B. Nodal Line of Measure-Relations

The measure-relation's final determination was that, being specific, it is exclusive; the excluding accrues to neutrality as the negative unity of the distinguished moments. For this unity that is for itself, elective affinity, no further principle of specification has come out with regard to its connection to the other neutralities; that specification remains only in the quantitative determination of affinity as such, according to which it is determinate multitudes that neutralize one another and thereby stand over against other relative elective affinities of their moments. But further, for the sake of the fundamental quantitative determination, the exclusive elective affinity also continues itself into the neutralities that are other to it, and this continuity is not merely an external connection of the various neutrality-relations, in the way a comparison would be; rather, neutrality as such has a separability within it, inasmuch as those out of whose unity it has come to be step, as self-subsistent somethings, each of them indifferently, into connection with this or with others of the series facing them, so as to combine with them, albeit in differing, specifically determined multitudes. Herewith this measure, resting as it does on such a relation within its own self, is saddled with an indifference of its own; it is something external at its own self and, in its connection to itself, something alterable.

This connection of the ratio-measure to itself is different from its externality and alterability, which are its quantitative side; over against these it is, as connection to itself, a qualitative foundation that is; – an abiding, material substrate which, as at once the measure's continuity with itself within its externality, would in its quality have to hold that principle for the specification of this externality.

Now on this closer determination the exclusive measure, external to itself in its being-for-itself, repels itself away from its own self, positing itself as another relation that is merely quantitative and likewise as such another relation which is simultaneously another measure; it is determined as a unity that specifies at its own self, one which produces measure-relations at itself. These relations differ from the kind of affinity considered above, in which one self-subsistent comports itself towards self-subsistents of another quality and towards a series of such; they occur at one and the same substrate, inside the very moments of neutrality; repelling itself from itself, the measure determines itself into other relations that differ only quantitatively, which likewise form affinities and measures, alternating with such as remain merely quantitative diversities. In such a way they form a nodal line of measures along a scale of the more and the less.

A measure-relation is at hand; a self-subsistent reality distinguished qualitatively from others. Because it is at the same time essentially a ratio of quanta, a being-for-itself of this sort stands open to externality and to quantum-alteration; it has a latitude within which it stays indifferent towards that alteration and leaves its quality unchanged. But a point of this change of the quantitative sets in at which the quality gets changed, at which the quantum proves to be specifying, so that the ratio, quantitatively altered, has overturned into a measure and with that into a new quality, a new something. This relation, having stepped into the place of the first, is determined by the latter partly according to the qualitative selfsameness of the moments standing in affinity, partly according to quantitative continuity. But since the difference falls within this quantitative side, the new something comports itself indifferently towards the preceding one; their difference is the external one of quantum. It has therefore come forth not out of the preceding one but immediately out of itself; that is, out of the inward specifying unity which has not yet stepped into existence. – The new quality, or new something, is subjected to the very same onward course of its alteration, and so forth into infinity.

Insofar as the advance from one quality runs in the steady continuity of quantity, the ratios drawing near to a qualifying point are, quantitatively regarded, distinguished only by more and less. On this side the alteration is a gradual one. But gradualness concerns merely what is external about the alteration, not what is qualitative about it; the preceding quantitative ratio, infinitely close as it is to the one that follows, is still another qualitative existence. On the qualitative side, accordingly, the merely quantitative going-on of gradualness, which is no limit at its own self, is absolutely broken off; since the newly entering quality, in respect of its merely quantitative connection, is one indeterminately other than the vanishing quality, an indifferent one, the transition is a leap; both are posited as wholly external to one another. – People are fond of making an alteration comprehensible to themselves by way of the gradualness of the transition; but gradualness is rather just the merely indifferent change, the opposite of the qualitative one. In gradualness the coherence of the two realities – they are taken as states, or as self-subsistent things – is on the contrary sublated; it is posited that neither is the limit of the other, but that the one is simply external to the other; and thereby precisely what is needed for comprehending, however little may be called for, is done away with.

Remark

The natural number system already displays such a nodal line of qualitative moments that come to the fore in the merely external going-on. On the one part it is a merely quantitative going forwards and backwards, a perpetual adding-on or taking-away, so that every number stands in the same arithmetical ratio to the number before it and the one after it as these do to the numbers before and after them, and so on. But the numbers arising in this way also have a specific ratio to yet other numbers preceding or following, either that of being such a multiple of one of them as a whole number expresses, or that of being power and root. – In the musical ratios a harmonic ratio comes in, upon the scale of the quantitative going-on, by way of a quantum, without this quantum for itself standing on the scale in any other ratio to its predecessor and successor than these in turn stand in to theirs. While the tones that follow seem to be withdrawing ever further from the keynote, or numbers by the arithmetical going-on seem merely to be growing yet more other, all at once there comes forth instead a return, a surprising accord, which was not qualitatively prepared by what immediately preceded but appears as an actio in distans, as a connection to something remote; the going-on among merely indifferent ratios, which do not change the preceding specific reality or which form no such reality at all, interrupts itself all at once, and since in quantitative respect it is carried on in the same manner, a specific ratio thus breaks in by way of a leap.

