III.3.3. The Absolute Idea

The Absolute Idea has now turned out to be the identity of the Theoretical and the Practical Idea; each of these by itself is one-sided and contains the Idea itself only as a sought Beyond and an unattained goal; each consequently is a synthesis of the tendency, and both contains and does not contain the Idea, and passes from one concept to the other, but, failing to combine the two concepts, does not pass beyond their contradiction. The Absolute Idea, as the reasonable Notion which in its reality coincides only with itself, is the return to Life by reason of this immediacy of its objective identity; but on the other hand it has equally transcended this form of its immediacy, and contains the highest opposition within itself. The Notion is not only Seele but also is free and subjective Notion, which is for itself and therefore has personality,—the practical and objective Notion, determined in and for itself, which, as person, is impenetrable and atomic subjectivity; while at the same time it is not exclusive individuality, but is, for itself, universality and cognition, and in its Other has its own objectivity for object. Everything else is error and gloom, opinion, striving, caprice, and transitoriness; the Absolute Idea alone is Being, imperishable Life, self-knowing truth, and the whole of truth.

The Absolute Idea is the only object and content of philosophy. As it contains every determinateness, and its essence is to return to itself through its self-determination or particularization, it has various phases. It is the business of philosophy to recognize it in them. Nature and Spirit are different manners of presenting its existence; art and religion, different manners in which it comprehends itself and gives itself an adequate existence. Philosophy has the same content and end as art and religion; but it is the highest manner of comprehending the Absolute Idea, because its manner is the highest—the Notion. Consequently it comprehends within itself these phases of real and ideal finitude, as well as infinitude and holiness, and understands both them and itself. The derivation and cognizance of these particular modes is the further business of the particular philosophic sciences. The logical element of the Absolute Idea may also be called one of its modes; but mode denotes a particular manner, or determinateness of form, while the logical is the general mode in which each severally is transcended and enfolded. The logical Idea is itself in its pure essence when it is enclosed in its Notion in simple identity and has not yet entered into the state of showing in any form-determinateness. Consequently the Logic represents the self-movement of the Absolute Idea only as the original word, which is an expression; an expression, however, which as external has immediately vanished again because it is. The self-determination therefore in which alone the Idea is, is to hear itself speak: it is in pure thought, where the distinction is not yet any otherness, but is and remains completely transparent to itself.—Thus the logical Idea has itself as infinite form for content,—form which is the opposite of content in so far as the latter is the form-determination which has passed into itself and in identity has transcended itself, which it has done in such a manner that this concrete identity stands opposite to that which is developed as form. As opposed to form, content appears as Other and as given, while the former simply stands related, its determinateness being at the same time posited as show.—The Absolute Idea itself has only this further content, that the form-determination is its own perfected totality—the pure Notion. Now the determinateness of the Idea and the whole evolution of this determinateness constituted the object of the Science of Logic, in whose course the Absolute Idea has emerged for itself; but, for itself, it has turned out to be this fact, that the determinateness has not the shape of a content, but is simply as form, and that accordingly the Idea is simply the universal Idea. What remains therefore to be considered here is not a content as such, but the universal element of its form—that is, the method.

Method at first may appear as the mere manner and fashion of cognition, and indeed such is its nature. But manner and fashion as method are not only a modality of Being, determinate in and for itself, but are posited as modality of cognition as determined by the Notion, and as form in so far as form is the soul of all objectivity and every content otherwise determined has its truth in form alone. If content is assumed as given to method, and is assumed to be of peculiar nature, then, in such a determination, both the method and logic in general are a merely external form. Against this, however, an appeal can be made not only to the fundamental notion of logic; its whole course too, in which every shape of a given content, of every object, occurred, has demonstrated their transition and untruth; and it has turned out, not that some given object could be the foundation, to which the absolute form would be related as a merely external and contingent determination, but on the contrary that the form is the absolute foundation and ultimate truth. Thus the method has emerged as the Notion which knows itself and has for object itself as the Absolute, both subjective and objective, that is, as the pure correspondence between the Notion and its Reality, as an existence which the Notion itself is.

