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.

Remark

The formal ground-reference contains but one single content for ground and grounded, and in this identity lies its necessity, though at the same time its tautology. The real ground contains a differing content, but with that the contingency and outwardness of the ground-reference sets in. On the one side, that which counts as the essential, and for that very reason as the determination of ground, fails to ground the other determinations linked with it. On the other side it also stays undetermined which of a concrete thing's several content-determinations should be assumed to be the essential one, the one that is ground; the choice between them is thus left free. Thus in the first respect the ground of a house, for example, is its foundation; what makes that foundation a ground is the heaviness residing in sensuous matter, the element utterly identical in the ground and in the grounded house alike. That heavy matter should exhibit such a difference as that between a foundation and a modification distinguished from it, whereby the matter makes up a dwelling, is a thing of complete indifference to the heavy itself; its reference to the other content-determinations, to the purpose, to the fitting out of the house and so forth, is outward to it; heaviness is therefore certainly the base of them, but not their ground. Heaviness is just as much the ground of a house's standing as it is the ground of a stone's falling; the stone has this ground, heaviness, within it; but that it carries a further content-determination, whereby it counts not simply as a heavy thing but as stone, lies outside heaviness; it is moreover posited through something else that the stone should have been removed beforehand from the body onto which it falls, just as time and space, and their reference, motion, are a content other than heaviness and admit (as the way of speaking goes) of being represented apart from it, and consequently are not essentially posited through it. – Heaviness is quite as much the ground of a projectile's performing the hurled motion opposed to falling. – From the diversity of the determinations of which heaviness is the ground it becomes clear that something else is required alongside, something that makes heaviness into the ground of this determination or of another. –

When nature is said to be the ground of the world, then whatever bears the name of nature is in one respect one with the world, the world being no more than nature itself. They are also distinguished, however, in such a way that nature is rather the indeterminate, or at any rate is the self-identical essence of the world determined only in those universal differences which are laws, and that to nature, if it is to be world, a manifoldness of determinations still accrues outwardly. Their ground, however, does not lie in nature as such; nature is rather what stands indifferent towards them as contingencies. – Just the same relation holds when God receives the determination of being the ground of nature. Being ground, he is nature's essence; nature harbours that essence in it and is something identical with him; but nature has besides a further manifoldness distinguished from the ground itself; nature is the third in which these two differing things are linked; that ground is neither the ground of the manifoldness differing from it nor the ground of its own linkage with that manifoldness. Nature is therefore not cognized out of God as its ground, for so taken he would be only its universal essence, an essence that does not contain nature as nature is determinate essence and nature.

The adducing of real grounds accordingly turns into just as much of a formalism as the formal ground itself, and this by reason of the content-difference between the ground — or, properly speaking, the base — and whatever is bound up with it in the grounded. In the formal ground the self-identical content stands indifferent towards form; the same holds good in the real ground. Beyond that there is now the further case that the real ground does not carry within its own self any decision as to which among the manifold determinations is to count as the essential one. Something is a concrete made up of such manifold determinations, all of which show themselves equally constant and abiding upon it. Any one of them may therefore be determined as ground just as well as any other; determined, that is, as the essential one, in comparison with which the other would then be only something posited. Bound up with this is what was mentioned just before, namely that if some determination is at hand which in a given case gets viewed as another's ground, nothing follows to the effect that the second is posited together with the first in a further case, or generally. – Punishment, to take an example, carries the manifold determinations of being retribution, of being furthermore a deterring example, of being something the law holds out as a threat for deterrence, and of being something that brings the criminal to reflection and improvement. Every one of these differing determinations has at some time counted as the ground of punishment, since each of them is essential as a determination, and thereby the rest, as distinguished from it, get determined over against it as merely contingent. The one taken as ground, however, is not yet the whole of punishment itself; this concrete contains those others as well, and they are merely linked with the one within it without having their ground in it. – Or an official has skill in office, stands as an individual within a kinship, has this and that acquaintance, a particular character, was placed in these and those circumstances and occasions for showing himself, and so forth. Each of these properties may be, or may be looked upon as, the ground of his holding this office; they are a differing content bound together in a third; the form of being determined against one another as the essential and as the posited is outward to that third. Each of these properties is essential to the official, since it is through them that he is this determinate individual and no other; insofar as the office admits of being regarded as an outwardly posited determination, each property may be determined as ground over against it, yet conversely those properties may equally be viewed as posited and the office as what grounds them. How they actually stand, which is to say in the particular case, is a determination lying outside the ground-reference and outside the content as well; some third thing is what bestows on them the form of ground and grounded.

In general, then, every existence can have grounds of many kinds; each of its content-determinations, being self-identical, pervades the concrete whole and therefore admits of being regarded as essential; and given the contingency of the manner of linkage, door and gate stand infinitely open to the many respects, that is, to determinations lying outside the fact itself. – Whether this or that consequence attends a ground is on the same account equally contingent. Moral motives, to take an example, count as essential determinations of ethical nature; what issues from them, though, is at once an outwardness distinct from them, which issues from them and equally does not; only by way of a third does it get added to them. Put more precisely, this is to be taken thus: it is not contingent for the moral determination, if it is ground, to have a consequence or something grounded, but it is contingent whether it be made into a ground at all or not. Yet since the content that is its consequence, once the determination has been made into a ground, itself has the nature of outwardness, that content can immediately be sublated by some other outwardness. Out of a moral motive an action may therefore come forth, or may just as well not. Conversely, an action can have grounds of many kinds; being a concrete, it contains manifold essential determinations, any of which may on that account be adduced as its ground. The searching out and adducing of grounds, in which ratiocination chiefly consists, is for this reason an endless driving about that contains no final determination; for anything and everything one good ground and several can be adduced, and just as many for its opposite, and a whole crowd of grounds can be at hand without anything at all resulting from them. What Socrates and Plato name sophistry amounts to nothing other than ratiocinating from grounds; over against it Plato places the consideration of the idea, in other words of the fact in and for its own self, or in its concept. Grounds are taken only from essential content-determinations, relations and respects, of which every fact has several, exactly as its contrary does too; in their form of essentiality the one counts as much as the other; because it does not contain the whole compass of the fact, each is a one-sided ground, whose other particular sides in turn have particular ones of their own, and of which none exhausts the fact that makes up their linkage and holds them all within it; not one of them is a sufficient ground, in other words the concept.

