Remark on Reflection

⁸⁵⁰ Reflection is usually taken in a subjective sense as the movement of the faculty of judgement that goes beyond a given immediate conception and seeks universal determinations for it or compares such determinations with it.

Kant opposes reflective judgement to determining judgement. He defines the faculty of judgement in general as the ability to think the particular as subsumed under the universal. ®

If the universal is given (the rule, principle, law), then the faculty of judgement that subsumes the particular under it is determinative. But if only the particular is given for which the universal is to be found, then judgement is merely reflective. Here, then, to reflect is likewise to go beyond an immediate to the universal.

On the one hand, it is only through this reference of the immediate to its universal that it is determined as a particular; by itself, it is only an individual or an immediate, simply affirmative being [unmittelbares Seiendes].

On the other hand, that to which it is referred is its universal, its rule, principle, law, in general, that which is reflected into itself, is self-related, essence or the essential.

⁸⁵¹ But what is under discussion here is neither reflection at the level of consciousness, nor the more specific reflection of the understanding, which has the particular and the universal for its determinations, but of reflection generally.

That reflection to which Kant ascribes the search of the universal of a given particular is clearly also only external reflection, which is related to the immediate as to something given.

But in external reflection there is also implicit the notion of absolute reflection; for the universal, the principle or rule and law to which it advances in its determining, counts as the essence of that immediate which forms the starting point.

This immediate therefore counts as a nullity, and it is only the return from it, its determining by reflection, that is the positing of the immediate in accordance with its true being. Therefore, what reflection does to the immediate, and the determinations which issue from reflection, are not anything external to the immediate but are its own proper being.

⁸⁵² It was external reflection, too, that recent philosophy had in mind when, as was the fashion for a while, it ascribed everything bad to reflection generally, regarding it and all its works as the polar opposite and hereditary foe of the absolute method of philosophising.

Intellectual reflection, in so far as it operates as external reflection, does in fact start from something immediately given which is alien to it, regarding itself as a merely formal activity which receives its content and material from outside and which, by itself, is only the movement conditioned by that content and material. Further, as will become more evident as soon as we come to consider determining reflection, the reflected determinations are of a different kind from the merely immediate determinations of being.

The latter are more readily granted to be transient, merely relative and standing in relation to other; but the reflected determinations have the form of being-in-and-for-self. This makes them count as essential, and instead of passing over into their opposites they appear rather as absolute, free, and indifferent towards each other. Consequently, they are stubbornly opposed to their movement, their being is their self-identity in their determinateness, in accordance with which, even though they presuppose each other, they maintain themselves completely separate in this relation. ©

(c) Determining Reflection

⁸⁵³ Determining reflection is in general the unity of positing and external reflection. This is to be considered in more detail.

1. External reflection starts from immediate being, positing reflection from nothing.

External reflection, when it determines, posits an other-but this is essence-in the place of the sublated being; but the determination thus posited is not put in the place of an other;

the positing has no presupposition. But that is why it is not the completed, determining reflection; the determination that it posits is consequently only something posited; it is an immediate, but not as equal to itself but as negating itself; it has an absolute relation to the return-into-self; it is only in reflection-into-self, but it is not this reflection itself.

⁸⁵⁴ What is posited is consequently an other, but in such a manner that the equality of reflection with itself is completely preserved; for what is posited is only as sublated, as a relation to the returninto-self.

In the sphere of being, determinate being was the being in which negation was present, and being was the immediate base and element of this negation, which consequently was itself immediate. In the sphere of essence, positedness corresponds to determinate being.

It is likewise a determinate being but its base is being as essence or as pure negativity; it is a determinateness or negation, not as affirmatively present [seiend] but immediately as sublated.

Determinate being is merely posited being or positedness; this is the proposition of essence about determinate being. Positedness stands opposed, on the one hand, to determinate being, and on the other, to essence, and is to be considered as the middle term which unites determinate being with essence, and conversely, essence with determinate being.

Accordingly, when it is said that a determination is only a positedness, this can have a twofold meaning; it is a positedness as opposed to determinate being or as opposed to essence. In the former meaning, determinate being is taken to be superior to positedness and the latter is ascribed to external reflection, to the subjective side.

