B. Difference

1. Absolute Difference

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

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

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

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

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

2. Diversity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Opposition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. Contradiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. The Contradiction Resolves Itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remark 1

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

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

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

Remark 2

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

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

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

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

Remark 3

Now that the first determinations of reflection — identity, diversity, and opposition — have each been set out in a principle, all the more ought the one into which they pass over as into their truth, namely contradiction, be caught in a principle too and stated thus: all things are in their own selves contradictory, and this in the sense that, as against the rest, it is this principle which gives voice to the truth and the essence of things. – Contradiction, as it comes forward at opposition, is merely the developed nothing that identity already harboured and that came up in the phrase according to which the principle of identity says nothing. This negation goes on to determine itself into diversity and into opposition, and opposition is now contradiction posited.

Yet it belongs to the basic prejudices of logic as it has stood hitherto, and of the ordinary way of representing, to suppose that contradiction is not a determination as essential and as immanent as identity is; indeed, were rank at issue, and had both determinations to be kept apart, contradiction would be the one to count as the deeper and the more essential. For identity, set beside it, is no more than the determination of what is simply immediate, of dead being, whereas contradiction is the root of every movement and of vitality; a thing stirs, has drive and activity, only insofar as it carries a contradiction within it.

At first contradiction is customarily kept away from things, from whatever is, and from the true as such; the assertion runs that there is nothing contradictory. Secondly it is shoved instead into subjective reflection, which is said only to posit it by referring and comparing. But not even in this reflection, so it is claimed, is contradiction properly at hand, since what is contradictory admits neither of being represented nor of being thought. Whether in the actual or in thinking reflection, it passes generally for a contingency, for something like an abnormality, a passing fit of illness.

As for the assertion that contradiction does not exist, that it is nothing at hand, we need give no heed to such an assurance; an absolute determination of essence has to be met with in every experience, in everything actual as in every concept. The same reminder was already given above with the infinite, which is contradiction as it shows itself within the sphere of being. Common experience of itself declares, though, that a multitude at least of contradictory things exists, of contradictory institutions and the like, whose contradiction is at hand not merely in some external reflection but within them. Nor, moreover, is contradiction to be taken merely for an abnormality cropping up here and there; it is the negative in its essential determination, the principle of all self-movement — a movement that amounts to nothing beyond a presentation of contradiction. External, sensible movement is its immediate existence. A thing moves, not by being here in this now and there in another now, but by being, within one selfsame now, here and not here, by at once being and not being in this here. The contradictions which the ancient dialecticians exhibited in movement must be granted them, yet what follows is not that on that account movement is not, but rather that movement is existent contradiction itself.

Just so, inner or genuine self-movement, drive as such (a monad's appetite or nisus, the entelechy of the absolutely simple essence), amounts to nothing else than that something is, under one and the same respect, in its own self and the lack, the negative of itself. Abstract identity with self is not yet vitality; it is because the positive is negativity in its own self that it steps outside itself and puts itself into alteration. A thing is alive, then, only insofar as it holds contradiction within itself, and is indeed the strength to seize contradiction and to bear it. Where something concretely existing is incapable, in its positive determination, of reaching over its negative at the same time and of holding the one fast within the other, incapable of having contradiction in it, there it is not the living unity itself, not ground, but founders in contradiction. – Speculative thinking consists in nothing but this, that thinking holds fast to contradiction and, within it, to itself, and not in letting itself be ruled by contradiction, as befalls representing, letting contradiction dissolve its determinations merely into others or into nothing.

While in movement, in drive, and the like contradiction lies veiled for representation beneath the simplicity of these determinations, in the determinations of relation contradiction exhibits itself without any veil. The most trivial examples — of above and below, of right and left, of father and son, and so on to infinity — every one of them holds the opposition within one term. Above is what is not below; above is determined as just this, not to be below, and it is only insofar as a below is; and the reverse holds too; within the one determination lies its own contrary. The father is the son's other and the son the father's other, and neither is except as being this other of the other one; at the same time the one determination is only in reference to the other; their being is a single subsistence. Apart from the reference to a son the father is also something for himself; but so taken he is no father but a man in general; as above and below, right and left, are likewise reflected into themselves, something apart from the reference; but so taken merely places in general. – Terms opposed harbour contradiction insofar as, under the same respect, they refer to one another negatively, or mutually sublate one another, and are yet indifferent towards one another. Representation, in going over to the moment at which the determinations are indifferent, therein forgets the negative unity they have and so holds on to them merely as diverse ones in general, a determination in which right is right no longer, left left no longer, and so forth. But in actually having right and left before it, it has these determinations before it as negating themselves, each in the other, and in this same unity as not negating themselves, each rather being for itself indifferently.

Representing thus has contradiction for its content everywhere, no doubt, yet never arrives at a consciousness of it; it stays external reflection, which passes over from likeness to unlikeness, or from the negative reference to the being-reflected-into-self of what has been distinguished. It sets these two determinations externally over against one another and has them alone before its mind, not the passing over, which is the essential thing and holds contradiction in it. – Ingenious reflection, to bring it up here, consists on the contrary in apprehending and enunciating contradiction. Though it fails to express the concept of things and of their relations, and has determinations of representation alone for its material and its content, it does bring these into a reference which holds their contradiction and lets their concept shine through it. – Thinking reason, however, sharpens to a point, so to speak, the blunted difference of the diverse, the mere manifoldness of representation, making of it an essential difference, an opposition. Only when driven to the pitch of contradiction do the manifold terms grow stirring and alive towards one another, gaining in contradiction that negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and vitality.

