Existence

Remark: The Thing-in-itself of Transcendental Idealism

^'1060'

Mention has already been made above of the thing-in-itself in connection with the moment of determinate being, of being-in-self.

The thing-in-itself is nothing else but the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which admittedly we can know nothing, for the very reason that it is supposed to be the abstraction from every determination.

The thing-in-itself is thus the indeterminate. All determination falls outside it into an alien reflection to which it is indifferent.

^'1061' For transcendental idealism this external reflection is consciousness.

Since this philosophical system places every determinateness of things both as regards form and content, in consciousness, the fact that I see the leaves of a tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not square, and taste sugar as sweet and not bitter, that I determine the first and second strokes of a clock as successive and not as one beside the other, nor determine the first as cause and the second as effect, and so on, all this is something which, from this standpoint, falls in me, the subject.

¹⁰⁶²

This crude presentation of subjective idealism is directly contradicted by the consciousness of freedom. This consciousness:

• lets me know myself as the universal and undetermined
• separates off from myself those manifold and necessary determinations
• recognises them as something external for me and belonging only to things.

In this consciousness of its freedom the ego is to itself that true identity reflected into itself, which the thing-in-itself was supposed to be.

I have shown elsewhere that this transcendental idealism does not get away from the limitation of the ego by the object, in general, from the finite world, but only changes the form of the limitation, which remains for it an absolute, merely giving it a subjective instead of an objective shape and making into determinatenesses of the ego and into a turbulent whirlpool of change within it (as if the ego were a thing) that which the ordinary consciousness knows as a manifoldness and alteration belonging only to things external to it.

At present we are considering only the thing-in-itself and the reflection which is in the first instance external to it; this reflection has not yet determined itself to consciousness, nor the thing-in-itself to ego.

We have seen from the nature of the thing-in-itself and of external reflection that this same external reflection determines itself to be the thing-in-itself, or, conversely, becomes the first thing-in-itself’s own determination.

¹⁰⁶³

The inadequacy of the standpoint at which this philosophy stops short consists essentially in holding fast to the abstract thing-in-itself as an ultimate determination.

In opposing to the thing-in-itself reflection or the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties; whereas in fact the thing-in-itself essentially possesses this external reflection within itself and determines itself to be a thing with its own determinations, a thing endowed with properties, in this way demonstrating the abstraction of the thing as a pure thing-in-itself to be an untrue determination.

(c) The Reciprocal Action of Things B The Constitution of the Thing out of Matters C Dissolution of the Thing Chapter 2 Appearance

¹⁰⁸⁰

Existence is the immediacy of being to which essence has restored itself again. This immediacy is in itself the reflection of essence into itself. Essence, as Existence, has issued from its ground which has itself passed over into it. Existence is this reflected immediacy in so far as it is in its own self absolute negativity. It is now also posited as this in that it has determined itself as Appearance.

¹⁰⁸¹

Accordingly Appearance is at first essence in its Existence.

Essence is immediately present in it. It is not immediate Existence, but reflected Existence. This reflection constitutes the moment of essence in it. Appearance is Existence as essential Existence.

¹⁰⁸²

Something is only Appearance — in the sense that Existence as such is only a posited being, not a being in and for itself.

This constitutes its essentiality, to have within itself the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence.

This is not an alien, external reflection to which essence belongs and which, by comparing essence with Existence, pronounces the latter to be Appearance.

On the contrary, this essentiality of Existence which constitutes its Appearance, is the truth of Existence itself. The reflection by virtue of which it is this, is its own.

¹⁰⁸³

Something is only Appearance, in the sense that contrasted with it immediate Existence is the truth, then the fact is that Appearance is the higher truth. For it is Existence as essential Appearance. Whereas Existence, on the contrary, is still essenceless Appearance. This is because it contains only the one moment of Appearance, namely, Existence as immediate reflection, not yet as its negative reflection.

When Appearance is called essenceless, one thinks of the moment of its negativity as though the immediate by contrast were the positive and the true.

But the fact is that this immediate does not as yet contain the essential truth. it is when Existence passes over into Appearance that it ceases to be essenceless.

¹⁰⁸⁴

Essence at first reflects an illusory being [schein] within itself, within its simple identity. As such it is abstract reflection, the pure movement from nothing through nothing back to itself.

Essence appears, so that it is now real illusory being, since the moments of illusory being have Existence.

Appearance is the thing as the negative mediation of itself with itself. The differences it contains are self-subsistent matters which are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence and at the same time only in an alien self-subsistence, of therefore having their subsistence in the negation of their own self-subsistence, and again for that very reason also only in the negation of this alien negation, or in the negation of their own negation.

Illusory being is the same mediation, but its unstable moments have, in Appearance, the shape of immediate self-subsistence.

On the other hand, the immediate self-subsistence which belongs to Existence is, on its part, reduced to a moment. Appearance is accordingly the unity of illusory being and Existence.

¹⁰⁸⁵

Appearance now determines itself further.

It is essential Existence. The latter’s essentiality is distinguished from Appearance as unessential and these two sides enter into relation with each other.

