I.1.3. Being for Self

In Being for Self qualitative Being finds its consummation; it is infinite Being. The Being of the Beginning is indeterminate. Determinate Being is Being transcended, but transcended only immediately: it thus contains only first negation, itself immediate; Being indeed is preserved, and in Being Determinate both have entered into a simple unity; but for that very reason they are not yet in themselves equal to one another, and their unity is not yet posited. For this reason Determinate Being is the sphere of difference, of dualism, the field of finitude. The determinateness here is determinateness as such, a fact relative and not absolute. In Being for Self the difference between Being and determinateness, or negation, is posited and levelled; quality, otherness, limit, and reality, being-in-self, ought, and so forth, are incomplete adaptations of negation to Being, which still have for base the difference between the two. But in finitude negation has passed over into infinity, into the posited negation of negation; it is thus simple self-relation, and in itself is the identification with Being:—absolute determinateness.

Being for Self is such, first, immediately’, it is One.

Secondly, One passes over into Plurality of Ones—Repulsion; which otherness of One transcends itself in its ideality—Attraction.

Thirdly, there is the mutual determination of Repulsion and Attraction in which they collapse into equipoise; here Quality, which reached its climax in Being for Self, passes over into Quantity.

We have reached the general concept of Being-for-Self. The task now is to demonstrate that the image which we connect with the term of “Being-for-Self” does correspond to this concept, if we are to be justified in employing it for this concept. And so, indeed, it seems; we say that something is for itself in so far as it cancels its otherness, its relatedness to and community with Other, rejecting and abstracting from them. In it, Other only exists as having been transcended, or as its moment; and Being-for-Self consists in this, that it has passed beyond the Barrier and its Otherness in such a manner that, thus negating them, it is infinite return upon itself.—Consciousness as such already contains the determination of Being-for-Self; for, the object of its sensation, intuition, and so forth, is imagined, and it thus comprehends its content, which, therefore, is of ideal nature; in its intuition, and, generally, in its entanglement with its own negative or Other, it still remains at home. Being-for-Self is the polemical or negative attitude against the limiting other; by virtue of this negation it is an intro-reflectedness; although, parallel to this return of consciousness upon itself and the ideality of the object, the reality likewise of the object is preserved, since simultaneously it is known also to be an external Determinate Being. In this its phenomenal aspect consciousness is a dualism; first it has knowledge of another and external object; secondly it is for itself, it contains the object in an ideal manner; its being is not only with such an Other, but, being with such an Other, it is also at home with itself. On the other hand, self-consciousness is Being-for-Self accomplished and posited; the aspect of relation to an Other, an external object, has been removed. Self-consciousness is thus the nearest example of the presence of infinity;—an infinity abstract indeed, but also of a concrete determination very different from that of Being-for-Self in general, the infinity of which still has a wholly qualitative determinateness.

It has already been pointed out that Being-for-Self is infinity which has collapsed into simple Being; it is Determinate Being in so far as the negative nature of infinity, which is negation of negation, exists only as negation in general or simple qualitative determinateness, in the form, now posited, of the immediacy of Being. In this kind of determinateness Being appears as Determinate Being, but further is distinct from that B g-for-Self which is only Being-for-Self in so far as its determinateness is of this infinite kind; but, also, Determinate Being is a moment of Being-for-Self, since it is true that the latter also contains Being infected with negation. Thus determinateness, which, in Determinate Being as such, is an Other and a Being-for-Other, is reflected into the infinite unity of Being-for-Self; and here the moment of Determinate Being is present as Being-for-One.

This moment expresses the manner in which the finite exists in its unity with the infinite, or as ideal in nature. In Being-for-Self negation is not applied as a determinateness or limit, not, therefore, as relation to another and distinct Determinate Being. This moment has been called Being-for-One, but so far there is nothing for which it could be;—there is no One, of which it could be a moment. And, indeed, nothing of this kind has yet been fixed in Being-for-Self; that for which Something would be (and, in fact, there is no Something), that which should be its general counterpart, is itself a moment and only Being-for-One; it is not yet One. Thus the two sides which may be suggested in Being-for-One are not distinguished; there is only one Being-for-Other, and just because it is one, it too is a Being-for-One; it is but one ideality of that, for which or in which a determination should exist as moment, and of that, which should be moment in it. Thus Being-for-One and Being-for-Self are not true determinatenesses relatively to one another. But let the distinction be granted for a moment; then, if we can assume a Being-for-Self, it is Being-for-Self, as cancellation of otherness, itself, which relates itself to itself as to the cancelled Other; it is thus for One, and in its Other relates itself to itself. That which is of ideal nature must needs be for One, but not for an Other: that One for which it is, is merely itself.—Ego, or Spirit in general, or God, are of ideal nature because they are infinite; but, as being for themselves, they are not distinct, ideally, from that which is for One. For then they would be merely immediate, or rather, they would be determinate beings, or being-for-other; for that which for them is would then be an Other and not themselves, if they had not the moment of being for One. God is thus for himself in so far as he is himself that which is for him.

Thus, Being-for-Self and Being-for-One are not really distinct meanings of ideality, but rather moments of it essential and inseparable.

The moment here considered is clearly emphasized in its intro-reflection by the expression of the German language, strange at first sight, in enquiring after quality by asking, “what for a thing is this?” In its origin the expression is idealistic; it does not ask what this thing A is for another, B, or what this man for another man;—but, “what for a thing, what for a man, is this?” Thus, this Being-for-One has forthwith returned into this thing, or man, itself, and that which is, is identical with that for which it is,—an identity which must also be considered as ideality.