c. The Complete Ground

1. Within the real ground, the ground as content and the ground as reference alike are no more than bases. The former is only posited to be essential and to be ground; the reference, for its part, is the something belonging to the grounded, an indeterminate substrate carrying a content of differing kinds, a linkage of that content which is no reflection of its own but comes from outside and hence is merely posited. What the real ground-reference amounts to is therefore rather ground in a sublated state, so that it makes up instead the side of the grounded, or of positedness. Being positedness, though, the ground has by now retreated into a ground of its own; it has become something grounded which possesses another ground. That further ground receives thereby the following determination: first, it is identical with the real ground taken as its grounded, and on this score the very same content belongs to either side, so that both content-determinations, together with the linkage they have in the something, turn up in the new ground as well. But secondly, into this new ground that merely posited outward linkage has been sublated, and the new ground, being the linkage's reflection into itself, is the absolute reference holding between the two content-determinations.

Since the real ground has retreated into a ground of its own, there is reinstated upon it the identity that ground and grounded have, which is to say the formal ground. For that reason the ground-reference now arisen is the complete one: it harbours formal and real ground at once, and it mediates those content-determinations that confronted each other immediately in the real ground.

2. Here, then, is the closer determination the ground-reference has given itself. First: something has a ground, and it carries in it the content-determination that constitutes the ground, plus a second one as posited through the first. Yet these being indifferent content, neither is the one ground upon its own self nor the other upon its own self grounded by the first; that reference is instead, within the immediacy of the content, sublated or posited, and as such it grounds itself in an other. Differing from the first only in point of form, this second reference carries the same content as the first — the two content-determinations, that is — yet it is their immediate linkage. But since what gets linked is throughout content of differing kinds, determination therefore indifferent to its counterpart, this is not the truly absolute reference between them, which would have one determination be the self-identical element within positedness and the other be nothing but that positedness of the identical; instead a something bears the reference and constitutes it as unreflected, as merely immediate, so that it counts only as relative ground over against the linkage found in the other something. So the two somethings are the pair of distinguished references of content which have come out. Standing in the identical ground-reference of form, they are a single whole content — the pair of content-determinations plus the reference between them — and what distinguishes them is nothing but the mode of that reference, immediate in the one, posited in the other, whereby the one diverges from the other in point of form alone, as ground and grounded. – Secondly: this ground-reference is real, and not formal merely. As has shown itself, formal ground passes over into real ground; the moments of form reflect into themselves; they amount to a self-subsistent content, and so a content peculiar as ground and one peculiar as grounded belong to the ground-reference too. To begin with, what constitutes the immediate identity of the formal ground's two sides is the content, and so a single content belongs to both. Form, though, adheres to the content upon its own self, which makes the content twofold, standing to itself as ground and as grounded. Hence, of the two content-determinations belonging to the pair of somethings, one gets determined as being not just shared between them upon outward comparison, but as the substrate identical to both and as the base upon which their reference rests. Set against the second content-determination it counts as the essential one and grounds that second as posited — namely within the something whose reference is the grounded reference. Within the first something, the one that is the ground-reference, this second content-determination too stands linked immediately, and in itself, with the first determination. The second something, by contrast, carries the one determination only in itself, as the point where it is immediately identical with the first something, while it carries the second as posited within it. What makes the first content-determination ground of the second is its original linkage, inside the first something, with that other content-determination.

Thus the ground-reference that the content-determinations have inside the second something stands mediated by the first, in-itself reference belonging to the first something. Here is the syllogism: since inside one something the determination B stands linked in itself with the determination A, B stands linked as well inside the second something, to which A alone belongs immediately. Inside the second something it is not merely this second determination that comes mediated; that the something's immediate determination should be ground comes mediated too, namely by the original reference which that determination bears to B inside the first something. Such a reference is accordingly ground of the ground A, and the whole ground-reference lies [in] the second something as posited, or grounded.

3. Real ground exhibits the ground's reflection turned external to itself; and the ground's complete mediation consists in re-establishing the identity it has with itself. Yet since this identity has along with it taken on the outwardness proper to real ground, the formal ground-reference, in this unity of itself with real ground, is a ground positing itself quite as much as sublating itself; the ground-reference mediates itself with itself through its negation. To begin with, ground is the original reference, a reference between immediate content-determinations. Being essential form, the ground-reference has for its two sides such as are sublated ones, or moments. Accordingly, as the form of immediate determinations, it is the self-identical reference and, at the same time, reference of its negation; whence it is ground not in and for its own self, but as referring to the ground-reference sublated. – Secondly, the sublated reference — the immediate, that is, which within the original and within the posited reference alike is the identical base — is likewise not real ground in and for its own self; on the contrary, its being ground is something posited through that original linkage. –

In its totality, therefore, the ground-reference is essentially a presupposing reflection: formal ground presupposes the immediate content-determination, while the latter, as real ground, presupposes form. So ground is form taken as immediate linkage, yet in such fashion that form thrusts itself away from itself, presupposing immediacy instead, and within it refers to itself as to an other. That immediate is the content-determination, the simple ground; but qua this, qua ground namely, it has likewise been thrust away from itself and refers to itself, again, as to an other. – The total ground-reference has determined itself in this way into conditioning mediation.

