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.

A. Identity

1. Essence is the simple immediacy that is sublated immediacy. Its own negativity is its being; in its absolute negativity it is selfsame with itself, a negativity through which otherness and the relation to another have simply and utterly vanished, upon their own selves, into pure self-sameness. Essence is therefore simple identity with itself.

This identity with itself is the immediacy that belongs to reflection. It is not the self-sameness that being is, or that the nothing also is, but rather the self-sameness which is as establishing itself into unity, not a re-establishing out of an other, but this pure establishing out of and within its own self; the essential identity. To that extent it is not abstract identity, nor has it come about through a relative negating that would have gone on outside it and would merely have severed from it what is distinguished, leaving that, for the rest, outside it as something that is, now as before. Rather, being, and all determinateness of being, has sublated itself not in a relative way but upon its own self; and this simple negativity, that of being in itself, is identity itself.

To that extent it is still, in general, the same thing as essence.

Remark 1

A thinking that confines itself to external reflection, acquainted with no other kind of thinking than this, never arrives at cognizing identity as it has just now been grasped, or essence, these being one and the same. Before such a thinking there stands only ever abstract identity, and, outside it and beside it, difference. It supposes reason to be nothing further than a loom on which it externally binds and interlaces the warp, say identity, and then the weft, difference; or again, analysing, now draws identity out on its own and then once more obtains difference alongside it, is now an equating and then once more an unequating; – an equating in that one abstracts from difference, – an unequating in that one abstracts from the equating. – Such assurances and opinions about what reason supposedly does must be set wholly aside, being in a manner merely historical ones, whereas the consideration of anything whatever that is shows, of it itself, that in its likeness with itself it is unlike itself and self-contradicting, while in its diversity, in its contradiction, it is identical with itself, and that it is, on its own account, just this movement whereby either of these determinations crosses over into the other — and so because either of them is, on its own account, its very opposite. The concept of identity — namely, to be simple self-referring negativity — is no product of external reflection; it emerged from being itself. Whereas by contrast that identity which is supposed to lie outside difference, and that difference which is supposed to lie outside identity, are products of external reflection and of the abstraction that arbitrarily fastens on this point of indifferent diversity.

2. This identity is at first essence itself and as yet no determination of essence; it is reflection entire, and not some one moment marked off within reflection. Being absolute negation, it negates itself at once; it is a non-being, a difference perishing in the very act of arising, or a distinguishing that distinguishes nothing and instead falls back straightway into itself. Distinguishing posits non-being, and posits it as the other's non-being. The other's non-being, however, means the sublating of that other, and with it of distinguishing as such. Yet distinguishing is present here as negativity relating itself to itself, as a non-being that is the non-being of itself; a non-being whose non-being lies not in something else, but in it. There is therefore present the self-referring, the reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.

Or identity is reflection into itself, which is such only as an inward repelling, and this repelling it is qua reflection into itself, a repelling that immediately draws itself back into itself. It is thus identity as difference that is self-identical. Difference, however, is self-identical only to the extent that it is not identity but absolute non-identity. And non-identity is absolute to the extent that it holds nothing other than itself within it, only itself — which is to say, to the extent that it is absolute self-identity.

Identity is therefore, on its own account, absolute non-identity. But over against that it is also the determination of identity. For, being reflection into itself, it makes of itself its own non-being; it is the totality, and yet qua reflection it makes of itself a moment of its own, a positedness, from out of which it is the returning-into-itself. Only as its moment in this way is it identity as such, as the determination of simple likeness with itself, over against absolute difference.

Remark 2

Identity is what I shall examine more closely in this Remark, and as the principle of identity, the one usually put forward as the first law of thought.

Taken in its positive wording, A = A, this proposition says at first nothing beyond an empty tautology. Hence the just remark that a law of thought like this is without content and carries one no further. So [it] is that empty identity which holds fast those who take it, just as it stands, for something true, and who never tire of protesting that identity is not diversity, but that identity and diversity are two diverse things. They fail to notice that already in this they are themselves saying that identity is something diverse; for they say that identity is diverse from diversity; and since this has at the same time to be conceded as identity's nature, what lies in it is that identity is such — not externally, but on its own account, in its nature — as to be diverse. – But further, in clinging to this motionless identity, which has its counterpart in diversity, they fail to notice that they thereby make of it a one-sided determinateness which as such holds no truth. It is conceded that the principle of identity gives voice to only a one-sided determinateness, that it holds only the formal, an abstract, incomplete truth. – But this correct judgment carries with it directly that only in the unity of identity with diversity is truth complete, and hence that it subsists in that unity alone. Where it is maintained that such identity is imperfect, the totality by which identity gets measured and found wanting hovers before thought as the perfect; but where, on the other side, identity is held fast as absolutely separated from diversity and, in this separation, is taken for something essential, valid, true, then in these clashing assertions nothing can be seen but a failure to hold two thoughts together — that identity taken abstractly is essential, and that just so taken it is equally imperfect; a failure of consciousness regarding that negative movement as which identity gets exhibited in these assertions themselves. – Or, when the matter is put thus, that identity is essential identity as separation from diversity, or in separation from diversity, then this is directly to have pronounced its truth, namely that what it consists in is being separation as such, or being essential in the separation, that is, being nothing for itself but a moment of separation.

