THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC1

G.W.F. Hegel

Summary

By

Gabriel Robledo Esparza

Monterrey, N. L., 2023

1
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, The Science of Logic, Cambridge Hegel Translations, translated and
edited by George di Giovanni, McGill University, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010,
Hegel, G. W. F., Ciencia de la Lógica, traducción directa del alemán de Augusta y Rodolfo Mondolfo.
Solar, S.A., Hachette, S.A., Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2a. Edición castellana, 1968

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 Indice
Introduction
Philosophy and its actual task
First position of thought regarding objectivity
Immediate and naive experience:
Second position of thought regarding objectivity.
Empiricism
Critical philosophy.
Third position of thought in front of its object.
The immediate knowledge
More particular concept and division of logic.
The Hegel system
The Science of Logic
Volume one
The Objective Logic
Book One
The Doctrine of Being
General division of being
Section I
Determinateness (Quality)
Chapter 1.
Being
A. Being
B. Nothing.
C. Becoming.
1.- Unity of being and nothing.
2. - The moments of becoming.
3.- Sublation of becoming.
Chapter 2
The determined being or the existence.
A) Being determined as such.
a) Being determined in general.
b) Quality
c) The something.
B) The finitude.
a) Something and other.
b) Determination (destination), constitution and term.
c) Finitude.
d) The limit and ought.
C.-Infinity.
Third chapter
Being for itself
A. Being-for-self as such
a) Determined being and being-for-itself.
b) Being for one.
c) The one.
B.- the one and the many
a. The one in its own self
b. The one and the void
c.- Many ones. Repulsion.

2
 C. Repulsion and attraction.
a) The exclusion of the one.
b) The only one of the attraction.
c) The relationship between repulsion and attraction.
Second section
Magnitude (quantity)
First chapter.
Magnitude (Quantity)
A.- The pure quantity.
B.- Continuous and discrete magnitude.
C.- Quantity limitation.
Second chapter
Quantum
A.- Number
B.- Extensive and intensive quantum
C.- Quantitative infinity
Third chapter
Ratio or the quantitative relation
A. The direct ratio
B.- The inverse ratio
C. The ratio of powers
Third Section
Measure
First chapter
Specific quantity
A.- The specific quantum
B.- Specifying measure
C. The being-for-itself in measure
Second chapter
Real measure
A. The relation of independent measures.
B.- Nodal line of measure relations
C. The measureless
Third chapter
The becoming of the essence
A.- Absolute indifference
B.- Indifference as inverse reason of its factors
C.- Transition into essence.
Second book
The doctrine of essence
First section
Essence as reflection within itself.
First chapter.
The appearance
A. The essential and the essential
B. The appearance
C. Reflection
Second chapter
The essentialities or determinations of reflection
A.- The identity
B.- The difference
C.- The contradiction
Third chapter
The foundation (ground)
A. The absolute foundation
a) Form and essence.

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 b) Form and matter
c) Form and content.
B) The determined foundation.
a) The formal foundation.
b) The real foundation
c) The integral foundation
C. The condition
Second section
The appearance
First chapter
Existence
A. The thing and its properties
B. The constitution of the thing out of matters
C. The dissolution of the thing
Second chapter
Appearance
A. The law of appearance
B. The world of appearance and the world in itself.
C. Dissolution of appearance
Third chapter
The essential relation
A. The relation of whole and parts
B. The relation of force and its expression
C. Relation of outer and inner
Third Section
Reality
First chapter
Absolute
A. The exhibition of the absolute.
B. The absolute attribute
C. The mode of the absolute
Second chapter
Reality
A Contingency or formal reality, possibility and necessity
B. Relative necessity, or real reality, possibility and necessity
C. Absolute necessity
Third chapter
The absolute relation
A. The relation of substantiality
B. The relation of causality
C. Reciprocity
Third book
Science of subjective logic or the doctrine of the concept
The concept in general
First section
The subjectivity
First chapter
The Concept
Second chapter
The judgment
A. The existence judgment
a) The positive judgment
b) The negative judgment
c) The infinite judgment
B. The judgment of reflection

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 a) The singular reflective judgment
b) The particular reflective judgment.
c) The universal reflective judgment.
C. The judgment of necessity
a) Categorical judgment.
b) Hypothetical judgment.
c) The disjunctive judgment.
D. The judgment of the concept
a) The assertoric judgment.
b) The problematic judgment.
c) The apodictic judgment.
Third chapter
The syllogism
A. The syllogism of existence
First figure I-P-U.
Second Figure P-I-U.
Third figure I-U-P.
B. The syllogism of reflection.
a) The syllogism of totality.
b) The syllogism of induction
c) The syllogism of analogy
C. The syllogism of necessity
a) the categorical syllogism
b) The hypothetical syllogism
c) The disjunctive syllogism.
Second section
Objectivity
First chapter
The mechanism
A. The mechanical object
B. The mechanical process
a) The formal mechanical process.
b) The real mechanical process.
c) The product of the mechanical process
C. The absolute mechanism
a) The center.
b) The law.
Second chapter
Chemism
A. The chemical object
B. The chemical process
C. Transfer of chemistry
Third chapter
The teleology
A. The subjective end
B. The medium
C. The end realized
Third section
The idea
First chapter
Life
A. The living individual
B. The life process
C. The gender
Second chapter

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 The idea of knowing
A. The idea of the true
a) Analytical knowing.
b) Synthetic knowing.
The moments of synthetic knowing.
1. The definition.
2. The division
3. The theorem
B. The idea of the good
Third chapter
The absolute idea
Objective view of the world.
The scientific conception of the universe
Bibliography

6
 Introduction

In the book La Lógica de Hegel y el marxismo 2, published in 2009, an exhaustive

study of the objective logic of G. W. F. Hegel was made; This matter is the content of the
first volume of The Science of Logic, the masterpiece of the German philosopher. Our work
was structured as follows. In the first place, Hegel's text was taken as a starting point,
either by means of a direct quotation, a summary or an extract; later, an attempt was
made to give the Hegelian obscurity the greatest possible intelligibility in order to obtain
the marrow of the philosopher's thought; Finally, this essential nucleus was placed on its
feet by rescuing the rational content of the Hegelian postulates.
In this Summary we present both Hegel's thought and the Marxist interpretation of
it, completely decanted, separated from all the complicated intellective apparatus used to
arrive at them, but without altering their essence. In this way, we want to make our work
accessible to a larger number of readers.
We include here a summary, interpretation, and commentary on Volume II of the
Science of Logic, The Doctrine of the Concept.
We live in a time of absolute dominance of idealistic philosophy and traditional
logic. It seems that science, which has achieved superlative goals, could do very well
without the Hegelian dialectical method and ontology. But this is completely wrong. If we
take a look, even a very superficial one, at modern scientific productions, we find
ourselves with a dazzling appearance behind which the most terrifying ignorance is
hidden. Current physics and cosmology, which have produced very brilliant results, are
nevertheless encumbered by the heavy burden of absurd theories, such as of the
relativity, of the big bang and of the quantum metaphysics. This has prevented, at the time
of the deepest technological revolution in history, from being able to formulate a scientific
vision of the universe, and instead metaphysical conceptions have been generated,
ultimately theistic, wrapped in any tangled mathematical formula, essentially false, such
as Einstein's field equation, the theorems of Stephen Hawking and Penrose, etc., which
inevitably lead to the fabrication of absurd, improbable universes, as much or more than
those of the cosmologies of the various religions and of the oldest philosophies.
Hegel's objective logic is the most complete ontology human thought has ever
produced, but in the inverted form of a spiritual substance. Back on her feet, in
accordance with the Marxist prescription, we obtain the materialist-dialectical ontology
that is the foundation of the scientific theory of the universe. The vindication of Hegel's
philosophy, mainly of his objective logic, is a prerequisite for the Marxist theory to be able
to complete the task of devising a truly scientific conception of the universe.
After the fall of real socialism, the jubilant international bourgeoisie decreed the
end of history. The efforts of universal history had been rewarded with the elimination
from the face of the earth of the inhuman regime of socialism and the establishment of
the highest form of capitalism, which in the eyes of the ruling class was the regime that

2
Robledo Esparza Gabriel, La Lógica de Hegel y el marxismo, Biblioteca marxista, Sísifo Ediciones,
Centro de Estudios del Socialismo Científico, Primera Edición, México, 2009.

7
corresponded to nature of the individual, where it could fully develop and which should
extend throughout eternity.
A current of thought, a direct heir to the Marxist theory that presided over the
conquest of power by the Russian proletariat and the subsequent formation of the system
of socialist countries, but which had already come a long way in its metamorphosis into a
bourgeois or petty-bourgeois ideology barely covered with a thin layer of Marxist varnish,
it had in the collapse of the existing socialism, which at that point was already a regime in
which capitalism was restored by leaps and bounds, the golden opportunity to give free
rein to his purpose of reviewing and, in the end, openly denying Marxist theory and thus
joining the chorus of those who considered that Marx's “prophecies” were totally
discredited by history. Those named Marxists soon renounced even their nickname and
joined the legion of detractors of Marxist socialism.
In these days, Marxist philosophy has ceased to be an acting force in the capitalist
production regime; it is, at most, a rarity that is addressed in very select university circles
and always, invariably, with the purpose of distorting Marxist principles and replacing
them with increasingly openly bourgeois propositions.
The Marxist theory of socialism has its firmest foundation in the Hegel's logic.
Marx and Engels discover the other that capitalism has within as its essence, that is, as
the other that it inevitably has to become, faithfully following the concepts expressed by
Hegel in the doctrine of the essence contained in his Science of Logic.
Hegel's objective logic is, as we have already said, the inverted reflection of the
laws of reality. The validity of these prescriptions has the force of ineluctable necessity.
Capitalism is that social regime only because it has in itself its negation, which is
socialism. The become of capitalism is the become of socialism. Marx's “prophecies” have,
as we can see, a solid support base.
It is precisely in Hegel's Logic where the petty bourgeois intelligentsia must find
the necessary theoretical elements to unravel the conditions and circumstances of the
new phase of the revolution. The first task will, of course, be to clarify the process by
which socialism first appeared, ascended to a high level, and then receded to a full
restoration of capitalism; after this, it will be imperative to reveal the elements of its
denial that are brewing within the current phase of capitalism.
All this necessarily implies the full vindication of revolutionary theory and its
creative development to face the new conditions.

Monterrey, N.L., July 2017, May 2023

8
 Philosophy and its actual task

In the introduction to the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences3 Hegel determines

what is the object and definition of Philosophy.
Philosophy can be defined as the reflective consideration of objects. It is the
activity of thought by which it takes the thoughts produced by the empirical sciences in
their direct relationship with the object, which have the nature of the accidental and
juxtaposition, and endows them with apriorism and necessity (necessity is the other of
being, is the essence). It is thought that has thought as its object.
The object of philosophy is reality, the objective world, and its aim is truth in the
highest sense of the word.
The first knowledge of reality is the experience that is only a fleeting appearance of
it.
The truth, which is the purpose of philosophy, is the agreement between
experience and reality. This agreement is achieved by philosophy by providing the result
of experience, the knowledge of empirical sciences, the nature of what is a priori and what
is necessary.
Speculative thought is the one that fulfills this task of philosophy; The
characteristic form of speculative thought, through which it endows knowledge with the
character of necessity, is the concept.

Hence the relationship of speculative science to the other sciences is simply the following:
speculative science does not leave the empirical content of the other sciences aside, but
recognizes and uses it, and in the same way recognizes and employs what is universal in
these sciences, [i. e.] the laws, the classifications, etc., for its own content; but also it
introduces other categories into these universals and gives them currency. So the
distinction between speculative and empirical science relates only to this alteration of the
categories. Speculative Logic contains the older logic and metaphysics; it preserves the same
forms of thought, laws, and objects, but it develops and transforms them with further
categories.4

Hegel calls intellectual knowledge that of the empirical sciences and speculative
knowledge that of philosophy.
Our author has determined in this part of the Encyclopedia... what philosophy
should be; in what follows he exposes what philosophy has already done in this field and
what remains to be done, thus putting all previous philosophy in opposition to his own
philosophy.
The task of philosophy is, for Hegel, in more precise terms, the following:
The spirit -the substantivized human conscience- has as its object the sensible,
the images and the ends; its activity, intellectual knowledge, consists in producing
thoughts about these objects. The highest result of the spirit in the form of this immediate
and reasoning consciousness are the empirical sciences.

3
Hegel, G. W. F., The Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zusätze), Part I of the Encyclopaedia of
Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, a new translation with Introduction and notes by T. F.
Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1991.
4
Ibídem, p. 33.

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 The spirit, the thought, excited by the immediate and reasoning consciousness
(that is, by the merely intellectual consciousness) conducts itself in such a way that it
rises from it to the pure element of itself, takes thought as its object. In this way it is put
in opposition with his starting point, from which he has moved away.
By taking itself as an object, thought produces only empty abstractions like the
being of the Eleatics, the nothingness of the Orientals, and the becoming of Heraclitus.
Thought finds its satisfaction in this production of empty abstractions.
However, in this work thought does not reach itself -that is, it does not become
aware of the superior form of its nature, of dialectic- because it is lost in the rigid non-
identity of the opposites –the concepts that it produces are rigid, immobile, to be or not to
be.
Philosophical necessity opposes this result of intellectual thought based on the
fact that thought does not renounce itself.
Thought then tends to seek its intimate nature and arrives at the conception of
dialectic as constituting the very nature of thought and that thought, as intellect, must be
used in the negation of itself, in the contradiction.
Thought denies the results of the intellect and establishes the true nature of
concepts as a being and a non-being, a being one and being another and a passing from
one to another. Thus thought finally comes to itself.
On the other hand, the knowledge obtained by the empirical sciences tends to
break the way in which the richness of its content is offered as something immediate and
given -that is, as belonging to the sphere of being- as an ordered multiplicity in a
juxtaposition and, therefore, in general, as something accidental, and to elevate said
content to something necessary - that is, to seek the essence in the richness of content.
This stimulus takes thought out of the universality and satisfaction it has sought
in itself and forces it to develop by moving on its own.
This development of thought is:
1) on the one hand, collect the content with its multiple given determinations and
2) configure the content so that it proceeds freely, in the sense of the original
thought and following the need of the thing itself.
There is a specific relationship between philosophy and the empirical sciences by
which the former is removed from the universality of thought.
There is an exact and deeper meaning in the statement that the development of
philosophy is due to experience: the empirical sciences are not content with the
perception of singular phenomena, but seek general determinations, genres, and laws,
and in this way they prepare the particular to be received by philosophy; on the other
hand, they constrain philosophy to proceed to concrete determinations and to allow
thought to develop by itself.

With reference to the first abstract universality of thinking, there is a correct and more
fundamental sense in which the development of philosophy is due to experience. On the one
hand, the empirical sciences do not stop at the perception of single instances of
appearance; but through thinking they have prepared the material for philosophy by finding
universal determinations, genera, and laws. In this way they prepare the content of what is
particular so that it can be taken up into philosophy. And, on the other hand, they contain
the invitation for thinking, to advance to these concrete determinations. The assumption of
this content, through which the immediacy that still clings to it, and its givenness, are
sublated by thinking, is at the same time a developing of thinking out of itself. Thus,
philosophy does owe its development to the empirical sciences, but it gives to their content
the fully essential shape of the freedom of thinking (or of what is a priori) as well as the
validation of necessity (instead of the content being warranted because it is simply found to
be present, and because it is a fact of experience). In its necessity the fact becomes the
presentation and imitation of the activity of thinking that is original and completely
independent.5

5
Ibídem, p. 37

10
 In summary, the task of philosophy is, according to Hegel, the following:
1) Give fixed and immobile concepts and categories (which are the result of
intellectual thought and matter of all previous philosophy) the nature of contradiction
(reveal their non-being, their other being and their passing into another) and lead thought
to recognize that nature and make it part of itself.
2) Liberate the wealth of content that empirical sciences have developed from the
forms of intellectual thought, concepts and fixed categories, through the application of
dialectic. The empirical sciences have reached the very core of being, the essence, but the
determinations of the latter appear undifferentiated next to those of the former and have
the form of intellectual knowledge. The work of philosophy is to free both types of
determinations from their rigid and immobile character, to provide them with dialectical
movement and to establish the laws of passage from one to the other and vice versa.
3) Collect all the wealth of content that empirical sciences have prepared and
incorporate it into thought in the form of dialectical concepts.
Thought thus loses its previous nature of a set of fixed and immobile categories
generating empty abstractions that stop at the sphere of being and becomes a body of
dialectical categories and concepts that produces abstractions full of content (concrete
thought) that they reflect the richness of determinations of being and essence and of their
passage from one to the other.
In this way, philosophy can fulfill the task that Hegel has set for it, and in the end
Hegel has in his hands something very different from that collection of empty
abstractions, fixed and rigid categories and superficial representations of being that
formed the content of philosophy above, since it has developed an omniscient science that
includes the laws of dialectical thought, the thoughts provided by the empirical sciences,
the speculative thought that submits these to those and a complete and profound
representation of being and the essence of the world.
The thought to which Hegel refers here is substantivized human consciousness;
This is the reflection of the world obtained through the thousands of years of human
practical activity, which has separated from its origin, taking on its own life and has
granted itself the character of demiurge of reality; in his abstractive activity he has come
to take himself as an object; the thought that is the object of thought is abstract
universality, the being of the Eleatians (or the nothingness of Eastern philosophy) and the
becoming of Heraclitus. For Hegel, philosophy is the activity of substantivized
consciousness that takes itself as an object. In this primitive self-awareness, thought
finds that it is a simple and poor abstraction without any content, a collection of rigid
thoughts that lose in the identity with themselves, and it suspects that there is a thought
richer in determinations and dominated by the contradiction of which there is still no
conscience; the philosophical thought of this stage tends to get out of itself to find that
exuberant content in movement that is outside of itself.
On the other hand, thought (substantivized human consciousness) continues its
task of obtaining knowledge of immediate reality; the empirical sciences carry out the task
of elaborating general determinations, genres and laws on said knowledge, thus providing
empirical knowledge with the apt form to be taken by philosophy. But those universalities
have the character of accidental, they are ordered only in juxtaposition and are prisoners
of the form of rigid and immobile thoughts.
According to Hegel, here are the conditions for thought to unfold out of itself: on
the one hand, the emptiness of self-awareness that resolves itself in the knowledge of
mere abstractions and moves thought outwards, towards the richness of content that is
alien to it, and on the other hand the full content of determinations to which thought has
provided the appropriate form to be received by philosophy and which ardently tend
towards it.
Philosophy takes a step forward (Hegel's philosophy, which is the negation of all
previous philosophy) and abstract and empty thought comes out of itself, becomes aware
of other parts of itself that are alien to it, and integrates them into itself:

11
 a) the dialectical categories of thought and the categories of a priori and necessity
(the a priori, the necessary, is the other of being, is the essence),
b) the thought of immediate reality expressed by the empirical sciences in genres,
laws, etc., which have the nature of the accidental and the ordered in juxtaposition,
c) speculative thought that takes the thoughts provided by the empirical sciences,
strips them of their immobile and rigid character, gives them the quality of the dialectical,
of the aprioristic and of the necessary and separates and orders them into determinations
of being and determinations of the essence and
d) the richest representation in content of being and the essence of the world.
Hegel does not say where thought obtains all these attributes, because for him
thought is a substance that possesses them independently of sensory experience. There is
a crude transposition here because it is the same empirical sciences, driven by
production, which bring to philosophy the categories of the dialectic, of the a priori, of the
necessary and of being and essence that are a reflection of the characteristics inherent to
objective reality discovered by practical human activity.
Speculative thought develops by itself in those thoughts that it has organized and
systematized around necessity, and it is when thought about immediate reality proceeds
freely in accordance with original, philosophical thought and follows the necessity of the
thing itself.
Hegel recognizes that the necessity is in "the thing itself"; Speculative thinking has
endowed empirical thoughts with necessity and apriorism and thus has made them a
faithful reflection of "the thing itself" that contains necessity in its nature and
development. This is the rational core of Hegelian philosophy.
Philosophical thought, which lived unsatisfied in empty abstraction, incorporates
into its being all the rich content of the objective world prepared as thoughts by the
development of empirical sciences. Once philosophical thought has taken this
fundamental step, it is ready to execute what constitutes a veritable somersault: by
making yours the thoughts about the objective world, it finds that they are an original
part of itself that has been alien to it, is recognized as a totality, the spirit -substantivized
human consciousness- that exists in itself, comes out of itself and produces the objective
world (in such a way, says Hegel, the fact becomes a representation and image of the
original and fully independent activity of thought) in which it is alienated and returns to
itself in speculative philosophy. This is the mystical part of Hegelian philosophy.
What is rational in Hegelian philosophy is encrypted in its postulate that "the
thing itself" contains necessity within it and that thought (although in a mystified,
inverted way, as we have already seen) can and should be the reflection of that; The role
that Hegel assigns to empirical science as a supplier of raw material for philosophy is the
highest guarantee that Hegel's philosophy is the most complete and profound reflection of
objective reality ever achieved by thought.
Hegel's fundamental mystification consists in his taking thought as the substance
of what exists; hence, then, thought and its laws are presented as the intimate nature of
the objective world; knowledge is, after all, in this transmutation, a relationship of
thought with itself.
Thought -spirit for Hegel- is a substance existing since the beginning of time; Here
is the first transubstantiation, the first inversion between the objective world and its
reflection in human consciousness, since the main characteristic of matter, its
substantivity, its infinite existence in time and space, is attributed by Hegel to the
Thought, which is nothing but a specific form of the movement of matter. This Hegelian
spiritual substance exists first in itself and then, coming out of itself, it unfolds in an
objective world that evolves from the undifferentiated nebula to thinking beings where it
recovers itself to continue existing for ever and ever. The inversion here is also extremely
clear: it is matter that passes from one phase of its existence -undifferentiated matter- to
other higher phases until it ends in thinking matter, in humanity.
The tasks that Hegel assigns to philosophy are precisely those that Hegelian
philosophy performs.

12
 Hegel's philosophy is the study of the nature and evolution of thought -spirit-
(thought that takes itself as an object) and is composed of three parts:
The logic,
The Philosophy of Nature and
The Philosophy of the Spirit.

Logic.
Logic is the science that studies thought.
Hegel's Logic is divided into Objective Logic and Subjective Logic.
Subjective Logic studies the laws of the formation of pure thoughts: concept,
judgment, syllogism, etc.

Objective Logic.
The Logic is the science of the pure Idea, that is, of the Idea in the abstract element of
thinking.6

The Idea is thinking, not as formal thinking, but as the self-developing totality of its own
peculiar determinations and laws, which thinking does not' already have and find given
within
itself, but which it gives to itself.7

The idea is the substantivized thought.

In Hegelian philosophy, thought has several instances and goes through different
phases. On the one hand, in its direct relationship with the object, thought produces a
cognitive instrument made up of immobile, fixed, and rigid categories (formal logic that
has its climax in Kant), a set of intellectual knowledge included in the empirical sciences
that only distortedly reflect the being of an immobile object, without internal life and a
representation of the world made up of empty abstractions. Thought, says Hegel, feels
good in this nature of its own, but nevertheless it is brought out of this satisfaction by
two forces: a) an internal impulse that moves it to go outside of empty abstraction and b)
the development of empirical sciences that they penetrate the exuberance of the content
of the object.
Thought is then forced to advance towards a stage that includes the following: the
development of a new cognitive instrument (dialectical logic), the formation of a body of
knowledge that is the expression of the essence of the objective world and a concrete
representation of the world, of being and essence and of knowing.
In this task, thought uses another faculty of its own, which is speculation; it
consists in the activity of denying the fixed and immobile categories, the intellectual
cognitions and the abstract and empty representations that form the content of primitive
thought and reflect the being of an immobile and contentless object, of making them fluid
and mobile and leading them until discovering and to affirm the other that each of them
has within and represents the essence of the objective world, and to establish the
relationship of mutual complementation and opposition between both types of
determinations, that is, the dialectical relationship between being thus vivified and the
essence.
The cognitive instrument in the two phases of thought is logic; in one case formal
logic and in the other dialectical logic. What is traditionally called objective logic is the
part of logic that includes the so-called laws of pure thought.
Pure thought is the highest abstraction of the structure and forms of movement of
matter, of the objective world. This thought has the characteristics of thought in general.