In chemical combinations, with the progressive change of the mixture-ratios, such qualitative nodes and leaps occur that two materials at particular points of the mixture-scale form products displaying particular qualities. These products are not distinguished from one another merely by a more and less, nor are they already at hand along with the ratios lying close to those nodal ratios, in a weaker degree perhaps, but are bound to such points themselves. For example, the combinations of oxygen and nitrogen give the various nitrogen oxides and nitric acids, which come forth only at determinate quantitative ratios of the mixture and have essentially different qualities, so that at mixture-ratios lying in between no combinations of specific concrete existences result. – The metal oxides, the lead oxides say, take shape at particular quantitative points along the course of oxidation, and they differ in colour and in other qualities. One does not shade over gradually into another; the ratios that lie between those nodes yield no neutral product, no specific existence. Without having gone through intermediate stages, a specific combination steps forth which rests on a measure-relation and has qualities of its own. – Or water, in changing its temperature, does not thereby become merely more or less warm but runs through the states of hardness, of drippable liquidity and of elastic liquidity; these different states do not set in gradually, rather the merely gradual going-on of the temperature-change is at these points interrupted and checked all at once, and the onset of another state is a leap. – All birth and death, instead of being a continued gradualness, are rather a breaking-off of it, and the leap out of quantitative alteration into qualitative.

There is no leap in nature, so it is said; and ordinary representation, when it is to comprehend a coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be, supposes, as was recalled, that it has comprehended it by representing it as a gradual emerging or vanishing. It has shown itself, however, that the alterations of being as such are not only the passing-over of one magnitude into another magnitude but a transition from the qualitative into the quantitative and conversely, a becoming-other which is a breaking-off of the gradual and a qualitatively-other over against the preceding existence. Under chilling, water does not grow hard bit by bit, in such a way that it would turn pulpy and stiffen by degrees up to the firmness of ice, but is hard at a stroke; when it stands at rest it can still possess its full liquidity even at the entire temperature of the freezing point, and a slight shaking brings it into the state of hardness.

Underlying the gradualness of coming-to-be is the representation that what is coming to be is already there sensibly, or in general actually at hand, only not yet perceptible on account of its smallness, just as, with the gradualness of vanishing, that the non-being, or the other that steps into its place, is likewise at hand, only not yet noticeable; – at hand, that is, not in the sense that the other is contained in itself within the other that is at hand, but that it is at hand as existence, only unnoticeable. Coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be as such are thereby sublated, or the in-itself, the inner, in which something is prior to its existence, is converted into a smallness of external existence, and the essential difference, or the difference of concept, into an external, mere difference of magnitude. – Making a coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be comprehensible out of the gradualness of the alteration has the tediousness proper to tautology; it has what comes to be or ceases to be all finished up beforehand and turns the alteration into a mere change of an external difference, whereby it is in fact nothing but a tautology. The difficulty for an understanding that would comprehend in this fashion lies in the qualitative transition of something into its other as such and into its opposite; against this it deludes itself with identity and with alteration as the indifferent, external alteration of the quantitative.

In the moral sphere, insofar as it is considered within the sphere of being, the same transition from the quantitative into the qualitative takes place; and different qualities appear to be grounded upon a diversity of magnitude. It is a more and less by which the measure of frivolity is overstepped and something wholly other, crime, comes forth, by which right passes over into wrong, virtue into vice. – So too do states, through their difference of magnitude, other things being assumed equal, acquire a different qualitative character. Laws and constitution become something other when the compass of the state and the amount of its citizens expand. The state has a measure of its magnitude, and driven out beyond that measure it collapses within itself without holding, under the very constitution which at a merely different compass made for its good fortune and its strength.

C. The Measureless

Even in its realized being-for-itself the exclusive measure stays saddled with the moment of quantitative existence, and is on that account capable of climbing and sinking along the scale of quantum, upon which the ratios change. Something, or a quality, resting as it does on such a ratio, is driven out beyond itself into the measureless, and perishes through the mere change of its magnitude. Magnitude is the constitution by which an existence can be laid hold of with the shine of innocuousness, and through which it can be destroyed.

The abstract measureless is quantum as such, as determinationless within itself and as only an indifferent determinateness by which the measure is not altered. Within the nodal line of measures, however, this same determinateness stands posited as specifying; the abstract measureless just mentioned raises itself, sublated, to qualitative determinateness; and the new measure-relation, the one into which the relation first at hand passes over, is a measureless in view of that first one, while at its own self it is equally a quality that is for itself; thus posited is the alternation of specific concrete existences with one another, and of these same existences with relations that stay merely quantitative, – and so forth into infinity. What is thus at hand in this passing-over is the negation of the specific relations no less than the negation of the quantitative advance itself; the infinite that is for itself. – The qualitative infinity, such as it is at existence, was the breaking-forth of the infinite at the finite, as immediate transition and vanishing of the here into its beyond. The quantitative infinity, on the other hand, is by its determinateness already the continuity of quantum, a continuity of the quantum out past itself. The qualitatively finite becomes the infinite; the quantitatively finite has its beyond at its own self, and points out beyond itself. This infinity of the specification of measure, however, posits the qualitative and equally the quantitative as sublating each other within one another, and with that it posits the immediate unity they first had, the unity that measure is as such, as one returned into itself and therefore as itself posited. The qualitative, a specific concrete existence, passes over into another in such fashion that nothing occurs but a change in the magnitude-determinateness of a ratio; the alteration of the qualitative itself into something qualitative is thereby posited as an external and indifferent one, and as a going-together with its own self; the quantitative in any case sublates itself as overturning into the qualitative, into determinedness in and for itself. This unity, continuing itself in this way within its own self throughout the alternation of measures, is the genuinely abiding, self-subsistent material, the matter.

