Force and the Play of Forces

Force

^'136' One moment appears as a universal medium, or as the subsistence of independent constituents, as the reality that has stepped aside.

The independence of these constituent elements, however, is nothing else than this medium – this universal is simply and entirely the plurality of such diverse universals.

The universal is per se in undivided unity with this plurality.

These elements are each where the other is.

They mutually permeate one another without touching one another. This is because the manifold diversity is equally independent.

They are also absolutely pervious and porous, or are cancelled and superseded.

To be thus superseded, again, or the reduction of this diversity to bare and simple self-existence, is nothing else than the medium itself, and this is the independence of the different elements.

In other words, the elements when set up as independent, pass directly over into their unity.

• Their unity passes directly into its explicit diversity.
• The diversity passes back once again into the reduction to unity.

This process is called Force. *

The Expression of Force is one of these moments when force takes the form of a dispersion of the independent elements each with its own identity.

When these elements unity and lose their identity then it is Pure Force.

• It is force withdrawn from expressing itself and driven back into itself [as unity].

But first, force driven back into itself must express itself.

• Secondly, in that expression it is still force existing within itself, as much as in thus being within itself it is expression.

^'137' The conception of force belongs to the Understanding.

• Understanding is the principle which carries the different moments qua different.

Both moments are not different. Such a distinction exists only in thought.

Stated otherwise, only the mere conception of force has been put forward in the above, not its realization.

However, force is the unconditioned universal.

For force to be what it truly is, it has to be:

• completely set free from thought, and
• put forward as the substantial reality of these differences

It is the substance qua the entire force remaining essentially self-contained (an und für sich), and then its differences as substantial entities, or as moments subsisting each on its own account.

Force as such, force as driven back within itself, is in this way by itself an excluding unit, for which the unfolding of the elements or differences is another thing subsisting separately; and thus there are set up two sides, distinct and independent.

But force is also the whole, or it remains what, in its very conception, it is.

These differences remain mere forms, superficial vanishing “moments”.

Thus there is:

• pure force, withdrawn into itself
• expressed force, manifesting in independent constituent elements

Their differences do not exist if they did not exist.

Force would not exist if it did not really exist in these opposite ways.

But to exist in this way as opposite aspects means that both moments are themselves independent at the same time.

This process is how both moments get themselves fixed as independent, and then cancel their independence again.

This process is nothing else than the process of perceiving.

• In this process, the aspects, both percipient and content perceived, are at once inseparably united as regards the process of grasping the truth.
• Yet, by that very fact, each aspect is at the same time reflected into itself. Each aspect is something on its own account.

These 2 aspects are elements or moments of force.

• They subsist within one unity, just as much as this unity, which appears as the middle term for the distinct and independent extremes, always gets broken up into these very extremes, which only are through this taking place.

Thus the process, which formerly took the shape of the self-negation of contradictory conceptions, here assumes objective form. It is a movement of force, the result of which is to bring out the “unconditioned universal”, as something which is not objective – which is the inner (unperceived) being of things.

^'138' Force, when determined, is taken as force because it is reflected into itself.

It is the one side of its notion and meaning.

• But it is a substantiated extreme
• It is an extreme established with the specific character of oneness.

Because of this, the subsistence of the differentiated elements falls outside it, and is something other than it.

Since of necessity it has to be this subsistence, i.e., to express, externalize itself, its expression takes the form that the other approaches it and incites it.

But since it must express itself, it has within itself this other, which from the start took up a position as something outside of it.

We must withdraw from the position which sets up force as a one, and its essence – self-expressions – an other approaching it from outside.

Force itself is this universal medium for the subsistence of the moments as differentiated elements.

In other words, it has expressed or externalized itself.

• Force itself the something outside of it that was attracting or inciting.

It thus exists now as the medium of the differentiated elements which are evolved.

• But it is in its very nature one and single.
• This Force has essentially the form of being that supersedes these subsisting elements.

This oneness is in consequence of something external to Force, since Force is the medium for the elements.

• Force therefore has this outside itself.
• This other is part of the essential nature of Force.

• It comes forward soliciting or inciting it to reflect into itself.
• It turns this pseudo-external factor into an aspect of itself.
• In other words, this other cancels its external expression.

It is force itself that is thus reflected into itself, that is the sublation of the external expression.

• The oneness vanishes as it appeared, viz. as something external.
• Force is that very other.
  • It is force thrust back into itself.

This inciting force took the character of an external force [other] in order to express and return into itself.

• This inciting force is also a universal medium that is also one and single.

Consequently, the original force has an other inciting force for it. Without that other, the original force is incomplete.

There are 2 forces present at the same time. The notion of both is the same notion. But it has passed out of its unity into duality.

Instead of the opposition continuing to be entirely and essentially a mere moment, it escapes from the control of the unity and to have become 2 independent forces because of this diremption.

The second force stands towards the force incited in the character of inciting force.

With respect to its content, it plays the part of universal medium.

But since that second force consists essentially in an alternation of these 2 moments and is itself force, it is likewise a universal medium only then when it is incited or solicited to being so.

In the same way, too, it is negative unity.

It incites and leads to the retraction of force, only by being incited thereto.

As a result, this distinction, which took place between one force regarded as inciting and the other as incited, turns also into one and the same reciprocal interchange of characteristics.