Accordingly, what must now be considered as method is no more than the movement of the Notion itself, whose nature has already been understood. This meaning, however, is now added, that the Notion is everything and that its movement is the universal and absolute activity, the self-determining and self-realizing movement. Hence the method must be recognized to be universal without restriction, to be a mode both internal and external, and the force which is utterly infinite, which no object can resist in so far as it presents itself as external and as removed from and independent of reason, while also it can neither have a particular nature as against it nor fail to be penetrated by it. The method therefore is both soul and substance, and nothing is either conceived or known in its truth except in so far as it is completely subject to the method; it is the peculiar method of each individual fact because its activity is the Notion. This is also the truer meaning of its universality: according to the universality of reflection it is merely taken as the method for everything; but according to the universality of the Idea it is both the general manner of cognizing (of the subjectively self-knowing Notion) and also the objective general manner (or rather the substantiality) of things—that is, of Notions, in so far as at first they appear as Others to imagination and reflection. For this reason it is not only the highest, or rather the sole and absolute, force of Reason, but also its highest and only impulse, by means of which it finds and recognizes itself, through itself, in everything.—Furthermore the distinction between the method and the Notion as such—the characteristic of the method—is here indicated. The Notion considered by itself appeared in its immediacy; reflection, or the Notion which contemplated it, formed part of our knowledge. The method is this knowledge itself, and for this knowledge the Notion is not only as object, but is its own peculiar and subjective activity, or the instrument and means of cognitive activity, distinct from it, but as its own peculiar essentiality. In inquiring cognition the method is likewise in the position of a tool, of a means which stands on the subjective side, whereby the method relates itself to the object. In this syllogism the subject is one extreme and the object the other, and by its method the former attaches itself to the latter, but does not therein, for itself, attach itself to itself. The extremes remain distinct because subject, method, and object are not posited as the one identical Notion, and the conclusion consequently is always the formal conclusion; the premiss, in which the subject posits the form (as its method) on its own side, is an immediate determination, and consequently contains the determinations of form, of Definition, Classification, and so on, as facts discovered existing in the subject—as was seen. But in true cognition the method is not merely a quantity of certain determinations: it is the fact that the Notion is determined in and for itself, and is the mean only because it equally has the significance of objective, so that, in the conclusion, it does not merely achieve an external determinateness through the method, but is posited in its identity with the subjective Notion.

1. Thus the method constitutes the determinations of the Notion itself and their relations, which must now be considered in their significance as determinations of the method.—First we must begin from the beginning. This beginning was mentioned at the commencement of the Logic and also, above, under Subjective Cognition, and it was shown that, unless it is made arbitrarily and with categorical unconsciousness, it may seem to cause many difficulties, but is really of extremely simple nature. Because it is the beginning its content is immediate, but an immediate which has the meaning and form of abstract universality. If otherwise it is a content of Being or of Essence or of the Notion, then, in so far as it is immediate, it is something taken up or discovered externally, and assertoric. But, first, it is not an immediate entity of sensuous intuition or of imagination, but of thought, which, because of its immediacy, may also be called a supersensuous or internal intuition. The immediate of sensuous intuition is a manifold and individual. But Cognition is Notion-forming thought, and consequently its beginning is only in the element of thought—it is simple and universal.—Mention was made of this form above, under Definition. At the beginning of finite cognition universality is likewise recognized as essential determination, but is only taken as determination of thought and of Notion in opposition to Being. In fact this first universality is immediate, and, for this reason, equally has the meaning of Being; for Being is precisely this abstract self-relation. Being requires no other derivation, as though it belonged to the abstract part of Definition only because it was taken from sensuous intuition or some other source, and only in so far as it may be possible to point it out. This pointing and derivation relate to a mediation which is more than a mere beginning, and which does not belong to the formation of Notions by thought, but is the elevation of imagination, of empirical and reasoning consciousness, to the standpoint of thought. According to the current distinction between thought or Notion and Being, it appears an important truth that the former, by itself, has no being, and that the latter has its own ground which is independent of thought. But the simple determination of Being is in itself so poor that, if only for that reason, it need not be seriously considered; the universal is itself immediately this immediate because, as abstract, it is merely the abstract self-relation which is Being. In fact the demand for the demonstration of Being has a further, inner meaning, which does not contain merely this abstract determination: here it is meant that the realization of the whole Notion is demanded, and this does not lie in the beginning itself, but is the goal and task of the entire further development of cognition. And further the content of the beginning is to be justified by this process of pointing out, in inner or outer perception, and is to be certified as something true or correct: therefore now it is not the form of universality as such that is meant, but its determinateness—which will soon have to be discussed. The certification of the determinate content with which the beginning is made seems to lie behind it; but in fact it must be considered as an advance—that is, if the certification belongs to Notion-forming Cognition.

