# The Secret of Hegel/Volume 1/Section 2/Chapter 1

II.
A TRANSLATION FROM THE COMPLETE LOGIC OF THE WHOLE FIRST SECTION, QUALITY.
FIRST SECTION.
DETERMINATENESS OR DEFINITENESS (QUALITY).
Being is the indefinite Immediate; it is devoid of definiteness as in reference to Essentity, as also of any which it might possibly have within itself. This reflexion-less Being is Being as it is only in its own self.
As it is indefinite, it is quality-less Being; but, in itself, the character of indefiniteness attaches to it, only in contraposition to the Definite, to the Quantitative. Definite Being as such, then, contraposing itself to Being in general, the very indefiniteness of the latter constitutes its Quality. It will be found, therefore that First, Being is in itself definite, and consequently,
Secondly, that it goes over into There-being, is There-being; but that this latter as finite Being sublates itself, and goes over into the infinite Reference of Being to its own self, i.e.,
Thirdly, into Being-for-self.
CHAPTER I.
BEING.
A.
Being, pure Being,—without any further definition. In its indefinite Immediacy, it is only equal to itself, and neither is it unequal as regards Other; it has no diversity within itself, and none in any reference outwards. Should any Determination or Intent [Form or Matter] be supposed in its regard, which might be distinguished in it, or by which it might be distinguished from another, it would not be held fast in its purity. It is pure indefiniteness and vacancy. There is nothing to be perceived in it,—so far as it is at all allowable to speak of perceiving at present,—or it is only this pure, void perceiving itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this void thought, this void thinking. Being, the indefinite Immediate, is, in fact, Nothing, and neither more nor less than Nothing.
B.
NOTHING.
Nothing, pure Nothing; it is simple equality with itself, perfect vacancy, determination-lessness and intentlessness [form-lessness and matter-lessness]; undistinguishedness in itself. So far as it is allowable to mention Perception or Thought here, the distinction [we may remark] is admitted, of whether something or nothing is perceived or thought. The perceiving or the thinking nothing has therefore a meaning; both ​[perceiving nothing and perceiving something] are distinguished, thus Nothing is (exists) in our perception or thought; or rather it is empty perception and thought themselves; and the same empty perception or thought as pure Being. Nothing, therefore, is the same form, or rather formlessness,—and so in general the same,—as what pure Being is.
C.
BECOMING.
1. Unity of Being and Nothing.
Pure Being and pure Nothing is, therefore, the same. What is the truth, is neither Being nor Nothing, but that Being,—does not pass over,—but has passed over into Nothing, and Nothing into Being. But the truth is just as much not their undistinguishedness, but that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinguished, but still, nevertheless, unseparated and inseparable, and either immediately disappears in its opposite. Their truth is, therefore, this movement of the immediate disappearance of the one in the other; Becoming; a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a distinction which has equally immediately sublated itself.
Remark. I.
The Antithesis of Being and Nothing in common conception.
Nothing is usually opposed to Something; Something, however, is already a definite Bëent [Existent], which distinguishes itself from other Something (something else); and so also, therefore, the Nothing opposed to the Something, is the Nothing of a given Something,— ​a definite Nothing. Here, however, Nothing is to be taken in its indefinite simplicity. Should it be considered more accurate that Non-being, instead of Nothing, be opposed to Being, there were nothing to object to this as respects the result, for in Non-being the reference to Being is implied; both, Being and the Negation of Being, are enunciated in One, Nothing, as it is in Becoming. But we are concerned here, first of all, not with the form of the opposition (form, also, at the same time, of the co-reference), but with the abstract, immediate negation, nothing purely for itself, reference-less Negation,—what might be expressed also, were it wished, by the mere word Not.
The Eleatics first of all, espeically Parmenides, enunciated the simple thought of pure Being as the Absolute, and as the one truth: only Being is, and Nothing is altogether not,—enunciated this (in the fragments of Parmenides which remain) with the pure intoxication of thought when for the first time it has apprehended itself in its absolute abstraction. In the Oriental systems, in Buddhism essentially, Nothing, as is well known, the Void, is the Absolute Principle. The deep-thinking Heraclitus brought forward, against that simple and one-sided abstraction, the higher total notion of Becoming, and said: Being is as little as Nothing is, or all flows, that is, all is Becoming. The popular, particularly Oriental proverbs, that All that is has the germ of its death even in its birth, while death, on the other hand, is entrance into new life, express at bottom the same union of Being and Nothing. But these expressions have a substrate, on, or in, or by which the transition takes place; Being and Nothing are held asunder in time, are represented as alternating in it, but are not thought in their abstraction, and ​therefore not so that they are in, by, and for themselves the same.
Ex nihilo nihil fit—is one of the positions to which in Metaphysic great importance was ascribed. There is to be seen in it either only the empty Tautology, Nothing is Nothing; or if the Becoming (fit) is to have actual meaning in it, then, inasmuch as only nothing comes out of nothing, there is rather in fact no Becoming present in it, for Nothing remains in it Nothing. Becoming implies, that Nothing does not remain Nothing, but passes over into its other, into Being. If the later especially Christian Metaphysic rejected the position, From Nothing arises Nothing, it maintained necessarily a transition from Nothing into Being: however synthetically or merely conceptively it took this position, still there is contained, even in the most imperfect Union, a point in which Being and Nothing coincide, and their distinguishedness disappears. The proposition, From Nothing comes Nothing, Nothing is just Nothing, has its special significance in its contrariety to Becoming in general, and consequently also to the creation of the world out of nothing. Those who, waxing even fanatic in its defence, maintain the position Nothing is just Nothing, have no consciousness that they thereby express adhesion to the abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics; essentially, too, to that of Spinoza. The Philosophical opinion which holds, Being is only Being, Nothing is only Nothing, as valid principle, merits the name of Identitätssystem: this abstract identity is the essence of Pantheism.
