Remark 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remark 2

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

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

Chapter 3. Being-for-itself

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

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

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

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

A. Being-for-itself as Such

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

a. Existence and Being-for-itself

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

b. Being-for-one

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

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

Remark

The expression our language has for the question after quality, one that at first seems peculiar, namely what kind of thing something may be, singles out the moment here under consideration in its reflection-into-itself. Idealistic in its origin, this expression asks not what this thing A may be for an other thing B, not what this human being may be for another human being; – but rather what kind of thing this is, what kind of human being? so that being-for-one is herewith taken back into the thing, into the human being itself, and so that what is, together with that for which it is, makes up a single selfsame thing, – an identity, and it is as such an identity that ideality too must be viewed.

Ideality belongs in the first instance to the sublated determinations, as distinguished from that wherein they are sublated, which by contrast may be taken as the real. Taken so, however, the ideal turns out once more to be one moment and the real the other; ideality, though, consists in this, that both determinations are alike only for one and hold good only for one, which one ideality is on that account undifferentiatedly reality. In this sense self-consciousness, spirit, God, the ideal, are infinite relating purely to self, – I is for I, both are the same, I is named twice, yet of the two, taken thus, each is only for-one, ideal; spirit is only for spirit, God only for God, and God is nothing but this unity, God as spirit. – Consciousness, though, is where self-consciousness steps into the difference between itself and an other, or between its ideality, wherein it is representing, and its reality, inasmuch as its representation carries a determinate content that retains the side of being known as the negative not yet sublated, as existence. To call thought, spirit, God merely something ideal, however, presupposes the standpoint on which finite existence counts as the real and on which the ideal, or being-for-one, carries only a one-sided sense.

In a preceding Remark the principle of idealism was stated, and it was said that with a philosophy what then matters more closely is how far the principle has been carried through. Concerning the manner of this carrying-through a further observation may still be offered with reference to the category at which we now stand. Such carrying-through depends first of all upon this, – whether, alongside being-for-itself, finite existence does not still persist self-subsistently, and besides that upon whether within the infinite itself the moment for-one, a comporting of the ideal towards itself as ideal, is already posited. Eleatic being, or Spinoza's substance, is accordingly nothing but abstraction's negating of all determinateness, no ideality being posited within it; – in Spinoza, as will be remarked further on, infinity amounts merely to the absolute affirmation of a thing, hence merely to the unity that does not move, and substance for that reason never even arrives at the determination of being-for-itself, much less at that of subject and spirit. More explicated within itself is the idealism of the noble Malebranche; it holds the following fundamental thoughts: since God encloses within himself every eternal truth, every idea, and the perfections belonging to all things, so that these are his alone, it is only in him that we see them; by an action having nothing sensuous about it God awakens our sensations of the objects in us, whereby we fancy that from the object we obtain not merely its idea, representing its essence, but the sensation of that object's existence besides (De la recherche de la Verité, Eclairc. sur la nature des idées etc.). As with the eternal truths and ideas (essentialities) of things, so too their existence, in God, is ideal, not an actual existence; although they are our objects, they are only for one. Present here is that moment of explicated and concrete idealism which Spinozism lacks, in that absolute ideality is determined as knowledge. Pure and profound though this idealism is, those relations still hold in part much that is indeterminate for thought, while in part their content is straightaway wholly concrete (sin and redemption and so forth enter into them at once); the logical determination of infinity, which would have to be their foundation, is not worked out on its own account, and so that lofty and replete idealism is indeed the product of a purely speculative spirit, yet not yet of a purely speculative thinking that alone truly grounds.

The Leibnizian idealism lies more within the limit of the abstract concept. – The Leibnizian representing essence, the monad, is essentially something ideal. Representing is a being-for-itself in which the determinatenesses are not limits and hence not an existence, but only moments. Representing is admittedly a more concrete determination as well, yet here it carries no further meaning than that of ideality; for with Leibniz even what is wholly without consciousness is something representing, something perceiving. Within this system, then, otherness stands sublated; neither spirit and body nor the monads at large are others for one another, none limits another, none exerts an effect upon another; every relation whatever that has an existence for its ground drops away. Manifoldness is only an ideal and inner one, the monad within it stays related only to its own self, the alterations unfold inside it and are no relatings of it to others. Whatever, according to the real determination, is taken as an existent relating of the monads to one another, is an independent, merely simultaneous becoming, shut up within the being-for-itself of each. – That there are several monads, that with this they are also determined as others, is no concern of the monads themselves; this is the reflection of a third party falling outside them; they are not in their own selves others over against one another; being-for-itself is held pure, without the alongside of an existence. – Yet just here lies at the same time what is unfinished about this system. Such representing beings the monads are only in themselves, or in God, the monad of monads, or else in the system. Otherness is likewise at hand; let it fall where it will, into representing itself, or however that third party be determined which regards the monads as others, as many. Excluded, and that only for a moment, is the plurality of their existence, the monads being posited as such solely through the abstraction that they should be non-others. If it is a third party that posits their otherness, then it is also a third party that sublates their otherness; but this whole movement, which makes them ideal, falls outside them. While it may be recalled, however, that this movement of thought itself falls, after all, only within a representing monad, it is at the same time to be recalled that precisely the content of such thinking is external to itself within its own self. The passage is made from the unity of absolute ideality (the monad of monads) immediately, without comprehension (– by way of the representation of creating), to the category of the abstract (relationless) plurality of existence, and from this back, just as abstractly, to that unity. Ideality, representing in general, stays something formal, as does likewise representing heightened into consciousness. In the conceit of Leibniz cited above about the magnetic needle, which, were it possessed of consciousness, would regard its northward pointing as a determination of its own freedom, consciousness gets thought merely as a one-sided form that is indifferent towards its determination and content; just so, ideality in the monads is a form that stays external to plurality. Immanent in them ideality is supposed to be, representing is supposed to be their nature; but their comporting is, first, their harmony, which does not fall within their existence and is on that account pre-established; second, this existence of theirs is grasped neither as being-for-other nor any further as ideality, but is determined merely as abstract plurality; the ideality of plurality and its further determination into harmony do not become immanent in and proper to this plurality itself.

