Science of Logic
II.2. Appearance
Section summary
Introduction to the second section of the Doctrine of Essence. “Essence must appear”: Hegel now follows essence out into immediate existence. The section has three stages: Existence, the Thing with its properties; Appearance, whose stable side is law; and Essential Relation, in which the apparent and the essential are bound together. Their complete interpenetration will be Actuality.
Being is absolute abstraction; and this negativity is not external to it: it is Being and nothing but Being only as being this absolute negativity. It is this which causes Being to be only as self-transcending Being, so that it is Essence. Conversely, however, Essence, as simple self-identity, is also Being. The Doctrine of Being contains the primary proposition that Being is Essence. The second proposition—Essence is Being—constitutes the content of the first section of the Doctrine of Essence. Now this Being, which Essence constitutes itself to be, is Essential Being, or Existence; it is a perfected egress from negativity and internality.
Thus Essence appears. Reflection is the showing of Essence into self. The Determinations of Reflection are included in unity simply as posited or transcended; in other words, Reflection is Essence immediately self-identical in its positedness. But this Essence is Ground, and as such really determines itself through its self-transcending or self-reverting Reflection. Further, this determination, or the otherness of the Ground-relation, transcends itself in the Reflection of Ground and becomes Existence; and herein the determinations of Form obtain an element of independent persistence. Their Show perfects itself so as to be Appearance.
Essentiality which has progressed to immediacy is, so far, Existence and existing entity or Thing,—as undistinguished unity of Essence with its immediacy. The Thing contains Reflection, but at this point the negativity of Reflection has become extinguished in the immediacy of the Thing; however, the Ground of the Thing essentially is Reflection, and therefore its immediacy transcends itself: the Thing becomes a positedness.
Thus the Thing, secondly, is Appearance. Appearance is what the Thing is in itself, or its truth. But this Existence, which is merely posited and reflected into otherness, is equally a passing beyond itself in its infinity: the intro-reflected self-existent world stands opposed to the world of Appearance.
Apparent and Essential Being are, however, absolutely related to each other. Thus, thirdly, Existence is essential relation: the Apparent demonstrates the Essential, and this latter is in its Appearance.—The relation is the union—imperfect as yet—of Reflection into otherness and intro-Reflection: their perfect interpenetration is Actuality.