What is at hand herewith is α) one and the same matter, posited as foundation in its differentiations and as perennial. Already in quantum as such this severing of being from its determinateness begins; something is large as indifferent towards its determinateness that is. In measure the matter itself is in itself already the unity of what is qualitative and what is quantitative, – of those two moments which inside the universal sphere of being make up the difference, the one being the beyond of the other; the perennial substrate thereby has, at its own self and to begin with, the determination of an infinity that is. β) This selfsameness of the substrate is posited in this, that the qualitative self-subsistences into which the measure-determining unity has been repelled subsist only in differences of quantity, so that into this its own differentiating the substrate carries itself over continuously; γ) within the nodal series' infinite progress what stands posited is the continuing of the qualitative into the going-on of quantity, as into an indifferent alteration, but just as much the negation of the qualitative that this contains, and therewith at the same time the negation of merely quantitative externality. The quantitative pointing out past itself towards an other, as another quantitative, founders in the coming-forth of a ratio-measure, of a quality, and the qualitative passing-over sublates itself in just this, that the new quality is for its part nothing but a quantitative ratio. This mutual passing-over of the qualitative and the quantitative proceeds upon the ground of their unity, and the sense of the process is nothing else than the existence, the showing or positing, that underlying it there is such a substrate, one that would be their unity.

Within the series of self-subsistent measure-relations, the members that stand one-sidedly in them are immediate qualitative somethings (the specific gravities, or the chemical materials, the basic or alkaline ones, the acids for example), and then the neutralizations of these (– among which the combinations of materials of differing specific gravity are here to be comprehended as well –) are self-subsistent and themselves exclusive measure-relations, totalities of a being-for-itself existence, indifferent towards one another. Now such relations have their determination only as nodes upon one and the same substrate. With this the measures, and the self-subsistences posited along with them, are brought down to states. The alteration is only the change of a state, and what passes over is posited as remaining the same within it.

To survey the further determining which measure has run through, its moments gather together thus: that measure is at first the itself immediate unity of quality and of quantity, in the shape of an ordinary quantum, one that is however specific. Herewith, as a determinateness of quantity referring not to an other but to itself, it is essentially ratio. Hence, further, it contains its moments within itself as sublated and undivided; as always within a concept, the difference in it runs thus, that every one of its moments is on its own account unity of the qualitative and the quantitative. This difference, herewith a real one, yields a multitude of measure-relations, self-subsistent within themselves as formal totalities. The series which form the sides of these relations are, for each single member which as belonging to one side comports itself towards the whole series facing it, the same constant order. This unity, still wholly external as mere order, does indeed show itself as the immanent specifying unity of a measure that is for itself, distinguished from its specifications; but the principle that specifies is not yet the free concept, the only thing that gives immanent determination to its differences; the principle is rather at first only substrate, a material, for whose differences, if they are to be as totalities, that is, to have within them the nature of the substrate that stays equal to itself, only the external quantitative determination is at hand, which at the same time shows itself as diversity of quality. In this unity of the substrate with its own self the determination of measure is a sublated one, and its quality an external state that quantum determines. – This whole course is just as much the realizing further determination of measure as it is the bringing of measure down to a moment.

Chapter 3. The Becoming of Essence

A. Absolute Indifference

Being is the abstract indifferentness for which, since it is to be thought for itself as being, the expression indifference has been used, – an indifferentness at which no sort of determinateness is yet supposed to be; pure quantity is indifference as capable of all determinations, yet in such a way that these are external to it and that out of itself it has no connectedness with them; the indifference, however, which may be called the absolute one is the one that, through the negation of every determinateness belonging to being, of quality and of quantity and of the unity these two first have immediately, that of measure, mediates itself with itself into simple unity. Determinateness is at it now only as a state, that is, as a qualitative external which has indifference for its substrate.

But whatever has been determined in this fashion as a qualitative external is only something vanishing; being thus external over against being, the qualitative, as the opposite of its own self, is only what sublates itself. Determinateness is in this way posited at the substrate merely as an empty differentiating. Yet precisely this empty differentiating is indifference itself as result. It is indeed in this way the concrete, that which inside its own self, by the negating of all the determinations of being, stands mediated with itself. Being this mediation, it holds within it negation and relation, and what went under the name of state is a differentiating immanent to it and referring itself to itself; precisely the externality, and the vanishing of that externality, makes the unity of being into indifference, and lies therefore within this indifference, which thereby ceases to be merely substrate and, at its own self, merely abstract.