With respect to the ontological proof of the existence of God it has already been recalled that the determination laid there at the ground is the sum total of all realities. Of this determination it is the custom to show first that it is possible, on the score that it holds no contradiction, reality being taken merely as reality without restrictions. The reminder was given that the sum total thereby becomes being simple and indeterminate, or, where the realities are in fact taken as a plurality of determinate ones, the sum total of all negations. Take the difference of reality more closely and it turns from diversity into opposition and so into contradiction, the sum total of all realities as such turning into absolute contradiction within itself. The usual horror which representational, non-speculative thinking feels before contradiction, as nature feels before a vacuum, throws this consequence out; for it halts at the one-sided consideration of the dissolution of contradiction into nothing and does not recognize contradiction's positive side, the side on which it becomes absolute activity and absolute ground.

From the consideration of the nature of contradiction it has emerged generally that it is not yet as such, so to speak, a harm, a lack, or a flaw in a matter if a contradiction can be shown up in it. On the contrary, every determination, everything concrete, every concept is essentially a unity of moments distinguished and distinguishable which pass over, through the determinate, essential difference, into contradictory ones. This contradictory element does indeed dissolve into nothing; it withdraws into its negative unity. And the thing, the subject, the concept is just this negative unity itself; it is something contradictory in its own self, but quite as much the resolved contradiction; it is the ground which holds and carries its determinations. Reflected into itself within its sphere, the thing, the subject, or the concept is its resolved contradiction; but this whole sphere of it is once more a determinate, a diverse one; so it is finite, and that is to say contradictory. Of that higher contradiction the sphere is not itself the resolution; for its negative unity, for its ground, it has a higher sphere instead. Hence finite things in their indifferent manifoldness are quite generally this: contradictory in their own selves, fractured within themselves and bound to return into their ground. – As will be considered later, the true inference from something finite and contingent to an absolutely necessary essence lies not in inferring the absolutely necessary from the finite and the contingent taken as the being which lies at the ground and keeps lying there, but in inferring it from a being that merely falls, from a being self-contradictory in its own self — which is likewise what lies immediately in contingency — or rather in showing that contingent being goes in its own self back into its ground, wherein it sublates itself, and further that by this return it posits the ground only so as to make itself the posited instead. In ordinary inference the finite's being appears as the ground of the absolute: because a finite is, the absolute is. The truth, though, is that the absolute is because the finite is the opposition self-contradictory in its own self, because it is not. Taken the first way, the proposition of the inference runs: the finite's being is the absolute's being; taken the second way it runs: the finite's non-being is the absolute's being.

Chapter 3. Ground

Essence determines itself as ground.

As the nothing was at the start in simple immediate unity with being, so here also is the simple identity of essence at the start in immediate unity with its absolute negativity. Essence is only this its negativity, and negativity so taken is pure reflection. As the return of being into itself, essence is this pure negativity; and thus, in itself or for us, it stands determined as the ground wherein being dissolves. This determinateness, though, has not been posited by it itself; or, it is no ground precisely for as long as it has not posited that determinateness of its own. What its reflection amounts to, however, is positing itself as what in itself it is, as negative, and determining itself. Positive and negative constitute the essential determination wherein essence has lost itself as in its own negation. Such self-subsistent determinations of reflection sublate one another, and the determination that has foundered is the genuine determination of essence.

Hence ground is itself one of the determinations of reflection that belong to essence — the last of them, or rather no determination at all beyond that of being a determination sublated. As it founders, the determination of reflection wins its genuine sense, that of being the absolute counter-thrust of itself into its own self, which is to say that the positedness falling to essence obtains only as positedness sublated, and inversely, that only a self-sublating positedness counts as essence's own positedness. Essence, as it determines itself to be ground, determines itself as what remains undetermined, and its determining is nothing but the sublating of its being-determined. – So determined, that is, as self-sublating, it is no essence come out of another, but one that stays identical with itself throughout its negativity.

To the extent that the passage to ground starts out from determination, from what is first and immediate (owing to the nature of determination itself, which founders through its own doing), ground is initially something the first has determined. Only, this determining is on one side, being a sublating of determining, essence's identity merely restored, cleansed, or made manifest, the identity which the determination of reflection is in itself; – on the other side, this negating movement, taken as determining, first posits that reflected determinateness which showed itself as the immediate one, though it is posited only by ground's self-excluding reflection and posited therein as no more than posited, or sublated. – Thus essence, determining itself as ground, proceeds out of itself and nothing else. As ground, then, it posits itself as essence, and its determining lies precisely in its positing itself as essence. That positing is essence's reflection, which sublates itself in its own determining — on the one side a positing, on the other the positing of essence, so that in one deed it is both.

Reflection is pure mediation generally, while ground is essence's real mediation with itself. Reflection, that movement out of nothing through nothing and back to itself, is the shining of itself within an other; but with opposition still lacking self-subsistence in such reflection, neither is the first term, the one that shines, a positive, nor is the other wherein it shines a negative. The pair are substrates, and strictly speaking substrates of the power of imagination alone; as yet they do not refer to their own selves. Mediation in its purity is nothing but pure reference, lacking terms referred. Determining reflection posits terms of that sort, to be sure, terms self-identical and yet at the same time only determinate references. Ground, by contrast, counts as the real mediation, since reflection is contained in it as reflection sublated; ground is the essence which through its non-being comes back into itself and posits itself. By this moment of sublated reflection the posited acquires the determination of immediacy, the determination of what stays self-identical apart from the reference or from its shine. Such an immediate is being as essence has restored it; it is reflection's non-being, and through this non-being essence mediates itself. It is as something negating that essence goes back into itself; in going back it therefore confers on itself the determinateness which for just that reason is the self-identical negative, positedness sublated, and so is quite as much something that is as it is the identity of essence with itself as ground.