If the result, that Being and Nothing are the same, seems startling or paradoxical in itself, there is just nothing further to be said; it were more reasonable ​to wonder at this wondering, which shows itself so new in philosophy, and forgets that there present themselves in this science quite other determinations than in ordinary consciousness and in the so-called Common Sense of Mankind, which is not just exactly sound sense or sound understanding, but understanding grown up and hardened into abstractions, and in the belief or rather the superstition of abstractions. It would not be difficult to demonstrate this unity of Being and Nothing, in every example, in everything actual, in every thought. What was said above of Immediacy and Mediacy (which latter implies a reference to another, and so Negation), the same thing must be said of Being and Nothing, That nowhere in heaven or on earth is there anything that in itself contains not Both, Being and Nothing. As, in such reference, indeed, the question is of a certain Something and Actual, those elements are in it no longer in the perfect untruth, in which they are as Being and Nothing, but in a further developed form, and have become (conceived, for example, as Positive and Negative), the former posited, reflected Being—the latter posited, reflected Nothing; but Positive and Negative imply, the one Being and the other Nothing as their abstract Ground-principle. Thus in God himself, Quality, Energy, Creation, Power, &c. involve essentially the element of Negativity,—they are a bringing into existence of an Other. But an empirical illustration by means of examples of the position maintained would be here quite superfluous. As now, indeed, this unity of Being and Nothing lies once and for all established as first Truth and basis, and constitutes the element of all that follows, all further Logical determinations—There-being, Quality, in general all ​notions of philosophy—are examples of this Unity quite as much as Becoming. But what names itself common (or sound) sense, so far as it rejects the undividedness of Being and Nothing, may be invited to try to discover a single example where the one is separated from the other (Something from Limit, or the Infinite, God, as has been just mentioned, from energy in act). Only these empty things of thought, Being and Nothing, themselves, are such separated things, and it is they which by said understanding are preferred to the truth, the undividedness of both, which is everywhere before us.
It were vain to seek to meet on all sides the perplexities into which ordinary consciousness, in the case of such a logical proposition, misleads itself, for they are inexhaustible. It is possible only to notice a few of them. One source of such perplexity, among others, is that consciousness brings with it to the consideration of such abstract logical position, conceptions (representations) of a concrete Something, and forgets that there is no question of any such here, but only of the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing, and that it is these alone which are to be held fast.
Being and Non-being are the same thing; it is, therefore, the same thing, whether I am or am not, whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are or are not in my possession. Such inference or such application of the proposition alters its sense completely. The Proposition contains the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing; the application, on the other hand, makes of these a determinate Being and determinate Nothing. But, as has been said, the question here is not of determinate Being. A determinate, a finite Being, is such as refers itself to ​others; it is a complex which stands in the relation of necessity with many other such, with the whole world. As regards the reciprocating system of the whole, Metaphysic might advance the—at bottom tautological—allegation, that were a single dust-atom destroyed, the whole universe would collapse. In the instances opposed to the position in question, something appears as not indifferent, whether it is or is not, not for the sake of Being or Non-being, but for the sake of its Import, which Import connects it with other such. If a determinate complex, any determinate There-being be presupposed, this There-being, because it is determinate, is in manifold relation to other complexes; it is not indifferent to it, then, whether a certain other complex with which it stands in relation, is or is not; for only through such relation is it essentially that which it is. The same thing is the case with conception (non-being being taken in the more determinate sense of conception as against actuality), in the context of which the Being or Non-being of an Import, which is conceived as determinately in relation with something other, is not indifferent.
This consideration involves what constitutes a main moment in the Kantian criticism of the Ontological argument for the existence of God, which is regarded here, however, only in reference to the distinction of Being and Nothing in general, and of determinate Being or Non-being, which there presents itself. There was presupposed, as is well known, in said so-called proof or argument, the Notion of a Being, to whom all realities accrue, and consequently also existence which was likewise assumed as one of the realities. The Kantian criticism took stand specially by this, that existence or being (which is here synonymous) is no ​quality, or no real predicate; that is, is not a notion of something which can be added to the notion of a thing. Kant wants to say here, that Being is no element of comprehension. Thus, he continues, the possible would contain no more than the actual; a hundred actual dollars contain not in the least more than a hundred possible ones; that is, the former have no other logical comprehension than the latter. For this Comprehension, considered as isolated, it is in fact indifferent to be or not to be; there lies in it no difference of Being or Non-being—this difference on the whole affects it not at all; the hundred dollars become no less if they are not, and no more if they are. A difference must come only from elsewhere. 'On the other hand,' suggests Kant, 'there is more in my means in the case of a hundred actual dollars, than in that of the mere notion of the same, or their possibility. For the object in the case of actuality is not merely analytically contained in my notion, but adds itself synthetically to my notion (which is a determination of my condition), without these said hundred dollars themselves being in the least increased by this Being besides my notion.'
There are presupposed here two kinds of conditions, to use the Kantian expressions (which are not without confusion and clumsiness): the one, which Kant names notion, but by which conception (representation) is to be understood; and another, the state of means. For the one as for the other, for one's means as for one's conception, a hundred dollars are a complex of comprehension, or, as Kant expresses himself, 'they add themselves synthetically thereto;' I as possessor of a hundred dollars, or as non-possessor of the same, or again, I as conceiving a hundred dollars, or not ​conceiving them,—there are certainly here cases of a different Comprehension. Stated more generally: The abstractions of Being and Nothing cease both to be abstractions, when they receive a determinate comprehension (or import): Being is then Reality, the determinate Being of a hundred dollars; Nothing, Negation, the determinate negation of the same. This element of comprehension itself, the hundred dollars, when taken abstractly by itself, is in the one unchanged, the same that is in the other. But now that Being further is taken as state of one's means, the hundred dollars come into relation to a state; and for this state, the determinatum which they are is not indifferent: their Being or Non-being is only alteration; they are transferred to the sphere of There-being. When, therefore, it is urged against the unity of Being and Nothing, that it is nevertheless not indifferent, whether this and that (the hundred dollars) be or be not, it is a delusion to transfer to mere Being and Non-being the difference of whether I have or have not the hundred dollars—a delusion which, as has been shown, rests on the one-sided abstraction which leaves out of view the determinate There-being present in such examples, and holds fast mere Being and Non-being; as, on the other hand, it (the delusion) transforms the abstract Being and Nothing, that [here, in this Logic] should alone be apprehended, into a determinate Being and Nothing—into a There-being. Only There-being contains the real difference of Being and Nothing, namely, a Something and an Other. This real difference, instead of abstract Being and pure Nothing and their only opined difference, is what floats before conception (Representation).
As Kant expresses himself, there comes 'through the fact of existence something into the context of collective experience;' 'we obtain thereby an addition object of perception, but our notion of the object is thereby not increased.' That, as appears from the preceding illustration, is as much as this—through the fact of existence, essentially just because something is a determinate Existence, it is in connexion with other, and among such also with a perceiving agent. 'The Notion of the hundred dollars,' says Kant, 'is not increased by perception.' The Notion here is the already-noticed isolatedly—conceived (represented) hundred dollars. In this isolated form, they are indeed an empirical matter, but cut off, without connexion and determinateness towards other: the form of identity with themselves takes from them the reference to other, and makes them indifferent whether they are perceived or not. But this so-called notion of a hundred dollars is a false notion: the form of simple reference to self does not belong to such limited, finite matter itself; it is a form put on it and lent to it by subjective understanding: a hundred dollars are not a Referent of self to self, but a changeable and perishable.