Other idealism, such as for example the Kantian and Fichte's, does not get beyond the ought or the infinite progress, and stays within the dualism of existence and of being-for-itself. Within these systems the thing-in-itself, or else the infinite check, does indeed step immediately into the I and becomes only something for the latter; but it proceeds from a free otherness that perennializes itself as negative being-in-itself. Hence the I is indeed determined as the ideal, as being-for-itself, as infinite relating to self; but being-for-one is not consummated into the vanishing of that beyond, or of the direction towards the beyond.

c. One

Being-for-itself constitutes the simple unity of its own self with its moment, with being-for-one. Present in it is only one determination, the relating-to-self of sublating. Into undifferentiatedness the moments of being-for-itself have collapsed together, and this undifferentiatedness is immediacy or being, though an immediacy resting upon the negating that stands posited as its determination. So constituted, being-for-itself is a being-for-itself, and, since in such immediacy its inner import drops away, it is the utterly abstract limit of its own self, – the one.

It may be pointed out in advance where the difficulty of the exposition that now follows, the exposition of the development of the one, resides, and on what that difficulty rests. Inside it the moments which make up the concept of the one as being-for-itself fall apart; they are 1) negation as such, 2) two negations 3) hence two of them which are the same, 4) which are downright opposed; 5) relating to self, identity as such, 6) a negative relating and yet one to its own self. The moments are driven apart here because the form of immediacy, of being, comes in upon being-for-itself as a being-for-itself; through such immediacy each moment is posited as a determination of its own, one that is; and yet the moments are just as much inseparable. Of every determination its contrary must accordingly be asserted as well; and given the abstract constitution of the moments, it is this contradiction that constitutes the difficulty.

B. One and Many

The one is the simple relating of being-for-itself to its own self, a relating in which its moments have fallen in together, so that it carries the form of immediacy and its moments accordingly now become existent ones.

Taken as the relating of the negative to itself, the one is determining, – and taken as relating to itself, it is infinite self-determining. Yet on account of the immediacy now in force, these differences are no longer posited merely as moments belonging to one single self-determination, but rather at the same time as existents. In this way the ideality of being-for-itself as totality veers over, to begin with, into reality, and indeed into the most rigid and most abstract reality, as the one. Being-for-itself, in the one, amounts to the posited unity of being with existence, to the absolute joining of relating-to-other with relating-to-self; but then the determinateness of being also steps in against the determination of infinite negation, against self-determination, with the result that what the one is in itself it now only is upon it, and the negative therewith becomes an other distinguished from it. That which shows itself to be at hand as distinguished from it is its very own self-determining; the unity of this self-determining with itself, thus distinguished from itself, is lowered to a relating, and, as negative unity, is a negating of its own self as of an other, an exclusion of the one, out of itself, the one, as of an other.

a. The One in Its Own Self

In its own self the one simply is; this being of it is no existence, no determination as a relating to other, no constitution, it is rather this, to have negated that whole circle of categories. Of any becoming-other, therefore, the one is incapable; it is unalterable.

Indeterminate it is, though no longer after the fashion of being; its indeterminateness is the determinateness which consists in relating to its own self, absolute determinedness; posited being-within-itself. Being, according to its concept, the negation that relates itself to itself, it has difference upon it, – a direction away from itself out towards an other, one that is nevertheless immediately reversed, because in keeping with this moment of self-determining there is no other for it to go out to, and one that has turned back into itself.

Within this simple immediacy there have vanished the mediation of existence and of ideality itself, and along with them all diversity and manifoldness. There is nothing in it; this nothing, the abstraction of relating to one's own self, is here distinguished from being-within-itself itself, it is something posited, since this being-within-itself is no longer the simple being-within-itself of something, but carries the determination of being concrete as mediation; taken abstractly, however, it is indeed identical with the one, yet diverse from the determination of the one. Posited in this way, as being in a one, the nothing is the nothing as void. – Thus the void is the quality of the one in its immediacy.

b. The One and the Void

Taken as the abstract relating of negation to its own self, the one is the void. From the simple immediacy, however, from the also affirmative being of the one, the void as the nothing is downright diverse, and, since the two stand in one relating, namely that of the one itself, their diversity is posited; but, being diverse from what is, the nothing as void lies outside the one that is.

By determining itself in this manner as the one and the void, being-for-itself has once more attained an existence. – What the one and the void have for their common, simple soil is the negative relating to self. Out of this unity the moments of being-for-itself step forth and become external to one another, for since the determination of being comes in through the simple unity of the moments, that unity lowers itself to being merely one side and therewith to existence, and therein its other determination, negation as such, places itself over against it likewise as existence of the nothing, as the void.