C. Condition

a. The Relatively Unconditioned

1. The ground counts as immediate, the grounded as mediated. But since ground is positing reflection, it makes of itself a positedness; and since it is presupposing reflection too, it refers to itself as to a sublated thing, an immediate by which it is itself mediated. Such mediation, the advance running from immediate to ground, is not reflection coming from outside but, as has turned out, what the ground does of itself; put otherwise, the ground-reference, reflecting as it does into identity with self, is with equal essentiality a reflection that divests itself. What the ground refers to as to its essential presupposition, this immediate, is the condition; hence real ground stands essentially conditioned. Its own otherness is the determinateness which it holds.

So condition is, first, an existence that is immediate and manifold. Secondly, that existence stands referred to another, to a thing which is ground — not ground of this existence, but under a different respect, seeing that existence is of itself immediate and without ground. Under such reference it counts as something posited; being condition, immediate existence ought to be, not for itself, but for another. Yet its standing thus for another is likewise, at the same time, no more than a positedness; its being something posited lies sublated in its immediacy, and an existence is indifferent to being condition. Thirdly, condition is immediate in such wise as to constitute the ground's presupposition. So determined, it is the ground's reference of form returned into identity with self, and therewith the content of the ground. Content as such, though, amounts only to the ground's indifferent unity, unity as it stands within form; where form is lacking content is lacking too. Content does nonetheless win free of form, seeing that in the complete ground the ground-reference becomes a reference outward to its own identity, by which content comes by immediacy. To the extent, therefore, that condition is where the ground-reference holds its identity with itself, condition supplies the ground's content; but since content stands indifferent towards that form, it is the ground's content in itself alone, a thing that has yet to become content and so supplies the material for the ground. Set down as condition, existence carries, under the second moment, the determination of forfeiting its indifferent immediacy and becoming a moment of something else. In virtue of its immediacy it stands indifferent towards this reference; to the extent that it steps into the reference, however, it supplies the being-in-itself of the ground and is for the ground the unconditioned. To be condition at all, it has its presupposition in the ground and is conditioned itself; such a determination, though, remains outward to it.

2. A something does not exist through its condition; a thing's condition is not its ground. For the ground, condition is the moment of unconditioned immediacy; it is not, though, itself that movement, that positing, which refers to itself negatively and turns itself into positedness. Over against condition there consequently stands the ground-reference. Alongside its condition a something has a ground as well. – The ground is reflection's empty movement, because reflection keeps immediacy outside itself as what it presupposes. Reflection is nevertheless the entire form and the mediating that is self-subsistent; for its ground is not the condition. Since this mediating refers to itself in the manner of positing, from that side it too is an immediate and an unconditioned; presuppose itself it does, yet as a positing that has been divested or sublated; while whatever it is by its own determination, that it is in and for its own self. – To the extent, then, that the ground-reference is self-subsistent reference to itself and carries reflection's identity upon its own self, it holds a content peculiar to it, over against the content belonging to condition. The one is the ground's content and for that reason essentially formed; the other, contrariwise, is immediate material and nothing more, material to which reference to the ground is as outward as it is at the same time what supplies the ground's being-in-itself; so the other is a mingling of self-subsistent content, bearing no reference to what the ground-determination has for content, with content that passes into it and, serving as its material, is to become a moment of it.

3. Condition and ground, the whole's two sides, are therefore on the one hand indifferent towards each other and unconditioned by each other; the first as the unreferred, to which the reference wherein it is condition remains outward; the second as reference or form, before which the condition's determinate existence figures merely as material, as a passive thing whose own form, the form it has upon itself for itself, is unessential. Both of them, further, are mediated as well. Condition supplies the ground's being-in-itself; so essential a moment of the ground-reference is it that it constitutes the ground's simple identity with self. Yet this too lies sublated; such being-in-itself is nothing but a posited thing; existence in its immediacy cares nothing about being condition. Condition's being the being-in-itself for the ground supplies, accordingly, that side of it on which it is a mediated thing. The ground-reference likewise, self-subsistent though it be, has a presupposition of its own too, and keeps its being-in-itself outside itself. – Each of the two sides is therefore the contradiction between indifferent immediacy and essential mediation, the two held within one reference; – or the contradiction between subsisting self-subsistently and being determined as a mere moment.

b. The Absolutely Unconditioned

Each of the two relatively unconditioned shines, to begin with, into the other: the condition, being immediate, shines into the ground's form-reference, and this reference into immediate existence as the positedness of that reference; but apart from this shine of its other within it, each is self-subsistent in its own self and carries its own peculiar content.