The thought or conception (representation), before which only a determinate Being, There-being, floats, is to be referred to the previously-mentioned beginning of Science made by Parmenides, who purified and elevated his own conception (representation), and thereby that of all following times, into the pure thought, Being as such, and in that manner created the element of science. That which is first in Science has of necessity to show ​itself historically as first. And we have to regard the Eleatic One or Being as the first of the knowing of the Thought. Water and such material principles are hypothetically to be considered to be, or would be the Universal [or All-common] principle; but they are as material things not pure thoughts: Numbers are neither the first simple unal thought, nor that which is permanent in itself, but the thought which is quite external to itself.
The reference back from particular finite Being to Being as such in its completely abstract universality, is to be regarded not only as the very first theoretical, but as even also the very first practical postulate. When, for example, there is a To-do made,—as about the hundred dollars, that it makes a difference in the state of my means, whether I have them or not, or that it makes a still greater difference to me whether I am or not, whether Other be or not,—the reminder may be held up—without mentioning that there doubtless are actual means, to which such possession of a hundred dollars is indifferent—that Man, in his moral thought, ought to raise himself to such abstract universality as would render it in truth indifferent to him whether the hundred dollars, let them have whatever quantitative relation they may to the actual state of his means, are or whether they are not—indifferent to him even whether he himself be or not (in finite life, that is, for a state, determinate Being is meant), &c.—even 'si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum fericut ruinæ,' was the utterance of a Roman, and much more the Christian ought to find himself in this indifference.
There is still to be noticed the immediate connexion in which the elevation over the hundred dollars, and all finite things in general, stands with the Ontological ​proof and the cited Kantian criticism of the same. This criticism has by its popular example made itself universally plausible: who does not know that a hundred actual dollars are different from a hundred merely possible dollars—that they constitute a difference in my state of means? Because, therefore, in the case of the hundred dollars this difference manifests itself, the Notion—that is, the determinatum of comprehension as mere possibility—and the Being are different from each other; and so, therefore, also God's Notion is different from his Being; and just as little as I can bring out of the possibility of a hundred dollars their actuality, so little can I 'grab out' of the notion of God his existence: and the ontological proof is nothing but this 'grabbing'—out of the existence of God from his notion. Now, if certainly it is not without its own truth that Notion is different from Being, God is still more different from the hundred dollars and other finite things. It is the Definition of Finite Things, that in them Notion and Being are different, Notion and Reality, Soul and Body are separable, and they themselves consequently perishable and mortal: the abstract definition of God, on the other hand, is just this—that his Notion and his Being are unseparated and inseparable. The true criticism of the Categories and of Reason is exactly this—to give cognition an understanding of this difference, and to prevent it from applying to God the distinguishing characters and relations of the Finite.
Remark 2.
Defects of the Expression Unity, Identity, of Being and Nothing.
There is another reason to be mentioned contributive to the repugnance against the proposition relative to ​Being and Nothing: this reason is, that the expression of the result, furnished by the consideration of Being and Nothing, in the proposition, Being and Nothing is one and the same, is imperfect. The accent is laid mainly on their being one and the same, as is the case in the Proposition of a Judgment in general, where the Predicate is, which alone enunciates what the Subject is. The sense seems, therefore, to be, that the difference is denied—which difference, at the same time, nevertheless, is immediately forthcoming in the proposition; for it names both terms, Being and Nothing, and implies them as things different. It cannot be intended, at the same time, that abstraction is to be made from them, and only their unity is to be held fast. This sense would of itself manifest its own onesidedness, inasmuch as that from which abstraction is to be made, is, nevertheless, actually present and expressly named in the proposition. So far now as the proposition, Being and Nothing is the same, enunciates the identity of these terms, but in truth just as much implies them both as different, it contradicts itself in itself and eliminates itself. Holding this still closer, there is here a proposition stated, which, considered nearer, involves the movement to disappear through its own self. But just so there happens in its own self that which is to constitute its special purport—namely, Becoming.
The proposition contains thus the result—it is that in itself. The point, however, which is to be noticed here, is the want, that the result is not itself expressed in the proposition; it is an external reflexion which discerns it in it. Here, then, in the beginning this universal remark must at once be made, that a proposition, in the form of a judgment, is not competent to express ​speculative truths: a knowledge of this circumstance is sufficient to set aside much misunderstanding of speculative truths. A judgment is an identical reference between subject and predicate: abstraction is made thereby from this, that the subject has still more characters than those of the predicate; as well as from this, that the predicate has more extension than the subject. Now, if the Import in hand is speculative, the non-identity of subject and predicate is also an essential moment; but in a judgment this is not expressed. The paradoxical and bizarre light in which much of later philosophy appears to those who are not familiar with speculative thought, arises frequently from the form of the simple judgment, when applied in expression of speculative results.
In order to express the speculative truth, the want may, in the first place, be attempted to be supplied by the addition of the contrary proposition, as here, Being and Nothing is not the same. But thus the further want arises that these propositions are unconnected, and so exhibit the Import in hand only in the state of Antinomy, while this Import refers itself to one and the same thing, and the terms which are expressed in the two propositions are to be directly united,—a union which can then be enunciated only at the same time as a movement, an unrest of incompatibles. The most common injustice which is done speculative matter, is to make it one-sided—to bring forward, that is, only one of the propositions into which it can be resolved. It cannot, then, be denied that this proposition is maintained—As true as is the statement, so false it is; for if the one proposition of a speculative nature be taken, the other ought, at least, to be equally considered and assigned. There is here yet to be mentioned that unfortunate ​word Unity. Unity designates still more than identity a subjective reflexion; it is especially taken as the relation which arises from comparison, from external reflexion. So far as such reflexion finds the same thing in two different objects, there is a unity present in such wise, that there is presupposed as regards this unity, the perfect indifference of the objects which are compared, so that this comparing and unity nowise concern the objects themselves, and are a doing and determining external to them. Unity expresses, therefore, the quite abstract self-sameness, and sounds the harder and the harsher, the more those things of which it is enunciated show themselves directly different. For Unity it would be, therefore, so far better to say only, unseparatedness or inseparableness: but thus, again, the Affirmative of the relation of the whole is not expressed.
Thus the whole veritable result which has here yielded itself is Becoming. And this is not merely the one-sided or abstract unity of Being and Nothing; but it is contained in this movement, that pure Being is immediate and simple; that it is, therefore, equally pure Nothing; that the difference of these is, but just as much that it eliminates itself and is not. The result, then, equally maintains the difference of Being and of Nothing, but as only a meant or opined one.
