III. On the Notion in General

The nature of the Notion can no more be indicated immediately than the notion of any other object can be established immediately. It might seem that, in order to indicate the notion of an object, the logical element were presupposed, and that this in turn could have nothing for antecedent, and could not be derived; as in geometry logical propositions (as they appear in application to magnitude and are used in that science) are premised in the form of axioms, underived and underivable determinations of cognition. Now the Notion must be looked upon not merely as a subjective presupposition, but as absolute foundation; but still it cannot be except in so far as it has made itself, foundation. It is true that the abstract immediate is a prius\ but as abstract it is, rather, mediated, so that its foundation must first be sought if it is to be seized in its truth. Consequently the foundation must be immediate, but in such a manner that it has made itself immediate, mediation having been transcended.

From this side, and in general, the Notion must be looked upon as the third term (where Being and Essence, or the Immediate and Reflection, are the other two). In this regard, Being and Essence are the moments of its becoming; but the Notion is their foundation and truth, as that identity in which they have been submerged and are contained. They are contained in it because it is their result, but no longer as Being and as Essence: they have this latter determination only in so far as they have not yet passed back into this their unity.

Accordingly Objective Logic, which considers Being and Essence, really constitutes the genetic exposition of the Notion. And (to come to details) Substance already is real Essence, or Essence in so far as it is united to Being and has entered into actuality. Consequently the Notion has Substance for immediate presupposition; Substance is that in itself which the Notion is as manifested entity. Hence the dialectic movement of Substance through Causality and Reciprocity is the immediate genesis of the Notion, and represents its becoming. But its becoming (like Becoming everywhere) has the meaning that it is the Reflection into its Ground of that which passes over, and that which first appears as Other into which the former has passed over, constitutes its truth. Thus the Notion is the truth of Substance; and, since Necessity is the specific mode of relation of Substance, Freedom shows itself to be the truth of Necessity and the specific relation of the Notion.

The peculiar and necessary process of determination of Substance is the positing of that which is in and for itself; the Notion is this absolute unity of Being and Reflection,—that Being-in-and-for-Self is only because it is also Reflection or positedness, and that positedness is Being-in-and-for-Self.—This abstract result explains itself through the presentation of its concrete genesis: this latter contains the nature of the Notion, but must precede its treatment. The chief moments of this exposition (which has been treated in detail in Book Two of Objective Logic) can therefore here be briefly summarized.

Substance is the Absolute, the Actual which is in and for itself:—in itself, as simple identity of Possibility and Actuality, absolute Essence which contains in itself all Actuality and Possibility; and for itself as being this identity as absolute power or simply self-relating negativity.—The movement of Substantiality which is posited through these moments has the following structure.

1. Substance as absolute power or self-relating negativity divides itself and becomes a relation wherein those moments, which at first are only simple, exist as substances and as original presuppositions.—The definite relation between them is that between a passive and an active substance; between the originality of simple Being-in-Self which is powerless, does not, therefore, posit itself, and is only original positedness,—and self-relating negativity, which as such has posited itself as Other and relates itself to this Other. This Other is passive substance, which the active, in the originality of its power, has presupposed for itself as condition.—This presupposing must be conceived in this manner, that the movement of Substance is at first under the form of one moment of its notion, of Being-in-Self; that the determinateness of one of the related substances is also the determinateness of this relation itself.

2. The other moment is Being-for-Self, where power posits itself as self-relating negativity, whereby it cancels again the term which had been presupposed.—Active substance is Cause; it acts; that is, it now posits what it presupposed before, namely that (a) power has now also the show of power, and positedness the show of positedness. What in presupposition was original becomes in causality, through relation to Other, what it is in itself. Cause produces an effect, and produces it in another substance; it is now power in relation to Other, and thus appears as cause, but is this only by virtue of this appearance.—(b) Effect is achieved on passive substance, and thus it now appears also as positedness, but is passive substance only in this appearance.