First off, the condition is immediate existence; two moments belong to its form — positedness, whereby existence, as condition, counts as material and as a moment of the ground; – and being-in-itself, whereby it makes up the ground's essentiality, the ground's simple reflection within itself. To immediate existence both sides of the form are outward; for that existence is the ground-reference sublated. – Yet, first, existence in its own self amounts to nothing but this: sublating itself in its immediacy and foundering. Being at large is merely the becoming towards essence; making itself into something posited, into the identity which through the negation of itself is what is immediate — that is being's essential nature. So the form-determinations of positedness and of self-identical being-in-itself, the form whereby immediate existence is condition, are not outward to existence at all; existence is rather this very reflection. Secondly, as condition, being is now posited also as that which it essentially is — to wit, as a moment, and so as belonging to an other, and equally as being-in-itself, again of an other; in itself, though, being is such solely by the negation of itself, that is, by way of the ground and of the ground's reflection, which sublates itself and so presupposes; the being-in-itself of being is accordingly nothing but something posited. Two sides belong to this being-in-itself of the condition: to be, on the one hand, the condition's essentiality as the ground's, and on the other hand the immediacy of the condition's own existence. Or rather the two come to the same. Existence is an immediate, but immediacy is essentially what has been mediated — mediated, that is, by the ground that sublates itself. Being immediacy thus mediated by a mediating that sublates itself, it counts at once as the ground's being-in-itself and as the ground's unconditioned; only this being-in-itself is, once more, quite as much mere moment or positedness, for it stands mediated. – Hence the condition is the entire form of the ground-reference; it is that reference's presupposed being-in-itself, and just thereby a positedness itself, its immediacy consisting in making itself into positedness — in thrusting itself away from itself so that it founders and equally is ground, a ground making itself into positedness and thus into the grounded too; and both come to one and the same.

In the conditioned ground, similarly, being-in-itself is not present merely as the shining of an other within it. This ground is the self-subsistent reflection of positing, the reflection, that is, which refers to itself; it is thereby the self-identical, or has within its own self its being-in-itself and its content. At the same time, however, it is presupposing reflection; it refers negatively to itself, sets its being-in-itself over against itself as something other to it, and the condition — by its moment of being-in-itself quite as much as by that of immediate existence — is a moment belonging to the ground-reference itself; immediate existence is essentially only through its ground, and is a moment of the ground as presupposing. Hence the ground too is quite as much the whole itself.

Only one whole of form, then, is at hand at all; and just as much only one whole of content. For the condition's peculiar content counts as essential content only insofar as it is reflection's identity with itself within the form, or insofar as this immediate existence is in its own self the ground-reference. This existence, further, is condition solely by virtue of the ground's presupposing reflection; it constitutes the ground's identity with itself, or its content, over against which the ground sets itself. Existence is accordingly no mere formless material for the ground-reference; since it carries this form in its own self, it is formed matter, and, standing at once in identity with the form and indifferent towards it, it is content. It is, lastly, the very same content the ground has, for it is content precisely as the self-identical within the form-reference.

Condition and ground, the whole's two sides, are accordingly one essential unity — in respect of content as much as of form. Through themselves they pass over into each other; or, being reflections, each posits itself as sublated and refers itself to that negation of its own, so that the two presuppose each other. Yet this is at once only a single reflection of the two, their presupposing therefore likewise only one; the mutuality of it passes over rather into their presupposing their one identity as their subsistence and their foundation. This, the one content and unity of form belonging to both, is the genuinely unconditioned; the fact in its own self. – The condition, as emerged above, is the relatively unconditioned only. One is therefore wont to take it as itself a conditioned and to enquire after a fresh condition, and with that the customary progress into infinity from condition to condition is under way. Now why, given a condition, is a fresh condition enquired after — why, that is, is the condition assumed to be a conditioned? Because it is some finite existence or other. But that is a further determination of the condition, not one lying within its concept. The condition as such, rather, is a conditioned because it is the posited being-in-itself; within the absolutely unconditioned it is therefore sublated.

This last now holds the two sides, condition and ground, within itself as its moments; it is the unity into which they have withdrawn. Taken together the two make up its form, its positedness. Condition of both is the unconditioned fact — the absolute condition, however, that is, the condition which is itself ground. – Qua ground the fact is now that negative identity which has thrust itself apart into those two moments; – firstly into the shape of the ground-reference sublated, of an immediate manifold lacking unity and outward to itself, a manifold that refers itself to the ground as to something other than it and at once makes up the ground's being-in-itself; secondly into the shape of an inward and simple form, which is ground, though it refers itself to that immediate, self-identical as it is, as to an other, and determines it as condition — determines, that is, this its in-itself as a moment of its own. – The totality is presupposed by these two sides in such a way that the totality is what posits them. Conversely, since they presuppose the totality , the latter seems in its turn conditioned by them, and the fact seems to arise out of its condition and out of its ground. But these two sides having shown themselves to be the identical, the relation of condition and ground has vanished; both are lowered to a mere shine; and the absolutely unconditioned, in its movement of positing and of presupposing, is nothing other than the movement wherein this shine sublates itself. It is the fact's own doing to condition itself and to set itself as ground over against its conditions; the fact's reference as the conditions and as the ground is, however, a shining within itself, and its comportment towards them is its going together with itself.