One opines that Being is rather directly other than what Nothing is, that there is nothing clearer than their absolute difference, and that there seems nothing easier than to assign it. It is, however, just as easy to convince oneself that this is impossible, that it is unsayable. Those who would persist in the difference of Being and Nothing, let them challenge themselves to assign in what it consists. Had Being and Nothing any determinateness by which they might be distin​guished, they would be, as has been observed, determinate Being and determinate Nothing—not pure Being and pure Nothing, as they are to be taken here. Their difference, therefore, is entirely empty; each of the two is in the same manner the Indeterminate: the difference, therefore, lies not in them, but in a Third, in Opinion. But opinion is a form of the Subjective which does not belong to this series of statement. The Third, however, in which Being and Nothing have their support, must present itself here also, and it has already presented itself here: it is Becoming. In it they are as Differents; Becoming is only so far as as they are different. This Third is another than they: they consist only in another; that is to say as well, they consist (or subsist) not by and for themselves. Becoming is the maintainment or maintaining medium of Being as well as of Non-being; or their maintainment is only their Being in One; just this their maintainment is it that just as much eliminates their difference.
The challenge to assign the difference of Being and Nothing includes that other also, to say, what then is Being and what is Nothing? Let those who strive against perceiving that the one as well as the other is only a transition into each other—and who maintain of Being and of Nothing this thing and the other—state what they speak of, that is, set up a definition of Being and Nothing, and demonstrate that it is correct. Without having complied with this first requisition of ancient Science, the logical rules of which they accept and apply in other cases, all that they maintain in regard to Being and Nothing are but assertions, scientific nullities. Should it be said, Existence, so far as this in the first place can be taken as synonymous with Being, is the complement to ​Possibility, we have thus presupposed another character, possibility; Being is not enunciated in its immediacy, not even as self-subsistent, but as conditioned. For Being which is mediated, we shall reserve the expression Existence. But one represents to oneself Being—perhaps under the figure of pure light, as the clearness of untroubled seeing—Nothing again as absolute Night, and one attaches their difference to this well-known sensuous diversity. In truth, however, if one will represent to oneself more exactly this very seeing, one will easily perceive that there will be seen in absolute light just as much and as little as in the absolute dark; that the one seeing as much as the other is pure seeing—seeing of Nothing. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same. Only in determinate light—and light becomes determinate through darkness—in troubled light, therefore, just as only in determinate darkness—and darkness becomes determinate by light—in illuminated darkness, can anything be distinguished, because only troubled light and illuminated darkness possess in themselves distinction, and are thereby determinate Being—There-being, or So-being.
Remark 3.
The Isolating of the Abstraction, Being and Nothing.
The unity, whose moments are Being and Nothing as inseparable the one from the other, it itself, at the same time, different from them, and thus to them a Third, which in its own most strictly proper form is Becoming. Transition is the same as Becoming; only that in the former, the two, from the one of which to the other of which the transition is made, have ​more the aspect of being at rest apart from each other, and the transition is rather conceived as taking place between them. Wherever and however Being or Nothing is in question, there this Third must be present also; for these subsist not by themselves, but are only in Becoming in this Third. This Third, indeed, has numerous empirical forms; but these are put aside or neglected by abstraction, in order to hold fast these its own products, Being and Nothing, each per se, and display them safe from transition. In reply to such simple procedure of abstraction, we have just equally simply to point to empirical existence, in which only said abstraction itself is something, has a Here-being. Through whatever reflexional forms, indeed, the separation of the inseparable is sought to be attained, there is independently present in every such attempt the opposite of its own self, and so, without recurring or appealing to the nature of the facts themselves, we may always confound every such attempt out of its own self, just by taking it as it gives itself, and demonstrating in it its own other. It would be lost pains to seek, as it were, to arrest all the sallies and windings of Reflexion and its reasonment, in order to cut off and render impossible to it all the shifts and shuffles by which it conceals its own contradiction from its own self. For this reason, also, I refrain from noticing numerous self-called refutations and objections which have been brought forward against the doctrine that neither Being nor Nothing is anything true, and that only Becoming is their truth; the mental training calculated to give insight into the nullity of such refutations—or rather, quite to banish all such weak suggestions from oneself—is to be effected only by a critical knowledge of the forms of the understanding; ​but those who are the most fertile in such objects fall-to at once with their reflexions upon the first propositions, without—by an enlarged study of Logic—helping or having helped themselves to a consciousness of the nature of these crude reflexions.
We shall consider, however, a few of the results which manifest themselves when Being and Nothing are isolated from each other, and the one placed out of the sphere of the other, so that their transition is negated.
Parmenides held fast by Being, and was but consistent with himself, in affirming at the same time of Nothing, that it in nowise is; only Being is. Being thus completely by itself in the Indeterminate, and has, therefore, no reference to Other: it seems, therefore, that from this beginning there can be no further progress made—from it itself, that is—and any progress can only be accomplished by the joining on to it of something foreign, something from without and elsewhere. The step forward, that Being is the same as Nothing, appears, then, as a second absolute beginning—a transition that is für sich (per se), and adds itself externally to Being. Being would be, in general, not the absolute Beginning, if it had a determinateness; it would then depend on another, and would not be immediate, would not be the Beginning. If it be, however, indeterminate, and so a true beginning, neither has it anything by which to lead itself over into another; it is at once the End. There can just as little anything break or dawn out of it, as anything break or dawn into it; in Parmenides, as in Spinoza, there is no transition from Being or Absolute Substance to the Negative, the Finite. But if transition nevertheless is to be made—which, as has been remarked, in the case of reference-less and ​so progress-less Being, can only take place in an external fashion,—such transition or progress is a second, a new beginning. Thus Fichte's absolutely first, unconditioned axiom, A=A, is position, Thesis; the second is opposition, Antithesis; this latter is now to be considered partly conditioned, partly unconditioned (and so contradiction in itself). Now this is a progress of outer Reflexion, which just as well again negates what is started with as an Absolute,—the Opposition, the antithesis of negation of the first identity,—as it, at the same time, immediately, expressly reduces its second unconditioned to a conditioned. If, however, on the whole, there were any right to proceed, i. e. to sublate the first beginning, such right must have been of this nature, that it lay in this First itself that another could connect itself with it; that is, the First must have been a Determinate. But the Being [of Parmenides]—or, again the Absolute Substance [of Spinoza]—does not enunciate itself as such. On the contrary, it is the Immediate, the still absolutely Indeterminate.