6
Ibídem, p. 45
7
Ídem.

13
 Thought is the reflection in human consciousness of the main characteristics of
the object; this image is the result of constant human practical activity on nature. Once
the mental representation is obtained, the human being uses it to directly appropriate the
object, with the purpose of achieving his goals, without having to repeat the process of
practical assimilation of its fundamental characteristics precisely because these are
already incorporated as knowledge into the mental image previously forged. The thought
that thus results is used as an instrument of practical human activity to appropriate the
external world in an ever more complete way; in turn, this enriched practical activity gives
rise to deeper thinking that more fully reflects the objective world. And so on.
The objectivity of thought, its earthiness, is guaranteed by practical human
activity, which is the ultimate criterion of truth.
According to Hegel, thought is a spiritual activity or faculty whose product is the
universal, the abstract in general.
Thought as activity is the active universal, it is what makes itself because its
product is the universal.
Thought as a subject is the thinking being, the self.
The self is the active universal whose nature and result is thought. Thought is
reflection applied to an object and its result is the universal.
This universal is what constitutes the very background, the intimate essence and
the reality of the object.
We see how in Hegel thought has nothing to do with practical human activity; for
him it is a faculty that has life in and of itself and that approaches the object from the
outside to produce universals (that is, thoughts about that object) that form a substance
independent of objectivity.
Later, however, by a mystical virtue that it possesses in itself, thought gives these
universals the character of the necessary and the a priori; Thus transformed, they reflect
the intimate essence and reality of the object.
But not only that, but Hegel recognizes in these universals a reflection in the
thought (substance external to the object) of the thought (substance of the object) that is
the essence and true reality of the object and to that external thought as a part of it that
lives alienated. In nature.
The objectivity of thought, according to Hegel, comes from two sources: 1) from a
mystical faculty (that is, it has its origin and foundation in thought itself) that allows
thought to obtain empirical knowledge of the object and 2) another equally mystical
faculty. that endows this empirical knowledge with the a priori and the necessary, with
which they constitute a faithful reflection of the essence of the object.
Here Hegel overlooks the following: practical human activity, that is, industry,
which is what provides thought with empirical knowledge and gives it earthiness, and the
dynamics of empirical thought that, starting from the practical activity, they themselves
become mobile, fluid, dialectical concepts and categories and penetrate the terrain of the
highest instance of philosophical thought, producing a dialectical consciousness that
enters into struggle against all previous metaphysics. This process remains hidden from
Hegel and before him it appears as if in the very thought, by virtue of an internal faculty,
the birth of a new consciousness of the objective world dominated by dialectic took place,
to which the philosopher only has to give form, order and system.
The objectivity of thought is, for Hegel, unquestionable, although he determines it
through a mystical detour: the objective relationship between the object and dialectical
thought, mediated by human practice, is ignored but its result is not, which is taken as a
product of the evolution of pure thought helped in its delivery by the philosopher. This
objective thought, the result of human practice, appropriated by philosophical thought, is
then used to provide the knowledge of a lower instance (empirical sciences) with the
characteristics that make it fully objective, that is, a profound and exact reflection of the
essence of the object. Once the thought acquires this higher nature he discovers that
thought which reflects the object is, in another manifestation of its own, the substance of

14
the objective world. Thought thus receives its highest objectivity in the recognition that
dialectical thought makes of itself in things.
Thus, Hegel concludes,

In accordance with these determinations, thoughts can be called objective thoughts; and
among them the forms which are considered initially in ordinary logic and which are
usually taken to be only forms of conscious thinking have to be counted too. Thus logic
coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in though is that used to be
taken to express the essentialities of the things.8

According to Hegel objective thoughts are the truth and this is the absolute object
of philosophy.
If thoughts have a fundamental opposition to each other, that is, if they are of a
finite nature, they are inadequate to express the truth that has absolute value. This
thought which produces only finite determinations is intelligence.
The finite nature of determinations occurs in two ways:
a) Because these thoughts are subjective and are in permanent opposition to the
object.
Subjective and object thought are extrinsic; Intellectual thought is an instrument
to reflect the object in consciousness, but it does not perform the task that Hegel entrusts
to the thought that produces objective thoughts, that is, it does not (nor can it) penetrate
into the deep and intimate essence of the object in order to become itself an object, a
substance, a demiurge of objective reality.
Translated into an intelligible, non-mystical language, Hegel considers that
thought is not objective when it does not penetrate to the essence of the object, when it
stops at its superficial and finite determinations.
b) When, due to their limited content, they contradict each other and even more so
with the absolute.
The finite determinations of the intellect are rigid identities and therefore their
contradiction to each other is irreducible; they cannot be objective thoughts because
there is no passing from one to the other or, better still, a being one and the other at the
same time, there is no dialectic between them.
Consequently, according to Hegel, thought, in order to produce objective thoughts,
must reach the deep and intimate essence of objects, seeking the necessity of their
development and the dialectic of their determinations, that is, their unity and opposition.
Hegel immediately continues with the study of the various ways in which
philosophy prior to his own has considered the objectivity of thought, in order to thus
highlight their insufficiency, their limited and anti-dialectical character, their permanence
within the terrain of being and by contrast, the nature of his own concept of objectivity.
Hegel immediately analyzes the various positions of thought regarding objectivity.

First position of thought regarding objectivity

Immediate and naive experience:

1) is not aware of the opposition of thought in itself and with itself [that is, it has
not become aware that it is still an intellectual thought that is separated from the object
and that produces finite determinations equal to themselves and opposed to each other;
In other words, it is a thought that has not come to understand that its work consists of
searching for the essence of things and the dialectic of their determinations and, already
in the field of mysticism, converting the essential characteristics of the object into
thoughts, that is, in a substance that reproduces the movement of the thing itself];
2) contains the belief that through reflection you can come to know the truth;
that is to say, that the conscience will be able to represent what things truly are;
8
Ibídem, p. 56

15
 3) in order to represent what things really are, it goes directly towards the
objects, reproduces the content of sensations and intuitions, making it content of
thought, and is happy with it as with the truth. [That is, he does not carry out the work of
endowing that knowledge, through the instance of dialectical thought, with the character
of necessity and apriorism, turning it into a reflection of the essence.]

All philosophy in its beginnings, all of the sciences, even the daily doing and dealing of
consciousness, lives in this belief.9

On this conviction rises the ancient Metaphysics.

Metaphysics considered:
-The determinations of thought as fundamental determinations of things [but let's
remember that it is about intellectual thought that due to its limitations cannot reach the
fundamental, the truth of objects].
-These determinations were considered as endowed with a real value and as being
able to constitute the predicates of truth.
-However, these predicates do not constitute the truth of the object because they
have a limited content. [They are the product of merely intellectual thought]. They are
linked to each other as predicates of the same object; but by their content they are
diverse, for which reason they remain external to each other.
-The objects of metaphysics were totalities that belong in and of themselves to
reason, to the thought of the concrete universal in itself (soul, world, God); but
metaphysics collected them from the representative consciousness, and by applying to
them the determinations of the intellect [that is, not those of the thought that produces
objective thoughts], it placed them as finished and previously given subjects, and had no
other measure than that representative consciousness to determine whether the
predicates were convenient or sufficient. [Those categories with which one can reach the
essence of the object and reproduce its dialectic were not applied.]
-This metaphysics becomes dogmatism because, following the nature of finite
determinations, it must admit that, of two opposite affirmations, as those implied by
those propositions, one must be true and the other false.

Parts of Metaphysics.
Ontology: doctrine of the abstract determinations of the essence.
[Abstract in the sense of coming from intellectual thought; one-sided, absent of
dialectic.]
Because these determinations [being, existence, finitude, simplicity, opposition,
etc.] are abstract:
They lack a principle,
-can only be enumerated empirically and accidentally;
-its content can only be based on representation [and not on objective thought]
Rational psychology or pneumatology: metaphysical nature of the soul, the spirit
considered as a thing.
Cosmology; it dealt with the world, its accidentality, necessity, eternity, and
limitation in space and time; of the formal laws of their changes and, furthermore, of the
freedom of man and the origin of evil.
In cosmology they were absolute, irreducible oppositions: accidentality and
possibility; internal and external need; efficient and final causes or causality in general
and finality; essence or substance and appearance; form and matter; freedom and
necessity; happiness and pain; good and bad.

Second position of thought regarding objectivity.

9
Ibídem, p. 65

16
 Empiricism
Empiricism arises:
-on the one hand, due to the need to have a concrete content in opposition to the
abstract theories of the intellect, which cannot proceed by itself from its generalities to
particularization and determination;
-on the other hand, due to the need to have a firm support against the possibility
of demonstrating everything on the ground and with the method of finite determinations
[that is, of intellectual thought.
Empiricism does not seek truth in thought itself [neither in intellectual thought
nor in dialectical, speculative thought], but in the experience that is present in external
and internal perception.
Empiricism:
-Has a community of origin with metaphysics because both are based on
representations, that is, on the content that experience offers us from the outset.
-The individual perception different from the experience that is the basis of the
empirical.
-Empiricism takes individual perceptions and forms general representations,
propositions and laws, but all these must have their verification precisely in perception.
-In empiricism is the great principle that what is true must be in reality and be
known through perception.
-This principle is opposed to that of the ought be with which reflection boasts and
takes a disdainful attitude towards what is real and present, invoking a beyond that
should only have its place and existence in the subjective intellect.
-In empiricism is the principle of freedom that consists in the fact that man can
conceive for himself that knowledge that has real value, and that, so to speak, he finds
himself in said knowledge.
-In the experience is on the one hand the isolated matter endowed with infinite
variety and on the other the form, the characters of universality and necessity. [Empirism
only takes that matter, but does not endow it with universality and necessity, forms that
are outside of knowledge].
-Empirism shows many equal perceptions, innumerable, but this is not
universality.
-He also shows perceptions of successive changes and juxtaposed objects, but this
is not the need. [Empirism remains in the experience that is based solely on singular
perception.]

Critical philosophy.

Like empiricism, it recognizes experience as the only source of knowledge.

This experience is not considered as truth, but as knowledge of phenomena. [That
is, it does not penetrate the essence, but stops at the mere appearance, at the surface of
things.]
He makes the distinction between sensible matter and the universal relations of
this matter, that is, universality and necessity, and recognizes that both are found in
experience.
However, since universality and necessity do not proceed from the empirical, they
are regarded as proceeding from the spontaneity of thought, that is, as having an a priori
existence.

…The thought-determinations or concepts of the understanding make up the objectivity of

the cognitions of experience. In general they contain relations, and hence synthetic a priori
judgments (i. e., original relations of opposed terms) are formed by means of them. 10

10
Ibídem, p. 81.

17
 For Hume and Kant, the determinations of universality and necessity are found in
knowledge.

Analysis of critical philosophy.

1.- Experience is the source of knowledge.
2.- Knowledge has two elements: sensible matter and the determinations of
universality and necessity.
3.- These determinations do not arise from the empirical, but come from thought,
they exist a priori.
4.- Critical philosophy investigates the value of the intellectual concepts used in
the metaphysics:
-this critique does not enter into the content or the relationship that these
concepts have with each other;
-considers these concepts according to the opposition of subjectivity and
objectivity;
-objectivity is, for this doctrine, the element of universality and necessity, the a
priori call;
-subjectivity brings together this element of universality and necessity as well as
sensible matter; in front of it remains the "thing in itself".

For critical philosophy there is the external world, sensible matter endowed with
universality and necessity; the knowledge of the objective world is realized through
experience; through it, sensible matter becomes interior to man; but the mere sensible
knowledge does not exhaust the nature of the object; it is then when knowledge applies
the determinations of thought of universality and necessity existing a priori and thus
reveals all that is knowable of the object; what the object is in itself, the "thing in itself",
which human consciousness is incapable of apprehending, remains outside of knowledge.
The postulate of critical philosophy is that human knowledge in its direct relationship
with the object (and there is no more direct relationship than work) only apprehends what
is concrete, individual, casual, superficial, apparent; In order to capture the universality
and necessity of the object, it is necessary to apply to those perceptions the categories of
thought that have an a priori existence; In this way it will be possible to know everything
that is knowable of the object, leaving in it a residue irreducible to knowledge. Thought is
objective because by applying it to perceptions and endowing them with universality and
necessity, they reproduce the object with the noted limitation.

Hegel makes a succinct exposition of the main postulates of Kantian philosophy

and, in parallel, criticizes them.
a) The theoretical faculties or knowledge as such.
Hegel exposes the Kantian theory of knowledge. The foundation of the concepts of
understanding is the original identity of the self in thought (transcendental unity of self-
awareness).
The representations are given by feeling and intuition.
The self collects them through a priori intuitions of time and space and refers them
to a series of pure concepts of understanding, the categories, which also exist a priori in
the self.
The problem is, according to Hegel, how the self, which is completely abstract and
indeterminate, can arrive at the determination of the self, at the categories. He
sarcastically says that fortunately in ordinary logic empirically determined categories are
already found.
Categories are the means by which objectivity is elevated to experience; these
categories are the unit of subjective consciousness and are conditioned by matter given by
itself; these categories only have adequate use in experience. The other parts of
experience, the determinations of feeling and intuition, are also purely subjective. [This

18
means that the categories can only determine the objectivity of what is presented to the
intuition, that is, the superficiality of the object.]
As the absolute does not occur in intuition, the categories are incapable of being
determinations of it.
The thing in itself (the absolute, the spirit, God) is the object abstracted from
everything that is itself for the consciousness of all sensible determinations and of all
determined thought. [The thing in itself is the limit that Kant sets to knowledge because
he considers knowledge limited through fixed and immobile categories as the only
possible one.]
What remains after making that abstraction is pure abstraction, the absolute void.
This caput mortum is only the product of thought, of thought continued to the
point of pure abstraction.
Reason is the faculty of the unconditioned. The object of reason is the
unconditioned or infinite. The reason is the abstract self or thought that puts the
unconditioned as an object or end. But the knowledge of the experience, as of determined
(conditioned) content, is inadequate to reason; therefore, if the true is the absolute and
unconditioned, the knowledge of the experience must be considered as the non-true, the
appearance.
Kant proposes to apply the categories to the knowledge of the unconditioned (the
thing in itself, the absolute, the world, God, etc.). This is the second part of the critique of
reason. In the first he has come to the conclusion that the categories have their origin in
the unity of self-consciousness and, therefore, the knowledge by categories does not
contain anything objective and the objectivity attributed to it is completely something
subjective. Considered in this way, Kant's philosophy is a superficial subjective idealism,
which does not penetrate the content.
The first unconditioned that is taken into consideration is the soul. The old
metaphysics put in the place of empirical determinations the corresponding intellectual
categories to define the soul.
According to the Kantian critique, the categories cannot lead to knowledge of the
soul because they only have an application for knowledge that is based on sensory
perception and the soul is something that cannot be known through it. Hence, according
to Kant, the soul is an unknowable "thing in itself."
The second unconditioned that is taken into account is the world. In the
knowledge of the world, reason falls into antinomies, that is, in the affirmation of opposite
propositions about the same object in such a way that each of them can be affirmed with
equal necessity. From this it follows that the content of the world, whose determination
falls into said antithesis, is only appearance.
For Kant, the contradiction is found only in thought by categories, in reason and
not in the objective world. From this he deduces that what the world is in itself cannot be
known by this contradictory thought.
Kant's philosophy takes a big step by considering contradiction as the essence of
thought; but that advance is lost when the contradiction is banished from the objective
world.

…The main point that has to be made is that antinomy is found not only in the four
particular objects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all
representations, concepts, and ideas. To know this, and to be cognizant of this property of
objects, belongs to what is essential in philosophical study; this is the property that
constitutes what will determine itself in due course as the dialectical moment of logical
thinking.11

The defect of critical philosophy is that of any dualistic system: it is inconsistent

because it wants to unify what had been declared independent and therefore not

11
Ibídem, pp. 92-93.

19
unifiable. First, the truth is made to consist in what is immediately unified, and then
what the two moments are by themselves, separated from each other, is taken for true.
Hence the maximum inconsistency of Kantian philosophy:
-concede, on the one hand, that the understanding knows only phenomena [that
is, only the relative] and
-on the other, affirm this knowledge as something absolute by saying: knowledge
cannot go beyond, this is the natural and absolute limit of human knowledge.
Kant's theory of knowledge has not exerted any influence on the sciences; it leaves
intact the categories and method of usual knowledge completely.
Knowledge is for Kant the application to sensitive perception of an enormous
system of pure intuitions and concepts (categories and synthetic principles) of an a priori
nature. These a priori intuitions and concepts are what Hegel calls "intellectual thought"
which is made up of immobile and fixed categories and which produces abstract
universality; the knowledge that is obtained from here is only the phenomenal of the
object, what is immobile, fixed and superficial in it, leaving its essence outside its horizon,
all the wealth of content that critical philosophy leaves aside, encompassing it in the
vacuous concept of the unknowable "thing in itself". Kant's philosophy does not meet the
demands that Hegel makes of philosophy to fulfill its task of finding the truth: to collect
the content of the object with its multiple given determinations and to shape that content
in such a way that it proceeds freely following the necessity of the thing. same. Knowledge
is in Kant a simple mechanical operation that subsumes sensible perceptions in an
ossified set of intuitions, categories and a priori synthetic principles that represent the
formal conditions of objectivity, but of it as it appears here, as the mere phenomenon, the
surface of a stationary object.
Kant's work was actually portentous. He completed the task of philosophy, begun
by Aristotle, of converting into thoughts and systematizing the determinations of the
objective world; The practical experience of thousands of generations of thinking beings
was distilled until turning it into a finished system of thoughts that allowed the objective
world to be theoretically assimilated, but of this only what constitutes the phenomenon,
the appearance, without being able to penetrate the determinations of its essence.
The limits of critical philosophy are recognized by itself when declaring that the
application of its method of knowledge to the unveiling of the essence of objects produces
mere antinomies, contradictory thoughts that, according to the system of concepts and
categories of logic, do not reflect the innermost truth of the object, which by definition is
non-contradictory. From there, critical philosophy goes on to postulate that the essence of
the object, what it is in itself, the "thing in itself", is unknowable.
Critical philosophy is the end of a period of flourishing of the empirical sciences
that were exhausting the field of knowledge of the phenomenal of the objective world; the
empirical sciences finish that task and begin a new one: that of determination of the
essence. Unveiling the essence, on the one hand, leads to the development of new
concepts and on the other, it also requires new ways of thinking to penetrate more deeply
into the content of the object; A new system of thought is then being formed that denies
(overcomes and preserve) the previous one (critical philosophy): Hegel's dialectical-
speculative logic and his philosophical system.
This new conceptual system is the same substantivized knowledge that has
recognized the limitation of its previous form of existence (intellectual thought) and that
has collected within it, through the empirical sciences, the inner richness of the object, its
content, its essence.
Kant's conceptual system is presented as having an objective value, that is, as a
suitable instrument to know the objective world; We have already seen that this is so, but
only for phenomenal knowledge, merely epidermal. Kant postulates the a priori existence
of pure intuitions, synthetic categories and principles; for him they have an existence
prior to all experience, they are a substance with a life of its own: such is the mystical
part of critical philosophy and the common heritage of all idealist philosophy.

20
 We have already had the opportunity to expose the real process on which this
mystification is based: in its millennial practical activity humanity has developed the
cognitive faculty (ability to make abstractions and produce universals that reflect the
characteristics of the object); as a result of this, it has been creating a system of thoughts
(concepts) that collect in the form of universality the most general characteristics of the
objective world; With this system as an instrument, it returns to reality, submitting its
perceptions to its legality, that is, in the cognitive process it assumes that the object
possesses the general characteristics attributed to it by the millenary experience
accumulated in objective mental forms. The philosopher (Kant in this case) finds this
system already fully developed and takes it as it appears before him, without inquiring
about its origin (human practical activity) and, on the contrary, attributes to it an
autonomous existence and a mystical origin, he considers it a substance with its own life.
Hegel's critique of Kant is fundamentally based on the limitations of the latter's
logic to penetrate the content of a moving object, its impossibility of reaching the essence
of the objective world.

Third position of thought in front of its object.

The immediate knowledge

Critical philosophy conceives thought as subjective and attributes to it abstract

universality, formal identity, as its main characteristic.
This thought (subjective, abstract universality) is opposed to the truth that is
concrete universality in itself.
In the determination of truth (of concrete universality itself) the categories have no
raison d'etre. [That is, they are powerless to know the truth.]
The opposite point of view, immediate knowledge, conceives thought as an activity
of the particular only and declares it equally incapable of understanding the truth.
Thought as an activity of the particular has no other product and content than the
categories.
The categories, as the understanding conceives them, are limited determinations,
forms of the dependent, of the mediate.
For such categories the infinite, thought, do not exist, they are inaccessible.
These categories are also called concepts and understanding an object means
putting them in the form of the conditioned and mediated.
When the object that one wants to understand is the truth, the infinite, the
unconditioned [the essence], thought based on concepts makes it conditioned and
mediate; this thought instead of understanding, thinking the truth, turns it into non-
truth.
Knowledge is conceived as knowledge of the finite, the march of thought from the
conditioned to the conditioned.
Explaining and understanding means showing one thing as mediated by another.
All content is particular, dependent and finite. The infinite, the truth, God, is left out of
this connection in which knowing is enclosed.
However, it is a necessity of man to know the truth, reason is what constitutes
man and reason is nothing other than the knowledge of God.
But since immediate knowledge is enclosed within the limits of finite content,
reason is therefore immediate knowledge, faith.
Knowledge of the finite, conditioned and mediate is obtained through categories
and concepts.
The knowledge of the infinite, the truth, God, is achieved by immediate knowledge,
by faith.
Immediate knowledge and faith are also called inspiration, revelation of the heart,
content imprinted by nature on men, healthy intellect, common sense.

21
 Immediate knowledge is the knowledge that the infinite, the eternal, God are in
our representation and they exist. The immediate and inseparable awareness of its being
is linked to the representation.
These postulates of immediate knowledge coincide with philosophical principles.
Philosophy tends to prove the unity of thought and subjectivity with being;
immediate knowledge postulates this unity as a fact that is therefore consistent with
experience.
Modern philosophy has even expressed its fundamental principle in the form of
immediacy: cogito ergo sum (Descartes). This is the immediate awareness of the unity of
the thinking self with being.
What is characteristic of immediate knowledge is that it not only demonstrates
that mediate knowledge is insufficient to reach the truth, but also affirms that immediate
knowledge alone, in isolation, excluding mediation, has the truth as its content.
This constitutes a relapse into the metaphysical intellect.
Immediate knowledge is considered a fact. On careful analysis, apparently
immediate knowledge is based on complicated and largely mediate considerations;
Similarly, the relationship of immediate existence with its mediation is easily observable:
the immediate existence of children is related to that of their parents, is mediated by it,
and so on.
The immediate knowledge of God, Law, Morality (and in general what are the
determinations of instinct, imprinted and innate ideas, etc.) requires prior education or
development. That is, it supposes mediation.
Here Hegel makes a distinction as regards innate ideas:
-there is an immediate essential connection of certain universal principles with the
soul; [N.B. Hegel accepts the existence of innate ideas]
-but there is another connection that would take place in an extrinsic way and
would be mediated by given objects and representations, that is, it would require prior
education and development; immediate knowledge postulates precisely that those ideas
that have been mediated by previous knowledge are innate. [NB Hegel does not refute the
existence of innate ideas; he is only against the concept that immediate knowledge has of
them.]
The immediate knowledge of God is taken as a rise above the finite and the
sensible, as well as the desires and inclinations of the natural heart; this means that it is
a knowledge mediated by this elevation process.
The essential principle [the philosophy of immediate knowledge] is that of the
immediate connection between the subjective idea and being. [The thought of the soul
and its existence: the thought of god and the existence of him; the thought of the world
and its existence.]
According to this principle, neither the idea as mere subjective thought, nor being-
for-itself, are the truth.
Truth is the connection between these two distinct determinations.
But this connection is precisely the mediation of one to the other.
Hence, immediate knowledge necessarily presupposes mediation.
Immediate knowledge puts as a criterion of truth not the nature of the content but
subjective knowledge and the certainty that I find a certain content in my consciousness.
What I find in my conscience is raised to something that is in the conscience of all
[consensus gentium as proof of the existence of God].

… But there is nothing quicker and easier than making the simple assertion that I find a
content in my consciousness, together with the certainty of its truth, and therefore that this
certainty does not belong to me, as this particular subject, but to the nature of spirit itself. 12

The form of immediacy has a universal nature.

This form, due to its unilaterality, also makes its content unilateral and finite.
12
Ibídem, p. 119.

22
 To the universal it gives the one-sidedness of an abstraction. The universal is
concrete, living, insofar as it mediates with itself.
To the particular it provides the form of the immediacy of the determination of
being and of referring to itself, the finite is posited as absolute.
But the particular is precisely a referring to another outside of oneself.
Abstract thought (which is the form of reflective metaphysics) and abstract
intuiting (which is the form of immediate knowledge) are one and the same thing.
The critical examination of this third position of thought against objectivity has
given the following results:
1) The fact that knowledge occurs without mediation, either from others or with
itself in itself, has been proven false.
2) The fact that thought proceeds only by determinations (finite and conditional)
mediated through another and that it does not suppress this mediation itself in mediation
has also been proven false.
If the principle of immediate knowledge is compared with that of naive
metaphysics, in which it has its origin, it turns out that this principle has returned to the
same beginning that this metaphysics has had in modern times with Cartesian
philosophy.
Both in the principle of immediate knowledge and in Cartesian philosophy it is
affirmed [that is, they agree on]:
1) The inseparability of thought and the being of the thinker: Cogito ergo sum.
Descartes declares that the inseparability of thought and being is without more (without
mediations, without evidence) the first and most certain knowledge.
2) The inseparability of the representation of God (thought of God) and his
existence is also affirmed in both.
3) It is also affirmed that the representations (thoughts) are inseparable of the
existence of things; sensible existence is affirmed.
This knowledge, however, is the smallest of knowledge, it is just knowing that one
thing exists and nothing else. The thought is set aside that this immediate knowledge of
the being of external things is illusion and error, that in the sensible as such there is no
truth, that the being of these external things is rather something accidental, temporary,
an appearance, which are essentially things that have an existence separable from their
concept and essence.
The modern principle of immediate knowledge and Cartesian philosophy differ in
that:
1) The Cartesian philosophy starts from the previous unproven and unprovable
assumptions; that undemonstrated conscience that considers inseparable the
representations (thoughts) of the existence of things proceeds to the assimilation of the
external world, giving rise to the empirical science of modern times.
The modern principle of immediate knowledge, on the contrary, has reached the
result that knowing by finite mediations knows only the finite and contains no truth.
Therefore, the knowledge of God that is obtained by faith is necessary.
2) The principle of immediate knowledge:
-On the one hand, the method used by Cartesio does not change anything and he
treats the sciences of the finite and the empirical things born from that method in the
same way.
-On the other hand, he rejects this method, and in general any method to know
what by its content is infinite. Then he makes unbridled use of the imagination.
In conclusion: it is not the way to enter science to put as its foundation an
irreducible antithesis between immediacy and independent mediativity.
To enter science, all other assumptions or preconceptions must be abandoned,
whether they come from representations or thought, science being precisely that in which
all these determinations must be investigated and what is in them and in their antithesis
must be known.

