I.1.1. Being

Being, pure Being—without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is similar to itself alone, and also not dissimilar from any other; it has no differentiation either within itself or relatively to anything external; nor would it remain fixed in its purity, were there any determination or content which could be distinguished within it, or whereby it could be posited as distinct from an Other. It is pure indeterminateness and vacuity.—Nothing can be intuited in it, if there is any question here of intuition, or again it is merely this pure and empty intuition itself; equally there is in it no object for thought, or again it is just this empty thought. In fact, Being, indeterminate immediacy, is Nothing, neither more nor less.

Nothing, pure Nothing: it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, without determination or content: undifferentiatedness in itself.—In so far as mention can here be made of intuition or thought, it is considered a distinction whether we intuit, or think, something or nothing. In that case, to intuit, or think, nothing, has a meaning: so if intuition or thought of Being and of Nothing are distinguished, then Nothing is (or does exist) in our intuition or thought; or rather, it is this empty intuition and thought itself: the same empty intuition or thought, as pure Being.—Nothing, therefore, is the same determination (or rather lack of determination), and thus altogether the same thing, as pure Being.

Pure Being and pure Nothing are, then, the same; the truth is, not either Being or Nothing, but that Being—not passes—but has passed over into Nothing, and Nothing into Being. But equally the truth is not their lack of distinction, but that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet unseparated and inseparable, each disappearing immediately in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement, this immediate disappearance of the one into the other, in a word, Becoming; a movement wherein both are distinct, but in virtue of a distinction which has equally immediately dissolved itself.

Nothing is generally opposed to Something; but Something is an already determinate existent distinguished from another Something: such a Nothing opposed to Something, therefore, such a negation of Something, is a determinate Nothing. Here, however. Nothing must be taken in its indeterminate simplicity.—If it were held more correct to oppose Not-being, instead of Nothing, to Being, no objection could be made as far as the result is concerned, for Not-being contains the relation to Being: both Being and its negation are simultaneously asserted, and this assertion is Nothing as it exists in Becoming. Primarily, however, we are not concerned to have a formal opposition (that is, a relation) so much as abstract and immediate negation. Nothing purely for itself, unrelated repudiation, or what one might express if one so wished, merely by “Not.”

The simple idea of pure Being was first enunciated by the Eleatics, as the Absolute and as sole truth; especially by Parmenides, whose surviving fragments, with the pure enthusiasm of thought first comprehending itself in its absolute abstraction, proclaim that “Being alone is, and Nothing is not at all.”—It is well known that in oriental systems, and essentially in Buddhism, Nothing, or the Void, is the absolute principle.—Herakleitos was profound enough to emphasize in opposition to this simple and one-sided abstraction the higher total concept of Becoming, saying: “Being is no more than Nothing is,” or “All things flow,” which means, everything is Becoming.—Popular sayings, chiefly oriental, to the effect that everything which is has in its birth the germs of its decay, while death conversely is entrance to a new life, express at bottom the same union of Being and Nothing. But such expressions have a substratum upon which the transition takes place: Being and Nothing are held apart in Time; they are presented as alternating in Time, and they are not thought in their abstraction, and therefore not thought in such a manner as makes them in and for themselves the same.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is one of the maxims to which great importance was at one time ascribed in metaphysics. Either it is just the empty tautology, “Nothing = Nothing;” or, should Becoming be supposed to have real meaning in it, there is in fact no Becoming contained in it, for, since only Nothing comes out of Nothing, Nothing still remains Nothing here. Becoming implies that Nothing should not remain Nothing but pass over into its Other, into Being.—In rejecting the proposition that nothing comes out of nothing, later (chiefly Christian) metaphysics asserted the transition of Nothing into Being; however synthetically or merely imaginatively this proposition was taken, even the least complete union contains a point where Being and Nothing coincide and their distinction vanishes.—The true importance of the proposition that Nothing comes out of Nothing, that Nothing is just Nothing, resides in its opposition to Becoming generally and therefore to the creation of the world out of nothing. Those who assert the proposition that Nothing is just Nothing, and even grow heated in its defence, do not know that in so doing they are subscribing to the abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics and, in essentials, of Spinoza. That view in philosophy which takes for principle that Being is merely Being, and Nothing merely Nothing, deserves the name of system of identity: this abstract identity is the essence of Pantheism.

If the result which identifies Being and Nothing is startling in itself or seems a paradox, no further attention is here to be paid to this: rather should we wonder at this wonderment which shows itself such a tiro in philosophy, and forgets that in this Science there occur determinations quite different from those of ordinary consciousness and so-called common-sense,—which is not exactly sound understanding, but understanding educated up to abstractions and the faith, or rather superstition, of abstractions. It would not be difficult to demonstrate this unity of Being and Nothing in every example, in every fact and thought. What was said above about immediacy and mediation (which latter contains a relation and therefore negation), must also be said of Being and Nothing: that neither in heaven nor on earth is there anything not containing both Being and Nothing. Since here we are speaking of a Something, of an actual fact, these determinations admittedly are no longer found in that complete untruth in which they manifest themselves as Being and Nothing: they have already been further determined and are taken, for example, as positive and negative, the former being posited and reflected Being, the latter posited and reflected Nothing: now of positive and negative, the former has Being and the latter Nothing for abstract basis.—And so, in God himself, his quality (energy, creation, might, and the like) essentially contains the determination of the negative,—it is the production of an Other. But an empirical elucidation of this assertion by means of examples would here be entirely superfluous. This unity of Being and Nothing, as being the primary truth, is, once and for all, the basis and the element of all that follows: therefore, besides Becoming itself, all further logical determinations, such as Determinate Being, Quality, and in short all philosophic concepts, are examples of this unity.—As for what calls itself sound or common sense, so far as it rejects the inseparateness of Being and Nothing, it might be invited to find an instance where One can be found separate from Other—Something from limit (or barrier), or the infinite (or God), as we have just remarked, from energy. Only the empty thought-structures, Being and Nothing, are thus separate, and those are they which common sense prefers to the truth which everywhere faces us—the unity of both.

