BECOMING XIV: RELATION OR CORRELATION

We now come to the third and final division of Appearance after “The
World of Appearance” and “Content and Form” before passing to “C.-
Actuality”, which after “A.-Essence as Ground of Existence” and B.-
Appearance” is the third and final major division of Essence, itself leading
into the Notion as “the truth of Being and Essence”. This section, “Relation
and Correlation”, itself divides into the relations of Whole and Parts, of
Force and its Expression plus, finally, of Inward and Outward. We
begin immediately with Whole and Parts, which is itself “the immediate
relation”, Hegel declares (135). For “The content is the whole, and consists
of the parts (the form), its counterpart.” Whether or not this repetition of
“part” in “counterpart” reflects the German text, the fact that the parts,
plural, which are the form, singular, are called the counterpart, singular, of
the Whole, just making the Whole a part of some Whole (the same one?)
over again, cannot be passed over. In ordinary life when one person
introduces another as his “counterpart” he implies that he himself is not
the whole (of the organisation), but we treat of Whole itself, signalling that
the final “system” or Notion will not be a composite or whole (but, rather,
we shall see, an identity).

That the parts, not mentioned before, are equated here with the form, of
the whole (we should not say a given whole or assume that that is what is
“really” meant), is but logical. The form constitutes, makes up, the thing,
although both categories have now been superseded by the present one.
The parts are mutually diverse and possess, they alone, “independent
being”. They are only parts when “identified by being related to one
another”. Again, there is perhaps a play upon “identify”. According to the
traditional theory of predication, to which Hegel in a measure subscribes, a
subject is identified, by the copula, with its predicate. Thus here he might
be saying that “being related to one another” is what the parts are, what
any part is, i.e. related to the others. Yet his meaning might include, or
alternate with saying, that in this mutual relation each part becomes the
whole composite of parts and is thus not a part at all. “This also is thou,
neither is this thou.” Part, that is, is “self-cancelling”, as it will anyhow
have to be. Meanwhile, they are parts “when taken together” only. But,
again, “this ‘Together’ is the counterpart and negation of the part”,
singular. It can never be “taken” on its own. If we take out part of an
engine and examine it on its own (and even mere attending to something
is a “taking out” or abstracting of it) it becomes, as object, a whole or,
rather, the whole now being considered. It is precisely as a whole that it
was functioning and may again function as a part.
 Essential correlation is the specific and completely universal
phase in which things appear. Everything that exists stands in
correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of every
existence. The existent thing in this way has no being of its
own, but only in something else: in this other, however, it is
self-relation; and correlation is the unity of the self-relation and
relation-to-others (135, Zus. my stress).

We reach here a kind of watershed, of course within the continuity of

dialectical principle. It directly parallels, but as underlying, the teaching of
love of "neighbour" as self, its possibility. This "essential correlation" of all
that exists, calling in question even whether there are any single existents
as such, should be kept in mind when considering each remaining
category in turn of the dialectic. As regards Whole and Part the correlation
is imperfect. That is to say, the relation whole to parts and vice versa "is
untrue to this extent, that the notion and reality of the relation are not in
harmony." Why is this? "The notion of the whole is to contain parts", i.e. no
whole without parts. But a whole as a whole "at once" ceases to be if it is
actually parted from itself or divided. Exemplifications of this relation are
just thereby "low and untrue existences", again. Being itself, Parmenides
had said, "has no parts". The relation is however immediate, as coming
easily to the understanding. The terms are therefore often used loosely or
"analogically", as when we speak of parts of the soul. Even parts of the
body are only truly parts when the body is dead. In a living organism the
whole substance, the form, its very life or subsistence, informs the act of
any limb or member. There is a unity of being, life and purpose. If one limb
is in pain, the whole organism is in pain. In the mental and spiritual world
talk of parts is yet more clumsy or, indeed, untrue, treating the subject "on
the analogy of this finite relation". Hegel has argued that "everything finite
is false". There are no isolated "powers" of the soul and in thinking the
whole being of the person is engaged.

