III.1.2. The Judgment

The Judgment is the determinateness of the Notion posited in the Notion itself. The determinations of the Notion (or, which is the same thing, as we saw, the determinate Notions) have already been considered by themselves; but this consideration was rather a subjective reflection or subjective abstraction. But the Notion is itself this process of abstraction: the opposing of its determinations is its own determining. The Judgment is this positing of determinate Notions through the Notion itself.

Judgment is a different function from the forming of Notions (or rather, it is the other function of the Notion), in so far as it is the self-determination of the Notion; and the further progress of the Judgment into the variety of Judgments is this progressive determination of the Notion. What determinate Notions there are, and how these its determinations yield themselves necessarily, will have to be shown in the Judgment.

Consequently the Judgment may be called the next realization of the Notion, in so far as reality designates as determinate Being in general an entry into existence. More precisely the nature of this realization has appeared to be this, that, first, the moments of the Notion, by virtue of its intro-Reflection or its Individuality, are independent totalities, while, secondly, the unity of the Notion exists as their relation. The intro-reflected determinations are determinate totalities as essentially in their indifferent and unrelated persistence, as in reciprocal mediation. The act of determining, itself, is totality only in so far as it contains these totalities and their relation. This totality is the Judgment.—First, then, it contains the two independent terms which are called subject and predicate. It is not yet properly possible to say what each is: they are as yet indeterminate, for they are to be determined only by the Judgment. In so far as the Judgment is the Notion as determinate Notion, only this general mutual distinction is present, that the Judgment contains the determinate Notion as against that which still remains indeterminate. At this point, then, subject may be taken against predicate as individual against universal, or again as particular, in so far as they are opposed to each other at all as more determinate and more universal.

It is consequently fit and necessary to have these names of subject and predicate for the determinations of the Judgment; as names they are something indeterminate which still awaits its determination; consequently they are not more than names. Determinations of the Notion themselves could not be used for the two sides of the Judgment, partly for this reason, and partly (and more particularly) because the nature of the determination of the Notion reveals itself as being not abstract and fixed, but as containing, and positing in itself, its opposites. The sides of the Judgment are themselves Notions (that is, the totality of its determinations); they must thus pass through the whole scale of the latter and show them in themselves, whether in abstract or concrete form. Now, in order to fix in a general manner the sides of the Judgment during this change of their determination, names, which remain unchanged, will serve best.—But the name stands opposed to the fact or Notion; this distinction occurs in the Judgment as such. The subject in general expresses the determinate and therefore rather that which is immediately; the predicate expresses the universal (namely the essence or the Notion); and thus the subject as such is at first only a kind of name; for it is only the predicate (which contains Being within the meaning of the Notion) that expresses what it is. When it is asked what this is, or what kind of a plant this is and so on, the name alone often is meant, and no other kind of Being, and when the enquirer has learnt this he is satisfied and knows what the thing is. This is Being within the meaning of the subject. But only the predicate furnishes the Notion, or at least the essence and the universal in general, and it is this that is asked for within the meaning of the Judgment.—As subject of a Judgment, therefore, God, Spirit, Nature, or whatever else it may be, is only the name: what such a subject is according to the Notion is given only in the predicate. If the predicate proper to such a subject is looked for, then a Notion must already be implied to furnish a ground for judgment; but it is only the predicate that expresses this Notion. Really therefore the mere image constitutes the presupposed significance of the subject and leads to a declaration of name; and what is or is not understood by a name is a historical fact, and contingent. Many controversies whether a predicate is proper or not to a certain subject are therefore no more than verbal disputes, because they begin from this form; that which lies at the bottom (subiectum, ὑποκείμενον) is as yet no more than the name.

Secondly, it remains to consider more closely how the relation of subject and predicate in the Judgment is determined, and how they themselves are, in the first instance, determined by it. The judgment has for its sides totalities, which here exist as essentially independent. The unity of the Notion is consequently only a relation of independent terms; it is not yet the concrete or completed unity, which has returned to itself out of this reality, but a unity outside of which they persist as extremes which are not transcended in it.—Now the consideration of the Judgment may begin from the original unity of the Notion or from the independence of the extremes. The Judgment is the self-diremption of the Notion: consequently this unity is the foundation from which it is considered in its true objectivity. In so far the Judgment is the original division (ursprüngliche Teilung) of the original One: the word “Judgment” (Urteil) thus refers to what it is in and for itself. That side of externality, on the other hand, by which the Notion is in the Judgment in the shape of appearance (since its moments have therein attained independence) is favoured rather by imagination.

In this subjective consideration, then, subject and predicate are each considered as complete by itself apart from the other: the subject as an object which would exist even if it had not this predicate; and the predicate as a general determination which would exist even if it did not belong to this subject. Accordingly judging is associated with the reflection whether this or that predicate, which is in the mind, can and ought to be attached to the subject, which exists externally by itself; and judging itself consists in this, that only by this process a predicate is connected with the subject in such a manner that, if this connexion did not take place, each for itself would still remain what it is—the one an existing subject and the other an image in the mind.—But the predicate which is attached to the subject ought also to be proper to it, that is, to be identical with it in and for itself. Through this meaning of attachment, the subjective significance of judging and the indifferent external persistence of subject and predicate are transcended again. “This action is good”: the copula denotes that the predicate belongs to the Being of the subject, and is not connected with it merely externally. In the grammatical sense this subjective relation, in which a beginning is made from the indifferent externality of subject and predicate, has complete validity; for the terms which here are externally connected are words.—It may be mentioned in this context that a sentence has a subject and predicate in the grammatical sense, but is not necessarily a Judgment for that reason. A Judgment requires that predicate should be related to subject as the determinations of the Notion are related, that is, as universal to particular or individual. If that which is predicated of the individual subject itself only expresses an individual fact, then this is a mere sentence. Thus it is a sentence, and not a Judgment, that Aristotle died in his seventy-third year and in the fourth year of the 115th Olympiad. The sentence would contain an element of Judgment only if one of the circumstances—the time of death or the age of this philosopher—had been questioned, and the numbers stated were nevertheless for some reason upheld. For in this case they would be taken as something universal, as time having some other filling and persisting apart from that determinate content, the death of Aristotle, or even as empty time. Thus the news “My friend N. has died” is a sentence, and would be a Judgment only if the question were whether he is really dead or only appears to be.

Judgment is usually explained as being the connexion of two Notions, and for the external copula the indefinite expression of connexion may be allowed; and it may also be allowed that the connected terms are at least supposed to be Notions. But otherwise this explanation is most superficial: for instance in the Disjunctive Judgment more than two so-called Notions are connected; and, quite apart from this, the explanation is much better than the fact; for not Notions are meant here, hardly even determinations of the Notion, but properly only determinations of imagination. It was observed under Notion in general and under Determinate Notion that what commonly is designated as such in no way deserves the name of Notion; whence then could Notions be derived in the Judgment?—In that explanation, above all, the essential part of the Judgment, namely the distinction of its determinations, is passed over; and the relation of the Judgment to the Notion is even less regarded.

With regard to the further determination of subject and predicate, it has been mentioned that they have really to receive their determination only in the Judgment. In so far as the Judgment is the posited determinateness of the Notion, it contains the distinctions stated, immediately and abstractly, as Individuality and Universality.—But, in so far as it is the Determinate Being or otherness of the Notion (which has not yet reconstituted itself into that unity in which it is as Notion), in so far notionless determinateness emerges—the opposition between Being and Reflection or Being-in-Self. But the Notion constitutes the essential ground of Judgment, and therefore these determinations are indifferent at least in this way, that, while one belongs to the subject and the other to the predicate, this relation also holds in a converse manner. The subject as the individual appears at first as that which is or is-for-self according to the determinate determinateness of the individual—as an actual object even although it is object only of imagination,—for instance, as courage, law, harmony, and so forth—about which a judgment is made. The predicate, on the other hand, as the universal, appears as this reflection about the object, or rather as its intro-Reflection, which passes beyond that immediacy and transcends the determinatenesses as merely being: it appears as the object’s Being-in-Self.—In so far a beginning is made from the individual as first and immediate, and it is raised into universality by the Judgment; while conversely the universal which is merely in-itself descends into Determinate Being in the individual, or becomes something which is-for-self.

This significance of the Judgment must be taken as its objective meaning and also as the true one among the earlier forms of transition. What has Being becomes and changes; Finite is submerged in Infinite; the Existent emerges out of its Ground into Appearance and perishes; Accident manifests the riches of Substance and its power; in Being there is transition into other and in Essence showing in an other, wherein the necessary relation reveals itself. This transition and showing have now passed over into the original dividing of the Notion, which, leading back the Individual into the Being-in-Self of its Universality, equally determines the Universal as actual. That Individuality is posited in its intro-Reflection, and the Universal as determinate—these two processes are one and the same.