Thus the beginning has for the method no other determinateness than that of being the simple and universal: and this is just the determinateness which vitiates it. Universality is the pure and simple Notion, and the method, as consciousness of the Notion, knows that universality is only moment and that the Notion is in it not yet determined in and for itself. With this consciousness, however, which would develop the beginning only for the sake of the method, the method would be something merely formal and posited in external reflection. But the method is the immanent and objective form, and therefore the immediate element of the beginning must be inherently defective and must be endowed with the impulse of self-development. In the absolute method, however, the universal does not mean the merely abstract but the objectively universal, that is, that which is in itself the concrete totality, but not as posited or for itself. Even the abstract universal considered as such in the Notion (that is, according to its truth) is not only the simple: as abstract it is already posited as affected with a negation. For this reason there is neither in actuality nor in thought anything so simple and abstract as is commonly imagined. Such a simple entity is a mere illusion which is based on ignorance of what in fact is given.—That which begins was above determined as the immediate; the immediacy of the universal is the same as that which here is expressed as Being-in-Self without Being-for-Self.—Consequently it may well be said that every beginning must be made from the Absolute, while every progress is merely the exhibition of the Absolute in so far as that which is in itself is the Notion. But just because as yet it is only in itself, it equally is neither the Absolute nor the posited Notion nor yet the Idea, for these are the fact that Being-in-Self is only an abstract, one-sided moment. The progress is therefore not a kind of overflow, which it would be if in truth that which begins were already the Absolute; rather the progress consists in this, that the universal determines itself and is the universal for itself, that is, is equally also individual and subject. It is the Absolute only in its completion.

It may be recalled that the beginning, which in itself is concrete totality, can also be free as such, and that its immediacy may have the determination of an external existence: the germ of life and the subjective end in general have shown themselves to be such beginnings, and both therefore are themselves impulses. The non-spiritual and non-living on the other hand are the concrete Notion only as real possibility; cause is the highest stage in which the concrete Notion as beginning has an immediate existence in the sphere of necessity; but it is not yet a subject which, as such, preserves itself also in its actual realization. For example the sun, and in general whatever is not living, are determinate existences in which the real possibility remains an inner totality; their moments are not posited in them in a subjective form, and in so far as they do realize themselves they acquire an existence through other corporeal individuals.

2. The concrete totality which is the beginning contains as such the beginning of progress and of development. As concrete it is internally differentiated; but by reason of its original immediacy the first differentiations are various. The immediate, however, as self-relating universality and as subject, is also the unity of these various terms.—This Reflection is the first stage of advance—the emergence of difference, judgment, determination in general. The essential thing is that the absolute method finds and recognizes in itself the determination of universal. The procedure of common-sense finite cognition here is that it takes up again equally externally from the concrete that which it had left out in the abstractive creation of this universal. The absolute method on the other hand does not hold the position of external reflection; it draws the determinate element directly from its object itself, since it is the object’s immanent principle and soul.—It was this that Plato demanded of cognition, that it should consider things in and for themselves, and that while partly considering them in their universality, it should also hold fast to them, not catching at externals, examples, and comparisons, but contemplating the things alone and bringing before consciousness what is immanent in them.—In so far the method of Absolute Cognition is analytic. If it discovers the further determination of its original universal in that universal alone, then this fact is the absolute objectivity of the Notion, whose certainty the method is.—But equally the method is synthetic, since its object, determined immediately as simple universal, shows itself to be an Other, by means of the determinateness which it possesses by virtue of its immediacy and universality. But this relation of various which thus the object is within itself, is no longer what is meant by synthesis in finite cognition; finite cognition equally determines the synthesis (analytically) as being relation in the Notion, and this alone distinguishes it completely from this other synthesis.

This equally synthetic and analytic moment of the Judgment, by which the original universal determines itself out of itself to be its own Other, may rightly be called the dialectic moment. Dialectic is one of those ancient sciences which have been most misjudged in modern metaphysics and in the popular philosophy of ancients and moderns alike. Diogenes Laertius says of Plato that, while Thales was the founder of natural philosophy and Sokrates of moral philosophy, he was the founder of the third science which belongs to philosophy, namely dialectic;—so that this was counted as his highest merit by the ancients, although it was often quite neglected by those who were fullest of him in their speech. Dialectic has often been considered an art, as though it rested upon a subjective talent and did not belong to the objectivity of the Notion. The shape and result which it had in Kant’s philosophy have been shown by the definite examples which express his view of it. It must be regarded as a step of infinite importance that dialectic has once more been recognized as necessary to reason, although the opposite conclusion must be drawn to that which was reached by Kant.