3. But there is more here than only this appearance, (a) Cause acts upon passive substance and changes its determination. But Substance is positedness, apart from which there is nothing in it susceptible of change, while the other determination which it receives is causal nature; passive substance thus becomes cause, power, and activity, (b) Effect is posited in it by cause; but that which cause posits is cause itself which, in action, is self-identical; it is cause which substitutes itself for passive substance.—In regard to active substance similarly (a) action is the translation of cause into effect (its Other), or positedness; and (b) in effect cause shows itself for what it is: effect is identical with cause and is not an Other; cause in action thus shows positedness as that which essentially it is.—Each thus becomes its own opposite, and that from both sides, from the identical as well as the negative relating of the other to it; but each side becomes this opposite in such a manner that the other (and therefore also each) remains identical with itself.—But both—negative and positive relating—are one and the same thing; Substance is self-identical only in its opposite, and this constitutes the absolute identity of the substances which are posited as being two. Active substance is manifested in action as cause or original substantiality; and action means that it posits itself as its own opposite, which is also the transcendence of its presupposed otherness, of passive substance. Conversely, through this operation positedness is manifested as positedness, the negative as negative, and consequently passive substance as self-relating negativity; and cause, in this its absolute Other, simply coincides with itself. Through this positing, then, presupposed or self-existent originality becomes for itself; but this Being-in-and-for-Self is only because this positing is equally a transcendence of that which is presupposed, or, because absolute Substance has returned to itself only from and in its positedness, and thereby is absolute. This Reciprocity is thus the self-transcending appearance, the revelation of the show of causality, where cause is as cause of show being show. This infinite intro-Reflection where Being-in-and-for-Self is only because it is positedness, is the consummation of Substance. But this consummation is no longer Substance itself, but something higher—the Notion, the Subject. The transition of the Relation of Substantiality takes place by virtue of its own immanent necessity, and is no more than the manifestation of this itself,—of the fact that the Notion is its truth, and Freedom the truth of Necessity.

It has been mentioned already in Book Two of Objective Logic (p. 167, Observation) that the philosophy which takes up the standpoint of Substance, and there halts, is the system of Spinoza. At that place the deficiency of this system both in form and matter was demonstrated. But to refute it is another matter. With respect to the refutation of a philosophic system, the general observation was made in another place that it must be purged of the erroneous idea that the system is to be presented as false throughout, and that the true system is just opposed to the false. The connexion in which Spinoza’s system here occurs shows of itself its true standpoint, and that of the question whether it is true or false. The Relation of Substantiality evolved itself out of the nature of Essence; therefore this relation, and its representation extended into the comprehensiveness of a system, is a necessary standpoint which the Absolute occupies. Such a standpoint must not then be regarded as an opinion, a subjective and arbitrary manner of imagining or thinking peculiar to an individual, nor as an aberration of speculation; rather, speculation in its course necessarily is promoted to this point, and in so far the system is perfectly true.—But it is not the highest standpoint. The system, however, cannot for this reason be regarded as false, as needing and capable of refutation: only its claim to be the highest standpoint is to be considered as false in it. And hence the true system cannot have the relation to it of being merely its opposite; for then this opposite would itself be one-sided. Much rather, being superior, it must contain the subordinate.

Further, the refutation must not come from outside; that is, it must not proceed from assumptions which lie beyond that system and do not correspond with it. It only requires not to acknowledge those assumptions; a flaw is a flaw only for those who proceed from requirements and needs which are based upon it. In this sense it has been said that no refutation of Spinoza’s system can be made for those who do not presuppose for themselves as decided the freedom and independence of the self-conscious subject. In any case, a standpoint so high and already in itself so rich as is the Relation of Substantiality does not ignore those assumptions, but also contains them: Thought is one of the attributes of Spinoza’s Substance. This standpoint rather succeeds in resolving and absorbing the determinations in which those assumptions conflict with it, so that (but with the modifications appropriate to it) they appear in this standpoint. The sinew of external refutation is this alone—firmly and rigidly on their side to uphold the opposite forms of the given assumptions,—for example, the absolute self-persistence of the thinking individual as against the form of Thought as the latter is posited in absolute Substance—namely, as identical with Extension. True refutation must engage the force of the opponent and must place itself within the compass of his strength; the task is not advanced if he is attacked outside himself and the case is carried in his absence. Hence the refutation of Spinoza’s system can consist solely in this, that his standpoint be first recognized as essential and as necessary, but that secondly this standpoint be raised out of itself to a higher. The Relation of Substantiality, considered solely in and for itself, leads over to its opposite, the Notion. Consequently the exposition of Substance contained in the last book, which leads over to the Notion, is the only and veritable refutation of Spinoza’s system. It is the revelation of Substance, and the latter is the genesis of the Notion of which the chief moments were summarized above.—The oneness of Substance is its relation of Necessity; but thus it is only inner Necessity; and, positing itself through the moment of absolute negativity, it becomes manifested or posited identity and consequently Freedom, which is the identity of the Notion. The Notion is the totality which results from Reciprocity, and is the unity of the two substances of Reciprocity, but is so in such a manner that now they belong to Freedom; for the identity which they have is no longer blind nor inner and their essential determination is that they are Show or moments of Reflection, where each has immediately coincided with its Other or its positedness, and each contains its positedness in itself and thus is simply posited as self-identical in its Other.

In the Notion, accordingly, the realm of Freedom has opened. The Notion is the free because it is the identity which is in and for itself and which constitutes the necessity of Substance; simultaneously it exists as transcended or as positedness, and this positedness, as self-relating, is precisely that identity. The darkness in which each of the substances which are in the Relation of Causality stands to the other, has vanished, for the originality of their individual persistence has passed over into positedness, and has thereby become self-transparent clarity. The original fact is this in being only its own cause, and this is Substance which, having achieved Freedom, has become Notion.