But this must be added to this objective significance, that the distinctions which have been mentioned, when they reemerge in the determinateness of the Notion, are at the same time posited as only appearing, that is, as not fixed, but as applying to one determination of Notion as well as to the other. Consequently the subject may equally well be taken as Being-in-Self, and the predicate as Determinate Being. Thus the subject without predicate is like the Thing without Properties, the Thing-in-itself, in Appearance,—it is an empty and indeterminate Ground; thus it is the Notion in itself, which receives a distinction and determinateness only in the predicate; the latter then constitutes the side of Determinate Being in the subject. By virtue of this determinate universality the subject stands in relation to the outside, is open to the influence of other things, and thus enters into activity as against them. That which exists passes out of its Being-in-Self into the universal element of connexion and relations, into the negative relations and reciprocal play of actuality; this is a continuation of the Individual into others, that is, Universality.

The identity which has just been demonstrated—namely, that the determination of the subject also applies to the predicate, and conversely—does not belong to this consideration alone; it is not only in itself but is also posited in the Judgment; for the Judgment is the relation of the two, and the copula expresses that the subject is the predicate. The subject is determinate determinateness, and the predicate is this its posited determinateness; the subject is determinate only in its predicate, or, it is subject in it alone; it has returned to itself in the predicate, and is in it the universal.—But in so far as the subject is the independent, this identity has the relation that the predicate has no independent persistence for itself, but only in the subject, in which it inheres. In so far as now the predicate is distinguished from the subject, it is only an isolated determinateness of the latter, only one among its properties; while the subject itself is the concrete, the totality of those manifold determinatenesses, of which the predicate contains one; it is the universal.—But on the other hand the predicate too is independent universality, and the subject conversely is only one of its determinations. To this extent the predicate subsumes the subject: neither individuality nor particularity is for itself, but each has its essence and its substance in the universal. The predicate expresses the subject in its Notion; individual and particular are contingent determinations of it, and it is their absolute possibility. When in subsumption an external relation of subject and predicate is present before the mind, and the subject is imagined as independent, then the subsumption refers to the above-mentioned subjective judging in which the beginning is made from the independence of both. Thus subsumption is no more than the application of the universal to a particular or individual, which, according to an indeterminate imagination, is posited under it, as being of inferior quality.

The identity of subject and predicate has been considered in such a way that (a) one determination of the Notion belongs to the former and the other to the latter, and (b) the converse happens,—thus the identity still is one which is in itself \ and because of the independent distinctness of the two sides of the Judgment, their posited relation also has these two sides, which at this point are different. But really distinctionless identity constitutes the true relation of subject to predicate. The determination of the Notion is essentially itself relation, for it is a universal; hence their relation itself has the same determinations that subject and predicate have. The relation is universal, for it is the positive identity of these two, subject and predicate; but it is also determinate, for the determinateness of the predicate is that of the subject; and further it is also individual, since in it the independent extremes (as being in their negative unity) are transcended.—But in the Judgment this identity has not yet been posited; the copula exists as the relation (as yet indeterminate) of Being in general: A is -B; for the independence of the determinatenesses of the Notion, or of the extremes, is, in the Judgment, the reality which the Notion has at this point. If the “is” of the copula were already posited as this determinate and completed unity of subject and predicate, or as their Notion, then it would already be Syllogism.

It is the aim of the movement of the Judgment to reconstitute this identity of the Notion, or, rather, to posit it. What is already given in the Judgment is partly the independence but also the determinateness of subject and predicate as against each other, and partly also their relation, which, however, is abstract. The Judgment at first affirms that the subject is the predicate; but, since the predicate is held not to be what the subject is, there is a contradiction which must be resolved, or pass over into some result. But, since in and for themselves subject and predicate are the totality of the Notion and the Judgment is the reality of the Notion, its progress is only development. It already contains what emerges in it, and in so far the demonstration is only a monstration, a Reflection as a positing of that which is already given in the extremes of the Judgment. But this positing too is already given: it is the relation of the extremes.

The Judgment in its immediacy is, first, the Judgment of Inherence \ its subject is, immediately, an abstract, existent individual, and the predicate is an immediate determinateness or property of it—an abstract universal.

This qualitative element in subject and predicate transcends itself, and the determination of one shows in the other: the Judgment now is, secondly, the Judgment of Subsumption.

But this somewhat external coincidence passes over into the essential identity of a substantial and necessary connexion; thus, thirdly, it is the Judgment of Necessity.

Fourthly, in this essential identity the distinction between subject and predicate has become a form, and so the Judgment becomes subjective; it contains the opposition between the Notion and its reality, and the comparison of both: it is the Judgment of the Notion.

This emergence of the Notion is the foundation of the transition of the Judgment into the Syllogism.

In the subjective Judgment the attempt is made to see one and the same object twofold,—first in its individual actuality, secondly in its essential identity, or in its Notion: the individual raised to its universality, or, what is the same thing, the universal individualized into its actuality. In this manner the Judgment is truth; for it is the agreement of Notion and reality. At first, however, this is not the nature of the Judgment; for at first it is immediate, since as yet no Reflection and movement of determinations have come to light in it. This immediacy makes the first Judgment to be a Judgment of Determinate Being, which may also be called qualitative, but only in so far as Quality not only belongs to the determinateness of Being but also includes abstract universality, which, because of its simplicity, has also the form of immediacy.

The Judgment of Determinate Being is also the Judgment of Inherence; immediacy is its determination, and, in the distinction between subject and predicate, the former is the immediate element and therefore is the essential and logically first part in this Judgment; hence the predicate is formally a dependent element which has its foundation in the subject,

1. As has already been mentioned, subject and predicate are at first names whose real determination is reached only in the course of the Judgment. But, as sides of the Judgment (which is posited determinate Notion), they have the determination of being its moments; but, because of their immediacy, they are as yet quite simple,—partly as they have not been enriched by mediation, and partly because they are abstractly opposed as abstract individuality and universality.—The predicate (to discuss this first) is the abstract universal; but the abstract is conditioned through the mediation of the transcendence of the individual or particular, and therefore, in so far, this mediation is only a presupposition. In the sphere of the Notion there can be no other immediacy than one which contains mediation in and for itself and has arisen only out of the transcendence thereof—a universal immediacy. Thus also qualitative Being itself is in its Notion a universal; but, as Being, universality has not yet been posited in this manner: only as universality does it become that determination of the Notion in which it is posited that negativity essentially belongs to it. This relation is present in the Judgment, where it is the predicate of a subject.—In the same manner the subject is an entity which is abstractly individual, or, the immediate which is supposed to be as such: it must therefore be the individual as a Something in general. In so far the subject constitutes the abstract side in the Judgment, according to which the Notion in it has passed over into externality.—In the same manner that the two determinations of Notion are determined, their relation, the “is,” or copula, is determined: it too can have the meaning only of an immediate and abstract Being. This Judgment is called the Positive from the relation, which as yet contains no mediation nor negation.

2. Hence the next pure expression of the Positive Judgment is this proposition: ”‘”‘The individual is universal,’’

This expression must not be understood as A is B; for A and B are perfectly formless and therefore meaningless names; while Judgment in general (and, consequently, even the Judgment of Inherence) has determinations of Notion for its extremes. A is B can represent any mere proposition as well as a Judgment. But in every Judgment (even in that which by its form is determined as a richer one) the proposition of this determinate content is asserted: the individual is universal,—that is, in so far as every Judgment is also abstract Judgment in general. Negative Judgment, and the question how far it also must fall under this expression, will be discussed presently.—It is usually forgotten that in every Judgment (or at least in every Positive Judgment) the assertion is made that the individual is a universal; and this happens, partly because the determinate form through which subject and predicate are distinguished is overlooked (since the Judgment is thought to be nothing more than the relation of two Notions); and partly perhaps because the further content of such a Judgment as “‘Gaius is learned” or “the rose is red” is vaguely present before consciousness, which, busy with the image of Gaius or the rose, does not reflect upon the form; although such a content at least as the Gaius of logic (who usually must furnish the example) is an exceedingly uninteresting content, and indeed is selected to be uninteresting in order not to distract attention from the form to itself.

