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hegel_phenomenology_of_spirit_preface_part_5.mp3
51. Instead of being articulated in terms of the inner life and the self-movement of its existence, such a simple determinateness of intuition, which here just means sensuous knowledge, is now articulated in terms of a superficial analogy, and this external and empty application of the formula is called construction. - It is the same case with that kind of formalism as it is with all others. How dull a man's head must be if he could not in a quarter of an hour come up with the theory that there are asthenic, sthenic, and indirectly asthenic diseases and then come up with equally as many cures, and who could not in a short time be thereby transformed from an experienced man into a theoretical physician, since, after all, it was not so long ago that such a kind of instruction sufficed to do precisely that. If the formalism of nature-philosophy teaches that understanding is electricity, that animals are nitrogen, or even that they are equivalent to south or north poles, and so forth, and if it represents these matters as baldly as it is expressed here, and if it concocts its brew with even more terminology, then when an inexperienced person encounters this nature-philosophy, something like the following can occur. When that person encounters the kind of force which brings together the kinds of things which otherwise seem so far removed from each other, and when that person also then comes face to face with the violence suffered by what is sensuous and motionless as a result of this combination, that is, a combination which only confers the mere semblance of conceptual thought on all of this and which thus spares itself the main point, namely, expressing the concept itself, i.e., expressing what the sensuous representations mean - when that happens, then such an inexperienced person may very well be led to a kind of admiration, astonishment, or even a veneration for the profound geniuses who can pull off such a feat. He may also feel a certain delight at the vividness of such determinations since they replace the abstract concept with something more intuitive and make it more pleasing. He may even congratulate himself for feeling a kinship of soul with such a splendid way of viewing things. The flair for displaying that sort of wisdom is as quickly acquired as it is easy to practice, but when it becomes familiar, its repetition becomes as intolerable as the repetition of any other bit of sleight-of-hand once one has seen through the trick. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter which contains only two colors, perhaps red and green, the former for coloring the surface when we require a historical piece, the latter when we require a landscape. - It would be difficult to decide which is thereby grander: The ease with which everything in heaven and earth, or even for that matter, everything under the earth, is bathed with that broth of color, or the fantasy about the excellence of this universal tool, since each underwrites the other. This method, which consists in taking the pair of determinations out of that universal schema and then plastering them onto everything in heaven and earth, onto all the natural and spiritual shapes and then organizing everything in this manner, produces nothing less than a "crystal clear report on the organism of the universe." This "report" is like a tabular chart, which is itself a little bit like a skeleton with small bits of paper stuck all over it, or maybe a bit like the rows of sealed and labeled boxes in a grocer's stall. Either of these makes just as much sense as the other, and, as in the former case, where there are only bones with the flesh and blood stripped off of them, and as in the latter case, where something equally lifeless has been hidden away in those boxes, in this "report," the living essence of what is at stake has been omitted or concealed. - It was previously noted that at the same time this style culminates in monochromatic, absolute painting since it is ashamed at the distinctions existing within the schema and thus looks on them as affiliated with reflection; it thus submerges them into the void of the absolute, from out of which pure identity, a pure formless whiteness, is produced. The monochromatic nature of the schema and its lifeless determinations, together with this absolute identity and the transition from one to the other, are each and every one the result of the same lifeless intellect and external cognition.
52. The excellent not only cannot escape the fate of being deprived of life and spirit, of being flayed and then seeing its skin wrapped around lifeless knowledge and that lifeless knowledge's vanity. But even within this fate, one still takes cognizance of the power excellence exercises over the heart, if not over the spirit; one also takes cognizance of the constructive unfolding into universality and the determinateness of form in which its consummation consists, which alone makes it possible for this universality to be put to such superficial use.