Ideality first applies to the already cancelled determinations as distinct from that wherein they are cancelled; this latter may be called the real. But thus once more that which is of ideal nature is one of the moments, and the real the other; but ideality consists in this, that both determinations in the same manner are only for one and count only as one, this one ideality thus being undifferentiated reality. In this sense self-consciousness, Spirit, God, are of this ideal nature as pure infinite self-relation;—ego is for ego, and both are the same, ego is named twice, but each of the two is for one, and of ideal nature; Spirit is only for Spirit, God for God, and it is only this unity which is God, God as Spirit.—But self-consciousness, as consciousness, enters into the distinction between itself and an Other, or between its ideality (where it exists as imagining) and its reality (inasmuch as its imagination has a definite content which has this further aspect of being known as untranscended negative, or as Determinate Being). But if Thought, Spirit, or God is called only of ideal nature, that point of view is assumed from which finite Determinate Being is counted as real, and that which is of ideal nature, or Being-for-One, has only a one-sided meaning.

In a previous Observation (p. 168), it was indicated what is the principle of idealism; and it was said that in any philosophy the next point of importance was, how far this principle was applied. As to the manner of application, a further remark may be made with reference to the category at which we have arrived. First, the possible independent existence of finite Determinate Being, alongside Being-for-Self, governs this application; and next, the possible positing of the moment of “for-one” (a self-relation of that which is of ideal nature, as such) in the infinite itself. The Eleatic Being, or the Substance of Spinoza, for instance, is only the abstract negation of all determinateness; but no ideality is posited in this negation. And with Spinoza (as will be mentioned below) infinity is only the absolute affirmation of a thing, and thus immobile one-ness; Substance thus does not even reach the determination of Being-for-Self, and much less that of Subject and Spirit. The noble idealism of Malebranche is, in itself, more explicit. It contains the following fundamental thought:—God contains all the eternal truths, the ideas and perfections of all things, so that they are his and his alone; therefore we see them in him only; God causes in us our sensations of objects by means of an act which has no sensuous element: we imagine that we obtain of the object not only the idea (which represents its essence), but also the sensation of its determinate existence (De la Recherche de la Vérité, Eclairc. sur la nature des idées, etc.).

Thus the determinate existence, like the eternal truths and ideas (or essentialities) of things, is, in God, of ideal nature; it is not an actual Determinate Being; they are objects to us, and yet they are only “for-one.” This moment of explicit and concrete idealism, lacking in Spinoza, is present here, absolute ideality being determined as knowledge. This idealism is pure and deep, but these relations partly contain much that is as yet indeterminate for thought, and partly their content is immediately wholly concrete (Sin and Salvation, and so on, enter immediately into play); the logical determination of infinity, which ought to be its foundation, is not carried through for itself; and thus, although this lofty and complete idealism is the work of a pure speculative spirit, it is not the work of a pure speculative and therefore alone truly fundamental thinking.

The idealism of Leibniz lies rather within the limits of the abstract concept.—Leibniz’s imagining subject, the monad, is essentially of ideal nature. Imagination is a Being-for-Self, in which the determinatenesses are not limits and therefore not a Determinate Being, but only moments. To imagine is certainly a more concrete determination, but still it has here no further meaning than ideality; for with Leibniz even that which lacks consciousness in general has imagination and perception. Thus otherness is transcended in this system; Spirit and Body, or, the monads in general, are not Others for one another; they neither limit nor act on one another; thus all the relations based upon a Determinate Being are absent. The differentiation, therefore, is of ideal nature, and internal, and the monad here remains self-related; changes develop within it; they are not relations of it to others. Where the real determination sees a determinately existing relation of the monads to one another, there is in fact an independent and merely simultaneous Becoming, included in the Being-for-Self of each individual.—That there is a plurality of Monads, and that therefore each is also determined as an Other, does not concern them, for this is the external reflection of a third party; in themselves they are not related as Others, and Being-for-Self remains unadulterated by any parallel Determinate Being.—However, this also implies the incompleteness of this system. It is only in themselves, or in God (as the monad of monads), or in the system, that the monads thus exist as imagining. Otherness also exists, in imagination itself or in whatever other name we give to that third element which considers them as Others and as Many. The multiplicity of their Determinate Being has only been barred out, and that only for the moment, and it is only by abstraction that the monads have been posited as existing as not-others. If a third element posits their otherness, it also cancels it; but the whole movement which gives them their ideal nature is external to them. Should it be objected that the whole movement of thought only falls within a monad imagining, then it may be replied that the content of such thought in itself is external to itself. From the oneness of absolute ideality (the monad of the monad) an immediate and non-conceptual transition (—by means of the image of creation) is made to the category of abstract, or unrelated, multiplicity of Determinate Being; and an equally abstract return is made from it to the former oneness. Ideality and imagination in general remain formal, and formal too is imagination raised to the power of consciousness. We mentioned above Leibniz’s notion about the needle of the compass which, if it had consciousness, would regard its northward direction as a determination of its freedom: there consciousness was taken as a one-sided form, supposed to be indifferent to its content and determination: here, similarly, ideality in the monads is a form which remains external to multiplicity. Ideality is supposed to be immanent in them, imagination is supposed to be their nature: but, first, their conduct is their Harmony, which is not within the sphere of their Determinate Being, and hence is pre-established; next, this their Determinate Being is not taken as Being-for-Other, nor, further, as Ideality; it is determined merely as abstract multiplicity; the ideality of multiplicity and its further determination to Harmony never become immanent and proper to this multiplicity.

Other forms of idealism, like that for instance of Kant and Fichte, do not get beyond Ought and the infinite progress; they remain in the dualism of Determinate Being and Being-for-Self. The Thing-in-itself, or the infinite Resistance-principle, does indeed enter immediately into the Ego in these systems, becoming “for-it” alone; but it starts from a free otherness, which persists as negative Being-in-Self. The Ego therefore may be determined as being of ideal nature, as infinite self-relation and being-for-self; but Being-for-One is not completed to that point where its beyond, or the trend towards the beyond, disappears.

Being-for-Self is the simple unity of its self and of its moment, Being-for-One. Here there is only one determination, the self-relation of the transcendence. The moments of Being-for-Self have collapsed into indistinguishability; this is immediacy, or Being, but an immediacy based on that negation which has been posited as its determination. Being-for-Self thus is that which is for itself; and since in this immediacy its inner significance vanishes, it is its own completely abstract limit—One.