Remark

In this form of existence the one is that stage of the category which turned up among the ancients as the atomistic principle, for which the essence of things consists in the atom and the void, (τὸ ἄτομον or τὰ ἄτομα καὶ τὸ κενὸν.) Abstraction, ripened into this form, has gained a determinateness greater than that of Parmenides' being and Heraclitus' becoming. However high it pitches itself in making this simple determinateness of the one and of the void the principle of all things, in tracing back the endless manifoldness of the world to this simple opposition, and in making bold to cognize that manifoldness out of it, just as easy is it for representational reflecting to picture atoms here and, alongside them, the void. No wonder, then, that the atomistic principle has kept itself alive at every period; the equally trivial and external relation of composition, which still has to be added if any semblance of something concrete and of a manifoldness is to be reached, is every bit as popular as are the atoms and the void themselves. Being-for-itself is the one together with the void, the supreme qualitative being-within-itself sunk down into utter externality; since the one negates all otherness, its immediacy or being is posited as being no longer determinable, no longer alterable, and for such absolute brittleness every determination, every manifoldness, every connection accordingly remains a downright external relating.

In this externality, though, the atomistic principle did not stay put among its first thinkers; over and above its abstraction it also held a speculative determination in this, that the void came to be cognized as the wellspring of motion; and that is an altogether different relating of the atom and the void than the bare side-by-side and the indifference of these two determinations towards one another. That the void is the wellspring of motion does not carry the paltry sense that something can move only into a void and not into a space already filled, for in such a space it would find no room left open; on that construal the void would be only the presupposition or condition and not the ground of motion, just as motion itself would be presupposed as already at hand and the essential thing, a ground of it, forgotten. The view that the void makes up the ground of motion harbours the deeper thought that within the negative as such there lies the ground of becoming, of the unrest belonging to self-movement; though in that sense the negative has to be taken as the infinite's genuine negativity. – Only as the negative relating of the one to its negative, to the one, i.e. to its own self, though a self posited as existent, is the void the ground of motion.

For the rest, though, further determinations of the ancients regarding a shape or position of the atoms and the direction of their motion are arbitrary and external enough; and they stand withal in direct contradiction with the fundamental determination of the atom. From the atoms, the principle of the highest externality and hence of the highest conceptlessness, physics suffers in its molecules and particles quite as much as does political science, which starts out from the singular will of individuals.

c. Many Ones. Repulsion

The one and the void make up being-for-itself in its nearest existence. Negation is what each of these moments has for its determination, and each is at the same time posited as an existence. In respect of the former, the one and the void are the relating of negation to negation, as of an other to what is other to it; the one, negation determined as being, the void, negation determined as non-being. But essentially the one is only a relating to itself as relating negation, i.e. it is itself that which the void, lying outside it, is supposed to be. Both are, however, also posited as an affirmative existence, the first as being-for-itself as such, the second as indeterminate existence in general, and as relating themselves to one another as to another existence. The being-for-itself of the one, however, is essentially the ideality both of existence and of the other; its relating is not to an other, but to itself alone. Yet insofar as being-for-itself stands fixed as one, as something that is for itself, as something immediately at hand, its negative relating to itself is at the same time a relating to something that is; and since that relating is quite as much negative, whatever it relates to stays determined as an existence and an other; as essentially a relating to its own self, what is other is not indeterminate negation, is not the void, but is a one just the same. The one is therefore a becoming into many ones.

Properly speaking, however, this is not so much a becoming; for becoming is a passing over from being into nothing, whereas the one becomes only a one. The one, as the term related, contains the negative as relating, and so has that negative upon its own self. In place of becoming there is present, first, the one's own immanent relating; and secondly, insofar as this relating is negative while the one at the same time is something that is, the one repels its own self away from itself. The negative relating of the one to itself is repulsion.

This repulsion, thus as the positing of the many ones yet through the one itself, is the one's own coming-outside-itself, though to such as lie outside it and are themselves nothing but ones. This is repulsion in accordance with the concept, repulsion as it is in itself. Distinct from it is the second repulsion, the one that first hovers before the representation of external reflection, not as a generating of the ones but only as a mutual holding-off of presupposed ones already at hand. It remains to be seen how that repulsion which is in itself determines itself into the second, the external one.

To begin with, it must be settled what determinations the many ones as such possess. The becoming into many, or the being-produced of the many, vanishes immediately as a being-posited; what is produced are ones, not for an other, but relating themselves infinitely to their own selves. The one repels only itself from itself, and hence does not come to be but already is; what is represented as the repelled is likewise a one, something that is; repelling and being-repelled fall to both in like manner, and make no difference.

The ones are thus presupposed over against one another; – posited through the repulsion of the one from its own self; posited beforehand as not posited; their positedness is sublated, they are beings over against one another, as relating themselves only to themselves.

Plurality accordingly appears not as an otherness, but as a determination altogether external to the one. In repelling its own self the one remains a relating to self, just as does that which is at first taken as the repelled. That the ones are others over against one another, gathered up into the determinateness of plurality, is therefore no concern of the ones. Were plurality a relating of the ones themselves to one another, they would limit each other and would have a being-for-other affirmatively upon them. Their relating, – and this they do have through their unity as it is in itself, – as it is here posited, is determined as none at all; it is once more the void posited earlier. It is a limit of theirs, yet external to them, a limit wherein they are supposed not to stand for one another. The limit is that wherein the limited just as much are as are not; the void, however, is determined as pure non-being, and this alone makes up their limit.

The repulsion of the one from its own self is the explication of what the one is in itself; infinity, however, as laid apart, is here infinity that has come outside itself, and outside itself it has come through the immediacy of the infinite, of the one. It is just as much a simple relating of one to one as, rather, the absolute relationlessness of the ones; the former in keeping with the simple affirmative relating of the one to itself, the latter in keeping with that very same relating taken as negative. Or, put otherwise, the plurality of the one is the one's own positing; the one is nothing other than the negative relating of the one to itself, and this relating, hence the one itself, is the many ones. Yet just as much is plurality downright external to the one; for otherness is precisely what the one sublates, and repulsion is the one's relating to itself, its simple equality with its own self. Infinity is what the plurality of the ones amounts to, a contradiction unconstrainedly bringing itself forth.