It is therefore at first simple self-identity which also contains various content-determinations; and these themselves as well as their relation are what remains self-equal in the flux of Appearance; this is the law of Appearance.

¹⁰⁸⁶

Secondly, however, the law which is simple in its diversity passes over into opposition; the essential moment of Appearance becomes opposed to Appearance itself, and the world of Appearance is confronted by the world of essence [die an sich seiende Welt].

¹⁰⁸⁷

Thirdly, this opposition returns into its ground; that which is in itself is in the Appearance and conversely that which appears is determined as taken up into its in-itself; Appearance becomes correlation or essential relation.

A The Law of Appearance B The World of Appearance and the World-in-itself C Dissolution of Appearance Chapter 3 The Essential Relation A The Relation of Whole and Parts B The Relation of Force and its Expression (a) The Conditionedness of Force (b) The Solicitation of Force (c) The Infinity of Force C Relation of Outer and Inner

Remark: Immediate Identity of Inner and Outer

¹¹⁵²

The movement of essence is in general the becoming of the Notion. In the relation of inner and outer, the essential moment of this emerges namely, that its determinations are posited as being in negative unity in such a manner that each immediately is not only it other but also the totality of the whole. But in the Notion as such this totality is the universal-a substrate which is not yet present in the relation of inner and outer. In the negative identity of inner and outer which is the immediate conversion of one of these determinations into the other, there is also lacking that substrate which above was called the fact.

§ 1153

It is very important to notice that the unmediated identity of form is posited here without the movement of the fact itself, a movement pregnant with content. It occurs in the fact as this is in its beginning. Thus pure being is immediately nothing. In general, everything real is, in its beginning, such a merely immediate identity; for in its beginning it has not yet opposed and developed its moments; on the one hand it has not yet inwardised itself out of externality. and on the other hand, it has not yet externalised and brought forth itself, out of inwardness by its activity. It is therefore only the inner as determinateness against the outer, and only the outer as determinateness against the inner. Hence it is partly only an immediate being; partly, in so far as it is equally the negativity which is to be the activity of the development, it is as such essentially only as yet an inner.

This makes itself apparent in all natural, scientific and spiritual development generally and it is essential to recognise that because something is at first, only inner or also is in its Notion, the first stage is for that very reason only its immediate, passive existence. ®

Thus — to take at once the nearest example — the essential relation here considered is only implicitly [an sich] the relation, only its Notion, or is at first only internal, before it has moved through the mediation of the relation of force and has realised itself. But for this reason it is only the outer, immediate relation, the relation of whole and parts, in which the sides have a mutually indifferent subsistence.

Their identity is not as yet within themselves; it is only internal and the sides therefore fall apart, have an immediate, external subsistence.

Thus the sphere of being as such is as yet still the completely inner and is therefore the sphere of simply affirmative [seienden] immediacy or externality. Essence is at first only the inner, and it, too, is for this reason taken as a wholly external, unsystematised, common element; one speaks of public instruction, the press [Schulwesen, Zeitungswesen], and understands thereby something common formed by an external aggregation of existing objects lacking any essential connection or organisation; or to take concrete objects, the seed of the plant, or the child, is at first only inner plant, internal man. But this is why the plant or the man as germ is an immediate, and outer, which has not as yet given itself the negative reference to itself, is something passive, a prey to otherness.

Thus God, too, in his immediate Notion is not spirit.

Spirit is not the immediate, that which is opposed to mediation, but on the contrary is the essence that eternally posits its immediacy and eternally returns out of it into itself.

Immediately, therefore God is only nature.

Or, nature is only the Inner God, not God actual as spirit, and therefore not truly God.

Or, in our thinking, our first thinking, God is only pure being, or even essence, the abstract absolute, but not God as absolute spirit, which alone is the true nature of God.

Section Three: Actuality

§ 1158

Actuality is the unity of essence and Existence; in it, formless essence and unstable Appearance, or mere subsistence devoid of all determination and unstable manifoldness, have their truth.

Existence is the immediacy which has proceeded from ground, but form is not as yet posited in it.

In determining and forming itself it is Appearance; and when this subsistence which is determined only as reflection-into-an-other is developed further into reflection-into-self, it becomes two worlds, two totalities of the content, one of which is determined as reflected into itself, the other as reflected into an other.

But the essential relation exhibits their form relation, the consummation of which is the relation of inner and outer in which the content of both is only one identical substrate and equally only one identity of form. By virtue of the fact that this identity is now also identity of form, the form determination of their difference is sublated, and it is posited that they are one absolute totality.

§ 1159

This unity of inner and outer is absolute actuality. But this actuality is, in the first instance, the absolute as such — in so far as it is posited as a unity in which form has sublated itself and made itself into the empty or outer difference of an outer and inner.

Reflection is external in its relation to this absolute, which, it merely contemplates rather than is the absolute’s own movement. But since it is essentially this movement, it is so as the negative return of the absolute into itself.

§ 1160

Secondly, we have actuality proper. Actuality, possibility and necessity constitute the formal moments of the absolute, or its reflection.

§ 1161

Thirdly, the unity of the absolute and its reflection is the absolute relation, or rather the absolute as relation to itself — substance.