Attention may be drawn before beginning to the difficulty inherent in the following presentation of the development of One, and to the ground of this difficulty. The moments which constitute the concept of One as Being-for-Self here fall apart. They are (1) negation in general; (2) two negations; (3) negations, therefore, of two terms which are the same; (4) these are utterly opposite; (5) self-relation, identity as such; (6) negative relation which yet is self-relation. These moments here fall apart because the form of immediacy, or Being, enters into Being-for-Self as that which is for itself; by virtue of this immediacy each moment is posited as an independent determination which has Being; and yet also they are inseparable. Of each determination, therefore, its contradictory must be asserted: it is this contradiction which, together with the abstract nature of the moments, constitutes their difficulty.

One is the simple relation of Being-for-Self to itself, where its moments have collapsed into themselves; here, therefore, it has the form of immediacy, and its moments now have determinate existence.

One, as self-relation of the negative, is determination,—and as self-relation, it is infinite self-determination. The resulting immediacy, however, brings it about that these distinctions are no longer posited merely as moments of one and the same self-determination, but also as being. The ideality of Being-for-Self as totality thus, first, passes into reality, and into the most fixed and abstract of all, into One. Being-for-Self, in One, is the posited unity of Being and of Determinate Being, as absolute union of relation to Other and Self-relation. Next, however, the determinateness of Being opposes itself to the determination of infinite negation (or self-determination); so that what One is in itself it now merely has in itself; the negative thus is an Other, distinct from it. That which shows itself present, as distinguished from it, is its own self-determination; and its unity with itself as thus distinct from itself is degraded to the rank of relation; and, as negative unity, it is negation of itself as an Other, an exclusion of the One as something Other to the One.

In itself, the One has existence in general; this its Being is not determinate or determinateness as relation to Other, nor is it Modification: what it is, is the fact that this circle of categories has been negated. One thus cannot become Other; it is immutable.

It is indeterminate, but not as Being is; its indeterminateness is that determinateness which is self-relation: the fact of being absolutely determined, posited Being-in-Self. Since in its concept it is self-related negation, it contains distinction,—it passes away from itself towards Other, which tendency, however, is immediately reversed; for this moment of self-determination brings it about that there is no Other to be a point of direction; it thus returns to itself.

In this simple immediacy the mediation of Determinate Being and of ideality, and thus all differentiation and multiplicity, has disappeared. There is nothing in it; and this nothing, which is the abstraction of self-relation, is here distinct from Being-in-Self; it is posited, since Being-in-Self no longer is that simplicity proper to the category of Something, but has a determination, namely that of being mediation and hence concrete. Being abstract, it is identical with One, but it is distinct from its determination. Nothing, thus posited as within the One, is Nothing as the Void.—This Void is thus the quality of One in its immediacy.

The One is the Void as the abstract self-relation of negation. But the Void, as Nothing, is absolutely different from the simple immediacy, the Being of One which is also an affirmation; and since they are in one relation (namely, that of One), their difference is also posited. The Nothing as Void differs from the existent, however, in that it is outside the existent One.

Thus Being-for-Self is determined as One and Void, and has once more acquired Determinate Being.—The One and the Void have for common and simple basis their negative self-relation. The moments of Being-for-Self leave this unity and become external to one another: since the determination of Being is introduced through the simple unity of the moments, it thus reduces itself to one side only (to the rank of Determinate Being), and thus its other determination, negation in general, likewise opposes itself in the shape of Determinate Being of Nothing, that is, as Void.

In this form of Determinate Being, the One is that grade of the category which occurs with the ancients as the atomistic principle, which places the essence of things in the atom and the void (τὸ ἄτομον or τὰ ἄτομα καὶ τὸ κενόν). Abstraction having reached to this shape has gained a greater determinateness than the Being of Parmenides or the Becoming of Herakleitos. Lofty as is its stand when, making the simple determinateness of the One and the Void into the principle of all things, it reduces the infinite variety of the world to this simple antithesis, daring to understand it through this alone, it is equally easy for imagining reflection to imagine, here atoms, and there beside them, the void. No wonder therefore that the atomistic principle has always survived; the equally trivial and external relation of combination, which must be added if we would reach the appearance of a concrete and a multiplicity, is as popular as the atoms themselves and the void. The One and the Void is Being-for-Self, the highest qualitative Being-in-Self, sunk back to complete externality; and the immediacy or Being of One, since it is the negation of all otherness, is so posited as to exclude all determination or variation; it is absolutely brittle, and thus all determination, multiplicity, or connection remains a wholly external relation.

They who first thought it did not however leave the atomistic principle in this externality; besides its abstraction it had a speculative determination when the Void was understood to be the source of motion. This is a relation of atom and void quite different from the mere parallelism and mutual indifference of these determinations. And when it was said that the void was the source of motion it had not this trivial meaning, that Something can have motion only into a Void and not into a space already filled, for then no room would be left open for it; in which case the Void would be only the presupposition or condition and not the ground of motion, motion itself being already assumed and its ground (which is the essential thing) forgotten. Rather, the view that Void is the ground of motion, contains this profounder thought, that the negative in general contains the ground of Becoming, the unrest of self-movement: and in this sense the negative must be taken as the true negativity of the infinite.—The Void is the ground of movement only as the negative relation of the One to its negative, to the One (that is, to itself); this, however, is posited as having determinate existence.

Apart from this the further determinations of the ancients about form and position of the atoms and about the direction of their movement, are sufficiently arbitrary and external; and, what is more, they are directly contradictory to the fundamental determination of the atom. The atoms are the principle of utter externality and utter absence of concept; this principle, in the shape of molecules and particles, causes physics to suffer as much as a theory of the State which begins from the separate wills of individuals.