In its objective significance the proposition that the individual is universal denotes (as was mentioned above in passing) partly the perishable nature of individual things and partly their positive persistence in the Notion in general. The Notion itself is immortal, but that which in its separation emerges from it is subject to change and to the regress into its universal nature. But, conversely, the universal achieves a Determinate Being. Essence passes out into Show in its determinations, Ground into the Appearance of Existence, and Substance into Manifestation and into its Accidents; and similarly the universal unfolds itself into the individual: Judgment is this its unlocking, the development of that negativity which in itself it is already.—This latter fact is expressed in the converse proposition that the universal is individual which is equally asserted in the Positive Judgment. The subject, being, at first, that which is immediately individual, is related in the Judgment itself to its Other, namely the universal; it is thus posited as the Concrete: as Being it is posited as a Something of many qualities, or, as the concrete of Reflection, as a Thing of manifold Properties, an Actual of manifold Possibilities, or a Substance of manifold Accidents. These manifolds here belong to the subject of the Judgment; hence the Something or Thing or whatever it may be is intro-reflected in its qualities, properties, or accidents, or continues itself through them, preserving itself in them and equally them in it. Positedness or determinateness belongs to Being-in-and-for-Self. Consequently the subject is the universal in itself.—The predicate on the other hand, as abstract, and not real or concrete, universality, is determinateness as against the subject, and contains only one moment of the totality of the subject to the exclusion of the others. Because of this negativity, which, at the same time, as extreme of the Judgment, refers itself to itself, the predicate is abstractly individual.—Thus in the proposition “the rose is fragrant” it expresses one only of the many properties of the rose; it isolates the property which, in the subject, is commingled with the others, just as, in the dissolution of the thing, the manifold properties which inhere in it become matters, grow independent, and are thus isolated. According to this side therefore the proposition of the Judgment runs: the universal is individual.

In the Judgment this reciprocal determination of subject and predicate is gathered in one point, with this twofold result. First, the subject exists immediately as that which is, as the individual, and the predicate as the universal. But the Judgment is the relation of the two, and the subject is determined as universal by the predicate, and therefore the subject is the universal. Secondly, the predicate is determined in the subject; for it is not any determination in general, but a determination of the subject. “The rose is fragrant”; and this fragrance is not any indeterminate fragrance, but that of the rose. Thus the predicate is an individual.—Now subject and predicate stand in the relation of Judgment, and therefore they ought to remain opposed, according to the determinations of the Notion; as in the reciprocal action of Causality, before they have reached their truth, the two sides ought to remain independent and opposite, against the equality of their determination. Consequently, if the subject is determined as universal, its determination of universality must not also be taken up by the predicate (else no Judgment could arise), but only its determination of individuality; while in so far as the subject is determined as individual, the predicate must be taken as universal.—If this mere identity is considered, two propositions of identity appear:—

The individual is individual;

The universal is universal. Here the determinations of the Judgment would have fallen quite apart, only their self-relation would be expressed; while their reciprocal relation would be dissolved, and the Judgment thus cancelled.—Of these two propositions one (the universal is individual) expresses the Judgment according to its content, which in the predicate is an isolated determination, but in the subject is its totality; the other (the individual is universal) expresses the form, which is given immediately in the proposition itself.—In the immediate Positive Judgment the extremes are still simple; consequently form and content are still at one. Or, the Judgment does not consist of two propositions: the double relation, which arose in it, immediately constitutes the one Positive Judgment. For its extremes are (a) the independent, abstract determinations of the Judgment; and (b) each side is determined by the other through the copula which relates them. But in itself, for this reason, the distinction of form and content is present in the Judgment, as it has resulted; and the content of the first proposition (the individual is universal) belongs to form, because it expresses the immediate determinateness of the Judgment. But the relation which is expressed by the other proposition (the universal is individual) y—that is, that the subject is determined as universal and the predicate as particular or individual,—affects content because its determinations arise only through intro-Reflection, whereby the immediate determinatenesses are cancelled, and thus the form constitutes itself an identity which has coincided with itself; it persists against the distinction of form, and is content.

3. There are two propositions, one of form and one of content:—

(Subject) (Predicate)

The individual is universal;

The universal is individual.

If now these two propositions, because they are contained in one Positive Judgment, were united, so that both, subject as well as predicate, were determined as unity of individuality and universality, then both would be the particular, and this in itself must be recognized as their inner determination. But then, partly, this connexion would only have been effected by an external reflection, and partly the resulting proposition the particular is the particular would no longer be a Judgment, but an empty proposition of identity, like the propositions which were already discovered, the individual is individual and the universal is universal.—Individuality and universality cannot yet be united into particularity, because in the Positive Judgment they are still posited as immediate.—Or, the Judgment must still be distinguished according to its form and to its content, just because subject and predicate are still distinguished as immediacy and mediated respectively, or because the Judgment according to its relation is both independence of the related terms, and their reciprocal determination or mediation.

First, then, the Judgment, considered according to its form, runs:—

The individual is universal. But such an immediate individual is not universal; its predicate is more comprehensive and thus does not correspond to it. The subject is an entity which is immediately for itself, and consequently is the opposite of that abstraction (namely, universality posited by mediation) which was to be predicated of it.

Secondly, if the Judgment is considered according to its content (or as the proposition the universal is individual), the subject is a universal of qualities, a concrete, which is determined as infinite; its determinatenesses are only qualities, properties, or accidents, and therefore its totality is their infinite number in the bad sense. Such a subject therefore is not such an individual property as its predicate affirms it to be. Both propositions must therefore be negated; and the Positive Judgment must be posited as Negative.

1. We have already mentioned the common idea that the truth or untruth of a Judgment depends only upon its content, logical truth relating to nothing but the form and demanding only that the content shall not be self-contradictory. The form of the Judgment is held to be made up only of the relation of two Notions. But it was seen that these two Notions have not only the relationless determination of an Amount, but that they are related as individual and universal. These determinations constitute the truly logical content, which in this abstraction is the content of the Positive Judgment; what further content may occur in a Judgment (“the sun is round,” “Cicero was a great orator of Rome,” “it is now day,” and so forth) is irrelevant to the Judgment as such; it merely asserts this, that the subject is predicate, or (since these are only names) in a more closely determinate manner, that the individual is universal, and conversely.—The Positive Judgment is untrue because of this purely logical content, and has its truth in the Negative Judgment.—It is only demanded that the content of the Judgment must not be self-contradictory; but in the Positive Judgment it was seen that it is self-contradictory.—Nevertheless it is quite indifferent if this logical content is also called form, and only further empirical filling is reckoned as content: form then does not contain only empty identity, with the determination of content lying outside of it. In that case the Positive Judgment is devoid of truth through its form as Positive Judgment; and if correctness of intuition or perception, or correspondence of image with object, were to be called truth, no expression would be left over for that which is the object and purpose of philosophy. At least, the latter would have to be called truth of Reason; and it will be admitted that such Judgments as these, that Cicero was a great orator, that it is now day, and so forth, are no truths of Reason. But they are not truths of Reason, not because they have an empirical content in a contingent kind of way, but because they are only Positive Judgments which can and ought to have no other content than an immediate individual and an abstract determination.

The Positive Judgment has, at first, its truth in the Negative Judgment, the individual is not abstractly universal;—but the predicate of the individual (because it is such a predicate or because, considered for itself without relation to the subject, it is abstractly universal) is itself determinate; so far, then, the individual is a particular. Further, according to the other proposition which is contained in the Positive Judgment, the Negative Judgment runs thus: the universal is not abstractly individual; but this predicate, because it is predicate, or because it stands in a relation to a universal subject, is something further than a mere individuality, and consequently the universal too is, so far, a particular.—Now this universal, as subject, is itself in the Judgment-determination of individuality, and thus the two propositions are reduced to the one: the individual is a particular.

What follows may here be observed: (a) Particularity, which has already been mentioned, here shows itself to be the predicate; but here it is not posited by external reflection, but has originated through the negative relation which was demonstrated in Judgment, (b) This determination here results only for the predicate. In the immediate Judgment, the Judgment of Inherence, the subject is the foundation, and consequently the determination seems to exhaust itself upon the predicate. But in fact this first negation cannot yet be a determination, or, more properly, cannot be a positing of the individual, since that is only second negation, or the negative of the negative.

The proposition the individual is a particular is the positive expression of the Negative Judgment. This expression is not Positive Judgment itself, in so far as, because of its immediacy, the latter has only the abstract for its extremes; whereas the particular results precisely through the positing of the relation of Judgment as the first mediated determination.—But this determination must not be taken only as moment of the extreme, but also as determination of the relation (which, in fact, so far, it is); or, this Judgment must also be considered as Negative.

This transition is founded upon the relation between the extremes and upon that of their general connexion in the Judgment. The Positive Judgment is the relation of the immediately individual and the universal, of terms, that is, of which one at the same time is not what the other is. Consequently the relation equally essentially is separation, or is negative: for this reason the Positive Judgment had to be posited as Negative. Hence logicians need not have protested so violently because the not of Negative Judgment had been attached to the copula. What in the Judgment is determination of the extreme is, equally, determinate relation. The determination of the Judgment, or the extreme, is not purely qualitative, like immediate Being, which is meant to stand opposed merely to some Other outside it. Nor is it determination of Reflection, which, according to its general form, takes up the attitude of positive and negative, each of which terms is posited as exclusive and is identical with the other only in itself. The determination of Judgment (as determination of Notion) is in itself a universal, posited as continuing itself into its other. Conversely, the relation of Judgment is the same determination as that which the extremes possess, for it is just this universality and continuation of one into the other: in so far as these are distinct it also contains negativity.

