II.3.1. The Absolute

The simple and solid identity of the Absolute is indeterminate; or rather, in it all determinateness of Essence and Existence, or of Being in general as well as of Reflection, has dissolved itself. To this extent the process of determining what the Absolute is becomes negative—the Absolute appears only as the negation of all predicates, and as the void. But equally it must be declared to be the positing of all predicates, and therefore it appears as a contradiction of the most formal nature. In so far as these two—the negating and the positing—belong to external reflection, this is a formal and unsystematic dialectic, which has no difficulty in picking up here and there determinations of many kinds, or in demonstrating with equal ease, on the one hand, their finitude and mere relativity, while, on the other hand, it asserts the immanence of all determinations in it—for it imagines it vaguely as the totality; but it does not succeed in raising these positings and negations to a veritable unity.—But the problem is, to demonstrate what is the Absolute; but this demonstration cannot be a determining or an external reflection, which would make only determinations of the Absolute: it is the Exposition and indeed the self-Exposition of the Absolute, and only points out what it is.

The Absolute is not only Being, nor yet Essence. The former is first unreflected immediacy, the latter reflected immediacy. Further, each in itself is totality, but a determinate totality. In Essence, Being emerges as Existence; and the relation of Being and Essence has developed to the Relation of Inner and Outer. Inner is Essence—Essence as that totality which essentially has the determination to be related to Being and immediately to be Being. Outer is Being, with this essential determination, that it is related to Reflection and is, immediately, equally relationless identity with Essence. The Absolute itself is the absolute unity of both; it is that which constitutes the Ground of Essential Relation,—which, as relation, merely has not yet passed back into this its identity, and whose Ground is not yet posited.

From this it results that the determination of the Absolute is, to be Absolute Form, but, at the same time, not as that identity of which each moment is a simple determinateness, but as that whose moments are each in itself the totality and therefore (as indifferent to form) the complete content of the whole. But conversely the Absolute is Absolute Content in such a manner that the content, which, as such, is indifferent multiplicity, possesses negative form-relation, by virtue of which its multiplicity is only one solid identity.

Accordingly the identity of the Absolute is absolute by virtue of this, that each of its parts is itself the whole, or that each determinateness is the totality, that is, that determinateness in general has become an utterly transparent Show, a distinction which has vanished in its positedness. Essence, Existence, World which is in itself, Whole, Parts, Force,—these reflected determinations appear to imagination as true Being valid in and for itself; while the Absolute as against them is the Ground in which they have been swallowed up.—Now, in the Absolute, form is just simple self-identity, and hence the Absolute does not determine itself; for determination is a form-distinction which, at first, counts as such. But at the same time the Absolute contains every distinction and form-determination whatever, or is itself Absolute Form and Reflection, and therefore variety of content too must emerge in it. But the Absolute itself is Absolute Identity; this is its determination, since all multiplicity of the World in Itself and the World of Appearance—or of internal and external totality—is transcended in it.—There is no Becoming in it, for it is not Being; nor is it self-reflecting determining, for it is not Essence determining itself only in itself; nor yet is it a self-manifestation, for it is as the identity of Inner and Outer.—But now the movement of Reflection stands opposed to its absolute identity. This movement is cancelled in the identity, and thus is only the Inner thereof; but hereby the movement is external to the identity.—At first therefore the movement only consists in this, that it cancels its activity in the Absolute. It is the Beyond of the manifold distinctions and determinations and of their movement, a Beyond which lies at the back of the Absolute; and accordingly, although it is the acceptance of these, it is also their perishing; it is thus the negative Exposition of the Absolute, which was mentioned before.—In its veritable presentation this Exposition is the whole of the logical movement of the sphere of Being and of Essence which has been traced up to this point; the content of this sphere is not given from without and picked up contingently, nor plunged into the abyss of the Absolute by means of a reflection external to it, but has determined itself in it through its own necessity, and, as the peculiar Becoming of Being and as Reflection of Essence, has passed back into the Absolute as into its Ground.