The One and the Void constitute Being-for-Self in its closest Determinate Being. Each of these moments has negation for its determination, and is also posited as a Determinate Being. According to this. One and Void are the relation of negation to negation as of one Other to its Other; the One is negation in the determination of Being, the Void in Not-being. Essentially, however, the One is self-relation only as relating negation; that is, it is itself that which the Void is intended to be outside it. But each is also posited as an affirmative Determinate Being, one as Being-for-Self as such, the other as indeterminate Existence in general; their mutual relation is that of other Determinate Being. The Being-for-Self of One is, however, essentially the ideality of Being Determinate and of Other; it is related, not as to an Other, but to itself. But Being-for-Self is pegged down as One, as something which is for itself and is immediately present, and thus its negative relation to itself is also relation to a Being: and since the relation is negative, that to which it relates itself remains determined as a Being Determinate and Other; being essentially a self-relation, this Other is not indeterminate negation, as Void, but likewise is One. One thus is Becoming which differentiates itself into many Ones.

But, really, this is not properly a Becoming, for Becoming is a transition of Being into Nothing; while One only becomes One. One as the other term of the relation contains the negative as relation, and thus is itself affected with it. Instead of Becoming, there is then, first, the proper and immanent relation of One; next, since it is negative, and also the One has being. One repulses itself from itself. The negative relation of One to itself is Repulsion.

This Repulsion, taken thus as a positing of many Ones, is effected only by the egress of One beyond itself; but they which are beyond, are also Ones. This is Repulsion according to the concept, or, as it is in itself. The second Repulsion is distinct from it, it is that which is present to the imagination of external reflection: not the creation of Ones, but the mutual exclusion of Ones which are presupposed and already present. It remains to be seen how that first Repulsion, which is in itself, determines itself to the second, which is external.

It must first be settled what determinations the many Ones have as such. The multiple Becoming, or production of Many, vanishes immediately as the fact of being posited; the products are Ones, but not for Other; they are infinitely self-related. The One repels only itself from itself: it does not become, but is already; what is imagined as the object of repulsion is also a One, a Being; each is equally the subject and object of a Repulsion which makes no difference.

Thus, relatively to one another, the Ones are presupposed’,—they are supposed (or posited) by the self-repulsion of the One, and presupposed as not posited; the fact of their being posited is transcended; they are related to one another as Beings as being related each only to itself.

Thus plurality does not appear as otherness, but as a determination quite external to One. One, which repels itself, remains a relation to itself, like that which first is taken as repelled. Thus it does not concern the Ones that, comprehended into the determinateness of plurality, they are related to one another as Others. If plurality were a relation of the Ones themselves to one another, they would limit one another and would contain Being-for-Other affirmatively. Their relation—theirs by virtue of their self-subsistent unity—as posited here, is determined as none: it is once more the Void already posited. It is their limit, a limit which, however, is external to them, in which they must not be for one another. The limit is that in which that which is limited is and also is not; but the Void is determined as pure not-being, and this alone constitutes their limit.

The self-repulsion of the One is the explication of that which the One is in itself; but infinity, as split-up, is here infinity which has passed beyond itself: and this it has done through the immediacy of the infinite entity, the One. It is a simple relation of One to One, and equally, or rather, the absolute unrelatedness of the One; it is the former according to the simple affirmative self-relation of One, and the latter according to the same as negative. In other words, the plurality of the One is its self-positing; the One is its own negative self-relation and nothing else, and this relation (the One itself) is many Ones. But, equally, plurality is merely external to the One; for the One also is the transcending of Otherness, Repulsion is its self-relation and simple self-identity. The plurality of Ones is infinity, as contradiction which unconcernedly produces itself.

Mention was made above of Leibniz’s idealism. We may here add that from the imagining monad, determined as being for itself, it proceeded only to the Repulsion just considered, and in fact only to plurality as such, wherein each One is for itself only, remaining indifferent to the Being Determinate or for-Self of Others, or Others do not exist at all for the One. The monad is for itself the whole and complete world; none has need of the other; but this inner multiplicity which it has in its imagination in no way alters its determination of being “for itself.” Leibniz’s idealism takes plurality immediately as given, and does not conceive of it as of a Repulsion of the monad; with him, therefore, plurality is taken only in its aspect of abstract externality. Atomistic philosophy does not know the concept of ideality; it does not take One as comprehending within itself the two moments of Being-for-Self and Being-for-It (that is, as of ideal nature), but as being simply and bluntly for-Self. However, it proceeds beyond mere indifferent plurality; the atoms enter into a further determination relatively to one another, though in a really inconsistent manner; whereas in the former indifferent independence of the monads, plurality remains the rigid and fundamental determination, so that their relation belongs to the monad of monads, or to the contemplating philosopher.

The many Ones have Being; their Determinate Being, their relation, is non-relation and external to them;—it is abstract Void. But they themselves are this negative relation to self now as to existent Others;—demonstrated contradiction, infinity, posited in the immediacy of Being. Thus here Repulsion immediately finds that which is repelled from it. In this determination it is Exclusion: One repels only the many Ones which were neither created nor posited by it. This mutual, or universal, Repulsion, is relative, limited by the Being of the Ones.

Plurality is, first, not-posited Otherness. The limit is only the Void, or that where the Ones are not. But also they are in the limit: they are in the Void, or, their Repulsion is their common relation.

This mutual Repulsion is the posited Determinate Being of the many Ones: it is not their Being-for-Self,—in which they would be distinct, as many, only for a third party,—it is their own distinguishing, which preserves them.—They negate one another, posit one another as being only for-One. But they equally negate this quality of being only for-One: they repulse this their ideality, and are.—Thus the moments, absolutely united in ideality, are separated. In its Being-for-Self the One also is for-One, but this One for which it is is itself: its distinction from itself is immediately transcended. But the One which is distinguished has a Being in plurality; Being-for-One (as it is determined in Exclusion) hence is a Being-for-Other. Thus each is repulsed by an Other, is transcended, and is made into something which is not for itself but for-One, and in fact is another One.

The Being-for-Self of the many Ones thus shows itself to be their self-preservation, due to the mediation of their mutual Repulsion, in which they cancel one another and posit each the others as mere Being-for-Other; but it also consists in the repulsion of this ideality and in positing the One as not being for-Other. But this self-preservation of the Ones through their negative relation is rather their dissolution.