From this the following and closer determination for the Notion immediately results. Being-in-and-for-Self is immediately as positedness, and therefore the Notion in its simple self-relation is absolute determinateness; which, however, equally as merely self-relating is immediately simple identity. But this self-relation of determinateness, as its own self-coincidence, is equally the negation of determinateness, and as this self-equality the Notion is the Universal. But this identity has just as much the determination of negativity; it is negation or determinateness which relates itself to itself: and thus the Notion is Individual. Each of the two is the totality, and each contains the determination of the other; and for this reason these totalities are one, as much as this unity is its own schism into the free Show of this duality,—a duality which in the distinction between individual and universal appears as complete opposition, but is Show so much that as soon as one is conceived and enunciated the other is therein immediately conceived and enunciated.

What has just been submitted should be considered as the notion of the Notion. If this notion seems to deviate from what is asserted to be the common view of Notion, it might be asked that a demonstration be furnished how that which here has yielded itself as the Notion is contained in any other conceptions or explanations. But on the one hand there can be no question here of a confirmation founded upon the authority of ordinary understanding: in the science of the Notion its content and determination can be vouched for only by the immanent deduction which is contained in its genesis, and which we have already left behind. On the other hand surely the Notion which has here been deduced must be recognizable in what is elsewhere offered as the notion of Notion. But it is not so easy to discover what others have said about the nature of the Notion. For, generally, they do not concern themselves at all with this quest, and presuppose that everyone understands automatically when the Notion is discussed. Recently men might have considered themselves superior to all trouble about the Notion,—the more so because it was the fashion for some time to speak ill in every way of imagination and also of memory; and because for long it has been and still is in part a practice in philosophy to heap every calumny upon the Notion, to ridicule that which is the summit of thought, and to regard as the highest peak both in the scientific and in the moral sphere the renunciation of Notion both as objective and as method.

I here restrict myself to an observation which may serve to render intelligible the concepts here developed and to make them more easily acceptable. The Notion, in so far as it has advanced into such an existence as is free itself, is just the Ego, or pure self-consciousness. It is true that I have notions—that is, determinate notions; but Ego is the pure Notion itself, which as Notion has reached Existence. If therefore the fundamental determinations which constitute the nature of the Ego are recalled, it may be assumed that mention is being made of something which is known, that is, which is familiar to imagination. Now Ego is this unity which, first, is pure and self-relating, and is so not immediately, but abstracting from every determinateness and content and passing back into the freedom of boundless self-equality. It is thus universality’, unity which is self-unity only by virtue of this negative attitude which appears as abstraction, and therefore contains dissolved within itself all determinateness. Secondly, and equally immediately, Ego as self-relating negativity is individuality or absolute determinedness which opposes itself to and excludes Other: it is individual personality. That absolute universality which equally immediately is absolute individualization, and a Being-in-and-for-Self which is simply positedness and is this Being-in-and-for-Self only by virtue of the unity with positedness, constitutes equally the nature of Ego and of the Notion; no notion can be formed about either unless the two moments mentioned are taken at once in their abstraction and at once in their complete unity.

If the understanding, which I have, is spoken of in the ordinary manner, a capacity or property is understood thereby which is related to the Ego as the property of the thing to the thing itself—to an indeterminate substratum which is not the true ground and determining element of its property. According to this idea I have notions and the Notion as I have a coat, colour, and other external properties.—Kant has passed beyond this external relation of the understanding (taken as the capacity of notions and of the Notion itself) to the Ego. Among the profoundest and most correct discoveries of the Critique of Reason is this, that the unity which constitutes the essence of the Notion is recognized to be the original and synthetic unity of apperception, as unity of the “I think” or of self-consciousness.—This proposition constitutes the so-called transcendental deduction of the category; but it has always been counted for one of the hardest parts of Kant’s philosophy—probably for no other reason than because it demands that the bare image of the relation in which the Ego and the understanding (or the notions) stand to a thing with its properties and accidents, must be superseded by thought proper. The object says Kant (Critique of Pure Reason p. 137, 2nd edition), is that in whose notion the manifold of a given intuition is unified. But every unification of ideas requires unity of consciousness in their synthesis. Consequently this unity of consciousness alone is that which constitutes the relation of the ideas to an object, that is, their objective validity: upon it alone even the possibility of understanding rests. Kant distinguishes from this the subjective unity of consciousness, the unity of ideation: I may be conscious of a manifold as simultaneous or as a sequence, and this is stated to depend upon empirical conditions. On the contrary, the principles of the objective determination of ideas must be derived wholly from the law of the transcendental unity of apperception. The categories (which are these objective determinations) so determine the manifold of given ideas that it is reduced to the unity of consciousness.—According to this representation, the unity of the Notion is that by virtue of which something is object and not merely determination of sensation, intuition, or mere idea; and this objective unity is the self-unity of the Ego.—And indeed to form a notion of an object consists just in this, that the Ego appropriates it, penetrates it, and reduces it into its own form, that is, universality which is immediately determinateness, or determinateness which is immediately universality. In intuition and also in ideation the object still is external and foreign. When a notion is formed of it, the Being-in-and-for-Self which it has in intuition and ideation is changed into a positedness: Ego penetrates it in and by thinking. But the object is truly in and for itself only as it is in thought; as it is in intuition or ideation it is appearance; thought transcends its immediacy, with which at first it meets us, and thus makes it a positedness; but this its positedness is its Being-in-and-for-Self or its objectivity. Hence the object has this objectivity in the Notion, and the Notion is the unity of self-consciousness into which the object has been taken up. Consequently its objectivity (or the Notion) is nothing else than the nature of self-consciousness, and has no other moments or determinations than the Ego itself.