B. Indifference as Inverse Ratio of Its Factors

We must now see how this determination of indifference is posited in indifference itself, and indifference thereby posited as being-for-itself.

1. The reduction of the measure-relations that at first pass for self-subsistent establishes One substrate for them; this substrate is their continuation into one another, hence the inseparable self-subsistent which is present wholly in its differences. For this difference the determinations it harbours, quality and quantity, are at hand, and all depends only on the manner in which they are posited in the substrate. But what settles this is that the substrate figures at first as result, and in itself as the mediation, though the mediation is not yet posited as such in it; by which the substrate is at first substrate, and, with respect to determinateness, is indifference.

In it, accordingly, the difference is at the outset essentially the merely quantitative, external one; and there are two quanta, differing from each other, of one and the same substrate, which on this showing would be the sum of them and hence itself determined as quantum. But indifference is this fixed measure, the absolute limit that is in itself, only in reference to those differences, and in such fashion that it would not itself be a quantum, nor step forward in any way — as sum or even as exponent — over against others, be they sums or indifferences. Only the abstract determinateness falls within indifference; the two quanta, in being posited as its moments, are alterable, indifferent, now larger, now smaller with respect to each other. Restricted, however, by the fixed limit of their sum, their bearing on each other is at the same time not external but negative; and therein lies the qualitative determination under which they now stand to one another. They are on that account to each other in an inverse ratio. This ratio parts company with the earlier, formal inverse ratio in that the whole is here a substrate that is real, while either side is posited under the requirement that in itself it be that whole itself.

In line with the qualitative determinateness just given, the difference is further at hand as one of two qualities, of which the one is sublated through the other, yet, held within One unity and making it up, cannot be severed from it. The substrate, being indifference, is itself likewise in itself the unity of both qualities; each side of the ratio therefore harbours the two of them alike, and differs only in that the one quality carries a more and the other a less, and conversely; by its quantum the one quality is merely the preponderant one in the one side, the second quality in the second.

Each side is thus, in its own self, an inverse ratio; as a formal ratio it returns within the distinct sides. These sides accordingly continue into one another by their qualitative determinations as well: each quality relates itself to itself in the other, and occurs in the two sides only with a differing quantum. Their quantitative difference is that indifference by which they continue into one another, and, as the qualities' self-sameness, this continuation is present within either of the two unities. – Yet the sides, each of them the whole of the determinations and so containing indifference itself, are for that reason posited at the same time as self-subsistent over against each other.

2. Being now is, as this indifference, the being-determined of measure no longer in its immediacy, but that being-determined in the developed manner just displayed; – indifference as being in itself the whole of being's determinations, dissolved as these are into this unity; – equally existence, as the totality of realization once posited, wherein the moments are themselves indifference's totality as it is in itself, sustained by indifference as their unity. Since, however, the unity is held fast only as indifference and hence only as being in itself, and since [the moments] are not yet determined as being-for-itself, that is, as not yet sublating themselves into unity in their own selves and through one another, what is at hand is quite generally the indifference of these moments towards themselves as a developed determinateness.

This self-subsistent, inseparable as it is, must now be examined more closely. It dwells immanently in all its determinations and abides in them in a unity with itself untroubled by them, but α) remaining in itself the totality, it has the determinatenesses sublated within it merely coming forth in it groundlessly. The in-itself of indifference and this its existence stand unconnected; the determinatenesses make their showing in it immediately; indifference is whole in each of them; their difference is thus posited at first as sublated, hence as quantitative; but for just that reason not as indifference's repelling of itself from itself, indifference not as self-determining, only as externally determined and coming to be determined.

β) The two moments stand in an inverse quantitative ratio; – a going back and forth in magnitude which is not determined by indifference, this being precisely indifference towards such going back and forth, but is on that account determined only externally. The pointer is towards an other lying outside indifference, an other in which the determining has its seat. The absolute as indifference carries, on this side, the second defect of the quantitative form: that it is not the absolute that settles the determinateness of the difference — just as its first defect on that score is that in it the differences merely come forth at all, that is, that the absolute's positing is an immediate something and not its own mediation with itself.

γ) What makes up the manner of the moments' subsistence — the moments being now sides of the ratio — is their quantitative determinateness; their existence, through such indifference, is withheld from the transition belonging to the qualitative. But over and above this existence of theirs they have a subsistence that differs from it, a subsistence that is theirs in itself, in that in themselves they are indifference itself, each for its part the unity of those two qualities into which the qualitative moment splits. The difference of the two sides restricts itself to this: that in the one side the one quality is posited carrying a more, in the other a less, the second quality standing conversely. Each side is thus in it the totality of indifference. – Taken singly and by itself, each of the two qualities likewise remains that same sum which indifference is; it continues from the one side over into the other, and the quantitative limit posited within it in the process does not restrict it. At this point the determinations enter into an immediate opposition which develops into contradiction, and this is what must now be seen.