The Ones not only have, but also preserve, their Being by mutual Exclusion. Now first that which ought to give them their fixed support against negation (namely, their distinctness), is their Being, in fact their Being-in-Self, as opposed to their relation to Other: this Being-in-Self is, that they are Ones. But this they all are: in their Being-in-Self they are the same, instead of! having in it a definite distinction. Next, their Determinate Being and attitude to one another, that is, the fact that each posits itself as One, is their mutual negation; but this also is one and the same determination of all; and through it they rather posit themselves as identical. Similarly, the fact that in themselves they are the same makes the ideality, which is supposed to be posited in them through Others, their own; it also they equally, therefore, do not repel.—Thus, according to their Being and positing, they are but one affirmative unity.

Our comparison is just this view of the Ones—that, in their two determinations, both as being and as mutually related, they manifest themselves as identical, and necessarily identical.—But we must further see what is posited of them in their mutual relation.—They are; this is presupposed in this relation; and they are only in so far as they negate one another, at the same time repelling this their ideality or negatedness; that is, in so far as they negate mutual negation. But they are only in so far as they negate; and thus in negating their negation they negate their being. In so far as they are, indeed, this negation would not negate them, for it is only external to them: the negation of the Other rebounds from them and strikes their surface only to touch it. But they return upon themselves only through the negation of the Other: they are only by virtue of this mediation, and this return is their self-preservation and their Being-for-Self. In so far as their negation effects nothing, by reason of the resistance offered by the existents, as such or as negating, they do not return upon themselves, they neither preserve themselves, nor are.

We observed above that the Ones are the same, that each one is the same as the other. This is not only our relation—a mere external juxtaposing; rather, the Repulsion is itself relation: the One which excludes the Ones relates itself to them (the Ones), that is, to itself. Thus the negative attitude of the Ones to each other is only a collapse into themselves. This identity, into which their repulsion passes, is the transcending of their distinctness and externality, which, as Excluding, they ought mutually to assert.

This self-positing of the many Ones in one One is Attraction.

Independence having reached its quintessence in the One which is for itself, is abstract and formal, destroying itself; it is the highest and most stubborn error, which takes itself for highest truth;—appearing, more concretely, as abstract freedom, pure ego, and, further, as Evil. It is freedom which goes so far astray as to place its essence in this abstraction, flattering itself that, being thus by itself, it possesses itself in its purity. Determined more closely, independence is that error which regards as negative, and maintains a negative attitude towards, that which is its own essence. It is thus a negative attitude towards itself, which seeking to possess its own Being destroys it; and this its activity only manifests the vanity of its activity. The reconciliation consists in acknowledging rather that that which is counter to the negative attitude is its essence; it is a renunciation of the negativity of its Being-for-Self in place of a clinging to it.

It is an old proposition that One is Many, and more especially that the Many are One. We may here repeat the observation that the truth of the One and the Many, expressed in propositions, appears in an inadequate form; and that this truth can be seized and expressed only as a Becoming and as a process, as Repulsion and Attraction, and not as a Being; but it is as the latter, as a stable unity, that it is taken in a proposition. Above, we mentioned and recalled the dialectic of Plato in the Parmenides in deriving the Many from the One, namely, from the proposition “One is.” The inner dialectic of the concept has been indicated; and the dialectic of the proposition “that Many are One,” is most easily taken as external reflection. External it here may be allowed to be, since its object too, the Many, are those entities which are external to one another. This comparison of the Many, each with the other, shows immediately that One is determined just like Other: each is One, is One of the Many, and is by excluding the others;—they are simply the same: there is only one determination present. This is the fact, and just this simple fact must now be grasped. Understanding is stubborn in its refusal to accept it only because there is present to it also (and rightly) the distinction; yet the fact mentioned does not eliminate the distinction, and equally the fact exists in spite of the distinction. And one can comfort understanding for the naive manner in which it grasps the fact of the distinction by reminding it that the distinction will return again.

Repulsion is the schism which the One makes of itself into Many, the negative attitude of which is powerless because they each presuppose the others as existent. It is only the Ought of ideality; but the latter is realized in Attraction. Repulsion passes over into Attraction, and the many Ones into One One. At first both Repulsion and Attraction are distinct; the former as the reality of One, and the latter as its posited ideality. The relation of Attraction to Repulsion is this, that the latter is its presupposition. Repulsion furnishes the material for Attraction. If there were no Ones there would be nothing to attract: the idea of continuous Attraction or consumption of Ones presupposes an equally continuous creation of Ones; the sensuous representation of spatial Attraction allows the series of attracted Ones to continue; the place of the atoms which vanish into the point which attracts them is taken by a new multitude surging out of the void; and so, if it is desired, to infinity. If attraction were to be imagined as completed—that is, the many Ones brought to the point of One One—there would be but one sluggish One and no Attraction. The ideality which determinately exists in Attraction also has in it the determination of self-negation, that is, has in it the many Ones to which it is the relation; and Attraction is inseparable from Repulsion.

First, Attraction is equally the property of each of the immediate Ones; not one is preferred beyond another; and thus we really have an equipoise in Attraction, or rather an equipoise of Attraction and Repulsion itself, a sluggish rest in which there is no determinate ideality. But there can here be no question of preference of one One beyond others, for this would imply a determinate distinction between them: Attraction rather is the positing of the already present indistinguishability of the Ones. It is only Attraction itself which is the positing of a One distinct from the others; these are only the immediate Ones, which are supposed to preserve themselves by means of Repulsion; but, from their posited negation, the One of Attraction arises, which is hence determined as One mediated and posited as One. The first Ones, as being immediate, do not return upon themselves in their ideality, but have it in another One.

But the One One is ideality realized and posited in the One. It attracts by the mediation of Repulsion, and contains this mediation as its determination. Thus it does not absorb the attracted Ones in itself as in a point, that is, it does not abstractly cancel them. It contains Repulsion in its determination, and Repulsion preserves the Ones, as Many, in it; through its Attraction it makes a profit, so to speak, gaining in width and content. Thus there is in it unity of Repulsion and Attraction in general.

