The_Doctrine_of_Being_part2_Hegel_Science_of_Logic.mp3

this elevation is a subjective postulate; before it proves itself as a valid demand, the progression of the concrete I from immediate consciousness to pure knowledge must be demonstratively exhibited within the I itself, through its own necessity. Without this objective movement, pure knowledge, also when defined as intellectual intuition, appears as an arbitrary standpoint, itself one of those empirical states of consciousness for which everything depends on whether someone, though not necessarily somebody else, discovers it within himself or is able to produce it there. But inasmuch as this pure I must be essential, pure knowledge and pure knowledge is however one which is only posited in individual consciousness through an absolute act of self-elevation, is not present in it immediately we lose the very advantage which was to derive from this beginning of philosophy, namely that it is something with which everyone is well acquainted, something which everyone finds within himself and to which he can attach further reflection; that pure I, on the contrary, in its abstract, essential nature, is to ordinary consciousness an unknown, something that the latter does not find within itself. What comes with it is rather the disadvantage of the illusion that we are speaking of something supposedly very familiar, the I of empirical self-consciousness, whereas at issue is in fact something far removed from the latter. Determining pure knowledge as I acts as a continuing reminder of the subjective I whose limitations should rather be forgotten; it leads to the belief that the propositions and relations which result from the further development of the I occur within ordinary consciousness and can be found pre-given there, indeed that the whole issue is about this consciousness. This mistake, far from bringing clarity, produces instead an even more glaring and bewildering confusion; among the public at large, it has occasioned the crudest of misunderstandings. Further, as regards the subjective determinateness of the I in general, pure knowledge does remove from it the restriction that it has when understood as standing in unsurmountable opposition to an object. But for this reason it would be at least superfluous still to hold on to this subjective attitude by determining pure knowledge as I. For this determination not only carries with it that troublesome duality of subject and object; on closer examination, it also remains a subjective I. The actual development of the science that proceeds from the I shows that in the course of it the object has and retains the self-perpetuating determination of an other with respect to the I; that therefore the I from which the start was made does not have the pure knowledge that has truly overcome the opposition of consciousness, but is rather still entangled in appearance. In this connection, there is the further essential observation to be made that, although the I might well be determined to be in itself pure knowledge or intellectual intuition and declared to be the beginning, in science we are not concerned with what is present in itself or as something inner, but with the external existence rather of what in thought is inner and with the determinateness which this inner assumes in that existence. But whatever externalization there might be of intellectual intuition at the beginning of science, or if the subject matter of science is called the eternal, the divine, the absolute of the eternal or absolute, this cannot be anything else than a first, immediate, simple determination. Whatever richer name be given to it than is expressed by mere being, the only legitimate consideration is how such an absolute enters into discursive knowledge and the enunciation of this knowledge. Intellectual intuition might well be the violent rejection of mediation and of demonstrative, external reflection. However, anything which it says over and above simple immediacy would be something con- crete, and this concrete would contain a diversity of determinations in it. But, as already remarked, the enunciation and exposition of this concrete something is a process of mediation which starts with one of the determinations and proceeds to another, even though this other returns to the first and this is a movement which, moreover, is not allowed to be arbitrary or assertoric. Consequently, that from which the beginning is made in any such exposition is not something itself concrete but only the simple immediacy from which the movement proceeds. Besides, what is lacking if we make something concrete the beginning is the demonstration which the combination of the determinations contained in it requires. Therefore, if in the expression of the absolute, or the eternal, or God (and God would have the perfectly undisputed right that the beginning be made with him), if in the intuition or the thought of them, there is more than there is in pure being, then this more should first emerge in a knowledge which is discursive and not figurative; as rich as what is implicitly contained in knowledge may be, the determination that first emerges in it is something simple, for it is only in the immediate that no advance is yet made from one thing to an other. Consequently, whatever in the richer representations of the absolute or God might be said or implied over and above being, all this is at the beginning only an empty word and only being; this simple determination which has no further meaning besides, this empty something, is as such, therefore, the beginning of philosophy. This insight is itself so simple that this beginning is as beginning in no need of any preparation or further introduction, and the only possible purpose of this preliminary disquisition regarding it was not to lead up to it but to dispense rather with all preliminaries. general division of being Being is determined, first, as against another in general; secondly, it is internally self-determining; thirdly, as this preliminary division is cast off, it is the abstract indeterminateness and immediacy in which it must be the beginning. According to the first determination, being partitions itself off from essence, for further on in its development it proves to be in its totality only one sphere of the concept, and to this sphere as moment it opposes another sphere. According to the second, it is the sphere within which fall the determinations and the entire movement of its reflection. In this, being will posit itself in three determinations: one. as determinateness; as such, quality; two. as sublated determinateness; magnitude, quantity; three. as qualitatively determined quantity; measure. This division, as was generally remarked of such divisions in the Introduction, is here a preliminary statement; its determinations must first arise from the movement of being itself, and receive their definitions and justification by virtue of it. As regards the divergence of this division from the usual listing of the categories, namely quantity, quality, relation and modality for Kant, incidentally, these are supposed to be only classifications of his categories, but are in fact themselves categories, only more abstract ones about this, there is nothing to remark here, since the entire listing will diverge from the usual ordering and meaning of the categories at every point. This only can perhaps be remarked, that the determination of quantity is ordinarily listed ahead of quality and as a rule this is done for no given reason. It has already been shown that the beginning is made with being as such, and hence with qualitative being. It is clear from a comparison of quality with quantity that the former is by nature first. For quantity is quality which has already become negative; magnitude is the determinateness which, no longer one with being but already distinguished from it, is the sublated quality that has become indifferent. It includes the alterability of being without altering the fact itself, namely being, of which it is the determination; qualitative determinateness is on the contrary one with its being, it neither transcends it nor stays within it but is its immediate restrictedness. Hence quality, as the determinateness which is immediate, is the first and it is with it that the beginning is to be made. Measure is a relation, not relation in general but specifically of quality and quantity to each other; the categories dealt with by Kant under relation will come up elsewhere in their proper place. Measure, if one so wishes, can be considered also a modality; but since with Kant modality is no longer supposed to make up a determination of content, but only concerns the reference of the content to thought, to the subjective, the result is a totally heterogeneous reference that does not belong here. The third determination of being falls within the section Quality inasmuch as being, as abstract immediacy, reduces itself to one single determi- nateness as against its other determinacies inside its sphere.