23
 More particular concept and division of logic.

The logical fact presents three concepts: a) the rational abstract; b) the dialectical
or rational negative; c) the speculative or positive rational.
These three concepts are moments of every real logical fact; that is, of every
concept or of every truth in general.
a) The rational abstract. At this moment thought stops at rigid determination [fixed
categories that only reveal the phenomenal, the surface of the object; empty abstractions;
intellectual thought closed in on itself; reflection of the being of the object] in the simple
difference of this determination with others. Such an abstract and limited product is valid
for the intellect as existing and subsistent by itself.
b) The dialectical or rational negative. This moment is the suppression by
themselves of these finite determinations and their passage to the opposite ones [The
determinations of being have in themselves those of the essence; that intellectual
determination negates itself and gives way to the opposite determination that corresponds
to the essence.]
Taken in isolation, dialectic gives rise to skepticism, which is simple and pure
negation.
Dialectic is also considered an extrinsic art that introduces confusion and an
appearance of contradiction between certain concepts. Then the determinations that this
art has given birth to are considered false and the truth of the merely intellectual
determinations is reaffirmed.
The dialectic is the proper and true nature of the intellectual determinations of
things and of the finite in general.
The reflection [rational abstract moment] consists of:
-go beyond isolated determinations,
-relate these isolated determinations to each other;
-but it does not penetrate the other that each determination has in itself.
The dialectic, on the contrary, is the immanent nature of intellectual
determinations that is expressed as their negation.

… The dialectic, on the contrary, is the immanent transcending, in which the one-sidedness
and restrictedness of the de terminations of the understanding displays itself as what it is,
i. e., as their negation. That is what everything finite is: its own sublation. Hence, the
dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression, and it is the principle
through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science,
just as all genuine, non-external elevation above the finite is to be found in this principle. 13

c) The speculative moment or the rational positive. He conceives the unity of the
determinations in their opposition. It is what is affirmative in its solution and in its
overcoming.
-The dialectic has a positive result [that is, the speculative moment or the rational
positive] because it has a determined content.
That is, because his result is not the abstract and empty nothing but the negation
of certain determinations that are contained in the result [in the result the positive
determinations and their opposites, their negation, the negative determinations are kept
in unity].
-The speculative or positive rational moment is, even if it is something thought and
abstract, something concrete because it is not the simple and formal unit, but the unit of
diverse determinations. This speculative or positive rational moment is a concrete
thought. [The first result of thought is empty abstraction; the dialectic is the negation of
these abstract determinations by other concrete determinations; the speculative or
positive rational moment is the unity of these abstract and empty determinations with the
concrete determinations that are their negation.]
13
Ibídem, p. 128.

24
25
 The Hegel system
The absolute spirit and its evolution:
absolute knowledge, absolute reality and absolute idea.

Hegel's system is the expression of the evolution of the philosophical spirit.

The philosophical spirit exists first as pure thought, as a substance composed of
the abstract categories of the being and knowing; It is the science of logic, the first part of
the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences.
This substance comes out of itself, is alienated, and produces the knowledge of
nature, the natural sciences; It is the philosophy of nature, second part of the
Encyclopedia.
The philosophical spirit frees itself from nature and goes through all the phases of
human knowledge, until reaching absolute knowledge, where it recovers itself; It is the
philosophy of the spirit, third part of the Encyclopedia.
In this deployment of the philosophical spirit, Hegel makes a complete
transposition of terms.
Knowledge of nature is obtained through the productive activity of the species.
In this same field, the phases of knowledge are developed from sensitive perception
to philosophical knowledge and the categories and forms of thought are forged.
The knowledge of nature, the stages of knowledge, the categories of thought and
the philosophical conception imply each other and to the productive activity that is their
base; all these elements provide a reciprocal upward impulse and take the human species
to higher stages of its evolution.
The result is the formation of the body of knowledge that constitutes the natural
sciences, of the set of categories and mental forms that are the content of the science of
logic and of the stages of knowledge that reach Philosophy.
Hegel takes the science of logic at the point where it was left by Kantian
philosophy.
The forms and laws of thought of ancient logic are transformed and organized with
further categories; he establishes the true nature of concepts as a being and a non-being,
a being one and being another and a passing from one to another.
He gives the fixed and immobile concepts and categories of previous logic the
nature of contradiction (it reveals its non-being, its other being and its passing into
another).
Previous logic had developed the rational abstract aspect of thought: fixed
categories, empty abstractions that only reveal the phenomenal, the being of the object.
Hegel puts dialectic and speculation into work.
The rational dialectical or negative moment is the suppression of finite
determinations and their passage to the opposite ones.
The rational positive or speculative moment is the conception of the unity of
determinations in their opposition.
Hegel founds the dialectical-speculative method.
With this tool he radically transforms the categories and concepts of traditional
logic and the structure and organization of its content. In his Logic, thought is a
substance whose components (being, essence, essential being, reality, etc.) exist

26
simultaneously and successively, in an incessant movement that is carried out through
contradiction. This substance necessarily refers to objective reality, but for the moment
Hegel sets this aside and turns his attention to its mental reflection.
Hegel substantivized thought in the form that he has given it through dialectic and
speculation.
Immediately he takes the knowledge of objective reality that the natural sciences
have developed and gives it the special character that the concept has in the new Logic.
Thus modified the categories and concepts, he integrates them into the spiritual
substance as the superior concept of objective reality, as absolute reality.
Hegel leads the substance towards the process of knowledge itself, to which he
also submits to the treatment that he has given to the determinations of reality and the
resulting concepts are incorporated into the thinking substance as absolute knowledge.
Thought, which presents itself as a result, is now the same as it was before the
long journey he took under Hegel's leadership: a substance containing the concepts of
absolute being and knowing, the absolute idea.
In this metaphysical journey, Hegel has turned the son into his own progenitor.
The absolute idea that he has configured is the ultimate result of science and
philosophy; it is a mental reflection of absolute being and knowing, of absolute knowing
and absolute reality.
It is, on the one hand, a scientific method (dialectical-speculative) and an
epistemology, and on the other, a concept of total, absolute reality, a scientific vision of the
universe, a worldview.
At this point, modern philosophy must carry out the task indicated by Marx: to
put the Hegelian idea on its feet, strip his philosophy of its metaphysical envelope and
leave its fully materialist content free.

The task of philosophy is, for Hegel, the true knowledge of reality.
This task is carried out through a process that goes, on the knowledge side, from
sensible knowledge to absolute knowledge, and on the reality side, from immediate being
to absolute reality.
Through absolute knowledge, the self-conscious spirit makes a mental image of
the totality that is absolute reality. In this task he has alienated himself. It abandons self-
awareness and becomes the awareness of the other, of total reality.
In a further movement, the self-conscious spirit recognizes its product as itself and
incorporates it into itself, thus forming a concept in which the self and its other are in
unity, which now partake of the same nature.
This higher concept is the absolute idea.
The configuration of the mental image of the totality that is reality (absolute
reality), that is, the conformation of the absolute idea, is carried out by Hegel by means of
absolute knowledge. For this, in the Phenomenology of Spirit14 and in the Philosophy of
Spirit, third part of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel determines the stages
of development of knowledge that start from perception and end in absolute knowledge,
the latter product of the pure and free will (Hegel's, of course) and in which all forms of
knowledge meet in a superior unity. In the Science of Logic, he records the different levels
of reality that in absolute reality are gathered in a substance that is the simultaneous and
successive existence of all of them; these phases are forms and stages of knowledge at the
same time. This formulation of the instances of absolute reality, carried out through
absolute knowledge, is the absolute idea, the superior concept of reality.

14
Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, Translated with introduction y commentary by Michael
Inwood, Oxford University Press, First Edition, United Kingdom, 2018.

27
 Absolute knowledge

In two works Hegel carries out the work of determining the instances of human
knowledge from sensitive consciousness to absolute knowledge: in the Phenomenology of
Spirit and in the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, in its third part called Philosophy
of Spirit.

In summary:
Self-awareness is the pure self-aware thought.
In front of it is the substance that is reality (substantial reality).
Self-awareness denies itself and comes out of itself, alienates itself.
It displays a succession of figures with which it assimilates the object (the
substance). He denies it as a material object and turns it into thoughts. In the form of
thoughts, it integrates the object into itself, converts it into self-awareness. It overcomes
alienation and reaffirms itself as self-awareness.
Self-consciousness is thus also substance.
The result of the entire process is the constitution of the concept, of the idea of the
object, and ultimately of the absolute idea.
Alienation and overcoming is the movement of consciousness (self-consciousness).
Consciousness (self-consciousness) is in this movement the totality of moments.
The self-consciousness that alienates itself and recovers itself with an enriched
content is absolute knowledge.
Consciousness (self-consciousness), absolute knowledge, must have grasped all
the determinations of absolute reality.
The reflection of absolute reality obtained through absolute knowledge is the
absolute idea.
The figures through which self-consciousness captures all the determinations of
absolute reality are the following:
-the natural soul,
-the soul that feels,
-the effectively real soul,
-awareness,
-sensitive consciousness
-the perception,
-the understanding,
-self-awareness,
-universal self-awareness,
-the reason,
-the spirit,
-the theoretical spirit,
-the intuition,
-the representation,
-the memory,
-the imagination,
-thinking (intelligence),
-the practical spirit,
-the practical feeling,
-the reflective will,
- the free spirit.
The extremes of knowledge are, on the one hand, the self (the subject, the self, the
consciousness of the species) and on the other the object (being, substance, reality).
The self is first the soul that feels: it possesses the faculty of feeling. The self
assimilates the object through the senses. It gathers the sensations and integrates them
into itself as an ordered whole. The I (the consciousness of the species) possesses in itself

28
the sensitive faculty and its result, that is, a series of sensory organizations that represent
external objects that are immediate natural beings, finite qualitative beings.
Sensitivity is the faculty of the spirit [feeling] in which all determination is still
immediate, undeveloped, both in the object, of which what is apprehended is its natural
and most particular property, and in the subject, which is the spirit in its individuality
devoid of conscience and understanding.
The self rises to a higher phase of its existence in which it retains its former
content and acquires new faculties.
The self is now a soul that feels and is certain of itself; it confronts the object that
is an immediate singular. It is a sensitive consciousness that apprehends its individual
characteristics from the object and incorporates them into its content as sensitive
representations in the consciousness of the species.
At a higher stage, the self has higher categories through which it starts from
sensible certainties of singular apperceptions, from experiences on which it reflects to give
them the form of something necessary and universal, of essence and foundation. The
result is a multitude of references, determinations of reflection, universalities that he
incorporates into himself. It is the perceiving consciousness.
The self acquires the faculty of understanding. Through it he apprehends the
regularities of the phenomenon, the laws that govern them, the relations between
universal determinations and integrates them to himself.
The self is self-consciousness, that is, the certainty of itself as a producer of laws.
Self-consciousness is the pure self, which possesses the categories and laws of
universality, through which it apprehends the universality of the object.
This pure self-certain self is the producer of scientific knowledge.
The universal pure self is the reason that apprehends the universality of the
object.
The self is reason and the object is rational.
The reason is constituted by the categories and laws that are presupposed to
immediate knowledge.
The self that is reason is the theoretical spirit.
The theoretical spirit has the abstract faculty of reason; it possesses abstract
intelligence, the ability to know rationally and appropriate the rationality of the object.
This faculty puts it into work through intuition, representation, imagination and
memory.
Thought is the understanding that elaborates the remembered representations to
make them genera, species, laws, forces, etc., that is, categories that are the truth of
being, the disjunction or judgment that expresses the connections of the concept and the
formal reason that syllogizes.
The result is thought, an image of the object that is completely detached from it
and that as thought is incorporated into itself, into self-awareness. The object is thought
and thought is object.
The spirit has thus acquired its freedom.
The spirit is, therefore, free will.
The free will acquires power over the object through the thought that is its
reflection.
On the one hand, the satisfaction of needs is no longer the mere appropriation of
the object, but the conscious production of it.
On the other hand, freedom is the power of the conscious spirit to organize and
systematize the faculties and cognitive capacities that it has developed in the historical
process of its development in order to structure absolute knowledge, to forge the most
complete mental image of the totality of reality, absolute reality, and as thoughts integrate
it into itself to form the absolute idea.
The reasoning and free self-consciousness takes itself in the totality of its figures
and is thus absolute knowledge; As such, it assimilates all the determinations of the

29
substantial reality that it itself has been forging in its evolutionary process and forges the
image of the totality, of the absolute reality, that is, the absolute concept.
Knowing is the activity of self-awareness by which it develops, organizes, and
systematizes the figures of consciousness in order, through a characteristic process of
alienation from oneself and immersion in the substance, to produce representations of it
and incorporate them into oneself, which is why it also becomes substance (revoke
alienation, alienation of self-consciousness). This movement has its highest point in
absolute knowledge, in which self-consciousness has deployed and organized the totality
of the figures of consciousness, captured all the determinations of reality (absolute reality)
and forged a complete mental image of it (absolute idea) which it then incorporates into
itself becoming absolute substance.
The spirit (the substantive consciousness of the species, which for Hegel is the
human essence) as self-consciousness has become alienated in the substance; the spirit
revokes its self-alienation and recovers itself as a substance self-conscious on a higher
level. The species recovers its essential nature of a self-conscious spirit. Human history
has come to an end riding on the dialectical shoulders of Hegel. The only thing that
remains is to make the good news known to all mortals.
In the Science of Logic Hegel develops the logical elements that reflect absolute
reality for absolute knowledge and with them forms a full image of it, an idea of it, the
absolute idea.
In the Science of Logic, in the section on objective logic, Hegel establishes, through
the use of the instrument of absolute knowledge, the determinations of reality, the
characteristics of their mutual relations and the phases of their development until
reaching reality absolute.
It is an exhaustive mental image of the totality, an integral and exact vision of the
Universe as no other philosophy or scientific discipline (cosmology, physics, etc.) has been
able to produce.

c. the absolute idea

§236
As unity of the subjective and the objective Idea, the Idea is the Concept of the Idea, for
which the Idea as such is the object, and for which the object is itself-an object in which all
determinations have come together. This unity, therefore, is the absolute truth and all
truth, it is the Idea that thinks itself, and at this stage, moreover, it is [present] as thinking,
i. e., as logical Idea.

§237
Since there is no passing-over within the absolute Idea, no presupposing, and no
determinacy at all that would not be fluid and transparent, this Idea is for-itself the pure
form of the Concept, which intuits its content as itself. It is its own content, inasmuch as it
is the ideal distinguishing of itself from itself, and [because] one of the distinct [terms] is its
identity with itself; but in this identity the totality of the form (as the system of the
determinations of the content) is contained. This content is the system of the logical. All
that remains here as form for the Idea is the method of this content -the determinate
knowing of the currency of its moments.15

The absolute idea is, as we have already seen, the mental image of the totality,
realized through absolute knowledge, which is incorporated as part of self-consciousness;
the representation of the world is now itself part of self-consciousness, and the self is part
of the concept of reality.
The spirit is complete, it is the absolute spirit that includes absolute knowledge,
absolute reality and the absolute idea. It is a substance that is found simultaneously and
successively in all those moments of its existence: it is the abstract thought that is alienated
in nature and recovers itself in the concept.

15
Ibídem, pp. 303-304.

30
 Subdivision.
385.] The development of Mind (Spirit) is in three stages:
(1) In the form of self-relation: within it, it has the ideal totality of the Idea—i. e. it has
before it all that its notion contains: its being is to be self-contained and free. This is Mind
Subjective.
(2) In the form of reality: realized, I. e. in a world produced and to be produced by it: in this
world freedom presents itself under the shape of necessity. This is Mind Objective.
(3) In that unity of mind as objectivity and of mind as ideality and concept, which
essentially and actually is and forever produces itself, mind in its absolute truth. This is
Mind Absolute.16

16
Wallace William, Hegel’s philosophy of mind, translated from the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences with five Introductory Essays of William Wallace, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of
Merton College and Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, Oxford, at the
Clarendon Press, 1894, p. 8

31
 The Science of Logic17
Volume one
The Objective Logic

Book One
The Doctrine of Being

Logic thus divides overall into objective and subjective logic, but more
specifically, it has three parts:
I. The Logic of Being,
II. The Logic of Essence, and
III. The Logic of the Concept.18

General division of being

1. Being is determined in general against another.
According to this determination, being is divided against the essence. In the progress of
its development, the totality of it appears only as a single sphere of the concept and
opposes it, as a moment, another sphere.
2. Being is determined within itself.
According to this determination, being is the sphere within which the determinations and
the total movement of its reflection fall.
3. Being is abstract indeterminacy and immediacy, in which being must constitute the
beginning.
In this sphere [2], the being will have the following three determinations:
I. As determinateness, as such, quality;
II. As determinateness sublated: magnitude, quantity;
III. As a qualitatively determined quantity: measure.

Section I
Determinateness (Quality)

Being is the indeterminate immediate.

-It is free of determination regarding the essence.
-He is free of determination within himself.
-It is being as it exists immediately only in itself.
-Since it is indeterminate, it is a being devoid of quality.
-The indeterminate belongs to him only in opposition to the determined or qualitative.

17
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, The Science of Logic, Cambridge Hegel Translations, translated
and edited by George di Giovanni, McGill University, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010.
18
Hegel, G.W.F., op. Cit., p. 43.

32
His indeterminacy constitutes his quality.
It will therefore be shown:
-that the first being is in itself determined
[his indeterminacy is his determination, his quality];
-that it passes over into existence, is existence;
-that this determined being, as finite, sublates and passes over into the infinite reference
of being to itself.
-This being that is eliminated passes through being-for-it-self.

Chapter 1.

Being

A. Being

Being, pure being; it is immediate and indeterminate; it has no difference either inside or
outside; it is pure indeterminacy and pure emptiness. It is neither more nor less than
nothing.

B. Nothing.

Nothing, pure nothingness; it is the perfect emptiness, the absence of determination and
content, the indistinction itself. It is the same thing as pure being.

C. Becoming.

1.- Unity of being and nothing.

-The pure being and the pure nothing are therefore the same.
-Truth is neither being nor nothing; truth is that being has passed over into nothing and
nothing into being.
-At the same time the truth is also that they are not the same, but they are absolutely
different.
-At the same time being and nothing are unseparated and inseparable.
-Each one disappears into the other.
Truth is, therefore, the movement of immediate disappearance of the one into the other:
becoming.
In this movement being and nothing are different; but this difference has been dissolved
immediately.

2. - The moments of becoming.

Becoming is the inseparability of being and nothing.

33
It is the determinate unit in which being and nothing equally are.
But in this inseparability each of them does not exist.
They exist in this unity but as disappearing, as eliminated.
They are moments, differentiated, but eliminated.
According to their difference, being and nothing are found in becoming, each one in unity
with the other.
Each is in their distinguishedness a unity with the other.
Being is as immediate and as reference to nothing.
Nothing is as immediate and as reference to being.
In each unity the determinations are of inequal value.
In one determination, nothing is the immediate, the determination that begins with
nothing and this refers to being, passes over into it. In the other determination, being is
the immediate, the determination begins with being and passes over into nothing –
coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be.
Both are the same, becoming, and as directions that are so different they interpenetrate
and paralyze each other. The one is ceasing-to-be; being passes over into nothing, but
nothing is opposite of itself, the passing-over into being, coming-to-be. This coming-to-be
is the other direction; nothing goes over into being, but being equally sublates itself and is
rather the passing-over into nothing; it is ceasing-to-be. They do not sublate themselves
reciprocally – the one sublating the other externally – but each rather sublates itself in
itself and is within it the opposite of itself.

3.- Sublation of becoming.

The equilibrium between coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be is becoming.

Becoming is the disappearance of being into nothing and of nothing into being and of
being and nothing in general.
Becoming is, in this disappearing, the unity of being and nothing.
Becoming is also the diversity of being and nothing.
The diversity of being and nothing is the disappearance of becoming, that is, the
disappearance of disappearance.
The becoming is a restlessness lacking firmness that falls into a resting result.
This result is the unity of being and nothing that has turned into quiet simplicity.
This calm simplicity is being.
Becoming, as passing into the unity of being and nothing, which is found as existent, that
is, which has the form of the immediate unilateral unity of these moments, is determined
being or existence.
In the Science of Logic Hegel begins his study with the empty abstractions that are being
and nothing, these are identical to each other, extrinsic to each other, unrelated to each
other. For all these reasons, they lack objectivity: there is no absolute being excluding
non-being (being of the Eleata) nor is there absolute nothing, excluding being (the nothing
of Eastern philosophy).
Hegel, the incarnation of speculation, takes these rigid abstractions, gives them mobility
and leads each of them to become its opposite: pure being is the same as pure nothing
and this the same as that, being and nothing are identical; being is in nothing and
nothing is in being, both are not separated and inseparable. Being and nothing continue
to be empty abstractions, but now they are no longer separate, but each is in indissoluble
unity with the other; this is an approach to objectivity; but still in the field of abstraction:
it reflects the most general nature of what exists, that is, the indissoluble union in it of
being and non-being, but without any other determination.
The identity of being and nothing is the identity of the different: being is different from
nothing and nothing is different from being, both are completely different. By virtue of
this difference, the being that is in union with nothing exists by disappearing in it, and

34
the nothing that is in union with being exists by disappearing in it; this disappearing of
one into the other is becoming.
In becoming, being and nothing are not separated and inseparable; insofar as each one of
them is in unity with its other, they do not exist, that is, they exist, but as one
disappearing into the other, as eliminated, as moments. However, since being and
nothing are different, each exists in becoming in unity with its other; becoming is then the
difference of two units: the unity of being with nothing and the unity of nothing with
being. Becoming thus finds itself in a double determination: in one it is nothing as
immediate that traverses being and in the other it is being as immediate that trespasses
into nothing. This difference of the two units in becoming is the coming-to-be and the
ceasing-to-be. Becoming is, then, the difference between the units of nothing with being
and of being with nothing and the disappearance in each unit of one in the other, that is,
the movement from coming-to-be to ceasing-to-be.
This category of becoming, to which Hegel declares to have incorporated everything that
Heraclitus had developed on it, is the second result of the impulse that Hegel has given to
the abstract categories of being and nothing; after having led them to identity he leads
them to difference and from there back to identity and difference, obtaining as a result
the concept of becoming. Becoming is still an empty abstraction, made up of the two
empty abstractions of being and nothing, but endowed with dialectical movement. Within
its abstraction, it constitutes one more approximation to objectivity: it expresses the
incessant passage from being to nothing and from nothing to being because being and
nothing are identical and different and each one is immediately its other. The movement
that Hegel has given to the abstract categories of being and nothing has led him to
another equally abstract category, that of becoming. Hegel has thus fulfilled a prerequisite
for bringing thought out of abstraction and into the realm of the concrete: to give mobility
to the abstract categories of being and nothing: from now on that same dialectic of
thought will lead him to approach more and more to objectivity until fully installed in it.
As we can see, Hegel presents the acquisition by human thought of the fundamental laws,
which at the same time are the most general, of the structure and movement of being, of
what exists, as the result of the movement of one's own thoughts. Due to the demands of
his philosophy and the progress of human knowledge itself, the principle that everything
that exists is and is not at the same time and that existence is a constant flow, an
incessant passage from existing to non-existing, has to be presented as proceeding from
the very dialectic of thoughts driven by the intuition of the philosopher and not as what it
is in reality, that is, the result of the generalization of knowledge acquired in practical
human activity. This is how the maximum abstraction with objective value of the existent,
which has its origin in human practice, acquires the form of the product of an
autonomous movement of two empty abstractions. The categories of unity and difference
of being and non-being and of becoming, which here are a result, are going to be the
foundation of the other categories that Hegel develops in his logic.
Hegel's logic begins by necessity completely removed from objectivity; it is a movement
within the thought itself by which fluidity and concretion are given to the categories of
ancient logic so that they approach an objectivity that is postulated as governed by
dialectic; This postulate has its origin in an intuition of a superior instance of thought,
the speculative thought that has taken shape in our philosopher.
This immanent necessity of Hegelian philosophy lays the foundations for the mystification
that is characteristic of it: in the first place, it is thought itself that, denying one of its
parts, gives birth to speculation, which allows the construction of a system of thoughts,
reflection of objectivity; second, speculative thought recognizes itself in that system as the
substance of objectivity.
Coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be are the same, to become. But these directions of
becoming are different, which is why they interpenetrate and paralyze each other. In the
direction of ceasing-to-be, being passes into nothing, but nothing is immediately the
opposite of itself, passing through being, being come-to-be. In the direction of coming-to-
be, nothing passes into being, but being is immediately the opposite of itself, the passing

35
into nothing, the passing away. Each one, being and nothing, are eliminated in
themselves and in their opposite. The balance of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be is
becoming itself. This equilibrium is the disappearance of being into nothing and of
nothing into being.
The category of becoming, although closer to objectivity than its parents, being and
nothing, is still an empty category, without any other determination; it is the expression
of the simple flow of being in existence: being appears and disappears in existence.
Thought -Hegel- is not satisfied with the slipping of the object through his hands and
retains it in the disappearance of being into nothing and from nothing into being; it
becomes the disappearing of disappearing, that is, the arrest of becoming at the moment
of the being; it is the passing from becoming to being determined.
In this part of his Logic, Hegel takes the object that is there, in existence, and proceeds to
analyze the determinations of its being. The category of the determined being thus has a
greater objectivity than the previous ones, but not, of course, all objectivity.
Hegel makes the study of the structure and movement of the determined being. It has as
its starting point the categories that intellectual thought had already developed about
being, to which it also gives fluidity and movement, fills them with content and organizes
and systematizes them according to the same determinations that practical activity has
discovered in the being of the objective world and that are all summarized in its non-
being, its being another and its passing to another that in the last instance is the essence;
these new ways of thinking they preserve and surpass those of the old logic, they are a
faithful reflection of the determinations of being in its movement towards the essence.