Hegel now prefaces section 136 with an at first reading unintelligible

paragraph, leading into the next item in the ascending series of
correlations, viz. Force and its Expression. He at once explains what he
means, however. Whole and part "is the immediate and therefore
unintelligent (mechanical) relation." In our machines we have in fact
reified, but it is hardly found in nature, or not until we get down to the
apparently discrete particles of physics. However, it may well be that this
discreteness is formed upon a subjective mechanical model of ours, as we
are, with quantum mechanics, seemingly beginning to be aware. This
postulated relation is "a revulsion of self-identity into mere variety", a
"negative self-relation", as he had at first put it. We pass from whole to
parts, from parts to whole, backwards and forwards. They repel each
other. Even the excised or abstracted part becomes itself just thereby a
whole. One recalls Hume's impressions and ideas. Just by being talked
about the impressions become themselves ideas. These are neither parts
nor wholes but the relation, as if holding between two distinct relatanda, is
similarly untrue.

What is first a part becomes a whole, any part does, when examined cum
praecisione. There is an alternation, since the whole too is broken down
into parts. This he calls "the negative self-relating element in the
correlation", i.e. it dissolves or cancels itself qua relation. What we have is
a self-identical unity, which is a better name therefore than "whole", What
we took, and commonly take, to be a real way of correlating things, a real
correlation, is actually a "mediating process" in our thinking, which
"supersedes this immanency and gives itself expression" as Force. The
Force, in turn, is the expression of it, we shall find. The transition,
however, is somewhat opaque. We have here expression without some
particular act, we have the pure dialectical thinking as suddenly become
expression of and in force. Or what force is being spoken of? Hegel refers
to Herder's conceiving of God as mainly force and power, which
conception he criticises as limited and hence finite, needing something
else either upon which to work or to elicit it, force and expression
together, in the first place. This force "is not yet genuinely identical with
the form" and that is certainly clear:

Not yet is it as a notion and an end; that is to say, it is not

intrinsically and actually determinate.

In the Absolute there cannot be a force distinct from thinking and

purposing or, rather, willing. There, to will is to effect. So there is no willing
as we understand it either, i.e. as some kind of internal correlate merely.
Rather, correlation becomes here, absolutely, identity. With force belongs
effort, pressing out or ex-pression, a want of harmony. This is its finitude.
There is not so much determinateness as determinedness. Only in the
Absolute, where there is no non-actual or pure possibility, is there absolute
determinateness, freedom namely.

If, though, we should compare the relation "between force and its putting
forth" with "the immediate relation of whole and parts" we may note an
advance in the embodiment of "essential correlation", the "specific and
completely universal phase in which things appear." For we are thinking
here still within the category of Appearance, prior to Actuality. The first-
mentioned relation, anyhow, that of force, "may be considered infinite".
For in it "that identity of the two sides is realised, which in the former
relation only existed for the observer." The whole, that is, "ceases to be a
whole when it is divided: whereas force is only shown to be force when it
exerts itself, and in its exercise only comes back to itself." Force and its
Exertion is a more perfect correlation than is that of Whole and Parts,
since correlation of whole and parts leads to the demise of the non-
correlated or independent pseudo-entity within the pair, each in turn. "The
exercise is only force once more." Yet "even this relation will appear
finite." It cannot be applied immediately to the Absolute, as Herder had
done, since there it is absorbed in that Thinking which already has, in its
inward or self-thinking, all that Otherness, all others toward which Force
strives.

Force then is finite in virtue of its mediation, that it is only force when it
exerts itself, as, by superficial contrast, the relation of whole and parts "is
obviously finite in virtue of its immediacy." Thought, by contrast, is itself
thinking, "pure act". Running, too, of course is purely act, but is correlated
with not-running or walking. Thinking is not thus paired, since it is not
conceived in relation to time or occasion. Thinking, Mind, is rather the
"place of all forms" (Aquinas) and prior to the Being which falls into it
(cadit in mente). Hence it is its dialectical Result. Thinking, as Hegel puts it
at the end of this "Doctrine of Essence", as if winding it up,

Means a liberation, which is not the flight of abstraction, but

consists in that which is actual having itself not as something
else, but as its own being and creation, in the other actuality
with which it is bound up by the force of necessity.