Thus a capital proposition of Kant’s philosophy furnishes the justification of the method, when the nature of the Ego is recalled in order that the Notion may be understood. But conversely it is necessary for this that the notion of the Ego (as cited above) shall have been grasped. If a halt is made at the mere idea [Vorstellung] of the Ego as it is present to our ordinary consciousness, then Ego is only that simple thing, which is also called soul, in which the notion inheres as a possession or property. This idea, which does not attempt to form a notion of either Ego or the Notion, cannot serve to make it an easier or readier matter to form a notion of the Notion.

Kant’s account of this matter, which has been quoted, contains two further sides which concern the Notion and necessitate some further observations. First, the stages of sensation and intuition are made to precede the stage of understanding, and it is an essential proposition of Kant’s transcendental philosophy that notions without intuition are empty, and have validity only as relations of the manifold which is given by intuition. Secondly, the Notion has been indicated as the objective element of cognition, and consequently as the truth. But on the other side it is taken as something merely subjective, out of which reality (by which objectivity must be understood, since it is contrasted with subjectivity) cannot be extracted; and, in general, both the Notion and the logical element are declared to be something merely formal which abstracts from content and therefore does not contain truth.

Now, first, with regard to this relation of the understanding or the Notion to the stages which are supposed to precede it, it is of importance what science it is that is being treated, in order to determine the form of these stages. In our science, since it is pure logic, these stages are Being and Essence. In psychology, sensation and intuition and also ideation [Vorstellung] in general precede understanding. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, since it is the doctrine of consciousness, the ascent was made through the stages of sensuous consciousness and, next, perception, to understanding. Kant places only sensation and intuition before this: and he himself allows us to recognize how incomplete this scale is by adding as appendix to the Transcendental Logic (or doctrine of the understanding) a treatise on the Notions of Reflection—a sphere which lies between intuition and understanding, or between Being and the Notion.

Concerning this matter itself, we may first observe that these forms of intuition, ideation, and the like belong to self-conscious spirit, which is not considered as such in the science of logic. It is true that the pure determinations of Being, Essence, and Notion also constitute the foundation and the inner simple framework of the forms of spirit: spirit as intuitive and also as sensuous consciousness is in the determinateness of immediate Being; while spirit as ideating as well as perceiving consciousness has risen from Being to the stage of Essence or of Reflection. But these concrete shapes concern the science of logic no more than the concrete forms which the logical determinations assume in nature, which forms would be space and time, and, further, filled space and time (as inorganic nature), and finally organic nature. And further the Notion must not here be considered as an act of self-conscious understanding, or as subjective understanding: what we have to do with is the Notion in and for itself, which constitutes a stage as well of Nature as of Spirit. Life, or organic nature, is that stage of nature at which the Notion emerges, but as blind, not self-comprehending, and therefore not thinking, Notion: as thinking it belongs only to Spirit. But the logical form of the Notion does not depend upon either its non-spiritual or its spiritual shape, and what was necessary has already been premised about this in the Introduction. This is a significance which cannot be justified within the body of logic: there must be no doubt about it before logic is attempted.

But, secondly, whatever shape the forms which precede the Notion may be given, the relation is of importance in which the Notion is thought of as standing to them. Both in the common psychological representation and in Kant’s transcendental philosophy this relation is assumed to be such that the empirical material, the manifold of intuition and of ideation, first exists for itself, and that next understanding addresses it, unifies it, and by abstraction raises it into the form of universality. Here understanding is an empty form, which partly achieves reality only by this content which is given it and partly abstracts from it, leaving it aside as useless, but useless only for the Notion. In both of these activities the Notion is not the independent, is not the essential and true part of the preceding material, but this latter rather is reality in and for itself, which cannot be extracted out of the Notion.