It cannot be our intention to meet at all points the confusions into which ordinary consciousness falls when faced by such a logical proposition, for they are inexhaustible. Only a few can be mentioned. One source among others of such confusion is that consciousness imports into such an abstract logical proposition representations of a concrete something, forgetting that we are not dealing with this, but with the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing, and that these alone are to be grasped.

Being and Not-being are the same: ergo it is the same whether I am or am not, whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred Thalers are part of my fortune or not.—This inference from or application of the proposition radically alters its meaning. In the proposition we merely have the pure abstractions of Being and Nothing; in the application these become a determinate Being and a determinate Nothing. But it has already been said that we are not here dealing with determinate Being. A determinate or finite Being is such as refers itself to an other; it is a content which stands in a relation of necessity with other content or with the whole world. In view of the mutually determinant connection of the whole, metaphysics could make the assertion (which is really a tautology) that if the least grain of dust were destroyed the whole universe must collapse. In the instances which are adduced against our proposition, something appears for which it is not indifferent whether it is or is not; and this not because of its being or not-being, but because of its content, which connects it with other matter. If a determinate content or being is presupposed, then such determinate being, because determinate, stands in various relations with other content; and for such being it is not indifferent whether a certain other content with which it stands in a relation, is, or is not: for it is only such a relation which essentially makes it what it is. The same occurs with imagination (where we oppose not-being in the more determinate sense of imagination to actuality); and in the context of imagination, the being and the absence of a content which is imagined as determined and in relation with other, are not indifferent.

This consideration also contains what is of capital importance in Kant’s critique of the ontological proof of the existence of God; but it can be noted here only with respect to the distinction which occurs in this proof between (a) Being and Nothing in general and (b) determinate Being and Not-being.—The reader will know that in this so-called proof the concept of an essence is presupposed to which all realities pertain, and therefore that of existence, which was also taken as one of the realities. The Kantian critique in the main followed the line that Existence or Being (here taken as equivalent) is no attribute nor real predicate, that is, is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing.—Kant by this means to say that Being is not a determination of content.—Therefore, he proceeds, what is potential contains no more than what is actual: one hundred actual Thalers contain not one doit more than one hundred potential;—that is, the former have no other determination of content than the latter. It is, in fact, indifferent for this content, regarded as isolated, whether it is or is not: it contains no distinction of being and not-being, indeed this distinction does not touch it at all; the hundred Thalers become no less when they are not, and no more when they are. A distinction must come from another source.—“On the other hand,” so Kant reminds us, “my fortune is larger when the hundred Thalers are real than when they are a mere concept or merely potential. For, where it is actual, the object is not merely contained analytically in my concept, but is added synthetically to my concept (which is a determination of my condition), without the aforesaid hundred Thalers being in the least increased because they exist externally to my concept.”

Two conditions, to retain Kant’s terminology, which is not without a certain confused clumsiness, are here presupposed,—(1) what Kant calls concept, meaning representation; and (2) my fortune. For each of these conditions, for fortune as well as representation, such hundred Thalers are a determination of content, or, as Kant expresses himself, “they are added synthetically to a condition.” I as owner or not-owner of one hundred Thalers, or I as representing, or else as not representing, them to myself: here there is, of course, a difference of content. And, more generally, the abstractions both of Being and of Nothing cease to be abstractions when they are given a determinate content; Being then becomes reality, the determinate being of one hundred Thalers, and Nothing becomes negation, the determinate not-being of them. This determination of content itself, the hundred Thalers, has remained the same in the one as in the other; and this is also the case when it is taken abstractly by itself. But when, further, Being is taken as a condition of my fortune, then the hundred Thalers enter into a certain relation with this condition, and, for this latter, such determinateness as the Thalers have is not indifferent; this being and not-being of the hundred Thalers is merely change; they are transferred into the sphere of Determinate Being. Therefore, if anyone urges against the unity of Being and Nothing that after all it is not indifferent whether a certain thing (such as the 100 Thalers) is or is not, it is because he is under the delusion that the distinction between possessing and not possessing one hundred Thalers has been passed on merely to Being and Not-being; this delusion depending, as has been shown, on the one-sided abstraction which omits the Determinate Being present in such examples and retains merely Being and Not-being, conversely changing abstract Being and Nothing, which it is its task to comprehend, into Determinate Being and Determinate Nothing. It is only Determinate Being itself which contains the true distinction between Being and Nothing, namely Something and an Other.—This real distinction is vaguely presented to the mind instead of abstract Being and pure Nothing and the merely intended distinction between these.

Kant employs the expression that “existence adds something to the fabric of total experience”; “it gives us one further object of perception, though our concept of the object is not thereby increased.”—From the preceding explanation it follows that this means that through existence Something, essentially because it is determinate existence, is connected with Other, which also includes a percipient.—Kant says that the concept of one hundred Thalers is not increased by reason of their being perceived. The concept here means the before-mentioned hundred Thalers presented as isolated. It is true that in this isolated manner they are an empirical content, but content cut off and without connection or determinateness relatively to Other; the form of identity with self deprives them of relation to Other and makes their perception or non-perception a matter of indifference. But this so-called concept of one hundred Thalers is a spurious concept; the form of simple relation to self does not properly belong to such limited and finite content, it is a form applied and lent to it by subjective understanding. One hundred Thalers are not related to themselves alone: they are mutable and perishable.

Thought or representation which has before it only a particular kind of Being, namely Determinate Being, must be referred back to the already mentioned beginning of Science which was made by Parmenides: it was he who purified and elevated his own processes of representation (and so those of posterity) to pure Thought, to Being as such, and so created the Element of the Science.—What is first in science has had to show itself first, too, historically. And we must consider the Eleatics’ One or Being as the first step in the knowledge of Thought; water and similar material principles are indeed intended for the Universal, but are material and therefore not pure thought; numbers are Thought quite external to itself, and neither primary and simple nor resting in itself.