But at the same time this Exposition has also a positive side, namely, in that the finite when it perishes exhibits this fixed characteristic of being related to the Absolute, or of itself containing the Absolute. But this side is not so much the positive Exposition of the Absolute itself as the exposition of the determinations, showing that they have the Absolute for Abyss (Abgrund) but also for Ground, or that that which gives to them (that is, to Show) a persistence, is the Absolute itself.—The Show is not Nothing, but Reflection, or relation to the Absolute; it is Show, in so far as the Absolute shows in it. Thus this positive Exposition arrests the finite before it vanishes, and looks upon it as an expression and copy of the Absolute. But the transparency of the finite, which is opaque to all but the Absolute, ends in total disappearance; for there is nothing in the finite which could preserve for it a distinction against the Absolute; it is a medium which is absorbed by that which shows through it.

Consequently this positive Exposition of the Absolute is itself only a showing; for the truly positive which it and the expounded content contain is the Absolute itself. Such further determinations as occur, or the form in which the Absolute shows, is a thing of no account; they are taken up by the Exposition from without, and it makes them the starting-point of its activity. Such a determination has in the Absolute not its beginning but only its end. The process of expounding is therefore absolute activity by its relation to the Absolute (into which it passes back), but not as regards its starting-point, which is a determination external to the Absolute.

But in fact the expounding of the Absolute is its own activity, which begins with itself as it arrives at itself. The Absolute as mere absolute identity is determinate—it is determined as identical; it is posited as such by Reflection as against opposition and multiplicity; or, it is only the negative of Reflection and of determining in general.—Hence not only this expounding of the Absolute is incomplete, but so is this Absolute itself, which is merely a point reached. In other words, that Absolute which is only as absolute identity is only the Absolute of an external reflection. It is therefore not the absolute-Absolute, but the Absolute in a determinateness; that is, it is Attribute.

But the Absolute is not only Attribute, because it is object of an external reflection, and therefore is an entity determined by the latter.—Or, reflection is not only external to it; but immediately, because it is external to it, it is internal. The Absolute is the Absolute only because it is not abstract identity, but the identity of Being and Essence, or of Inner and Outer. It is thus itself that Absolute Form which causes it to show in itself and determines it as Attribute.

The expression of absolute-Absolute which was employed denotes the Absolute which in its form has returned to itself, or that whose form is equal to its content. The Attribute is the merely relative Absolute, which nexus just means the Absolute in a form-determination. For at first, and before its completed Exposition, form is only internal as yet, or—which is the same thing—only external; it is here determinate form, or negation in general. But it is also as form of the Absolute, and consequently the Attribute is the whole content of the Absolute; it is that totality which before appeared as a World, or as one of the sides of the Essential Relation, each of which is itself the whole. But the two Worlds—that which appears and that which is in and for itself—were supposed to be opposed to each other in their Essence. One side indeed of the Essential Relation was equal to the other—the Whole was equal to the Parts, Manifestation of Force the same content as Force, and Outer in general the same as Inner; but still, each of these sides was also supposed to have its own immediate persistence—one as existent, and the other as reflected, immediacy. In the Absolute on the other hand these distinct immediacies are reduced to Show, and the totality, which is the Attribute, is posited as its true and only persistence; and the determination in which it is, as the unessential.

The Absolute is Attribute because as simple absolute identity it is in the determination of identity. Other determinations may be attached to determination in general,—among them this, that there are more attributes than one. But absolute identity means this only—not merely that all determinations have been transcended, but that it is itself Reflection which has transcended itself, and consequently all determinations are posited in it as transcended. Or again, totality is posited as absolute, or the Attribute has the Absolute for content and for persistence; and accordingly its form-determination, whereby it is Attribute, is also posited, immediately as mere Show,—the negative as negative. The positive Show which the Exposition acquires by means of the Attribute, when it does not take the finite in its barrier as being in and for itself, but dissolves its persistence into the Absolute and extends it until it becomes Attribute, transcends the fact that it is Attribute; it submerges both it and its distinguishing activity in the simple Absolute.