53. Science may organize itself only through the proper life of the concept. The determinateness which was taken from the schema and externally stuck onto existence is in science the self-moving soul of the content which has been brought to fruition. On the one hand, the movement of "what is" consists in becoming an other to itself and thus in coming to be its own immanent content; on the other hand, it takes this unfolding back into itself, that is, it takes its existence back into itself, which is to say, it makes itself into a moment, and it simplifies itself into determinateness. In that movement, negativity is the act of distinguishing and positing of existence; in this latter return into itself, negativity consists in the coming-to-be of determinate simplicity. In this way, the content shows that its determinateness is not first received from an other and then externally pinned onto it; rather, the content gives itself this determinateness, it bestows on itself the status of being a moment, and it gives itself a place in the whole. The understanding, which likes to put everything in its own little pigeon-hole, retains for itself the necessity and the concept of the content which constitutes the concrete, that is, actuality itself, the living movement of the subject-matter which it puts in order. Or, rather, the understanding does not retain this for itself; it does not get to know it, for if it were to have this insight, it would surely indicate that it had it. It is has no cognizance at all of the need for such insight; if it did, it would refrain from schematizing, or at least it would know that it knows no more than what is made available through a table of contents. A table of contents is all that the understanding offers, but it does not supply the contents itself. - Even when determinateness such as, for example, magnetism, is in itself concrete, that is, is actual, it is nonetheless downgraded to the status of something lifeless since it is merely predicated of another existence, and no cognizance is taken of the immanent life of this existence, nor of how it possesses its indigenous and distinctive self-production and exposition. The formal understanding leaves it to others to add this main point. - Instead of entering into the immanent content of the subject-matter, the understanding always surveys the whole and stands above the individual existence of which it speaks, or, what amounts to the same thing, it does not see it at all. However, to an even greater degree scientific cognition requires that it give itself over to the life of the object, or, what is the same thing, that it have the inner necessity of the object before it and that it articulate this inner necessity. Absorbing itself in its object, it forgets the former overview, which is only a reflection of knowledge out of the content and back into itself. However, sunken into the material and advancing in that material's movement, knowledge returns back into itself, but not before the culmination, that is, the content, takes itself back into itself, simplifies itself into determinateness, reduces itself to one aspect of an existence, and passes over into its higher truth. By this movement, the simple whole, surveying itself, emerges out of the wealth in which its reflection seemed to be lost.
54. As it was previously expressed, because substance is in itself subject, all content is its own reflective turn into itself. The durable existence, that is, the substance of an existence, is its parity-with-itself, for its disparity with itself would be its dissolution. However, parity-with-itself is pure abstraction, but this pure abstraction is thought. When I say, "quality," I say "simple determinateness"; it is by means of its quality that one existent is distinguished from another or that it is even determined that it is an existent at all. It is "for itself," that is, it durably exists by virtue of this simplicity with regard to itself. However, by doing so, it is essentially thought. - It is here that one conceptually grasps that being is thought, and it is here that the insight which tries to steer clear of that ordinary, non-comprehending talk of the identity of thought and being finds its place. - Now, since the durable existence of what exists is parity-with-itself, that is, is pure abstraction, that durable existence is the abstraction of itself from itself, that is, it is itself its own disparity with itself and its own dissolution - its own inwardness and withdrawal into itself - its coming-to-be. - Since this is the nature of what exists, and insofar as what exists has this nature for knowledge, this knowledge is not an activity that treats the content as alien. It is not a reflective turn into itself from out of the content. Science is not the former idealism which replaced the dogmatism of assertion with the dogmatism of assurance, that is, the dogmatism of self-certainty - but rather, since knowledge sees the content return into its own inwardness, its activity is to a greater degree sunken into that content, for the activity is the immanent self of the content as having at the same time returned into itself, since this activity is pure parity-with-itself in otherness. In this way, that activity is a kind of cunning which, while seeming to abstain from activity, is looking on to see just how determinateness and its concrete life is taking itself to be engaged in its own self-preservation and its own particular interest and how it is actually doing the very opposite, that is, how it is doing what leads to its own dissolution and what makes itself into a moment of the whole.