Such a "force" however is nothing other that its own internal, free and
properly infinite self-differentiation, necessary to the very Notion as
Notion. Thus it is called and is I, Spirit, Love, Blessedness, but not
(substance or) force (159, end).

Mediacy and immediacy are themselves, in the end, finite categories. The
immediate is, as such, mediated and vice versa. This is different from
saying that thinking is itself thought, is self-thinking, in infinite reflection.
Force, anyhow, is always mediated and elicited by something other than
itself, requiring "solicitation" by another exertion of force. This is a
different kind of regress, since each soliciting cannot but be separate or
"abstract", the sign of finitude and falsity. It differs from the properly
infinite or unbounded depth of all thinking, all consciousness, this having
in self, of the other as other, as such; or, as Hegel puts it, this having of
itself as the other. The figurative "in" relation (cp. "I in them and they in
me") gives way to identity, of self and not-self. Self itself, like the former
opposition of the One and the Many, is effectively superseded.

We have then either infinite repetition of exertion of force or reciprocity of

solicitation, here presaging the demise of Cause and Effect. So "we have
no absolute beginning of motion", since motion itself is not absolute, is
finite. It is therefore infinite with respect to a beginning, but this is
because Beginning itself is the Infinite as is the End, as we saw when
discussing Being. Force, of course, belongs to motion as its cause. That is
why the Absolute is necessarily changeless, free of the imperfect act
which is motion, the act of something potential (in potentia) in so far as it
is potential, as Aristotle had put it. Force is not though "final cause,
inherently self-determining", without extrinsic origin, since it is final and
hence not finite. It receives its content and is thus itself "blind".

Therefore,

Though we may consent to let the world be called a

manifestation of divine forces, we should object to have God
Himself viewed as a mere force.

Force "is a subordinate and finite category", it is now clear.

The finite forms of understanding… fail to fulfil the conditions

for a knowledge either of Nature or of the formations in the
world of Mind as they truly are.

Empirical science has nonetheless the "formal right" to investigate further

the various forces which we experience as at work in the world. The
question "Why?", however, is common to metaphysics (religion) and
science. Why are things as they are, why did God make a world, why does
the Absolute thus, as it appears, alienate itself? Or, as Milton has Satan
say,

O earth, how like to Heav'n, if not preferred

More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built

With second thoughts, reforming what was old!

For what god after better worse would build?1

This or these questions are answered here through the supersession of

correlations, whole and parts, force and exertion inside and outside, in
identity. "It is the very essence of force to manifest itself." Again, in the
totality of this manifestation, "conceived as a law, we at the same time
discover the force itself." This Law, which is the Law of the Phenomenon
mentioned at 133, is Reason itself, both within, as constituting, and
without as intrinsic Ground and Notion. It is also within us as our moral
or rational nature and outside of us as ordering phenomena or Appearance
as "a whole".

1
John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, ll. 108-112. This thought is left hanging in
the air, as if a passing reflection of the poet himself.
The reason the force in itself is unknowable is that force is finite as a
category. It has to be this correlation simply. We "see that the apparently
contingent is necessary, by recognising the law that rules it." But then
there is something, albeit apparent merely, that is ruled and such a
relation to what is outside of a thing or category is essentially finite. The
Absolute has no such "real relation" to anything but itself. This law,
furthermore, this generalised Force wrongly postulated as divine, splits up
into forces and disciplines (laws) without end, "gravity, magnetism,
electricity," etc. So also in empirical psychology we have the forces or
"faculties" of "memory, imagination, will," etc. But this multiplicity cannot
be traced back to some "common,primary" force in the same sense of the
term. This would be "empty abstraction", like the "thing-in-itself". Force
and manifestation are "reciprocally dependent", i.e. the correlation is
"mediated", so a primary force "resting on itself" "contradicts its notion".
Hegel here brings out implicitly the hidden ambiguities in the idea, the
thesis, of the potentia absoluta Dei, virtually axiomatic in much fourteenth
century theology especially. We should, again, "object to have God himself
viewed as a mere force." This is a "subordinate and finite category".