Remark

Mention was made earlier of Leibniz's idealism. It may be added here that this idealism, setting out from the representing monad which is determined as something that is for itself, got no further than the repulsion we have just examined, and indeed no further than plurality as such, wherein each of the ones is merely for itself, indifferent towards whether others exist or are for themselves, or wherein others are simply not there for the one at all. For itself the monad is the whole self-enclosed world; none of them stands in need of the others; but this inner manifoldness, which the monad has in its representing, alters nothing in its determination of being for itself. Leibniz's idealism takes up plurality immediately as something given and does not comprehend it as a repulsion of the monad; and so it possesses plurality only from the side on which it is abstractly external. The concept of ideality is missing from atomism; atomism does not grasp the one as something which in its own self contains the two moments of being-for-itself and of being-for-it, hence as something ideal, but only as something simply and drily for itself. But it does get beyond the merely indifferent plurality; the atoms come into a further determination over against one another, even if in a way that is strictly inconsistent; whereas in that indifferent independence of the monads, on the contrary, plurality stays put as a rigid fundamental determination, so that their relating falls only within the monad of monads, or within the philosopher who observes them.

C. Repulsion and Attraction

a. Exclusion of the One

The many ones are beings; their existence, or their reference to one another, is non-reference, something external to them; – the abstract void. Yet they themselves are this negative reference to themselves, now as to others that are; – the contradiction already exhibited, infinity, posited in the immediacy of being. What has been repelled by repulsion is now something repulsion finds immediately at hand. Exclusion is what it is in this determination; those many ones which it has neither generated nor posited are the only ones the one repels from itself. Reciprocal, or on every side, such repelling is relative – held within limits by the being which the ones have.

Plurality is, to begin with, otherness not yet posited; as for the limit, it is merely the void, merely that wherein the ones are not. And yet within the limit they too are; the void is where they are, or, what says the same, their repulsion constitutes their common reference.

What stands posited as the existence of the many ones is this reciprocal repulsion; their being-for-itself it is not, for on that they would count as many only when distinguished within a third thing; it is rather their own distinguishing, the distinguishing that keeps them in being. – They negate one another and posit one another as such as are only for-one. Yet at the same time, and equally, they negate this, that they should be only for-one; that ideality of theirs they repel, and they are. – Separated, then, stand the moments which in ideality are joined without qualification. Being for itself, the one is for-one as well, and yet that one for which it is turns out to be the one itself; immediately, therefore, its distinguishing of itself from itself is sublated. In plurality, though, a being belongs to the one that is distinguished; and so being-for-one, determined as it is within exclusion, amounts to a being-for-other. Repelled by an other, each is accordingly sublated and made into something which is not for itself but for-one, and for another one at that.

What the being-for-itself of the many ones now proves to be is their self-preservation, mediated by the repulsion they exercise against one another, wherein each sublates the rest and posits them as a bare being-for-other; and yet that same self-preservation lies just as much in repelling this ideality, so that the ones get posited as not being for-an-other. Such preservation of themselves by way of their negative reference to one another is, however, much rather their dissolution.

The ones not only are, they also preserve themselves through their reciprocal exclusion. First, then, that whereby they were supposed to have the firm hold of their diversity against being negated is their being, and specifically their being-in-itself over against their reference to other; this being-in-itself consists in their being ones. But all are this; in their being-in-itself they are the same, instead of having in it the fixed point of their diversity. Second, their existence and their comportment toward one another, that is, their positing themselves as ones, is the reciprocal negating; but this too is one and the same determination of all of them, through which, accordingly, they rather posit themselves as identical; just as, because they are in themselves the same, the ideality that is supposed to be posited in them by others is their own, and hence something they just as little repel. – By their being and by their positing, therefore, they are only One affirmative unity.

Our comparison is this consideration of the ones: that under both their determinations – as they are, and as they refer to one another – nothing shows itself in them but one and the same, and so their indistinguishability. – Yet what is posited in them within their very reference to one another is also to be looked at. – They are, this is presupposed in that reference, – and they are only insofar as they negate one another and at the same time hold off from themselves this ideality of theirs, their being-negated, that is, negate the reciprocal negating. But since they are only insofar as they negate, their being is negated in the negating of this their negating. Granted, so far as they are, this negating would not negate them, being for them nothing but an externality; the other's negating rebounds off them, brushing their surface and nothing more. Only through the negating of the others, however, do they come back into themselves; as this mediation alone are they, and their return is what constitutes their self-preservation, their being-for-itself. Their negating effects nothing, given the resistance that the beings put up as such, or as negating; hence there is for them no coming back into self, no preserving, and no being.

A moment ago the consideration was made that the ones are the same, each of them being a one just as the other is. Nor is this merely our referring, an external bringing-together; referring is what repulsion itself is; in excluding the ones, the one refers to them, to the ones, which means: to itself. The negative comportment of the ones toward one another is thus nothing but a coming-together-with-itself. Their repelling passes over into this identity, and the identity sublates the diversity and externality which, as excluding, they were rather supposed to maintain over against one another.

This positing of the many ones into One one is attraction.

Remark

Self-subsistence driven to the extreme point of the one that is for itself is self-subsistence abstract and formal, destroying its very self; it is the highest and most stubborn of errors, one which takes itself for the highest truth; – in shapes more concrete it makes its appearance as abstract freedom, as the pure I, and then further as evil. Here is a freedom so far astray as to place its essence in this abstraction, flattering itself that in such being-at-home it gains itself in purity. More determinately, the error of this self-subsistence lies in taking for negative, and behaving negatively toward, that which is its own essence. Comportment negative toward itself is therefore what it is, a comportment which, out to gain its own being, destroys that being, and its whole doing is nothing but the manifestation of how null the doing is. Reconciliation consists in acknowledging that against which the negative comportment is directed to be rather one's own essence, and it comes about only as a letting go of the negativity of one's being-for-itself, instead of holding fast to it.