It must indeed be admitted that the Notion as such is not yet complete, but must rise into the Idea, which is the unity of Notion and Reality; this must result of itself below, out of the nature of the Notion. For the reality which it gives itself must not be taken up as external: science demands that it should be derived from the Notion itself. Certainly it is not the material given by intuition and ideation that may be claimed as real in opposition to the Notion. “It is only a notion” is a thing commonly said; and not only the Idea, but sensuous, spatial, and temporal palpable existence is opposed to the Notion, as something which is more excellent than it. And the abstract is counted of less worth than the concrete, because from the former so much of that kind of material has been omitted. To those who hold this, the process of abstraction means that for our subjective needs one or another characteristic is taken out of the concrete in such a manner that, while so many other properties and modifications of the object are omitted, these lose nothing in value or dignity. They are the real and are reckoned as counting in full, only they are left on the other side; and it is only the incapacity of understanding to absorb such riches that forces it to rest content with meagre abstraction. But if the given material of intuition and the manifold of ideation are taken as the real in opposition to that which is thought and to the Notion, then this is a view the renunciation of which is not only a condition of philosophy, but is assumed even by religion; for how can these be needed and have significance if the fugitive and superficial appearance of the sensuous and the individual are taken for the truth? But philosophy furnishes an insight, in terms of the Notion, into the value of this reality of sensuous Being, and prefaces understanding with those stages of sensation and intuition, sensuous consciousness and so forth, so far as they are the conditions of its becoming: this they are only in such a manner that the Notion emerges out of their dialectic and nothingness as their Ground, but is in no way conditioned by their reality. Consequently abstracting thought must not be considered as a mere setting-aside of the sensuous material, whose reality is said not to be lowered thereby; but it is its transcendence, and the reduction of it (as from mere appearance) to the essential, which manifests itself in the Notion only. Of course, if what is to be taken up out of concrete appearance into the Notion is to serve only as a mark or symbol, then indeed it may be any merely sensuous and individual determination of the object, which is selected from the others for the sake of some external interest and is of the same kind and nature as the rest.

The principal misapprehension here is, that the natural principle or the beginning which is the starting-point in the natural development or in the history of the individual in its formation, is taken as the true and as that which is first also in the Notion. It is true that in nature intuition or Being is prius or condition for the Notion, but neither is for that reason in and for itself unconditioned: indeed, in the Notion their reality is transcended, and with it the show which they had as conditioning realities. If, instead of the search for truth, the aim is to narrate what happens in ideation and appearing thought, then a halt may be made at the point where the story is told that we begin with sensations and intuitions, and that understanding extracts from their manifold a universality or an abstract, and, naturally, requires that foundation to remain present before imagination in this process of abstraction with all the reality in which it first showed itself. But philosophy is not meant to be a narrative of what happens, but a cognition of what is true in happenings, and, further, it has to form a Notion out of the body of truth about that which in the narrative appears as mere happening.

In the superficial idea about the nature of the Notion, all multiplicity stands outside it, and it has only the form of abstract universality or of empty identity of Reflection; but it may be recalled that elsewhere too, where a notion or a definition is given, a specific determinateness is explicitly required in addition to the species, which is itself not really purely abstract universality. If only some thoughtful consideration were applied to the meaning of this, it would be plain that distinction is implicitly regarded as an equally essential moment of the Notion. Kant led up to this idea by the extremely important reflection that there are synthetic judgments a priori. This original synthesis of apperception is one of the profoundest principles for speculative development; it contains the beginning of a correct understanding of the nature of the Notion, and is absolutely opposed to that empty identity or abstract universality which is no synthesis in itself.—But the further development little fulfils the promise of this beginning. The very term “synthesis” again leads easily to the image of an external unity and mere connexion of elements which in and for themselves are separate. Next, Kant’s philosophy made a halt at the psychological reflex of the Notion, and returned again to the assertion of the permanent conditionedness of the Notion by a manifold of intuition. It pronounced the discoveries of understanding, and experience, to be an appearing content not because the categories themselves are only finite but by reason of a psychological idealism, because they are only determinations which are derived from self-consciousness. It also belongs to this place that the Notion, without the manifold of intuition, is again supposed to be void of content and empty, in spite of the fact that a priori it is supposed to be a synthesis; which if it is, it has determinateness and distinction within itself. The synthesis is the determinateness of the Notion, and, therefore, absolute determinateness or individuality, and consequently the Notion is ground and source of all finite determinateness and multiplicity.