55. If in the foregoing the significance of the understanding was stated in terms of the self-consciousness of substance, then at least on the basis of has already been said, it now becomes clear what it means in terms of "substance as existing." - Existence is quality, determinateness in parity with itself, that is, determinate simplicity, determinate thought, and this is the understanding which is appropriate to existence. It was that reason that Anaxagoras first took cognizance of Nous as the essence. Those who succeeded him grasped the nature of existence more determinately as Eidos or Idea, which is to say, as determinate universality, as a kind. The term, "kind," perhaps seems too ordinary and too petty for the Ideas which are all the rage nowadays, such as beauty, holiness, and the eternal. However, "Idea" means neither more nor less than "kind," or "species." Yet nowadays we often see that an expression which determinately designates a concept is scorned, and whereas another is preferred to it simply for the reason that it belongs to a foreign language and that it both shrouds the concept completely in a fog and thereby sounds more edifying. - Precisely for the reason that existence is determined as a "kind," it is simple thought; Nous, simplicity, is substance. On account of its simplicity, that is, its parity-with-itself, it appears to be fixed and persisting. However, this parity-with- itself is likewise negativity, and that fixed existence thereby passes over into its own dissolution. Its determinateness at first seems to exist only by virtue of its relating itself to an other, and its movement seems imposed upon it by an alien power. However, that it has its otherness in itself and that it is self-moving are contained in that simplicity of thought itself, for this is the self-moving and self-distinguishing thought, the thought which is its own inwardness, which is the pure concept. In that way, the intelligibility of the understanding is a coming-to-be, and as this coming-to-be, it is rationality.
56. Logical necessity in general consists in the nature of what it is to be "its concept" in "its being." This alone is the rational, the rhythm of the organic whole, and it is equally as much the knowledge of the content as that content itself is the concept and the essence - that is, it is this alone which is the speculative. - The concrete shape which sets itself into movement makes itself into simple determinateness, and it thereby elevates itself to logical form and exists in its essentiality. Its concrete existence is only this movement, and it is immediately logical existence. It is therefore unnecessary to apply externally a formalism to the concrete content. That content is in itself a transition into this formalism, but it ceases to be the latter external formalism because the form is the indigenous coming-to-be of the concrete content itself.
57. On the one hand, this nature of scientific method is inseparable from the content, and on the other hand, it determines its rhythm by way of itself, and it has, as has already been noted, its genuine exposition in speculative philosophy. - Although what is stated here expresses the concept, it cannot count for more than an anticipatory affirmation. Its truth does not lie in this narrative exposition. For that very reason, it is not in the least refuted by any assertion to the contrary that the movement instead conducts itself in this or that way, or by calling to mind common conceptions as if they were truths both settled and familiar, or if something new is also served up and combined with the assurance that it flows forth from the shrine of inward, divine intuition. - This kind of reception is usually the first reaction on the part of knowledge when something unfamiliar appears to it. It usually resists it in order to save both its freedom and its own insight and its own authority against alien authority, since the shape in which anything is apprehended for the first time always appears as that of alien authority - it also stages its resistance in order to rid itself of any semblance of the kind of shame which supposedly lies in something's having been learned, just as in those cases where the unfamiliar is greeted with applause, the reaction is of the same sort as what in another sphere consisted of ultra-revolutionary speech and action.
58. What thus matters to the study of science is that one take the rigorous exertion of the concept upon oneself. This requires concentrated attention to the concept as such, to simple determinations, such as, for example, being-in-itself, being-for-itself, parity-with- itself, and so on, for these are pure self-movements of the kind that one might even call souls were it not that their concept denotes something higher than that. The habit of marking progress in representational thought finds interruption by the concept irksome; likewise, so does formal thinking in the way it employs non-actual thoughts to argue cleverly for this or that thing. That habit should be called materialized thinking, a contingent consciousness which is sunken into what is material and which at the same time finds it exceedingly difficult to lift its own self out of this matter and to be at one with itself. In contrast, merely clever argumentation amounts to freedom from content and to the vanity that stands above all content. This vanity is expected to make the effort to give up this freedom, and, instead of being the arbitrary principle moving the content, it is supposed to let this freedom descend into the content and move itself by its own nature, which is to say, to let it move itself by means of the self as its own self and then to observe this movement. This refusal both to insert one's own views into the immanent rhythm of the concept and to interfere arbitrarily with that rhythm by means of wisdom acquired elsewhere, that is, this abstinence, are all themselves an essential moment of attentiveness to the concept.