Dialectic generally appears as contingent; but, further, it usually has this form, that opposite determinations are demonstrated in the same object (such as the world, motion, or point, and so on): for example (in the above order), finitude in space and time, presence at a given point, absolute negation of space,—and also, with equal necessity, infinity in space and time, non-presence at a given point, and a relation to space and, consequently, spatiality. The elder Eleatic school applied its dialectic chiefly against motion, Plato frequently against contemporary ideas and concepts (especially those of the Sophists), but also against pure categories and reflection-determinations; the developed later scepticism extended it not only to the immediate so-called data of consciousness and maxims of ordinary life, but also to all the concepts of science. The conclusion which is drawn from such a dialectic is contradiction in general and the nullity of the assertions made. But it may be drawn in a twofold manner,—in the objective sense, the self-contradictory object being held to cancel itself and to be null (—the Eleatic conclusion, by which, for example, the world, motion, and the point were deprived of truth), and in the subjective sense, cognition being held to be defective. The latter conclusion is sometimes understood to mean that it is only this dialectic that effects the trick of an illusive show. This is the ordinary view of so-called sound common sense, which holds fast to the evidence of the senses and to customary ideas and expressions; sometimes quietly (as in the case of Diogenes the Cynic, who exposes the dialectic of motion in its weakness by silently walking up and down), and sometimes indignantly, the whole matter being regarded as sheer folly, or (if it concerns objects of moral importance) sheer wickedness, which tries to shake what is essentially firm and to give reasons to vice. The view occurs in Sokrates’s dialectic against that of the Sophists; the indignation in turn cost Sokrates his life. That vulgar refutation which confronts thought (as Diogenes did) with sensuous consciousness and thinks that in the latter it holds the truth, must be left to itself; but in so far as the dialectic transcends moral determinations, reason must be trusted to reconstitute them, but in their truth and in the knowledge of their limitations no less than of their rights.—Or again the result reached—that of subjective nullity—may relate not to the dialectic itself, but rather to the cognition against which it is directed, or, as in the case of scepticism and likewise of the Kantian philosophy, to cognition in general.

The fundamental prejudice here is that the dialectic has only a negative result; this will soon receive its further determination. Here it may be observed about the form mentioned, in which the dialectic usually appears, that it and its result refer to the object which is examined, or to subjective cognition, declaring the latter, or the object, to be null; while the determinations which are demonstrated in the object, as in a third term, remain disregarded and are presupposed as valid for themselves. It is an infinite merit of Kant’s philosophy that it drew attention to this uncritical procedure, and thus initiated the reconstruction of logic and dialectic in the sense of the consideration of the determinations of thought in and for themselves. The object in its existence without thought and Notion is an image or a name: it is what it is in the determinations of thought and Notion. They alone therefore are of real importance; they are the true object and content of reason, and whatever is elsewhere meant by object and content in opposition to these is valid in them and through them alone. It must not therefore be considered the fault of an object, or of cognition, if they prove their dialectic nature through their quality or through an external connexion. In this manner both alike are imagined as a subject into which determinations (in the shape of predicates, properties, or independent universals) are so introduced that, fixed and correct in themselves, they are placed in a dialectical and contradictory relation only by an alien and contingent connexion operating in and through a third term. Such an external and fixed subject of imagination and understanding, and such abstract determinations, cannot be regarded as ultimate terms which remain as secure foundations, but must rather be considered as themselves immediate, or as just such presupposed and original terms as must, as was shown above, in and for themselves be the foundation of dialectic because they must be taken as Notions in themselves Thus all opposites which are taken as fixed, like (for example) finite and infinite or individual and universal, are contradictory not in virtue of some external connexion, but rather are transitions in and for themselves, as the consideration of their nature showed; the synthesis and the subject in which they appear are the product of the auto-Reflection of their Notion. Notionless contemplation halts at their external relation, isolates them and leaves them as fixed presuppositions: the Notion scrutinizes their very selves, is their moving soul, and stimulates their dialectic.

Now this is the standpoint which was referred to above, in which any first term considered in and for itself shows itself to be its own Other. Taken quite generally this determination may be held to mean that what first was immediate is thus mediated and related to an Other, or that the universal is as a particular. The second term which has thus arisen is accordingly the negative of the first and (if we allow in advance for the further development) is the first negative. From this negative side the immediate has become submerged in the Other, but the Other is essentially not the empty negative or Nothing which is commonly taken as the result of the dialectic: it is the Other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is thus determined as mediated,—and altogether contains the determination of the first. The first is thus essentially contained and preserved in the Other.—To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.