An old proposition has it that the one is many, and more particularly, that the many are one. On this point the observation must be repeated that the truth of the one and of the many, once put into propositions, takes on a form unsuited to it, and that such truth admits of being grasped and uttered only as a becoming, as a process, repulsion and attraction, not as being, in the manner in which a proposition posits being as a unity at rest. Plato's dialectic in the Parmenides, dealing with the derivation of the many out of the one, namely out of the proposition: one is, was mentioned and recalled above. The inner dialectic of the concept has been set out; easiest to grasp, however, is the dialectic of the proposition that many are one, grasped as external reflection; and here it may well be external, since the object too, the many, is precisely what is external to one another. Compare the many with one another and it emerges at once that each is determined exactly as every other is; each is a one, each is one among the many, each excludes the rest; – so that utterly they are but the same, and utterly there is but One determination at hand. Such is the fact, and the whole business is to take in this simple fact. If the stubbornness of the understanding balks at taking it in, the reason is that difference hovers before it too, and does so with right; but difference is as little dispelled by that fact as, assuredly, that fact holds good regardless of the difference. One might, as it were, console the understanding for its plain taking-in of the fact of unity with the promise that difference will make its entrance again.

b. The One One of Attraction

Repulsion is the self-splintering of the one, at first into many whose negative comportment has no power, since each presupposes the rest as beings; it amounts only to the ought of ideality, whereas in attraction that ideality is realized. Over into attraction repulsion passes, the many ones into One one. At first the two, repulsion and attraction, stand distinguished, repulsion as the reality of the ones, attraction as the ideality posited in them. Attraction refers to repulsion in this manner, that repulsion serves it as presupposition. The matter for attraction is furnished by repulsion. Were there no ones, nothing would be there to attract; if one represents attraction as going on and on, the ones being consumed, an equally unceasing generation of ones is presupposed; the sensuous representation of attraction in space keeps the stream of ones-being-attracted flowing on; where the atoms disappear at the attracting point, another crowd of them steps forth out of the void, and, if one likes, on into infinity. Suppose attraction were represented as accomplished, the many brought to the point of One one: then nothing would be at hand save an inert one, and attracting there would be none. Ideality as existent in attraction has upon itself, further, the determination of its own negation, the many ones to which it is the reference, and attraction cannot be severed from repulsion.

Attracting belongs at the outset to each of the many ones equally, insofar as they are immediately at hand; none enjoys a privilege over another; so there would be an equilibrium in attracting, properly an equilibrium of attraction and repulsion themselves, and an inert repose lacking any existent ideality. Yet a privilege of one such one over another cannot be spoken of here, for it would presuppose a determinate difference between them; attraction is rather the positing of that undifferentiatedness of the ones which is already at hand. Attraction itself is the first positing of a one distinguished from the rest; the rest are merely immediate ones, ones meant to keep themselves in being by repulsion; out of their posited negation, though, the one of attraction emerges, determined accordingly as the mediated, as the one posited as one. Immediate as the first ones are, they do not come back into themselves in their ideality, but possess that ideality in an other.

The One one, by contrast, is ideality realized, ideality posited upon the one; attracting is what it does through the mediation of repulsion, and this mediation it holds within itself as its determination. Hence the attracted ones are not swallowed into it as into a point, which is to say, it does not sublate them abstractly. Since repulsion is contained in its determination, the ones are at the same time preserved within it as many; by its attracting the One one puts, so to speak, something out before itself, and so gains an extent or a filling. Unity of repulsion and attraction in general is thus present in it.

c. The Connection of Repulsion and Attraction

Into the difference of their reference to one another has the difference of one and many determined itself, and that reference falls apart into two references, repulsion and attraction, of which each stands at first self-subsistently outside the other, so that they nevertheless hang together essentially. Their unity, still indeterminate, has yet to emerge more closely.

Repulsion, being the fundamental determination of the one, makes its appearance first, and as immediate – so too its ones, generated by it yet posited at the same time as immediate – and on this account repulsion is indifferent toward attraction, which, repulsion once presupposed in this way, comes to it from without. Attraction, on the other side, is not presupposed by repulsion, so that in repulsion's positing and being it is to have no share, which is to say that repulsion would not already carry upon itself the negation of itself, nor the ones already be negated upon themselves. Taken in this manner, repulsion is before us abstractly for itself, and attraction likewise, over against the ones as beings, has the side of an immediate existence and comes to them, out of its own resources, as an other.

Take mere repulsion, then, thus for itself, and it is the scattering of the many ones into the indeterminate, beyond the sphere of repulsion itself; for repulsion is just this, that the reference of the many to one another be negated; referencelessness, repulsion being taken abstractly, is its determination. But repulsion is not the void merely; the ones, if devoid of reference, are not repelling, not excluding, and this is precisely what makes up their determination. Negative though it be, repulsion is nonetheless essentially reference; the mutual holding-off and fleeing is no liberation from what is held off and fled from, and whatever excludes still stands in connection with that which it excludes. This moment of reference, however, is attraction, which lies accordingly within repulsion itself; attraction negates that abstract repulsion in which the ones would be beings merely referring to themselves, and not excluding ones.