Chapter 2

THE DETERMINED BEING OR THE EXISTENCE.

Determined being is the result of the becoming of pure being and pure nothing.
Existence is a determined being.
The determination of being is an existing determination, a quality.
Through its quality
-is in front of another [outside himself],
-is mutable [changes],
-is finite [has a term or limit] and
-is determined in himself [interiorly, he has the other in himself] in a frankly negative
way.
This opposite negation of the finite is the infinite.

Be determined as such.
It has its determination as a quality.
The quality has to be taken both in a determination: reality, as in the other: denial.
In reality and its negation, determined being is reflected in itself, posited as such
determined being; is the something.

B. BEING-THERE
§ 89
In becoming, being, as one with nothing, and nothing as one with being, are only vanishing
[terms]; because of its contradiction becoming collapses inwardly, into the unity within
which both are sublated; in this way its result is being-there.
…
It follows that (1) being-there is the unity of being and nothing, in which the immediacy of
these determinations, and there with their contradiction, has disappeared in their relation-a
unity in which they are only moments. (2) Because the result is the sublated contradiction,
it is in the form of simple unity with itself or even as a being, but [as] a being with its

36
 negation or determinacy; it is becoming posited in the form of one of its moments, of
being.19

A) Being determined as such.

a) Being determined in general.

Being determined as such is coming-to-be from becoming.

Determined being is the being-one of being and nothing.
-is an immediate,
-his mediation, becoming, is left behind.
It appears as a first from which one starts.
It is found in the unilateral determination of being.
The determined being is not a pure being, but a determined being.
In accordance with its becoming, it is a being with a non-being.
This non-being is assumed in simple unity with being.
The concrete set of being and non-being is in the form of being, of immediacy.
The set represents in the form -in the determination of being- a negatively determined
eliminated moment, because being has shown itself in becoming also as a moment.
But this negative determination is thus only for our reflection, it does not belong to the
concept.
[Distinction between being-posited and reflection. Being-posited: only what is put into it,
in the development of its consideration, belongs to the content of a concept. Reflection:
what is not posited in the concept and which belongs to our reflection, whether it
concerns the nature of the concept itself, whether it constitutes an external comparison.]
This ensemble thus determined is determination as such.
The determined being or existence corresponds to the being of the antecedent sphere.
But this is indeterminate, in it no determinations of any kind are offered.
Existence, on the contrary, is a concrete being, full of multiple determinations and
relationships.

b) Quality

Being and nothing are one only in determined being.

To the same extent that the determined being is existent, it is a non-being, it is
determined.
In the existing determined being, the determination in which the unity of being and non-
being is in the form of being is quality, something totally simple, immediate.
Being determined as the unity of being and nothing in the form of being, is quality as only
immediate or existent determination. [It is the set of being and non-being in the form of
being].
This unity must also show itself in the determination of nothing. [The set of being and
non-being in the form of the nothing].
The quality as only immediate and existent determination [that is, the whole in the form
of being] is reality.
The quality as determination in the form of nothing is negation.
[Two aspects of quality:
[1.- As a unilateral determination of the existing being, an immediate and existing
[determination.
[2.- As a determination of the nothing is a negation.]
The quality as existent is reality.

19
Wallace William, Hegel’s philosophy of mind, translated from the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences de G. W. F. Hegel, pp. 145-146

37
The quality affected by a negation is a negation in general, a quality that counts as a lack
and that is determined as a term and limit.
In reality as an existing quality it remains hidden that it contains determination, and
therefore negation; reality is valid as something positive, from which negation, lack, is
excluded.
Negation is not nothing, but a determined being, a determined quality as a non-being.
Determination is negation posited as affirmative: omnis determinatio est negatio (Spinoza)
Denial is against reality.
Later on, it will be the opposite of the positive, which is reality, reflecting itself in denial.
This reality is where the negative appears.
In reality as such still it is hidden.
The determined being is the same being of becoming, but taken in its immediacy; It is no
longer the emptiness and incessant passage from nothing to being and from being to
nothing that does not provide any knowledge of the object; now it is about the being that
exists at a certain moment and that has been taken by thought to apprehend the
characteristics that are manifested in its existence.
This determined being is in unity with non-being; but non-being is here something
extrinsic which thought adds to the concept of determinate being and which does not yet
belong to its content. In other words, the determined being is what appears at a certain
moment in existence and is in unity with its non-being that remains hidden from thought.
The determined being has certain specific characteristics, a quality; This category is more
concrete than that of being determined and serves to apprehend the nature of the object
at the moment of its existence. The quality is in unity with its negation, but this, like the
non-being in the previous determination, is only the product of an extrinsic reflection of
thought and is not yet contained in the concept; the negation of quality is only a
presupposition of thought and therefore does not yet appear in it.
The determined being also contains the determination of nothing, but this remains
hidden and only later will it reveal itself in front of it.
This determination of existing being as non-being is the quality.
The quality are the characteristics that the being manifests at the moment of its
existence.
Being determined and quality are two different categories that Hegel uses. The first refers
to the being that arises from becoming and that is there in existence, but without any
determination; the second applies to the being of existence from which the characteristics
of its nature have already been apprehended.
In the determined being, the quality is unilateral because it is only an immediate, existent
determination; Although it is affected by a negation, it remains hidden and it is the
extrinsic reflection that puts it in the concept.
The quality as existent is the reality; in it remains hidden that it contains determination
and therefore also negation; reality is valid as something positive from which negation,
limitation, and lack are excluded.
This category is the same as that of traditional logic and expresses only the
characteristics and properties of the object at the moment of its existence in becoming; it
does not transcend beyond the surface of being taken in its immobility. However, in
Hegel's philosophy this category has an internal tension that leads it outside of itself; as
we know, it is the result of the dialectical movement of two original categories, being and
nothing, and for this reason it contains within it the opposition between them, which is
the motor of its passage to another superior category.
The quality as reality is affected by a negation; this negation here still has a general
character, it is valid as a lack that is determined as term and limit. The characteristics
and properties of the object have a term and a limit after which they no longer exist: with
them it also ceases to be the object, both disappear.
Once again, when thought believed it had firmly grasped the object, it slipped through its
hands. Knowledge stops at the limit of the object, where it ceases to be; in this way it

38
becomes a haphazard collection of the superficial characteristics of what exists; it is the
realm of the chaotic and accidental.
Reality is the existing quality and its negation is a simple ceasing to be. Thought is not
satisfied with this abstraction and denies it by seeking in being what is permanent, what
is its truth.
Thought -according to the Hegelian methodology- denies this simple ceasing to be; the
quality does not simply disappear, but is negated by another quality and both have as
their substrate a being that remains, an entity, something. This denial is the denial of the
denial.
With this category, thought finally manages to apprehend the object; its specificity and
objectivity are greater than those of the preceding categories.

c) The something.

The quality is the existing determination.

In it lies the difference between reality and denial.
The reality is an existent, not the indeterminate and abstract being.
The negation is an existent, not the abstract nothing, an existent nothing.
In this way quality in general is not separated from existence [it contains both existences,
reality and negation].
The difference is removed.
Being determined in general has in itself the difference [the difference between reality and
negation].
This difference is removed.
The determined being then arises as once again made equal to itself through the
elimination of difference. [Again the set in the form of the being].
This elimination is to denial of denial.
This determined being is the simplicity of determined being mediated by elimination.
[His return to the form of being].
The determined being has its own determination in the elimination of difference.
This determined being thus determined is a determined existent, a something.
[The something is the existent determined being that has eliminated the difference
between reality and negation; it is the return of the existent determined being to the form
of being].
The something is being itself.
This something as a negation of the negation has no concrete determination.
The something is, it exists; is a certain entity.
The something is also a becoming.
This becoming has as moments:
-the determined being, a determined entity, the something,
-a certain entity, but as a negative of the something, an other.
The something as becoming is a transfer.
The moments of this transfer are somethings; is a variation.
This variation has become concrete. [It is an extrinsic consideration. It only changes in its
concept. It is not on].
The something is not posited as the mediator and is mediated. [That is to say, it does not
yet have the other in itself].
The something is found as what is maintained in its reference to itself. [The set in the
form of being].
Its negative is found as a qualitative, as an other in general.
The something is being-in-itself, that is, the determined being that has become equal to
itself (substratum) through the elimination of the simple ceasing to be and the
establishment of its negation as an other.

39
The something has a double determination: it is a determined being, a determined entity
and it is at the same time an other. Being a determined being and another are two
moments of the something (which remains) and the passage from one to another is the
variation of the something. Becoming has become concrete.
The category of the something is already completely installed in the field of objectivity.
With the object in his hands, the subject apprehends the variations that its
characteristics and properties have, the passage from one to the other.
This category is very important because it reflects in thought an essential characteristic of
objectivity. The determined entity, the something, the object, is another in itself; Being
other in itself is what determines the change in the something (its negation) but at the
same time his conservation; the something is what changes and what remains in the
change; it is the unit in movement of opposite determinations.
This category is the soul of the Hegelian dialectic; it is the contradiction that has become
concrete.
Hegel next studies the category of the something in more detail.

B) The finitude.

They are indifferent to each other.

The other is also something.
Denial falls outside of both.
Something is in itself against its being for another.
The determination also belongs to the in itself of the something. [It's his variation]
This inner determination is his destination.
The destination becomes constitution.
The constitution is being by another, the limit of the something.
The limit of the something is the immanent destination of the something itself.
This something limited is the finite.

a) Something and other.

1
-Something and other are determined entities or somethings.
-Each one of them is also another.
-If A is called a determined being and B another determined being,
-B is the other of A,
-but equally A is the other of B.
Both are somethings.
Both are others.
-The being other appears as a foreign determination to the existence thus determined: the
other appears as outside of a determined being.
-The two are determined as something and also as another, therefore, they are the same
and there is no difference between them.
This sameness is determined by external reflection.
-The other is by itself in relation to something, but it is also by itself outside of it.
-The other has to be taken as isolated in relation to himself, that is, in an abstract way,
like the other.
-Not the other of something, but the other in itself.
[The physical nature is the other of the spirit.]
[The spirit is the something; nature the other in itself, the existing outside of itself.]
-The other by itself is the other in itself and with this the other of itself and thus the other
of the other.
-It is, therefore, the absolutely unequal in itself, which negates and changes itself.

40
-At the same time it is identical with itself, since what is changed into is the other and
what is changed is also the other.
-Being identical with himself, he reflects himself and eliminates himself from being
another; is the something.

2
-The something is a determined being denied in itself, an other.
-In its negation it is also preserved, so it is a being for another.
-It is preserved in its non-existence and is a being as a reference to itself against its
reference to another, as equality with itself against its inequality. It is a being-in-itself.
Being-for-another and being-in-itself constitute the two moments of the something.
Something and other are identical: something is the other of another something and the
other is the something of another. They are different because the something and the other
are external to each other. The something and the other fall out of each other; the other
exists in the term of the something.
Something and other are identical: the something is another and the other is something.
But they are also different. The other, as absolutely different from something, is the other
in itself, the other of itself and the other of the other. The other, taken to its ultimate
consequences, is found inside the other, since the latter is also something; the other is
inside something.
The other in his constant inequality, that is, in his incessant step towards another,
determines the change in the other. As the other is also a something, it changes because
it has its other in itself and it is a constant passing to it.
The something is the unity of two different moments: the determined being and the other
being.
Here Hegel takes the category of the other from the exterior to the interior of the object.
The other is not only the end of something, but is the something itself. The something is
the other of itself. This unity of opposites is the engine of change of the something. As we
have said, this category of contradiction is the soul of the Hegelian dialectic expressed for
now in the field of being.
The other becomes a something, but a something that has being and being other as its
moments.
In the something, being and being other are different; one ends where the other begins.
Hegel's next step is to bring the negation, the other, to the very terrain of the being of the
something.
The something is a determined being denied in itself and therefore it is an other in itself;
but at the same time it is preserved in that negation: it is, consequently, a being-for-
another.
The something is preserved in its non-existence; it is a being as a reference to itself
against its reference to another, as equality with itself against its inequality; it is a being-
in-itself.
The being of the something is being-in-itself and being-for-another.
Hegel has driven the contradiction to the heart of the being of the something; something
has it other in itself and undergoes a variation to become the other of itself because its
determined being is a being-in-itself and a being-for-another, that is, it is a determined
being whose destiny is to be other.
The something is the unity of two moments, the determined being and the other being,
and its movement is the passing from the determined being to the other.
The being of the something is preserved in its being other and passing into another, that
is, it is preserved in its non-existence. Despite being another and after passing into
another, the determined being remains the same; it is identical to itself; it is a being that
denies its immediate relationship with the other and relates to itself through that denial:
it is a being-in-itself. But at the same time, this self-identical being is the other and
becomes an other, the one who is destined to be another, is a being-for-another.

41
The contradiction is now found in one of the moments of the something, in the
determined being, which has the double nature of being-in-itself and being-for-another.
Being-in-itself and being-for-another are moments of the same being; they are
determinations that are relations and remain in their unity. Each one contains within
itself a different moment.
In summary, the steps taken by Hegel in the field of objectivity are the following: first, the
object has its negation outside of itself, in another object; then, the negation finds itself
within the object itself as a moment of its own against its moment of determined being;
Lastly, the negation is within the being-determined itself as the moment of being-for-
another as opposed to the moment of being-in-itself.
In the being of the something we find being and non-being in a higher form, as the
relationship between being-in-itself and being-for-another.
The being of something is being-in-itself; It is no longer immediate being (as in the quality
and the something) but a relation to oneself as non-being of being-other.
The non-being of the being of the something is its relationship with another, its being-for-
another.
Being-in-itself has a double nature: on the one hand, it excludes being-other and being-
for-another, and on the other, it has non-being within itself because it is the non-being of
being-for-other.
Being-for-another also has a dual determination. It is the negation of being-in-itself and
therefore it lacks being. But at the same time the negation is not pure nothing, it is the
negation of being-in-itself that preserves being-in-itself.
Hegel makes negation penetrate the very terrain of being-in-itself. This is a determined
being equal to itself and the non-being of being-for-another; This non-being is the
negation of being-for-another, but at the same time it is the affirmation of it because it is
the non-being of being-for-another as a result of the something returning to itself from its
other being or as a moment prior to being another and passing into another. Being-for-
another is transferred to the interior of being-in-itself.
The something is thus made up of two moments: being-in-itself and being-for-another;
and each moment has its other in itself: being-in-itself to being-for-another, and being-
for-another to being-in-itself.
Being-in-itself and being-for-others are different. The something is being-in-itself: it is in
itself when, leaving being-for-another, it has returned to itself. The something has a
determination that is external to it: it is being-for-another.
Being-in-itself and being-for-another are identical: the something is in itself what it is for
another.
The something is the identity and unity of the different. It is the contradiction fully
installed in the sphere of being.
Hegel has shown the following development of the category of the something:
1st.- The something is an entity, the substratum of the transition from one quality to
another.
2nd.- The something is the unity of two different moments in quality: the determined
being and the other being.
3rd.- The something is the unity of two different moments in the determined being: being-
in-itself and being-for-another.
4th.- The something is the unity of two different moments in being-in-itself: the in-itself
and the in-it which is being-for-another installed within being-in-itself.
In each of these steps Hegel has gone deeper and deeper into the core of the
contradictions of being. This category is a more complete reflection of objectivity and its
specification is greater than that of the preceding categories.
With this category, Hegel has intent to retain the object that in the becoming existed by
disappearing. The something is what is preserved in its being other and pass to another;
it is the substratum of the changes.
In the last determination studied by him, the something is being-in-itself that has in-itself
and in-it as moments (being-for-another).

42
The quality began as the absolute affirmation, without any relation to his denial, which
was only something added to it by extrinsic reflection. In the superior determination to
which the something has arrived, the quality is constituted by the being-in-itself that has
as its moments the in-itself (being-in-itself) and the in it (being-for-another), it is that is,
being and non-being in an indissoluble unity within a determined moment of being, or in
other words, non-being existing under the form of the being.

b) Determination (destination), constitution and term.

In the way of the greater determination of the logical-dialectical categories, Hegel has
arrived to the something as being-in-itself. Being-in-itself is constituted by two moments:
the in-itself and the in-it. The in-itself is the being-in-itself that is preserved in its
involvement with another; The in-it is the being-for-another of the being-in-itself, that is,
the being-in-itself in its relation to another. The in-itself and the in-it are the two
moments of a contradiction that exists in the depths of the determined being, the being-
in-itself, and that is the engine of its movement. The in-it is being-for-another, the
moment of being-in-itself that is in relation to the other of the something and that is the
other within the something. The in-itself is the moment in which the being-in-itself
withdraws from its relationship with another and returns to itself, it becomes equal to
itself.
The in-it negates the in-itself and through it incorporates the other into the
something. Being-in-itself through in-it, being-for-another, is in relation to the other of
something and incorporates it into itself; he has the other in himself and becomes
another.
In turn, the in-itself denies the in-it and reaffirms itself as equal to itself, which is
only a moment that becomes its opposite, the in-it, which relates to the other and makes
it its own.
The quality reappears here, but in a higher form. At first it was the motionless,
negationless quality of the object. In this part of Hegel's Logic, the quality is being-in-
itself, that is, the quality that is in relation to another and that incorporates the other in
itself, that is, that is the other of itself. Now the quality is the living contradiction; in itself
it has its being and non-being and its existence is the movement between both extremes.
But non-being is here being-other; the movement therefore results in internalizing the
other in the something. In this way, the quality is a replenishment, that is, the process by
which its other is and also becomes its moment. The quality that is being-in-itself formed
by its two moments, the in-itself and the in-it, is the destination of the something. Its
replenishment, as we have already seen, is making its other its own.
Hegel goes to the example of what is the destination of man. Following his reasoning,
we immediately present a scheme that at the same time pretends to be a summary of the
entire transit process from the quality in its original form to the quality as it has resulted
in the category of destination.

HUMAN BEING

Quality Negation

Be determined. Non-being of the thinking

being.
Thought. Disappear like
Faculty of producing universal. be
thoughtful.

Something Other

A determined being.

43
An entity

Thought in itself Extrinsic External nature

Faculty of producing universals

Something Other Extrinsic External nature

Be
determined.
Thought in Naturalness and
itself. Facul- sensitivity
of producing of human
universals beings
which is
based on
nature
and sensitivity
.

Two moments of the something

1. Something

Be
determined.
Being-in-itself Being-for-another External
nature
Thought in Naturalness and
itself. Facul- sensitivity
ty of producing of human being
universals as a connection
which is with external
based on nature
naturalness
and sensitivity
what is in
connection with
nature
abroad.

Two moments of being determined

of the something

Something [quality in a higher form; destination]

Be in itself
In-itself In-it
Thought Thought External nature
In itself concrete by
Faculty of which the
think like a human being
means of mentally
appropriate appropriates

44
nature external nature.
abroad. Is the another
inside and under
the form of
the something.

CONTRADICTION

Two moments of being-in-itself

of the determined being of something.
Their dialectical relationship is
the filling of the quality.

The destination category (quality in its higher form) is richer in content than the
previous Hegelian categories and its correspondence with the object is also greater.
The destination is the quality that has itself and its other as moments and that exists
becoming its other that is itself and thus incorporating the exterior other into its interior.
Quality as a destination is primarily a power that is put into action through its other
in order to relate to and make the external other one's own.
The object fulfills its destination (that is to say, converts what is mere potentiality
into an act) when it has made the external other totally its own.
The something has been preserved in its non-existence, its nature has gone from
potency to act and it has fully incorporated the other into itself: the something is the
other of itself.
Immediately Hegel studies the process by which something ceases to be that
something and becomes another.
2.- Destination and constitution.
Being-in-itself is made up of two moments, the in-itself and the in-it.
The destination of the something is being-in-itself in its double existence; it is the
quality that is itself its other.
The filling in is the process by which the being-in-itself is related through the in-it
with the other of the something and makes it its own.
The in-it is divided into two: it is the destination, that is, the other inside the in-itself
of the something, and it is the constitution, that is, the other outside the in-itself of the
something that is in relation to the something exterior and that it is the exterior existence
of something.
By its constitution, the something is in a multitude of external relations.
Destination and constitution are different.
What changes in the something thanks to the filling is its unstable surface, its
constitution, which becomes its other; its destination remains unchanged. The something
is conserved in change.
Destination and constitution are the same. The determination (quality) is the unit of
destination and constitution.
Both are identical and become each other. The destination is the unity of the in-itself
and of the moment of the in-it that is the other within it; the in-it, at a different moment,
is also the other, but outside of the in-itself, it is being-for-another within being-in-itself,
it is the constitution of the something. The other is the qualitative difference, the negative
of something, another existence. The other is brought through the constitution (of the in-
it) to the very core of the in-itself. The destination becomes constitution. The destination,
reduced to constitution, is also subject to change; with the change in the constitution
(destination) the something also changes.
The constitution is being-for-another within being-in-itself; Taken to its extreme, the
constitution becomes the other in himself and the other of himself; Since the other is also
something, the constitution becomes a quality that its other has in itself, that is, a
destination. The constitution becomes destination.

45
 By transforming the constitution into destination, the change in the something
results in another something.
Through speculation Hegel has discovered that the negation is found in the very
heart of the object, in the being-in-itself of the something; the something is the unity of
the in-itself and the in-it, that is, of itself and its other; this unit is the destination of
something and fills it by integrating the other outside into its interior; the integration of
the other in something first affects its constitution (the unstable surface of the something)
and then its destination, giving rise to the change of the being-in-itself of the something,
the transformation of something into another. The change that leads the something to its
other is being-within-itself. Now the something has the other inside and is changing to be
another.
This Hegelian category of being-within-itself reflects the innermost nature of the
object's being.
Being-in-itself was the something that was preserved in change. When completing its
destination (when passing from potency to act) the something changed, but only its
constitution, its alterable surface, while its being-in-itself was preserved in that change.
The being-within-itself is the something that has its other within itself and that is in the
process of change to become another. Movement, change, contradiction are discovered at
the heart of the something.
The something has the other in itself as a movement of integration of the other
outside and is in the process of change to be another. The something is now again a
determined being, but no longer as a something that has its other outside of itself, but
rather has it in itself; it is a being-within-itself [enclosed in itself]. The something is, as at
the beginning, exterior to the other somethings; but this new indifference with respect to
the other somethings is not immediate as before, but is mediated by the elimination
(negation) of the external being-other and the interiorization of the other in the something
as a moment of its own.
In the beginning of analysis, the something and the other were extrinsic; each one
was the negation of the other, the non-being of the other; the something had its other
outside of itself. By going deeper into the consideration of the object, speculation
discovers that the something is a relationship with another, an other in itself, the
integration of the other to itself and the transformation into another. This something rich
in determinations, extrinsic to the other somethings that have the same nature, that is to
say that are others in themselves, this being-within-itself is now the object of speculative
thought.
So far Hegel led us to consider the relation of the something to its other.
In this part he will study the relationship of the something with other somethings.
The something, as being-within-itself, is at the same time the incorporation of the
other into its interior, that is, the negation of being-in-itself and the elimination of the
other outside, the negation of being other, the negation of the denial that is the
restoration of being itself.
The something as being-within-itself is the negation of being-other, the non-being of
being other, the cessation of the other in it; in turn, the other as something that is a being
within itself, is the negation of being-other, the non-being of being-other and the
cessation of the other in it. Each of them, something and other, as being-within-itself, is
the term of the other.

3.- Being-for-another.

Hegel has entered the study of the object in relation to other objects with similar
characteristics. But here we are dealing with objects full of determinations; they are units
in tension of being and non-being, of being one and being another, of being one and
passing into another.