The most eloquent, perhaps forgotten, delineation of the impossibility to come from an Abstract to a Further and to a union of both is made by Jacobi in the interest of his polemic against the Kantian synthesis à priori of Self-consciousness, in his Essay on the attempt of Criticismus to bring Reason to or under Understanding (Jac. Werke, iii. Bd.). He states (S. 113) the problem thus: That there be demonstrated the occurence or the production of a synthesis in a Pure [blank unity], whether of consciousness, of space, or of time. 'Space is one, Time is one, Consciousness is one;—tell me now, then, how any one of these three ones shall—purely—multiply itself in itself: each is only one, and no other; an identical one sort, a the- this- that Selfsameness! ​without the-ness, this-ness, that-ness; for these slumber with the the, this, that, still in the infinite＝O of the Indeterminate, from which each and every determinate has yet to expect its birth. What brings into these three infinitudes, finitude; what impregnates space and time à priori with number and measure, and converts them into a pure manifold; what brings the pure Spontaneity (I) into oscillation? How gets its pure vowel to a consonant—or rather, its soundless uninterrupted sounding—how, interrupting itself, breaks it off, in order at least to gain a sort of Self-sound (literally vowel), an accent?' One sees from this that Jacobi has very sharply recognised the non-ens of abstraction, whether a so-called absolute (i. e., only abstract) Space, or a so-characterised Time, or a so-characterised pure Consciousness, Ego; he remains immovable in it for the purpose of maintaining the impossibility of a transition to Other, the condition of a synthesis, and to a synthesis itself. The synthesis, which is meant, must not be taken as a conjunction of characters already there externally; the question is partly of the genesis of a Second to a First, of a Determinate to a beginning Indeterminate,—partly, again, of immanent synthesis, synthesis à priori, a Unity of Differents that is absolutely (or that in and for itself is). Becoming is such immanent synthesis of Being and Nothing; but because synthesis mostly suggests the sense of an external bringing together of things full-formed, ready-present, externally confronting each other, the name synthesis (synthetic unity) has been justly left out of use. Jacobi asks, how does the pure vowel of the Ego get to its consonant, what brings determinateness into indeterminateness? The What were easily answered, and in his own fashion has been already answered by Kant; ​but the question of How amounts to, in what mode and manner, in what relation, and so on, and demands thus the statement of a particular category; but of mode and manner, of categories of the understanding, there cannot be any question here. The question of How belongs itself to the erroneous ways of Reflexion, which demands comprehensibleness, but at the same time presupposes its own fixed categories, and consequently feels itself armed in advance against the reply to its own question. Neither has it with Jacobi the higher sense of a question concerning the necessity of synthesis; for he remains, as has been said, fixed in the abstractions, in order to maintain the impossibility of a synthesis. He describes (S. 147) with particular vivacity the procedure in order to reach the abstraction of space. 'I must for so long strive clean to forget that I ever saw, heard, touched, or handled anything at all, my own self expressly not excepted. Clean, clean, clean must I forget all motion; and precisely this forgetting, because it is hardest, I must make my greatest concern. I must get everything in general, as I have got it thought away—also completely and entirely show away, and leave nothing whatever over but only the forcibly kept perception of infinite immutable space. I may not therefore again think into it my own self as something distinct from it, but at the same time connected with it; I may not allow myself to be simply surrounded and pervaded by it: but I must wholly pass over into it, become one with it, transmute myself into it; I must leave nothing over of myself, but this my perception itself, in order to contemplate it as a veritably self-subsistent, independent, single and sole manifestation.'
In this quite abstract purity of continuity,—that is, ​indefiniteness and void of conception,—it is indifferent to name this abstraction space, or pure perception, pure thought;—it is quite the same thing as what the Indian names Brahma, when, externally motionless and no less internally emotionless, looking years long only to the tip of his own nose, he says within himself just Om, Om, Om, or perhaps just nothing at all. This dull, void consciousness, conceived as consciousness, is Being (das Seyn).
In this vacuum, says Jacobi further, he experiences the opposite of what he is assured by Kant he ought to experience: he finds himself, not as a plurality and manifold, but rather as a unit without any plurality and variety; nay, 'I am the very impossibility, am the annihilation of all variety and plurality,—can, out of my pure, absolutely simple, unalterable nature, restore again, or raise ghost-like within myself, not the smallest particle of any such;—thus all out-of and near-one-another-ness, all thereon founded variety and plurality, reveals itself in this purity as purely impossible.'
This impossibility is nothing else than the tautology—I hold fast by the abstract unity, and exclude all plurality and variety; hold myself in the difference-less and indeterminate, and look away from all that is distinguished and determinate. The Kantian synthesis à priori of self-consciousness—that is, the function of this unity to sunder itself, and in this diremption or sundering to maintain itself—is attenuated by Jacobi into the same abstraction. This 'synthesis in itself,' the 'original ordeal,' is onesidedly reduced by him into 'the copula in itself;—an Is, Is, Is. without beginning and end, and without What, Who, and Which: this repetition of the repetition continued ad infinitum is the sole business, function, and production of the all-​purest synthesis; it itself is the mere, pure, absolute repetition itself.' Or, indeed, we might say, rather, as there is in it no remission,—that is, no negation, distinction,—it is not a repetition, but only undistinguished simple Being. But is it then still synthesis, when Jacobi omits precisely that by which the unity is synthetic unity?
In the first place, when Jacobi plants himself thus fast in the absolute (i.e. abstract) space, time, and consciousness,—it is to be said that he, in this manner, misplaces himself into, and holds himself fast in, something empirically false; there empirically exist no space and time, which were not limited, not in their continuity filled with variously-limited There-being and Vicissitude, so that these limits and alterations belong unseparated and inseparably to Space and Time: in like manner, consciousness is filled with determinate sensation, conception, desire, &c.; it does not exist separated from a particular matter of some sort. The empirical transition, moreover, is self-evident: consciousness can make, indeed, void space, void time, and void consciousness itself, or pure Being, its object and ingest; but it remains not with such, it presses forward out of such void to a better,—i. e. in some manner or other, a more concrete ingest, and however bad an ingest may be otherwise, it is so far better and truer: just any such ingest is a synthetic one in general; synthetic taken in the more universal sense. Thus Parmenides gets to be busied with his delusion and his opinion, the opposite of Being and of Truth; so, too, Spinoza, with his attributes, modes, extension, motion, understand, will, &c. The synthesis involves and shows the untruth of those abstractions; in it they are in unity with their other— ​not, therefore, as self-subsistent—not as absolute, but directly as relative.