Since, though, the starting point was taken in the repulsion of existent ones, whereby attraction too got posited as stepping up to them from outside, the two, inseparable as they are, are still held apart as distinct determinations; and yet it has turned out that repulsion is not merely presupposed by attraction, but that a back-reference of repulsion to attraction takes place just as much, so that repulsion has in attraction its presupposition no less.

On this determination they are inseparable, and each is at the same time determined as the ought and the restriction of the other. Their ought is their abstract determinateness as something being in itself, a determinateness thereby directed utterly beyond itself, referring to the other, so that each is by means of the other as other; their self-subsistence lies in this, that within such mediation they are posited for one another as an other determining. – Repulsion as positing of the many, attraction as positing of the one, this latter being at once negation of the many, and the former negation of the ideality that the many have in the one, so that attraction likewise is attraction only by means of repulsion, as repulsion is repulsion by means of attraction. That therein, however, mediation with itself through an other is in fact rather negated, and that each of these determinations is mediation of itself with itself, follows from a closer consideration of them and carries them back into the unity of their concept.

First, that each presupposes itself, referring in its presupposition only to itself, is already at hand in the comportment of a repulsion and an attraction that are as yet merely relative.

Relative repulsion is the mutual holding-off of many ones at hand, ones supposed to be found already there as immediate. But that many ones should be is repulsion itself; whatever presupposition it might have is nothing but its own positing. Then too, the determination of being which would accrue to the ones over and above their being posited – that whereby they would be there in advance – belongs equally to repulsion. Repelling is that by which the ones manifest and preserve themselves as ones, by which they are as such. Repulsion itself is their being; repulsion is thus nothing relative over against some other existence, but comports itself throughout to itself alone.

What attraction posits is the one as such, the real one, and against it the many in their existence get determined as merely ideal, as vanishing. Attraction, then, presupposes itself straightaway, namely in the determination whereby the other ones are ideal, ones which otherwise are supposed to be for themselves and to be repelling for others, hence for anything that attracts as well. Over against this determination of repulsion, ideality does not first accrue to them through relation to attraction; ideality is rather presupposed, being the ideality of the ones that is in itself, inasmuch as they, as ones – the one represented as attracting included – are undifferentiated from one another, one and the same.

That each of the two determinations thus presupposes itself, each on its own, further means that each contains the other within itself as a moment. Self-presupposing in general is, in one and the same act, a positing of oneself as the negative of oneself, – repulsion, while what gets presupposed therein is the same as what presupposes, – attraction. Each being in itself a moment only, each thereby passes over out of itself into the other, negates itself upon its own self, and posits itself as its own other. Since the one as such is the coming-out-of-itself, is itself only this, namely to posit itself as its own other, the many, while the many are likewise only this, to collapse together into themselves and to posit themselves as their other, the one, and in precisely this to refer only to themselves, each continuing itself within its other, – there is with this already in itself, undivided, the coming-out-of-itself (repulsion) along with the positing-of-oneself-as-one (attraction). Posited, however, it is in relative repulsion and attraction, that is, in the repulsion and attraction which presuppose immediate, existent ones, that each is this negation of itself upon its own self, and therewith the continuity of itself into its other as well. Repulsion on the part of existent ones is the one's self-preservation by way of the reciprocal holding-off of the others, in such a way that 1) it is upon it that the other ones get negated, which is the side of its existence, or of its being-for-other; that side, though, is thereby attraction, as the ideality of the ones; – and in such a way that 2) the one should be in itself, without reference to the others; yet the in-itself in general has long since passed over into being-for-itself, and beyond that the one is, in itself and by its determination, that very becoming into many. – Attraction on the part of existent ones is the ideality of those ones, and the positing of the one, wherein attraction, as negating and as bringing the one forth, sublates its very self, and, as positing of the one, is upon itself the negative of itself, repulsion.

Herewith the development of being-for-itself is brought to completion and has arrived at its result. The one, as referring to itself infinitely, that is, as posited negation of the negation, is the mediation whereby it thrusts from itself its absolute (that is, abstract) otherness (the many), and, referring to this its non-being negatively, sublating it, is in precisely this nothing but the reference to itself; and the one is nothing but this becoming, wherein the determination that it begins, that is, that it stands posited as an immediate, as something that is, and that as result it should equally have restored itself to the one, to the equally immediate excluding one, has vanished; the process which it is posits and holds it throughout only as something sublated. Sublating, determined at first only as a relative sublating, as the reference to another existent, which for that very reason is itself a differentiated repulsion and attraction, proves equally to pass over into the infinite reference of mediation by way of the negation of the external references of immediates and existents, and to have as its result that very becoming which, its moments having no stability, is the sinking together – or rather the coming-together-with-itself – into simple immediacy. This being, on the determination it has now received, is quantity.

Survey briefly the moments of this transition of quality into quantity, and the qualitative has for its fundamental determination being and immediacy, wherein limit and determinateness stand so identified with the something's being that the something itself vanishes once they are altered; posited thus, it is determined as finite. Owing to the immediacy of this unity, in which difference has vanished, although in itself difference is present in it, in the unity of being and nothing, difference falls as otherness in general outside that unity. This reference to other stands in contradiction with the immediacy wherein qualitative determinateness is reference to itself. Such otherness sublates itself within the infinity of being-for-itself, an infinity that has realized the difference that it has upon and within its own self in the negation of the negation, realized it into the one and the many and their references, and which has raised the qualitative into the genuine unity, a unity, that is, no longer immediate but posited as agreeing with itself.