c. Emergence of the Fact into Concrete Existence

The absolute ground identical with its condition is the absolutely unconditioned — the immediate fact, as that which is genuinely of the nature of essence. Qua ground it refers itself negatively upon itself and turns itself into positedness; into a positedness, however, that is the reflection complete in its sides and the form-reference self-identical within them, as its concept has come out. Firstly, therefore, this positedness is the ground sublated, the fact as the immediate devoid of reflection: the side of the conditions. That side is the totality of the fact's determinations – the fact itself, yet cast out into the outwardness of being; the restored circle of being. Within the condition, essence lets go the unity of its reflection-into-itself as an immediacy, though one that now bears the determination of being a conditioning presupposition and of essentially making up but a single one of essence's sides. – That the conditions are the fact's entire content rests on this, that they are the unconditioned in the shape of formless being. On account of that shape, however, they wear besides a different figure from the determinations of the content such as it is in the fact as such. They appear as a manifoldness devoid of unity, intermingled with the outwardly-essential and with other circumstances which have no place in the circle of existence, insofar as that circle makes up this determinate fact's conditions. – The sphere of being itself is the condition for the absolute, unrestricted fact. That sphere is posited by the ground, in the ground's going back into itself, as the first immediacy, upon which the ground refers itself as upon its unconditioned. Being sublated reflection, this immediacy is reflection in the element of being, an element which accordingly builds itself up as such into a whole; as determinateness of being the form proliferates onward, and appears thereby as a manifold content, one differing from the determination of reflection and indifferent towards it. The unessential which the sphere of being carries about it, and which it strips off insofar as it is condition, is that determinateness of immediacy into which the unity of form lies sunk. In being, this unity of form, as being's reference, is present at first as becoming – as the passing over of one of being's determinatenesses into another. The becoming of being, however, is further a becoming towards essence and a going back into the ground. Existence, therefore, which makes up the conditions, is in truth not determined as condition by an other and put to use as material; through its own self, rather, it makes itself into a moment of an other. – Nor, further, is its becoming a beginning from itself as from what is genuinely first and immediate; its immediacy is rather only the presupposed, and reflection's own doing is the movement of its becoming. Hence to be condition is the truth of existence; existence has its immediacy solely through the ground-reference's reflection, which posits itself as sublated. Becoming is thus, like immediacy, only the shine of the unconditioned, the unconditioned presupposing itself and having its form therein; and the immediacy of being is on that account essentially a moment of form and nothing more.

This shining of the unconditioned has as its other side the ground-reference as such, determined as form as against the immediacy both of the conditions and of the content. But it is the form of the absolute fact, a fact having the unity of its form with itself, or its content, in its own self, and, in determining that content into condition, sublating the content's diversity in this very positing and making it into a moment; just as, conversely, the fact gives itself, qua essenceless form, the immediacy of subsistence within this identity with itself. The ground's reflection sublates the conditions' immediacy and refers them, as moments, into the unity of the fact; but the conditions are what the unconditioned fact itself has presupposed, so that in doing so the fact sublates its own positing; or its positing thereby makes itself, immediately and quite as much, into becoming. – Both are on that account one unity; the movement of the conditions in their own selves is becoming, a going back into the ground and a positing of the ground; the ground as posited, however — as sublated, that is — is what is immediate. Negatively referring itself upon itself, the ground turns itself into positedness and grounds the conditions; but in that immediate existence is thereby determined as a posited, the ground sublates it and only so makes itself into ground. – This reflection, then, is that mediation whereby the unconditioned fact is mediated with itself through its negation. Or rather: the unconditioned's reflection is in the first place presupposing, yet this sublating of its own self is immediately a determining positing; secondly it is therein immediately a sublating of the presupposed and a determining out of itself; and thus this determining is once again a sublating of the positing, and is becoming in its own self. Therein mediation, as a return to itself by way of negation, has vanished; it is simple reflection shining within itself, and absolute becoming without ground. That the fact is posited by its conditions on the one side and on the other by its ground — this movement is nothing else than the vanishing of the shine of mediation. The fact's being posited is hereby a coming forth, the simple putting of itself forth into concrete existence; the fact's pure movement to its own self.

When all the conditions of a fact are on hand, it thereupon steps into concrete existence. The fact is, before it concretely exists; and indeed it is, first, as essence, or as unconditioned; secondly it has existence, or is determinate, and this in the twofold manner considered — on the one side in its conditions, on the other in its ground. In those conditions the fact has given itself the form of outward, groundless being, since as absolute reflection it is the negative reference upon itself and makes itself into its own presupposition. What is thus presupposed as unconditioned is accordingly the groundless immediate, and its being amounts to nothing but being there as groundless. If, then, all the fact's conditions are on hand — which is to say, if the fact's totality stands posited as groundless immediate — this scattered manifoldness recollects itself in its own self. – The whole fact must be there in its conditions, or: to its concrete existence all the conditions belong; for all of them make up the reflection; or, existence being condition, it is determined by the form, its determinations are therefore determinations of reflection, and with any one of them the others are essentially posited. – At first the recollection of the conditions is the foundering of immediate existence and the becoming of the ground. But with that the ground is a posited, which is to say that just as much as it is ground, so much is it sublated as ground and is immediate being. If, then, all the fact's conditions are on hand, they sublate themselves qua immediate existence and qua presupposition, and just as much does the ground sublate itself. The ground shows itself only as a shine that immediately vanishes; this coming forth is thus the fact's tautological movement to itself, and the fact's mediation through the conditions and through the ground is the vanishing of both. So immediate, therefore, is the coming forth into concrete existence that it stands mediated only through the vanishing of mediation.

The fact emerges out of the ground. The ground does not ground or posit it in such a way that the ground would still stay below; the positing is rather the ground's movement out to its own self, and the ground's simple vanishing. By union with the conditions the ground obtains outward immediacy and the moment of being. It obtains them, though, neither as something outward nor by an outward reference; as ground, rather, it turns itself into positedness, in the positedness its simple essentiality goes together with itself, and in this sublating of its own self it is the vanishing of its difference from its positedness, hence simple essential immediacy. It does not, then, stay behind as something diverse from the grounded; rather the truth of grounding lies in this, that therein the ground unites with its own self, so that its reflection into an other is its reflection into itself. Just as the fact is the unconditioned, so it is hereby also the groundless, and it steps out of the ground only insofar as the ground has foundered and is no ground — out of the groundless, which is to say out of its own pure form or essential negativity.

Mediated through ground and condition, and through the sublating of that mediation identical with itself, this immediacy is concrete existence.

Second Section. Appearance

Essence must appear.