The demonstration of the empirical nullity of empty space, &c. is not, however, that with which we have to do. Consciousness certainly can abstract, can fill itself with the indeterminate also; and the abstraction it then holds fast are the Thoughts of pure Space, Time, pure Consciousness, pure Being. Now, it is the thought of pure space, &c.—i.e. pure space, &c.—which is in itself to be demonstrated as null: i.e., that it as such is already its own contrary; that as it is there in its self, its contrary has already penetrated into it; it is already of itself gone forward out of itself—is determinateness.
But this manifests itself immediately in their regard [that is, as regards pure space, time, &c.]. They are, as Jacobi profusely describes them, results of abstraction; they are expressly determined as undetermined; and this—to go back to its simplest form, amounts to Being—is Being. Just this Indeterminateness of Being, however, is what constitutes its determinateness; for Indeterminateness is opposed to Determinateness: it is consequently, as contraposited, itself the Determinate or Negative, and the pure, quite abstract Negative. This Indefiniteness or abstract negation, which Being in this manner has in its own self, is what outer as well as inner reflexion enunciates when it takes it as equal to nothing, and declares it an empty thing of thought, Nothing. Or it may be expressed thus: Since Being is determinationless, it is not the (affirmative) determinateness, which it is, not Being but Nothing.
In the pure reflexion of the Beginning, as it has been taken in this Logic with Being as such, transition is still concealed: as Being is taken only as Immediate, Nothing breaks by it only immediately forth. But all ​following determinations, as There-being which is next, are more concrete; as regards There-being, that is posited which contains and produces the contradiction of those Abstractions, and therefore their transition. As regards Being as said Simple, Immediate, the remembrance that it is the result of perfect Abstraction, and so for that very reason but abstract Negativity, Nothing, becomes lost from view behind the Science which within its own self, expressly from Essence onwards, will present said one-sided Immediate as a Mediate, in which Being is posited as Existence, and the Mediating agency of this Being as the Ground.
In the light of said remembrance, the transition from Being into Nothing may be represented (or, as the phrase goes, explained and made intelligible) as something even light and trivial. It may be said, for example, that without doubt Being which has been made the beginning of the Science (and of Science) is Nothing; for we can abstract from everything; and when one has abstracted from everthing, there remains, of course, nothing over. But, it may be continued, the beginning is thus not an Affirmative, not Being, but just Nothing; and Nothing is then also the End, at least as much so as Immediate Being, and even still more. The shortest way is to let such reasoning take its own course, and look on to see how the results it vaunts are characterised. Taking it for granted, then, that Nothing were the result of said raisonnement, and that now, consequently, the Beginning must be made with Nothing (as in Chinese Philosophy), there were no necessity on that account to stir a hand; for before one could stir a hand, this Nothing would have just as much converted itself into Being (see above, B., Nothing). But, further, said abstraction from all and ​everything (which all then is, nevertheless, bëent) being presupposed, it is still to be more exactly understood; the result of the abstraction from all that is, is first of all abstract Being, Being in general; as in the cosmological proof of the existence of God from the contingent being of the world (over which) being the ascent or advance contained in the proof is made), Being is still brought up along with us, Being is determined as Infinite Being. But abstraction can certainly again be made from this pure Being also; Being, too, can be thrown into the all from which abstraction has been already made; then remains Nothing. It is still possible for us, would we but forget the thinking of Nothing—i. e., its striking round into Being—or did we know nothing of this, to continue in the style of One may this, One may that: we may, for example (God be praised!), abstract also from the Nothing (as, for that part, the creation of the world itself is but an abstraction from Nothing), and then there remains not Nothing, for it is just from it we have abstracted, and we are once more lauded in Being. This One can, One may, gives an external play of abstraction, in which the abstracting itself is only the one-sided activity of the Negative. Directly at hand, it lies in this very One can, One may, itself, that to it Being is as indifferent as Nothing, and that just as much as each of the two disappears, each of them equally also arises: again, it is equally indifferent whether we start from the act of the Nothing, or from the Nothing; the act of Nothing—i. e., the mere abstracting—is no more and no less anything True than the mere Nothing.
The Dialectic, according to which Plato handles the One in the Parmenides, is also to be regarded rather as a Dialectic of external reflexion. Being and the One ​are both Eleatic forms, which are the same thing. But they are also capable of being distinguished: it is thus Plato takes them in the Dialogue mentioned. Having removed from the One the various characters of the whole and parts—of being in itself, of being in another, &c.—of figure, time, &c.,—the result is that Being does not belong to the One, for only in one or other of these modes does Being attach to any one Something (p. 141, e., vol. iii., ed. Steph). Plato then proceeds to handle the position, the One is; and we have to see how, from this proposition, the transition to the Non-is of the One is accomplished. It takes place by comparing the two elements of the proposition advanced, the One is. This proposition contains the One and Being; and the One is contains more than when we say only, the One. In this that they are different, then, is demonstrated the moment of Negation which the proposition holds within it. It is obvious that this path (method) has a presupposition, and is an external reflexion.
In like manner as the One is here placed in connexion with Being, may that Being which is supposed capable of being held fast by itself and abstractly, be demonstrated—in the simplest fashion, without calling in Thought at all—to be in a union which implies the contrary of that which is supposed to be maintained. Being, taken as it is immediately, belongs to a Subject, is an enunciation, has an empirical Here-being in general, and stands, therefore, on the level of limitation and the Negative. In whatever phrases or flexions the understanding may express itself, when struggling against the unity of Being and Nothing, and appealing to what is immediately before us, it will find just in this very experience nothing but determined Being, defined Being, Being with a limit or Negation [a term, an end],—that ​very unity which it rejects. The maintaining of immediate Being reduces itself thus to an empirical existence, the exhibition of which cannot be rejected, because it is the immediacy without (outside of) Thought, to which its own appeal is made.
The case is the same with Nothing, only reverse-wise, and this Reflexion is familiarly known and has often enough been made in its regard. Nothing, taken in its immediacy, shows itself as Be-ing or Be-ent (as a thing that is); for it is in its nature the same as Being. Nothing is thought, Nothing is represented (conceived), it is spoken of; it is therefore. Nothing has in thought, representation, speech, &c., its Being. This Being again is furthermore also distinguished from it: it is therefore said, that Nothing is indeed in Thought, Representation; but that on that account not it is, not to it as such does Being attach, that only Thought or Representation is this Being. Notwithstanding this distinction, it is just as much not to be denied that Nothing stands in connexion with a Being, but in connexion (reference, relation), though it implies difference also, there is a unity with Being. In whatever manner Nothing be enunciated or exhibited, it shows itself in combination, or if you will contact, with a Being, unseparated from a Being, or just in a There-being.