The formal position which the Notion retains as understanding is completed in Kant’s presentation of the nature of Reason. It might be expected that in Reason, which is the highest stage of thought, the Notion would lose that conditionedness in which it appears at the stage of understanding, and would reach perfected truth. But this expectation is cheated. Kant determines the attitude of Reason to the categories as being merely dialectic, and takes the result of this dialectic as being just infinite Nothing; and thereby the infinite unity of Reason loses even the synthesis, and, with it, the beginning of a speculative and truly infinite Notion: it becomes the well-known, quite formal, merely regulative unity of the systematic practice of understanding. It is declared to be an abuse if logic, which ought to be merely a canon of judgment, is regarded as an organ for the production of objective discoveries. The notions of Reason, in which a higher force and a deeper content were of necessity divined, are less constitutive than even the categories; they are mere ideas. Their use may certainly be permissible, but these intelligible essences, which should wholly unlock the truth, are to signify no more than hypotheses; and it would be completely arbitrary and reckless to ascribe any truth to them in and for themselves, since they can occur in no kind of experience,—Could it ever have been thought that philosophy would gainsay the validity of the intelligible essences because they are without the spatial and temporal material of sensuousness?

With this the point of view is immediately connected with respect to which the Notion and the determination of logic in general must be considered: this in Kant’s philosophy is taken in the same manner as it is taken commonly. This point of view is the relation of the Notion and its science to truth itself. We quoted above from Kant’s deduction of the categories that, according to it, the object, in which the manifold of intuition is united, is this unity only by virtue of the unity of self-consciousness. Thus the objectivity of thought is here definitely asserted—an identity of the Notion and the thing, which is the truth. In a like manner it is generally admitted that when thought appropriates a given object, this undergoes a change, and having been an object of sense becomes an object of thought; but that this change not only does not alter its essentiality, but that it is in its truth only in its Notion, while in the immediacy in which it is given it is only appearance and contingency; and that cognition of the object which forms a Notion of it is a cognition of it as it is in and for itself, and the Notion is its very objectivity. But, on the other side, the assertion is made again that we surely cannot know things as they are in and for themselves, and that truth does not allow cognizing reason to approach it; that truth which consists in the unity of object and Notion is after all only appearance, and the reason now is that its content is only the manifold of intuition. Of this argument it has already been remarked that this manifoldness, in so far as it belongs to intuition as opposed to the Notion, is transcended precisely in the Notion, and that the object is led back by the Notion into its non-contingent essentiality; the latter enters into appearance, and for this very reason the appearance is not merely non-essential, but manifestation of Essence. But that manifestation of it which has become entirely free is the Notion.—The propositions which are here mentioned are not dogmatic assertions, for they are results produced through themselves in the course of the entire development of Essence. The standpoint to which this development has led is, now, that that form of the Absolute which is higher than Being and Essence is the Notion. From this side it has subordinated to itself Being and Essence (which, with other starting-points, include sensation, intuition, and ideation): these appeared as its precedent conditions, and it has now proved itself their unconditioned Ground. There now remains therefore the second side (to the treatment of which this third book of the Logic is devoted)—which shows how the Notion forms in and out of itself that Reality which has vanished in it. It has here been admitted that cognition which has halted at the Notion purely as such, is incomplete as yet and has reached only abstract truth. But its incompleteness lies not in any lack of the “reality” which sensation and intuition are supposed to give, but in the fact that the Notion has not yet given itself its own self-generated Reality. The absoluteness of the Notion, which is proved upon and in empirical matter (and, more exactly, in its categories and determinations of reflection), consists in this, that the latter has truth not as it appears apart from and before the Notion, but only in its ideality, or in its identity with the Notion. The derivation (if that is to be its name) of the real from it here consists essentially in this, that the Notion in its formal abstraction shows itself to be incomplete, and passes over to reality by the dialectic which is founded upon itself; it does this by generating reality from within itself, and not by falling back again into a reality which it finds standing ready over against it, nor by taking refuge with something which had manifested itself as the unessential of appearance because, having looked for something better, it has failed to find it.—It will always remain a matter for astonishment how the Kantian philosophy knew that relation of thought to sensuous existence, where it halted, for a merely relative relation of bare appearance, and fully acknowledged and asserted a higher unity of the two in the Idea in general, and, particularly, in the idea of an intuitive understanding; but yet stopped dead at this relative relation and at the assertion that the Notion is and remains utterly separated from reality;—so that it affirmed as true what it pronounced to be finite knowledge, and declared to be superfluous and improper figments of thought that which it recognized as truth, and of which it established the definite notion.