The distinction of One and Many has determined itself to be that of their relation to one another; this is divided into two relations. Repulsion and Attraction. Each of these remains outside the other and independent for the present; and yet essentially they are connected. Their unity, as yet indeterminate, must reveal itself more definitely.

Repulsion as the fundamental determination of the One appears first and immediately, like its Ones, which though produced by it are yet posited as immediate; they are thus unaffected by Attraction, which is added to them, thus presupposed, from without. Repulsion, on the other hand, does not presuppose Attraction, so that the latter ought to have no part in its positing and Being; that is, so that Repulsion is not in itself the negation of itself, nor the Ones in themselves negated. Thus we have Repulsion abstractly by itself; and indeed Attraction too, relatively to the Ones as existents, has the aspect of an immediate Determinate Being; leaving its place it comes to them as an Other.

Thus if we take pure Repulsion by itself it is the scattering of many Ones into the indeterminate, outside the sphere of Repulsion: for it is just the negation of the mutual relation of the Many; if it is taken in the abstract, unrelatedness is its determination. But Repulsion is not merely the Void; the Ones, as unrelated, do not repulse or exclude one another; and this constitutes their determination. Repulsion, though negative, still essentially is a relation; mutual exclusion and avoidance do not mean liberation from that which is excluded and avoided, and that which excludes is still in connexion with that which is excluded. Now this moment of relation is Attraction, and thus is in the midst of Repulsion itself: it is the negation of that abstract Repulsion according to which the Ones would be but self-related existents, without the moment of excluding.

But when we start from the Repulsion of the determinately existing Ones, and in doing so posit Attraction as being added to them from without, then, though inseparable, both are kept apart as distinct determinations; we have seen, however, that Attraction does not only presuppose Repulsion, but that there also is a reverse relation of Repulsion to Attraction, so that the former equally has its presupposition in the latter.

According to this determination they are inseparable, and also each is determined as Ought and Barrier relatively to the other. Their Ought is their abstract determinateness as being in themselves; thereby, however, it is just referred beyond itself and relates itself to the other, so that each is mediated by the other as other. Their independence consists in this, that in this mediation they are posited as another determining for each other (Repulsion is the positing of the Many, Attraction of the One; the latter is also negation of the Many, the former, the negation of their ideality in the One), and in that Attraction is Attraction only by the mediation of Repulsion, and Repulsion Repulsion only by the mediation of Attraction. The further fact that mediation through Other is here in fact rather negated and each of these determinations is self-mediation, results from closer contemplation and carries them back to the unity of their concept.

First, then, the attitude of Repulsion and Attraction (which as yet are only relative) already implies that each presupposes itself, and in so doing relates itself only to itself.

Relative Repulsion is the mutual repelling of the many given Ones, which are supposed to exist immediately. But that there are many Ones, this assertion is just Repulsion; and any presupposition of Repulsion is only its own positing. Further, the determination of Being, which might belong to the Ones apart from the fact that they are posited—a determination which would give them pre-existence—also belongs to Repulsion. It is by means of Repulsion that the Ones manifest and preserve themselves as Ones, and have Being as such. Their Being is Repulsion itself, which thus is not relative to any other Determinate Being, but stands related only to itself.

Attraction is the positing of the One as such, of the real One, in opposition to which the Many are determined, in their Determinate Being, as only of ideal nature, and as vanishing. And thus Attraction also presupposes itself, namely in the determination of the other Ones to be of ideal nature, which elsewhere are supposed to be repellent for-themselves and for-others, and therefore also for whatever attracts. They gain ideality as opposed to this determination of repulsion, not in the end and only through their relation to Attraction; rather it is presupposed, and is the self-existent ideality of the Ones, since, as Ones (and here we include the One which is imagined as attracting), they are undistinguished one from another, they are one and the same.

If then the two determinations thus presuppose themselves, each for itself this further means that each contains the other as moment. Self-presupposition is the positing of self in One as its own negative,—here we have Repulsion; and that which is presupposed is the same as that which presupposes,—here we have Attraction. The fact that each is in itself mere moment constitutes the transition of one into the other, negating itself in itself and positing itself as its own Other. The One as such is self-transcendence, and its only meaning is to posit itself as its Other, the Many; and the Many similarly is only collapse upon itself,—it posits itself as its Other, the One, and in it alone relates itself to itself; so that each continues itself in its Other; and thus we have already here self-transcendence (Repulsion) and self-positing-as-One (Attraction) present unseparated. That which is posited in a Repulsion and Attraction which are relative (that is, which presuppose immediate Ones existing determinately) is this, that each is in itself its own negation, and therefore the continuation of its self into its Other. The Repulsion of Ones having Determinate Being is the self-preservation of each one by means of the mutual repulsion of the others: thus (1) the other Ones are negated in it; this is the aspect of its Determinate Being, or Being-for-Other; this therefore is Attraction as being the ideality of the Ones;—and (2) the One is in itself, without relation to others; but “in-itself” passed long ago into “Being-for-self,” and further the One in itself is by its determination that Becoming of Many.—The Attraction of determinately existing Ones is their ideality, and is the positing of the One, wherein as negation and production of the One it thus transcends itself, and, as positing of the One, is its own negative, or Repulsion.

Thus Being-for-Self has completed its development and has reached its result. The One as in infinite self-relation (infinite because it is the posited negation of negation) is mediation: itself, as its own absolute (that is, abstract) otherness (the Many), it repulses from itself; and, entering into a negative relation to this its not-Being, it transcends it and thus again is self-relation; and One is no more than this Becoming, in which the determination has vanished which states it to be Beginning, that is, posits it as immediate and having Being, and, further, as reconstituting itself, in the result, as One, a One equally immediate and exclusive. The process, which is the One, everywhere posits and contains it only as transcended. This transcendence first is determined only as relative, as a relation to other Determinate Being, which thus itself is a different Repulsion and Attraction; next, it shows itself as passing over into the infinite relation of mediation through negation of the external relations of Beings immediate and Determinate, having for result this Becoming which, through the instability of its moments, is the collapse, or rather self-gathering, into simple immediacy. Having acquired this new determination, this Being is Quantity.