Ground is at first absolute ground, wherein essence serves initially as groundwork in general for the ground-reference; determined more closely, though, it determines itself as form and material and confers a content on itself.

Second, it is determinate ground, being ground of a determinate content; and as the ground-reference grows external to itself in the course of its realization generally, it passes over into the mediation that conditions.

Third, a condition is presupposed by ground; yet the condition presupposes ground quite as much; their unity is the unconditioned, the matter in itself, which passes over into concrete existence through the mediation of the conditioning reference.

Remark

Ground has been expressed in a principle, like the other determinations of reflection: everything has its sufficient ground. – Taken generally this says no more than that whatever is must be regarded not as an immediate which is but as something posited; one is not to halt at immediate existence, or at determinateness generally, but to go back out of it into its ground, in which reflection it is as sublated and in its being-in-and-for-itself. What the principle of ground pronounces, then, is the essentiality of reflection-into-self as against mere being. – To add that the ground be sufficient is in truth quite superfluous, since it goes without saying; whatever the ground did not suffice for would have no ground, and yet everything is supposed to have one. Leibniz, however, who had the principle of sufficient ground particularly at heart and even made of it the fundamental proposition of his entire philosophy, bound up with it a deeper sense and a weightier concept than is commonly bound up with it when one halts at the immediate expression alone; though even in this sense the principle already deserves to count as important, in that being as such, in its immediacy, is thereby declared untrue and essentially something posited, whereas ground is declared the genuine immediate. What Leibniz chiefly set the sufficiency of ground against was causality in its strict sense, the mechanical mode of efficacy. Since this latter is an external activity, one restricted as to its content to a single determinateness, the determinations posited by it meet externally and contingently in a connection; the partial determinations are comprehended out of their causes, but the reference among them, which makes up what is essential in a concrete existence, is not contained in the causes of mechanism. That reference, the whole as essential unity, resides in the concept alone, in purpose. For such a unity mechanical causes do not suffice, since purpose, the unity of the determinations, does not lie at their ground. By a sufficient ground Leibniz accordingly understood one that would suffice for this unity as well, one comprehending within itself not the bare causes but the final causes. This determination of ground, however, does not yet belong in this place; the teleological ground is a property of the concept and of the mediation effected through it, and that mediation is reason.

A. Absolute Ground

a. Form and Essence

The determination of reflection, insofar as it goes back into ground, is a first, an immediate existence in general with which the beginning is made. But existence carries as yet only the meaning of positedness and presupposes a ground essentially — in the sense that it rather does not posit that ground; that this positing is a sublating of its own self, the immediate being rather the posited and the ground the non-posited. As has come out, such presupposing is the positing that strikes back at what posits; being determinateness sublated, ground is not the indeterminate but the essence determined through its own self, though determinate as indeterminate or as positedness sublated. It is the essence which in its negativity is identical with itself.

With this, the determinateness of essence as ground becomes a doubled one, that of ground and that of the grounded. First it is essence as ground, determined to be essence against positedness, as non-positedness. Second it is the grounded, the immediate that is nevertheless not in and for itself, positedness as positedness. The grounded, accordingly, is likewise self-identical, though what it has is the negative's identity with itself. Negative and positive, each identical with itself, are now one and the same identity. For as ground, the positive — indeed positedness itself — is identical with itself; the grounded is positedness as positedness, but its reflection into itself is precisely the identity of ground. – So this simple identity is not the ground itself, since ground is essence posited as the non-posited over against positedness. As the unity of the determinate identity just described (of ground) with the negative identity (of the grounded), it is essence in general, marked off from its mediation.

Measured against the earlier reflections from which it descends, this mediation is in the first place not pure reflection, which stands undistinguished from essence and does not yet bear on it the negative and with it the determinations' self-subsistence. In ground, though, as reflection sublated, those determinations do have a subsistence. – Nor again is it determining reflection, whose determinations enjoy essential self-subsistence; for that reflection has foundered in ground, and in ground's unity they are posited merely. – Ground's mediation is consequently the unity of the two reflections, the pure and the determining; what it determines, the posited, has subsistence, and inversely that subsistence of theirs is a posited. And because this subsistence is itself a posited, or carries determinateness, the determinations stand distinguished from their simple identity and constitute the form over against essence.

Essence has a form, together with determinations of that form. A fixed immediacy accrues to it, or it is substrate, only as ground. Essence as such is at one with its reflection and, undistinguished from it, is that very movement. Not essence, then, is what traverses the movement; nor is essence that from which the movement takes its start as from a first. That circumstance is what makes the exposition of reflection difficult all through; for strictly one cannot say that essence withdraws into its own self, that essence shines within, seeing that essence is neither before its movement nor in it, and the movement has no groundwork over which to run. Something referred emerges only in ground, once the moment of sublated reflection has come. Essence as the referred substrate, however, is essence determinate; on account of this positedness form belongs to it essentially. – The form-determinations, on the other hand, are now determinations as on essence; essence lies at their ground, the indeterminate that within its determination remains indifferent towards them; in essence they possess their reflection into themselves. Subsistence in their own selves and self-subsistence were what the determinations of reflection were meant to have; but their self-subsistence is their own dissolution, and so it is in an other that they have it; and yet that dissolution is itself just this identity with self, the ground of the subsistence they confer on themselves.