The above-mentioned transition from the form of relation to the form of determination constitutes the immediate result that the not of the copula must equally be added to the predicate, whence the latter must be determined as the non-universal. But the non-universal, by an equally immediate consequence, is the particular.—If the negative is kept fast according to the wholly abstract determination of immediate Not-being, then the predicate is just the quite indeterminate non-universal. This determination is otherwise dealt with in logic under the contradictory Notions, and it is emphasized as being important that in the negative of a Notion only the negative must be held fast: it must be taken as the merely indeterminate extent of the Other of the positive Notion. Thus the merely not-white would be red, yellow, blue, and so on, as much as black. But white as such is the notionless determination of intuition; the not of white is, then, equally notion-less Not-being, which abstraction was considered at the very beginning of the Logic, when its next truth was recognized to be Becoming. If, in the consideration of the determinations of Judgment, such notionless content, coming from intuition and imagination, is used as example, and the determinations of Being and of Reflection are taken for determinations of Judgment, then this is that same uncritical procedure as when, in imitation of Kant, the notions of understanding are applied to the infinite idea of reason or the so-called Thing-in-itself. The Notion (which includes the Judgment issuing from it) is the true Thing-in-itself or reasonable entity; while these determinations belong to Being or Essence, and are not forms developed to that state in which they are in their truth, in the Notion.—If no progress is made beyond white or red as sensuous images, then (as happens so often) something is called notion which in fact is only determination of imagination; and then it is true that not-white and not-red are not positive, while further the not-triangular is something quite indeterminate, since that determination which rests upon number and quantum in general is essentially indifferent and notionless. But a notion ought to be formed both about Not-being and about every such sensuous content: it ought to lose that indifference and abstract immediacy which it has in blind and motionless imagination. Already in Determinate Being the thoughtless Nothing becomes a Limit by which Something does after all relate itself to an Other which is outside it. But in Reflection it is the Negative which essentially relates itself to a Positive, and is thus determinate. Already a Negative is no longer that indeterminate Not-being; it is posited as being only in so far as the Positive stands opposite to it; the third term is their Ground; and thus the Negative is held in an enclosed sphere where that which the one is not is something determinate.—Still more this not is immediately a Positive in the absolutely fluid continuity of the Notion and its determinations; and negation is not only determinateness, but is taken up into universality, and thus identified with it. Consequently the non-universal is forthwith the particular.

2. Since negation concerns the relation of Judgment, and Negative Judgment is still being considered as such, it is still a Judgment; thus the relation of subject and predicate or of individuality and universality is present here, as well as their connexion, the form of the Judgment. The subject, as the fundamental immediate, remains untouched by negation; thus it retains its determination of having a predicate, or its relation to universality. What therefore is negated is not universality in general in the predicate, but its abstraction, or determinateness, which appeared as content as against that universality.—The Negative Judgment then is not total negation; the universal sphere, which the predicate contains, still remains; the relation of subject to predicate is therefore still essentially positive, and the surviving determination of the predicate is equally relation.—If for example it is said that the rose is not red, this negates only the determinateness of the predicate, which is distinguished from the universality which also belongs to the predicate. The universal sphere, colour, is retained; if the rose is not red, it is assumed that it has a colour—some other colour; and, according to this universal sphere, the Judgment still is positive.

This is expressed immediately in the positive form of the Negative Judgment—the individual is a particular; the particular contains universality. This proposition moreover expresses that the predicate is not only a universal, but also a determinate. The negative form contains the same; for although, for example, the rose is not red, still it is not only to retain for predicate the universal sphere of colour, but it is also to have some other determinate colour; thus only the individual determinateness of red is cancelled, and not only is the universal sphere left, but determinateness too is preserved, although it has been turned into indeterminate or universal determinateness, that is, into particularity.

3. Particularity, which has yielded itself as the positive determination of the Negative Judgment, is the mediating term between individuality and universality; hence now Negative Judgment in general, at the third step, is the mediating term of the intro-Reflection of the Judgment of Inherence. In its objective significance it is only the moment of the change of accidents,—or, in Determinate Being, of the individual properties of the Concrete. By virtue of this change the complete determinateness of the predicate, or the Concrete, emerges as posited.

The individual is particular, according to the positive expression of the Negative Judgment. But also the individual is not particular, for particularity is of wider compass than individuality; it is thus a predicate which does not correspond with its subject; in which, therefore, it has not yet its truth. The individual is only individual, it is negativity relating itself not to Other, either positively or negatively, but only to itself.—The rose is not any coloured something, but it has only that determinate colour which is rose-colour. The individual is not an indeterminate determinate, but the determinate determinate.

If the start is made from this positive form of the Negative Judgment, this its negation appears again as only a first negation. But it is not this in fact. Rather the Negative Judgment in and for itself is already second negation or negation of negation; it remains to posit what it is in and for itself. It negates, then, the determinateness of the predicate of the Positive Judgment, its abstract universality, or, considered as content, the individual quality which it receives from the subject. But already negation of determinateness is second negation, that is, the infinite return upon itself of individuality. Thus the construction of the concrete totality of the subject has been effected, or rather it has only now been posited as individual, since it has been mediated with itself through negation and its transcendence. The predicate for its part has herewith passed over from first universality to absolute determinateness, and has equated itself with the subject. In so far the Judgment runs: the individual is individual.—From the other side, since the subject equally was to be taken as universal, and in so far as in Negative Judgment the predicate (which is the individual as against this determination of the subject) became extended into particularity, and since further the negation of this determinateness is equally the purification of the universality which it contains, now therefore this Judgment also runs: the universal is the universal.

In these two Judgments, which before had been reached through external reflection, the predicate is already expressed in its positivity. But here the negation of the Negative Judgment must itself appear in the form of a Negative Judgment. It was seen that a positive relation of subject to predicate, and the universal sphere of the latter, remained in this Judgment. From this side therefore it contained a universality more clear of restrictedness than did the Positive Judgment, and consequently it must be negated all the more of the subject as individual. In this manner the whole volume of the predicate has been negated, and no positive relation remains between it and the subject. This is Infinite Judgment.

The Negative Judgment is no more a true Judgment than is the Positive Judgment. But the Infinite Judgment, which is to be its truth, is negatively expressed and therefore is Negatively-infinite Judgment—a Judgment in which the form of Judgment too is transcended.—But this is an absurd Judgment. It is supposed to be a Judgment, and thus to contain a relation of subject and predicate; but at the same time such a relation is not to be contained in it.—The name of Infinite Judgment is generally mentioned in ordinary systems of logic; but it is not made very clear what it really is.—Examples of Negatively-infinite Judgments are easily obtained: determinations are negatively connected as subject and predicate, and one of these not only does not contain the determinateness of the other, but also does not contain its universal sphere: Spirit (for example) is not red, yellow, and so forth, nor acid nor alkaline; the rose is not an elephant; understanding is not a table; and the like.—These Judgments are correct or true, as the expression goes, but in spite of such truth they are absurd and trivial.—Or, rather, they are not Judgments at all.—An evil deed is a more valid example of Infinite Judgment. In a civil case Something is negated only as the property of one party, while it is admitted that it should belong to that party if it had a good claim; it is claimed only in the name of law: thus the universal sphere, namely law, is recognized and preserved in this Negative Judgment. But the misdeed is that Infinite Judgment which negates not only the particular application of law but also the universal sphere, or law as law. It has of course “correctness” because it is an actual deed, but it is absurd because it is related in a wholly negative manner to morality, which constitutes its universal sphere.

The positive element of the Infinite Judgment, or of the negation of negation, is the intro-Reflection of individuality: it is only through this that it is posited as determinate determinateness. According to this reflection its expression was this: the individual is individual. In the Judgment of Inherence the subject exists as immediate individual, and to that extent is only as Something in general. It is posited as individual only through the mediation of Negative and Infinite Judgment.

Hereby the individual is posited as continuing itself into its predicate, which is identical with it; and thus now equally universality exists no longer as immediate, but as a comprehension of distincts. The Positively-infinite Judgment also runs: the universal is universal; and thus it is also posited as return into itself.

Judgment has now transcended itself through this intro-Reflection of the determinations of Judgment. In Negatively-infinite Judgment the distinction is, so to speak, so great that it cannot remain a Judgment; subject and predicate have no positive relation to each other at all. On the other hand in Positively-infinite Judgment there is nothing but identity: there is no distinction whatever, and consequently no Judgment.

More precisely, it is the Judgment of Inherence which has transcended itself: here that is posited which the copula of the Judgment contains—namely, that the qualitative extremes are transcended in this their identity. But this unity is the Notion, and thus this identity immediately is sundered again into its extremes, and exists as Judgment, the determinations of which are however no longer immediate but intro-reflected. The Judgment of Inherence has passed over into the Judgment of Subsumption [Reflection].