If we review in brief the moments of this transition of Quality into Quantity, the qualitative has for fundamental determination Being and immediacy, where limit and determinateness are identical with the being of the Something in such a manner that, these being altered, the Something itself vanishes. Being posited in this manner it is determined as finite. By virtue of the immediacy of this unity, in which distinction has disappeared, though it is in itself present in the unity of Being and Nothing, the distinction becomes Otherness in general and is outside this unity. This relation to Other is in contradiction to the immediacy in which qualitative determinateness is self-relation. This Otherness transcends itself in the infinity of Being-for-Self; by the latter the distinction, which it has in and by itself in the negation of negation, is made real into the stages of One and Many and their relations: the qualitative is elevated to the unity which is true because it is no longer immediate but posited as in harmony with itself.

This Unity then is (α) Being, purely affirmative, that is, immediacy mediated with itself through the negation of negation; Being is posited as the unity which runs through each determinateness, through limit and so on; these are posited in it as transcended:

(β) Determinate Being; according to such a determination it is negation or determinateness as moment of affirmative Being; but it is such no longer as immediate, but as intro-reflected, related not to Other but to Self; it is Determinedness-in-itself, or One; Otherness as such is itself Being-for-Self:

(γ) Being-for-Self, as this Being which endures through determinateness; here One and Determinedness-in-itself are themselves posited as transcended. The One is now determined as having passed beyond itself and as Unity; and hence the One, the absolutely determinate Limit, is posited as the Limit which is not Limit, and as indifferent to Being although it is posited in it.

Attraction and Repulsion are generally, of course, regarded as forces. This determination, and the relations connected with it, should be compared with the concepts which they have been found to be.—In the view mentioned they are regarded as independent, as if they were not related to one another by their own nature; that is, they are taken not as two moments passing each into its opposite, but rather as standing one against the other in fixed opposition. It is further imagined that they meet in a third element, namely, matter; but this takes place in such a manner that this unification is not held to be their truth: rather, each is a first principle and is for itself, while matter and its determinations are posited and created by them. When it is said that matter contains the forces, this unity is intended to mean a connexion, while at the same time they are presupposed as having independent self-existence.

Kant, as we know, has constructed matter from Repulsive and Attractive force, or, at least, he has erected (as he calls it) the metaphysical elements of this construction.—It will not be without some interest to cast light upon this construction. This metaphysical exposition of an object which, not only itself but also in its determinations, appeared to belong only to experience, is remarkable: first, because, as an essay of the concept, it furnished at least the impulse to the modern philosophy of nature, which does not make nature as a sense-datum the foundation of science, but proceeds from the absolute concept to the cognition of its determinations; next, because often a halt is made at this Kantian construction, and it is taken as the philosophic beginning and foundation of physics.

Now an existent such as empirical matter is not the object of Logic any more than are Space and the determinations of Space. But Repulsive and Attractive force, too, in so far as they are looked on as forces of empirical matter, are based upon the pure determinations of One and Many here considered, and on those relations of them which (because these names were most obvious) I have called Repulsion and Attraction.

Closely considered, Kant’s method in the deduction of matter from these forces, which he calls a construction, does not deserve this name, unless indeed every kind of reflection, even analytical reflection, be called a construction; and, indeed, later natural philosophers have given the name of construction to the shallowest reasoning and the most baseless concoction of arbitrary imagination and thoughtless reflection—especially if it employed and everywhere displayed the so-called factors of attractive and repulsive force.

For at bottom Kant’s method is analytical and not constructive. He presupposes the idea of matter, and next asks what forces are necessary to maintain its determinations thus assumed. Thus first he postulates Attractive force, because really matter cannot exist through Repulsion alone without Attraction (Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, pp. 53 et seq.). Next he derives Repulsion, too, from matter, and gives as reason the fact that we imagine matter as impenetrable, since it presents itself under this determination to the sense of feeling, by which it manifests itself to us. Consequently (he proceeds) Repulsion is immediately thought in the concept of matter, since it is immediately given therein; whereas Attraction is syllogistically added to it. But these syllogisms, too, are based on what has just been said, namely, that matter having only repulsive force does not exhaust our image of matter.—It is evident that this is the procedure of knowledge reflecting on experience, which first perceives determinations in the phenomenon, next makes them the basis, and finally assumes for their so-called explanation corresponding fundamental materials or forces which are supposed to produce these determinations of the phenomenon.

In view of the different fashion in which repulsive and attractive force are thus discovered by cognition in matter, Kant further observes that attractive force really equally belongs to the concept of matter, “although it is not contained in it.” Kant lays emphasis on this last expression. Yet it is not clear what the distinction may be; for a determination which belongs to the concept of a thing must be truly contained in it.

What causes the difficulty and gives rise to this vain subterfuge is that Kant from the beginning arbitrarily counts impenetrability alone as proper to the concept of matter; this, he says, we perceive by the senses, and therefore repulsive force—the repelling of other from one—is immediately given. But if he goes on to say that matter cannot exist without attraction, then this assertion is based on a view of matter which is taken from experience; perception therefore must yield us the determination of attraction, too. Indeed it is easy to perceive that beyond its Being-for-Self, which transcends Being-for-Other (or offers resistance), matter contains a relation of entities which are for themselves, and thus has spatial extension and cohesion, which latter, in the qualities of rigidity and solidity, is very strong. Explanatory physics demands, in order (for instance) that a body may be torn apart, a force which must be stronger than the mutual attraction of the parts of that body. And from this truth reflection can just as immediately deduce attractive force, or take it as given, as it did with repulsive force. Indeed, if we consider Kant’s syllogisms from which he tries to deduce attractive force (the proof of the proposition, that the possibility of matter demands attractive force as a second basic power, loc. cit.), they are found to contain nothing save that mere repulsion would not make matter spatial. When matter is presupposed as filling space, continuity is ascribed to it, and the basis of continuity is supposed to be attractive force.