To form belongs everything determinate whatever; a thing counts as form-determination insofar as it is a posited and hence stands distinguished from that whose form it is; as quality, determinateness is at one with its substrate, being; being is what is immediately determinate, still undistinguished from its determinateness — or not yet reflected within it into itself, just as that determinateness is on this account one that is, not yet a posited one. – The form-determinations of essence, moreover, being the determinatenesses of reflection, are in their closer determinateness those moments of reflection which were considered above. Identity, and difference, this last partly as diversity and partly as opposition. Yet the ground-reference belongs among them too, insofar as it is the sublated determination of reflection and thereby at once essence in the shape of a posited. Excluded from form, by contrast, is the identity ground possesses within itself, namely that positedness as sublated together with positedness as such — ground together with the grounded — form a single reflection, and this reflection constitutes essence as that simple groundwork in which form has its subsistence. Yet in ground such subsistence is posited; or this essence is itself essentially determinate; so it is once again moment of the ground-reference and of form. – Just this is the absolute reciprocal reference between form and essence: that essence is simple unity of ground and grounded while therein being itself determinate or negative, marking itself off as groundwork from form, yet in that very act becoming itself ground and moment of form.

Form is thus reflection's completed whole; it carries in it reflection's determination of being sublated as well; therefore, in the same measure as it is a unity of its determining, it stands also referred to its own sublatedness, to an other that is not form but that on which form is to be. Being the essential negativity that refers to its own self, form is, against this simple negative, the positing and the determining term; whereas simple essence is the indeterminate and inactive groundwork on which the form-determinations find subsistence, or reflection into themselves. – At this distinguishing of essence from form external reflection is wont to come to rest; the distinguishing is necessary, but of itself it is their unity, as this ground-unity is the essence that thrusts itself away from itself and makes itself into positedness. Form is absolute negativity as such, the negative absolute identity with self, by which alone essence is essence rather than being. Taken in the abstract, that identity is essence against form, just as negativity taken in the abstract, as positedness, is the individual form-determination. Determination as it has exhibited itself, however, is in truth the total negativity that refers to its own self, which, being this identity, is thus the simple essence in its own self. In its own identity, accordingly, form has essence, as essence in its negative nature has absolute form. There can be no asking, then, how form comes to be added to essence, for form is only essence's shining within its own self, the reflection that dwells in essence as its own. Form no less in its own self is reflection returning into itself, or identical essence; in determining, form turns determination into positedness as positedness. – It does not, therefore, determine essence as though it were genuinely presupposed and cut off from essence, since in that guise it is the unessential determination of reflection that founders restlessly; in that guise, rather, it is itself the ground of its own sublating, the identical reference among its determinations. To say that form determines essence therefore says that form, in distinguishing, sublates the distinguishing itself and is that identity with self which essence is as the subsistence of determination; form is the contradiction of being sublated in its positedness and of holding its subsistence in this sublatedness; hence it is ground, the essence that stays identical with itself in being determined, or negated.

Such differences of form and essence are consequently no more than moments of the simple form-reference itself. Closer consideration and a firm hold on them are nevertheless in order. Determining form refers to its own self as positedness sublated, and so refers to its identity as to something other. It posits itself as sublated, and thereby presupposes its identity; taken in this moment, essence is the indeterminate for which form counts as an other. Essence so taken is not the absolute reflection in its own self, but is determined as the identity devoid of form; it is material.

b. Form and Matter

[1.] Essence turns into matter when its reflection determines itself so as to bear towards essence as towards what is formless and indeterminate. Matter, accordingly, is that simple identity, without difference in it, which essence is, though now carrying the determination of being form's other. Hence it is form's proper groundwork, its substrate, since what it makes up is the inward reflection of the form-determinations — the self-subsistent term to which those determinations refer as to the positive subsistence they have.

When abstraction is made from every determination, from the whole form of a something, indeterminate matter is what remains over. Matter is something abstract pure and simple. (– Matter admits of no seeing, no feeling, and so on – what one sees and feels is matter that is determinate, which is to say matter and form in unity). Yet the abstraction from which matter proceeds is no merely external stripping off and sublating of form; form rather, as has come to light, brings itself down by its own doing to this simple identity.