We thus have now the mediated term, which at first, taken as immediate in its turn, is itself a simple determination, since, the first term having perished in it, its only content is the second. But also the first is contained in the second, and the second is the truth of the first; this unity can therefore be expressed as a proposition in which the immediate term is the subject and the mediated term the predicate, as “The finite is infinite,” “One is many,” “The individual is the universal.” But it is obvious that such propositions and judgments are formally inadequate. It was shown under the Judgment that its general form, and more particularly the immediate form of the Positive Judgment, is incapable of comprehending within itself speculation and truth. Its next complement, the Negative Judgment, would at least have to be added equally. In the Judgment the first term as subject has the appearance of an independent persistence, while in fact it is transcended in its predicate as in its Other. This negation is contained in the content of the above propositions, but their positive form contradicts the content; thus their content precisely eludes positing, although this is the whole purpose of the employment of propositions.

The second or negative and mediated determination is at the same time the mediating determination. At first it may be taken as simple determination, but in truth it is a reference or relation; for it is negative—the negative, however, of the positive, and includes the latter. It is not therefore the Other of a term to which it is indifferent, for thus it would be neither an Other, nor a reference or relation; it is the Other in itself, the Other of an Other. It thus includes its own Other, and so is contradiction, or the posited dialectic of itself.—The first or immediate term is the Notion in itself, and therefore is the negative only in itself; the dialectic moment with it therefore consists in this, that the distinction which it implicitly contains is posited in it. The second term on the other hand is itself the determinate entity, distinction or relation; hence with it the dialectic moment consists in the positing of the unity which is contained in it.—If then the negative, the determinate, the relation or judgment, and all determinations which fall under this second moment, do not of themselves appear as contradictory and dialectical, this is a mere fault of thought which does not confront its thoughts one with another. For the materials—opposite determinations in one relation—are posited already and are at hand for thought. But formal thought makes identity its law, and allows the contradictory content which lies before it to drop into the sphere of sensuous representation, into space and time, where the contradictory terms are held apart in spatial and temporal juxtaposition and thus come before consciousness without being in contact. In this connexion this thought makes it its fixed principle that contradiction is unthinkable; but in truth the thinking of contradiction is the essential moment of the Notion. In point of fact formal thought does think contradiction, but immediately disregards it, and with the empty assertion of that principle passes over to abstract negation.

The negativity which has just been considered is the turning-point of the movement of the Notion. It is the simple point of negative self-relation, the innermost source of all activity, of living and spiritual self-movement, the dialectic soul which all truth has in it and through which it alone is truth; for the transcendence of the opposition between the Notion and Reality, and that unity which is the truth, rest upon this subjectivity alone.—The second negative, the negative of the negative. which we have reached, is this transcendence of the contradiction, but is no more the activity of an external reflection than the contradiction is: it is the innermost and most objective moment of Life and Spirit, by virtue of which a subject is personal and free.—The self-relation of the negative must be considered as the second premiss of the whole syllogism. If the determinations of analytic and synthetic are used as opposite, then the first premiss may be regarded as the analytic moment, the immediate being here in an immediate relation to its Other, and its transition into it being thus in progress or, rather, accomplished. At the same time this relation, as was mentioned, is also synthetic, because the term into which it passes over is its Other. The second premiss, which has been considered here, may be determined as the synthetic, because it is the relation of the distinct as such to its distinct.—The first premiss is the moment of universality and communication; the second is determined by individuality, which at first is in an exclusive relation to the Other, as existing for itself and as different. The negative appears as mediator, since it includes both itself and the immediate term of which it is the negation. In so far as these two determinations are taken as externally related in any manner, the negative moment is merely the formal mediating element; but as absolute negativity the negative moment of absolute mediation is the unity which is subjectivity and soul.