3. Namely, within each side each quality enters into reference to the other, and does so in such wise that this reference too, as has been settled, is meant to be nothing but a quantitative difference. Should both qualities be self-subsistent – taken, say, as sensible matters independent of each other – the whole determinateness of indifference falls apart; its unity and totality would be hollow names. They are, on the contrary, determined at the same time so as to be comprised within One unity, to be inseparable, each having sense and reality solely in this one qualitative reference to the other. But now, precisely because their quantitativity is through and through of this qualitative nature, neither extends further than the other. Were they to be distinct as quanta, the one would run out past the other and would possess, in that more of it, an indifferent existence denied to the other. But in their qualitative reference each is only to the extent that its other is. – What follows is that they stand in equilibrium: by whatever amount the one increased or diminished, the other would grow or shrink to just that extent, and in the very same ratio.

On the ground of their qualitative reference, then, no quantitative difference can arise, nor any more belonging to the one quality. Whatever more should carry the one of the two moments in reference out past the other would be a determination with no footing, or such a more would be but the other itself over again; in this equality of the two, however, neither is at hand, since their existence was to rest on nothing but an inequality of their quantum. – Each of these would-be factors vanishes as surely when it is supposed to lie out beyond the other as when it is supposed to be equal to it. That vanishing shows itself as follows: starting from the quantitative representation, the equilibrium is disturbed and the one factor taken as greater than the other; with that, the other's quality is posited as sublated and as having no footing; the first becomes the preponderant one, so that the second diminishes at an accelerating rate and is overpowered by the first, which thereby makes itself the one and only self-subsistent; but then there are no longer two specifics and factors, only the single whole.

This unity, posited thus as the totality of determining, in the very way it is itself therein determined as indifference, is contradiction on every side; it is therefore to be posited, as this self-sublating contradiction, as determined towards a self-subsistence that is for itself — a self-subsistence whose result and truth is the absolute unity that is no longer merely indifferent but immanently negative within its own self, and this unity is essence.

Remark

The ratio of a whole that is supposed to have its determinateness in the magnitude-difference of factors qualitatively determined against one another is put to use in the case of the elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies. This example, to start with, displays only two qualities in inverse ratio, and not two sides of which each would itself be the unity of the two and their inverse ratio. Given the solidity of the empirical basis, one overlooks the consequence to which the theory brought into that basis leads, namely that of destroying the underlying fact, or, if this fact is held fast as it ought to be, of exposing the emptiness of the theory over against it. Ignoring the consequence lets the fact and the theory that contradicts it subsist peaceably side by side. – The plain fact is that in the elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies their speed accelerates as they draw near the perihelion and slackens as they draw near the aphelion. The quantitative side of this fact has been determined precisely through the tireless diligence of observation, and the fact has further been traced back to its simple law and formula, so that everything has been accomplished which may genuinely be demanded of theory. But to the reflecting understanding this has not seemed enough. In order to supply what is called an explanation of the phenomenon and its law, one assumes a centripetal and a centrifugal force as the qualitative moments of motion in the curved line. Their qualitative difference consists in the opposition of direction, and, quantitatively regarded, in this, that since they are determined as unequal, the one is supposed to increase as the other decreases, and conversely; and then further in this, that their ratio is supposed to turn about again, so that after the centripetal force has for a while grown while the centrifugal force has waned, a point arrives where the centripetal force wanes and the centrifugal force, by contrast, grows. This representation is contradicted, however, by the relation of their essentially qualitative determinateness towards each other. By this determinateness they simply cannot be prised apart; each has meaning only with respect to the other; hence to the extent that one had a surplus over the other, to that same extent it would bear no reference to the other and would not be at hand. – On the assumption that the one is at a given time greater than the other, then, if as the greater it stood in reference to the smaller, what was said above sets in: it would acquire absolute predominance and the other would vanish; the latter is posited as the vanishing one, the one without footing, and nothing in this determination is altered by the vanishing happening only gradually, nor by the fact that by as much as it lost in magnitude the former is supposed to gain; the former founders along with the other, since what it is, it is only insofar as the other is. It is a very simple consideration that if, for instance, as is alleged, the centripetal force of the body is to grow as the body approaches the perihelion while the centrifugal force is to diminish by just as much, then the latter would no longer be able to wrest the body from the former and carry it away again from its central body; on the contrary, since the former is once granted predominance, the other is overpowered, and the body is conveyed to its central body with accelerating speed. Just as, conversely, if the centrifugal force has the upper hand in the infinite proximity of the aphelion, it is equally contradictory that in the aphelion itself it should now be overpowered by the weaker force. – It is further evident that it would take an alien force to bring about this reversal, which means that the now accelerated, now retarded speed of the motion cannot be cognized, or, as it is called, explained, from the assumed determination of those very factors which were assumed precisely in order to explain this difference. That one direction or the other, and with it elliptical motion as such, must consequently vanish is passed over and kept out of sight, on the strength of the settled fact that this motion endures and moves over from accelerated to retarded speed. The assumption that the weakness of the centripetal force at the aphelion turns about into a strength preponderant over the centrifugal force, and conversely at the perihelion, contains in part what was developed above, that each of the sides of the inverse ratio is in its own self this whole inverse ratio; for on the side where motion runs from aphelion to perihelion – the side of the centripetal force that is supposed to preponderate – the centrifugal force is still meant to be contained, though on the wane while the former waxes; in just that inverse ratio the preponderant and ever more preponderant centrifugal force is meant to stand to the centripetal force on the side of the retarded motion, so that on neither side has either of them vanished, but each only grows ever smaller until the time when it turns about into preponderance over the other. What thus recurs on either side is simply what constitutes the defect of this inverse ratio: that either each force is taken self-subsistently on its own, and with their merely external convergence into a single motion, as in the parallelogram of forces, the unity of the concept, the nature of the matter, is sublated; or else that, since the two are qualitatively related to each other through the concept, neither can acquire an indifferent, self-subsistent subsistence over against the other, such as a more would apportion to it; the form of intensity, the so-called dynamic, changes nothing here, since it too holds its determinateness in the quantum and can therefore express just as much force — that is, exists just so far — as it has an opposed force standing over against it. In part, however, that reversal out of preponderance into the opposite involves an alternating qualitative determination as positive and as negative; whatever the one gains is by the same amount the other's loss. The inseparable qualitative connection of this qualitative opposition has, in the theory, been pulled apart into a succession; but with that the theory still owes us the explanation both of this alternation and, above all, of this pulling apart itself. The shine of unity that still lies in the increase of the one accompanied by an equal decrease of the other here vanishes entirely; what is given is a merely external sequence of events, one that does nothing but contradict the consequence of that connection, according to which, once the one has become preponderant, the other must vanish.

