III.2.2. Chemism

In the whole of Objectivity, Chemism constitutes the moment of Judgment, of difference and Process which have become objective. It begins with determinateness and positedness, and at the same time the Chemical Object is objective totality; hence its immediate course is simple, and is completely determined by its presupposition.

The Chemical is distinct from the Mechanical Object because the latter is a totality which is indifferent to determinateness; with the Chemical Object its determinateness, and hence relation to other and the way and manner of this relation, are part of its nature.—At the same time this determinateness is essentially also particularization, that is, it is absorbed into universality; in this manner it is principle—universal determinateness, and not only determinateness of the one individual Object, but of the other too. Consequently in the Object its Notion distinguishes itself (1) as the inner totality of both determinatenesses, and (2) as the determinateness which constitutes the nature of the individual Object in its externality and existence. In this manner it is in itself the whole of the Notion: it therefore has in itself the necessity and impulse to transcend its opposite and one-sided persistence, and to make itself in Determinate Being the real Whole which it is already in its Notion.

It may be observed with regard to the expression “Chemism” for the relation of the difference (Differenz) of Objectivity as it has here turned out, that it must not be understood to mean that this relation is only found in that form of elementary nature which has the name of so-called Chemism proper. The meteorological relation already must be looked upon as a Process, the parts of which have the nature of physical rather than of chemical elements. In life the relation of the sexes falls under this schema; and it constitutes also the formal foundation of the spiritual relations of love, friendship, and so on.

If the Chemical Object is further considered as an independent totality in general, then it is intro-reflected and to this extent distinct from its reflectedness outwards, that is, an indifferent base and an individual which is not yet determined as different: even a person is such a merely self-relating base. But this immanent determinateness which constitutes its difference is, first, intro-reflected in such a manner that this withdrawal of the relation outwards is only formal abstract universality: thus the relation outwards is determination of its immediacy and existence. From this side it does not pass back in itself into individual totality; and the negative unity has the two moments of its opposition in two particular Objects. Accordingly a Chemical Object is not intelligible out of itself, and the being of one is the being of another.—Secondly, however, the determinateness is intro-reflected absolutely, and is the concrete moment of the individual Notion of the whole, which Notion is the general essence or real genus of the particular Object. Thus the Chemical Object is the contradiction of its immediate positedness and its immanent individual Notion; it is a tendency to transcend the determinateness of its Determinate Being and to give existence to the objective totality of the Notion. Consequently it is dependent itself, but in such a manner that it is on the other hand subject to tension through its own nature and that it begins the Process by self-determination.

1. The Process begins with the presupposition that the Objects, however great the tension of each against itself, have an equal tension, for this very reason, against one another: this relation is called their affinity. Each, by virtue of its Notion, stands in contradiction with the one-sidedness of its own existence and tends to cancel it; and this fact immediately implies that each tends to cancel the one-sidedness of the other, and, by means of this reciprocal compensation and connexion, to posit the reality in conformity with the Notion, which contains both moments.

In so far as each is posited as self-contradictory and self-transcending in itself, they are held only by external force in separation from each other, neither completing the other. Now the mean through which these extremes are bound together is, first, the self-existent nature of both, the whole Notion which holds both within itself. But secondly, since both are opposed to each other in Existence, their absolute unity is also an element which still is formal and exists in distinction from them—the element of communication, through which they enter into external community with each other. The real distinction belongs to the extremes, and hence this mean is only their abstract neutrality or real possibility; it is, so to speak, the theoretic element of the existence of Chemical Objects, of their Process and its result. In matter the function of this medium belongs to water; in spirit, in so far as it contains an analogue to such a relation, the symbol in general, and more precisely language, must be regarded as this analogue.

In this element the relation between the Objects, as bare communication, is (1) a quiet coincidence, but also and equally (2) a negative attitude, since the concrete Notion which is their nature is, in communication, posited into reality, so that the real distinctions of the Objects are reduced into the unity of this Notion. Thus their former independent determinateness is transcended in the unification conformable to that Notion which is one and the same in both; their opposition and tension are blunted, and so the process of tending achieves its quiet neutrality in this mutual completion.

In this manner the Process is extinguished; the contradiction between Notion and Reality being removed, the extremes of the Syllogism have lost their opposition, and simultaneously have ceased to be extremes both against each other and against the mean. The product is neutral, that is, it is a product in which the ingredients (which no longer can be called Objects) have lost their tension and, consequently, those properties which belonged to them while they were in a state of tension, while the capacity for this former independence and tension survives. For the negative unity of the neutral proceeds from a presupposed difference; the determinateness of the Chemical Object is identical with its objectivity, it is original. The Process which has been considered transcends this difference in a merely immediate manner; consequently the determinateness as yet does not exist as absolutely intro-reflected, and the product of the Process is only a formal unity,

2. Now in this product the tension of opposition, and negative unity as activity of the Process, are extinct. Nevertheless, since this unity is essential to the Notion, and also has itself come into existence, it is still present, but has passed outside the neutral Object. The Process does not kindle itself again spontaneously, in so far as it had the difference only for presupposition and did not itself posit it.—This negativity, which is independent outside the Object, the existence of abstract individuality whose Being-for-Self has its reality in the indifferent Object, now contains its own tension against its abstraction and is an inwardly restless activity which consumes itself and turns outwards. It relates itself immediately to the Object, whose quiet neutrality is the real possibility of its opposite; the Object is now the mean of the neutrality which before was merely formal; now it is concrete and determinate within itself.