At this turning-point of the method the course of cognition also turns back upon itself. This negativity, as self-transcending contradiction, is the reconstitution of the first immediacy, of simple universality; for, immediately, the Other of the Other and the negative of the negative is the positive, identical, and universal. If number is applicable, then in the whole course this second immediate is the third term, the first immediate and the mediated being the other terms. But it is also third of a series composed besides of first (or formal) negative and absolute negativity or second negative; now, since the former (the first negative) is itself the second term, the third term may now be counted as fourth, and the abstract form of it may be taken as a quadruplicity in place of triplicity; the negative, or distinction, is in this manner counted as a duality.—The third (or fourth) term is just the unity of the first and the second moments, of the immediate and the mediated.—It is the wholly superficial and external side of the manner of cognition that apprehends this as a unity, and the form of the method as a whole as a triplicity: but it must be regarded as an infinite merit of Kant’s philosophy that it demonstrated this, and demonstrated it in a more particular application; for the abstract form of number itself was, of course, set up earlier, but without any concept and therefore without consequence. The syllogism, and the threefold generally, has always been recognized as the general form of reason; but it was considered as a wholly external form which did not determine the nature of the content, and, further, the syllogism in the formal sense ends in the determination of identity, made by understanding, and therefore it lacks the essential dialectic moment, or negativity. But this moment does enter with the triplicity of determinations, because the third is the unity of the first two determinations, and the latter, being different, can be in unity only as transcended.—Formalists have seized even upon triplicity, and have held fast to its skeleton; and this form has been rendered tedious and of ill-repute by the shallow misuse and the barrenness of modern so-called philosophic construction, which consists simply in attaching the formal framework without concept and immanent determination to all sorts of matter and employing it for external arrangement. But its inner value cannot be diminished by this vapid misuse, and it must still be deemed a great matter that the outward form of rational procedure has been discovered, albeit not understood.

Considered further, the third term is the immediate through transcendence of mediation, the simple through transcendence of distinction, and the positive through transcendence of the negative,—the Notion which realizes itself through its otherness, and has coincided with itself through the transcendence of this reality, and has established its absolute reality, or simple self-relation. Consequently this result is truth. It is immediacy as much as mediation;—but it is not properly comprehended by forms of judgment like “the third term is immediacy and mediation” or “it is their unity,” for it is not a quiescent third term, but, as this unity, is self-mediating movement and activity.—The beginning was the universal; the result is the individual, the concrete, and the subject; what the former is in itself, the latter now is equally for itself; the universal is posited in the subject. The first two moments of the triplicity are the abstract and false moments, which for this very reason are dialectical and make themselves into the subject by virtue of this their negativity. For us the Notion itself is (1) the universal which is in itself, (2) the negative which is for itself, and (3) the third term, which is in and for itself, the universal which runs through all the moments of the syllogism. But the third term is the conclusion, in which it mediates itself with itself through its negativity, and is thus posited for itself as the universal and the identity of its moments.

Now this result, as the self-identical whole which has passed into itself, has recovered the form of immediacy. It is thus an entity of the same kind as the beginning had determined itself to be. As simple self-relation it is a universal, and the negativity which constituted its dialectic and mediation has, in this universality, also collapsed into a simple determinateness which in turn can be a beginning. It might at first appear as though this apprehension of the result must be an analysis of it, separating out again, in the manner already considered, the various determinations and their movement, through which it has arisen. If however the treatment of the object is in fact made in this analytic manner, then it belongs to the stage of the Idea which was considered above, namely inquiring Cognition, which merely states of its object what is, without the necessity of its concrete identity and of the Notion of the latter. But the method of truth, which forms a Notion of the object, is indeed itself analytic (as was shown), since it simply remains within the Notion, but is equally synthetic, since the object becomes dialectical by virtue of the Notion, and is determined as other. The result which is reached now becomes object and is the new foundation, but the method remains the same as in the previous foundation. The distinction concerns only the relation of the foundation as such: it is still foundation, but its immediacy is only form, because at the same time it was result; the fact that it is determined as content is therefore no longer a mere assumption, but is deduced and demonstrated.

Here at last the content of cognition as such enters within the sphere of our contemplation, for now, being derivative, it belongs to the method. By the addition of this moment the method itself is extended into a system.—At first the beginning of the method had to be quite indeterminate in regard to content: in so far the method appears as the merely formal soul, for and through which the beginning was determined only formally, as the immediate and universal. By means of the movement which has been demonstrated, the object has obtained for itself a determinateness which is a content because negativity which has collapsed into simplicity is transcended form, and, as simple determinateness, stands opposed to its development, and, first of all, to its very opposition to universality.