This means that accounts of empirical reality in terms, as it were

absolutely, of forces, productive of Deism or a "god of the gaps", are
themselves flawed or finite, not "going to the ground", as is in a sense true
of the notion of "empirical reality" itself. Each and all of these forces tend,
by the logic of this concept, to "get fixed in their finitude as ultimate". For
there is no force as such, just as there is no animal as such. These are
generic terms, intrinsically requiring separate specifications. That is, they
are abstractions. Thus the scientists themselves search for a master
category, not however to be attained by such finite and less than
dialectical methods.

Of course God will be abstract and "far away" from "this de-infinitised
world of independent forces and matters". The argument reaches back
into all the dualisms considered, matter and form, finite and infinite, here
being first got to grips with under the banner of correlation, since this
latter is intrinsic to the each of these categories in a new way. What is
essentially correlate is not in itself. The presupposed self-and-other is
taken away, superseded, aufgehoben, put by though remaining (when
needed). "The finite forms of understanding fail to fulfil the conditions for a
knowledge of Nature or of… Mind as they truly are", even though they
have precisely this finite "formal right" to as it were fill out the
abstractions. But ultimately they themselves must coalesce with
philosophy, as must, from the other side, religion as taking refuge in
"mystery". This would be the gist of Hegel's answer to those reproaching
him as not taking evolution, surely a "force" in this eighteenth century
sense, as an absolute mechanical or bio-chemical explanation. There can
be no such. Even more foreign to the Infinite however would be any idea,
taken literally, of "directing", however "intelligently", outwards. Thus the
next correlation of categories to arise is that of Inward and Outward.
The reflection-into-another of Force, its intrinsic putting forth of itself or
pushing itself off from itself, corresponds to the distinction between the
Parts of the Whole (137), considered above. It is "equally a reflection-into
self", what it is, since "this out-putting is the way and means by which
Force that returns back into itself is as a force":

The very act of out-putting accordingly sets in abeyance the

diversity of the two sides which is found in this correlation, and
expressly states the identity which virtually constitutes their
content. The truth of Force and utterance therefore is that
relation, in which the two sides are distinguished only as
Outward and Inward.

That's it, identity. We should also note the equating, the identification, of
exertion or expression of force with "utterance" here, as covering a range
from divine manifestation through moral behaviour to (exterior) speech
and more, already in the proximately following section.

********************************************

The Inward (Interior) is the ground, when it stands as the mere

form of the one side of the Appearance and the Correlation -
the empty form of reflection-into-self. As a counterpart to it
stands the Outward (Exterior), - Existence, also as the form of
the other side of the correlation, with the empty characteristic
of reflection-into-something-else. (138)

Reflection-into-self, reflection-into-something-else, characterise Inward

and Outward less figuratively. In either case the terms name "mere forms"
of the sides of the Correlation as Appearance. They succeed to Ground and
Existence and find a certain echo in the later discussions of "intensional"
and "extensional" language. Yet in Hegel's thinking Inward and Outward
are identified simply, as "reciprocally opposed, and that thoroughly" (140).
They are, "as stages of the one form, essentially identical" and "their
identity is identity brought to fulness in the content." This content is "that
unity of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-other which was forced to
appear in the movement of force." They are "both the same one totality,
and this unity makes them the content." That is, they are "the content",
which is, we recall, absolutely correlated with form in "mutual revulsion
"(133). There is no form "imposed" on the content, on that which is or on
that which is-finally-thought, the Notion.