Absolute abstraction — that is being; this negativity is not something outward to being, but being is being and nothing other than being, only as this absolute negativity. On account of that negativity, being only is as being that sublates itself, and is essence. Essence, however, as the simple equality with itself, is conversely being just as much. In the doctrine of being there is contained the first proposition: being is essence. What makes up the content of the doctrine of essence's first section is the second proposition, essence is being. This being, however, into which essence turns itself, is essential being, concrete existence — a having gone forth out of negativity and inwardness.

Thus does essence appear. Reflection is the shining of essence within itself. Enclosed within the unity, reflection's determinations are simply and solely posited ones, sublated ones; or reflection is the essence that in its positedness is immediately self-identical. In that essence is ground, however, it determines itself really, by way of its reflection, which sublates its own self, or returns into itself; and in that this determination, or the ground-reference's otherness, sublates itself further in the ground's reflection and turns into concrete existence, the form-determinations have in this an element of self-subsistent subsistence. Into appearance their shine completes itself.

Essentiality gone forward into immediacy is at first concrete existence, and something concretely existing, or thing; as the unity, undifferentiated, of essence with its immediacy. The thing does contain reflection, yet in the thing's immediacy reflection's negativity is at first extinguished; since the thing's ground is essentially reflection, however, its immediacy sublates itself; it makes itself into a positedness.

Thus it is, secondly, appearance. What the thing is in itself, its truth, is appearance. But this concrete existence, merely posited and reflected into otherness, is just as much a going out beyond itself into its infinity; against the world of appearance there sets itself the world reflected into itself, the world that is in itself.

Appearing being and essential being, however, stand simply and solely in reference to one another. Concrete existence is thus, thirdly, essential relation; what appears exhibits the essential, and the essential is within its appearance. – Relation is the union, still imperfect, of reflection into itself with reflection into otherness; the perfect interpenetration of the two is actuality.

Chapter 1. Concrete Existence

As the principle of ground expresses it — everything that is has a ground, or is something posited, something mediated — so too a principle of concrete existence would have to be set up and expressed thus: everything that is concretely exists. Not to be a first immediate, but to be essence come forth into immediacy — that is the truth of being.

But if it was further said as well that what concretely exists has a ground and is conditioned, then it would have to be said no less: it has no ground and is unconditioned. For the sublating of that mediation which refers by ground and condition has brought forth an immediacy, and this immediacy is concrete existence, which in emerging sublates just this emerging itself.

Insofar as the proofs of the concrete existence of God may be mentioned here, it should be recalled beforehand that alongside immediate being, first, and concrete existence, second — the being emerging out of essence — there is a still further being, one emerging out of the concept: objectivity. – Proving as such is mediated cognition. Each kind of being demands or contains a kind of mediation of its own; the nature of proving therefore comes out differently in respect of each. The ontological proof wants to set out from the concept; it lays the sum total of all realities down as ground, and thereupon subsumes concrete existence too under reality. It is therefore that mediation which is a syllogism, and it does not yet fall to be considered here. Regard has already been paid above (Part I, Division I, p. 47 f.) to Kant's reminder against this, and it was noted that Kant understands by concrete existence the determinate existence whereby something enters the context of the whole of experience, that is, enters the determination of an otherness and the reference to other. As something concretely existing, then, a something stands mediated by an other, and concrete existence at large is the side on which it is mediated. Now in what Kant calls the concept — that is, in a something so far as it is taken as merely and simply referred to itself, or in representation as such — its mediation does not lie; within abstract identity with itself the setting-in-opposition has been dropped. What the ontological proof would have to exhibit is that the absolute concept, the concept of God namely, arrives at determinate existence, at mediation, or how the simple essence mediates itself with mediation. This comes about through the subsumption indicated, that of concrete existence under its universal, namely under reality, which is assumed as the middle — on the one side God in his concept, on the other side concrete existence. – Of this mediation, so far as it has the shape of the syllogism, there is, as has been said, no question here. How that mediation of essence with concrete existence is in truth constituted, however, is what the exposition up to now has contained. Proving's own nature falls to be considered in the doctrine of cognition. Only what bears upon the nature of mediation at large is to be indicated here.

In the proofs of the existence of God a ground is given for that existence. This is not supposed to be an objective ground of God's existence; for that existence is in and for its own self. It is therefore merely a ground for cognition. With that it declares itself at the same time to be something that vanishes in the object which at first appears through it as grounded. The ground now taken from the world's contingency contains the world's going back into the absolute essence; for the contingent is what in its own self is groundless and sublates itself. In this manner, then, the absolute essence does in fact emerge out of the groundless; the ground sublates itself, and with that the shine also vanishes of that relation which was given to God, of being grounded in an other. Hereby this mediation is the genuine one. Only that proving reflection is unacquainted with this nature of its mediation; on the one part it takes itself to be something merely subjective and thereby removes its mediation from God himself, while on the other part it therefore fails to recognize the mediating movement, and to recognize that and how the movement lies within essence itself. Reflection's genuine relation consists in its being both in one: mediation as such, yet at the same time, to be sure, a subjective and outward mediation, that is, the mediation outward to itself, which sublates itself again in its own self. In that exposition, though, concrete existence acquires the skewed relation of appearing merely as something mediated or posited.