Now this determinateness is the next truth of the indeterminate beginning: it thus is a reproach to its incompleteness and to the method itself which, starting from it, was only formal. This may be expressed now as the definite demand that the beginning, because it is itself determinate as against the determinateness of the result, shall be taken not as immediate but as mediated and derivative: this may seem equivalent to the demand for an infinite backward progress in proof and derivation, while, from the new beginning which has been obtained, a result likewise emerges in the course of the method, so that the progress also rolls forward to infinity.

It has been shown many times that the infinite progress in general belongs to Notionless reflection: the absolute method, which has the Notion for soul and content, cannot lead into it. At first, beginnings like Being, Essence, and Universality may appear to be of the kind which have that perfect universality and lack of content that is demanded for a proper, wholly formal, beginning, so that, as absolutely first beginnings, they neither demand nor admit any regress. Since they are pure self-relations, and purely immediate and indeterminate, they have not indeed that distinction which is at once posited in any other beginning between the universality of its form and its content. But the indeterminateness which these logical beginnings have for sole content precisely constitutes their determinateness; for the latter consists in their negativity, as transcended mediation; and the particularity of the latter imparts a particularity to their indeterminateness, by means of which Being, Essence, and Universality are distinguished from one another. Now the determinateness which belongs to them is their immediate determinateness if they are taken for themselves, and is a determinateness as much as one which applies to any content; it therefore requires a derivation; and it is indifferent to the method whether it is taken as determinateness of form or of content. Hence in fact no radical change is introduced in the method because a content has been determined through the first of its results: the method remains no less formal than before. For it is the absolute form, the Notion which knows itself and everything to be Notion; there is therefore no content which could stand opposed to it and determine it as one-sided and external form. The lack of content of the various beginnings does not make them absolute beginnings; and similarly it is not the content as such that could lead the method into the infinite progress forwards or backwards. From one side the determinateness which it produces in its result is the moment through which it effects self-mediation and makes the immediate beginning a mediated entity. Conversely, however, this its mediation takes its course through determinateness; it goes through a content as through an apparent Other back to its beginning in such a manner that it not only reconstitutes the beginning (as determinate, however), but that the result equally is transcended determinateness, and therefore is the reconstitution of the first indeterminateness with which the method began. The method effects this as a system of totality. It still remains to be considered in this determination.

It has been shown that that determinateness which was result is itself a new beginning by virtue of the form of simplicity into which it collapsed; and, since this beginning is distinct from its antecedent by precisely this determinateness, cognition rolls forward from content to content. This progress determines itself, first, in this manner, that it begins from simple determinatenesses and that each subsequent one is richer and more concrete. For the result contains its own beginning, and the development of the beginning has made it the richer by a new determinateness. The universal is the foundation; the progress therefore must not be taken as a flow from Other to Other. In the absolute method the Notion preserves itself in its otherness, and the universal in its particularization, in the Judgment and in reality; it raises to each next stage of determination the whole mass of its antecedent content, and by its dialectical progress not only loses nothing and leaves nothing behind, but carries with it all that it has acquired, enriching and concentrating itself upon itself.

This expansion may be regarded as the moment of content, and, in the whole, as the first premiss; the universal is communicated to the richness of the content and is immediately contained in it. But the relation also has the second (the negative or dialectic) side. The process of enriching advances along the necessity of the Notion, it is supported by the latter, and each determination is an intro-Reflection. Each new stage of exteriorization (that is, of further determination) is also an interiorization, and greater extension is also higher intensity. The richest consequently is also the most concrete and subjective term, and that which carries itself back into the simplest depth is also the most powerful and comprehensive. The highest and acutest point is simple personality, which, by virtue alone of the absolute dialectic which is its nature, equally holds and comprehends everything within itself because it perfectly liberates itself,—becoming simplicity which is first immediacy and universality.