In the Judgment which has now arisen the subject is an individual as such; and similarly the universal is no longer abstract universality or individual property: it is posited as a universal which has comprehended itself into one through the relation of distincts, or (considered according to the content of different determinations in general) as the automatic coalescing of manifold properties and existences.—If examples are to be given of predicates of Judgments of Reflection, they must be of another kind than for Judgments of Inherence. Really a determinate content—the only possible content—is given only in the Judgment of Reflection; for it is determination of form reflected into identity, as distinct from form, in so far as the latter is distinct determinateness, which it still is as Judgment. In the Judgment of Inherence the content is merely immediate or abstract, and indeterminate.—Consequently the following may serve for examples of Judgments of Reflection: “man is mortal”; “things are perishable”; “such and such a thing is useful, or harmful.” Hardness or elasticity of bodies, happiness, and so forth, are such peculiar predicates; they express an essentiality, which however is a determination in the relation, or a comprehensive universality. This universality, which will further determine itself in the movement of the Judgment of Reflection, is as yet distinct from the universality, as such, of the Notion; it is no longer the abstract universality of qualitative Judgment, but it still has the relation to the immediate from which it is derived, and has the latter for the foundation of its negativity.—The Notion at first determines Inherence to exist as determinations of relation or continuities of themselves into the various manifold of existence;—so that the true universal is their inner essence, but is also in appearance; and this their relative nature or characteristic is not yet their Being-in-and-for-Self.

The Judgment of Reflection may seem almost to imply that it should be determined as Judgment of Quantity, just as the Judgment of Inherence was determined also as Qualitative Judgment. But immediacy, in the latter, was not only existent immediacy, but essentially also was mediated and abstract; and similarly here this transcended immediacy is not merely transcended Quality; it is not, then, merely Quantity. Rather, as Quality is the most external immediacy, this similarly is the most external determination which belongs to mediation.

A further observation remains to be made about determination and the manner in which it appears in its movement in the Judgment of Reflection. In the Judgment of Inherence its movement showed itself in the predicate because that Judgment was in the determination of immediacy, and consequently the subject appeared as the fundamental element. For the same reason the progressive movement of determining, in the Judgment of Reflection, exhausts itself upon the subject; for this Judgment has reflected Being-in-Self for its determination. Here therefore what is essential is the universal, or the predicate, which consequently constitutes the fundamental element; it is the measure of the subject, which must be determined in accordance with it.—However, through the further development of the form of the subject, the predicate too obtains a further, although an indirect, determination determination; whereas the other, for the reason which was indicated, shows itself as a direct further determination.

With regard to the objective significance of the Judgment, the individual enters into existence through its universality; but it does this as in an essential determination of relation, an essentiality which preserves itself through the manifold of appearance; the subject ought to be that which is determined in and for itself; and it has this determinateness in its predicate. The individual on the other hand is reflected into this its predicate, which is its general essence; in so far the subject is that which exists and appears. In this Judgment the predicate no longer inheres in the subject; it is rather that under which, while it is in itself, the other, which is an individual, is subsumed as accidental. If the Judgments of Determinate Being can also be determined as Judgments of Inherence, the Judgments of Reflection are rather Judgments of Subsumption,

The immediate Judgment of Subsumption has now again become this: the individual is universal; but subject and predicate have the significance which has been indicated; it may therefore be further expressed thus: This is an essentially universal entity.

But a “this” is not an essentially universal entity. And this Judgment, which in its general form is positive, must be taken as negative. But, since the Judgment of Subsumption is not merely positive, the negation does not directly concern the predicate, which does not inhere but is the term which is in itself. It is the subject that is changeable and must be determined. Consequently the negative Judgment must here be framed thus: not a This is a universal of Reflection; such an In-itself has a more universal existence than merely in a This. The Singular Judgment thus has its next truth in the Particular Judgment.

That non-individuality of the subject which must be posited in place of the singularity which it has in the first Judgment of Subsumption, is particularity. But in the Judgment of Subsumption individuality is determined as essential individuality: particularity therefore cannot be simple and abstract determination, in which the individual would be transcended and the existing would have perished: it is only the extension of the individual in external reflection. Consequently the subject is some These or a particular number of individuals.

This Judgment, some individuals are a universal of Reflection, appears at first as a positive Judgment; but it is equally negative. For “some” contains universality, and accordingly it can be considered as comprehensive; but, in so far as it is particularity, it also is inadequate to universality. The negative determination which the subject has obtained through the transition of the Singular Judgment is also (as was shown above) determination of the relation, the copula.—The Judgment ’’some men are happy” implies immediately “some men are not happy.” If some things are useful, some things, in consequence, are not useful. Positive and Negative Judgment no longer fall apart: the Particular Judgment contains both together immediately, just because it is a Judgment of Subsumption.—But, for this reason, the Particular Judgment is indeterminate.

If we further consider the subject in the examples of such judgments (“some men,” “animals,” and so on), we find that, besides the particular determination of form (“some”), it contains also a determination of content (“man,” and so on). The subject of the Singular Judgment could be ”this man,” a singularity which really is proper to external indication; really therefore it should run (for example): “Gaius.” But the subject of the Particular Judgment can no longer be “some Gaius,” for Gaius is supposed to be an individual as such. A more universal content is therefore added to the “some,” such as “men,” “animals,” and so forth. This is not a merely empirical content, but one determined by the form of the Judgment: it is a universal because “some” contains universality, and because at the same time universality must be separated from the individuals; for reflected individuality is the foundation. Further, this universality is also a general nature, or the genus man, or animal;—that universality which is the result of the Judgment of Subsumption anticipates—as also the Positive Judgment, which has for subject the individual, anticipated—the determination which is the result of the Judgment of Inherence.

The subject which contains the individuals, their relation to particularity, and universal nature, is in so far already posited as the totality of the determinations of the Notion. But really this is an external consideration. What is here posited in the subject in relation to one another through its form, is the extension of the “this” into particularity. But this extension is not adequate to it: “this” is completely determinate, but “some this” is indeterminate. The extension is meant to apply to the “this,” that is, to correspond to it and to be completely determinate: now such an extension is totality, or, at this point, universality in general.

This universality is founded upon the “this,” for here the individual is the intro-reflected term; its further determinations therefore act upon it externally. For such a reason particularity determined itself as “some,” and similarly the universality, which the subject has reached, is allhood: the Particular Judgment has passed over into the Universal Judgment.

Universality as it is in the subject of the Universal Judgment is the external universality of reflection, or allhood; all the terms are as individuals, and the individual here remains unchanged. Consequently this universality is only a comprehension of individual entities which persist for themselves; it is a common quality which belongs to them only in comparison.—It is this common quality which usually first occurs to subjective imagination when universality is mentioned. The fact that a determination is common to several entities is given as the most obvious reason why it should be looked upon as universal.—This notion of universality is especially present also in analysis, when, for example, the development of a function in terms of a polynomial is considered to be more universal than its development in terms of a binomial, since the polynomial represents more individualities than the binomial. The demand that the function should be represented in its universality really asks for a pantonomial, or exhausted infinity; but here the barrier of that demand arises automatically, and the representation of the infinite amount is forced to content itself with its ought and, in consequence, with a polynomial. In fact however the binomial is pantonomial already in those cases in which the method or rule regards only the dependence of one term upon another, and the dependence of several terms upon their antecedents does not particularize itself, one and the same function still remaining fundamental. The method or rule must be looked upon as the true universal; in the continuation of development, or in the development of a polynomial, it is only repeated, and thus gains nothing in universality through the increased number of terms. Bad infinity and the illusion which it involves have already been mentioned above; the universality of the Notion is the achieved Beyond, while this infinity remains infected with this Beyond as with an unattainable term, in so far as it remains mere progress to infinity. If under universality nothing better is present to imagination than allhood, a universality which is supposed to be exhausted in the individuals as individuals, then this is a relapse into that bad infinity; or else mere manyness is being taken in place of allhood. But manyness, however great it is, still remains particularity and is not allhood.—A dim image of the universality of the Notion which is in and for self is here presented: it is the Notion which forcibly urges beyond the stubborn individuality to which imagination clings and beyond the externality of its reflection, substituting allhood as totality, or, rather, categorical Being-in-and-for-Self.

This appears elsewhere too in allhood, which indeed is empirical universality. In so far as the individual is presupposed as an immediate, and therefore is discovered and taken up externally, the reflection which comprehends it into allhood is equally external to it. But the individual, as “this,” is utterly indifferent to this reflection, and therefore universality and such an individual cannot unite in one unity. Empirical allhood therefore remains a problem or “ought” which cannot be represented as Being. An empirically universal proposition (for such are nevertheless advanced) rests only upon the tacit agreement that, if no instance of the opposite can be adduced, the majority of cases is to be reckoned as allhood; or that subjective allhood (namely, the cases which have come to knowledge) may be taken as being an objective allhood.