Further, a matter is presupposed by form, one to which form refers. The two, however, do not for that reason simply find themselves confronting one another externally and by accident; neither the one nor the other is out of its own self, or, to put it otherwise, eternal. Towards form matter is what is indifferent; but that indifference is precisely the determinateness of self-identity, and it is into this, as into its groundwork, that form withdraws. What makes form presuppose matter is just this, that form posits itself as sublated and hence bears upon this identity of its own as upon something other. Conversely it is matter that presupposes form; for matter is not the simple essence which immediately is absolute reflection, but that essence determined as the positive, that is, as what only is qua negation sublated. – From the other side, however, since form posits itself as matter only insofar as it sublates its own self, and so presupposes matter, matter carries also the determination of groundless subsistence. Nor, correspondingly, is matter determined as form's ground; for in positing itself as the abstract identity of a form-determination sublated, matter is not identity qua ground, and to that extent form has no ground in it. So each of the two, form as well as matter, is determined not to be posited by way of the other, not to be the other's ground. Matter is instead the identity of ground and grounded, a groundwork confronting this reference of form. Indifference, the determination they hold in common, is what matter as such is determined to be, and it likewise makes up how the two refer to one another. And the determination of form — being the reference of terms distinguished — is likewise the second moment in the way the two comport themselves towards one another. – As what is determined to be indifferent, matter is the passive, while form is the active. Form, being the negative that refers to itself, is the contradiction within, that which dissolves itself, thrusts itself away from itself, and determines. Its reference falls upon matter, and it is posited to refer to that subsistence of its own as to something other. Matter, on the contrary, is posited to refer to nothing but itself and to be indifferent towards what is other; and yet in itself its reference is to form, since sublated negativity is what it contains and only by that determination is it matter at all. Only because form is not posited in matter, because matter is form merely in itself, does matter refer to form as to an other. Matter keeps form shut up inside it and is absolutely receptive to it, and this for no other reason than that form is absolutely within matter, that such is the determination matter has in itself. Matter must therefore be formed, and form must materialize itself, procuring for itself, in matter, self-identity or subsistence.

2. Form, accordingly, is what determines matter, and matter what is determined by form. – Since form is of itself absolute self-identity and so holds matter within it, and since matter, in its pure abstraction or absolute negativity, likewise has form within its own self, the operation of form upon matter and matter's becoming determined by it amount to nothing more than the sublating of the shine of their indifference and distinctness. Such a reference of determining is thus how each of the two mediates itself with itself by way of its own non-being, – but a single movement is what these two mediations are, one that reinstates the identity they originally had; – the recollection of what they had externalized.

First, each of the two, form and matter, presupposes the other. This, as has come to light, says that the one essential unity is negative reference to itself, so that it splits in two: into essential identity determined as indifferent groundwork, and into essential difference, negativity, which is the form that determines. The unity of essence and of form just named, which counterpose themselves as form and matter, is the absolute ground in the act of determining itself. By making itself into something diverse, and because an identity underlies the diverse terms, the reference turns into reciprocal presupposition.

Secondly, form taken as self-subsistent is already the contradiction that sublates itself; but posited as such it also is, for self-subsistent and at the same time essentially referred to something other is what it is; – accordingly it sublates itself. Being itself two-sided, it makes this sublating doubled as well: first, it sublates its self-subsistence and turns itself into a posited term, into what has its being in an other, and matter is this other of it. Secondly, it sublates its determinateness over against matter, its reference to matter, thus its positedness, and by that gives itself subsistence. With the sublating of its positedness, this reflection of form is the identity proper to it, into which form passes over; but since form at the same time externalizes that identity and sets it over against itself as matter, the reflection of positedness into itself is a uniting with a matter wherein form gets subsistence; in this uniting, then, form comes together with matter as with an other – in accordance with the first side, its making itself into something posited – and therein no less with its own identity.

The activity of form, then, by which matter gets determined, lies in form's negative comportment towards itself. Conversely, however, form thereby comports itself negatively towards matter too; only, matter's becoming determined is no less form's own movement. Free of matter form is, yet it sublates this self-subsistence of its; and its self-subsistence is matter itself, for in matter lies its essential identity. Thus its making itself into a posited term and its making matter into something determinate are one and the same. – Viewed from the other side, though, the identity proper to form has at the same time been externalized, matter being form's other; to that extent matter does not get determined by form's sublating the self-subsistence proper to it. Only, matter is self-subsistent solely over against form; with the sublating of the negative the positive is sublated as well. Hence with form's sublating of itself there falls away also the determinateness matter had over against form, namely that of being indeterminate subsistence.

Moreover, what shows itself as the activity of form is no less the own movement of matter itself. Matter's determination as it is in itself, its ought, consists in its absolute negativity. By virtue of that negativity matter simply does not refer to form merely as to something other; this external is rather the very form matter holds shut up inside it. Matter is in its own self that very contradiction which form harbours, and one alone is this contradiction, as one alone is its resolution. Within its own self matter is contradictory because, being the indeterminate self-identity, it is withal absolute negativity; so it sublates itself upon itself, its identity breaking up within its negativity while that negativity obtains subsistence in the identity. When matter is thus determined by form as by something external, it thereby attains its determination, and for form no less than for matter the externality of the comportment lies in this, that each of them — or rather the unity they originally are — is in its positing at the same time presupposing; whereby reference to self is at once reference to self as sublated, that is, reference to its other.

Thirdly, the movement of form and matter has on the one side reinstated the unity they originally were, and on the other made that unity a posited one. Matter determines its own self quite as much as this determining is a doing of form external to matter; conversely form determines nothing but itself, having within its own self the matter that it determines, quite as much as in determining it comports itself towards something other; and the doing of form and the movement of matter are one and the same, except that the first is a doing, negativity as posited, whereas the second is movement or becoming, negativity as a determination that is in itself. What results, therefore, is being-in-itself and positedness in unity. Matter as such is something determined, or it necessarily has a form; and form, for its part, is material form throughout, form possessed of subsistence.

