Science of Logic
I. General Classification of Being
Section summary
A provisional outline of Book One. Being is first opposed to Essence; within itself it unfolds as Quality, Quantity and Measure; and as immediate it is the beginning. Hegel defends putting quality before quantity, against the usual order, since quantity is quality that has become indifferent to the thing. He notes how his scheme departs from Kant’s table of categories: Kant’s relational categories belong to Essence, and modality concerns only the relation of content to thought.
Thirdly, this preliminary classification being rejected, it is abstract indeterminateness and immediacy, and in this it must be the Beginning.
According to the first determination Being distinguishes itself from Essence because in its further development it shows itself in its totality to be no more than one sphere of the concept, opposing to it by way of moment another sphere.
According to the second determination it is the sphere wherein fall the determinations and the whole movement of its reflection. Being here will posit itself in the following three determinations:
II. as Determinateness transcended: Magnitude, Quantity; III. as Quantity qualitatively determined: Measure.
At this point this classification is a preliminary enumeration, as was pointed out in the Introduction concerning these classifications generally; their determinations must arise from the movement of Being itself, and must thereby define and justify themselves. We have nothing here to remark on the divergence of this classification from the ordinary enumeration of categories, namely as Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality (which same, we may note in passing, are intended by Kant himself merely as titles for his categories, though in fact they are categories themselves, only of a more universal nature); the reason why we make this observation is that the whole exposition will show the divergence from the common order and meaning of the categories.
This remark only might perhaps be made, that elsewhere Quantity is enumerated before Quality, and this—as most other things—without reason. It has already been shown that the Beginning is made with Being as such, that is, qualitative Being. And if Quality be compared with Quantity it is evident that the former is by its nature prior. For Quantity is Quality which has already become negative: Magnitude is Determinateness no longer identical with Being, but already differentiated from it; it is Quality transcended and rendered indifferent. It comprehends the mutability of Being, while the matter itself, Being, of which it is a determination, suffers no mutation through it. The qualitative determinateness, on the other hand, is one with its Being; it neither falls short of nor exceeds it, but is its immediate limitedness. Quality therefore is immediate determinateness, and as such is prior and must constitute the Beginning.
Measure is a relation, though not Relation in general, but a definite relation—that of Quality to Quantity; the categories which Kant includes under Relation will be treated in quite another place. Measure may also, if you will, be regarded as a kind of Modality; but since with Kant modality is no longer meant to constitute a determination of the content, but is merely intended to concern the relation of the content to thought (that is, to the subjective element), this is an entirely heterogeneous relation which does not belong to this place.
The third determination of Being falls under the heading of Quality because, as abstract immediacy, it reduces itself to an individual determinateness as opposed to other such within its sphere.