In this manner it comes about that each step in the progress of further determination in advancing from the indeterminate beginning is also a rearward approach to it, so that two processes which may at first appear to be different (the regressive confirmation of the beginning and its progressive further determination) coincide and are the same. The method thus forms a circle, but, in a temporal development, it cannot anticipate that the beginning as such shall already be derivative: it is sufficient for the beginning in its immediacy that it is simple universality. In so far as it is this it is completely conditioned, and it need not be objected that it should be allowed to count merely as provisional and hypothetical. Any objections which might be advanced—about the limits of human cognition, or the need of a critical investigation of the instrument of cognition before the problem is attacked—are themselves suppositions which, as concrete determinations, imply the need of their mediation and proof. Formally then they are no better than that beginning against which they protest, and rather require a derivation by reason of their more concrete content; so that it is sheer presumption to demand that they should have preferential consideration. Their content is untrue, for they make incontrovertible and absolute what is known to be finite and untrue (namely, a restricted cognition which is determined as form and instrument as against its content); and this untrue cognition is itself form and regressive confirmation.—The method of truth too knows the beginning to be incomplete because it is beginning, but also knows this incomplete term in general as necessary, because truth is only self-coincidence, through the negativity of immediacy. That impatience whose only wish is to go beyond the determinate (whether in the form of beginning, object, finite, or in any other form) and to be immediately in the absolute, has nothing before it as object of its cognition but the empty negative, the abstract infinite,—or else a would-be absolute, which is imaginary because it is neither posited nor comprehended; it can be comprehended only through the mediation of cognition, of which the universal and immediate is a moment, while the truth itself is only in its extended course and at its end. The subjective need of ignorance and the resulting impatience may be satisfied with a preliminary conspectus of the whole, by means of a classification for the use of reflection, which, after the manner of finite cognition, predicates the particular as given in the universal and to be looked forward to in philosophy. Nevertheless this affords no more than a picture to imagination; for the true transition from universal to particular and to the whole which is determined in and for itself (where this first universal itself, according to its true determination, again is a moment) is foreign to this type of classification and is only the mediation of philosophic science itself.

By reason of the nature of the method which has been demonstrated the science is seen to be a circle which returns upon itself, for mediation bends back its end into its beginning or simple ground. Further, this circle is a circle of circles; for each member, being inspired by the method, is intro-Reflection which, returning to the beginning, is at the same time the beginning of a new member. The various sciences, of which each has a before and an after, are fragments of this chain; or rather, each has only a before, and in its conclusion shows its after.

Thus the Logic too in the Absolute Idea has returned to this simple unity which is its beginning. The pure immediacy of Being, in which at first all determination appears to be extinct or omitted by abstraction, is the Idea which has reached its adequate self-equality through mediation—that is, through the transcendence of mediation. The method is the pure Notion which is related only to itself; it is therefore the simple self-relation which is Being. But now it is also Being fulfilled, the self-comprehending Notion, Being as the concrete and also thoroughly intensive totality.—In conclusion the following observations may be made about this Idea. 1. In it the science of Logic has comprehended its own Notion. In Being (the beginning of its content) its Notion appears as a knowledge external to the content in subjective reflection. But in the Idea of Absolute Cognition the Notion has become its own content. Logic is itself the pure Notion, which has itself for object, and with itself for object passes through the totality of its determinations; in doing which it develops into the whole of its reality, into the system of philosophic science, and ends by comprehending this process by which it forms its Notion about itself, whereby it transcends its position as content and object, and understands the Notion of philosophy.—2. This Idea still is logical, it is enveloped in pure thought, and is the science only of the divine Notion. The systematic development is itself a realization, but is maintained within the same sphere. In so far the pure Idea of Cognition is enclosed in subjectivity, and therefore is an impulse to transcend the latter; and, as last result, pure truth becomes the beginning of another sphere and science. This transition need here only be intimated.

For the Idea posits itself as the absolute unity of the pure Notion and its Reality, and thus gathers itself into the immediacy of Being; and in doing so, as totality in this form, it is Nature.—But this determination is not a perfected becoming or a transition like that by which above the subjective Notion in its totality becomes objectivity and the Subjective End becomes Life. Rather, the pure Idea, in which the determinateness or reality of the Notion is itself raised to the level of Notion, is an absolute liberation having no further immediate determination which is not equally posited and equally Notion. Consequently there is no transition in this freedom; the simple Being, as which the Idea has determined itself, remains perfectly transparent to it, and is the Notion which in its determination stands fast by itself. The transition here therefore must rather be taken to mean that the Idea freely releases itself in absolute self-security and self-repose. By reason of this freedom the form of its determinateness also is utterly free—the externality of space and time which is absolutely for itself and without subjectivity.—In so far as this externality is only in accordance with the abstract immediacy of Being, and is comprehended by consciousness, it exists as mere objectivity and external life; but in the Idea it remains, in and for itself, the totality of the Notion, and Philosophy related to Nature as divine knowledge. But this next resolution of the pure Idea—to determine itself as external Idea—thereby only posits for itself the mediation out of which the Notion arises as free existence that out of externality has passed into itself; arises to perfect its self-liberation in the Philosophy of Spirit, and to discover the highest Notion of itself in that logical science as the pure Notion which forms a Notion of itself.