The Universal Judgment has been reached; if it is considered more closely, the subject is seen to contain universality which is in and for itself as posited, whereas before (as we observed) it contained it as presupposed. “All men” expresses, first, the genus man, and secondly expresses this genus in its individuation, but in such a manner that at the same time the individuals are extended into the universality of the genus. Conversely, through this connexion with individuality, universality is determined as completely as individuality; hereby posited universality has become equivalent to presupposed universality.

But properly that which is presupposed should not be regarded first: the result ought to be considered by itself in the determination of form.—Individuality, since it has extended itself to allhood, is posited as negativity which is identical self-relation. Thus it has not remained that first individuality (like that, for example, of “Gaius”), but is that determination which is identical with universality, or the absolute determinateness of the universal.—That first individuality of the Singular Judgment was not the immediate individuality of the Positive Judgment, but arose through the dialectic movement of the Judgment of Inherence in general; and this individuality had already been determined to be the negative identity of the determinations of that Judgment. This is the true presupposition of the Judgment of Subsumption; as against the positing which operates upon it that first determinateness of individuality was its in-itself; that which it is in-itself is now, accordingly, posited through the movement of the Judgment of Subsumption—namely, individuality as identical self-relation of the determinate. By virtue of this that Reflection which extended individuality into allhood is not external to it; but through that Reflection it only becomes for itself what it already is in itself—The result is thus in truth objective universality. In so far the subject has discarded the form-determination of the Judgment of Subsumption, which passed from “this” through “some” to allhood; in place of “all men” we must now say “man.”

The universality which has hereby arisen is the genus—that universality which is concrete in itself. The genus does not inhere in the subject and is not an individual property of it, or indeed any property; it contains every isolated determinateness resolved in its substantial homogeneity.—For this reason—because it is posited as this negative self-identity—it is essentially subject; but it is no longer subsumed in its predicate. The nature of the Judgment of Subsumption is now altogether changed hereby.

This Judgment was essentially Judgment of Subsumption. The predicate was determined as the universal which was in itself as against its subject; according to its content it could be taken as essential determination of relation, or also as characteristic—a determination according to which the subject is only an essential appearance. But, determined as such an objective universality, the predicate ceases to be subsumed under such a determination of relation or comprehensive reflection: rather, such a predicate is a particular against this universality. The relation between subject and predicate has become inverted, and in so far the Judgment has now transcended itself.

This transcendence of the Judgment coincides with that which becomes the determination of the copula, which latter still remains to be considered: the transcendence of the determinations of the Judgment and their transition into the copula are one and the same thing.—For in so far as the subject has risen into universality, it has become equal to the predicate in this determination, and the predicate, as reflected universality, also includes particularity; subject and predicate are consequently identical, that is, they have coalesced into the copula. This identity is the genus, or the nature which is in and for itself of a thing. And in so far as this nature again sunders itself and becomes a Judgment, it is the inner nature through which subject and object are related to each other,—a relation of Necessity, in which these determinations of the Judgment are no more than unessential distinctions. What belongs to all the individuals of a genus belongs to the genus through its nature: this consequence follows immediately, and is the expression of that which resulted before, namely, that the subject (“all men,” for example) discards its form-determination and that “man” must be said instead.—This connexion, which is in and for itself, constitutes the foundation of a new Judgment—the Judgment of Necessity.

Universality has developed into a determination which is, as was seen, objective universality or universality which is in and for itself,—that to which in the sphere of Essence Substantiality corresponds. It is distinct from the latter in that it belongs to the Notion; hence not only the inner but also the posited necessity of its determinations is immanent in it: in other words, distinction is immanent in it, whereas in Substance distinction lies only in its Accidents and is not contained in it as principle.

Now this objective universality is posited in the Judgment, and hence first with this its essential determinateness as immanent in it, and secondly as distinct from it as particularity, of which this universality constitutes the substantial foundation. In this manner it is determined as genus and species.

The genus divides or repels itself essentially into species: it is genus only in so far as it comprehends inferior species; species is species only in so far as (a) it exists in individuals and (b) is a higher universality in the genus.—Now the Categorical Judgment has for predicate such a universality as provides for the subject its immanent nature. But it is itself the first or immediate Judgment of Necessity; hence the determinateness of the subject by virtue of which it is a particular or individual as against genus or species, belongs, to this extent, to the immediacy of external existence.—But, equally, objective universality has only here its immediate particularization; for this reason it is determinate, having higher genera relatively to itself;—and, on the other hand, it is not precisely the nearest genus, that is, its determinateness is not precisely the principle of the specific particularity of the subject. What is necessary in it is the substantial identity of subject and predicate, against which the peculiarity by which the former is distinct from the latter is only an unessential positedness, or a mere name; in its predicate the subject is reflected into its Being-in-and-for-Self.—Such a predicate should not be ranked together with the predicates of the Judgments which have been treated so far; if, for example, the Judgments “the rose is red,” “the rose is a plant,” or “this ring is yellow,” “it is gold,” are confounded into one class, and if so external a property as the colour of a flower is taken as a predicate of equal rank with its vegetable nature, then a distinction is overlooked which must be obvious to the most vulgar apprehension.—The Categorical Judgment must therefore be definitely distinguished from the Positive and the Negative Judgment; in these that which is predicated of the subject is an individual and contingent content, in the Categorical Judgment it is the totality of the intro-reflected form. In it therefore the copula signifies necessity, but in the Positive and Negative only abstract and immediate Being.

At this point the determinateness of the subject, by virtue of which it is a particular as against the predicate, is still contingent; subject and predicate are not related through form or determinateness as necessary; so far, therefore, the necessity is still an inner one.—But the subject is subject only as particular, and, in so far as it has objective universality, it is supposed to have it essentially only according to that immediate determinateness. The objectively-universal determines itself, that is, it posits itself into the Judgment; and in so doing it is essentially in identical relation with this determinateness (which has been repelled out of itself) as such; that is, essentially this determinateness must not be posited as merely contingent. The Categorical Judgment corresponds to its objective universality only through this necessity of its immediate being: in this manner it has passed over into the Hypothetical Judgment.

If A is, B is; or, the being of A is not its own being but the being of another, of B.—What is posited in this Judgment is the necessary connexion of one immediate determinateness with another:: this is not yet posited in the Categorical Judgment.—Here there are two immediate or externally contingent existences, whereas in the Categorical Judgment there is one only, namely the subject; but, since one is external as against the other, this other immediately is also external to the first.—According to this immediacy the content of each side is indifferent to the other; consequently this Judgment at first is a purely formal proposition. Now it is true that immediacy (1) as such is an independent and concrete Being; but (2) its relation is what is essential; hence equally this Being exists as mere possibility; the Hypothetical Judgment does not imply that A is or that B is, but that if one is, then the other is: only the connexion of the extremes is posited as being, not the extremes themselves. Rather, in this necessity each is posited as equally the Being of an Other.—The proposition of identity merely states that A is only A and not B, and B is only B and not A: in the Hypothetical Judgment, on the contrary, the Being of finite things according to their formal truth is posited through the Notion; that is, it is posited that the finite is its own Being, but equally is not its own but is the Being of an Other. In the sphere of Being the finite changes and becomes an Other; in the sphere of Essence it is Appearance, and it is posited that its Being consists in this, that an Other shows in it, and here Necessity is the inner relation not yet posited as such. But the Notion is this, that this identity is posited and that the being entity is not abstract self-identity, but concrete identity; it is immediately of itself the Being of an Other.

