²⁰⁸ In determinate being its determinateness has been distinguished as quality; in quality as determinately present, there is distinction — of reality and negation. Now although these distinctions are present in determinate being, they are no less equally void and sublated. Reality itself contains negation, is determinate being, not indeterminate, abstract being. Similarly, negation is determinate being, not the supposedly abstract nothing but posited here as it is in itself, as affirmatively present [als seiend], belonging to the sphere of determinate being. Thus quality is completely unseparated from determinate being, which is simply determinate, qualitative being.

²⁰⁹ This sublating of the distinction is more than a mere taking back and external omission of it again, or than a simple return to the simple beginning, to determinate being as such.

The distinction cannot be omitted, for it is. What is, therefore, in fact present is determinate being in general, distinction in it, and sublation of this distinction; determinate being, not as devoid of distinction as at first, but as again equal to itself through sublation of the distinction, the simple oneness of determinate being resulting from this sublation. This sublatedness of the distinction is determinate being’s own determinateness; it is thus being-within-self: determinate being is a determinate being, a something.

²¹⁰ Something is the first negation of negation, as simple self-relation in the form of being.

Determinate being, life, thought, and so on, essentially determine themselves to become a determinate being, a living creature, a thinker (ego) and so on.

This determination is of supreme importance if we are not to remain at the stage of determinate being, life, thought, and so on — also the Godhead (instead of God) — as generalities. In our ordinary way of thinking, something is rightly credited with reality.

However, something is still a very superficial determination; just as reality and negation, determinate being and its determinateness, although no longer blank being and nothing, are still quite abstract determinations. It is for this reason that they are the most current expressions and the intellect which is philosophically untrained uses them most, casts its distinctions in their mould and fancies that in them it has something really well and truly determined. The negative of the negative is, as something, only the beginning of the subject [Subjekt] — being-within-self, only as yet quite indeterminate. It determines itself further on, first, as a being-for-self and so on, until in the Notion it first attains the concrete intensity of the subject. At the base of all these determinations lies the negative unity with itself. But in all this, care must be taken to distinguish between the first negation as negation in general, and the second negation, the negation of the negation: the latter is concrete, absolute negativity, just as the former on the contrary is only abstract negativity.

²¹¹ Something is the negation of the negation in the form of being; for this second negation is the restoring of the simple relation to self.

But with this, something is equally the mediation of itself with itself. Even in the simple form of something, then still more specifically in being-for-self, subject, and so on, self-mediation is present; it is present even in becoming, only the mediation is quite abstract. In something, mediation with self is posited, in so far as something is determined as a simple identity. Attention can be drawn to the presence of mediation in general, as against the principle of the alleged mere immediacy of knowledge, from which mediation is supposed to be excluded; but there is no further need to draw particular attention to the moment of mediation, for it is to be found everywhere, in every Notion.

²¹² This mediation with itself which something is in itself, taken only as negation of the negation, has no concrete determinations for its sides;

It thus collapses into the simple oneness which is being. Something is, and is, then, also a determinate being; further, it is in itself also becoming, which, however, no longer has only being and nothing for its moments. One of these, being, is now determinate being, and, further, a determinate being. The second is equally a determinate being, but determined as a negative of the something — an other.

Something as a becoming is a transition, the moments of which are themselves somethings, so that the transition is alteration — a becoming which has already become concrete. But to begin with, something alters only in its Notion; it is not yet posited as mediating and mediated, but at first only as simply maintaining itself in its self-relation, and its negative is posited as equally qualitative, as only an other in general.

B. FINITUDE

²¹³ (a) Something and other are at first indifferent to one another; an other is also immediately a determinate being, a something.

The negation thus falls outside both. Something is in itself as against its being-for-other. But the determinateness also belongs to its in-itself and is

(b) its determination; this equally passes over into constitution which, being identical with the determination, constitutes the immanent and at the same time negated being-for-other, the limit of the something. This limit is

(c) the immanent determination of the something itself, which latter is thus the finite.

In the first section, in which determinate being in general was considered, this had, as at first taken up, the determination of being.

Consequently, the moments of its development, quality and something, equally have an affirmative determination. In this section, on the other hand, the negative determination contained in determinate being is developed, and whereas in the first section it was at first only negation in general, the first negation, it is now determined to the point of the being-within-self or the inwardness of the something, to the negation of the negation.

(a) Something and an Other

²¹⁴ 1. Something and other are, in the first place, both determinate beings or somethings.

Secondly, each is equally an other. It is immaterial which is first named and solely for that reason called something; (in Latin, when they both occur in a sentence, both are called aliud, or ’the one, the other’, alius alium; when there is reciprocity the expression alter alterum is analogous).

If of two things we call one A, and the other B, then in the first instance B is determined as the other. But A is just as much the other of B. Both are, in the same way, others. The word ’this’ serves to fix the distinction and the something which is to be taken affirmatively.

But ’this’ clearly expresses that this distinguishing and signalising of the one something is a subjective designating falling outside the-something itself.

The entire determinateness falls into this external pointing out; even the expression ’this’ contains no distinction; each and every something is just as well a ’this’ as it is also an other.

By ’this’ we mean to express something completely determined; it is overlooked that speech, as a work of the understanding, gives expression only to universals, except in the name of a single object; but the individual name is meaningless, in the sense that it does not express a universal, and for the same reason appears as something merely posited and arbitrary; just as proper names, too, can be arbitrarily assumed, given or also altered.

²¹⁵ Otherness thus appears as a determination alien to the determinate being thus characterised, or as the other outside the one determinate being; partly because a determinate being is determined as other only through being compared by a Third, and partly because it is only determined as other on account of the other which is outside it, but is not an other on its own account.

At the same time, as has been Remarked, every determinate being, even for ordinary thinking, determines itself as an other, so that there is no determinate being which is determined only as such, which is not outside a determinate being and therefore is not itself an other.

²¹⁶ Both are determined equally as something and as other, and are thus the same, and there is so far no distinction between them.

But this self-sameness of the determinations likewise arises only from external reflection, from the comparing of them; but the other as at first posited, although an other in relation to the something, is nevertheless also an other on its own account, apart from the something.

²¹⁷ Thirdly, therefore, the other is to be taken as isolated, as in relation to itself, abstractly as the other; the to eteron of Plato, who opposes it as one of the moments of totality to the One, and in this way ascribes to the other a nature of its own.

Thus the other, taken solely as such, is not the other of something but the other in its own self, that is, the other of itself.

Such an other, determined as other, is physical nature; it is the other of spirit. This its determination is thus at first a mere relativity by which is expressed, not a quality of nature itself, but only a relation external to it.

However, since spirit is the true something and nature, consequently, in its own self is only what it is as contrasted with spirit, the quality of nature taken as such is just this, to be the other in its own self, that which is external to itself (in the determinations of space, time and matter).

²¹⁸ The other simply by itself is the other in its own self, hence the other of itself and so the other of the other — it is, therefore, that which is absolutely dissimilar within itself, that which negates itself, alters itself.

But in so doing it remains identical with itself, for that into which it alters is the other, and this is its sole determination;

But what is altered is not determined in any different way but in the same way, namely, to be an other; in this latter, therefore, it only unites with its own self. It is thus posited as reflected into itself with sublation of the otherness, as a self-identical something from which, consequently, the otherness, which is at the same time a moment of it, is distinct from it and does not appertain to the something itself.