It is to be considered not only the very first demand of theory, but also of practice, that Thought should be ordered back from particular and finite Being to Being as such in its purely abstract universality. For if such an ado is made about the hundred Thalers, and it is said that the state of my fortune is altered by their possession or non-possession, and that the difference is still greater between the being and not-being of myself, or of other; then—neglecting the fact that there will probably be such fortunes as are indifferent to the possession of such hundred Thalers—we must recall that it is the duty of man to rise to that abstract universality of outlook for which it is indeed indifferent whether the hundred Thalers exist or not, whatever their quantitative relation to his fortune, just as much as he should be indifferent to his existence or non-existence—in finite life (for a condition, a determinate being, is here intended), and so forth. Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ was said by a Roman: a Christian should be even more perfectly indifferent.

Finally, we must notice the immediate connection between this elevation above the hundred Thalers (and finite things in general), and the ontological proof, together with Kant’s critique of this. This critique has made itself universally plausible with its popular example: who does not know that a hundred actual Thalers differ from a hundred merely potential ones, and that they constitute a difference in my fortune? Because this difference is so salient with the hundred Thalers, therefore the concept (in the sense of the determinateness of content as bare potentiality) and being also are distinct: hence the concept of God is distinct from his existence, and I can no more “extract” the existence of God from his concept than I can get the actual existence of one hundred Thalers from their potential existence; now the ontological proof is supposed to consist in this extraction of the existence of God from his concept. But if it is correct that concept is not the same as being, it is truer still that God is not the same as one hundred Thalers or other finite things. It is the definition of finite things that with them concept and being, concept and reality, soul and body, are different and separable, and that therefore they are perishable and mortal: while it is just the abstract definition of God that with him concept and being are unseparated and inseparable. The true critique of the Categories and of Reason consists precisely in explaining this difference to cognition, and in preventing it from applying to God the determinations and relations of the finite.

Another reason should be mentioned which strengthens the repugnance to the proposition about Being and Nothing: this is, that the result of the consideration of Being and Nothing, when expressed in the proposition that “Being and Nothing are one and the same,” is incomplete. The accent is chiefly placed on the “are one and the same,” as in a judgment generally, where it is only the predicate which tells what the subject is. The sense therefore appears to be that the distinction is denied, although it immediately occurs in the sentence; for the proposition asserts the two determinations of Being and Nothing and contains them as distinct.—At the same time the meaning cannot be that they are to be abstracted from, and only the unity retained. Such a meaning would proclaim its own inadequacy, since that from which abstraction is to be made is present, and is named, in the sentence. Now in so far as the proposition that “Being and Nothing are the same” asserts the identity of these determinations, while yet containing both as distinct, it is self-contradictory and dissolves itself. If we look more closely we find that a proposition has here been asserted which, carefully considered, has a movement by which, through its proper nature, it disappears. But in so doing it does what must be held to constitute its true content, it undergoes Becoming.

The proposition thus contains the result, it in itself is the result. That to which attention must here be drawn, is the defect that this result is not itself expressed in the sentence; it is an external reflection which perceives it in the proposition.—At the outset we must make the general observation on this subject that a proposition, in the form of a judgment, is ill fitted to express speculative truths; acquaintance with this fact would be apt to remove many misunderstandings of speculative truths. Judgment is a relation of identity between subject and predicate, and it abstracts from the fact that the predicate is not the only determinateness of the subject, and also is wider than the subject. Now when the content is speculative the non-identical nature of the subject and predicate is an essential moment; but this is not expressed in the judgment. The paradoxical and bizarre light in which many aspects of modern philosophy appear to those unacquainted with speculative thought, is frequently due to the form of the simple judgment when it is used to express speculative results.

In order to express the speculative truth, the defect is remedied, in the first place, by adding the contradictory proposition, namely, “Being and Nothing are not the same;” this proposition, too, is expressed above. But now a further defect arises: these propositions lack connection and therefore show their content only in the form of an antinomy, whereas the content refers to one and the same thing, and the determinations expressed in the two propositions should be absolutely united; so that the union can then be called only a restlessness between incompatible terms, a movement. The most common injustice done to speculative content is to make it one-sided, that is, to emphasize one only of the propositions into which it can be resolved. When this happens, it cannot be denied that that proposition is asserted; but this assertion is as false as it is true, for once one proposition is taken from the speculative complex the other, too, should equally be considered and enunciated.—Special mention must here further be made of this unhappy word, as it may be called, of “unity;” unity even more than identity indicates subjective reflection; it is generally taken as the relation arising from external reflection, from comparison. In so far as this finds the same thing in two distinct objects there is unity, but in this shape, that the complete indifference towards this unity of the objects compared is presupposed, so that comparison and unity in no way concern the objects themselves, being a procedure and determining quite external to them. Unity therefore expresses a quite abstract sameness, and sounds violent and striking in proportion as the objects of which it is asserted obviously show themselves as distinct. In this respect therefore mere Unseparateness or Inseparability would be a good substitute for Unity; but these would not express the affirmative nature of the relation of the whole.

The whole and true result, therefore, which has here been found, is Becoming, which is more than the one-sided or abstract unity of Being and Nothing. On the contrary it consists of this Movement—that pure Being is immediate and simple; that it therefore equally is Nothing; that there is a distinction between them, but equally this cancels itself, and is not. In the result, therefore, the distinction between Being and Nothing is equally asserted, but is asserted as a distinction that is merely intended.