46
 The being-within-itself has two aspects: it is the link between the something and the
other because by denying the being-in-itself it introduces the other into the something;
and it is the separation of the something and the other because it is the negation of the
other external to the something.
In this second aspect in which being-within-itself is the separation of something and
other, the term of the other in the something (where the other ceases, ceases to be), Hegel
calls being-by-another that is the negation of being-for-another.
The something as being-for-another is the non-being of the other, the terminus of the
other, where the other ceases to be; since the other is also a something, the something
that is the term of the other is also the term of the something, the non-being of the
something. Consequently, the something as being-by-another, as a term, is the non-being
of the something in general.
Since the term is the being-by-other of something, the something exists as term; this
is the being of something; the term is the non-being of the other and the non-being of the
other is the being-by-other of something, the being of something. That is why something
as a term is the being of something in general.
The term is then what the something is, its quality.
The term is both the being and the non-being of something.
The term is the means through which the something and the other (as something)
exist and do not exist.
The something exists as a term of the other (it is the being where the other ceases to
be), and outside of the term, that is, outside of the other, which is where it ends or ceases
to be something.
The other as something also exists as a term and outside of the term.
The something and the other exist outside of each other and outside of the term; the
term is the non-being of each one, the other of both.
The two somethings, the something and the other something [two material points, for
example] are two things that have the same nature, but remain isolated from each other;
their only relationship is that in which one be where the other ceases to be, one is the
term of the other, and they exist each outside of its term.
This relationship expresses the simple existence of something and the other, there is
no difference between the two, both are the same, they exist side by side without any
relationship. But something and other are also different: the other as a term is the non-
being of something. Among the different there is a unity; the something is united to the
other, to their non-being and their common unity is the term; the something continues in
its other, in its non-being, it expresses the other as its being and transfers itself to it. (The
material point is continued at another point and forms the line.)
The something exists both outside the term and in the term, and its existence
consists in becoming a superior unit, in a something formed by terms, each of which is
the being and the non-being of that something.
The something has an internal contradiction that leads it outside of itself to form a
superior unit with the other somethings that have the same nature (terms). The result is a
something that is the unity of the somethings as terms.
Hegel uses the example of the point and the line, the line and the surface, and the
surface and the body.
The point is not only the end of the line: it is also its principle (absolute beginning)
and its element. The line has its existence only in the point as terminus; that is to say,
that the point of the line is the end of the other in the line and, therefore, where the line
begins to exist. The line and the point as exist and end are the negative of each other
[being and non-being]. The point is also the non-being of the line because it is the point
where the other begins. The line separates from itself at the point as its non-being; it
expresses the point as its being and transfers itself into it; the line is a succession of
points in which each one of them is the being and the non-being of the same.
The line is not only the end of the surface, it is also its principle and its element.

47
 Hegel closes here a whole wide circle of his speculative path to reveal the laws of
objectivity. In a first approximation, he had captured the object as the subject of
becoming, that is, in its transition from coming-to-be to ceases-to-be, without any other
determination. Dissatisfied with the poverty of these concepts, Hegel advances in the
study of the object taking it at the moment of its existence, that is, between the extremes
of being, coming-to-be and dying. The object has a quality, it is a determined being; This
determined being is the unity of itself and its other, the incorporation of the other into its
being and the passing into another. The object is a unit in tension and in movement of
opposite determinations that leads to a change in its constitution and with it in its
nature; the something is transformed into another something. But the subject of the
changes remains the same object. This object thus considered as the unity of its quality
and its negation is in a superior unity with the other objects of its own nature of which
they are terms, that is, its being and its non-being.
The object, which is the unity of various objects of the same nature (which are the
living contradiction) and which contains them as terms, this superior something that
encompasses the many somethings, is what Hegel now places at the center of his
lucubrations.
The first thing that Hegel exposes is the dialectic of the transit of this object towards
ceasing-to-be, that is, its finite character. With this he returns to the starting point, but
with a great wealth of content: the object that comes to an end, that ceases to exist, is no
longer the object without any determination, but the one that constitutes the unity of the
many similar objects that are contradictory in themselves.

c) Finitude.

The something has its limit in quality; that is to say that the something is not beyond
that limit. In this sense, the limit is the negation of the something, where the non-being of
the something begins. The something and its negation, that is, its immanent limit,
constitute the being within itself, the being where the change in the constitution that is
change in the something is produced; within the limits of something, its becoming occurs
in itself. The limit, the negation of something as being within itself, is the finitude that is
being within the limit and non-being outside of it.
But finitude is also the non-being of things. It is not only the change of something,
but its ceasing to be.
This second form of finitude is also immanent to being-within-itself. The something
has the germ of its ceasing-to-be in its being-within-itself; the dialectic of the latter
consists in walking towards its end.
Finitude as it has been exposed here, that is to say, that which leaves nothing of
being and which appears as irreducibly opposed to infinity, is called by Hegel the finitude
of the intellect; as a concept it is powerless to continue the study of the laws of objectivity.
Indeed, the being-within-itself, in its becoming, suddenly disappears and with it the
object of knowledge. All the previous hard work to reflect the object of consciousness as
perfectly as possible turns out to be fruitless because the object has simply ceased to be,
it has disappeared.
Hegel, not satisfied with this result, continues to investigate what happens when
everything indicates that the something has vanished.

d) The limit and ought.

Being-within-itself had two aspects for Hegel: one by which it was the link of the
other with the something and another by means of which it constituted the separation of
the something and the other.

48
 The second of the aspects was developed until arriving at the discovery of the
relationship of the somethings as terms of a superior unit.
In the first aspect, being-within-itself, which is the link of something with the other
because it has the other within it, is the term of itself. The term being-within-itself also
has two meanings: it is the border before which the something exists and changes, and it
is the limit of something's existence, where something ceases to exist, the ceasing-to-be of
something.
The being-within-itself has primarily as its moments being-in-itself and the term, that
is, the destination and the constitution of something. The term is the negation of being-
in-itself, a change in the constitution that is a change in destination. The something
ceasing-to-be and becomes another something.
However, in this determination the relationship between the something and the other
that follows to it is casual, accidental. The unilateral action of exteriority on the
something has only been developed through its constitution; the destination has been
abandoned to his influence and remains passive in the relationship. The sense of change
is completely arbitrary.
Hegel had said in the introduction that one of the tasks of speculation was to
discover necessity in the thing itself. In accordance with this, in the incessant change of
something into another, it reveals its intrinsic necessity.
The constitution of the something, that is to say, its alterable surface that is subject
to external influence and which is what first changes, is the term of the destination of the
something; it is both the border within which it is contained and the limit of its existence.
The constitution as a term denies the destination of the something, makes it ceasing-to-be
giving way to another destination that is the same as another something. But the
destination is at the same time the negation of the term; the destination is both what is
and what is not, but ought to be. By being denied by the term what the destination of
something is, that is, when something ceasing-to-be, it gives rise to what it is not but
ought to be. The change of something into another now has the character of necessity
demanded by Hegel since the other is immanent in the destination of the something as its
non-being that it ought to be.
Insofar as the term is opposed to the destination as a unit of what is and what is not
but should be, it is limit. The destination that opposes its term and overcomes it by
passing from its being to its non-being is the ought to be.
Finitude as the mere disappearance of something and the casual appearance of
another something is superseded by a higher concept. The something has its limit and is
therefore denied by it; in this way it ceases to be, it perishes, its destination is finished;
but at the same time the something has an ought to be and this negates the limit by
making another something emerge from the something that has ceasing-to-be, but not
just any other something, but the one that was already found in the very destination of
the previous something as its non-being which it should necessarily become. The ought to
be, by denying the limit and becoming being, also becomes a limit and as such leads to
the ceasing-to-be of the new something. The limit and the should be are identical, both are
finite.
Ought to be and limit are different. The limit is the denial of the ought to be; that is to
say, it also leads to the ceasing-to-be of the new something that arises from the
completion of the previous something. The ought to be, for its part, is the negation of the
limit, the restoration of being after the ceasing-to-be of something; it is the ceasing-to-be of
ceasing-to-be, the ceasing-to-be of the finite, it is the infinite.
This can be taken in two senses: in one of them the dialectic between what should be
and the limit leads to the infinite succession of finites; something finite reaches the limit
and ceasing-to-be, but when it ceasing-to-be it passes into another finite which in turn
reaches the limit and so on to infinity. In the other sense, the dialectic between what
should be and the limit is based on the conservation through all the changes -of the
endless succession of finite things- of an affirmative being, equal to itself, which does not
ceasing-to-be. This is the infinite determined being.

49
 Hegel has taken in this part of his work important steps to approach objectivity. The
something, as being-within-itself, has a destination and a term: it is another in itself, it
integrates the other in itself and goes beyond the other that is itself; the something is
preserved in this change and pass to another. The something has a term, that is to say,
on the one hand a border within which it exists and that separates it from the other
exterior and on the other a moment after which it ceases to exist, it ceasing-to-be;
something is the unity of being and non-being considered as the term of its existence. The
something ceasing-to-be, but from it another something arises; This new something is
linked to the previous one by a relation of necessity; the previous something is the unity
of what is and what is not but must become; that into which the something is going to
become, the other something, is already implicit in the being of the something as its ought
to be. The succession of finite things that are coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be has as its
foundation an infinite determinate being which is the substance that is preserved through
all changes. In short, Hegel arrives at the determination of the object as a mutable and
finite something that must ceasing-to-be and be transformed into another finite thing and
that is based on an infinite substance.
The something is itself and its other, it has its other in itself and it necessarily
becomes it.
In the first instance, the finite determined being contains in itself its destination,
which is another form of the determined being itself. The movement of the determined
being consists in constituting the other that it has as its destiny. The determined being
overcomes and preserves itself in this passing from what it is to what it is destined to be.
The result is a superior nature of the same determined being, in which a new destination
is established that has to be constituted; and so on. Hegel says that in this way the filling
of the determined being is produced. The result of this evolution is the determination of
the ought to be of the determined being. The should be is the other in which the
determined being will necessarily be transformed when it ceasing-to-be, when its existence
comes to an end.
The determined being, the something, in its evolution through its destinations,
cultivates the elements of the other into which it must necessarily become. But here
everything is staged in the field of being. The necessity has the character of the reiterated
regularity of the phenomenon; The entire process by which something fatally changes into
another determined being when it ceasing-to-be is outside of this superficial knowledge.
The concept of should be is the maximum conquest of formal logic. Aristotle, in his
Metaphysics, develops this notion for the first time and around it later philosophers hover
without taking a step forward.
The determined being also has its other within itself as its essence. By becoming its
other, which is its essence, the something ceases to be and its other (the ought to be of
the sphere of being) comes into existence as a new determined being.
Hegel's doctrine of essence is the one that undertakes the task of revealing the
deepest nature of being.
The successive passage from one destination to another elevates the determined
being to a higher stage of its existence. This evolution is at the same time the procreation
of the constitutive elements of the essence, which will come into existence as a different
determined being. The movement of the destination necessarily leads to the appearance of
the essence.
Hegel immediately goes on to unravel the true relationship between the finite and the
infinite, or, in other words, between the finite determined being and the infinite
determined being that is its foundation.

C.-Infinity.

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 Being-within-itself is finite; his destiny is to ceasing-to-be and he ceasing-to-be. Its
ceasing-to-be is exceeding its limit and becoming what it is not but should be; by
exceeding its limit, it denies finiteness and is infinite.
The fate of the finite is to become infinite.
Infinity exists.
The infinite falls back into the limit, into the finite; the finite denies the infinite; the
infinite becomes finite.
The finite exists.
The finite exists and is the negation of the infinite.
The infinite exists and is the negation of the finite.
Finite and infinite exist and their existence is the passing from one to the other
through their mutual negation.
The being-within-itself is the unity of the limit and of what should be; the something,
as being-within-itself, is finite and ceasing-to-be, but it exceeds its limit and becomes
what it was not, but should be. The something is transformed into another something. In
this passing to another, the being of something is continued; the existence of the primitive
being-inside-itself is prolonged in the existence of the new being-inside-itself, that of the
latter in another new being-inside-itself and therefore also that of the first of them. By
transforming into something else, the finite being becomes an infinite being. The infinite
being of something denies finite being and rises above it. This infinite being is the
substance that remains in all the changes of being-within-itself. The infinite being, the
continuity of being, the infinite substance only exists in the passage from one something
to another.
The being-within-itself is infinite in its prolongation in another. Prolonging itself in
another means remaining within itself until its end occurs. Passing into another, which is
the infinity of being, is transformed into remaining in itself, which is its finiteness. The
finite being denies the infinite being. The infinite being is transformed into a finite being.
Hegel considers that in this first approach to the relationship between finite and
infinite one can fall into the determination of the intellect that puts one outside the other.
Indeed, here only the existence of one and the other and the need to pass from one to the
other have been expressed, but appearing as separate from each other. Hegel then deems
it necessary to delve into the analysis of this relationship.
Finite and infinite are linked by the negation that separates them.
The finite is the term, the negation of the infinite.
The infinite is the term, the negation of the finite.
Each one of them begins where the other ends.
In the previously studied relationship, each of them existed and then became the
other; in this new relationship both coexist and are inseparable. The finite presupposes
the existence of the finite.
The being-within-itself is continued in the other and is the continuation of another,
so that its being is thus infinite, substance; it is infinite insofar as it ceases to be finite,
but after being the continuation of the other and before continuing in the other it remains
in itself and its being is therefore finite; it is finite as soon as it ceases to be infinite. The
being-within-itself, the something, is the unity of the infinite and the finite. The infinite
being posits the finite being; finite being presupposes [posits] infinite being; both coexist
in the something. This coexistence occurs, however, only within the limits of something,
when it passes into being or ceases to be. The unity between infinite and finite occurs not
before or after the appearance or disappearance of somethings, but during their
appearance and disappearance.
Hegel is still not satisfied with the determinations of the finite and the infinite that he
has arrived at and he intends to penetrate further into the rich content of this
relationship.
The relationship of infinite and finite taken to its ultimate consequences results in
the following: each of them contains its other as its own moment; each of them is the
unity of both.

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 The infinite has in itself the finite; the infinite is being-in-itself and the finite is the
determination, the term. The infinite has its opposite in itself, it is an infinite turned
finite.
At the point at which the unraveling of the relationship had arrived, at the limits of
the something the finite and the infinite coexist. Being-within-itself is infinite insofar as it
becomes another, that is, insofar as it ceases to be finite; the being-within-itself is finite
insofar as it becomes other, insofar as it ceases to be infinite.
The being-within-itself is infinite in the limit because it is itself an infinite substance.
This infinite substance is the same being that remains within the limit. The infinite
substance is the unity of the infinite and the finite, of passing into another and of
remaining within itself. The infinity, the being that is preserved by passing something to
another, the infinite substance, is the same being that remains within the limit, it is the
finite being. Passing into another is how being subsists and subsists precisely in a finite
being. The being that is perpetuated in the somethings, the infinite being, is the unity of
itself and its opposite.
The infinite being, the substance, does not exist otherwise than as a finite being.
The being within itself becomes infinite in the limit because as a being that is within
itself, as a finite being, it is an infinite substance. The finite is the unity of itself and its
opposite.
Here the relationship is still lacking in mobility; it is necessary to apply speculation to
it in order to reflect in thought all its internal dialectic.
For speculation (that is, for Hegel, speculative philosopher) the infinite is the unity of
the infinite and the finite, but a unity in which the infinite negates itself through the term
that it contains within; in this way the infinite is transformed into the finite; this is the
simple negation. The finite is negated by the infinite and the latter posits itself again; It is
the negation of negation; it is the affirmation that arises from the double negation, the
return to itself of the infinite.
The finite is the unity of the finite and the infinite; the finite negates itself and
becomes infinite, it is the simple negation. The infinite is negated by the finite and the
latter posits itself again, it is the negation of the negation; it is the affirmation that arises
from the double negation, it is the return to itself of the finite.
The finite and the infinite are the movement back to itself through its own negation.
The infinite substance that is being-within-itself is the unity of the infinite and the
finite; this infinite substance negates itself and exists as a finite being; In the limit of
finite being, the infinite substance that exists as a finite being negates its own negation
and exists as an infinite being.
The finite being that is being-within-itself is the unity of the finite and the infinite;
this finite being negates itself in the limit through the infinite substance and then exists
as an infinite being; Before and after the limit, the finite being that exists as infinite
negates its own negation and exists as a finite being.
This very rich determination of the relationship between infinite and finite that Hegel
has arrived at can still fall into the same error of the intellect due to the double result that
is obtained from this double beginning: to consider the finite as the here and the infinite
as the beyond, separated from each other.
The possibility of this relapse is eliminated if it is first considered that infinite
progress can begin with either finite or infinite and that in the result both are negated as
finite and therefore both are the infinite.
If infinite progress begins with the infinite, which is the unity of the infinite and the
finite, then the finite exists as a moment of the infinite.
If, on the contrary, it begins with the finite, which is the unity of the finite and the
infinite, the infinite is like a moment of the finite.
Both finite and infinite, as units of each with its opposite, are moments of infinite
progress. Since they pass from one to the other (the finite becomes infinite and the infinite
becomes finite), then both have a term, both are finite.

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 Furthermore, both are negated in the infinite progress and, therefore, their finiteness
is also negated, and this negation of both is infinity. Both are infinite.
In the infinite progression, infinite and finite are finite and equally are infinite.
In this way, the most complete determination of the relationship between infinite and
finite and the concept of true infinity are reached
The infinite is the process where he is only one of its determinations (the infinite)
against the other and in this way he is only one of the finites; but it is at the same time
the elimination of this difference of self with respect to oneself to arrive at the affirmation
of oneself, that is to say, it is at the same time the two determinations (infinite and finite)
and through the latter it negates itself becoming in a finite that is infinite because it is the
negation of the finiteness of the infinite. This is true infinity.
The true infinity is essentially as becoming. It is not the beyond; the infinite is the
determined being; exists here, present, actual.
Hegel's purpose in trying to elucidate the relations between finite and infinite was to
determine the nature of the infinite being that arose from the ceaseless passage from one
finite being to another.
The infinite substance exists by opposition to the finite at the limit of being-within-
itself; and it exists in this separation because at the same time it exists in unity with the
finite within the limits of being-within-itself where it negates itself through the finite, that
is, where it exists in the form of the be finite; but by existing in the form of finite being, by
denying itself through it, it affirms itself because it is precisely it that exists in finite
being.
Being-within-itself is infinite being, the infinite substance which, at the same time, is
finite being, negates and affirms itself in this existing in finite being and substantiativize
itself as infinite being in opposition to be finite; all these are moments of infinite being,
which is thus a becoming in which they find themselves successively and simultaneously.
This infinite being Hegel calls being-for-itself and it is the one that he goes on to study in
the next chapter.
With all this, Hegel has taken a long step further in his original purpose of
representing objectivity in thought. In the previous instances of his argument, the
something was a determined entity that constituted the support of all the changes:
incorporating the other within himself, being the other of himself and becoming his other;
the something was preserved through all this movement. However, the something had
been taken in its existence between the extremes of its becoming, that is, between its
coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be; after all, the something at a given moment succumbed
and ceased to be. Here Hegel sharply penetrates objective reality and discovers that this
something that ceasing-to-be is the unity of what is and what should be and that its
ceasing-to-be is the necessary transition to another predetermined something, that the
something fatally transforms into another something. The something, which is already by
its destiny another something, continues its being in the something into which it is
transformed; this means that something is, in addition to being finite, a being that
remains; this being that is conserved in all changes is the infinite substance, which
contains the most general properties of the determined being and exists under the form of
the finite being with its specific properties.
The profundity of Hegel's thought consists in the fact that he does not conceive of
infinite substance as existing by itself with its determined properties and then springing
from it or existing alongside it and separate the specific forms of finitude. On the
contrary, Hegel comes to the conclusion that the finite being of the something is at the
same time the infinite substance and this equally is the finite being, and that the infinite
substance negates and affirms itself in its existence as finite being; In other words, that
being with its particular properties is at the same time being with its general properties
and vice versa, and that being with its general properties denies and affirms itself in its
existence as being with its particular properties.
Here Hegel comes to the conclusion that the true infinity is reality, what really exists.
In the same way, they are reality: the concept, the spirit, god, etc.

53
 Hegel warns us by telling us that this category of reality is misused because an
abstract concept that corresponds to a situation that is also more abstract such as that of
a finite being (which was said to be the only reality) is applied to something more concrete
such as true infinity.
However, this category is used in this case for the following reasons:
Since the true infinite is the affirmative against the negation (this is finite being) and
this negation here has the character of the negation of the negation (in the true infinite
the infinite negates itself through the finite and at the same time affirms itself through the
negation of the finite; in the same way in the true infinite the finite negates itself through
the infinite and then negates its negation and returns to itself; that is why the finite is in
the true infinite negation of the negation) then the existence of the true infinite is opposed
to that of the finite being.
This opposition is the denial of the reality of the finite being which is here
destination, etc., but only as a moment.
As the negation of the finite being that is the negation of the negation, the true
infinity is now the existing reality.
The negation of the negation that is finite being, to which the affirmation of true
infinite being is opposed, is ideality.
The negation of the negation that is the finite being in the infinite true being is a
reduction of the same to an infinite substance; but since being continues to exist as finite,
its reduction to an infinite substance is only a mental operation, an idea.
The finite being is ideal.
The true infinity is reality; the finite being in its existence as such is not real; its
reality exists only insofar as it is an infinite substance; therefore, its real existence, its
reality is only ideal, that is, it is only the result of a mental operation, an idea, by which
its particular characteristics are reduced to the general properties of the true infinite
being.
At this point Hegel introduces the bases of the mystification of his philosophy. Up to
this point he had walked smoothly along the path of objectivity: the something is the finite
being that ceasing-to-be and gives rise to another finite being, another something; the
something is reality, the existent; in the passage from one something to another, being
continues, so there is a being that subsists all changes; this being is the infinite being,
the infinite substance that is now the reality, the true existence that does not perish. To
approach objectivity Hegel now has to study the nature and laws of that infinite being
which he has arrived at in his analysis.
In the study of the true infinite he had established the objectivity of the infinite and
the finite; the infinite exists by denying itself in the finite and returning to itself precisely
in the same finite; the existence of both is concomitant, simultaneous in the finite being.
The general properties of being exist only in the particular characteristics.
But in his reasoning, Hegel had to establish the infinite being as what really exists
and, in return, deny the reality of the existence of the finite being. That is, to point out
that the existence of the finite being as such is not of the nature of the infinite being;
however, finite being is also infinite substance. But since the finite is not infinite
substance directly but through finite being, then its reduction to infinite being, to infinite
substance, to reality, is carried out by means of a mental operation and its result is an
idea, the idea of infinite substance; And here is the mystical transmutation!: the finite
being as such is real and as an infinite being it is ideal, the product of a thought, thought
itself.
Here we find the foundation of the well-known Hegelian thesis that the essence of
things is thought, the idea. This is the point at which Hegel lost his way to objectivity.
From now on we will have to differentiate between the rational nucleus of his philosophy
and its mystical envelope, which will no longer be separated.
Hegel completes this point that we are studying by saying that the opposition
between finite and infinite is also conceived in relation to ideality and reality in the
following way: the finite is valid for the real and the infinite for the ideal. In this way of

54
considering ideality and reality, one falls into the one-sidedness of the abstract negative
(which denied and made being disappear) which is part of the false infinite and persists in
the affirmative existence of the finite.
In the next chapter Hegel will go on to analyze the nature and laws of the infinite
being which he calls "being-for-itself".

Third chapter

Being for itself

A. BEING-FOR-SELF AS SUCH

For Hegel, being-for-itself is fulfilled qualitative being, that is, the superior form of
quality in being, infinite being.
He then makes a summary account of the phases through which the concept of being
has passed before arriving at being-for-itself. First it was the being devoid of
determination, then the determined being that was the unity in the difference of
immediate being and negation (non-being). This determined being and its simple negation
constituted the sphere of difference, of dualism, of infinity; being was immediately
implicated with its other: being-in-itself with being-for-another, the destination with the
term, the ought to be with the limit, and so on. In being-for-itself, on the contrary,
negation is equal to being (it is not different from it); As being for itself is the negation of
the negation, this negation is the being that refers to itself; here negation is being. This
being thus determined is the absolute being determined.
The being-for-itself as an infinite being, as a determined being, is the being that has
eliminated its other being, its relationship and community with another and that has
established the relationship with itself.
Already in previous pages we had the opportunity to consider how Hegel approaches
objectivity through the development of his concepts of Logic. The something is the being-
in-itself that is other, incorporates the other in itself, transforms into another and is
preserved in this becoming; the something is the being-within-itself because it has
become independent from the other outside by taking the other inside; the something as
being-within-itself is the unity of what is and what is not but must become; the
something perishes and gives rise to another something; the being of the something is
continued in the being of the other something; the being that continues in the somethings
that are coming-to-be and perish is the infinite being.
In his study of being, Hegel has first observed what happens on its surface, finding
the law of its movement that we already expressed in the previous paragraph; but this
knowledge comes up against the fact that once the finite being ceases to be, the being
continues in another finite being and that therefore there is another level of being that is
the one that underlies the one that appears on the surface and that this being it is an
infinite substance subject to all the changes that occur. This infinite being, this absolute
determined being is what he now takes as the object of study; His purpose is to discover
the laws of his movement as he established those of the finite being. It is worth
remembering that what Hegel has submitted to analysis is being and that the essence
does not yet appear on its horizon, which is the deepest level of the object.
As examples of being-for-itself, Hegel presents that of consciousness and self-
consciousness. Consciousness, he says, already contains in itself the determination of
being-for-itself. Consciousness represents an external object; This representation is ideal,
its result is an idea; consciousness has its other in itself but as surpassed, as eliminated
because in that representation it preserves itself as consciousness. His other, however,
continues to have an existence outside of the subject. Self-awareness is being fulfilled and

55
placed for oneself, the closest example to infinity. Self-consciousness is the self-certainty
of consciousness: its object is not exterior but consciousness itself; self-awareness has
completely eliminated being other, it is only and exclusively being-for-itself.
In the immediate past, Hegel arrived at the determination of objectivity as an infinite
being, as an infinite substance. And it was here precisely where he introduced the
mystification by considering the finite being, in its relationship with the infinite being, as
a mere idea, as a thought.
He now goes a step further by considering self-consciousness, which is only finite
human consciousness, as the infinite substance. The mechanism through which this
transubstantiation is carried out is elementary: since the infinite being manifests itself
directly as such in the finite being and to apprehend it we have to resort to a mental
operation, thought, and then we must represent this infinite being through means of
thoughts, then that infinite being is the thoughts that represent it, that is, consciousness,
and it is the being that represents them, that is, self-consciousness.
In this way, being-for-itself, although it is reality because it is the being that persists,
is also ideality.
Here Hegel has made a rude supplantation: all the previous analysis of him deals
with the development of being and by means of it determines the laws of its movement;
when it comes to the determination of the infinity of being, it is evaded from it and
gracefully adjudicated to consciousness, that is, to what is only a form or modality of
being, the finite conscious being. This responds to his intention to give thought, which is
the ultimate result of the evolution of matter, the character of a pre-existing substance
that is even the ultimate nature of being.
The rational nucleus, it must not be forgotten, is the determination of being as an
infinite substance, as an absolute determined being; mystification is the consideration of
the nature of this infinite being as thought, as ideality.

a) Determined being and being-for-itself.

b) Being for one.