"What is inwardly is also found outwardly and vice versa…. In the essence
there is nothing but what is manifested." Hegel means this literally, as
Essence is Appearance (139). The pair abstractly name the One and the
Many, "multiplicity or reality". "Therefore what is only internal is also only
external: and what is only external, is so far only at first internal" (my
stress), i.e. both are abstract and self-cancelling into their opposites when
taken separately.

"It is the customary mistake of reflection to take the essence to be merely

the interior." Hegel wants to emphasise that there is not even a logical
priority of the inward. That is why his Logic itself is not an inwardly prior
study to his Nature and Psychology but really contains what is later
worked out in "alienation". God's creation, we have to say, as a divine
idea, is identical with absolute or divine "essence". It is anyhow not
outside but we live "in" God as all is at once reflection into self and into
other. Self is finally Other and in Otherness or negation and negation over
again we have Self. The Notion simply is Absolute Spirit, in all its forms or
as Form itself.

Regarding religion there is an illustrative moment in the exegetical

controversy concerning the text "The kingdom of Heaven is within you"
which some, hoping to avoid the liberty of "mysticism", insist should be
translated "among you". They generally agree though that both are
somehow involved. This "somehow" gets explained in philosophy. If,
indeed, one gives priority to "the interior", this is in itself a "purely
external way" of looking "at it", the essence, in "empty external
abstraction". The more spiritual we try to be the less spiritual we become,
one might say.

Hegel here transforms some lines of Goethe, actually Haller originally,

either through imperfect memory or characteristic punning, I would rather
bet. He anyhow agrees with Goethe that it is "philistine" or untrue to view
Nature in terms of kernel and rind, since precisely the outward sheen is
the inward glory, so to say. Wordsworth's "great Apocalypse" lies there in
the very language of the "types and shadows" which are indeed, they
themselves, the "thoughts of one mind". Thus a musician strictly
contemporary with Wordsworth and Hegel could project what is at one and
the same time a passage in music, an inward experience of a storm and
an outward theophany, the latter being the most "inward" of all. Our very
word "storm" is indeed a metaphor so alive that we call it dead since, as
we shall see, the category of Life is itself finite and so finally contradictory.
"All thy waves and storms have gone over me." The significance of these
well-known things, often passed over without thought, is here
systematically worked out, we had better recall.

So, "if the essence of nature is ever described as the inner part, the person
who so describes it only knows its outer shell." This is of course
Franciscan, where sun, water and death itself (the mark of nature surely)
are brother or sister to the consciousness evoking it. True, the notion is "at
first" inward, like the reason of a child, a mere “inner possibility”, but
therefore it is still "something external to Being", itself "a subjective
thinking and being, devoid of truth." There is no ground in this "at first" for
a giving of priority to this pre-knowledge (by no means proto-) of an
alienated Nature, of an awakening but not yet awake Mind.

So long as the notion, design, or law are at first the inner

capacity, mere possibilities, they are first only an external,
inorganic nature, the knowledge of a third person, alien force,
and the like. (140, my stress)
This "objectified" Nature of our unreflected consciousness is not the truth
liberating it in the subject's spiritual perception or knowledge of self in
other. Similarly a man's behaviour, his "fruits", give his essence, the
essence of the tree, and are not an accidental manifestation of something
essentially inward in some restricted sense or other, making the one half
of him "as hollow and empty as the other".

This relation "unites" the first two, of whole and parts and of force and
expression, Outward to some extent corresponding to analysis as against
synthesis, one might hazard. Not merely so, however, but it "sets in
abeyance mere relativity and phenomenality in general" as we pass on to
Actuality, the final specification and hence essence of Essence, so to say.
Even the differentiation of Nature and Mind as such depends on this
abstract and unreflected dichotomy between inner and outer, Hegel says
in effect, at least when the difference is "traced back" to that. Certainly
nature is "in the gross" external, "even on its own part" and not merely in
our conception of it. But this is a misuse of "external", which cannot be
thus abstract or absolute, since it is essentially correlated. Rather the Idea,
"common content of nature and mind" (as we shall see), "is found in
nature as outward only, and for that very reason only inward", i.e.
"outward" is as such an inward idea. Nature, that is, as all that is outside is
thus inside or, at the least, not outside. Outside of what, for a start, we
might ask?