Nor, on the other side, can concrete existence be regarded merely as something immediate. Taken in the determination of an immediacy, the apprehending of God's concrete existence has been given out as something unprovable, and the knowledge of it as a merely immediate consciousness, as a faith. Knowledge, it is said, must come to this result: that it knows nothing; that is, that it gives up once more its mediating movement together with the determinations that occur within it. This has come out in the foregoing as well; only it is to be added that reflection, in ending with the sublating of its own self, does not on that account have nothing as its result, as if the positive knowledge of essence, taken as immediate reference to essence, were severed from that result and were an emerging of its own, an act starting merely from itself; rather this very ending, this foundering of mediation, is at once the ground from which the immediate emerges. As was remarked above, language brings together the meaning of this going under and of the ground; the essence of God, one says, is the abyss for finite reason. And such it is in fact, insofar as reason therein surrenders its finitude and lets its mediating movement sink away; yet this abyss, the negative ground, is equally the positive ground from which what is emerges, the essence immediate in its own self; mediation is an essential moment. The mediation through the ground sublates itself, yet it does not leave the ground below, so that what emerges from it would be a posited having its essence elsewhere, namely in the ground; as abyss, rather, this ground is mediation vanished; and conversely, only mediation vanished is at once the ground, and only by way of this negation is it the self-same and the immediate.

Concrete existence, then, is not here to be taken as a predicate, nor as a determination of essence, in such a way that a proposition about it would run: essence concretely exists, or has concrete existence; – essence has rather passed over into concrete existence; concrete existence is essence's absolute externalization, beyond which essence has not remained behind. The proposition would accordingly run: essence is concrete existence; from its concrete existence it is not distinguished. – Essence has passed over into concrete existence insofar as essence, qua ground, draws no further distinction between itself and itself as the grounded, or insofar as that ground has sublated itself. This negation, however, is just as essentially essence's position, or simply and solely positive continuity with its own self; concrete existence is the reflection of the ground into itself, the ground's identity with its own self achieved in the ground's negation, and hence that mediation which has posited itself as self-identical and is thereby immediacy.

Now because concrete existence is essentially the mediation identical with itself, it has the determinations of mediation about it, yet in such a way that they are at once reflected into themselves and possess subsistence that is essential and immediate. Being the immediacy that posits itself through sublating, concrete existence is negative unity and being-within-itself; it therefore determines itself immediately as something concretely existing and as a thing.

A. The Thing and Its Properties

Concrete existence, qua something concretely existing, stands posited in the form of that negative unity which it essentially is. At first, though, this negative unity is only an immediate determination, and so the one belonging to something at large. The concretely existing something, however, differs from the something that is. Essentially the former is an immediacy such as has come about through mediation's reflection into its own self. And so the concretely existing something is a thing.

One distinguishes the thing from its concrete existence much as the something may be distinguished from its being. Immediately, thing and what concretely exists are one and the same. Yet because concrete existence is not being's first immediacy, but carries the moment of mediation about it, the determining of concrete existence into thing, and the distinguishing of the two, is no transition but properly an analysis; and this distinguishing is itself contained in concrete existence as such, within the moment of its mediation — the difference of thing-in-itself from outward concrete existence.

a. Thing-in-itself and Concrete Existence

1. As the essential immediate on hand by way of a mediation already sublated, the thing in itself is that which concretely exists. In this, mediation is quite as essential to the thing in itself; but within such first, immediate concrete existence the said difference comes apart into indifferent determinations. One side of it, the mediation of the thing, namely, is the thing's unreflected immediacy; its being pure and simple, which, on account of being determined at once as mediation, amounts to an existence other to itself, inwardly manifold and external. Not existence merely, though: it stands in reference to the sublated mediation and to essential immediacy, and hence is existence as the unessential, as positedness. – (Once the thing is held apart from its concrete existence, it is the possible, the thing belonging to representation, or the thought-thing, which as such is not meant at the same time to exist. The determination of possibility, together with the opposition of the thing to its concrete existence, belongs later.) – Yet thing-in-itself and mediated being are both alike contained in concrete existence, and each is itself a concrete existence; the former concretely exists and is the thing's essential concrete existence, the latter its unessential one.

The thing in itself, as the simple being-reflected of concrete existence into itself, is no ground of the unessential existence; it is motionless, indeterminate unity, since its determination is precisely to be mediation already sublated, and hence merely the groundwork of that existence. Reflection too, therefore, as the existence mediating itself through another, falls outside the thing-in-itself. The latter is to bear no determinate manifoldness on it, and comes by such only once brought before external reflection, towards which it nevertheless stays indifferent. (– Color the thing-in-itself has only once brought before the eye, taste once brought before the nose, and so forth.) Its diversity amounts to respects that an other takes, determinate references which this other confers on itself in regard to the thing-in-itself, and which are no determinations belonging to the latter.

2. This other is now reflection, which, being determined as external, is first external to itself and constitutes the determinate manifoldness. Next it is external to what essentially concretely exists, and refers itself to that as to its absolute presupposition. Both these moments of external reflection, though, a manifoldness of its own and its reference to the thing-in-itself standing other to it, are one and the same. For such concrete existence is external only insofar as it refers itself to essential identity as to an other. Beyond the thing-in-itself, accordingly, the manifoldness has no self-subsistent subsistence of its own, but is only as shine as against it, in its necessary reference thereto, as the reflex breaking upon it. Diversity is thus on hand as an other's reference to the thing-in-itself; but that other is nothing subsisting for itself and is only as reference to it; simultaneously, though, it is only as the repulsion away from it, and so proves the unsupported counter-thrust of itself into itself.

To the thing-in-itself, then, essential identity of concrete existence that it is, this essenceless reflection does not accrue; external to it, rather, that reflection collapses into itself. It founders, and so becomes itself essential identity, or thing-in-itself. – One may view the matter also thus: essenceless concrete existence has its reflection-into-itself in the thing-in-itself; to begin with, it refers itself to that as to its other; but being the other as against what is in itself, it is only the sublating of itself, and the becoming of being-in-itself. Thereby the thing-in-itself is identical with external concrete existence.

