Actuality

The absolute is the unity of inner and outer as initial, implicit unity.

The exposition appeared as external reflection which, on its side, has the immediate before it as something already given, but is at the same time the movement and relation of this to the absolute, and as such movement leads it back into the absolute and determines it as a mere ‘way and manner’.

But this ‘way and manner’ is the determination of the absolute itself, namely, its initial identity or its merely implicit unity. And through this reflection, too, not only is that initial in-itself posited as essenceless determination but, since the reflection is negative self-relation, it is through this alone that the in-itself becomes this mode.

This reflection, as sublating itself in its determinations and in general as the self-returning movement, is first truly absolute identity and at the same time is the determining of the absolute or its modality. The mode is therefore the externality of the absolute, but equally only as the reflection of the absolute into itself; or it is the absolute’s own manifestation, so that this manifestation is its reflection-into-self and therefore its being-in-and-for-itself.

The absolute as such manifestation, the absolute which is nothing else and has no content save that of being self-manifestation, is absolute form. Actuality is to be taken as this reflected absoluteness. Being is not yet actual: it is the first immediacy; its reflection is therefore a becoming and transition into an other; or its immediacy is not being-in-and-for-itself. Actuality also stands higher than Existence. True, Existence is the immediacy that has proceeded from ground and conditions, or from essence and its reflection. It is therefore in itself what actuality is, real reflection, but it is not yet the posited unity of reflection and immediacy. Existence therefore passes over into appearance in that it develops the reflection which it contains.

It is the ground that has fallen to the ground; its determination is the restoration of the ground; thus it becomes essential relation and its final reflection is the positing of its immediacy as reflection-into-self, and conversely; now this unity in which Existence or immediacy, and the in-itself, the ground or the reflected are simply moments, is actuality. The actual is therefore manifestation; it is not drawn into the sphere of alteration by its externality, nor is it the reflecting of itself in an other, but it manifests itself; that is, in its externality it is itself and is itself in that alone, namely only as a self-distinguishing and self-determining movement.

Now in actuality as this absolute form, the moments are only as sublated or formal, not yet realised; their difference thus belongs at first to external reflection and is not determined as content.

Actuality as itself the immediate form — unity of inner and outer is thus in the determination of immediacy over against the determination of reflection-into-self; or it is an actuality as against a possibility. Their relation to each other is the third term, the actual determined equally as a being reflected into itself, and this at the same time as a being existing immediately. This third term is necessity.

But first of all, since the actual and the possible are formal differences, their relation is likewise merely formal and consist only in the fact that the one like the other is a positedness, or in contingency.

Now since in contingency, the actual as well as the possible is positedness, they have received determination in themselves; the actual thereby becomes, secondly, real actuality and with it equally emerges real possibility and relative necessity.

Thirdly, the reflection of relative necessity into itself yields absolute necessity, which is absolute possibility and actuality.

A Contingency B Relative Necessity C Absolute Necessity Chapter 3 The Absolute Relation A The Relation of Substantiality B The Relation of Causality (a) Formal Causality (b) The Determinate Relation of Causality (c) Action and Reaction C Reciprocity

In finite causality it is substances that are actively related to each other. Mechanism consists in this externality of causality, where the reflection of the cause into itself in its effect is at the same time a repelling being, or where, in the self-identity which the causal substance has in its effect, the cause equally remains something immediately external to it, and the effect has passed over into another substance.

In reciprocity this mechanism is sublated; for it contains first the vanishing of that original persistence of the immediate substantiality, and secondly the coming-to-be of the cause, and hence originativeness as self-mediating through its negation.

At first, reciprocity displays itself as a reciprocal causality of presupposed, self-conditioned substances; each is alike active arid passive substance in relation to the other.

Since the two, then, are both passive and active, any distinction between them has already been sublated; the difference is only a completely transparent semblance; they are substances only inasmuch as they are the identity of the active and the passive.