59. There are two aspects to merely clever argumentation that call for further notice and which are to be contrasted with conceptually comprehending thought. - On the one hand, merely clever argumentation conducts itself negatively towards the content apprehended; it knows how to refute it and reduce it to nothing. It says, "This is not the way it is"; this insight is the merely negative; it is final, and it does not itself go beyond itself to a new content. Rather, if it is once again to have any content, something other from somewhere else has to be found. It is reflection into the empty I, the vanity of its own knowledge. - What this vanity expresses is not merely that this content is vain but also that this insight itself is vain, for it is the negative which catches no glimpse of the positive within itself. Because this reflection does not gain its negativity itself for its content, it is not immersed in the subject-matter at all but is always above and beyond it, and thus it imagines that by asserting the void, it is going much farther than the insight which was so rich in content. On the other hand, as was formerly pointed out, in comprehensive thought, the negative belongs to the content itself and is the positive, both as its immanent movement and determination and as the totality of these. Taken as a result, it is the determinate negative which emerges out of this movement and is likewise thereby a positive content.
60. But in view of the fact that such thinking has a content, whether the content is that of representations, or of thoughts, or is a mixture of the two, there is another aspect to it which makes such conceptual comprehension so difficult for it. The peculiar nature of this aspect is closely connected with the essence of the Idea itself as it was described above, or rather it expresses how the Idea appears as the movement which is itself that of thoughtful apprehension. - For just now in its negative conduct, which was previously discussed, clever argumentative thinking is itself the self into which the content returns, and so too, the self is in its positive cognition a represented subject to which the content is related as accident and predicate. This subject constitutes the basis in which the content is bound and on the basis of which the movement runs back and forth. Comprehending thought conducts itself in quite a different way. Since the concept is the object's own self, that is, the self which exhibits itself as the object's coming-to-be, it is not a motionless subject passively supporting the accidents; rather, it is the self-moving concept which takes its determinations back into itself. Within this movement, the motionless subject itself breaks down; it enters into the distinctions and the content and constitutes the determinateness, which is to say, the distinguished content as well as the content's movement, instead of continuing simply to confront that movement. The solid basis which merely clever argumentation had found in the motionless subject thus begins to totter, and it is merely this movement itself which becomes the object. The subject, which brings its content to fruition, ceases to go beyond this content and cannot have still other predicates or accidents. As a result, the dispersal of the content is, to the contrary, bound together under the self, and the content is not the universal which, as free from the subject, could belong to many others. The content is thereby in fact no longer the predicate of the subject; rather, it is the substance, the essence, and it is the concept of what it is which is being spoken of. Since the nature of representational thought rightfully consists in marking advances with accidents or predicates and then, because they are nothing more than predicates and accidents, going beyond them, it is impeded in its course since what has the form of a predicate in the proposition is the substance itself. It suffers, to picture it in this way, from a counter-punch. Starting from the subject as if this were an enduring ground, it on the contrary finds that since the predicate is the substance, the subject has passed over into the predicate and has thereby become sublated. And since in this way what seems to be the predicate has now become self- sufficient, that is, has become the whole show itself, thought cannot freely roam about but is instead held down by this weight. - At first, it is usually the subject as the objective fixed self which is made into the ground. The necessary movement advances from here to the multiplicity of determinations, that is, the predicates. It is here that the knowing I takes the place of that subject, and it is here that it is both the binding together of the predicates and the subject supporting them. However, since that former subject enters into the determinations themselves and is their soul, the second subject, which is to say, the knowing subject, finds that the former, which it was supposed to be over and done with, and which it wants to go beyond in order to return into itself, is still there in the predicate. Instead of being able to be what sets the predicate in motion, the subject, as merely clever argumentation over whether this or that predicate is supposed to be attached, has to an even greater degree something to do with the self of the content. The subject is not supposed to exist on its own, but it is supposed to exist together with this content.
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