The problem that Hegel poses here is that of the relationship between finite
determined being and infinite determined being. How can infinite being, being-for-itself,
contain determination? Hegel's answer is in the sense that the infinite being is ideal
[consciousness, spirit, God] and that its essential faculty is to ideally represent
determined, finite beings; therefore, the determination is contained in the infinite being
[consciousness, spirit, God] as representation, as idea. The infinite being and the finite
being are united only in ideality: the one is the consciousness that incorporates
determination as a representation, as an idea. This implies two considerations: (a) that
infinite being is only consciousness, which is a specific form of being, and not being in
general (that is, only consciousness, which is a specific form of movement of matter and
not matter in general) and (b) that being is not in itself, independently of consciousness,
the indissoluble unity of the finite and the infinite, of determination and infinity.
Being in general (material being, if we express ourselves in another way) has an
infinite determination; this means that it possesses a series of general and fundamental
determinations that contain within it its other as its essence, that is to say, the finite
determinations that spring from those, they preserve them in themselves and return to
them in an infinite cycle. The finite determined being arises from the infinite determined
being; The finite determined being is the unity of finite determinations and infinite
determinations; the determined finite being returns to the bosom of the infinite being
where the finite determinations are dissolved in the infinite determinations (or more
general: the compound is dissolved in the substances that form it, the substances in their
elements, the elements in their atoms, the atoms in their particles, etc.)

56
 Being is the only subject of this movement from the infinite to the finite and from the
finite to the infinite.
The infinite being contains within itself, like its other, in germ, consciousness; in a
certain phase of its evolution, that is, of its passage to finitude, it generates from its
bosom the conscious being as a determined finite being (the human species, e. g.);
consciousness is then nothing but the finite conscious determined being; at the end of its
life process, the conscious being dissolves into its elemental components and
consciousness returns to being only a possibility of the infinite being.
Here Hegel's gross inversion comes into view:
(1) For him the infinite being, which contains consciousness only as a possibility, is
fully developed consciousness.
(2) On the contrary, the consciousness of the determined finite being, which is also
finite by necessity, is considered by Hegel as an infinite being, as the infinite being par
excellence.
The mechanism by which Hegel makes this transposition is elementary: all things are
finite, mutable, elusive, they are and are not at the same time, etc.; this finitude is
absolute, the being does not have in itself anything permanent, eternal, infinite; human
consciousness ideally represents finite things; the idea is the only thing that remains
invariable in the face of the mutability and finiteness of things; consequently, the idea is
infinite; Likewise, human consciousness, as a producer of ideas, that is, of infinite beings,
is the infinite being par excellence; In order for a finite consciousness such as human
consciousness to have the finite character, the existence of an infinite supra-human
consciousness (the idea, the spirit) of which human consciousness is a form of
manifestation is postulated.
It is important to note how Hegel makes a somersault here when in the analysis of
being he has untimely introduced consciousness.
The first thing that Hegel investigates is the relationship between being-for-itself and
determined being.
Being-for-itself exists in the form of immediate determined being; the negation of the
negation that it is exists in the form of a simple, immediate negation. Being-for-itself and
determined being are the same.
Being-for-itself, however, is different from determined being: determined being is
finite being and being-for-itself is infinite being.
But the truth of determined being is only a moment of being for itself. (See all the
previous development about finitude and infinity).
As distinct from being-for-itself, determined being was, as we have seen, an other,
being-for-another; as a moment of being-for-itself it eliminates its being other and its
being-for-another and is then being-for-one.
Determined being is only a moment in the infinite return to itself of being-for-itself
(infinite being, infinite substance); At this moment, the determined being is, as a finite
being, another being, a being-for-another, but as a manifestation of being-for-itself, as an
infinite substance in a modality of its existence, it is being-for-one. that is to say,
exclusive of the other, of finitude.
Hegel still moves in the field of determined being as it appears in existence; through it
he has to reach what is the substratum of it, the infinite substance; as a "piece", allow us
such a barbarous expression, of such an infinite substance, the determined being is a
being that has eliminated the other, finitude. Here, then, the infinite substance is still
considered through the determined, existent being; its existence is mediated by that of the
finite being.
The moment of being-for-one expresses how the determined, finite being is in unity
with the infinite being, that is, as an ideal.
This means, in Hegel's language, that the infinite substance, substratum of
determined being, becomes evident to the subject by an act of thought, starting precisely
from determined being; In this way, the relationship between the determined being and
the being-for-itself is an idea, a thought. In its rational nucleus, this means that the

57
determined being is formed by a substance (matter) that is the substratum of all the
changes that occur in existence.
Once Hegel arrives at the infinite substance through the determined being, he
definitively settles in it and undertakes the task of knowing its structure and its peculiar
laws (structure of matter).
From this theoretical consideration, the determined being has been eliminated and
the being-for-itself, the infinite substance, remains as the only subject of knowledge.
In this sense, the infinite substance is the one for which being determined as a
moment of being-for-itself is, the one that has eliminated its other.
Being-for-itself is the one, that is, the infinite substance as existing, immediate being.
Hegel also attributes to the one the character of an ideal. The infinite substance as an
immediately existent being can only be apprehended by an act of thought; the substance
is represented by thoughts; then, who thinks and thoughts are the substance: this is also
ideality.
What Hegel has posited, albeit in an idealistic way, is the existence, up to now, of two
levels of objectivity: the field of finitude, of the immediately existent determined being, and
that of infinity, of the infinite being that also has an immediate existence. Behind the
birth and death of finite beings (the laws of whose movement have been unraveled in all of
the above) is found existing in them, also immediately, the infinite substance (matter) and
its structure is now the object of study from Hegel. The macrocosm and the microcosm
are populated by determined finite beings and these are made up of an infinite substance
that has an elemental structure that is characterized by its immutability; such is the
atomic structure of matter. The atom is the unit of existence of matter both in the macro
and in the microcosm.
Being-for-one and being-one are ideal moments of the ideal substance that is being-
for-itself; but being for itself is also the highest reality hitherto attained: ideality is reality
and reality ideality. Here Hegel definitively completes the inversion that he has begun in
previous passages: thought, the idea is the "nous" of the infinite substance; reality, the
infinite substance as an immediate existent is idea, thought.
In another part of his logic, in one of his notes, Hegel had said that all philosophy
was necessarily idealistic because there was not one that did not start from the
declaration of the absolute non-existence of the finite being, from its ideality; Now,
regarding the ideality that is at the same time the reality of being-for-one, being-one and
being-for-itself, he makes what he calls the critique of idealism.
On the Eleatics Being or the Spinoza's Substance, he says that they are the abstract
negation of all determination; Hegel's critique is based on the fact that ideality is not
placed in this negation. This means that neither the Eleatics nor Spinoza consider the
finite being as a form of existence of the infinite substance, a form that is denied and
preserved at the same time, but as an existence completely separated from the infinite
substance that is an absolutely alien being to the determination, immobile.
Hegel says of Malebranche that his idealism is no deeper than that of Spinoza; God
as ideality is the infinite substance: he contains in himself both the eternal truths, the
ideas of all things, and the sensations of finite things; however, things do not have a real
existence, only ideal in God. In summary, for Malebranche the infinite substance contains
both the infinite being and the determination, in what differs from Spinoza and the
Eleatics, but this determination is merely internal, without external reality. Hegel
comments that Malebranche's idealism lacks the logical concept of infinity, that is,
considering determined being as an existing moment of infinite substance.
For Leibnizian idealism the infinite substance is formed by monads that are the
atoms of nature and the elements of things; these monads are representative, that is to
say, they inside ideally represent what exists, but apart from that there is no relationship
between the being-for-itself that is the monad and the finite determined being; according
to Hegel, representing oneself is a concrete determination but it has no other meaning
than ideality; this means that Leibniz does not establish the existence of determined being
as a moment of infinite being.

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 Finally, from the idealism of Kant and Fichte Hegel expresses that it does not go
beyond what should be or infinite progress; by which he means that this idealism remains
in the constant passage from one something to another something without arriving
through this movement at the concept of being that endures, of infinite being. This
idealism is maintained in the separation of the determined being and the being-for-itself.

c) The one.

In order to arrive at the consideration of being-for-itself as an object of knowledge,

Hegel took as a starting point being determined in its character as a moment of being-for-
itself; being-for-one is precisely that determined being that is the moment of being-for-
itself; being-for-itself is the unity of itself and its moment, being-for-one.
The determined being as being-for-one is the determined being that has eliminated its
relationship with another, its finitude; it is, therefore, as we said above, only a "piece" of
infinite substance, of matter.

The one for which determined being is being-for-itself, infinite being.

The one is the infinite substance (matter with its atomic structure) that exists
immediately as a substratum of the determined being.
The one is the existing substratum of the finite world; therefore, it contains, as
moments, all the determinations of the sphere of finitude: the something and its negation
that is the other, being-in-itself and its negation that is the term, the ought to be and the
limit.
In this part of his work Hegel emphasizes the indissoluble relationship between
infinite substance and its general properties and finite being. Here precisely lies the
difference between Hegel's philosophy and the previous idealist philosophers (the Eleatics,
Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Fichte and Kant). For Hegel, the determined finite being is
not only ideal, but also has reality, exists and exists as a moment of being-for-itself, of
infinite being. This is the rational core. However, Hegelian metaphysics also penetrates
here: since the infinite being is, as we have already seen, a thinking subject and thought,
the finite world is the turning of the idea into reality, it is the product of the idea in a
phase of its development, a moment of it.

B.- THE ONE AND THE MANY

a. The one in its own self

b. The one and the void

Hegel started from determined being to arrive at being-for-itself, infinite being;

Through the mediation of the finite being, and through an act of thought, Hegel becomes
aware of the existence of an infinite substance that here is just a thought and the result
of thought, a hypothesis. Being determined and being infinite are eminently ideal, mere
thoughts. The infinite being is ideal and the moments of the determined being are ideal
moments of its own.
Already installed in what thought has revealed to him, infinite being, Hegel considers
it as what it really is, that is, not a thought, not something ideal, but something existent,
real, immediate; its moments, that is, the determinations of finitude, are also existent.
Ideality becomes reality.
The being-for-itself, the infinite substance is, therefore, real, existent.
In this transition from being determined to being infinite we see Hegel's method very
clearly. Since what the subject has before him is determined, finite, changeable being, his
first approximation to infinite being is a deduction; hence, then, the finite being as a
moment of the infinite substance and the latter itself are, in this first approximation of

59
the subject, thought, hypothesis, idea; however, Hegel does not express it that way but in
a mystical way: for him ideality is not a reflection of reality in the subject but reality itself
in a phase of his development. The determined finite being has become infinite by itself
and in that transmutation it has become idea, thought.
Subsequently, the subject is faced with the infinite substance as an object of
knowledge: it is no longer a mere hypothesis, but an existing reality. The subject then
abandons the field of ideality, of thought as mere deduction and prepares to analyze that
living reality that he has before him. Hegel, our mystic, presents this as if the ideal object
now turned into a real object.
Hegel's mystical circle is complete: real being becomes ideal being; the ideal being is
transformed into the real being. The mystification is reinforced when Hegel himself says,
regarding true infinity, that a closer example of it is self-consciousness, that is, the
consciousness of consciousness, thought.
The infinite being and its moments are therefore immediately existent.
The immediate infinite being that is the one, that is, that being that is not determined
by any other, that is the infinite reference to itself, the elimination of its other, this infinite
substance is made up of multiple units.
It is the nature of these that Hegel now sets out to examine.
The one exists and is the negation of all the determinations of the determined (finite)
being: therefore, it is not capable of becoming any other, it is immutable.
The one is determined in itself, not through another; it is an absolute determined
being.
The one as a determined infinite being is an existent; the one is the finite non-being,
the nothing; the nothing in this determination is the void; the one is identical to the void.
The one is emptiness; but the one is existent and the void is precisely the immediate
non-existence; the one and the void are diverse.
The void as different from the existing one is found outside of it; the one and the void,
as moments of being for itself, separate from their unity and become exterior.
Separating one from the other, they have a separate existence: the determination of
being is lowered to a one-sided situation, to the existence and determination of non-being,
negation in general, is also existent, nothingness and emptiness existent.
The one and the void are the same, both exist in a single being; the one and the void
are different for what they constitute in moments of being-for-itself; the one and the void
separate, become exterior and the one exists outside of the void and vice versa.
The element of infinite substance is the atom; This structure of the determined being
has specific characteristics. By definition, as an element of being that remains through all
changes, it is immutable. The various chemical elements are made up of atoms; the atom
in turn is made up of moving particles that give it an intense internal life and are the
basis of its relations with the outside.
It is undeniable that there was a cosmic process (on our cosmic island), lost in
infinite time, by which atoms were formed from sub-atomic particles, and it is also
indisputable that there must be a process in the infinite distance of time opposite by
which matter with an atomic structure dissolves into its elementary particles; In the same
way, it is true that in nature there are processes by which the atoms of certain chemical
elements break up into the particles that compose them, and it is equally true that
certain interactions between atoms are carried out through sub-atomic particles.
But all this does not contradict the fact that the atom as such is the elementary unit
of being that subsists changes; the atomic structure is the one that serves as the
foundation for all the transformations that take place in the determined finite being and
the sub-atomic particles come out of the atom and return to the atom, which have no
meaning or efficacy by themselves, but in their relationship with the atomic structure; in
the sense of all these considerations, the atom is immutable.
The one or the atom has an immediate existence; as infinite being it is the non-being
of finite determined being. In this way, it is the finite non-being, the nothingness, which
in this determination is the void.

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 The finite determined being has its non-being as being another, integrating another
into its being, passing into another and, finally, as perishing, ceasing to be. But as long
as finite being exists it excludes non-being as nothing from itself; it is, so to speak, a "full"
being. The element of the infinite determined being, the one, the atom, has non-being as
nothing in itself, it is an empty being.
The atom is formed by infinitesimally small particles and by an empty space, its
constituent, in which they act and move. The being of the atom is made up of both the
sub-atomic particles and the vacuum in which they develop; the being of the atom is the
unity of being and the void: the atom is identical to the void.
If, continuing Hegel's line of thought, we wanted to go further in this determination,
we would have to establish the nature of sub-atomic particles. These would also be made
up of smaller particles acting in a space integrated with the sub-atomic particle; that is to
say, that its being would also be the void.
Being and emptiness exist, they are moments of the one, of the atom. The atom exists
successively and simultaneously as its particles and the void; the existence of the atom is
the interaction between the particles and the void (what modern physics calls "fields"),
between being and nothingness in this more concrete determination. The void is the
negativity that determines being. Hegel discovered, nearly 200 years earlier, what our
modern physicists are just beginning to glimpse in their theories of the structure of
matter.
The one and the void are different; by virtue of this they separate and remain exterior;
the atom exists next to the void which is the non-existence of the atom. The infinite
determinate being, the infinite substance, is formed by atoms that act and move in a
vacuum. The void as an external non-being of the atom exists and is also in interaction
with it, it is the negativity that determines it.
Hegel has penetrated still further into the realm of objectivity. After the being that
perishes, he has found the infinite being and now undertakes the task of unveiling its
structure. The infinite being is a substance formed by immutable elementary units
(atoms) (in the sense that we determined in previous lines) that are a concrete unit of
being and nothingness (this has here the determination of the void). The being of the one,
that is, of the atom, is the void; the being of the void is the one.
When Hegel began the development of his logic, he started from the two empty
abstractions that previous philosophy had reached: absolute being and absolute
nothingness. He declared them false, non-objective, and showed that both only made
sense in the becoming of being, which was the unity and difference of being and
nothingness; but here being and nothingness still showed themselves to be external to
each other: nothingness was the nature of being only as destiny; nothingness was non-
being, the ceasing to be of being.
In the analysis of the structure of the infinite substance, Hegel reveals that in its
elemental unity, in the one, being is immediately and directly nothing and that nothing is
immediately and directly being; the nothingness of being is not only its being-other or its
destiny, but its own actual, immediate nature. The depth of Hegel's thought will be shown
to us in a more evident way if we take into consideration that it is only now, almost 200
years away, when our physicists begin to discover that identity between being and
nothing, forced by the fact that as they penetrate deeper and deeper into the microcosm,
what they believe they have trapped as a material particle escapes their hands as a "field"
and vice versa.

c.- Many ones. Repulsion.

Being-for-itself (infinite substance) is the unity of the moments of the one and the
void.

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 The one and the void have negation as their determination; the one is the non-being
of determined being and the void is the non-being of determined non-being. As such
denials, they are related to each other in an extrinsic way.
The one does not only refer to the void as something external; the self is in him the
void. The one refers negatively to itself: the one as emptiness negates the one as such.
In this negation, however, both the one as such and the one as emptiness have an
affirmative existence; that is, the negation leaves them still separated from each other in
the same one.
The one as such refers negatively to itself; the one as such negates itself through the
one as void; in this negation the one pushes himself outside himself to become another.
This other is also a one, this in turn leads to another one and so on. The infinite
substance, being for itself, is made up of multiple ones immersed in the void that repel
themselves.
By pushing outside of himself, by repelling himself by virtue of the internal dialectic
of his negativity (as emptiness he negates himself as one in-itself), the one establishes a
relationship with the other ones, prolongs his being in them (the "engenders", says Hegel),
becomes other ones, becomes other ones.
Here Hegel establishes the nature of the infinite substance: it is made up of a
multitude of ones that are units of being and nothingness and that are related to each
other in such a way that the being of one is continued in the other and vice versa. The
ones are not isolated elements closed in on themselves, but units in an intimate
relationship, so intimate that in reality the other is nothing more than the continuation of
the one, part of its being. Hegel says that this relationship by which the one rejects
himself and continues in another one is not the same as the one studied with regard to
the finite determined being, where the relationship with the other is the being of the other
in itself and the become another; In this higher relationship, the one has the other
outside of himself and does not incorporate him into himself or transforms into him, but
engenders him from himself as a continuity of himself.
Hegel calls this relationship of multiple one’s repulsion in itself to differentiate it from
the other repulsion that exists between ones.
The ones reject themselves outside of themselves and produce the other ones.
This simply means that the being of the one is prolonged in the being of another one.
But this continuation in the other is premised on self-repulsion, that is, the separation
from the other in which it continues. The repulsion of oneself is transformed into the
repulsion with respect to others; the latter is external repulsion.
Thus considered, the multiple ones repel each other; they are units of the infinite
substance that prolong their being one in the other but that they do so through their
mutual repulsion. The being-other, the prolongation of the being of the one in the other,
is not realized as an incorporation or extension of the being of the other to the one, but as
a reciprocal action of the ones through the void.
By repelling each other, their nature as such is once again highlighted, that is, closed
in on themselves, without any external relationship.
Each one has an infinite reference to himself.
But as we have already seen, this infinite reference to oneself is a rejection of oneself
and a producing one another; in this way the infiniteness come out of itself through of the
one and establishes an infinite multiplicity of ones that repels each other.
At this point Hegel has gone one step further in the unraveling of being-for-itself, that
is, of infinite substance. He has come to the conclusion that the infinite substance is
constituted by a plurality of ones that at the same time are in an infinite relationship with
themselves by which they remain immutable (in the sense that we established in previous
pages) and through the void (their non-being) and by that same relationship with
themselves, now negative, prolongs their being in an infinite multiplicity of ones that repel
each other while remaining external to each other.
The plurality of ones is infinity as contradiction.

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 C. REPULSION AND ATTRACTION.

a) The exclusion of the one.

b) The only one of the attraction.

c) The relationship between repulsion and attraction.

The infinite substance is formed by a multiplicity of ones; these are a unity of the one
as such and of the void. The ones are separated from each other and maintain a mutual
relationship. The ones prolong their existence in the other ones and at the same time are
a prolongation of the existence of those.
By existing in connection with the other ones, by prolonging its being in them, the
one preserves itself as such; but by maintaining itself as one in itself, it separates from
the others, it repels them from itself; This is the repulsion of some, which is produced
through the extension of the being of some in others.
The one exists in itself, separated from the other ones; but at the same time it is the
continuation of the being of the others. As an extension of the being of the others in him,
the one attracts them to himself; this is the attraction of the ones that is realized by
means of their separation.
Repulsion is the exclusion of some that occurs through the continuation of the being
of some in others; This existence of one in the other that excludes each other is
attraction. Therefore, repulsion becomes attraction, the latter is a moment of the former,
and the repulsion is itself an attraction.
The attraction is the continuation of the being of one in the other through their
mutual exclusion; this exclusion is the repulsion of the ones. Consequently, the attraction
turns into repulsion, this is a moment of the first and the attraction is the other of itself
in itself, it is the repulsion.
The ones are the unity of attraction and repulsion.
With this Hegel goes further into the unveiling of the laws of objectivity. The being is
formed by an infinite substance (matter) that at the same time is integrated by a plurality
of units (atoms) that exist separately and in mutual connection, extending its being
outside of itself and constituting the prolongation of the being of the others, but
preserving its own being.
Hegel has here revealed the nature of the infinite substance that remains after the
changes of the finite determinate being. This infinite substance is formed by a plurality of
immutable units (in the sense that was seen in the development of this point) of being
and of the void that exist in the void, rejecting from itself, repelling and attracting each
other.
Our author had begun his investigation with the finite determined being; he found
that this was a coming-to-be, a being-other, an integrating the other into oneself, a
passing into another (conserving in this change the being of something) and, finally, a
perishing, a ceasing-to-be of the something. But after the ceasing-to-be of something
arose, from its own elements, another new being. There is then a substance that remains
and that is what Hegel has made the object of his inquisitions in all this part of his work.
Already installed in this new field of reality, Hegel prepares to clarify the laws that
govern the infinite substance that he first determined as composed of a plurality of units;
it is a question of establishing the nature of the one and the plurality, the regularities of
the relations of the one with the one, of the one with the plurality, of the plurality with the
one and of the plurality with the plurality; all this in order to understand how the finite
determined being is produced from the evolution of the infinite substance.
This work of speculation occurs in the field of being; In the period between its birth
and its death, the object has two levels of existence: as a finite determined being (whose

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nature was already elucidated in the chapter referring to determined being or existence)
and as an infinite determined being, as an infinite substance, which began to be
considered from the chapter referring to being-in-itself and which will continue to be
analyzed by Hegel in the following chapters of his work.
Speculation, however, is not satisfied with the result he has achieved; Although he
knows perfectly well that the new being proceeds from the previous one and that it is
nothing but a manifestation of the infinite substance, he is absolutely unaware of how the
new being is gestated within the previous one and how its birth takes place.
In a significant step forward in his task of faithfully reflecting objectivity, Hegel delves
into the object and discovers its essence, that is, the being into which it will necessarily
become, and the process through which the essence (that is, the new being) arises into
existence, into the already known terrain of finite determined being and infinite
determined being.

Second section

Magnitude (quantity)

Hegel has reached the conclusion that behind the determined finite being there is an
infinite substance that is the substratum of all changes.
The infinite substance is formed by a plurality of immutable units (atoms) of being
and the void that exist in the void, repel themselves, continue in and are the continuation
of the others, deny and preserve each other through of their repulsion and attraction.
The unity of the infinite substance, the one, is the infinite determined being.
In what follows, Hegel tries to clarify the laws that govern the infinite substance by
establishing the nature of the one and the plurality, the regularity of the relations of the
one with the one, of the one with the plurality, of the plurality with the one and of the
plurality with the plurality. He tries to understand how the finite determined being arises
from the infinite substance.

Difference between quantity and quality.

Quality is the first, immediate determination.
Quantity is the determination indifferent to being; term that at the same time is not
such; being-for-oneself absolutely identical to being-for-another; repulsion that is at the
same time attraction.
What exists-for-itself does not exclude its other, but rather continues in it;
-what exists-for itself is the being-other insofar as in this continuity existing presents
to itself;
-determination is no longer a simple relationship with itself, immediate of the existing
being;
-the determination is posited as a rejection of itself in order to have in another
existence the reference to itself as determination.
The existents-for-itself are at the same time [that is, at the same time that they
continue in the other] as indifferent terms, reflected in themselves, devoid of relation;
-the determination is outside of itself, it is something extrinsic to itself;
-this term which is the indifference in itself of the existent for itself and of the other
[as existent for itself] constitutes the quantitative determination of being-for-itself.

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 First chapter.

Magnitude (Quantity)

A.- THE PURE QUANTITY.

Quantity is being-for-itself eliminated.