Since it is logic, and not science in general, whose relation to the truth is here under discussion, it must further be admitted that the former, as formal science, cannot and ought not to contain that reality too which is the content of further parts of philosophy—the Sciences of Nature and of Spirit. These concrete sciences do indeed emerge into a more real form of the Idea than does logic,—but not in such a manner as to turn back to that reality which consciousness has given up when rising beyond its appearance into science, or to revert to the use of forms (such as the categories or determinations of reflection) whose finitude and invalidity have proved themselves in the logic. Logic rather shows the elevation of the Idea to that stage from which it becomes the creator of Nature and passes over to the form of a concrete immediacy, the Notion of which, however, breaks this mould too when, as concrete Spirit, it becomes itself. These are concrete sciences; the logical element, or the Notion, is and remains that which moulded and still moulds them; and, as opposed to these, logic itself is the formal science: but it is the science of absolute form, which is totality in itself, and contains the pure idea of truth itself. This absolute form has its content, or reality, in itself: the Notion is not trivial empty identity, and thus, in the moment of its negativity or of absolute determining, it has a variety of determinations: the content is indeed nothing else than such determinations of absolute form—the content posited by it and therefore adequate to it.—And hence this form is quite different in nature from that which normally is taken as logical form. It is truth already for itself, since this content is adequate to its form, or this reality to its Notion; and it is pure truth, because the determinations of content have not yet the form of an absolute otherness or of absolute immediacy.—When Kant (in the Critique of Pure Reason, p. 83) comes to speak of the old and famous question “what is truth?” in connexion with logic, he begins by granting (as something trivial) the description of truth as the correspondence of knowledge with its object—a definition which is of great and even of the highest value. If this is recalled in connexion with the fundamental assertion of transcendental idealism, namely, that cognition by means of reason is not capable of apprehending the things-in-themselves, and that reality lies utterly outside the Notion, then it is clear immediately that such a reason, which cannot establish a correspondence between itself and its object (the things-in-themselves), is an untrue idea; and equally untrue are things-in-themselves which do not correspond with the Notion of reason, a Notion which does not correspond with reality, and a reality which does not correspond with the Notion. If Kant had kept the idea of an intuitive understanding close to this definition of truth, then he would not have treated this idea, which expresses the required correspondence, as a figment of thought, but as truth.

“What it is required to know,” Kant proceeds, “is a universal and safe criterion of the truth of every cognition; this would be a criterion valid of every cognition without distinction of object; but, since here abstraction is made from every content of cognition (namely, relation to its object), and truth concerns itself precisely with this content, it would be quite impossible and absurd to ask for a token of the truth of this content of cognitions.”—Here the common view of the formal function of logic is very definitely expressed, and the argument quoted appears very convincing. But it must first be observed that such a formal argument generally comes to forget, in the course of its utterance, the matter which it has made its foundation and is now discussing. It would be absurd, we are told, to ask for a criterion of the truth of the content of cognition;—but, according to the definition, it is not the content which constitutes truth, but its correspondence with the Notion. A content such as is spoken of here, that is, without Notion, is notionless and therefore essenceless; of course it is impossible to ask for the criterion of the truth of such an entity, but for the opposite reason, namely because, lacking notion, it is not the requisite correspondence and cannot be anything but what belongs to truthless opinion.—If we omit mention of the content, which here causes the confusion (in which formalism is involved every time, being caused to say the opposite of what it would submit whenever it attempts an explanation),—if we make a halt at the abstract view that the logical is merely formal and abstracts from all content,—we then obtain a one-sided cognition which is to contain no object, a form empty and without determination, which consequently is neither correspondence (since correspondence essentially demands two) nor truth.—In the synthesis a priori of the Notion Kant had a higher principle, where duality could be cognized in unity, which was what was demanded for truth; but the sense-material, the manifold of intuition, was too powerful to allow him to leave it for a consideration of the Notion and of the categories in and for themselves, or for a speculative method of philosophy.

Since logic is the science of absolute form, this formal element, in order to be true, must in itself have a content which must be adequate to its form; and this the more because the formal element of logic is pure form, so that logical truth must be pure truth. This formal element must therefore be thought of as being in itself much richer in determinations and content, and as having infinitely more influence upon the concrete, than it is generally held to do. The laws of logic in themselves (aside from applied logic and the other psychological and anthropological material, which is in any case of a different kind) are generally restricted, apart from the law of contradiction, to some few poor propositions regarding the conversion of judgments and the forms of syllogisms. The forms themselves which here occur and their further determinations are taken up in a historical manner, so to say, and are not subjected to criticism to test their truth. Thus, for example, the form of positive judgment is counted as perfectly correct in itself, the truth of such a judgment depending entirely upon its content. And no thought is given to the investigation whether this form in and for itself is a form of truth, and whether the proposition which it enunciates (“the individual is a universal”) is not dialectic in itself. It is simply held that this judgment in itself is capable of containing truth, and that the proposition which every positive judgment enunciates is valid, although it is immediately clear that what the definition of truth demands is lacking in it—namely, the correspondence of the notion and its object; if the predicate (which is here the universal) is taken as the notion, and the subject (which is the individual) is taken as the object, then the one does not correspond with the other. But if the abstract universal which the predicate is does not by itself constitute a notion, which certainly requires much more beside,—just as such a subject also is not yet much more than a grammatical subject,—then how can the judgment contain truth, when its notion and object do not correspond, and perhaps the notion, or even the object, is lacking?—Hence this procedure is rather the impossibility and absurdity of attempting to frame the truth in such forms as positive judgment or judgment in general. Kant’s philosophy did not consider the categories for their own sake, but only for the mistaken reason that they were thought to be subjective forms of self-consciousness, and therefore it declared them to be finite determinations incapable of containing the truth; and, again, it has even less submitted to criticism the forms of the Notion which are the content of ordinary logic; rather, it has taken up part of them (namely the functions of judgments in determining a category), and has allowed them to count as valid presuppositions. But, even if the logical forms are to be regarded as nothing more than formal functions of thought, yet this character would make them worthy of an investigation as to how far they correspond to the truth in themselves. A system of logic which neglects this can claim at most to have the value of a naturalistic description of the empirical phenomena of thought. It is of infinite merit in Aristotle, and must fill us with the highest admiration of his genius, that he first undertook this description. But it is necessary to go further, and to understand both the systematic connexion and the value of the forms.