Thus Reflection, while it distinguishes, only returns therefrom to the identity of the Absolute, and for this reason it has not left externality nor arrived at the veritable Absolute. It has reached only determinate and abstract identity, that is, that identity which is in the determinateness of identity.—In other words, when Reflection, as inner form, determines the Absolute as Attribute, this determining remains distinct from externality; the inner determination does not penetrate the Absolute; its manifestation is, to vanish in the Absolute as merely posited.

Therefore the form, whether taken as outer or inner, by means of which the Absolute might be Attribute, is at the same time posited as null in itself, as an external Show, or mere way and manner.

The Attribute is, first, the Absolute as in simple self-identity. Secondly, it is negation, and this as negation is formal intro-Reflection. These two sides constitute, to begin with, the two extremes of the Attribute, of which itself is the mean, since it is as well Absolute as determinateness.—The second of these extremes is the negative as negative, or Reflection external to the Absolute.—Or, in so far as it is taken as Inner of the Absolute, and in so far as it is its proper determination to posit itself as Modus, so far Modus is the self-externality of the Absolute where it loses itself in the instability and contingency of Being, or its accomplished transition into the opposite without return to self; it is the multiplicity of form and content-determinations subsumed under no totality.—But the Modus—the externality of the Absolute—is not this only; it is also externality posited as externality, a mere way and manner, and hence Show as Show or the intro-Reflection of form,—hence that self-identity which is the Absolute. Thus in fact the Absolute is posited as absolute identity only in the Modus; it is what it is—namely self-identity—only as self-relating negativity, as Showing which is posited as Showing.

In so far, then, as the Exposition of the Absolute begins with its absolute identity and thence passes over to the Attribute and from that to the Modus, it has now passed completely through its moments. But herein, first, it is not a merely negative attitude to these determinations; this its activity is the reflecting movement itself, and it is only as this that the Absolute is veritably absolute identity.—Secondly, it is here not merely engaged upon the external, and the Modus is not only extremest externality; but, because it is Show as Show, it is return to self, self-dissolving Reflection, as being which the Absolute is absolute Being.—Thirdly, expounding Reflection appears to begin from its own determinations and from externality, and to take up the Modi, and also the determinations of the Attribute, as found contingently outside the Absolute; and its activity seems to consist in merely reducing them into indifferent identity. But in fact it has in the Absolute itself that determinateness from which it begins. For the Absolute, as first indifferent identity, is itself only determinate Absolute or Attribute, because it is the Absolute unmoved and as yet unreflected. This determinateness, because it is determinateness, belongs to the reflecting movement; the Absolute is determined as first identical entity only by it, and likewise by it alone has absolute form and is, not that which is, but that which posits itself equal to itself.

Consequently the true meaning of the Modus is that it is the proper reflecting movement of the Absolute,—a determining, though not one by which it would become an Other, but a determining only of that which it already is,—transparent externality which is a self-display, a movement from out of itself in such a manner that this outward-Being is equally internality itself, and therefore is equally a positing which is not merely positedness but absolute Being.

When therefore the content of the Exposition is asked for (what is it that the Absolute expounds?), the answer is that the distinction between form and content is anyhow dissolved in the Absolute. In other words, it is precisely the content of the Absolute to manifest itself. The Absolute is absolute form which as its own dichotomy is utterly self-identical—the negative, as negative or as coinciding with itself; it is absolute self-identity only in this manner, and the self-identity is also indifferent to its differentiations, or is absolute content; consequently the content is only this Exposition itself.

As this self-supporting movement of Exposition, as a way and manner which is its absolute self-identity, the Absolute is not manifestation of an Inner, nor against an Other; it is only as absolute self-manifestation for itself. It is thus Actuality.