This unity is accordingly α) being, only as affirmative being, that is, as immediacy mediated with itself through the negation of the negation; being stands posited as the unity that passes through its determinatenesses, limit and so on, which are posited in it as sublated; – β) existence; on such a determination it is negation, or determinateness as a moment of affirmative being, though determinateness that is no longer of the immediate kind but rather reflected into itself, referring not to another but to itself; the utter – the in-itself-being-determined, – the one; otherness as such is itself being-for-itself; – γ) being-for-itself, namely that being which carries itself on through determinateness, in which the one and in-itself-being-determined are themselves posited as sublated. The one is at once determined as having gone out beyond itself and as unity, and so the one, the utterly determinate limit, stands posited as the limit which is none, the limit which, though upon being, is indifferent to it.

Remark

Attraction and repulsion, as is well known, are habitually regarded as forces. This determination of theirs, and the relations bound up with it, are to be compared with the concepts that have emerged for them. – On that representation they are taken to be self-subsistent, so that they do not refer to each other by their nature, i.e. so that neither is to be merely a moment passing over into its opposite, but is instead to persist firmly over against the other. They are further represented as coming together in a third, in matter; yet in such a way that this becoming-one does not count as their truth, each being rather something first and in and for itself, while matter, or the determinations of matter, are what these two posit and bring forth. Should it be said that matter has the forces within it, then this unity of theirs is taken to mean a linkage in which the two are at the same time presupposed as free of each other, each of them being in itself.

Kant, as everyone knows, constructed matter out of repulsive and attractive force, or at any rate laid down what he terms the metaphysical elements belonging to such a construction. – Some interest attaches to looking at this construction rather more closely. Remarkable in part is that this metaphysical presentation of an object which appeared to belong, not merely in itself but in its determinations, to experience alone, gave, as an attempt of the concept, at least the initial impetus to the newer philosophy of nature, – to that philosophy which refuses to make nature, as something sensuously given to perception, the ground of science, cognizing nature's determinations instead out of the absolute concept; remarkable in part, too, because people still commonly stop at that Kantian construction and take it for a philosophical beginning and foundation of physics.

Concrete existence of the sort that sensuous matter is remains, to be sure, no object for logic, any more than space and the determinations of space are. Yet at the base of attractive and repulsive force too, insofar as they are regarded as forces of sensuous matter, there lie the pure determinations of the one and the many considered here, together with their references to one another, which I have called repulsion and attraction because these names lie nearest to hand.

Looked at more closely, the procedure Kant follows in deducing matter from these forces, and which he entitles a construction, hardly merits that title, unless of course every sort of reflection, the analysing sort included, is to go by the name of construction, as later philosophers of nature have indeed called the shallowest ratiocination and the most groundless brew of an arbitrary imagination and a thoughtless reflection, – a brew helping itself especially to the so-called factors of attractive force and repulsive force and parading them everywhere, – a constructing.

Kant's procedure, that is, is at bottom analytic, not constructive. The representation of matter he presupposes, going on to ask what forces are needed if its presupposed determinations are to be preserved. On the one side, accordingly, he calls for attractive force, and does so because through repulsion alone, without attraction, there could properly be no matter. (Foundations of Natural Science, p. 53 f.) Repulsion, on the other side, he likewise derives from matter, and states as its ground that it is because we represent matter to ourselves as impenetrable, since matter presents itself under this determination to the sense of touch, through which it is said to reveal itself to us. Repulsion is on that account thought immediately within the concept of matter, being given along with it; attraction, by contrast, gets attached to that concept only through inferences. But these inferences too rest at bottom on what has just been said, that a matter possessing merely repulsive force would not exhaust what we represent to ourselves under matter. – This, as is evident, is the procedure of a cognition reflecting upon experience, which first perceives determinations in the appearance, then lays these at the base, and for the so-called explaining of them assumes corresponding basic materials or forces that are supposed to bring forth those determinations of the appearance.

As to the difference adduced, namely how repulsive force and how attractive force come to be found in matter by cognition, Kant goes on to remark that attractive force does indeed belong to matter's concept just as much, though it is not contained in it. Kant gives this last expression special emphasis. It is impossible to see, however, what difference is supposed to lie in this; for a determination belonging to the concept of a matter must truly be contained therein.

What makes the difficulty, and produces this empty evasion, is that Kant counts into the concept of matter, one-sidedly and from the outset, nothing but the determination of impenetrability, a determination we are to perceive by way of touch, so that repulsive force, as the warding off of an other from oneself, is said to be given immediately. If, further, matter is not supposed to be able to exist without attractive force, then a representation of matter drawn from perception underlies this assertion; the determination of attraction must accordingly be encounterable in perception as well. It can indeed be well perceived that matter, besides its being-for-itself, which sublates being-for-other (which offers resistance), also has a reference of what is for itself to one another, spatial extension and cohesion, and in rigidity, solidity, a very firm cohesion. For the tearing apart and so forth of a body, explanatory physics requires a force stronger than the attraction of that body's parts towards one another. Out of this perception reflection can derive attractive force just as immediately, or assume it as given, as it did with repulsive force. Indeed, when one examines the Kantian inferences from which attractive force is supposed to follow (the proof of the theorem: that a second fundamental force, a force of attraction, is required for the possibility of matter, loc. cit.), they contain nothing more than this, that by mere repulsion matter would fail to be spatial. Inasmuch as matter is presupposed as space-filling, continuity is ascribed to it, and the force of attraction is assumed as the ground of that continuity.