Hegel points out that nature, for religion, is God's primary revelation, "no
less than the spiritual world". Here, uncharacteristically, he speaks of the
mind as finite, in order not to suggest priority over nature, as of inward
over outward. By the same token, no merely inward essence of nature
should be sought behind appearance, making an unnecessary mystery as
of an unworthily jealous or envious God, he says. "All that God is, he
imparts and reveals" and "at first, in and through nature", i.e. it does not
come all at once, all the same. Rather, as he teaches of the dialectic, it is
in its fulness final result.

In his identification of Inward and Outward Hegel goes so far as to say that
the penalty meted out to a criminal is “only the manifestation of his own
criminal will”. Here we have an indication of his rejection of the classic
view that relations between citizens in a State are somehow accidental to
man’s eternal destiny. The Centre is here too and nothing is accidental.
What is rendered to Caesar is ipso facto rendered to God, a doctrine by no
means excluding a right of rebellion against unjust regimes. The child,
again, in becoming adult, in “internalising” the “outward”, becomes
himself. Here there is a coincidence of Hegelian and “natural law” doctrine
in ethics, with its slogan of “Become what you are”. Again, even with the
adult, “when, in opposition to his true destiny, his intellect and will remain
in the bondage of the natural man.” One can read elsewhere how Hegel
understands this “natural man”, viz. as something which “absolute
religion”, i.e. Christianity, teaches us to deny and transcend. Here he
relates this to Inward and Outward, to becoming “spiritual”, we might say,
as our “true destiny”. There is no side-stepping this side of Hegel’s vision.
There is a progressive internalisation of the outward which is a realisation
of the Outward’s Inwardness. This in turn, as total, implies that the Inward
is on the (outward) face of things, properly apprehended. There is thus no
appeal from the outward to the inward, from lack of fruit to good intention,
at least in general. A “man is what he does”, what he makes himself and
nothing else, he might almost be saying with Sartre, his partial disciple
after all. “By their fruits ye shall know them”, he quotes. Conversely, it is
mere envy to try to play down outward achievements by stress upon
motivation, specifically inward dispositions and so on. Here he anticipates
what he will say, startlingly, about the wickedness of conscientiousness.
Hypocrisy is too often insinuated beyond the bounds of possibility, since
men “cannot conceal the whole of their inner self”. There is rather, we
might wish to say, an unconscious hypocrisy in those who blether on in
this style.

This “fallacious separation of the outward from the inward” distorts much
historical writing, he thinks, as reflecting a general prejudice against
greatness in individual actors on the historical stage. One looks for ever
more “secret motives” rather than pay tribute, depressing all “to the level
of vulgar mediocrity”. Psychology bears much guilt here. So it would be
interesting to know how Hegel would react to the findings of Freud. He
would surely, first of all, have paid tribute to Freud’s own greatness, with
whom too he had so much in common. Freud went beyond “the petty
knowledge of men”. All the same, Hegel wishes to keep apart
“substantial” interests “of patriotism, justice, religious truth, and the like”
and “subjective” and “formal” interests “of vanity, ambition, avarice, and
the like”. Without this wish, indeed, we lose in as far as a realm of value is
concerned, which is to say we lose Being itself, the Good. It is not only the
latter group that are “really efficient”, as built on the contrast between the
inward and the outward, again. They “have in truth the same content”,
however. So much for this “pedantic judiciality”! Due to this unity “great
men willed what they did, and did what they willed.”

These empty abstractions suspend themselves, the one in the other (141).
The content is “nothing but their identity (§138)”. So the inward is not
merely mediately “put into existence”. It never left it, since inward and
outward are, he winds up, “absolutely identical” Their “difference is
distinctly no more than assumed and imposed.” Now “this identity is
Actuality.”