C. REPULSION AND ATTRACTION

Section Two: Magnitude (Quantity)

§ 387

Quality is the first, immediate determinateness.

Quantity is the determinateness which has become indifferent to being. It is:

• a limit which is just as much no limit.
• being-for-self which is absolutely identical with being-for-other
  • It is a repulsion of the many ones which is directly the non-repulsion, the continuity of them.

§ 388

A being-for-self does not exclude its other. Instead, the other affirmatively continues itself into the being-for-self.

It is otherness again appears in this continuity.

• Its determinateness no longer is in a simple self-relation.
• It is no longer an immediate determinateness of the determinately existent something.

Instead, its determinateness becomes self-repelling. It has the relation-to-self as a determinateness in another something.

That other something is for itself. Since they are at the same time indifferent, relationless limits reflected into themselves, the determinateness in general is outside itself. That determinateness is an absolutely self-external determinateness and an equally external something. Such a limit, the indifference of the limit within itself and of the something to the limit, constitutes the quantitative determinateness of the something.

§ 389

1. Pure quantity is distinguished from itself as a determinate quantity, from quantum.

As a determinate quantity, pure quantity is a real being-for-self which has returned into itself. It has yet no determinateness. It is a compact, infinite unity which continues itself into itself.

§ 390

2. This develops a determinateness which is posited in it as one which is at the same time no determinateness, as only an external one.

It becomes quantum.

Quantum is indifferent determinateness, that is, a self-transcending, self-negating determinateness; as this otherness of otherness it relapses into the infinite progress.

But the infinite quantum is the indifferent determinateness sublated, it is the restoration of quality.

§ 391

3. Quantum in a qualitative form is quantitative ratio.

Quantum transcends itself only generally: in ratio, however, its transition into its otherness is such that this otherness in which it has its determination is at the same time posited, is another quantum. Thus quantum has returned into itself and in its otherness is related to itself.

§ 392

At the base of this ratio there is still the externality of quantum; the quanta which are related to each other are indifferent, that is, they have their self-relation in such self-externality. The ratio is thus only a formal unity of quality and quantity. Its dialectic is its transition into their absolute unity, into Measure.

Remark: Something’s Limit as Quality