It is intended to take Being, rather, as that which is simply other than Nothing; nothing is clearer than their absolute distinctness, and nothing seems easier than to be able to describe it. But it is equally easy to prove the impossibility of this, and that the distinction cannot be expressed. Those who insist on remaining at this standpoint of the distinctness of Being and Nothing, should set themselves the task of indicating in what it consists. If Being and Nothing had any determinateness to distinguish one from the other, they would be determinate Being and determinate Nothing, as has been recalled, and not pure Being and pure Nothing, as they still are at this stage. The distinction between them is therefore completely void; each is the indeterminate itself, and is so in the same manner; the distinction therefore does not lie in themselves but in a third thing, namely our intention. This however is a form of the subjective which does not belong to this stage of the exposition. But the third element which gives subsistence to Being and Nothing must occur here too; and indeed it has occurred here too, and is Becoming. In Becoming the two exist as distinct; and only in so far as they are distinct is there Becoming. This third is something other than themselves;—they subsist solely in an Other, which also means that they do not subsist for themselves. Becoming is the subsistence of Being as much as of Not-being; in other words, their subsistence simply is their being in One: it is just this their subsistence which equally transcends their distinction.

The challenge to indicate the distinction between Being and Nothing includes a challenge to say what Being, and what Nothing, is. Those who struggle against recognizing, in either, any more than a transition to the other, and make various assertions about Being and Nothing, should indicate what they are speaking of; that is, they should give a definition of Being and Nothing, and demonstrate its correctness. Unless they satisfy this first demand of the old science of which they elsewhere admit and employ the logical rules, all such assertions about Being and Nothing are merely asseverations, scientifically invalid. If it has elsewhere been said that Existence (here regarded as equivalent to Being) is the complement to Possibility, then another determination, that of Possibility, is presupposed, and Being is asserted, not in its immediacy, but as dependent and conditioned. We shall reserve for such Being as is mediated the term of “Existence.” Of course Being is sometimes imaged, for instance as pure light, as the clearness of unclouded vision, and Nothing as pure night; and their distinction is thus connected with this well-known sensuous difference. But in fact, if this pure seeing be imagined more exactly, it is easy to perceive that in absolute clearness as much and as little is seen as in absolute darkness, and that one kind of seeing, as much as the other, is pure seeing, that is, a seeing of nothing. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same. We can distinguish only in determinate light, that is, since light is determined by darkness, in clouded light,—and, equally, in determinate darkness, that is, since darkness is determined by light, in illuminated darkness: and this is just because clouded light and illuminated darkness contain distinction in themselves and therefore are Determinate Being.

The unity whose moments, Being and Nothing, exist as inseparable, is at the same time different from them, and therefore stands to them in the relation of a third: this, in its most characteristic form, is Becoming. Transition is the same thing as Becoming; only in the former the two, between which, as One and an Other, the transition takes place, are imagined rather as resting apart, transition taking place between them. Now, in whatever place or manner Being or Nothing is discussed, this third must be there too; for these two do not subsist for themselves, but are only in this third, in Becoming. This latter however has many empirical forms which abstraction shelves and neglects, in order to retain severally these its creations, Being and Nothing, and to prove them armed against transition. This simple attitude of abstraction is met, equally simply, by the reminder that in empirical Existence this abstraction itself is only Something, and has Determinate Being. Or the attempt is made to give fixity to this separation of inseparables by other Forms of Reflection. Such a determination contains its own opposite in itself, and this determination of reflection is refuted in itself, without any return or appeal to the nature of its object, by taking it as it is and showing it to contain its Other within itself. It would be wasted labour to spread a net for all the twistings and objections of reflection and its reasonings, in order to cut off and render impossible all the evasions and digressions which it uses to hide from itself its own internal contradictoriness. I therefore refrain from noticing much that calls itself objection or refutation of the assertion that neither Being nor Nothing is true and only Becoming is their truth. That temper of mind which alone can perceive the futility of such refutations, or rather alone can expel them, is only brought about by critical cognition of the forms of Understanding; but those who are readiest with such objections immediately assault with their reflections the very first propositions; not attaining nor having attained, through a further study of Logic, to any consciousness of the nature of these crude reflections.

We must now consider some of the phenomena which result from the isolation of Being and Nothing, when one is placed without the sphere of the other, and transition is thus denied.

Parmenides held fast to Being, and was the most consistent of all when at the same time he said of Nothing that it is not at all; Being alone is. Being thus isolated is the indeterminate; it is not related to Other; it therefore seems that no progress could be made from this Beginning (that is, from out of Being itself): progress could only be effected by connecting something foreign from without. The progress made by asserting that Being is the same as Nothing, therefore, appears like a second and independent Beginning,—a transition dependent on itself and merely added to Being from without. In short, Being would not be the absolute Beginning if it were in any way determined; for, if it were, it would be dependent on something else, would not be immediate, would not therefore be the Beginning. But if Being is indeterminate and therefore the true Beginning, it lacks whatever could transform it into an Other; it is End as well as Beginning. Nothing can assault it from without; but also, nothing can sally forth from within; Parmenides, equally with Spinoza, will not admit progress from Being, or the absolute Substance, to the negative or finite. We have remarked that, on this showing, Being admits of no relation and therefore no progress; if a progress is made nevertheless, it can only be effected in an external manner, and must be a second and new Beginning. Thus Fichte’s most absolute and unconditional, fundamental assertion, A = A, is Thesis; his second is Antithesis: the latter is supposed to be partly conditioned, partly unconditioned, and thus self-contradictory. This progress is therefore one of external reflection, which, first, denies what, as being an Absolute, it made its Beginning (Antithesis being the negation of the first identity); and, secondly, forthwith expressly makes conditioned its second unconditioned element. But if there were any justification for the progress, that is, for transcending the first Beginning, then this first Beginning would itself have to possess the capacity of having an Other related to itself: it would have to be determinate. But such neither Being nor Absolute Substance professes to be: quite the reverse. It is the immediate, that which is as yet utterly indeterminate.