But in that Nothing is thus demonstrated in a There-being, usually still this distinction of it from Being is wont to float before the mind,—namely, that the There-being of Nothing [its presence in this sublunary existence] is entirely nothing appertinent to it itself; that it does not possess Being for and by its own self, that it is not Being as such. Nothing is only absence of Being, as darkness is only absence of light, cold only absence of heat, &c. Darkness (the strain continues) ​has only meaning in reference to the eye, in external comparison with the Positive, Light; and just so is cold only something in our sensation. On the other hand, Light, Heat, like Being, are per se, for themselves, the Objective, the Real, the Actuose, of absolutely quite another quality and dignity than those Negatives—than Nothing. We find it frequently adduced as a very weighty Reflexion and important Cognition, that darkness is only absence of light, cold only absence of heat. But in this field of empirical matters it may be empirically remarked, in reference to said acute reflexion, that in light darkness certainly shows itself Actuose, inasmuch as it defines, determines it as colour, and thereby to it itself only first of all imparts visibility; for, as formerly observed, in pure light vision is just as little possible as in pure darkness. But the visibility is actuality in the eye, and in that actuality the Negative has just as much share as the light itself, which passes for the Real and Positive. In like manner, cold makes itself perceivable enough in water, our sensation, &c. &c.; and when we refuse to it a so-called objective reality, we have with that won altogether nothing as against it. But it might further be objected, that here too, as above, it is a Negative of definite Import that is spoken of, and that we have not steadily remained by Nothing itself, to which Being is, as regards empty abstraction, not inferior—nor, indeed, superior. But it were well to take by themselves cold, darkness, and the like definite negations, in order to see what is involved in this common constitution which they exhibit. They are not then to be considered as Nothing in general, but as the Nothing of light, heat, &c.—of something definite, of an Implex, an Intent: they are thus determinate, and, if we may say so, ​implicant Nothings, intaining Nothings (meaning-ful Nothings). But a definedness, determinedness, is, as comes again further on, itself a Negation: they are thus negative Nothings. But a negative Nothing is something affirmative. The striking round of Nothing, by reason of its definiteness (which definiteness manifested itself a little while ago as a There-being—a real state of being—in a subject, in water, or whatever else), into an affirmative, appears to a consciousness which remains fixed in the abstraction of the understanding as the greatest of paradoxes, however simple it is to perceive that the Negation of a Negation is a Positive. To be sure, on the other hand, the perception of this simple truth may appear to a like consciousness—and just because of its simplicity—as something trivial, on which therefore high and mighty understanding need bestow no attention. The matter meanwhile has, with all this, its own correctness: nay, not only has this correctness, but possesses, because of the universality of such forms or determinations, an infinite extension and universal application. It were not amiss, as regards these things, then, to pay a little attention after all. (Original curiously tangled: see p. 105, Werke, vol. iii. ed. 1833.)
It may be still remarked, as regards the transition of Being and Nothing into one another, that it ought to be taken up into the mind—just so—without any further operation of reflexion. It is immediate and quite abstract because of the abstraction of the transient moments; i. e, because in either of these moments the determinateness of the other moment is not yet set (manifested as implied), and so as means by which the transition were to be effected. Nothing is not yet posited (manifested as implied) in Being, though Being ​is essentially Nothing, and vice versâ. It is, therefore, inadmissible to apply here further-determined connective media, and conceive Being and Nothing in any relation whatever: said transition is not yet a relation. It is, therefore, not allowable to say, Nothing is the Ground of Being; or, Being is the Ground of Nothing; Nothing cause of Being, &c.; or, transition is possible into Nothing only under condition that something is, or into Being only under the condition of Non-being. The species of inter-reference cannot be further defined, unless the co-referred sides themselves were at the same time further determined. The connexion of Ground and Consequent, &c. has no longer mere Being and Nothing as the sides which it combines, but expressly Being which is Ground, and something which is to be sure posititious, and not self-subsistent, but which, however, is not the abstract Nothing.
Remark 4.
Incomprehensibleness of the Beginning.
We may perceive from the preceding, what is the nature of the Dialectic against a beginning of the world, and also its end, by which the eternity of matter should be supposed proved; i.e., of the Dialectic against Becoming, Origin or Decease, in general. The Kantian Antinomy respecting the finitude or infinitude of the world in space and time receives more particular consideration further on, under the notion of Quantitative Infinitude. Said simple ordinary Dialectic rests on the holding fast of the antithesis of Being and Nothing. It is proved in the following manner, that there is no beginning of the world, or of anything else, possible:
There cannot anything begin, neither so far as it is, ​nor so far as it is not: for so far as it is, it does not first begin; and so far as it is not, neither does it begin. Should the world or anything else be supposed to have begun, it must have begun in nothing. But nothing is no beginning, or there is no beginning in nothing: for a beginning includes in it a Being; but nothing contains no Being. Nothing is only Nothing. In a Ground, Cause, &c., when the Nothing is so determined or defined, an affirmation, Being, is contained. For the same reason there cannot anything cease. For in that case Being would require to contain Nothing. But Being is only Being, not the contrary of itself.
It is obvious that there is nothing brought forward here against Becoming, or Beginning and Ending, this unity of Being and Nothing, but their assertoric denial and the ascription of truth to Being and Nothing, each in division from the other. This Dialectic is, nevertheless, at least more consistent than reflective conception (representation). To this latter, that Being and Nothing are only in separation, passes for perfect truth; but, on the other hand, it holds beginning and ending as equally true characterisations: in these latter, however, it de facto assumes the undividedness of Being and Nothing.
On the presupposition of the absolute partedness of Being from Nothing, the beginning—as we so often hear—or Becoming, is certainly something incomprehensible; for we make a presupposition which sublates the beginning or the becoming, which nevertheless we again grant; and this contradiction, which we produce ourselves, and whose resolution we make impossible, is what is incomprehensible.
What has been stated is also the same Dialectic which understanding uses against the notion which the higher analysis gives of infinitesimal magnitudes. This ​notion is treated more in detail further on. These magnitudes are defined as such, that they ARE in their disappearance, not before their disappearance, for they were then finite magnitudes;—not after their disappearance, for they were then nothing. Against this pure notion it has been objected, and again and again repeated, that such magnitudes are either something or nothing; that there is no middle state (state is here an inappropriate, barbarous expression) between Being and Non-being. There is here, too, assumed the absolute separation of Being and Nothing. But, on the other hand, it has been shown, that Being and Nothing are in effect the same, or, to speak the same dialect, that there is nothing whatever which is not a middle state between Being and Nothing. Mathematic has to thank the adoption of said notion, which understanding contradicts, for its most brilliant results.