But in fact positedness is the superior; for as positedness, determinate being is that which it is in itself, a negative, something that is simply and solely related to the return-into-self. It is for this reason that positedness is only a positedness with respect to essence, as the negation of the accomplished return-into-self.

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2. Positedness is not yet a determination of reflection; it is only determinateness as negation in general.

But the positing is now in unity with external reflection; the latter is, in this unity, an absolute presupposing, that is, the repelling of reflection from itself, or the positing of the determinateness as determinateness of itself.

Consequently, positedness is, as such, negation; but, as presupposed, it is also reflected into itself. Positedness is thus a determination of reflection.

⁸⁵⁶ The determination of reflection is distinct from the determinateness of being, from quality. The latter is immediate relation to other in general; positedness, too, is a relation to other, but to reflectedness-into-self.

Negation as quality, is negation simply as affirmative [seiend]; being constitutes its ground and element. The determination of reflection, on the other hand, has for this ground reflectedness-into-self.

Positedness fixes itself into a determination precisely because reflection is equality-with-self in its negatedness; its negatedness is consequently itself a reflection-into-self. Here the determination persists not through being but through its equality with itself.

Because being, which supports quality, is not equal to the negation, quality is unequal within itself and hence a transitory moment vanishing in the other.

The determination of reflection, on the other hand, is positedness as negation, negation which has negatedness as its ground; it is therefore not unequal within itself, and hence is essential, not transitory determinateness. It is the equality of reflection with itself that possesses the negative only as negative, as sublated or posited being, that enables the negative to persist.

⁸⁵⁷ By virtue of this reflection-into-self the determinations of reflection appear as free essentialities floating in the void without attracting or repelling one another.

In them the determinateness has established and infinitely fixed itself through the relation-to-self. It is the determinate that has brought into subjection its transitoriness and its mere positedness, or has bent back its reflection-into-other into reflection-into-self.

These determinations hereby constitute determinate illusory being as it is in essence, essential illusory being. Because of this, determining reflection is reflection that has come forth from itself; the equality of essence with itself has perished in the negation, which is the dominant factor.

⁸⁵⁸ In the determination of reflection, therefore, there are two sides which at first are distinguished from one another.

First, the determination is positedness, negation as such; secondly, it is reflection-into-self. As positedness, it is negation as negation; this accordingly is already its unity with itself.

But at first, it is this only in itself or in principle [an sich], or, it is the immediate as sublating itself in its own self, as the other of itself. To this extent, reflection is an immanent determining.

In the process, essence does not go outside itself; the differences are simply posited, taken back into essence. But according to the other side, they are not posited but reflected into themselves; the negation as negation is in an equality with itself, is not reflected into its other, into its non-being.

⁸⁵⁹ 3. The determination of reflection is as much a reflected relation within itself as it is positedness.

This immediately throws more light on its nature.

Positedness is negation, a non-being over against an other. It is a non-being over against absolute reflection-into-self, or over against essence.

But as self-relation, it is reflected into itself.

This its reflection and the above positedness are distinct. Its positedness is rather its sublatedness.

But its reflectedness-into-self is its subsistence. In so far, therefore, as it is the positedness that is at the same time reflection-into-self, the determinateness of reflection is the relation to its otherness within itself.

It is not an affirmative [seiende], quiescent determinateness, which would be related to an other in such a way that the related term and its relation are distinct from each other, the former a being-within-self, a something that excludes its other and its relation to this other from itself.

On the contrary, the determination of reflection is in its own self the determinate side and the relation of this determinate side as determinate, that is, to its negation. Quality, through its relation, passes over into an other.

In its relation its alteration begins. The determination of reflection, on the other hand, has taken its otherness back into itself.

It is positedness, negation, which however bends back into itself the relation to other, and negation which is equal to itself, the unity of itself and its other, and only through this is an essentiality. It is, therefore, positedness, negation; but as reflection-into-self it is at the same time the sublatedness of this positedness, infinite self-relation.