The repellent one [who denied the excluded one] refers to the repelled other as
himself.
The repellent one transits towards attraction.
The attraction is found in quantity as the moment of continuity.
Continuity is a reference to itself, simple, equal to itself, not interrupted by any term
or by any exclusion;
-It is not immediate unity, but unity of the ones existing for-itself. [That is, mediated
by reference to self through reference to another.]
In continuity the reciprocal exteriority of multiplicity is still contained, but at the
same time as an uninterrupted indistinct.
[Continuity is the unity of multiple equal ones.]
The multiplicity is the many equal, they are one as the other is; It is simple equality
devoid of difference.
But continuity is the moment of equality with itself of being-one-outside-of-the-other,
that is, the continuity of the different ones in their different from them.
The attraction is immediately its opposite, that is, the repulsion.
Continuity [which is attraction as a moment of quantity], being the continuity of the
different, is at the same time discontinuity. [Repulsion as another moment of quantity.]
The magnitude has immediately in the continuity the moment of discontinuity
(Diskretion);
-stability is the equality with itself of the multiple that does not exclude [that is,
without repulsion];
-repulsion extends equality with oneself to continuity;
-discontinuity is a confluent discontinuity whose ones are related to their stability
and do not interrupt this equality with itself in the multiple.
Quantity is the unit of moments of continuity and discontinuity.
-this unit is in the form of one of the moments, in that of continuity.
Quantity contains its moments as being-for-itself as it truly is:
-being-for-itself is referring to itself by eliminating itself, that is, the perpetual going-
out-of-itself; self-repulsion;
-the repulsion of being-for-itself is the going out of itself by generating itself;
-since what is rejected is himself, then he continues in what he rejects, it is an
uninterrupted continuity;
-because he goes outside of himself, this continuity, without being interrupted, is at
the same time multiplicity, which immediately remains in its equality with itself.

B.- CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE MAGNITUDE.

1.- Quantity contains the two moments of continuity and discontinuity.

-It is their immediate unity that is placed in one of its determinations, in continuity,
thus being a continuous magnitude.
-Continuity is the unity of the discontinuous; thus it is no longer just a moment, but
the entire quantity, the continuous magnitude.

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 2.- The quantity has to be placed in the determination that is immanent to it, the
one. The quantity is the discontinuous magnitude. Quantity is a being one outside of the
other in itself;
-the continuous magnitude is this being-one-outside-of-the-other insofar as it
continues itself without negation, as a connection equal to itself;
-discontinuous magnitude is this being one outside the other as not continuous but
as interrupted;
-the discontinuity of the discontinuous magnitude is continuity;
This continuity consists in the fact that the ones are mutually equal, that they have
the same unity, that they are the multiple of a unit.

C.- QUANTITY LIMITATION.

The discontinuous magnitude:

-has one for principle;
-is a multiplicity of ones;
-is constant [is continuous];
-is the one as eliminated;
-is the one as unity;
-It is the continuity of the ones in the discontinuity.
Therefore, the discontinuous magnitude:
-it is set as a magnitude;
-its determination is the one thing
-which is an exclusive, a term in the unit.
The discontinuous magnitude:
-it is like an existence and something;
-whose determination is the one;
-is first negation and term.
The term;
-refers to the unit;
-is its negation in this one;
-it refers to itself;
-Therefore, it is a limited and comprehensive term.
The term is immediately an existing something, a one and the negation of it.
The being that is limited by the term is as essentiality by what goes beyond the term
and this one and is indifferent to them.
The real discontinuous quantity is thus a quantity or a quantum, that is, the
quantity as an existence and a something.
The one, as a term, comprehending in itself the many ones of the discontinuous
quantity, posits them at the same time as eliminated in it;
-is a term in continuity in general as such; it is indifferent to the continuous and
discontinuous magnitude;
-is a term in the continuity of both one and the other; both go beyond to be quanta.

Second chapter.

Quantum

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 A.- NUMBER

B.- EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE QUANTUM

The infinite substance is formed by a multiplicity of units that repel each other and
continue in the others (atoms); those units repel and attract each other. Its repulsion is at
the same time attraction and vice versa.
The infinite substance insofar as it is a constant flow of some that repel each other
and engender in others (matter in general) is called by Hegel "pure quantity"; the ones of
the infinite substance insofar as they repel each other are the "discrete magnitude" and
insofar as they attract each other they are the "continuous magnitude"; the ones of the
infinite substance form a "continuum" of some that repel each other and continue in
others that are discrete and continuous at the same time.
But these ones have a determination, they are somethings (for example, they are not
only atoms, but they are also Hydrogen atoms, they are an element) and with this
character they form a multiplicity. This multiplicity has the one determined by principle,
element and term. The one is term, it is it and its negation; the multiplicity is formed by
ones that are terms. The one as a term is called by Hegel "quantum". The multiplicity is
only a determined amount of ones that are terms (they are somethings, absolute
determined beings); the quantum as one with a term is a number and as the multiplicity
is another number determined by the first. The quantum is a number and has as its
moments the unit (the quantum that is the one with a term) and the amount (the
quantum that is the multiplicity of the ones). From the indeterminate infinite substance
(pure quantity), Hegel has advanced to the quantitative determination of the multiplicity
of determined ones (e. g. a concentration of 50 Hydrogen atoms). The quantum as one
with a term has a certain quantity, it is a something. But also that quantum has a quality
as a member of the multiplicity of somethings; that quality thus determined is the degree.
The degree is the quality that the one has as the nth term of a multiplicity of ones.
The amount as a multiplicity of determined ones is the extensive magnitude; Unity as the
nth term of a multiplicity is the intensive magnitude. The extensive magnitude, in addition
to being a determined multiplicity of quanta, has a specific quality derived from the
number of quanta that form it (e. g. the specific properties that a concentration of 50
Hydrogen atoms would have.)
The quantum that has resulted here is a plurality with a determined quality that is
an amount (quantum) of units (quanta) that have a specific quality. The quantum is
exponent (quality of plurality), unit and amount.
The quantum that is a determined unit is finite; it is within a limit.
The amount is a plurality of units that reject each other and continue in the others. It
is the false infinity, the infinite progression that has infinity as its non-being, as
something external.
The infinite quantum is the plurality with a determined quality that contains within
its limits the infinity of the quantum. It is the exponent of the relation of two quanta (unit
and amount).

C.- QUANTITATIVE INFINITY

The quantum as degree has its determination outside of itself.

This being outside of itself is the abstract non-being of the quantum in general, the
bad infinity.
This non-being is also a magnitude.
The quantum continues in its non-being, since it has its determination in that
exteriority.
This exteriority of the quantum is also a quantum.
The non-being of the quantum, the infinity, is finished.

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 The beyond is eliminated and determined itself as a quantum.
The quantum is found in its negation situated in itself.
The infinite is not beyond a quantum, but in the quantum itself.
Infinite progress is found in the quantum itself.
Infinite progress in its abstract determinations is presented as follows:
-it is in it to eliminate itself from the quantum (negation) (go beyond the quantum).
-and also eliminate itself from the beyond the quantum (negation of the negation)
(returning to the quantum).
The truth of infinite progress consists in the unity of these determinations where they
meet as moments.
The unity of these determinations is the solution of the contradiction and its closest
meaning is the restoration of the concept of magnitude.
The quantum is the negation of the quality. [quanta immediate]
Infinite progress is the negation of the quantum.
The true infinity is the negation of the negation of the quantum, the restoration of the
quantum, but in a new form: the quantum according to its concept. It is quality
restoration.
In the quantum according to its concept:
-exteriority is now the opposite of itself by being-posited as a moment of magnitude;
-through the mediation of its non-being, that is, of infinity, it has its determination in
another quantum;
-has returned to quality, is qualitatively determined.
The quantum that has returned to quality is being-for-itself, since the relationship
with itself has arisen from mediation, that is, from the negation of the negation.
The quantum has the infiniteness, being-determined-by-itself, no longer outside of it,
but in itself.
Infinity is nothing other than quality.
The quantum is the eliminated quality.
What comes out of itself is the negation of itself, it is infinite; it is the restoration of
the denied quality.
Exteriority, which appeared as a beyond, is determined as the very moment of the
quantum.
The quantum finds itself rejected from itself.
There are two quanta [quantum finite, which is the negation of quality, and quantum
infinite, which is the negation of the negation] that, however, are eliminated and exist only
as moments of a single unity; This unit is the determination of the quantum.
The finite quantum is negated by the infinite quantum; this in turn is negated by the
finite quantum; both negations are moments of a unit that is the determination of the
quantum.
The quantum referred to itself [infinite quantum that eliminates the finite quantum
and finite quantum that eliminates the infinite quantum] in its exteriority as an
indifferent term and with this term put in a qualitative way, is the quantitative relation.
In this relation, the quantum is exterior to itself, different from itself;
-this exteriority of it is the relation of a quantum with another quantum;
-each of these quanta only has value in this relationship of it with its other;
-This relationship constitutes the determination of the quantum, which exists as
such a unit.

Third chapter

68
 Ratio or the quantitative relation

A. THE DIRECT RATIO

B.- THE INVERSE RATIO

C. THE RATIO OF POWERS.

The relationship between the unit and the amount in the exponent, when, for
example, it comes to the combination of two elements, can be direct, inverse and
potential.
In the direct relationship the quality of plurality is a determined and fixed one. The
quanta of amount and unit vary in the same sense. In the inverse relationship, the quality
of the plurality is determined and fixed, and so is its quantity. But the quanta of the
amount and the unit vary in the inverse sense.
In the potential relation the quality of the plurality is absolutely variable. The amount
and the unit are also variable. To each quantity of the amount and the unit corresponds a
quality.
The determined infinite substance (e. g. any material element: oxygen, hydrogen,
etc.), has a quality that derives from the quantity of the concentrated elements. This
quality is the exponent of the relationship between the unit and the amount of such
elements. The unit has a finite character; the amount that forms these units is the
gathering of quanta that flee from itself other in an infinite progression; the exponent goes
back to the quantum of that flight from itself and internalizes it within the limits that this
quality is. The quantum that is unit, amount and exponent is the infinite quantum. The
infinite is therefore actual, it is here, within the limits of the quality that is finite. The
quality is the infinite. The quality of plurality can also be the quality of the combination of
two determined infinite substances (hydrogen atoms, e. g.).
This combination can be a direct relationship between both elements (a fixed ratio in
which they are changed, always resulting in the same quality), or escalate to a more
complicated relationship, the inverse relationship (where both are combined inversely in
different proportions but within the limits of a fixed quantity that is also a determined
quality); or, finally, it can be the most complex relationship that is the potential
relationship (the one in which the quantities in which the elements are combined vary
and each variation in any direction corresponds to a different quality).
Hegel has entered into the determination of the nature of infinite substance. At this
level that he has reached, he finds the infinite substance formed first by atoms, then by
atoms with a specific quality, somethings, determined infinite beings, later by
concentrations of atoms that have their own quality and, finally, by combinations of
atoms of different qualities in substances also with a quality. This quality surpasses and
preserves the primitive quality from which it started and therefore reflects objectivity in a
more complete way, that is, the dialectical unity of the two levels of existence of the
determined finite being.
The infinite quantum is, in the last form of relationship between the elements,
directly quality. Quantity is quality.
Hegel began his study by taking quality abstracted from quantity; Subsequently, he
submits the infinite substance to analysis as an indeterminate substance, as a pure
quantity and finally he arrives at the unifying truth of the finite quantum that contains
infinity within it and that is directly a quality.
Hegel has done the following:
1) he has established the quality; he has denied it. Quality becomes quantity.
2) he has established the amount; he has denied it. Quantity becomes quality.
Hegel says that this double transfer is very important for the scientific method. This
means that the analysis of the object must begin by establishing the laws of quality itself,

69
then move on to those that pertain to it as an infinite substance and finally carry out the
synthesis of the two to arrive at the richest reflection of objectivity which is the quality
that the determinations of the infinite substance and of the finite determined being have
in themselves.
Of course, quantity is also a characteristic of the determined finite being abstracted
from its nature of infinite substance, as it appears on the first level of knowledge; here too
quantity is a quality. But Hegel has preferred to study this determination in the infinite
substance because here the most abstract units of being are taken into consideration, the
atoms, and, therefore, the relations of quantity (continuity, discretion, extension,
intensity, unit, amount, etc.) are more evident and easily deducible.
Hegel immediately goes on to study the most complex combinations between
substances that are forms of existence of the infinite substance.

Third Section

Measure

First chapter

Specific quantity

Qualitative quantity is above all a specific immediate quantum.

A.- THE SPECIFIC QUANTUM

B.- SPECIFYING MEASURE

C. THE BEING-FOR-ITSELF IN MEASURE

Hegel set out to unravel what is the nature of infinite substance. In the first place, he
considers it as an indeterminate substance, as a pure quantity. It is a multiplicity of units
that have a similar structure, they are atoms. These units of the infinite substance are
determined quanta, that is, they are elements, they have a certain quality. Its multiplicity
is a simple union of determined quanta, a determined number of them. The infinite
substance has been determined as a certain amount of determined quanta.
The concentration of determined quanta also has its own quality that is given by the
quantity of concentrated quanta. This quality is the exponent of the relationship between
the amount and the unit of the quantum (which are also quanta), but here it is a merely
quantitative relationship between the two. Now we find that the infinite substance is
formed by determined quanta that are the exponent of the relationship between the
amount and the unit of elemental quanta with the same quality; its quality derives from
its quantity.
The quanta that are exponents are related to each other in a certain amount and give
rise to a quality that is an exponent of that relationship in which the quanta are one the
amount and another the unit. The highest form of this relationship is the one in which
the quantity of the quanta is absolutely variable, so that the resulting quality is also
variable. Here it is emphasized that each quantity corresponds to a quality. The infinite
substance has passed from full indetermination (matter with atomic structure), from pure
quantity, to the determination of its elemental units and their multiplicity, that is, to
quantity that is quality. The infinite substance is formed by quantities that are qualities of

70
elementary units that also have a quality, in this case internal, determined by the
quantity. The infinite substance is formed by a plurality of qualitative quanta.
The qualitative quantum, the quantity that is a quality, is a measure. Everything that
exists has a measure, that is, a quality determined by quantity. That which has a
measure is something, a determined being. The measure of something has two aspects,
quantity and quality. The first does not go beyond the second, nor the latter beyond the
first; each is the limit of the other, between them they determine the measure of the
something. The measure belongs to the nature of the something; if it changes, so does the
something.
However, the quantity side of the measure of the something is subject to extrinsic
determination, being a plus or minus. Quality is a limit to this coming and going of
quantity. The quality remains unchanged, whether the quantity increases or decreases.
But if the variation of the something is carried to its extreme, then the something perishes
because the new quantity has exceeded the limits of the primitive quality. In its place a
new quality has arisen, another something. Quantitative changes produce qualitative
changes.
The infinite substance exists under the form of a plurality of somethings; the
something has a measure, that is, a quantity that is a quality; this quantity is variable;
first it increases or decreases without changing the quality, but after a point that
variation produces a change in the quality that gives rise to the ceasing-to-be of the
something. The infinite substance exists in the form of somethings, which are a measure
and are subject to quantitative changes that produce qualitative changes.
The something is a measure, a qualitative quantum; it is, on the one hand, a
quantum that can increase and decrease without altering the quality and, on the other
hand, a specific qualitative quantum that sets a limit to the increase and decrease of the
quantum. The measure of something is a rule, that is, it is used to measure a quantum
extrinsic to it, to determine in what quantitative relationship is the quality of the extrinsic
quantum with that of the one that is the rule.
The somethings in which the infinite substance manifests are related to each other;
its relations are relations of measure, relations of qualities. A first way of linking the
somethings to each other is that in which one of them is the quality (measure) that
specifies, that is, it endorses an external quality that exists as a general external
environment; the result is something with a specific quality, that is, a quality that is the
relationship of two qualities. The specific measure, the quality that is the relationship
between two qualities is the exponent of the relationship. Another form of relationship is
that which exists directly between two qualities in something; the exponent of that
relationship is the measure, the quality of something. A higher form of the relationship is
one in which the two qualities are in potential relationship and are therefore absolutely
variable. Finally, the highest form is the one that contains the two previous relationships,
the direct and the potential. The somethings that are the highest relationship between
qualities are independent material things that constitute a unit of qualities in a measure
relationship.

Second chapter

Real measure

A. THE RELATION OF INDEPENDENT MEASURES.

B.- NODAL LINE OF MEASURE RELATIONS

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 C. THE MEASURELESS

In summary, Hegel's argument is as follows:

Independent material things are units of qualities that are in relation to measures.
The real measure is the exponent of the direct relationship between two measures that
are qualities of something independent, of material things. The measures of things that
enter into a relationship are qualitative quanta; therefore, they can increase and decrease.
The direct relations between the measures of independent things are determined and
exclusive measures in themselves (affinities).
The quantitative variability of the measurements of the things that are related gives
rise to a series of relations that are a series of real measurements. The series of real
measurements is a quantitative progression, but it is also a line of knots of independent
specific relationships.
The real measurement is the exponent of the link between two somethings that are
measurements carried out (that is, which in turn are a relationship between two
qualities). It is the exponent of the interior measurements of the somethings. These
interior measurements are preserved and negated, giving rise to a new measurement in
the combination of the somethings.
The series of real measurements is the series of exponents that result from the
combination between one something and a plurality of terms of the other something that
here appears as an absolutely variable amount compared to the unit that is fixed.
The parallel series of real measures are the series of exponents that result from the
combination, on the one hand, between a something and a plurality of terms of another
something, and on the other hand, of another something and the same plurality.
The series of real measurements of real measurements is the one that is formed by
the series of exponents that results from the combination of the parallel series of real
measurements. The somethings are already the members of a series of real measures and
the combinations of members of opposite series.
Affinity is the superior relation between a member of a series of real measures and
the members of the opposite series. The exponents of the relationship are a series of real
measurements, of qualitative somethings.
The exclusive relation between a member of the series of real measures and a
member of the opposite series of real measures is elective affinity.
The members of the opposite series that enter into an exclusive relationship are also
quanta and therefore subject to quantitative variability. The quantitative variation of the
members of the series that have elective affinity occurs first without altering the quality of
the exponent of the relationship; after a certain increase or decrease in the quantity of
those there is a change in the quality of the exponent. The relations between both
members of the opposite series are on the one hand a quantitative progression (of the two
that are related) and on the other a line of knots, that is, of measurement relations, of
exponents that have different qualities.
The exponent of the relation between two independent members of opposite series
that have elective affinity is a something. The quality of the something is determined by
the quality of the two independents.
The something is subject to qualitative changes that are produced by the quantitative
changes of the independents that form it.
There is a stretch of quantitative variation within which the quality of the something
does not change. There is a point of quantitative variation at which the quality of
something changes; there is a qualitative variation, a leap from one quality to another.
The new quality or the new something is in turn subject to quantitative variation and
qualitative change and so on to infinity. The material substratum of the variation of the
something is maintained; is the combination of two determined independents.
The something has a quantitative variation determined by the quantitative changes of
the independents that form it. This variation is indifferent to the measure.

72
 The something has a qualitative variation, it goes from one quality to another and
each one of them is a specific measure, an exponent of the different quantities of the
independent ones that enter into the relationship.
The variation of the something is an alternation of specific existences with
quantitative relations, a transfer from the specific measure to the excessive and from this
to that. This transfer is the negation of specific (measured) relations by quantitative
relations as well as the negation of the latter by the former. It is the infinite existing by
itself. In it is contained the qualitative infinity, which is the incessant qualitative variation
of something, and the quantitative infinity, which is a constant increase or decrease.
The constant passage from the specific measure to the excessive and from the latter
to the former supposes the existence of a substratum that is the subject of all variations,
the material base of quantity and quality. The quality happens to have the nature of a
state of existence of that substratum. The variation is only the alteration of a state. On his
way towards the full reflection of objectivity in thought, Hegel establishes that infinite
substance exists in the form of independent material things that are units of qualities
that are in a measure relationship; They are real measurements. These material things
are related to each other; the exponent of their ratio is a higher order, more complex, real
measure; material things that enter into relationship as real measures are subject to
variability, increase and decrease; In its variation, each quantity corresponds to a quality
both in things and in the exponent of their relationship. These exponents, which are real
measurements of higher order, more complex material things, form a series of real
measurements; members of one series combine with members of another to produce a
series of exponents, of real measures containing a multitude of real measures, a
something that is a complex combination of qualities. A member of the series that is an
exponent of the relationship between two material things is combined with different
amounts of the member of another series, which here appears as absolutely variable, in a
range that is determined by the affinity [combinability] between both; each specific
relationship, which is exclusive of the others and which expresses the elective affinity
between the two, gives rise to an exponent of specific quality. The member of the series
that appears as a unit, that is, fixed, is also absolutely variable and as such is the unit
amount of the member of another series that is fixed.
Each specific relationship between the member of the series that is the unit and the
one that is the amount, is an independent relationship between two independent things;
the exponent of each specific relation is a real measure, unit of many real measures, sum
of multiple qualities.
The members of the series that are linked in the specific relationship have a range of
quantitative variability within which their quality is maintained without alteration. Within
this range, its variability produces stretches of purely quantitative variability in the
exponent that give rise to qualitative changes, followed by only quantitative changes, and
so on.
Thus Hegel arrives to unravel the superior form of existence of the infinite substance:
it is about independent material things that are a complex combination of qualities at
different levels that results in a specific measure of those; those material things are
subject to quantitative changes that, when accumulated, gives rise to a qualitative change
of their complex real measure; in turn, this qualitative change is followed by simple
quantitative changes that transfer to qualitative changes and so on ad infinitum.
Independent material things, like complex real measurements, are subject to
quantitative changes which leads into qualitative changes; its real size changes, they are
other material things that in turn suffer the aforementioned variation. In this way, the
real measure, the quality of things, is only a state of a material substratum that is the
subject of all changes; this substratum is the unity of quantity and quality, which are
only its moments.
Hegel has completed a whole cycle of his speculative work. In the analysis of the
determined being, he came to the conclusion that the something was the unity of what
should be and of the limit; the dialectic between the two was as follows: the something

73
has a limit and therefore perishes; but at the same time it has within it what it should be,
what it is not but must become; the becoming of something is overcoming the limit,
ceasing-to-be and transforming into another something, into what it should be. The
becoming of something is an infinite succession of finites. But the new something comes
from something that has perished, it is the continuation of the same under another form;
therefore, there is a being that continues through all changes, a being that does not
perish, which is the substratum of finite determined beings. This being is the infinite
determined being, the infinite substance.
In the next part of his study, which is the one we have just concluded, Hegel deals
with the unveiling of the nature of that infinite substance.
In the end, Hegel arrives at the same something from which he started, but now with
an enriched content: the quality of the something is a complex combination of qualities
that is determined by the nature of the infinite substance as such and in which the
passage of what is not to what it should be, that is, from one quality to another, it occurs
through the accumulation of quantitative changes.
The infinite substance has here also reached a much fuller determination; it has gone
from being the indeterminate substance, a mere composition of atoms, to constituting a
substance full of determinations, a substance that engenders finite determined beings.
The variation of the something was removed by Hegel from arbitrariness and he
discovered in it the necessity: the something arrives to be what it is not but should be. In
the part that concerns us, Hegel brings to light the mechanism of this change: the
something is subject to quantitative change that, when accumulated, produces qualitative
change. However, both determinations are insufficient to let us know the true nature of
the something that arises from the previous thing nor the complex process through which
this is done: they only tell us that something is regularly followed by another certain thing
and that therefore the first necessarily transforms into the second and is already the
latter by its destiny; change is a superficial quantitative accumulation that becomes
qualitative transformations. Here the relationship between the something and its other
before its emergence into existence is completely hidden. These determinations exhaust
the nature of the immediate determined being and open up the broad field of essence.

Third chapter

The becoming of the essence

A.- ABSOLUTE INDIFFERENCE

B.-INDIFFERENCE AS INVERSE REASON OF ITS FACTORS

The determined being is the material substratum that remains indifferent to the
quantitative and qualitative changes and also to the quantitative and qualitative
differences that exist in the something.
Being considered as this absolute indifference is the determined being of measure,
the whole of the determinations of being that have been dissolved in this unity. It is the
nest of all contradictions.
It is the totality where all determinations of being are contained and eliminated.
It is the foundation, but it is only in the unilateral determination of being-in-itself.
It is the contradiction of himself and his determined being, of his existing
determination in himself and of his posited determination.

74
 Indifference is a simple and infinite reference to itself, incompatible with itself, its
rejection of itself. The determining and finding itself determined by indifference is not a
passing through, nor an external variation, nor a presentation of the determinations in it,
but its own referring to itself, which is its negativity of itself and of its being-in-itself.

C.- TRANSITION INTO ESSENCE.

Determined being has become absolute indifference; it is the material substratum

that remains in the face of quantitative and qualitative determinations and quantitative
and qualitative differences. This being, which is absolute indifference, is absolutely
negative. It denies the extrinsic determinations and denies itself as a separate material
substratum of the determinations. It establishes the unity between being and
determinations, converting these into immanent determinations (interior of being) that
have their negation, their other, in being. Being determined, by denying itself, becomes
essence. The essence is the being that has denied its exteriority.
The ultimate result of Hegel's approach to objectivity has been the consideration of
the determined being as a substratum that is the subject of changes and quantitative and
qualitative differences. In this way, the determined being is a substratum that has
determination as something extrinsic; the something arises from that substratum and
returns to it when it perishes, but its determination as existent does not belong to that
substratum, which is completely indifferent to it. Speculation remains unsatisfied with
this result: the determined being, the quality, the something are another in themselves,
they are destined to be other, and they become other through the accumulation of
quantitative changes; but the nature of the other in which it becomes remains completely
subject to accidentality; the necessity in the succession of the somethings is extrinsic to
them, it is the simple verification of the regularity in the transformations. Speculation
intuits that there is a deeper necessity in the changes of the determined being, that the
nature of the other in which the something becomes exists in it as determinations that
are the negation of the determinations of the immediate being, and that the becoming of
the something is the development of its negative determinations and its emergence into
existence as something else. Speculation establishes the postulate that being is the unity
of its immediate determinations and its negative determinations, of something and of the
other into which it is transformed, of immediate being and essence. Speculation, since it
must present objectivity as the result of the development of the idea, makes all this
appear as if the concept of determined being, which is absolute indifference, denied
immediate determinations and denied itself as indifferent and acquired in this negation
the essential determination, the nature of the negative determinations that in their
becoming must give rise to the other something; it presents the essence as arising from
the concept of it. In the objective world, the determined being contains in its interior its
essence, which are the determinations of its negation and that in its movement have to
give rise to another determined being; the becoming of the determined being is its
internalization in itself, its transformation into essence and the appearance of the essence
in existence.