As for the remaining credentials of the absolute truth of the identity principle, they rest on experience to just this extent, that every consciousness is invoked as witness to the experience that, the moment one utters this proposition to it, A is A, a tree is a tree, it grants the proposition straight off and is content with it, since a proposition immediately clear of itself needs no further grounding or proof.

For one thing, this appeal to experience, that every consciousness universally acknowledges it, is a mere turn of phrase. For nobody intends to claim that the abstract proposition A = A has been tried out experimentally on every consciousness. To that extent the appeal to experience actually made is not meant in earnest; it is only the assurance that, were the experience to be made, the result of universal acknowledgment would follow. – Suppose, though, that what was meant were not the abstract proposition as such but the proposition in concrete application, out of which the abstract one was first to be developed; then the claim to its universality and immediacy would come to this, that every consciousness, and indeed in every one of its utterances, lays it at the base, or that it lies implicite in each of them. Yet the concrete and the application is precisely the relating of the simple identical to a manifold that is diverse from it. Uttered in propositional form, the concrete would in the first instance be a synthetic proposition. Out of the concrete itself, or out of its synthetic proposition, abstraction would doubtless be able to draw the principle of identity by analysis; yet in truth experience would not have been left as it stands, but would have been altered; for experience held within it, rather, identity in unity with diversity, and it constitutes an immediate refutation of the assertion that abstract identity as such is anything true, since the very reverse — identity only as joined with diversity — turns up in every experience.

On the other side, though, the experience with the identity principle in its pure form is made only too often, and that experience shows plainly enough what regard is had for the truth it holds. For if the question what is a plant? draws the answer: a plant is – a plant, then the truth of a proposition of this kind will be granted by the whole company on whom it is tried, and in the same breath they will say just as unanimously that nothing has been said thereby. If somebody opens his mouth and undertakes to state what God is, namely that God is – God, then expectation finds itself cheated, for it was looking out for a different determination; and if this proposition is absolute truth, such absolute oratory is thought very little of; nothing will be reckoned more tedious and more of a burden than a conversation that merely chews over the same thing, than talk of this kind which is nevertheless supposed to be truth.

Looking more closely at this effect of tedium in the case of such truth: the opening, the plant is –, makes as if to say something, to bring forward some further determination. But since nothing recurs except the same, the reverse has happened instead, nothing has come out. Such identical talk therefore contradicts itself. Identity, so far from being in itself the truth and absolute truth, is rather the reverse; so far from being the motionless simple, it is the passing out beyond itself into its own dissolution.

There lies, then, in the form of the proposition in which identity is uttered, more than simple, abstract identity; there lies in it this pure movement of reflection wherein the other steps forth only as shine, as immediate vanishing; A is, is a beginning before which something diverse hovers, out towards which the step is to be taken; but the diverse is never reached; A is – A; the diversity is nothing but a vanishing; the movement goes back into itself. – One may look upon the form of the proposition as the concealed necessity of adding that surplus of movement to abstract identity. – Thus too there enters some A, or a plant, or whatever other substrate, which as a useless content carries no significance; yet it makes up the diversity that seems to attach itself by accident. If identity itself is put in place of A and of every other substrate – identity is identity – then it is equally granted that any other substrate might just as well be put in place of identity. If, then, appeal is once to be made to what the appearance shows, what it shows is this, that in the utterance of identity diversity likewise turns up immediately; – or, more determinately, in keeping with the above, that this identity is the nothing, that it is negativity, the absolute difference of itself from itself.

The principle of identity has a second expression: A cannot be A and not-A at the same time; this has negative form, and it goes by the name of the principle of contradiction. As to the way in which identity comes by the form of negation that marks this proposition off from the previous one, no warrant is customarily given. – That form lies, however, in identity's being simple negativity, as the pure movement of reflection, and it is just this that the second expression cited above holds in more developed shape. An A is uttered, and also a not-A, that which is purely other than A, but it makes its showing only in order to vanish. In this proposition, then, identity finds expression – as the negation of negation. A and not-A stand distinguished, and both, as thus distinguished, are referred to A, one and the same. Identity is accordingly set out here as this distinctness in a single relation, or as the simple difference within the terms themselves.

It is plain from this that the identity principle itself, and the principle of contradiction still more so, is not of a merely analytic but of a synthetic nature. For the latter holds within its expression not the empty, simple likeness with itself alone, and not only the other of that in general, but even absolute unlikeness, contradiction in itself. The principle of identity itself, however, holds, as was shown in its case, the movement of reflection, identity as the vanishing of otherness.

What issues from this consideration, then, is that first, the principle of identity or of contradiction, so far as it is meant to give out as true only abstract identity in opposition to difference, is no law of thought but rather the reverse of one; second, that what these propositions hold is more than what is meant by them, namely this very reverse, absolute difference itself.

B. Difference

1. Absolute Difference

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

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

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

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

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

2. Diversity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remark

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Opposition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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