This same ratio has been applied to attractive and repulsive force so as to comprehend how bodies differ in density; and an inverse ratio between sensibility and irritability was likewise meant to make comprehensible, from the inequality arising between these factors of life, the whole's various determinations, those of health, and also the diversity among the genera of the living. Yet the confusion and the galimatias in which this explaining — which was to become a philosophy-of-nature foundation for physiology, nosology, and then zoology — entangled itself through the uncritical use of these conceptual determinations had here the result that this formalism was soon abandoned again, whereas in the science of physical astronomy in particular it is carried on in its full extent.

Insofar as absolute indifference can seem to be the fundamental determination of Spinoza's substance, it may still be remarked on this head that it is indeed such in the respect that in both of them all determinations of being, and generally every further concrete distinction of thinking and extension and so forth, are posited as having vanished. It is, if one is to stop short at the abstraction, altogether a matter of indifference how that which has gone under in this abyss may have looked in its existence. But substance as indifference is bound up, for one thing, with the need for determining and with regard for it; it is not meant to remain Spinoza's substance, whose one and only determination is the negative one that within it everything is swallowed up. In Spinoza the difference, the attributes, thinking and extension, and then also the modes, the affects and all the remaining determinations, arrive on the scene quite empirically; it is the understanding, itself a mode, into which this distinguishing falls; the attributes stand to substance and to each other in no further determinateness than that they express substance entirely, and that in content — the order of things taken as extended and taken as thoughts — they coincide. With the determination of substance as indifference, however, reflection upon the difference is added; the difference is now posited as what it is in itself in Spinoza, namely as external, and hence more precisely as quantitative. Indifference, like substance, does indeed remain immanent to itself within that difference, – abstractly, though, only in itself; and the difference is not immanent to it, being rather, as quantitative, the very contrary of immanence, while quantitative indifference is rather the unity's being-outside-itself. The difference is therefore not grasped qualitatively either, and substance is not determined as what distinguishes itself, not as subject. The nearest consequence for the category of indifference as such is that within it quantitative and qualitative determination fall apart in their difference, as the development of indifference brought out; indifference is the dissolution of measure, in which both moments had been posited immediately as one.

C. Transition into Essence

Absolute indifference is the last determination of being before being becomes essence; yet indifference does not reach essence. It shows itself as still belonging to the sphere of being, in that, still determined as indifferent, it has the difference in it as an external, quantitative one. This is its existence, and therein indifference stands at once in the opposition of being determined, in contrast to that existence, as no more than what is in itself, and of not being thought as the being-for-itself absolute. Or else it is external reflection that halts at the thought that the specifics are, in themselves or in the absolute, one and the same, that their difference is merely an indifferent one and no difference in itself. What is still lacking here consists in this, that such reflection should not be the external reflection of a thinking, subjective consciousness, but rather the very determination of the differences of that unity to sublate themselves — a unity which then shows itself to be absolute negativity, its indifference towards its own self, towards its own indifference, quite as much as towards otherness.

But this self-sublating of the determination of indifference has already emerged; in the development of its positedness indifference has shown itself on every side to be the contradiction. In itself it is the totality wherein all determinations of being are sublated and contained; so considered it is the foundation, but it is so far confined to the one-sided determination of being-in-itself, and hence the differences — quantitative difference and the inverse ratio of factors — attach to it as external. Being thus the contradiction of itself and of its being-determined, of its determination as it is in itself and of its posited determinateness, indifference is that negative totality in which the determinatenesses have sublated themselves in their own selves, and with them this their fundamental one-sidedness, their being-in-itself. Posited hereby as what indifference in fact is, it is simple and infinite negative reference to itself, the incompatibility of itself with itself, a repelling of itself from itself. The determining and the being determined is no passing over, no external alteration, no coming forth of determinations in it, but indifference's own self-reference, and this self-reference is the negativity of indifference, of its being-in-itself.

