What is Explanation?

¹⁵⁴ The distinction is, then, in both cases no distinction of an inherent or essential kind. Either the universal, force, is indifferent to the division into parts, which is found in the law, or else the distinctions, the parts of the law, are indifferent to one another.

Understanding, however, does have the notion of this distinction per se, just by the fact that law is in part the inner being, the inherent nature, but is at the same time something distinguished within the notion. That this distinction is thereby inner distinction is shown by the fact that law is bare and simple force, or is the notion of that distinction, and thus is a distinction of the notion.

But still this inner distinction falls to begin with only within understanding, and is not yet established in the fact itself. It is thus only its own necessity to which understanding gives expression – the distinction, that is to say, is one which it makes only so as at the same time to express that the distinction is not to be a distinction in the nature of the fact itself.

This necessity is merely verbal. It is thus a rehearsal of the moments which make up the cycle of necessity.

They are distinct. But their distinction is at the same time explicitly stated to be not a distinction of the fact itself. Consequently, it is itself again straightway cancelled and transcended.

This process is called Explanation.

A law is expressed.

• From this, its inherently universal element or ground is distinguished as force
• But this distinction asserts that it is no distinction, rather that the ground has entirely the same constitution as the law.

For example, a lightning event is apprehended as universal. This universal is expressed as the law of electricity. This explanation merges the law in force as the essence of the law.

This force is, then, so constituted that, when it finds expression, opposite electrical discharges appear, and these again disappear into one another.

In other words, force has exactly the same constitution as law. Both are thus not distinct.

The distinctions are pure universal expression or law and pure force.

But both have the same content, the same constitutive character. Thus, the distinction between them qua distinction of content, i.e. of fact, is also again withdrawn.

¹⁵⁵ In this tautological process, understanding holds fast to the changeless unity of its object.

The process takes effect solely within understanding itself, not in the object.

It is an explanation that not only explains nothing, but is so plain that, while it makes as if it would say something different from what is already said, it really says nothing at all, but merely repeats the same thing over again.

So far as the fact itself goes, this process gives rise to nothing new. The process is only of account as a process of understanding.

In it, however, we now get acquainted with just what we missed in the case of the law – absolute change itself: for this process, when looked at more narrowly, is directly the opposite of itself.

It sets up a distinction which is not only for us no distinction, but which it itself cancels as distinction.

This is the same process of change which was formerly manifested as the play of forces. In the latter we found the distinction of inciting and incited force, or force expressing itself, and force withdrawn into itself.

But these were distinctions which in reality were no distinctions, and therefore were also immediately cancelled again. We have here not merely the naked unity, so that no distinction could be set up at all; the process we have is rather this, that a distinction is certainly made, but because it is no distinction, it is again superseded.

Thus, then, with the process of explaining, we see the ebb and flow of change, which was formerly characteristic of the sphere of appearance, and lay outside the inner world, finding its way into the region of the supersensible itself.

Our consciousness, however, has passed from the inner being as an object over to understanding on the other side, and finds the changing process there.

¹⁵⁶ The change is in this way not yet a process of the fact itself, but rather presents itself before us as pure change, just by the content of the moments of change remaining the same.

Since, however, the notion qua notion of understanding is the same as the inner nature of things, this change becomes for understanding the law of the inner world. Understanding thus learns that it is a law in the sphere of appearance for distinctions to come about which are no distinctions.

In other words, it learns that what is self-same is self-repulsive, and, similarly, that the distinctions are only such as in reality are none and cancel one another, or that what is not self-same is self-attractive.

Here we have a second law, whose content is the opposite of what formerly was called law, viz. the invariable and unchanging self-identical distinction.

This new law expresses rather the process of like becoming unlike, and unlike becoming like.

The notion demands of the unreflective mind to bring both laws together, and become conscious of their opposition.

Of course the second is also a law, an inner self-identical being; but it is rather a self-sameness of the unlike, a constancy of inconstancy.

In the play of forces this law proved to be just this absolute transition and pure change; the selfsame, force, split into an opposition, that in the first instance appeared as a substantial independent distinction, which, however, in point of fact proved to be none.

For it is the selfsame which repels itself from itself, and this element repelled is in consequence essentially self-attracted, for it is the same; the distinction made, since it is none, thus cancels itself again.

The distinction is hence set forth as a distinction on the part of the fact itself, or as an absolute (objective) distinction; and this distinction on the part of the fact is thus nothing but the selfsame, that which has repelled itself from itself, and consequently only set up an opposition which is none.

¹⁵⁷ By means of this principle, the first supersensible world, the changeless kingdom of laws, the immediate ectype and copy of the world of perception, has turned round into its opposite.

The law was in general, like its differences, self-identical. Now, however, it is established that each side is, on the contrary, the opposite of itself. The self-identical repels itself from itself, and the self-discordant sets up to be selfsame.

In truth only with a determination of this kind is distinction inner distinction, or immanent distinction, when the like is unlike itself, and the unlike like itself.