But though this so-called construction of matter would at most have value as analysis (a value diminished by the impure exposition), still the fundamental thought which derives cognition of matter from these two opposed determinations as from its basic forces, must always be highly esteemed. Kant chiefly is at pains to banish the vulgar and mechanistic idea which stops at the one determination, namely, impenetrability, or self-existent puncticity, and makes into something external the opposite determination, the relation of matter in itself or in other matters, which in turn are regarded as separate Ones; a manner of presentation which, as Kant says, will allow no other motive forces except pressure and impact, that is, action from without. This externality of cognition always presupposes motion as already existing externally in matter, and never thinks of taking it as something internal and of comprehending it in matter, which thus is assumed in itself as motionless and inert. This point of view looks only on common mechanics, and not on immanent and free movement.—It is true that Kant transcends this externality in so far as Attraction (or the relation of one matter to another in so far as they are taken as separate, or else of matter in general, in its existence beyond itself) is with him made into a force of matter itself; still, on the other side, his two basic forces remain, within matter, opposed to one another, external and independent.

The independent distinction between these two factors, attributed to them from the point of view of this cognition, was void, and equally void every other distinction must show itself to be if it is made with regard to the determination of their content as something which ought to be fixed; for, as they were considered above in their truth, they are no more than moments, which pass into one another.—I will consider these further determinations of distinction as indicated by Kant.

Kant determines attractive force as a penetrative force, by means of which one piece of matter can act immediately upon parts of another even beyond the surface of contact; repulsive force, on the other hand, he determines as a superficial force, by means of which parts of matter can act upon one another only at the common surface of contact. The reason cited for this determination of the latter is as follows:—“Parts in contact with one another limit each the sphere of activity of the other, and repulsive force cannot move any more distant part except through those parts which intervene; an immediate action of one part of matter on another, passing straight through these, by means of forces of expansion (that is, repulsive forces), is impossible.” (See ibid. Erklärung und Zusätze, p. 67.)

And here the reader must remember this: when “nearer” and “more distant” parts of matter are assumed, the distinction would also arise with regard to Attraction, in this way, that though one atom might act upon another, yet a third and more distant atom (between which and the attracting atom the “other” atom would be) would next enter into the sphere of attraction of the intermediate (and more proximate) atom; thus the action of the first atom on the third would not be immediate and simple. Thus mediated action would result for attractive as well as for repulsive force. Further, true penetration of attractive force would then have to consist solely in the fact that all parts of matter had power to attract in themselves, and not in the passivity of a certain number and the activity of just one atom.—With immediate regard to repulsive force itself we may remark that in the passage quoted there occur “parts in contact with one another”; which means a homogeneity and continuity of finished matter not admitting of repulsion. But this homogeneity of matter, where parts, no longer separated by void, are in contact with one another, already presupposes the transcendence of repulsive force; according to the sense-image of Repulsion which governs here, parts in contact must be taken as such as do not repel one another. The tautological conclusion therefore is that where the not-being of Repulsion is assumed there can take place no Repulsion. But nothing further follows from this by way of a determination of repulsive force.—If, however, it is considered that parts in contact touch one another only in so far as they still keep one another apart, then repulsive force no longer resides merely in the surface of matter, but within that sphere which was intended to be the sphere of Attraction only.

Next Kant assumes the determination that “through attractive force matter occupies but does not fill space” (ibid.); “and since matter does not through this force fill space, it can act across empty space, since there is no intervening matter which could limit it.”—This distinction resembles the one mentioned above, where a determination is supposed to belong to but not to be contained in the concept of a thing; similarly here matter is to occupy space but not to fill it. It is then Repulsion (if we remain at its first determination) by means of which the Ones repulse one another and are related to one another only negatively, that is, here, across empty space. But here it is attractive force which keeps space empty; it does not fill space by means of the relation between atoms which here prevails; that is, it keeps the atoms in a negative relation to one another.—Thus Kant is unconsciously brought to do what is implicit in the nature of the case, that is, he ascribes to attractive force precisely what he ascribed (according to the first determination) to the opposite force. While the distinction between the two forces was being laid down, one had passed over into the other.—By Repulsion, on the other hand, matter is intended to fill space, that is, through it the empty space left over by Attractive force is intended to vanish. And in fact, in cancelling empty space it cancels the negative relation of the atoms or Ones, that is, the Repulsion which takes place between them; in other words, Repulsion is determined as its own opposite.

Thus the distinctions are blurred; and to this is added the confusion arising from the fact that (as was observed at the beginning) Kant’s exposition of the opposed forces is analytic, and in the whole course thereof matter, which should be derived first from its elements, appears fully and completely constituted. In the definition of superficial and of penetrative force both are taken as motive forces, by means of which matter can act in one or in the other manner.—They are thus here set out as forces by which matter is not created but, being already given, is only moved. But in so far as we speak of forces by means of which matter acts upon matter, or moves itself, this is a very different thing from the determination and relation which they were supposed to have as moments of matter.

In a further determination centripetal and centrifugal force form the same antithesis as attractive and repulsive force. The former seem to offer an essential distinction, since in their sphere one One, or centre, is fixed, relatively to which other Ones behave as not self-existent, so that the distinction between the forces may be connected to this presupposed distinction between a central One and others which are not independent relatively to it. But in so far as they are used for explanation, for which purpose (like Repulsive and Attractive force) they are taken to be in inverse quantitative ratio, one increasing as the other decreases, the phenomenon of movement and its inequality, which they are accepted in order to explain, is supposed only to result from them. However, it is only necessary to examine any exposition of a phenomenon, like the unequal velocity of a planet in its orbit around the central body, to see that, when based on the opposition of these forces, it is full of confusion and that it is impossible to disentangle the magnitudes; so that the one, which in the exposition is assumed to be diminishing, may just as well be assumed to increase, and conversely. To make this evident would require an exposition more lengthy than can be offered here; what is essential occurs below, under the category of Inverse Ratio.