The adduced raisonnement, which makes the false presupposition of the absolute separatedness of Being and Non-being, and adheres immovably to the same, is to be named, not Dialectic, but Sophistry. For Sophistry is raisonnement from a groundless presupposition, which is accepted without examination and thoughtlessly; but we call Dialectic the higher rational movement, in which such seemingly absolutely separated things pass over into one another—through themselves—through that which they are—and the presupposition sublates itself. It is the dialectic immanent nature of Being and Nothing themselves to manifest their unity—Becoming—as their truth.
2. Moments of Becoming.
Becoming, Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be, is the unseparatedness of Being and Nothing; not the unity ​which abstracts from Being and Nothing; but as unity of Being and Nothing, it is this definite, determinate [concrete] unity, that in which well Being as Nothing is. But thus as each is, only unseparated from its other, each also is not. They ARE, therefore, in this unity, but as evanescents, only as things eliminated, resolved, sublated. They sink down from their previously-conceived self-subsistency into moments, distinguished and distinguishable, but resolved.
Considered on the side of their distinguishedness, each is in it as oneness with the other. Becoming, then, contains Being and Nothing as two unities such that each of them is itself unity of Being and Nothing. The one is Being as immediate and as reference to Nothing; the other, Nothing as immediate and as reference to Being: the elementary distinctions are in unequal value in these unities.
Becoming is thus in a double form. In the one, Nothing is as immediate: this form is as beginning from nothing which refers itself to Being, or, what is the same thing, passes over into Being. In the other, Being is as immediate: this form is as beginning from Being which passes over into Nothing. The former is Origin or Coming-to-be; the latter, Decease, Ceasing, or Ceasing-to-be.
Both are the same, Becoming, but, as these so diverse directions, they reciprocally interpenetrate and paralyse each other and themselves. The one is Ceasing-to-be; Being passes over into Nothing, but Nothing is equally the contrary of itself, a passing over into Being, Coming-to-be. This Coming-to-be is the other direction; Nothing passes over into Being, but Being equally sublates itself, is a passing over into Nothing, Ceasing-to-be. They sublate not themselves mutually, not the one the other ​externally; but each sublates itself in itself, and is in its own self the contrary of itself.
3. Sublation (resolution) of Becoming.
The equilibrium into which Coming-to-be and Ceasing-to-be reflect themselves, is, at first hand, Becoming itself. But Becoming equally goes together into peaceful unity. Being and Nothing are in it only as disappearing; but Becoming as such is only through their distinguishedness. Their disappearing, therefore, is the disappearing of Becoming, or the disappearing of the disappearing itself. Becoming is an untenable unrest, which sinks together into a peaceful result.
Or it might be expressed thus: Becoming is the disappearing of Being in Nothing and of Nothing in Being, and the disappearing of Being and Nothing in general; but it rests, at the same time, on the distinguishedness of these. It contradicts itself, therefore, within itself, because it unites within itself what is opposed to itself, but such a union destroys itself.
This result is a disappearedness, but not as Nothing;—as Nothing it were only a relapse into one of the distinctions already sublated, not a result of Nothing and of Being. It is not unity of Being and Nothing in reposing simplicity. But reposing simplicity [a fixed, simple, incompound oneness] is Being, so, nevertheless, that it is no longer per se (for and by itself), but as form [determination, characterising element] of the Whole.
Becoming, thus as transition into the unity of Being and Nothing, which unity is as bëent (existent), or has the shape and aspect of the one-sided immediate unity of these moments, is There-being [particularised, ​definite existence, or real state of Being, taken quite generally].
Remark.
The expression, Sublation.
Aufheben und das Aufgehobene (das Ideelle), sublation and what is sublated (and so only idéellement, not réellement is), this is one of the most important notions of Philosophy, a ground-form which repeats itself everywhere and always, the sense of which is to be exactly apprehended and particularly distinguished from Nothing. What sublates itself, does not, on that account, become Nothing. Nothing is the Immediate [directly present to us]; what is sublated, on the other hand, is a Mediate, it is a Non-bëent—but as result—which set out from a Being: it has, therefore, the definite particularity from which it derives still IN itself [impliciter, virtually, materialiter, not formaliter; what anything has in itself, it implies or involves]. Aufheben, To sublate, has two scuses, now signifying as much as to preserve, maintain, and again as much as to cause to cease, to make an end of. Even preserving includes the Negative in it—this Negative, that Something, in order to be conserved is removed or withdrawn from its Immediacy, from a There-being open to external influences. What is sublated or resolved is thus, at the same time, preserved; it has only lost its immediacy, but it is not on that account annihilated. The two characters of sublation just stated, may be described lexikalisch as two significations of the word. It is striking to find language using the same word for two contradictory predicables. To speculative thought, it is gratifying to find words which have a speculative meaning in their own selves. The German lan​guage has a considerable number of these. The double meaning of the Latin tollere (which the Ciceronian wit—tollendum esse Octavium—has made notorious) is more circumscribed, its affirmative character amounting only to a lifting-up. A thing is sublated, resolved, only so far as it has gone into unity with its opposite; in this closer determination, as what is reflected, it may be fitly named Moment. Weight, and Distance from a point, are called, with reference to the Lever, its mechanical Moments, because of the identity of their action, notwithstanding their diversity otherwise; the one being, as it were, the Real of a weight, and the other the Ideal or Idëell of a line, a mere character of space (S. Encycl. Hegel, 3te Ausbag. § 261, Anm). The remark must often occur to be made, that philosophy uses Latin expressions for reflected characters, either because the mother-tongue has not such as are required, or if having them, as here, because they remind more of what is immediate, while the foreign tongue suggests rather what is reflected.
The nearer [more concrete or determinate] sense and expression which—now that they are moments—Being and Nothing receive, has to effect itself in the consideration of There-being, the unity in which they are conserved or put by. Being is Being, and Nothing is Nothing, only in their distinguishedness from each other; in their truth again, in their unity, they have disappeared as these characters, and are now something else. Being and Nothing are the same; therefore, because they are the same, they are no longer Being and Nothing, and possess now a different determination (or characterisation): in Becoming, they were Origin and Decease; in There-being, as a differently-determined unity, they are again differently-determined moments. ​This unity remains now their base [the ground, the mother-liquor that holds them], from which they do not again issue in the abstract sense of Being and Nothing.
* ↑ Kant's Kritik der r. Vern. 2te Aufl. S. 628 ff.
* ↑ The original runs—'Statt des abstracten Seyns und reinen Nichts, und ihrem nur gemeinten Unterschiede.' The last phrase is in the dative, though governed, like those which precede it, by Statt: this is a slip of the pen, unless there exist a rule in such cases unknown to me.