The most eloquent descriptions—perhaps already forgotten—of the impossibility of passing on from an abstract to something beyond, and to a union of the two, are given by Jacobi in support of his attack on the Kantian “a priori Synthesis” of self-consciousness, in his dissertation on the undertaking of the Critical Method to bring Reason within limits (Jac., Works, Vol. III). He puts the problem in this way, that the origin or creation of a synthesis is to be demonstrated in some pure sphere, whether in pure consciousness, pure space or pure time (p. 113). “Let space be one, let time be one, let consciousness be one;—say now, how does any one of these three Ones, purely and in itself, engender multiplicity? Each is one and no other; an indifference, a self-identity of space, time, and consciousness, where not even space, time, and consciousness can be asserted; for these nouns still slumber in the infinite naught of the indeterminate, whence each and every determinate has yet to issue. What introduces finitude into these three infinities? What renders Space and Time, a priori, pregnant with Number and Measure and changes them into a pure multiplicity; what causes pure spontaneity (Ego) to oscillate? Whence does the pure vowel get its consonant, or rather, how does its soundless and unbroken note break off and interrupt itself in order to get at least a kind of independent sound, an accent?”—It will be seen that Jacobi saw very clearly the unsubstantial nature of abstraction, whether of so-called absolute, that is, of abstract Space, or of abstract Time, or of abstract pure Consciousness or Ego; and he remains in this position in order to uphold the impossibility of a progress to Other (which is the condition of a Synthesis), and so to the Synthesis itself. The Synthesis here in question must not be taken as a connection of determinations already present externally;—the question is, partly, the creation for a first element of its second, and for the originally indeterminate, of something determinate; partly, it is the immanent synthesis or synthesis a priori,—the self-existent unity of distincts. Becoming is this immanent synthesis of Being and Nothing; but, since “synthesis” suggests external juxtaposition of things already there externally to one another, the word synthesis, and synthetic unity, rightly has not been employed.—Jacobi asks how the pure vowel of the ego gets its consonant, and what introduces determinateness into indeterminateness. The latter question is easily answered, and has been answered by Kant after his fashion; the former asks after the particular manner, the relations and so forth, and thus demands that a special category should be indicated; but here there can be no question of particular manner or of such categories of understanding. The question ‘“how” is itself one of the bad habits of reflection, which asks how a thing can be conceived, but at the same time presupposes its own fixed categories, and thus knows itself armed against the answer to its question. With Jacobi too the question lacks the higher significance of a demand after the necessity of the synthesis, for, as was said, he stays firm in his intention to remain with the abstractions, so as to assert the impossibility of a synthesis. His description of the procedure for reaching the abstraction of Space is especially graphic (p. 147). “For a time I must seek utterly to forget whatever I saw, heard, touched or handled, myself expressly not excepted. Utterly and purely must I forget all motion and, just because it is hardest, be at greatest pains to achieve this forgetting. Whatsoever I have thought away I must also wholly and entirely keep away, nothing being retained save only the intuition, forcibly retained, of infinite unchangeable Space. Nor must I re-introduce myself into Space as something distinct from it and yet connected: I must not merely allow myself to be surrounded and penetrated by it: I must pass over into Space, become one with it, be changed into it; nothing must remain of me save this my intuition itself, so that this may be contemplated as a presentation truly self-subsistent and independent, one, and one only.”

Such being the perfectly abstract purity of Continuity, that is, of indeterminateness and vacuity of presentation, this abstraction may indifferently be termed Space, or pure Intuition, pure Thought;—the Indian, who, externally motionless, and impassive also as regards sensation, fancy, imagination, desire, and so forth, contemplates the point of his nose for years on end, rehearsing his Om Om Om, or else nothing at all, has one name for all these concepts—Brahma. This torpid and vacuous consciousness, taken as consciousness, is Being.

Now in this void, so Jacobi continues, his experience is the reverse of what it should be, according to Kant’s assurance: he does not find himself to be a multiplicity and manifold, but rather a One quite lacking either of these attributes; indeed, “I am impossibility itself, the annihilation of all manifold and multiplicity; from my pure, utterly simple and unalterable essence I cannot reconstruct, nor spirit into myself, any least thing; thus in this pure state the external and separate existence of entities, and every manifold and multiplicity based on these, are manifested as a pure impossibility” (p. 149).

This impossibility is simply the tautology of saying, “I hold fast to abstract unity and exclude all multiplicity and manifold; I persist in the undifferentiated and indeterminate, neglecting all that is differentiated and determinate.” The Kantian a priori synthesis of self-consciousness, the active force, which this unity contains, whereby it splits itself up and sustains itself in this state of diremption, is, with Jacobi, watered down to the same abstraction. This “synthesis in itself,” this “original judgment,” with him is one-sidedly turned into “the Copula in itself;—an ‘is,’ ‘is,’ ‘is,’, without beginning or end, without what, who, or which; this repetition of repetition ad infinitum is the one business, function, and output of this purest of pure synthesis; which itself is just pure, absolute, and simple repetition” (p. 125). Or in fact, there being no break, that is, no negation or distinction, in it, it is not repetition, but merely undifferentiated simple Being.—But is this synthesis, if Jacobi omits precisely that which makes unity into synthetic unity?

It must be remarked, first, that when Jacobi thus entrenches himself in absolute or abstract Space, Time, and Consciousness, he has in this manner entered, and retains, a sphere empirically false; there is, given empirically, neither Space nor Time which is spatially or temporally unlimited, or whose continuity is not filled with the manifold limits of Determinate Being and Change, so that these limits and changes belong, unseparate and inseparably, to spatiality and temporality; similarly consciousness is filled with determinate sensation, presentation, desire, and so forth; it exists only in connection with some particular content.—The empirical transition in any case goes without saying; it is true that consciousness can make empty space, empty time, and even empty consciousness, or again empty Being, its object and content; but it does not remain there; it proceeds, or rather bursts on from such vacuity to a content which is better, that is, in some way more concrete; which, however bad it may be in other ways, is, by this much at least, better and truer; and precisely such content is synthetic in itself, synthetic, taken in the more general sense. Thus Parmenides is faced with Appearance and Opinion, the opposite of Being and Truth; Spinoza with the Attributes, the Modes, Extension, Movement, Understanding, Will, and so forth. The synthesis contains and demonstrates the invalidity of these abstractions: in the synthesis they are united each with its Other and therefore exist, not as self-subsistent and absolute, but as entirely relative.