The concept of Substance in Spinoza corresponds to the concept of the Absolute and the relation of reflection to it, as it has here exhibited itself. Spinoza’s philosophy has this fault, that in it reflection and its manifold determining activity are an external thinking.—The Substance of this system is One Substance, one inseparable totality; there is no determinateness which is not contained and dissolved in this Absolute; and it is of sufficient importance that everything which to natural imagination or determining understanding appears, distinctly or vaguely, as independent, is wholly reduced in this necessary concept to a mere positedness.—Determinateness is negation—this is the absolute principle of Spinoza’s philosophy, and this true and simple insight is the foundation of the absolute unity of Substance. But Spinoza does not pass on beyond negation as determinateness or quality to a recognition of it as absolute, that is, self-negating, negation. Accordingly his Substance does not itself contain absolute form, and when it is cognized, this is no immanent cognition. Certainly Substance is absolute unity of Thought and of Being (or Extension); it therefore contains Thought itself, but only in its unity with Extension, that is, as not separating itself from Extension: it is hence in general not determining and forming activity, nor movement which returns and begins out of itself. Therefore, (a) Substance lacks the principle of personality—a defect which more than any other has aroused revolt against Spinoza’s system; and (b) cognition is external reflection, which does not comprehend and deduce from Substance that which appears as finite—the determinateness of the Attribute, and the Mode, and indeed itself: it is active as an external understanding, and takes up the determinations as given, reducing them into the Absolute, and not beginning from it.

The concepts of Substance which Spinoza offers are concepts of an entity which is its own cause: it is that whose essence includes existence; the concept of the Absolute for him does not require the concept of an Other as a necessary factor in its formation. These concepts are profound and correct, but they are definitions which are assumed immediately at the opening of the system. Mathematics and other subordinate sciences must begin with something presupposed which constitutes their element and positive foundation. But the Absolute cannot be a first or immediate entity: the Absolute essentially is the result of such an entity.

After the definition of the Absolute, the definition of Attribute next emerges with Spinoza; it is determined as a manner in which understanding comprehends the essence of the Absolute. Understanding is taken to be posterior in its nature to Attribute, for Spinoza determines it as Mode; but at the same time Attribute—determination as determination of the Absolute—is made dependent upon an Other, namely understanding, which emerges externally and immediately over against Substance.

Spinoza further determines the Attributes as infinite, and this in the sense of an infinite plurality. In the sequel, however, only two occur—Thought and Extension, and it is not shown by what necessity the infinite plurality reduces itself to an opposition, namely this definite opposition of Thought and Extension.—These two Attributes are, then, accepted empirically. Thought and Being represent the Absolute in a determinate aspect; the Absolute itself is their absolute unity, so that they are only unessential forms; the order of things is the same as that of ideas or thoughts; and the one Absolute is contemplated only by external reflection (which is a Mode) under these two determinations, (a) as a totality of ideas and (b) as a totality of things and their mutations. It is this external reflection which both makes this distinction, and brings it back to absolute identity and there submerges it. But this whole movement takes place outside the Absolute. Certainly the Absolute itself too is Thought, and, so far, this movement is only in the Absolute; but, as was observed, it is in the Absolute only as unity with Extension, and hence not as this movement, which is essentially also the moment of opposition.—Spinoza makes the sublime demand of thought that it is to consider everything under the form of eternity, sub specie aeterni, that is, as it is in the Absolute. But in this Absolute, which is only unmoved identity, both Attribute and Mode exist only as vanishing and not as becoming, so that this vanishing too now takes its positive beginning only from without.