On the thing-in-itself this displays itself thus. The thing-in-itself is essential concrete existence referring itself to itself; it is identity with itself only to the extent that it harbors within it the negativity of reflection; what showed up as concrete existence external to it is on that account a moment within it. Hence it is likewise a thing-in-itself repelling itself away from itself, one which accordingly comports itself towards itself as towards an other. So there are now several things-in-themselves on hand, which stand to one another in the reference of external reflection. Their relation to one another as to others is this unessential concrete existence; but it is moreover itself essential to them – or rather, this unessential concrete existence, collapsing into itself, is thing-in-itself, though an other than the first, since the first is immediate essentiality while this one issues out of the unessential concrete existence. Only, this second thing-in-itself is nothing more than an other in general; for, being a thing identical with itself, it holds no further determinateness as against the first, and is, as the first was, the reflection of unessential concrete existence into itself. Thus the determinateness of the diverse things-in-themselves as against one another falls to external reflection.

3. This external reflection is henceforth a comportment of the things-in-themselves towards one another, their mutual mediation as others. In this way the things-in-themselves are the extremes of a syllogism, its middle term being made up by their external concrete existence, that concrete existence whereby they are others for one another and are differentiated. This difference of theirs falls solely within their reference; from their surface, as it were, they merely dispatch determinations into that reference, and towards it, as absolutely reflected into themselves, they stay indifferent. – This relation now makes up the totality of concrete existence. The thing-in-itself stands in reference to a reflection external to it, and within that reflection it has manifold determinations; this is its repelling of itself away from itself into another thing-in-itself; such repelling is the counter-thrust of it into itself, since each is an other only as shining back out of the other; its positedness lies not on itself but on the other, and it is determined solely by the other's determinateness; and this other is just as much determined solely by the determinateness of the first. Since the two things-in-themselves have the diversity thereby not on themselves but each only on the other, they are not differentiated at all; the thing-in-itself, supposed as it is to comport itself towards the other extreme as towards another thing-in-itself, comports itself towards what is undifferentiated from it, and external reflection, which was meant to make up the mediating reference between extremes, turns out to be a comportment of the thing-in-itself merely towards itself, or essentially its reflection into itself; it is accordingly determinateness that is in itself, the determinateness of the thing-in-itself. This determinateness it does not possess, then, in a reference external to it towards another thing-in-itself, and of the other towards it; the determinateness is no mere surface of it, but is its essential mediation with itself as with an other. – Both things-in-themselves, which were to make up the extremes of the reference, being supposed to have in themselves no determinateness as against one another, in fact collapse into one; there is but One thing-in-itself which in external reflection comports itself towards itself, and what makes up its determinateness is its own reference to itself as to an other.

Such determinateness on the part of the thing-in-itself is the property of the thing.

b. Property

Quality is the immediate determinateness belonging to something; the negative itself by virtue of which being is a something. Just so, the thing's property is the negativity of reflection whereby concrete existence is at all something concretely existing and, as simple identity with itself, is thing-in-itself. The negativity of reflection, the sublated mediation, is however essentially itself mediation, and reference – not to an other in general, in the way that quality is the unreflected determinateness, but reference to itself as to an other; or mediation that immediately is just as much identity with itself. The abstract thing in itself is itself this comportment returning into itself out of another; thereby it is determined in its own self; but its determinateness is constitution, which as such is itself determination and which, being comportment towards another, does not pass over into otherness and is withdrawn from alteration.

A thing has properties; these are, in the first place, its determinate references to what is other; property is on hand only as a manner of comporting towards one another; it is accordingly external reflection, the side of the thing's positedness. But, in the second place, in this positedness the thing is in itself; it preserves itself in the reference to another; admittedly it is thus only a surface with which concrete existence gives itself over to the becoming of being and to alteration, yet in that surface the property does not get lost. A thing possesses the property of bringing about this or that in the other and of expressing itself in its reference after a fashion of its own. It furnishes proof of this property only on condition of an answering constitution in the other thing, yet the property is at once peculiar to it and its own groundwork identical with itself; – this reflected quality is called property for that reason. Therein the thing passes over into an externality, but there the property maintains itself. Through its properties the thing turns into cause, and cause is just this, to preserve itself as effect. Here, however, the thing is as yet no more than the quiescent thing of many properties; not yet determined as actual cause; it is as yet only the in-itself reflection of its determinations, not yet itself the positing one.

As has come out, then, the thing-in-itself is essentially not thing-in-itself in such fashion that its properties would be positedness of an external reflection; rather, they are determinations of its own, through which it comports itself in a determinate manner; it is no determinationless groundwork lying beyond its external concrete existence, but is on hand in its properties, as ground, which is to say, as the identity with itself in its positedness; yet at the same time as conditioned ground, which is to say, its positedness is quite as much self-external reflection; only to the extent that it is external is it reflected into itself and in itself. – By way of concrete existence the thing-in-itself steps into external references; and concrete existence consists in this externality; being the immediacy of being, it subjects the thing to alteration; but it is likewise the reflected immediacy of ground, and so the thing is in itself throughout its alteration. – This mention of the ground-reference must not be taken here, however, as if the thing were determined generally as the ground of its properties; thinghood itself as such is the ground-determination, property is not something distinguished from its ground, nor does it merely make up the positedness, but is that ground which has passed over into its own externality and is thereby truly reflected into itself; property itself as such is the ground, positedness that is in itself, or else the ground makes up the form of property's identity with itself; property's determinateness is the ground's self-external reflection; and the whole of it is the ground which refers itself to itself in its repelling and determining, in its external immediacy. – Essentially, therefore, the thing-in-itself concretely exists, and that it concretely exists means conversely: concrete existence, as external immediacy, is at once being-in-itself.