The Hypothetical Judgment can be taken, in closer determinateness through the relations of Reflection, as relation of ground and consequence, condition and conditioned, causality, and so forth. In the Categorical Judgment, Substantiality is in its notional form: in the Hypothetical Judgment, the connexion of Causality. This and other relations are all subordinate to it, but they are here no longer relations between independent sides: the latter exist essentially only as moments of one and the same identity.—However, they are not yet opposed to each other in the Judgment according to their notional determinations as individual or particular and universal, but only as moments in general. In so far, the Hypothetical Judgment has rather the aspect of a proposition; the Particular Judgment was of indeterminate content, and similarly the Hypothetical Judgment is of indeterminate form, since its content does not reside in the relation between subject and predicate.—In itself however the Being, since it is Being of the Other, is thereby unity of itself and the Other, and, therefore, universality; and for that reason it is at the same time really only a particular, since it is determinate and in its determinateness is not merely self-relating. But it is not simple and abstract particularity that is posited; but, through the immediacy which belongs to each determinateness, the moments of particularity are distinct; and, at the same time, through its unity (which constitutes their relation) particularity is also their totality.—In truth therefore what is posited in this Judgment is universality as the concrete identity of the Notion whose determinations have no persistence by themselves but are only particularities posited in universality. Thus it is the Disjunctive Judgment,

In the Categorical Judgment the Notion exists as objective universality and as an external individuality. In the Hypothetical Judgment the Notion in its negative identity emerges in this externality; through this identity its moments acquire the determinateness which is now posited in the Disjunctive Judgment; in the Hypothetical Judgment they have it immediately. The Disjunctive Judgment therefore is objective universality posited at the same time in conjunction with form. Hence it contains, first, concrete universality or genus, in simple form, as the subject; secondly it contains it as the totality of its distinct determinations. A is either B or C. This is the necessity of the Notion, where, first, the indiscernibility of the two extremes is sameness of comprehensiveness, content, and universality; secondly, they are distinguished according to the form of the determinations of Notion, but in such a manner that the form (because of this identity) is mere form. For this reason, thirdly, identical objective universality appears as the intro-reflected term as against unessential form,—as content, which however has in itself the determinateness of form, first as the simple determinateness of genus, next as this same determinateness developed into its distinction,—in which manner it is the particularity of species and their totality, the universality of the genus.—In its development particularity constitutes the predicate, because it is the more universal in so far as it contains the whole universal sphere of the subject, but also contains it in the analysis of particularization.

If this particularization is considered more closely, the genus, first, constitutes the substantial universality of the various species; consequently the subject is as well C as B; and this “as well as” designates the positive identity of the particular with the universal; this objective universal preserves itself intact in its particularity. Secondly, the species are mutually exclusive; A is either B or C; for these are the determinate distinction of the universal sphere. This “either—or” is their negative relation. But here they are identical as much as in the former relation; the genus is their unity, in which they are determinate particulars.—If the genus were an abstract universality as in the Judgments of Inherence, then the species too would have to be taken as merely various and indifferent to one another: but it is not this external universality, which arises out of comparison and omission only: it is the universality immanent and concrete in them.—An empirical disjunctive judgment lacks necessity; A is either B or C or D and so forth because the species B, C, D and so forth are given; really no “either—or” can be expressed by this judgment; for such species at best constitute only a subjective completeness. One species does exclude another; but “either—or” excludes every other, and thus concludes by itself a total sphere. This totality has its necessity in the negative unity of the objectively universal, which contains individuality dissolved within itself, immanent as simple principle of distinction: through this the species are determined and related. On the other hand the empirical species have their distinctions in any contingent characteristic, which is an external principle and therefore not their own principle or the immanent determinateness of the genus; for this reason too they are not related according to their determinateness.—But the species constitute the universality of the predicate through the relation of their determinateness.—The so-called contrary and contradictory Notions should really not find their place until this point; for in the Disjunctive Judgment the essential distinction of the Notion is posited; but at the same time they have here their truth, which is, that the contrary and contradictory themselves are distinct both as contrary and as contradictory. The species are contrary just in so far as they are various,—that is, they have a persistence which is in and for itself, through the genus as their objective nature; and they are contradictory in so far as they exclude one another. But by itself each of these determinations is one-sided and without truth; in the “either—or” of the Disjunctive Judgment their unity is posited as their truth, according to which this independent persistence, as concrete universality, is itself also the principle of negative unity, by means of which they exclude one another.

By virtue of the identity of subject and predicate (which has just been demonstrated), according to negative unity, the genus in the Disjunctive Judgment is determined as that which comes next. At first this expression points to a merely quantitative distinction of more or less,—which determinations a universal is supposed to contain against a particularity which stands subordinate to it. Accordingly, it remains contingent what the next genus is, in fact. But in so far as the genus is taken as a universal which is formed through the mere omission of determinations, it cannot really form a Disjunctive Judgment; for it is contingent whether the determinateness which constitutes the principle of the “either—or” happens to remain in it; the genus then would not be represented in its determinateness in the species, and these could have only a contingent completeness. In the Categorical Judgment the genus remains only in this abstract form as against the subject: it is therefore not necessarily the genus next to it, and in so far is external. But the genus is concrete and as such is essentially determinate universality, and therefore as simple determinateness it is the unity of moments of Notion which are merely suspended in that simplicity but have their real distinction in the various species. The genus therefore is that which is next to a species in so far as the latter has its specific distinction in the essential determinateness of the former, and the species in general have their distinct determination as principle in the nature of the genus.

The side which has just been considered constitutes the identity of subject and predicate according to the side of determinateness in general, a side which was posited through the Hypothetical Judgment, whose necessity is an identity of immediate and various entities—that is, essentially, a negative unity. Indeed, it is this negative unity which segregates subject and predicate, although now it is itself posited as distinct, in the subject as simple determinateness and in the predicate as totality. This segregation of subject and predicate is the distinction of Notion; but the totality of the species in the predicate cannot for that very reason be any other distinction.—Thus the determination of the disjunctive members against one another results from this. It is nothing more than the distinction of the Notion, for it is this only which disjoins itself and in its determination manifests its negative unity. The species further comes under consideration here only according to its simple Notion-determinateness, and not according to shape which is the manner in which it has passed out of the Idea into further independent Reality. The latter indeed is neglected in the simple principle of the genus; but the essential process of distinguishing must be a moment of the Notion. In the Judgment which is here under consideration the developing process of self-determination of the Notion has really itself posited its disjunction,—that is, that which, under Notion, was found to be its determination which is in and for itself, or its distinction into determinate notions.—Now the Notion is the universal; it is equally the positive and the negative totality of the particulars, and it is also for this reason immediately one of its disjunctive members; the other member is this universality resolved into its particularity, or the determinateness of the Notion as determinateness, in which it is precisely the universality which represents itself as totality.—If the disjunction of a genus into species has not yet attained this form, this is a proof that it has not yet risen to the determinateness of the Notion and has not emerged out of it.—A colour is either violet, dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, or red;—such a disjunction shows plainly its empirical admixture and impurity; and considered from this side, and by itself, it may even be called barbarous. If a Notion is formed about colour that it is the concrete unity of light and dark, then this genus contains the determinateness which constitutes the principle of its particularization into species. But one of these must be just simple colour, which contains the opposite equally balanced, and enclosed and negated in its intensity; opposed to it the opposition of the relation between light and dark must present itself, to which must be added (since this is a phenomenon of nature) the indifferent neutrality of the opposition.—If mixtures like violet and orange, and degrees of intensity like dark and light blue, are held to be species, this can only be the result of a wholly unconsidered procedure, showing too little reflection even for empiricism.—But this is not the place for developing what distinct or more closely determinate forms may belong to disjunction as it takes place in the element of Nature or of Spirit respectively.

The Disjunctive Judgment has the members of disjunction, at first, in its predicate; but equally it is disjunct itself; its subject and predicate are the members of disjunction; they are the moments of Notion, posited in their determinateness, but also as identical—(α) in objective universality, which in the subject is as simple genus and in the predicate as the universal sphere and as the totality of the moments of Notion,—and (β) in negative unity, or the developed connexion of necessity, according to which simple determinateness in the subject has separated into the distinction of the various species, where precisely it is their essential relation and the self-identical. This unity—the copula of this Judgment, where the extremes have coincided through their identity—is thus the Notion itself, and, further, as posited; and now the mere Judgment of Necessity has risen to be the Judgment of the Notion.

A skill in making Judgments of Inherence, such as “the rose is red,” “the snow is white,” and so forth, will hardly be accounted as evidence of great power of judgment. The Judgments of Subsumption are rather propositions; in the Judgment of Necessity the object exists, it is true, in its objective universality, but its relation to the Notion is to be found only in the Judgment which is now to be considered. The Notion thus is the basis, and, since it is in relation to the object, it is this as an ought, to which reality may or may not be adequate.—Consequently it is only this Judgment which contains a true judgment; the predicates good, bad, true, beautiful, correct, and so on, signify that the fact has been measured against its general Notion, which is just a presupposed ought, and that it does, or does not, agree with it.

The Judgment of the Notion has been called judgment of modality; it has been considered to contain the form according to which the relation of subject and predicate is found in an external understanding, and to concern the value of the copula only in regard to thought. Accordingly the Problematic Judgment is supposed to consist in its affirmation or negation being taken as optional or possible, the Assertoric Judgment in its being taken as true—that is, as actual, and the Apodeictic Judgment in its being taken as necessary.—It is easy to see why in this Judgment the judgment itself is so readily surpassed, and its determination regarded as something merely subjective. For here it is the Notion, or subjective element, which emerges again in the Judgment and stands related to an immediate actuality. But this subjective quality must not be confused with external reflection, which, though it is of course subjective, is subjective not in the same sense as the Notion itself; this Notion, which re-emerges from the Disjunctive Judgment, is indeed the opposite of a mere way and manner. In this sense the earlier Judgments are merely subjective, for they are based upon an abstraction and one-sidedness in which the Notion is lost. Rather, the Judgment of the Notion is objective and is truth as against them, just because it is founded upon the Notion in its determinateness as Notion and not in external reflection or in relation to subjective, that is, to contingent, thought.