So far as form presupposes a matter as its own other, form is finite. It is no ground, but merely what is active. Likewise matter, so far as it presupposes form as the non-being of matter, is finite matter; no more than form is it the ground of their unity — it is only the groundwork upon which form rests. But truth belongs neither to this finite matter nor to the finite form; each refers to the other, or their unity alone is what is true of them. The two determinations go back into this unity and there sublate their self-subsistence; the unity thus proves to be their ground. Matter, then, grounds its form-determination only so far as it is not matter qua matter but essence and form in absolute unity; and form likewise grounds the subsistence of its determinations only so far as it is that selfsame unity. Yet this one unity, being absolute negativity and, more precisely, an excluding unity, is presupposing in its reflection; or there is one single doing here — in positing, to keep itself within the unity as posited and to thrust itself away from its own self, to refer to itself as to itself and to refer to itself as to something other. Or again: matter's becoming determined by form is essence, as ground, mediating itself with itself in one unity, by way of itself and by way of the negation of itself.

Matter that has been formed, or form possessed of subsistence, is now not merely that absolute unity of ground with itself but the posited unity as well. In the movement just examined absolute ground has set out its moments as at once self-sublating and thus posited. Or: in coming together with itself the reinstated unity has just as much thrust itself away from its own self and determined itself; for a unity that has come about by way of negation is a negative unity too. Hence it is the groundwork of form and matter, their unity, though their determinate groundwork — matter formed, yet at the same time indifferent towards form and matter as towards what is sublated and unessential. It is the content.

c. Form and Content

Form stands over against essence in the first place; there it is ground-reference at large, its determinations being ground and grounded. Next it stands over against matter; there it is determining reflection, its determinations being the determination of reflection itself and the subsistence such determination has. Lastly it stands over against content, and its determinations are once more form itself and matter. Whatever was previously the self-identical term — first ground, then subsistence at large, and at last matter — falls under form's dominion and is once again one of form's determinations.

First, content has a form and a matter that belong to it and are essential to it; their unity is what content is. But this unity, being withal determinate, or posited, sets content over against form; form makes up the positedness and, measured against content, is the unessential. Content is therefore indifferent towards form; form comprehends both form as such and matter; and so content has a form and a matter whose groundwork it constitutes, and which are for it mere positedness.

Secondly, what is identical in form and in matter is content, these two counting then as nothing but indifferent, external determinations. Positedness at large is what they are — a positedness that in content has withdrawn into its unity, or its ground. Content's identity with its own self is therefore, on the one occasion, that identity indifferent towards form; on the other, however, it is the identity of ground. Ground has at first vanished within content; but content is withal the form-determinations reflected negatively into themselves; hence its unity, at first merely the unity indifferent towards form, is formal unity as well, the ground-reference as such. Content has this reference, then, for its essential form, and conversely ground has a content.

The content of ground is thus ground returned into unity with itself; ground is at first essence identical with itself in its positedness; as diverse from its positedness and indifferent towards it, essence is the indeterminate, matter; but as content essence is at the same time formed identity, and this form becomes ground-reference just because the determinations of its opposition are in content posited as negated too. – Content is, further, determinate upon itself: not, like matter, merely indifferent at large, but formed matter, such that form's determinations possess a subsistence that is material and indifferent. Content is, on one side, ground's essential identity with itself in its positedness; on the other, an identity posited over against the ground-reference; this positedness, which attaches to that identity as a form-determination, confronts the free positedness — confronts form, that is, taken as the entire reference of ground and grounded; the latter form is total positedness returning into itself, the former accordingly nothing but positedness as immediate, determinateness as such.

With this, ground has made itself determinate ground at large, and the determinateness is itself doubled: first that of form, secondly that of content. The former is ground's determinateness of being external to content at large, content being indifferent towards this reference. The latter is the determinateness of the content that ground has.

B. Determinate Ground

a. Formal Ground

A determinate content belongs to ground. That determinateness of content is, as has come to light, the groundwork for form — the simple immediate over against the mediation of form. Ground is identity referring to itself negatively, and by so doing it makes itself into positedness; it refers negatively to itself in that within this negativity of its it is identical with itself; this identity is the groundwork, or the content, which in this manner makes up the indifferent, positive unity of the ground-reference and is what mediates that reference.

Within this content the determinateness of ground and of grounded has at first vanished, the one against the other. The mediation, however, is further a negative unity. The negative, as attaching to that indifferent groundwork, is the immediate determinateness of the groundwork, whereby ground comes to have a determinate content. But then the negative is also form's negative reference to its own self. On one side what is posited sublates itself and withdraws into its ground; but ground, the essential self-subsistence, refers negatively to its own self and makes itself into what is posited. This negative mediation of ground and grounded is the mediation peculiar to form as such, the formal mediation. Now since the one of form's two sides passes over into the other, the two thereby posit themselves jointly as sublated in one identity; and thereby they at the same time presuppose that identity. That identity is the determinate content, and it is upon this, as upon what mediates positively by way of itself, that the formal mediation accordingly bears. It is what the two have identical in them, and since they are distinguished though each in its difference is reference to the other, in it they subsist, each one subsisting as the whole itself.

From this it follows that in determinate ground the following is at hand: first, a determinate content comes under consideration from two sides, on the one occasion so far as it is posited as ground, on the other so far as it is posited as grounded. The content itself is indifferent towards this form; in both it is at large only one determination. Secondly, ground is itself no less a moment of form than is what ground posits; this is their identity as regards form. It is a matter of indifference which of the two determinations gets made into the first: the transition may run from what counts as posited over to the other as its ground, or from what counts as ground over to the other as posited. Grounded, considered on its own, is the sublating of its own self; by that it makes itself on one side into something posited, and is at the same time a positing of ground. Ground as such is this very same movement: making itself posited, it becomes thereby ground of something — that is, therein it is present both as posited and, for the first time, as ground. That a ground is at all — of this the posited is the ground, and conversely ground is thereby something posited. The mediation begins from the one as readily as from the other; each side is ground as much as posited, and each is the whole mediation, the whole form. – This whole form, further, being itself the self-identical, is the groundwork of those determinations which constitute the two sides, ground and grounded; so form and content are themselves one identity, the selfsame one.

