The Process of Life

Superphysics Note

We replace sense-certainty with metaphysical perception and perception with physical perception

2. Life

¹⁶⁸ For us or implicitly, the object, which is the negative element for self-consciousness, has on its side returned into itself, just as on the other side-consciousness has done.

This reflexion of consciousness into self, the object has become Life.

What self-consciousness distinguishes as having a being distinct from itself, has in it too, so far as it is affirmed to be, not merely the aspect of metaphysical and physical perception.

It is a being reflected into itself, and the object of immediate desire is something living.

The inherent reality is the general result of the relation of the understanding to the inner nature of things.

It is:

• the distinguishing of what cannot be distinguished
• the unity of what is distinguished.

This unity recoils from itself.

This conception breaks asunder into the opposition of:

• self-consciousness and
• life.

Self-consciousness is the unity for which the absolute unity of differences exists.

Life is only this unity itself, so that the unity is not at the same time for itself.

consciousness has independence which its object also has.

Self-consciousness is absolutely for self-consciousness.

It characterizes its object directly as:

• negative
• primarily desire

Self-consciousness will find through experience this object’s independence.

¹⁶⁹ The determination of the principle of life as obtained from the conception or general result with which we enter this new sphere, is sufficient to characterize it, without its nature being evolved further out of that notion.

Its circuit is completed in the following moments.

The essential element is infinity as:

• the supersession of all distinctions
• the pure rotation on its own axis

Life is itself at rest while being absolutely restless infinity.

, the very self-dependence in which the differences brought out in the process are all dissolved, the simple reality of time, which in this self-identity has the solid form and shape of space.

The differences, however, all the same hold as differences in this simple universal medium,

This universal flux exercises its negative activity by sublating them.

But it could not transcend them unless they had a subsistence of their own.

Precisely this flux is itself self-identical independence.

This is their substance, in which they are distinct parts.

Their existence is now just that simple fluent substance of the pure movement within itself.

The difference, however, of these parts is their moments of infinity, as the mere movement itself.

¹⁷⁰ The independent members exist for themselves.

This is done by their reflexion directly into the unity, just as this unity is the breaking into independent forms.

The unity is sundered because:

• it is absolutely negative or infinite unity
• it is subsistence, difference likewise has independence only in it.

This independence of the form appears as a determinate entity, as what is for another.

This is because:

• the form is something disunited.
• the cancelling of diremption takes effect to that extent through another.

But this sublation lies in the actual form itself becaause that flux is the substance of the independent forms.

This substance, however, is infinite.

Hence, the form itself in its very subsistence involves diremption, or sublation of its existence for itself.

¹⁷¹ Let us distinguish more exactly the moments contained here.

The first moment is the subsistence of the independent forms. It is the suppression of the forms having no existence.

The second moment, however, is the subjection of that subsistence to the infinity of distinction.

In the first moment there is the persisting mode or form.

It then comes forward opposing the universal substance.

It disowns this fluent continuity with that substance.

It insists that it is not dissolved in this universal element.

Rather it preserves itself through:

• its separation from this its inorganic nature, and
• its consuming this inorganic nature.

Life in the universal fluid medium, silently shapes, moulds, and distributes the forms in all their manifold detail.

This leads to a life process.

The mere universal flux is here the inherent being.

The outer being, the “other”, is the distinction of the forms assumed.

But this flux becomes itself the other in virtue of this very distinction.

This is because now it exists “for” or in relation to that distinction, which is self-conditioned and self-contained (an und für sich).

Consequently, it is the endless, infinite movement by which that stable medium is consumed — is life as living.

This inversion of character, however, is on that account again invertedness in itself as such.

The essential reality is consumed.

The Individuality:

• preserves itself at the expense of the universal
• gives itself the feeling of its unity with itself

This unity with itself cancels its contrast with the other.

Individuality gives Individuality the unity with self.

This unity is the fluent continuity of differences, or universal dissolution.

But, conversely, the cancelling of individual subsistence at the same time produces the subsistence.

This is because the essence of the individual form – universal life – and the self-existent entity per se are simple substance.

The essence puts the other within itself. This cancels its own essence. It sunders that simplicity.

This disruption of fluent undifferentiated continuity is the setting up of individuality.

The simple substance of life, therefore, is:

• the diremption of itself into shapes and forms
• the dissolution of these substantial differences

The resolution of this diremption is just as much a process of diremption, of articulating.

The sides of the movement are:

1. The setting up of individual forms lying apart and undisturbed in the universal medium of independent existence
2. the process of life

Both these sides collapse into one another.

The process of life is:

• a formation of independent individual shapes
• a way of cancelling an assumed shape

The setting up of individual forms is either a cancelling or an articulation of them.

The fluent, continuous element is itself only the abstraction of the essential reality, or it is actual only as a definite shape or form;

That it articulates itself is once more a breaking up of the articulated form, or a dissolution of it.

The entire circuit of this activity constitutes Life.

It is neither what is expressed to begin with, the immediate continuity and concrete solidity of its essential nature; nor the stable, subsisting form, the discrete individual which exists on its own account;

Nor the bare process of this form; nor again is it the simple combination of all these moments. It is none of these; it is the whole which develops itself, resolves its own development, and in this movement simply preserves itself.