But we are not here concerned to demonstrate the empirical invalidity of empty space, and so forth. It is true that, by abstracting, consciousness can fill itself with those indeterminates; and the abstractions, thus fixed, are the ideas of pure space and time, pure consciousness, and pure being. The task is, to demonstrate as invalid the idea of pure space, and so on, that is, pure space itself, and so on, in itself: to demonstrate, in other words, that, being what it is, it is its own opposite, that its opposite has penetrated into it as being what it is, that it itself is the perfected transition from itself, namely, determinateness.

This, however, is immediately evident in these ideas. They are, as Jacobi abundantly describes them, results of abstraction, they are expressly determined as indeterminate; and the indeterminate, in its simplest form, is Being. But it is just this indeterminateness which constitutes its determinateness; for, the former being the opposite of the latter, indeterminateness, as being opposite, is itself the determinate, or negative, and, moreover, the pure and entirely abstract negative. It is this indeterminateness or abstract negation, thus inherent in Being, which is asserted by external as well as internal reflection when it equates Being with Nothing, declaring it to be an empty fabrication of thought: that is, Nothing.—Or we may say that, since Being is the indeterminate, it is not what it is (namely, affirmative determinateness): it is not Being, but Nothing.

In the pure reflection of the Beginning, as it is made in this Logic with Being as such, the transition is as yet hidden; since Being is posited as merely immediate, Nothing can break forth from it only immediately. But every subsequent determination (as will immediately be seen in Determinate Being) is more concrete; in Determinate Being that is already posited which contains and produces the contradiction, and hence the transition, of those abstractions. While Being is considered as this simple immediacy, the recollection that Being is the result or perfect abstraction and by this alone abstract negativity, of Nothing, is left outside the science, which, within itself, will, under the category of Essence, exhibit this one-sided immediacy as mediated; for Being there is posited as Existence and as that which mediates this Being, as Ground.

With this recollection the transition from Being to Nothing can even be imagined as something easy and trivial, or, as it is called, can be explained and made conceivable, thus: Being, which was made the Beginning of the Science, is of course Nothing, for we can abstract from everything, and this having been done, Nothing remains. But, so one might continue, in this way the Beginning is not affirmative, it is not Being but just Nothing, and Nothing then is the End, at least as much as immediate Being and even more so. It is simplest to let such reasoning be and look for the nature of the results of which it boasts. If Nothing were the result of this reasoning, and we should begin with Nothing (as does Chinese philosophy), this need not cause us to raise a finger, for before it could be raised this Nothing would have changed into Being (see above, B. Nothing). But if this abstraction from everything, since everything after all has the quality of being, is presupposed, it must be examined more exactly; the result of abstracting from all beings is, first, abstract Being, Being in general; just as in the cosmological proof of the existence of God we rise above the accidental being of the world, but, in rising, take with us this Being: Being is determined as infinite Being. But we can also abstract from this pure Being, Being can be added on to all that from which we have already abstracted: then Nothing remains. Now if we wish to forget the thinking of Nothing, that is, its metamorphosis into Being, or know nothing about it, we can continue further to do what we can\ for we can, further, (heaven be thanked) abstract from Nothing (—the Creation of the World is an abstraction from Nothing), and then not Nothing remains, for it is just this from which we are abstracting; and so Being has been reached again.—This method of “can” affords an external play of abstraction where abstraction itself is a one-sided activity of the negative element. First, then, to this method. Being is as indifferent as Nothing, and each arises as much as it vanishes; but it is, equally, indifferent whether we begin with the doing of Nothing, or with Nothing; for the former, that is, pure abstracting, is neither more nor less real than pure Nothing.

The dialectic which Plato applies to the One in the Parmenides must also be taken rather as a dialectic of external reflection. Being and the One are both Eleatic concepts, and are identical. But they are also to be distinguished, and this is the aspect which Plato seizes upon in this dialogue. He removes from the One its various determinations, e.g. whole and part, being in itself and being in an other, shape, time, and so forth, and reaches the result that Being does not pertain to the One, since Being pertains to nothing save in one of these modes (p. 141, e. Vol. Ill, ed. Steph.). Plato next deals with the proposition, “The One is;” and Plato himself should be consulted for the transition from this to the proposition that the One is not. It is effected by comparing the two determinations of the proposition which is assumed, namely, “The One is,” which contains “One” and also “Being”: now “The One is” contains more than the simple assertion of “One.” The negative element of the proposition is demonstrated from the difference between these two. It is clear that this method presupposes something and is an external reflection.

The One is here connected with Being: similarly Being which it is desired to retain abstractly for itself, is best shown, without any reference to thought, in a connection which contains the contrary of that which is to be asserted. Being, taken in its immediacy, belongs to a Subject; it is asserted, has an empirical existence in general, and therefore is within the sphere of limitation and negation. Let understanding take what turns or phrases it will in its repugnance to the unity of Being and Nothing and in its appeal to that which is immediately at hand, it will find in this experience nothing but determinate Being, Being with some limitation or negation, which is just that unity which it rejects. The assertion of immediate Being is thus reduced to empirical Existence, nor can it reject the demonstration of this empirical Existence, since it desires to cling to the immediacy external to thought.