On account of this identity of ground and grounded, in respect of content as well as of form, ground is sufficient (sufficiency confined to this relation); nothing is in the ground that is not in the grounded, just as nothing is in the grounded that is not in the ground. When a ground is asked after, what one wants is to see the same determination that is the content twice over: on the one occasion in the form of what is posited, on the other in the form of existence reflected into itself, of essentiality.

Now inasmuch as in determinate ground both ground and grounded are the entire form, while the content they have, determinate though it be, remains one and the same, ground is not yet really determined on its two sides; no diverse content belongs to them; determinateness is still simple, not yet gone over into the sides; determinate ground is present only in its pure form, that is, as formal ground. – Since the content amounts to no more than this simple determinateness, which does not bear upon itself the form of the ground-reference, it is a content identical with itself, indifferent towards form, form being external to it; an other than form is what content is.

Remark

If reflection upon determinate grounds holds to that form of ground which has here come to light, then the citing of a ground stays a mere formalism, an empty tautology: what it puts into the form of reflection-into-self, of essentiality, is a content already at hand in the form of immediate existence taken as posited. Such an adducing of grounds is accordingly attended by the same emptiness as talk conducted according to the proposition of identity. The sciences, above all the physical ones, are stuffed with tautologies of this sort, which pass, as it were, for a prerogative of science. – For instance, the ground given for the planets moving about the sun is the attractive force that earth and sun exert upon one another. As regards content, nothing else is thereby pronounced than what the phenomenon itself contains, namely the reference of these bodies to one another in their motion, only pronounced in the form of a determination reflected into itself, in the form of force. If it is then asked what sort of force the attractive force may be, the answer runs that it is the force which brings it about that the earth moves about the sun; in other words, its content is throughout the same as the existence whose ground it is supposed to be; the reference of earth and sun in respect of motion is the identical groundwork of ground and of grounded. – If a form of crystallization gets explained by having its ground in the particular arrangement that the molecules take up towards one another, then the crystallization that exists is that very arrangement, expressed now as ground. In everyday life such aetiologies, on which the sciences hold a privilege, are taken for what they are, for tautological, empty chatter. If, to the question why this man is travelling to town, the ground given is that in the town there is an attractive force which drives him there, such a manner of answering, sanctioned though it be in the sciences, passes for absurd. – Leibnitz reproached the Newtonian attractive force with being such a hidden quality as the schoolmen employed for the business of explaining. One would sooner have to reproach it with the opposite, with being a quality too well known; for it has no content other than the appearance itself. – What precisely recommends this manner of explaining is its great clarity and comprehensibility; for nothing is clearer or more comprehensible than that a plant, say, has its ground in a vegetative force, that is, in a force that brings plants forth. – An occult quality it could be called only in the sense that ground is supposed to have a content other than what is to be explained; such a content is not given; to that extent the force employed for explaining is indeed a hidden ground, seeing that a ground of the kind demanded has not been given. This formalism explains as little as the nature of a plant is cognized by my saying that it is a plant; clear though that proposition be, or the proposition that the plant has its ground in a plant-producing force, one may on that account call such a way of explaining a very occult one.

Secondly, as regards form, there occur in this manner of explaining the two opposed directions of the ground-reference, without their determinate relation being recognized. Ground is on the one part ground, as the content-determination of the existence it grounds reflected into itself; on the other part it is what is posited. It is that out of which existence is to be comprehended; but conversely it is from existence that ground is inferred, and ground is comprehended out of existence. For the chief business of this reflection consists precisely in finding the grounds out of existence, that is, in transposing immediate existence into the form of reflectedness; and so ground, far from being in and for itself, far from being self-subsistent, turns out rather to be what is posited and derived. Since by this procedure ground is fitted up to suit the phenomenon, and its determinations rest upon the phenomenon, the latter of course flows out of its ground quite smoothly and with a favourable wind. But cognition has not thereby stirred from the spot; it drives about within a difference of form which this very procedure inverts and sublates. One of the chief difficulties in getting oneself schooled in the sciences where this procedure prevails rests, therefore, on this perversity of position: putting first, as ground, what is in fact derived, and then, in advancing to the consequences, first stating in them the ground of those alleged grounds. The exposition begins with the grounds; they are set up in mid-air as principles and first concepts; they are simple determinations lacking all necessity in and for their own selves; upon them what follows is to be founded. Whoever, then, would penetrate into sciences of this kind must begin by inculcating those grounds in himself; a business that comes hard to reason, since it is asked to let what is groundless pass for a groundwork. He fares best who, without much reflecting, puts up with the principles as given and from then on uses them as ground-rules of his understanding. Without this method no beginning can be gained; just as little can any advance be made without it. This advance, however, now obstructs itself, in that within those principles the recoil of the method comes to light — a method which means to point out in the sequel what is derived, though the sequel in fact contains the grounds of those very presuppositions. Further, because what follows shows itself to be the existence out of which ground was derived, the relation in which the phenomenon is paraded gives rise to mistrust of the exposition of it; for the phenomenon does not show itself expressed in its immediacy but as a documentary proof of the ground. But since ground is in its turn derived from the phenomenon, one rather demands to see the phenomenon in its immediacy, so as to be able to judge the ground by it. In an exposition of this kind, where what properly grounds occurs as derived, one accordingly does not know where one stands, either with ground or with phenomenon. The uncertainty is increased — especially when the delivery is not strictly consequent but rather honest — by traces and circumstances of the phenomenon betraying themselves everywhere which point to more, and often to something quite other, than is merely contained in the principles. The confusion finally grows greater still when reflected and merely hypothetical determinations are mixed in with immediate determinations of the phenomenon itself, the former being pronounced in a manner suggesting that they belong to immediate experience. So many a one who approaches these sciences in honest faith may well be of the opinion that the molecules, the empty interstices, centrifugal force, the ether, the isolated ray of light, electrical and magnetic matter, and a host of the like, are things or relations which, from the way they are spoken of as immediate determinations of existence, really are at hand in perception. They serve as first grounds for other things, are pronounced as actualities and confidently applied; on good faith one lets them count as such, before one becomes aware that they are rather determinations inferred from the very things they are meant to ground — hypotheses and fabrications that an uncritical reflection has derived. In fact one moves within a sort of witches' circle where existence-determinations and reflection-determinations, ground and grounded, phenomena and phantoms run about among one another in unseparated company and all enjoy equal rank.