In the Disjunctive Judgment the Notion was posited as identity of universal nature and its particularization: thus the relation of the Judgment had cancelled itself. This concretion of universality and particularization is, at first, simple result; it must now develop into totality, since the moments which it contains have perished in it and do not yet stand opposed to each other in definite independence.—The inadequacy of the result may also be expressed more definitely in these terms, that in the Disjunctive Judgment objective universality has indeed become complete in its particularization, but that the negative unity of the latter passes back only into the former, and has not yet determined itself to be the third term, or individuality.—But, in so far as the result is itself negative unity, it is already this individuality; but now it is only this one determinateness which must now posit its negativity, sunder itself into the extremes, and in this manner finally develop into the Syllogism.

The first diremption of this unity is that Judgment in which it is posited first as subject, as an immediate individual, and then as predicate, as determinate relation of its moments.

At first the Judgment of the Notion is immediate: thus it is the Assertoric Judgment. The subject is any concrete individual, and the predicate expresses this same as the relation of its actuality, determinateness, or character, to its Notion. (‘This house is bad,” “this action is good.”) Further then it contains this:—(a) that the subject ought to be something; its universal nature has posited itself as the independent Notion; (b) particularity, which exists as character and external existence not only because of its immediacy but also because it is expressly distinguished from its independent and universal nature; and, since the Notion is independent, this existence for its part is indifferent to the universal, and may, or may not, be adequate to it.—This character is the individuality which lies beyond the necessary determination of the universal in the Disjunctive Judgment, a determination which exists only as particularization of the species and as negative principle of the genus. In so far the concrete universality which emerged from the Disjunctive Judgment is split into the form of extremes in the Assertoric Judgment; these extremes lack the Notion as posited unity which relates them.

For this reason the Judgment so far is no more than assertoric; it is vouched for by a subjective asseveration. It depends upon some outside third term whether something is good or bad, correct, fitting or unfitting, and so on. But the fact that this dependence is posited externally means that it is only in itself or internal.—Consequently nobody will suppose that if something is good or bad (and so forth), it is good only in subjective consciousness but perhaps bad in itself, or that good and bad, correct, fitting, and the rest, are not predicates of the objects themselves. The merely subjective element of the assertion in this Judgment consists then in this, that the connexion between subject and predicate, which is in itself, is not yet posited, or, what is the same thing, that it is merely external; as yet the copula is an immediate and abstract Being.

Consequently the asseveration of the Assertoric Judgment is opposed with equal authority by its opposite. If it is stated that an action is good, the opposite assertion, that it is bad, has an equal justification.—Or, considered by itself, the subject of the Judgment is immediate individual, and therefore in this abstraction no determinateness is yet posited in it containing its relation to the universal Notion. It is therefore still contingent whether it corresponds to the Notion or not. Hence the Judgment is essentially Problematic.

The Problematic is the Assertoric Judgment in so far as the latter must equally be taken positively and negatively.—From this qualitative side the Particular Judgment is also a Problematic Judgment, for it is equally valid positively and negatively;—and similarly in the Hypothetical Judgment the being of the subject and predicate is problematic;—through these too it is posited that the Singular and the Categorical Judgments are still something merely subjective. But this positing is more immanent in the Problematic Judgment as such than in those others; for in the former the content of the predicate is the relation of the subject to the Notion, and here therefore the determination of the immediate as contingent is actually given.

At first it only appears to be problematic whether or not the predicate is to be connected with a certain subject, and in so far the indeterminateness falls within the copula. No determination can emerge therefrom for the predicate, for it is already objective and concrete universality. Thus the problematic element concerns the immediacy of the subject, which thus is determined as contingency.—Further, for this reason abstraction must not be made from the individuality of the subject: purged of individuality it would be merely a universal; the predicate contains just this, that the Notion of the subject is to be posited in relation to its individuality.—It is impossible to say “the house” or “a house is good”; it is necessary to add “according to its character.”—The problematic part of the subject in itself constitutes its contingency as moment: it constitutes the subjectivity of the thing (as opposed to its objective nature or Notion), and the mere manner or character of it.

Thus the subject itself is distinguished into its universality or objective nature (its ought) and into the particular character of Determinate Being. Hence it contains the Ground whether it is as it ought to be. In this manner it is equated with the predicate.—The negativity of the problematic, in so far as it is directed against the immediacy of the subject, accordingly means only this its original division (and it already exists in itself as the unity of the universal and the particular) into these its moments—a division which is the Judgment itself.

It may further be observed that each of the two sides of the subject, its Notion and its character, might be called its subjectivity. The Notion is the introverted universal Essence of a thing, or its negative self-unity: this constitutes its subjectivity. But a thing is also essentially contingent, and has an external character; and this is equally called its mere subjectivity, as opposed to that other, which is its objectivity. The thing itself is indeed just this, that its Notion as negative self-unity negates its universality and transposes itself into the externality of individuality.—Here the subject of the Judgment is posited as this duality; and those opposite meanings of subjectivity reside, according to their truth, in one entity.—The significance of the subjective part has itself become problematic because it has lost the immediate determinateness which it had in the immediate judgment, together with its definite opposition to the predicate.—This opposite significance of the subjective element, which occurs also in the reasonings of ordinary reflection, ought by itself at least to draw attention to the fact that in one of these it has no truth. The double significance is the manifestation of the fact that each by itself is one-sided.

The problematic being thus posited as the problematic element of the thing, or the thing together with its character, the Judgment itself is no longer Problematic, but Apodeictic.

The subject of the Apodeictic Judgment (“the house, if of such and such a character, is good”; “the action, if of such and such a character, is just”) contains first the universal which it ought to be, and secondly its character; the latter contains the ground why a predicate of the Notion-Judgment belongs, or does not belong, to the whole of the subject; that is, whether the subject does or does not correspond to its Notion.—Now this Judgment is truly objective; that is, it is the truth of judgment in general. Subject and predicate correspond to each other and have the same content, and this content itself is concrete posited universality; for it contains the two moments, the objective universal (or genus) and the individualized entity. It is here therefore the universal which is itself, and continues itself through its opposite, and is universal only as unity with the latter.—A universal like the predicates “good,” “fitting,” “correct,” and so forth, is based upon an ought and also contains the fact that Existence corresponds; it is not the ought nor the genus by itself, but this correspondence, that is the universality which constitutes the predicate of the Apodeictic Judgment.

The subject too contains these two moments in immediate unity, as Thing. But its truth is, that it is inwardly severed into its ought and its is; and this is the absolute judgment about all actuality.—This original division, which is the omnipotence of the Notion, is equally return to its unity and absolute relation to each other of ought and is, and so causes the actual to be one Thing; its inner relation, this concrete identity, constitutes the soul of the Thing.

The transition from the immediate simplicity of the Thing to that correspondence, which is the determinate relation of its ought and its is, or the copula, is now seen to lie in the particular determinateness of the Thing. The genus is the universal which is in and for itself, and, in so far, appears as unrelated; while the determinateness is that which in this universality reflects itself into itself but also into an Other. Consequently the Judgment has its ground in the character of the subject, and thereby is Apodeictic. Thus there is now given the determinate and completed copula, which formerly consisted in the abstract “is” but has now developed itself further into ground in general. At first it exists in the subject as immediate determinateness; but it is equally relation to the predicate, which has no other content than just this correspondence, or the relation of the subject to universality.

The form of Judgment has thus perished: first, because subject and predicate in themselves are the same content; but secondly because the subject, through its determinateness, points beyond itself and relates itself to the predicate. But, thirdly, this process of relating has equally passed over into the predicate; it constitutes the latter’s content alone, and is thus the posited relation or the Judgment itself.—Thus the concrete identity of the Notion, which was the result of the Disjunctive Judgment and constitutes the inner foundation of the Notion-Judgment, is established in the whole, whereas originally it was posited only in the predicate.

If the positive part of this result, which effects the transition of the Judgment into another category, is further considered, it appears (as was seen) that subject and predicate are in the Apodeictic Judgment each the whole of the Notion.—The unity of the Notion, as that determinateness which constitutes the copula which relates them, is also distinct from them. At first it merely stands on the other side of the subject as its immediate character. But its essential function is to relate, and thus it is not only such immediate character, but also that which passes through subject and predicate and is universal.—On the other hand, since subject and predicate have the same content, the form-relation is posited through this determinateness, that is, determinateness as a universal, or particularity.—Thus it contains the two form-determinations of the extremes, and is the determinate relation of subject and predicate; it is the completed copula of the Judgment, full of content, the unity of the Notion which has re-emerged out of the Judgment, where it lost itself in the extremes.—Through this completion of the copula the Judgment has become the Syllogism.