The third term—the Mode—is with Spinoza an affection of Substance, determinate determinateness, or that which is in an Other and is apprehended through this Other. Really the Attributes have only indeterminate variety for their determination: each is supposed to express the totality of Substance, and to be understood out of itself; but, in so far as it is the Absolute as determinate, it contains otherness and therefore cannot be understood only out of itself. Consequently the determination of the Attribute is really posited only in the Mode. Further, this third term remains mere Mode: on the one hand it is immediately given, on the other its nullity is not recognized as intro-Reflection.—Consequently Spinoza’s exposition of the Absolute is complete in so far as it begins with the Absolute, follows up with the Attribute, and ends with the Mode; but these three are only enumerated one after the other without any inner sequence of development, and the third term is not negation as negation, not negatively self-relating negation,—if it were, it would of itself be return to the first identity, and this identity would be veritable identity. Hence the necessity of the progress of the Absolute to unessentiality is lacking, as well as its dissolution in and for itself into identity; or, the becoming both of identity and of its determinations is wanting.

In a similar manner in the Oriental idea of emanation the Absolute is self-illuminating light. But it does not only illumine itself: it also emanates. Its emanations are distances from its unclouded purity; and the subsequent products are less perfect than the preceding ones out of which they arise. Emanation is taken only as a happening, and becoming only as a progressive loss. Thus Being increasingly obscures itself, and night, the negative, is the last term of the line and does not return to the primal light.

The lack of intro-Reflection which is common to Spinoza’s exposition of the Absolute and to the theory of emanation is made good in the concept of the monad in Leibniz.—The one-sidedness of one philosophic principle is generally faced by its opposite one-sidedness, and, as everywhere, totality at least is found as a sundered completeness.—The monad is only One, an intro-reflected negative; it is the totality of the content of the world; in it the various manifold has not only vanished, but is in a negative manner stowed away. (Spinoza’s Substance is the unity of all content; but this manifold content of the world is not in it as such, but in reflection which is external to it.) Essentially therefore the monad exists as ideating; but although it is finite it has no passivity: mutations and determinations within it are manifestations of itself in itself. It is an entelechy, and revelation is its proper activity.—At the same time the monad is also determinate, it is distinct from others; and the determinateness belongs to the particular content and the way and manner of the manifestation. Consequently the monad is in itself (or according to its substance) the totality,—not in its manifestation. This restriction of the monad necessarily is not part of the self-positing or ideating monad, but of its Being-in-Self; in other words it is absolute limit, a predestination which is posited by some other essence than itself. Further, limited entities exist only as related to other limited entities, but the monad is at the same time a self-contained absolute entity; and consequently the harmony of these limitations—that is, the relation of the monads to one another—falls outside them, and is likewise pre-established by some other essence or in itself.

Clearly, by means of the principle of intro-Reflection, which constitutes the fundamental determination of the monad, otherness and external influence in general are certainly removed, and the changes of the monad are its own positing;—but, on the other hand, passive subjection to other has been transformed into an absolute barrier, into a barrier of Being-in-Self. Leibniz ascribes to the monads a certain self-completeness, a kind of independence; they are created essences.—If their barrier is considered more closely, it is seen from this presentation of the case that the self-manifestation which is theirs is the totality of form. It is an extremely important concept that the changes of the monad are imagined as actions having no passivity, or as self-manifestations, and that the principle of intro-Reflection or individuation clearly emerges as essential. Further it is necessary to allow finitude to consist in this, that content or Substance is distinct from form, and that, further, the former is restricted but the latter infinite. But now the task would be to find in the concept of the absolute monad not only this absolute unity of form and content, but also the nature of Reflection as self-relating negativity which is self-repulsion, by means of which it exists as positing and creating. It is true that in Leibniz’s system the further feature is present that God is the source of the existence and of the essence of the monads, that is, that those absolute barriers in the Being-in-Self of the monads are not existent in and for themselves, but vanish in the Absolute. But in these determinations only those vulgar ideas appear which are left without philosophic development and are not raised to the rank of speculative concepts. Thus the principle of individuation does not receive its profounder elaboration; the concepts which concern the distinctions of the various finite monads and their relation to their Absolute do not originate in this essence itself nor in an absolute manner, but belong to argumentative and dogmatic reflection and have therefore achieved no inner coherence.