Alongside the formal business of explaining in this way out of grounds, and for all the explaining out of forces and matters that are well known, one hears it said again that of these forces and matters the inner essence itself is something we do not know. In this there is only the confession to be seen that this grounding is by itself wholly inadequate, that it itself demands something quite other than such grounds. Only then it is not to be seen why this trouble was taken with such explaining at all, why the other was not sought instead, or why that explaining was not at least set aside and a halt made at the simple facts.

b. Real Ground

As has come to light, the determinateness of the ground is in one part a determinateness of the base, that is, a content-determination; in another part it is the otherness within the ground-reference itself, namely the differentiatedness of that reference's content from its form; and the reference of ground and grounded runs out into an outward form upon a content which stands indifferent to these determinations. – In fact, though, neither of the two is external to the other; for the content is precisely this: to be the identity which the ground has with itself in the grounded, and which the grounded has in the ground. It has shown itself that the side of the ground is itself something posited, and that the side of the grounded is itself ground; each is in its own self this identity of the whole. Yet because they belong at the same time to form and constitute its determinate differentiatedness, each is, in its determinateness, the whole's identity with itself. Each therefore carries, over against the other, a different content. – Or, looked at from the content's side: since the content is self-identity as the ground-reference, it carries this difference of form essentially in its own self, and is one thing as ground and another as grounded.

Now with ground and grounded holding a different content, the ground-reference is no longer a formal one; the return into the ground and the emergence out of it into what is posited is no tautology any more; the ground stands realized. Whoever asks after a ground is therefore in fact demanding for that ground some content-determination other than the one whose ground is in question.

This reference now goes on to determine itself further. For to the extent that its two sides are content of differing kinds, they stand indifferent to one another; each is an immediate determination self-identical in itself. Further, taken as ground and grounded referred to one another, the ground is what stands reflected into itself within the other as within its positedness; the content, accordingly, that belongs to the side of the ground is present in the grounded as well, and the grounded, as what is posited, holds its self-identity and its subsistence in the ground alone. Over and above this content of the ground, however, the grounded from now on has a content peculiar to itself as well, and so is the unity of a twofold content. As a unity of what differs, this is admittedly their negative unity; but since the content-determinations stand indifferent to one another, it amounts only to their empty reference, contentless in its own self, and not to their mediation — a one, or a something, as the outward linking of the two.

Within the real ground-reference, then, a double is at hand: for one thing, the content-determination that is ground carries on with itself in the positedness, so as to constitute the simply identical element of ground and grounded; the grounded on this count harbours the ground entire within it, and the reference of the two is a differenceless essential solidity. Whatever accrues in the grounded beyond this simple essence is accordingly no more than unessential form, outward content-determinations that as such go free of the ground and make up an immediate manifoldness. That essential, then, is not the ground of this unessential, nor is it the ground of the reference the two bear to one another within the grounded. It is a positively identical element housed in the grounded, though it sets itself there into no difference of form and instead, as content referring itself to itself, is an indifferent positive base. – For another, whatever is linked with this base in the something counts as indifferent content, yet as the unessential side. What chiefly matters is the reference borne by the base and the unessential manifoldness. Since the determinations so referred are indifferent content, however, this reference too is not ground; one of them is indeed determined as essential and the other merely as unessential or posited content, but for content referring itself to itself such form is outward to both. The one of the something that constitutes their reference is on that account no reference of form but a merely outward band, one that does not hold the unessential manifold content as something posited; it too, then, is nothing but base.

The ground, in determining itself as real, thereby breaks up into outward determinations, and does so on account of the difference of content that constitutes its reality. The two references — the essential content, being the simple immediate identity that ground and grounded have; and then the something, being the reference of the differing content — are two different bases; the self-identical form of the ground, whereby one and the same is at one time essential and at another posited, has disappeared; the ground-reference has in this way turned external to its own self.

What operates now, therefore, is an outward ground, one that brings differing content into linkage and settles which of them is ground and which the thing posited through it; in the content on either side that determination is not to be found. The real ground is on that account reference to other — of content to other content on the one hand, and on the other of the ground-reference itself (of the form) to an other, namely to an immediate that it has not posited.