The case of Nothing is the same, but in the opposite manner, and this reflection is well known and has often enough been made about Nothing. Nothing, taken in its immediacy, appears as being; for in its nature it is identical with Being. Nothing is the object of thought, of imagination, of speech: it therefore is; it has its being in thought, imagination, speech, and so forth. But, further, this Being also differs from it; it is therefore said that, although Nothing is in thought or imagination, yet it cannot for that reason be, and being does not belong to it as such, since such being is just thought or imagination. It is undeniable that where this distinction is made Nothing is in a relation to Being; but this relation, although it contains the distinction, also contains a unity with Being. In what manner soever Nothing is asserted or demonstrated, it shows itself in connection or, if that is preferred, in contact, with some Being, and unsevered from some Being; that is, precisely, in a Determinate Being.

But, where the presence of Nothing in a Determinate Being is thus demonstrated, its distinction from Being is vaguely presented in the form that Being does not pertain to Nothing in itself, and that it has not in it the quality of being for itself, that it is not Being as such; and that Nothing is just absence of Being, and darkness absence of light, coldness absence of warmth, and so on. It is said that darkness has meaning only with reference to the eye, by virtue of an external comparison with the positive element (light); and that similarly coldness is something only in our sensation; whereas light, warmth, and Being, are, in themselves, the Objective, the Real and Active, having a quality and dignity quite different from that of those Negatives, or of Nothing. It is a common thing to find it cited as a most important reflection and significant recognition that darkness is mere absence of light and cold mere absence of warmth. Here, within the sphere of empirical objects, this one empirical remark may be made about this acute reflection, that darkness does indeed show itself active in light by determining it to colour, and thereby alone endows it with visibility; since, as was said above, as little is seen in pure light as in pure darkness. But visibility is activity within the eye, an activity in which this negative element has as great a share as light which counts for real and positive; similarly cold manifests itself adequately to water, to our sensation, and so on, and if we deny it so-called objective reality, our case against it is not strengthened thereby in the least. But this further censure might here be made, that here as well as above the negative of a determinate content is discussed, and the argument does not stop at Nothing itself, which, as regards empty abstraction, is neither superior nor inferior to Being.—But let cold, darkness, and other determinate negations be taken for themselves, and let it be seen what is thereby posited with regard to their general determination according to which they are here introduced. They are to be, not Nothing in general, but the not-being of light, warmth, and so on, of something determinate, of a content: they are, if one may say so, Nothings determinate and having content. But a determinateness, as will also be seen below, is itself a negation; hence they are negative nothings: but a negative nothing is something affirmative. This transformation of Nothing into something affirmative, by virtue of its determinateness (which above appeared as a Determinate Being in the subject, or whatever else it might be), seems the greatest of paradoxes to the consciousness which stands firm in the abstractions of Understanding. The recognition (in spite, or perhaps because, of its simplicity) that the negation of a negation is something positive, appears to be a triviality beneath the notice of Understanding in its pride, though no doubt correct enough: but this recognition not only is correct, but, because of the universality of such determinations, is of such infinite scope and universal application that it is well worthy of attention.

This further remark may be made about the determination of the transition of Being and Nothing into one another, that it is similarly to be taken without further determination of reflection. It is immediate and quite abstract, because of the abstract nature of the moments which pass into one another, since there is not yet posited in either moment the determinateness of that other which brings about the transition: although Being is essentially Nothing, yet Nothing is not yet posited in Being, and vice versa. It is not therefore here admissible to employ mediations further determinate, and to take Being and Nothing as in any way related; this transition is not yet a relation. It is therefore incorrect to say that Nothing is the ground of Being, or that Being is the ground of Nothing; that Nothing is cause of Being, and so on; or that the transition to Nothing depends on this condition, that there is something, or the transition to Being on the condition that there should be Nothing. The kind of relation cannot be more closely determined without simultaneously determining the terms of the relation. In the connection between ground and consequence, and so on, the terms connected are no longer mere Being and Nothing, but, expressly, Being which is ground, and something which, though merely posited and not independent, yet is not abstract Nothing.

What has been said throws light on the quality of the dialectic directed against the beginning of the world, as also against its destruction,—the dialectic which was to establish the eternity of matter and refute Becoming, arising, and passing away in general.—The Kantian antinomy of the spatial and temporal finitude or infinity of the world will be more closely considered below, under the concept of Quantitative Infinity.—This simple, ordinary dialectic is based on the retention of the opposition between Being and Nothing. The impossibility of a beginning of the world, or of anything, is demonstrated in the following manner:—

Nothing can begin, either in so far as it is or in so far as it is not: for in so far as it is, it is not merely beginning; in so far as it is not, it is not even beginning.—If the world, or anything, is supposed to have begun, it must have begun in Nothing; but Nothing is not beginning, neither is there any beginning in it: for beginning comprehends a Being, and Nothing contains no Being. Nothing is only Nothing. In a ground, cause, and so on (if Nothing is determined in that way), there is contained an affirmation, a Being.—For the same reason something also cannot cease to be. For then Being would contain Nothing; but Being is only Being and not its own opposite.

It is evident that nothing is adduced here against Becoming, or against beginning and ceasing, against this unity of Being and Nothing, save a dogmatic denial,—validity being ascribed to Being and to Nothing, each distinct from the other.—At any rate this dialectic is more consistent than reflective imagination. This latter thinks it perfect truth that Being and Nothing can exist only as separate; but on the other hand it admits beginning and ceasing as equally valid determinations, and therein in fact assumes the inseparate nature of Being and Nothing.

If Being and Nothing are supposed to be absolutely separate, then—as we so often hear—beginning and Becoming are indeed something inconceivable; for an assumption is made which destroys beginning and Becoming; and yet these are again admitted: the contradiction, thus introduced and made incapable of solution, is then called the inconceivable.