Granted that such a so-called construction of matter possesses at best an analytic merit, one still curtailed by the impure exposition, the basic thought is always well worth valuing, that of cognizing matter out of these two opposed determinations as its fundamental forces. Kant is chiefly concerned to banish the ordinary mechanical way of representing, which stops short at the one determination, impenetrability, at punctiformity that is for itself, and turns the opposed determination, the reference of matter within itself, or of several matters, again regarded as particular ones, to one another, into something external; – the way of representing which, as Kant says, will otherwise allow no moving forces except through pressure and impact, hence only through action from outside. This externality of cognition always presupposes motion as already at hand externally to matter, and never thinks of grasping motion as something inward and comprehending it within matter itself, which is thereby assumed to be for its own part motionless and inert. Before this standpoint there lies nothing but ordinary mechanics, not motion that is immanent and free. – Although Kant does sublate that externality insofar as he makes attraction, the reference of matters to one another insofar as these are assumed to be separate from one another, or of matter in general in its being-outside-itself, into a force of matter itself, on the other side his two fundamental forces nevertheless remain, within matter, external and self-subsistent over against one another.

As null as was the self-subsistent difference of these two forces which the standpoint of that cognition attributes to them, just as null must every other difference show itself to be that is drawn with regard to their content-determination as something meant to stand fast, since, taken in their truth as they were considered above, the two are moments only, each passing over into the other. – These further determinations of difference I take up as Kant states them.

Attractive force he determines, namely, as a penetrating force, one by which a given matter is able to act immediately on the parts of another even past the surface of contact, while repulsive force counts as a surface force, whereby matters are able to affect one another only within the common surface of contact. The ground adduced for the latter's being only a surface force is the following: »The parts touching each other bound each the other's space of action, and repulsive force cannot move a more distant part except by means of those lying in between; an immediate action of one matter on another crosswise through these, by way of expansive forces (which here means repulsive forces), is impossible.« (see ibid. Erklär. u. Zusätze p. 67.)

It is to be recalled at once that, once nearer or more distant parts of matter are assumed, the difference would likewise arise with regard to attraction, namely that one atom would indeed act upon another, but that a third, more distant one, between which and the first attracting atom the other was situated, would step first of all into the attracting sphere of that intervening atom, which lies nearer to it, so that the first would not exercise an immediate simple action upon the third; from which a mediated acting follows for attractive force just as much as for repulsive force; further, the true penetrating of attractive force would have to consist solely in this, that all parts of matter were attracting in and for themselves, and not that a certain quantity behaved passively and only One atom actively. – Immediately, however, or with regard to repulsive force itself, it is to be noted that in the passage cited there occur parts touching each other, hence a compactness and continuity of a finished matter which does not permit a repelling through itself. But such compactness of matter, where parts touch and are divided by no void any longer, presupposes already the sublatedness of repulsive force; on the sensuous representation of repulsion that governs here, parts touching one another count as parts that do not repel one another. It follows quite tautologically, then, that where the non-being of repulsion is assumed, no repulsion can take place. From this, however, nothing further follows for a determination of repulsive force. – Reflect, though, that touching parts touch only insofar as they still keep themselves outside one another, and repulsive force turns out by that very fact to lie not on matter's surface merely, but inside the sphere meant to belong to attraction alone.

Kant further adopts the determination that »by the force of attraction matter only occupies a space, without filling it;« (ibid.) »since matter does not fill space by the force of attraction, this force can act through empty space, no matter lying in between setting bounds to it.« – That difference is fashioned about like the earlier one, where a determination was to belong to a matter's concept and yet not be contained in it; matter here is to occupy a space merely, without filling it. In that case repulsion, if we hold to its first determination, is what makes the ones thrust one another away and, in a merely negative fashion, which here means through empty space, refer to one another. Here, however, it is attractive force that keeps space empty; it does not fill space through its reference of the atoms, which is to say, it keeps the atoms in a negative reference to one another. – We see that here, without being conscious of it, Kant runs up against what lies in the nature of the matter, ascribing to attractive force precisely what, according to the first determination, he ascribed to the opposed force. In the course of the business of fixing the difference between the two forces, it had come about that the one had passed over into the other. – Through repulsion, by contrast, matter is supposed to fill a space, so that through repulsion the empty space left by attractive force disappears. In fact, then, by sublating empty space it sublates the negative reference of the atoms or ones, i.e. the repulsion of them; which is to say, repulsion stands determined as its own opposite.

To this blurring of the differences there is added the further confusion that, as was noted at the outset, the Kantian exposition of the opposed forces is analytic, and that throughout the whole presentation matter, which is first supposed to be derived from its elements, already turns up as finished and constituted. In the definition of surface force and penetrating force, both are assumed as moving forces by which matters are to be able to act in the one way or the other. – They are therefore exhibited here as forces not by which matter first comes about, but by which it, already finished, is merely set in motion. But insofar as the talk is of forces by which different matters act upon one another and set each other in motion, this is something quite other than the determination and reference they were supposed to have as the moments of matter.

The same opposition, as attractive and repulsive force, is constituted in a further determination by centripetal and centrifugal force. These seem to afford an essential difference, since within their sphere One one, a centre, stands fast, over against which the other ones comport themselves as not being for themselves, so that the difference of the forces can be attached to this presupposed difference of One central one and of the others as not standing fast over against it. Insofar as they are put to use for explanation, however – for which purpose they get assumed, like repulsive and attractive force elsewhere, in an opposed quantitative ratio, the one waxing as the other wanes – the appearance of motion, for the explanation of which they were assumed, along with its inequality, are supposed to result only out of them. One need only take up the first available exposition of an appearance, say of the unequal velocity a planet has in its orbit around its central body, out of the opposition of those forces, and one soon recognizes the confusion reigning in it, and the impossibility of separating out their magnitudes, so that the one has always just as much to be assumed as increasing which in the explanation is assumed as decreasing, and conversely; to be made intuitable this would require a more extensive exposition than could be given here; but what is needed comes up later, in connection with inverse ratio.