Reciprocity itself is therefore still only an empty mode of representing this; all that is still required is merely an external bringing together of what is already both in itself and posited. First of all, it is no longer substrates but substances that stand in relation to each other; in the movement of conditioned causality, the still remaining presupposed immediacy has been sublated, and the conditioning factor of the causal activity is still only the passivity of being acted upon, or the passivity of the cause itself.

But further, this ‘being acted upon’ does not originate in another causal substance, but simply from a causality which is conditioned by being acted upon, or is a mediated causality.

Consequently, this initially external moment which attaches to cause and constitutes the side of its passivity, is mediated by itself, is produced by its own activity, and is thus the passivity posited by its own activity.

Causality is conditioned and conditioning; the conditioning side is passive, but the conditioned side equally is passive.

This conditioning or passivity is the negation of cause by the cause itself, in that it essentially converts itself into effect and precisely through this is cause.

Reciprocity is, therefore, only causality itself. Cause not only has an effect, but in the effect it stands, as cause, in relation to itself.

Causality has hereby returned to its absolute Notion. At the same time, it has attained to the Notion itself.

At first, it is real necessity; absolute identity with itself, so that the difference of necessity and the related determinations in it are substances, free actualities, over against one another.

Necessity is, in this way, inner identity. Causality is the manifestation of this, in which its illusory show of substantial otherness has sublated itself and necessity is raised to freedom.

In reciprocity, originative causality displays itself as an arising from its negation, from passivity, and as a passing away into the same, as a becoming.

But in such a manner that at the same time this becoming is equally only illusory; the transition into an other is a reflection into itself; the negation, which is ground of the cause, is its positive union with itself.

In reciprocity, therefore, necessity and causality have vanished; they contain both, immediate identity as connection and relation, and the absolute substantiality of the different sides, hence the absolute contingency of them.

The original unity of substantial difference, and therefore absolute contradiction. Necessity is being, because it is-the unity of being with itself that has itself for ground; but conversely, because it has a ground it is not being, it is an altogether illusory being, relation or mediation.

Causality is this posited transition of originative being, of cause, into illusory being or mere positedness, and conversely, of positedness into originativeness; but the identity itself of being and illusory being is still an inner necessity.

This inwardness or this in-itself, sublates the movement of causality, with the result that the substantiality of the sides standing in relation is lost, and necessity unveils itself.

Necessity does not become freedom by vanishing, but only because its still inner identity is manifested, a manifestation which is the identical. movement of the different sides within themselves, the reflection of the illusory being as illusory being into itself. ®

Conversely, at the same time, contingency becomes freedom, for the sides of necessity, which have the shape of independent, free actualities not reflecting themselves in one another, are now posited as an identity, so that these totalities of reflection-into-self in their difference are now also reflected as identical, or are posited as only one and the same reflection.

Absolute substance, as absolute form, distinguishes itself from itself.

Therefore it no longer repels itself as necessity from itself.

It does not fall asunder into indifferent, self-external substances.

On the contrary, it differentiates itself into 2:

1. Into the totality as passive substance

This is originative as reflection out of the determinateness into itself, as a simple whole, which contains within itself its positedness and is posited as self-identical therein-the universal.

2. Into the totality as causal substance

This is the reflection equally out of the determinateness into itself to a negative determinateness which, as thus the self-identical determinateness is likewise posited as the whole, but as self-identical negativity-the individual.

But because the universal is self-identical only in that it contains the determinateness within itself as sublated.

Therefore, the negative as negative. It is immediately the same negativity which individuality is. It is individuality because it is equally the determinate determinate.

The negative as negative, is immediately the same identity which universality is.

This their simple identity is particularity, which contains in immediate unity the moment of determinateness of the individual and the moment of reflection-into-self of the universal.

These 3 totalities are, therefore, one and the same reflection, which, as negative self-relation, differentiates itself into these two, but into a perfectly transparent difference, namely, into a determinate simplicity or simple determinateness which is their one and the same identity.

This is the Notion, the realm of subjectivity or of freedom.