But the determinations, as thus repelled, do not now belong to themselves, do not come forward into self-subsistence or externality; they are, on the contrary, as moments; – belonging, first, to the unity that is in itself, not discharged from it but carried by it as their substrate and filled by nothing but it; and, second, as those determinations which, immanent to the unity that is for itself, are only through that unity's repelling of itself. Instead of being ones that are, as throughout the whole sphere of being, they now simply are as posited ones, simply with the determination and sense that they be referred to their unity, each therefore to its own other and negation, – stamped with this relativity of theirs.

With that, being at large, and likewise the being or immediacy of the distinguished determinatenesses, has vanished quite as much as being-in-itself has, and the unity is being, an immediate presupposed totality, in such wise that it is this simple reference to itself only as mediated through the sublating of this presupposition, and that this being-presupposed, this immediate being, is for its part but a moment of the unity's repelling, while self-subsistence and identity with self, as originally given, only is as the resulting, infinite convergence with itself; – being is thus determined into essence, being that, through the sublating of being, is simple being with itself.

Book Two. The Doctrine of Essence

The truth of being is essence.

Being is what is immediate. Because knowing wants to cognize the true, wants to know what being is in and for itself, it refuses to halt at the immediate and at the immediate's determinations; it forces its way through, presupposing that behind this being there lies something further than being itself, and that this background is what constitutes the truth of being. Such cognition is a knowledge that is mediated, since it does not stand straightway at essence and in it, but sets out from something else, from being, and has a preliminary road to travel — the road that leads out beyond being, or rather into it. Not until knowing recollects itself out of immediate being, not until this mediation, does it come upon essence. – Language has kept essence stored in the past tense of the verb Sein: gewesen; for essence is being gone by, though gone by outside of time.

Represented as the pathway of knowing, this movement – the start made from being together with the advance that sublates being and reaches essence as a mediated term – looks like an activity of cognition external to being and of no concern to being's own nature.

But this course is being's own movement. Being showed at itself that by its nature it recollects itself, and that by this going-into-itself it becomes essence.

If the absolute stood at first determined as being, then, it now stands determined as essence. Cognition can find no resting place at manifold existence, nor yet at being, at pure being; there presses forward at once the reflection that this pure being, the negation of all that is finite, has for its presupposition a recollection, a movement that has purified immediate existence into pure being. On this footing being is determined as essence, as a being at which everything determinate and finite stands negated. It is thus the determinationless simple unity from which the determinate has been carried off in an external fashion; to this unity the determinate counted as an external, and even after being carried off it goes on facing the unity; for it was not sublated in itself but relatively, only with reference to this unity. – It has already been recalled above that when pure essence is determined as the sum total of all realities, those realities are subject no less to the nature of determinateness and to abstracting reflection, and the sum total shrinks to an empty simplicity. Essence on this footing is a product merely, a thing made. Abstraction, being the external negation, does no more than lift the determinacies of being off from whatever survives as essence; it shifts them, so to speak, to another spot, and lets them go on being what they were, before as after. On this footing, however, essence is neither in itself nor for itself; it holds through an other, namely through the external reflection that abstracts; and it holds for an other, namely for abstraction and generally for whatever keeps its stand opposite it and has being. Within its determination it amounts, accordingly, to a lack of determination that is inwardly dead and empty.

Essence as it has come to be here, by contrast, is what it is not by virtue of a negativity alien to it but by virtue of its own, the infinite movement of being. Essence is being-in-and-for-itself; it is absolute being-in-itself inasmuch as it stands indifferent to all determinateness of being, otherness and the reference to an other having been sublated outright. Yet it is not this being-in-itself alone; taken as bare being-in-itself it would amount to no more than the abstraction of pure essence; it is quite as essentially being-for-itself; essence is itself this negativity, the self-sublating of otherness and of determinateness.

As the consummated return of being into its own self, essence is thus to begin with the essence that is indeterminate; within it the determinacies of being stand sublated; it harbours them in itself, though not in the shape in which they are posited at it. Absolute essence, in this its simplicity with itself, possesses no existence. Over into existence it must pass, however; for it is being-in-and-for-itself, which is to say that it distinguishes the determinations it harbours in itself; because it repels itself away from itself, or is indifferent towards itself, is negative reference to itself, it thereby sets itself opposite its own self, and is infinite being-for-itself only in that it is unity with itself in this its difference from itself. – This determining, then, is of a different nature from the determining that went on in the sphere of being, and the determinations belonging to essence bear a different character from the determinacies of being. Essence is absolute unity of being-in-and-for-itself; its determining therefore never leaves this unity, and is no becoming and no passing over; nor, correspondingly, are the determinations themselves an other in the sense of other, or references to an other; they are self-subsistent, and yet with that only as such as stand in their unity with one another. – Being at the outset simple negativity, essence has now to posit within its own sphere the determinateness it harbours only in itself, so as to procure existence for itself and thereupon its being-for-itself.