As considered above, the Notion shows itself to be the unity of Being and Essence. Essence is the first negation of Being, and has turned it into Show; the Notion is the second, or the negation of this negation, that is, it is reconstructed Being, but is this as its infinite mediation and negativity in itself.—Consequently in the Notion Being and Essence no longer have the determination in which they are as Being and Essence; nor are they in such a unity that each only shows in the other. Hence the Notion does not diversify itself into these determinations. It is the truth of the Relation of Substantiality, in which Being and Essence reach their perfected independence and determination one through the other. Substantial identity proved itself to be the truth of Substantiality, and this equally, and only, exists as positedness. Positedness is Determinate Being and Distinction; consequently Being-in-and-for-Self has reached a self-adequate and true Determinate Being in the Notion; for that positedness is Being-in-and-for-Self itself. This positedness constitutes the internal distinction of the Notion: its distinctions are themselves the whole of the Notion because it is immediately Being-in-and-for-Self: they are universal in their determinateness and identical with their negation.

This is the very Notion of the Notion. But, so far, it is only its Notion;—or, it is only Notion itself. It is Being-in-and-for-Self in so far as that is positedness; or it is absolute Substance in so far as that reveals the necessity of distinct substances as identity; and therefore this identity must itself posit that which it is. The moments of the movement of the Relation of Substantiality, out of which the Notion became and the reality which they represent, are only in a state of transition to the Notion; reality is not yet its peculiar determination which has emerged from it, but fell within the sphere of Necessity; the determination of the Notion must be a free determination, an existence in which it is as identical with itself, having for moments Notions which have been posited by itself.

First, then, the Notion is truth only in itself \ because it is only inner, it is, equally, only outer. It is first an immediate in general, and in this shape its moments have the form of immediate and fixed determinations. It appears as the determinate Notion, as the sphere of mere understanding.—This form of immediacy is an existence which is not yet adequate to its nature, since the Notion is that free entity which relates itself to itself alone; and therefore it is an external form, in which the Notion cannot count as Being-in-and-for-Self, but as only posited, or subjective.—The shape of the immediate Notion constitutes that standpoint from which the Notion is a subjective process of thought, a reflection external to the object. This stage accordingly constitutes Subjectivity or the Formal Notion. Its externality appears in the fixed being of its determinations, by virtue of which each comes forward as isolated and qualitative for itself, existing only in external relation to its Other. But the identity of the Notion, which is their inner or subjective essence, sets them in dialectic movement, by means of which their isolation, and consequently the separation of the Notion from the object, transcends itself: totality emerges as their truth, and this is the Objective Notion.

Secondly, the Notion in its Objectivity is the object which is in and for itself. The Formal Notion, in the necessary process of its determination, itself becomes the object, and therefore loses the relationship of subjectivity and externality to the object. Or, conversely, Objectivity is the Real Notion which has emerged from its internality and has passed over into existence.—In this identity with the object it thus has peculiar and free existence. But this is an immediate and not yet a negative freedom. Being at one with the object, it is immersed in it; its distinctions are objective existences in which, in turn, it itself is again Inner. It is the soul of objective existence, and must therefore give itself that form of Subjectivity which, as Formal Notion, it possessed immediately. Thus in the form of the free (which, in Objectivity, it did not yet possess) it opposes the object, and now makes the identity with it, which as Objective Notion it has in and for itself, a posited identity.

In this perfection, where, in its Objectivity, it also has the form of freedom, the adequate Notion is the Idea. Reason, which is the sphere of the Idea, is truth which is unveiled from itself, wherein the Notion has the realization which is entirely proper to it, and is free in so far as it recognizes this its objective world in its subjectivity, and its subjectivity in its objective world.