What has been adduced is the same dialectic as is employed by Understanding against the concept of the infinitely small magnitudes of the higher analysis. This concept is dealt with at greater length below.—These magnitudes have been defined as such as are in process of disappearing,—neither before their disappearance, for then they are finite magnitudes, nor after it, for then they are nothing. Against this pure concept the objection has been made and has ever been repeated, that such magnitudes are either Something or else Nothing; that there is no mean condition (condition here is an improper and barbarous expression) between Being and Not-being.—Here, too, the absolute separation of Being and Nothing is assumed. But in fact the identity of Being and Nothing has been demonstrated, or, to speak the language of the objectors, it has been shown that there exists nothing that is not a mean condition between Being and Nothing. Mathematics owes its most brilliant successes to the adoption of this determination which Understanding contradicts.

This argument, which wrongly presupposes the absolute separateness of Being and Not-being and there remains stationary, should be called, not dialectic, but sophistry. For sophistry is an argument proceeding from a baseless supposition which is allowed without criticism or reflection; while we term dialectic that higher movement of Reason where terms appearing absolutely distinct pass into one another because they are what they are, where the assumption of their separateness cancels itself. It is the dialectic immanent nature itself of Being and of Nothing that they manifest their unity (which is Becoming) as their truth.

Becoming is the unseparateness of Being and Nothing, not the unity which abstracts from Being and Nothing; rather, Becoming as the unity of Being and Nothing is this determinate unity in which there is Being as well as Nothing. But each, Being and Nothing, in so far as it is unseparated from its Other, is not. They are, therefore, in this unity: but only as disappearing and transcended. From the independence (which they were primarily imagined as possessing) they fall to the status of moments, which still are distinct, but at the same time are transcended.

The moments being thus taken in this their distinctness, each is in it as unity with its other. Becoming thus contains Being and Nothing as two such unities, each of which itself is unity of Being and Nothing: one of them is Being taken immediately and as relation to Nothing; the other Nothing taken immediately and as relation to Being. The determinations are of unequal value in these unities.

In this manner Becoming is in a twofold determination. In one of these, Nothing is immediate, that is, the determination begins with Nothing which relates itself to Being, or passes over into it; in the other, Being is immediate, that is, this determination begins with Being which passes over into Nothing: Arising and Passing Away.

Both are the same thing, namely Becoming; and even when taken as these different directions they penetrate and paralyse each other. One direction is Passing Away: Being passes over into Nothing; but equally Nothing is its own opposite, a transition to Being, that is. Arising. This Arising is the other direction: Nothing passes over into Being, but Being equally cancels itself (hebt sich auf) and is rather a transition to Nothing, a Passing Away.—They do not cancel mutually, nor one the other externally; each cancels itself in itself, and in itself is its own opposite.

The equipoise of Arising and Passing Away is, first, Becoming itself. But this equally collapses into static unity. In it Being and Nothing exist only in so far as they disappear, but Becoming as such exists only by virtue of their distinctness. Their disappearance therefore is the disappearance of Becoming, or the disappearance of disappearance itself. Becoming is a baseless unrest which collapses into a static result.

This might also be expressed as follows:—Becoming is the disappearance of Being in Nothing and of Nothing in Being, and the disappearance of Being and Nothing in general; but also it depends upon the difference between these. It is therefore self-contradictory, because it unites contradictories within itself; but such a union destroys itself.

The result is, that disappearance has taken place; but this is not Nothing: that would be merely a relapse into one of the determinations which have already been transcended (auf- gehoben) and not the result of Nothing and of Being too. It is the union of Being and Nothing, which has become a static simplicity. But this static simplicity is Being, which again, however, exists no longer for itself, but as a determination of the whole.

Becoming, then, taken as transition into the unity of Being and Nothing, which exists because it is, or has the form of, the one-sided immediate unity of these moments, is Determinate Being.

To transcend (aufheben), and that which is transcended (the ideal), are among the most important concepts of philosophy,—a fundamental determination which reappears everywhere without exception, the meaning of which must be taken definitely, and must especially be distinguished from Nothing.—What transcends itself does not thereby become Nothing. What is Nothing is immediate: what is transcended is mediated, and, though it is not, yet it has reached nonentity as a result approached from Being. It therefore retains the determinateness whence it started.

To transcend (aufheben) has this double meaning, that it signifies to keep or to preserve and also to make to cease, to finish. To preserve includes this negative element, that something is removed from its immediacy and therefore from a Determinate Being exposed to external influences, in order that it may be preserved.—Thus, what is transcended is also preserved; it has only lost its immediacy and is not on that account annihilated.—In the dictionary the two determinations of transcending may be cited as two meanings of this word. But it should appear as remarkable that a language should have come to use one and the same word for two opposite determinations. It is a joy for speculative thought to find words which in themselves have a speculative meaning; the German language has several such. The double meaning of the Latin tollere (which has achieved fame through the Ciceronian pun tollendum esse Octavium) does not go so far; the affirmative determination only goes so far as to mean elevation. A thing is transcended only in so far as it has come into unity with its opposite; in this narrow determination, as something reflected, it may fittingly be called moment. With the lever, weight and distance from a point are called its mechanical moments, on account of the sameness of their operation and in spite of the difference between something real (such as a weight) and something ideal (the mere spatial determination, the line): see Encyclopaedia, 3rd Ed., section 261, note.—Even more frequently the observation will force itself into notice that the technical language of philosophy employs Latin expressions for reflected determinations, either because the mother tongue has no expressions for them, or because, when it has such, as happens here, its own expressions call to mind rather what is immediate, and the foreign language what is reflected.

The more precise meaning and expression which Being and Nothing receive, now that they are moments, must result from the consideration of Determinate Being as the unity in which they are preserved. Being is Being, and Nothing Nothing, only in the distinctness of one from the other; but, truly considered and in their unity, they have disappeared as these determinations, and are now something different. Being and Nothing are the same: but just because they are the same they no longer are Being and Nothing, and have a different determination. In Becoming they were Arising and Passing Away: in Determinate Being, as in a differently determined unity, they are moments differently determined. This unity now remains their basis, from which they no more issue to the abstract meaning of Being and Nothing.