Essence is on the whole what quantity was within the sphere of being; the absolute indifference towards limit. Quantity, though, is this indifference under immediate determination, and limit at quantity is a determinateness immediately external; quantity passes over into quantum; for quantity the external limit is a necessity, and at quantity it is something that is. At essence, on the other hand, determinateness is not; only through essence itself is it posited; not free, but only in reference to the unity of essence. – What the negativity of essence amounts to is reflection, and the determinations amount to reflected ones, posited by essence itself and abiding in it as sublated.

Essence has its stand between being and concept, makes up the middle term of the two, and its movement makes up the transition out of being into the concept. Essence is the being-in-and-for-itself, yet under the determination of being-in-itself; for what determines it universally is that it hails from being, or that it is the first negation of being. Its movement lies in this, that it posits negation or determination at itself, thereby procuring existence for itself, and, as infinite being-for-itself, comes to be that which in itself it already is. In this way it procures for itself an existence that matches its being-in-itself, and it becomes the concept. For the concept is the absolute in the way the absolute is, within its existence, absolute or in and for itself. The existence essence gives itself, however, is still not the existence that is in and for itself, but existence as essence gives it to itself, or as it is posited, and so is still distinguished from the existence proper to the concept.

Essence shines first within itself, or is reflection; secondly it appears; thirdly it reveals itself. Within its movement it posits itself in the determinations that follow,

I. as simple essence, essence in itself, in the determinations it has within itself;

II. as stepping out into existence, that is, according to its concrete existence and appearance;

III. as essence in unity with its appearance, as actuality.

First Section. Essence as Reflection within Itself

Essence hails from being; so far, then, it is not straightway in and for itself but a result of that movement. Or again: take essence at the outset as an immediate, and it is a determinate existence with an other set opposite it; it is only essential existence as against unessential existence. But essence is being sublated in and for itself; whatever is set opposite it is shine merely. Only, this shine is a positing that belongs to essence itself.

Essence is first reflection. Reflection gives itself determination; the determinations it has are a positedness that is simultaneously reflection into itself; there are

secondly these determinations of reflection, or the essentialities, to be examined.

Thirdly, essence, as the reflection of determining into its own self, makes itself into ground, and thence passes over into concrete existence and appearance.

Chapter 1. Shine

Essence, coming as it does from being, seems to stand opposite being; this immediate being is at first the unessential.

Only, secondly, it is something more than just unessential; it is essenceless being, it is shine.

Thirdly, this shine is not something external, an other over against essence; it is essence's very own shine. The shining of essence within its own self is reflection.

A. The Essential and the Unessential

Essence is sublated being. Simple equality with its own self is what it is, though only insofar as it is the negation of being's sphere at large. Essence thus has immediacy set opposite it, as an immediacy out of which it has come to be, and one which in this sublating has kept and preserved itself. Essence in this determination is itself an essence that is, an immediate essence, and being is something negative only in reference to essence, not in and for its own self; essence, then, is a determinate negation. Being and essence, on this footing, again bear towards each other the relation of others at large, since each has a being, an immediacy, and the two beings stand indifferent towards one another; measured by that being, each counts for as much as the other.

Simultaneously, though, being in its opposition to essence is the unessential; over against essence it carries the determination of what has been sublated. Insofar, however, as being bears towards essence merely the relation of an other at large, essence is not properly essence but only an existence otherwise determined, the essential.

The difference between essential and unessential has let essence tumble back into the sphere of existence, seeing that essence, as it at first is, stands determined as an immediate that has being, and hence only as an other over against being. With that, the sphere of existence has been laid down as the base, and the point that what being is within this existence is being-in-and-for-itself is one determination more, external to existence itself; just as, the other way about, essence is indeed the being-in-and-for-itself, yet only over against an other, under a determinate respect. – Insofar, then, as at some existence an essential and an unessential are told apart from one another, this difference is an external positing, a setting aside of one portion of that existence from another portion, which leaves the existence itself untouched; a severance falling into a third. Which of the two anything belongs to, the essential or the unessential, is left undetermined thereby. It is some external respect and consideration that draws the difference, and for that reason the very same content may be looked upon now as essential, now as unessential.

Examined more nearly, essence turns into a merely essential over against an unessential through this, that essence is taken only as being or existence sublated. Essence on this footing amounts only to the first negation, the negation which is determinateness, by which being turns into mere existence, or existence into a mere other. Essence, though, is being's absolute negativity; it is being's own self, only not determined merely as an other; rather it is the being that has sublated its own self in both respects, as being that is immediate and as negation that is immediate, as negation encumbered with an otherness. Being, or existence, has thus not held itself over as an other than what essence is, and the immediate still told apart from essence is not merely an unessential existence but the immediate that is null in and for itself; it is a non-essence merely, shine.

B. Shine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. Reflection

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

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

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

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

It is firstly positing reflection;

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

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

1. Positing Reflection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. External Reflection

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

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

3. Determining Reflection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 2. The Essentialities, or the Determinations of Reflection

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

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

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

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

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

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