Taken more closely the immediate relation of the extreme of the negative unity to the Object is, that the latter is determined by it and thus is sundered. This disruption may now be regarded as the reconstitution of the opposition of tense Objects with which Chemism began. But this determination does not constitute the other extreme of the Syllogism, but belongs to the immediate relation of the differentiating principle to the mean, in which the latter gives itself its immediate reality: it is that determinateness which in the Disjunctive Syllogism belongs to the mean apart from the fact that it is the general nature of the object, whereby the latter is objective universality as well as determinate particularity. The other extreme of the Syllogism stands opposed to the external independent extreme of individuality; consequently it is the equally independent extreme of universality; and hence the disruption which the real neutrality of the mean experiences in it is that it is analysed into moments which are not different but indifferent to each other. Accordingly these moments are (1) the abstract indifferent base and (2) its animating principle, which, through its separation from the base, also attains the form of indifferent objectivity.

This Disjunctive Syllogism is the totality of Chemism. Here the same objective whole is represented as independent negative unity, and next, in the mean, as real unity;—finally Chemical Reality is represented, resolved into its abstract moments. In these last the determinateness has reached its intro-Reflection not in an Other (as it did in the neutral), but has in itself passed back into its abstraction, and is an element determined originally.

3. Accordingly, these elementary Objects are set free from chemical tension; in them, the original foundation of that presupposition with which Chemism began has been posited by means of the Real Process. Now further, first, their internal determinateness as such is essentially the contradiction between their simple indifferent persistence and themselves as determinateness, and is the outward impulse which sunders itself and posits a tension in their Object and in an Other, in order that it may have an entity against which it may take up a relation of difference and may neutralize itself and give existent reality to its simple determinateness; and, in so far, Chemism has now passed back to its beginning, in which Objects in reciprocal tension seek each other and then unite into a neutral entity through a formal and external mean. Secondly, Chemism transcends itself through this regress into its Notion, and has passed over into a higher sphere.

Even ordinary chemistry exhibits examples of chemical changes in which a body (for example) assigns a higher oxidation to one part of its mass and thereby reduces another part to a lower degree of oxidation, so that now only can it enter into a neutral combination with some other different body which is approached to it—a combination to which it would not have been susceptible in the first and immediate degree. What here happens is this: the Object does not relate itself to another according to some immediate and one-sided determinateness, but, in accordance with the inner totality of an original relatedness, posits the presupposition which it requires for a real relation; thus it gives to itself a mean through which it binds together its Notion with its reality. It is individuality determined in and for itself, the concrete Notion as principle of disjunction into extremes, the reuniting of which is the activity of the same negative principle, which thus returns to its first determination, but returns to it having been objectivated.

Chemism itself is the first negation of indifferent objectivity, and of the externality of determinateness; accordingly Chemism is still infected with the immediate independence of the Object and with externality. Consequently for itself it is not yet that totality of self-determination which emerges from it, or rather in which it transcends itself.—The three Syllogisms which have resulted constitute its totality. The first has formal neutrality for middle, and the Objects in a state of tension for extremes; the second has for middle the product of the first, that is, real neutrality, and for extremes the sundering activity and its product, the indifferent element; while the third is the self-realizing Notion, which posits for itself the presupposition by which the process of its realization is conditioned,—a Syllogism which has the universal for its Essence. But chemical objectivity is subject to the determination of an immediacy and externality, and these cause these Syllogisms as yet to fall apart. The first Process, whose product is the neutrality of the Objects in tension, is extinguished in its product, and it is kindled again only by a differentiation which is added from without: it is conditioned by an immediate presupposition, and it exhausts itself in it.—Similarly the segregation of the different extremes from the neutral, and likewise their analysis into their abstract elements, must start from conditions and stimulants to activity which are added externally. But the two essential moments of the Process—first neutralization and next separation and reduction—are connected in one and the same Process, and the union of the extremes by loosening of the tension between them is also a separation into such elements; and, in so far, and also by reason of the externality which is still the foundation, these two constitute two different sides. The extremes which are segregated in the same Process are Objects or kinds of matter different from those which unite in it; and in so far as the former emerge again different they must turn outwards. Their new neutralization is a different Process from that which took place in the first Process.

These various Processes, however, which have proved to be necessary, are as many stages through which externality and conditionedness are transcended; whence the Notion emerges as a totality determined in and for itself and not conditioned by externality. In the first process the mutual externality of the different extremes which constitute the whole of reality, or the distinctness of the determinate Notion which is in itself from its existent determinateness, transcends itself; in the second, the externality of the real unity—the union as merely neutral—is transcended. (Considered more closely, the formal activity first transcends itself in equally formal bases or indifferent determinatenesses, whose inner Notion now is absolute activity which has passed into itself, as realizing itself in itself; that is, as an activity which posits within itself the determinate distinctions and constitutes itself as real unity by means of this mediation—a mediation which accordingly is the self-mediation of the Notion, its self-determination and, with respect to its intro-Reflection thence, a process of immanent presupposition.) The third Syllogism is on the one hand a reconstruction of the preceding Processes; on the other hand it cancels the last remaining moment of indifferent bases—the wholly abstract external immediacy, which in this manner becomes a proper moment of the self-mediation of the Notion. The Notion thus has transcended as external all the moments of its objective Determinate Being and has posited them into its simple unity; it is thus completely set free from objective externality, to which it relates itself only as to an unessential reality. This objective and free Notion is the End.