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 SECOND BOOK

THE DOCTRINE OF ESSENCE

First section

Essence as reflection within itself.

First chapter.

THE APPEARANCE

A. THE ESSENTIAL AND THE INESSENTIAL

B. THE APPEARANCE

C. REFLECTION

Hegel begins the study of the essence considering its understanding as a requirement
of knowledge on his way to the truth. Knowledge wants to apprehend the truth; the truth
of being is something that is behind it, it is the essence; the knowledge of it can only be
achieved starting from the immediate being itself.
This path of knowing is also the one followed by being since it becomes an essence
starting from itself.
Hegel then goes on to examine the process by which being becomes essence.
Firstly, he points out that the driving force of this transformation is the negativity
that is proper to the essence, the infinite movement of being, which he calls reflection.
Then he considers the great stages of this transmutation.
The essence develops from the being and acquires the following nature:
a) it is being-in-itself, which means that it is not immediately determined being like
the one from which it started, but that it has reached a different, specific determination of
its own, and
b) is being-for-itself because the being that characterizes it has given it to itself,
through its own negativity.
In its first stage of existence, therefore, the essence gives itself specific determinations
different from those of being; what is characteristic of these determinations is that their
being does not consist in being other by their destiny or becoming other, like the
immediate determined being, but in having the other in itself.
The determinations of the essence have a double nature; on the one hand, they are
the determinations of the existing immediate being and on the other the germ -but only
that- of the other that is to succeed it; this essence with such characteristics is for the
moment the foundation of existing immediate being, its raison d'etre.
In their character as the foundation of existing being, the determinations of the
essence develop its negative nature, confront the determinations of immediate being, drive
it out of existence and come out into it as a new determined being. At the end of the whole

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process, the essence appears in existence as a new determined being that, through
negation, replaces the previous one.
Hegel continues with the detailed examination of each of the indicated stages.
The essence develops from the being. The determinations of being have at first the
same nature; then a distinction is established between them even while preserving their
similar nature; some of those determinations are destined to be essence and others to be
preserved as determinations of being, some are the essential and others the inessential of
the determined being; both are extrinsic to each other.
Later on, a relationship between the two types of determinations is produced. The
determinations destined to be essence are reflected in themselves and negate the
determinations of being; By virtue of this denial, the determinations of being lose their
nature as immediate existents, they are non-essence, mere appearance, they only appear
to be. By this same negation the determinations of the essence acquire the nature of
being, of the true immediate being that is not only appearance.
The appearance of being of the immediate determinations of being has been produced
by the essence; therefore, the appearance is the appearance of the essence. The
appearance is the non-being produced by the essence in the movement by which it
acquires the nature of true immediate being; appearance is non-being, nothingness;
consequently, the essence is the going from nothing to nothing. By this Hegel means that
this self-reflection of the essence does not yet come to constitute the specific
determinations of the essence, but only gives it the character of true immediate being.
The reflection of the essence in itself is the placing of being in the essence; that is to
say, obtaining the nature of a true immediate existing being in opposition to appearance.
Here Hegel makes the knowing subject enter the scene. Knowing presupposes the
being that is in the essence - that is, the true immediate determined being that the
essence has arrived at in its reflection on itself; Starting from here, through extrinsic
reflection - the abstractive reflection of thought - he searches for the specific
determinations of the essence; what knowledge thus obtains is a mere hypothesis of what
they are.
Again, when the object displays its characteristics before the eyes of the speculative
philosopher, reflecting them in his brain, and everything seems to take place in the field
of full objectivity, he does not resist the temptation and strays towards the field of
mysticism: he considers that thought, which has been interspersed in the process of
becoming of being in essence, is the one that produces the passage of the essential
determinations from the state in which they are barely the true immediate being to the
point where it assumes the nature of being in and for itself.
If we put aside this mystical deviation, we find a clear and simple objective process;
the essence itself, due to the negativity that characterizes it, is the one that through
immanent reflection develops specific determinations different from those of immediate
being; these determinations are what Hegel calls the essentialities and whose nature he
will explain in the next chapter of his work.

NOTE
Being posited is related to another, but by being reflected in itself.
Being posited are the essential determinations considered as the only ones existing after the
denial of the existence of the determinations of being. They still have the form of being. At
the same time, in themselves they have their other, with whom they relate, that is, to their
being in and for itself, whose unveiling is the object of reflection.
The essential determination has its other, its negation, in itself.
Being posited is determination because reflection is equality with itself in its being-negated,
the equality with itself of determination in its foundation.
Reflexive determination has its foundation in being reflected in itself.
The negation of reflection remains as such, and in its persistence reaches even the in and
for itself of the essential determinations.
First, reflection denies the determinations of being and places being in the essence; then, it
denies being posited and establishes the in and for itself of the essential determinations.

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 The foundation of being posited is, therefore, the equality with itself of reflection, that is, the
persistence of reflection as a negation that penetrates to the essence.
Reflexive determination is being posited as negation; therefore, it is not unequal in itself,
but an essential determination that does not go beyond.
Reflexive determinations, as a product of reflection that is identical to itself -a negation that
persists until it finds the in and for itself of the essential determinations- are also equal to
themselves, which means that they do not disappear in another, but rather they remain
essential determinations.
What gives subsistence to the reflexive determination is the equality with itself of the
reflection itself, which has the negative as negative, or as eliminated or as posited.
Because of this reflection itself, the essential determinations appear:
-as free essentials,
-suspended in a vacuum,
-no reciprocal attraction or repulsion.
In this first immersion of the subject in the essence, it has been possible to establish which
of the determinations of the object are essential, that is, they remain without disappearing
in their opposite. The intimate nature of the determinations has not yet been penetrated,
only the fundamental characteristic that differentiates them from the determinations of
being has been established. Therefore, Hegel says that they appear as free essentialities,
suspended in a vacuum, without reciprocal attraction or repulsion.
In a later penetration, the subject will come to unravel the deeper nature of those
determinations.
In these essentialities the determination has been infinitely affirmed and fixed through the
relationship with itself.
Determination has submitted to itself its transfer and its pure being posited, that is, it has
subdued its reflection in another into a reflection in itself.
The essential determination does not transfer to its other; that is to say, it does not
disappear into another, but converts the transference into another in the relationship with
itself by having its other in itself. Likewise, the essential determination has turned pure
being posited into essentiality. Reflection, that is, the movement that goes from the
immediate to the essence, has ceased to be a reflection in another, that is, a reflection that
reaches an immediate other, to become a reflection in itself, which reaches the essence.
The determination of being is, so to speak, external to the object; expresses the superficial
and accidental characteristics of the object in its relation to another. The essential
determination, on the contrary, expresses the internal, deep characteristics of the object,
These determinations form the determined appearance as it is in the essence, the essential
appearance.
The essential determinations appear, before fully manifesting themselves, as free
essentialities, suspended in a vacuum, without reciprocal relationship; They are thus the
essential appearance, distinct from the appearance that sprang from the sphere of being.
Knowledge must now go to discover the most intimate nature of these essentialities to find
behind their appearance the richness of their internal movement.

Second chapter

The essentialities or determinations of reflection

A.- THE IDENTITY

B.- THE DIFFERENCE

The first step in the development of the essence is the negation of the determined
being, the declaration of its non-existence, the reputation of it as a mere appearance. This
is at the same time putting being in the essence. From here the essence begins its
development to reach the in and for itself that is the specificity of its determinations.
Reflection is determined reflection: essence is thus determined essence or
essentiality.

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 Reflection is the appearance of the essence itself.
THE ESSENCE IS THE IDENTITY. The essence is first of all a simple reference to
itself, pure IDENTITY. It is its determination that is rather lack of determination. It is
identical to itself because it has eliminated its relationship with another outside, in the
field of determined being.
THE ESSENCE IS THE DIFFERENCE because it has established in itself the other of
itself, its non-being.
Two poles are constituted: essentiality and its other (positive pole and negative pole).
In its reflection, the essence eliminates its non-being as an other external to it that
has immediate existence; in its absolute negativity it establishes non-being within the
very interior of essentiality; essentiality contains within itself the other of itself, its non-
being.
The essence is therefore the pure, absolute difference.
The difference is reflection itself; it denies itself and identity arises; identity is
reflection in itself; it negates itself and the difference arises.
The difference has the two moments of identity and difference;
-both are a posited being, a determination;
-both are reflection in itself;
-The difference, since it has two moments that are reflection in itself, is DIVERSITY.
The essence is the identity that is absolute difference that has the difference and the
identity as moments that alternate with each other.
Identity and difference are extrinsic to diversity. The poles of the essence are diverse,
that is to say, identical and different, but they are extrinsic to each other. They are
independent. There is a transfer from identity to difference and then from difference to
identity.
The diverse are indifferent one to the other; identity is denied by reflection and
identity established.
This indifference is denied and the reciprocal unity of identity and difference is
established in the form of equality and inequality where equality is itself and inequality
and inequality is itself and equality. Identity and difference enter into a relationship in
which each one is himself and the other, that is, they enter into OPPOSITION.
The poles in which the essence has been constituted are identical; reflection itself
denies that identity and gives way to difference.
The poles are different; reflection itself denies difference and gives way to identity.
The moments of identity and difference are diverse.
The essence is the identity that is absolute difference that has the difference and the
identity as moments that alternate with each other.
Identity and difference are extrinsic to diversity. The poles of the essence are diverse,
that is to say, identical and different, but they are extrinsic to each other. They are
independent. There is a transfer from identity to difference and then from difference to
identity.
The diverse are indifferent one to the other; identity is denied by reflection and
identity established.
This indifference is denied and the reciprocal unity of identity and difference is
established in the form of equality and inequality where equality is itself and inequality
and inequality is itself and equality. Identity and difference enter into a relationship in
which each one is himself and the other, that is, they enter into opposition.
The opposition contains the positive in and for itself and the negative in and for itself.
Each of the poles of the essence is himself and the other. The poles enter into
opposition.
The equality that inequality has in itself is the positive. The inequality that has in
itself equality is the negative. It is determined opposition.
The poles are determined as positive and negative. The positive and the negative have
the nature of being posited, that is, of being determined. They are not yet the positive in
itself nor the negative in itself.

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 The posited being of the positive and the negative is negated (overcome) and the
positive and the negative become negative in themselves and positive in themselves. The
positive contains in itself the negative and this in turn contains in itself the positive.
The opposition is further determined: the positive pole contains the negative in itself
and precisely for this reason it is such a positive pole; the negative pole contains the
positive pole in itself and that is the reason why it is such a negative pole. They are the
positive and the negative by themselves.
The essence advances towards a deeper determination: the positive in and for itself is
indifferent and independent of the negative in and for itself, it excludes it from itself
because it has it in itself; the negative in and for itself is indifferent independent of the
positive in and for itself, it excludes it from itself because it has it in itself.
The poles of the essence come into contradiction.

C.- THE CONTRADICTION

The contradiction of the poles consists in the fact that they form a unit in which they
are independent of each other and exclude each other because each one contains the
other within itself.
The positive pole is the absolute contradiction. By putting identity with himself
through the exclusion of the negative, he makes himself negative. By excluding the
negative, it remains free and is also exclusive. The negative excludes the positive; it puts
it as its other that excludes it. Therefore, he sires it as his other.
The negative pole is the absolute contradiction. The negative excludes the positive and
makes itself positive. By excluding the positive, it is independent and excludes the
negative from itself. By excluding the negative, it places it as its other that excludes it.
Therefore, he sires it as his other.
The absolute contradiction of the negative is at the same time the absolute
contradiction of the positive.
The essence is absolute contradiction. It is the unity of the independent poles where
they are mutually exclusive because each one has the other in itself and becomes the
other of itself. In this mutual exclusion they engender each other as their exterior other.
The contradiction between the positive and negative poles is absolute because each of
them, in addition to containing its opposite inside, constantly becomes it and in this way
its independence from the other is reinforced. By excluding each other, they engender
each other as two absolutely independent poles.
The essence is the solved contradiction. By excluding each other and engendering
their other outside of themselves through their own conversion in its other, the positive
and negative poles eliminate themselves, each one transfers itself to its opposite. Each
eliminates itself and engenders itself in its other. This is the solved contradiction: in their
mutual exclusion the poles are engendered like others; but at the same time, in that
mutual exclusion that is an engendering as others, they engender themselves in their
other.
The absolute contradiction is solved because by excluding the poles as absolutely
independent they engender themselves in their opposite. Independence is exchanged in
their mutual complementation.

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 The immediate determined being, whose first two levels of existence we have already
studied, enters into itself and becomes essence. The essence is, in this phase, the third
level of existence of the determined being, although one of its poles is already the germ of
the other determined being into which it has to become; the three levels run parallel, the
first two engendering the third and this in turn engendering those. Being determined as
essence is divided into two poles; First of all, these two poles are diverse and extrinsic: at
one moment they are identical and different at the other. Later each pole integrates the
other into it; it is itself and its other. Immediately, the opposition is determined: one pole
is positive and the other is negative. The positive pole is the original quality of the
something and the negative pole is the opposite quality that negates the first but within
the limits of the terrain of determined being; however, this pole is destined to become an
element of the. The opposition is further determined: the positive pole contains the
negative in itself and that is why it is such a positive pole; the negative pole contains the
positive pole in itself and that is why it is such a negative pole. The opposition becomes a
contradiction: each pole contains the other inside and therefore they are independent in
their unity, they are mutually exclusive, they are contrary. The contradiction between the
positive and negative poles is absolute because each of them, in addition to containing its
opposite within itself, constantly becomes it and in this way reinforces its independence
from the other. By excluding one another, they engender each other as two absolutely

81
independent poles. The absolute contradiction is solved because by excluding the poles as
absolutely independent they engender themselves in their opposite. Independence is
exchanged in their mutual complementation.
The determined being is thus completely defined by Hegel in its three levels: it is the
something with a quality that is another quality in itself and that is the unfolding of itself
through the incorporation of the other quality by means of the filling in of the constitution
of being, which results in the destination of the something, the being other within itself,
the being that is destined to be something that is in itself. This determined being has a
quality that is a complex combination of qualities determined by the nature of the infinite
substance as such and in which the replenishment of the quality and the transition from
one quality to another occurs through quantitative changes.
This same determined being is made up of two poles that each contain its opposite in
itself, engender it in itself, exclude it from itself, and engender it outside as the other pole
and engender themselves in the other pole through that exclusion; the unity and struggle
of opposites is the essence of being determined as such, it is what constitutes the
foundation of the quality of something, of its filling and of the quantitative changes that
lead to the substitution of one quality for another, upon ceasing-to-be of a something and
its transformation into another. This essence is not yet an element of the other into which
the something has to be transformed; it is only the foundation of the being determined
within the limits of its existence, before its ceasing-to-be; however, one of its poles is
destined to be a constitutive element of the other and is already a germ of the same within
the current determined being. Once the something is fully constituted with its three levels
of existence, the development of the elements of the other into which it has to be
transformed begins. The essence begins to develop within itself the in and for itself of the
determinations of immediate being, that is, the elements of its other.

Third chapter

The foundation (ground)

In his "Logic" Hegel has followed step by step the development of objectivity. The
immediate being goes into itself and becomes essence; what remains on the surface
during this going into oneself is the mere appearance of being, what appears to be. The
first progress of the essence is to reach the status of immediate true being as opposed to
the "appear to be" of the determinations from which it started.
But the essence is absolute negativity and therefore it denies this situation in which
it finds itself and following its path it produces its own specific determinations that have
the nature of being-in-itself and by-itself.
These determinations of the essence are generated by itself and are characterized by
having the other in themselves; they are constituted by two poles, each of which in turn
has the other pole in itself and in their mutual relationship they have a positive and a
negative aspect.
The essence has been constituted on two levels. In the first of them the positive and
negative poles are found as being-put; they are the positive aspect of the contradiction. In
the second of them are the others of each of the poles, that is, the negative pole within the
positive pole and the positive pole within the negative pole; they are being itself, the
negative aspect of the contradiction. The positive aspect of the contradiction engenders
and negates its negative aspect; The same thing happens in turn with the negative aspect.

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 Being-posited of the essence
Being immediate, the positive of the essence
POSITIVE POLE With the exclusion With the exclusion NEGATIVE POLE
ESSENCE It engenders the negative of the negative pole of the positive pole It engenders the positive
EQUAL and integrates it into itself as being-posited, as being-posited, and integrates it into itself
TO and excludes it from itself. the positive pole the negative pole and excludes it from itself.
ITSELF That is to say, it produces engenders itself as engenders itself as That is to say, it produces
the negative as being in the positive in and the positive in and the positive as being in itself
itself and as being-posited. of itself. of itself. and as being-posited.

Negative pole Positive pole

FOUNDA- The positive pole engenders The negative pole engenders
TION itself as being-posited itself as being-posited
through its own negation. through its own negation

Being in itself and by itself of the essence

The negative of the essence

Once this structure has been established, the essence develops a new relationship
with the determinations from which it arose; provides them as content that fills what was
previously only a form with the determinations of the positive aspect of the contradiction,
and then immediate determined being splits into two levels of existence: the essence
formed by the determinations of the negative aspect of the contradiction and which is the
foundation of being and the foundation that are the determinations of the positive aspect
of the contradiction; the foundation is the cause or sufficient reason for what is founded;
both form the existent immediate determinate being.

These two levels of existence that the immediate determined being has reached (its
inner and outer existence) produce and negate each other.
The relationship between the founded and the foundation, between the being placed
and the being in self and by itself is one of mutual engendering and negation. Being in
self and by itself is the other of itself of the actual being, its destiny, what it is destined to
be, and its existence is the constant passage from one form of itself to another. In this

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process, the current being cultivates the elements of its duty to be, of the other immediate
being into which it must become upon its demise.
The successive passage from one destination to another elevates the determined
being to a higher stage of its existence. This evolution is at the same time the procreation
of the constituent elements of the essence, which will come into existence as a distinct,
determined being. The movement of destiny necessarily leads to the appearance of
essence.
The determined being first produces its essence as its foundation of existence. It is
the positive essence.
At this point, Hegel has achieved the full configuration of the existing determined
being before beginning his path towards the transformation into another immediate
determined being; The essence here has the character of the foundation of what exists
and has not yet developed as an element of the other that has to happen to the being that
currently exists.
This reflection of objectivity achieved by Hegel is already, although it still moves
within the terrain of existing immediate determined being, at an infinite distance from
what all previous logic had achieved in the process of knowledge. Of course, the essence
as the foundation of what exists had already been determined in this way by previous
logic; but it was a fixed, immobile, empty, unilateral essence, only the cause or sufficient
reason for being; the essence as a contradiction was absolutely outside the gaze of the
philosophers. The Hegelian revolution in the field of Logic consists precisely in
apprehending the nature of being as a contradiction between two opposites, antithetical
poles, where one is the opposite of the other and both coexist in a unit; the existence of
being is precisely the relationship between these two poles.
Infinitely superior to that of the preceding Logic, however, this conception of being is
still insufficient. Hegel internalizes even more in the nature of being and manages to
reveal a more precise determination of it. When the determined being internalizes itself
and produces its essence, which is the contradiction, it is at the same time establishing
the germs of the being that will succeed it when it perishes: indeed, the negative pole is
not only the one that in the contradiction engenders and negates to the positive pole,
preserving and developing in this way itself and its opposite as a constitutive element of
the current being, but at the same time it is the germinal element of the other that must
come after the one that exists today and, therefore, a negative element of this last.
The determined being thus achieves its most perfect structure: it is the unity of two
existing opposite poles and that of itself and of the other into which it has to be
transformed, although this is only found for the moment in a potential state.
Once this described nature has been reached, the determined being begins the path
of its conversion into another determined being.
In what follows, Hegel will analyze the process by which the essence develops its
negative nature and becomes the other of the existing being.

A. THE ABSOLUTE FOUNDATION

a) Form and essence.

In the previous section, the essence was determined as the foundation of the existent,
but of the latter enclosed in itself, without going outside towards its other. Starting from
here, Hegel intends to describe the process by which the essence becomes the other that
has to replace the existing being.
Hegel begins his investigation at the point where he left it in the previous section: the
essence is being-in-itself, the foundation of the external determinations of being that are
what is founded; foundation and founded are the integral elements of the structure of the
determined being that exists at a given moment. But this essence is still completely

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indeterminate in relation to the other in which the actual being has to become; it is, in
this sense, only a matter and what is founded is its form.
From here on, the essence will be determined more and more until the most complete
nature of the in self and for self is achieved, which consists in the development of the
elements of the other within the being that exists today.
The essence that is the foundation of being within the limits of its existence, becomes
the essence whose development must lead to the constitution of the other that the present
being must become; Being-in-itself and for-itself acquires in Hegel this new connotation:
they are the determinations of the other in which the determined being has to become,
contained in himself.
In the first place, the essence is the other of the existing being, but only as its duty to
be; the other is found in it in a germinal, indeterminate and inactive form; The immediate
determinate being must become another, but it is not yet. This essence, which is only
potentially the other of current being, has before it the form of the latter, that is,
everything that was previously determined as the essential contradiction.
It is, evidently, the same determinations of the existing immediate being, but now
considered as the germ of the other, as potential elements of the new being that has to be
generated in the one that exists today. Its present nature is form; its potential future
nature is essence.
The essence as the foundation of the existence of the determined being evolves
towards the essence that is the negative foundation of the determined being; the essence
is now the being-in-itself and by-itself of the determined being, the other into which it has
to become, its negation, but at the same time its foundation as existent. In its new role,
essence is first of all the unity of being-posited and of being in and for self; later it is
differentiated internally and splits into form and essence: the form is the being-posited,
the immediate determinations and the essence the being in and of them, their generating
nature of the other.

b) Form and matter

The second relationship between being-posited (the positive of the essence) and the
being-in-itself and for-itself of the essence (the negative of it) is that which exists between
form and matter.
In the first relationship, being-posited had remained as the form that is
determination and being in and of self as the indeterminate and indifferent substratum
that is the basis of the former and at the same time the germ of the other to come. In this
second relation, the posited being is the form that eliminates itself and produces matter
as being since it eliminates itself and produces the form that the posited being is. But in
this relationship, one is not yet established as the foundation of the other, there is still an
identity between the two. In the second relation, the being-posited in the form eliminates
itself and disappears in its other, in the being-posited in the matter, and the latter
eliminates itself and disappears in its other, in the being-posited in the form. Each one
denies himself and puts his other
The form presupposes the matter because this is posited as something surpassed.
The overcoming of matter (its negation) is the form. Matter is posited as something
surpassed, as form, and refers to its identity, its indifference, as an other.
Matter is the simple undifferentiated identity that is essence. It is the other of the
form.
It is the base or substratum of the form.
Form and matter are extrinsic, but do not exist by themselves.
Matter is indifferent, but with respect to form.
This indifference is identity with itself (measure
through the form) in which the form returns as its base.
The form is the overcoming of matter.

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 It presupposes matter because it is posited as something surpassed (as form) and
refers to its identity as an other.
The form is presupposed by the matter.
Matter is not only the essence as the absolute reflection (the in itself and by itself),
but it is also the determined essence as the positive, as the superseded negation, as form.
The form is posited as matter because it eliminates itself.
Therefore, when eliminated, it is not the foundation of matter.
Matter posits itself as form by negating itself.
Therefore, by negating itself it is not a foundation of the form.
Form and matter are determined one like the other but without being the foundation
of one another.
This second relationship is made up of two parts: one that is the first overcoming of
the extrinsication of form and matter in which the form has an active role and determines
matter and matter a passive role and is determined by the form; another part is in which
matter also acts on form, but without the former having the character of determinations
in and of itself.
The essence, as we have already seen, in addition to being the positive foundation of
the existence of the determined being, of its destiny, is constituted as its negative
foundation, that is, as the germ of the other into which it must be transformed. The
essence, as the negation of the immediate being, is both the foundation of its existence
and destiny and the seed of the other that must succeed it.
In the process of constituting itself as the other of the determined being, the essence
enters into a first relationship with it, which is that of form and essence where this is a
mere indeterminate and extrinsic substrate that has not yet developed its nature of
negation of the determined being, but which already contains it in germ. Afterwards the
relationship becomes that between form and matter; Matter is the essence that is not yet
a negation of the determined being, but rather its indeterminate base, but which has
ceased to be extrinsic to it: matter is such through the mediation of form; it denies itself
and becomes its other, the form; the form is it only through mediation with the matter; it
refuses and becomes its other, the form. Form and matter are the same determined being
that has not yet developed its essence as foundation and negation.
For Hegel, the matter that is the foundation or the base of the determined being also
constitutes the substance from which the other determined being that must succeed the
one that exists today must sprout.
In the essence-form relationship, the determinations of being-posited were completely
independent and extrinsic from those of being-in-itself; these were only the indifferent
and indeterminate base of those that also only subsisted in it. In the matter-form
relationship, the formal determinations (of being-posited) are active, they act on the
indifferent and indeterminate base that is matter (being in and of itself) and give it shape;
but in this relationship, independence and extrinsication have been overcome since now
the form contains the matter itself and the matter has the form itself.
In the relationship between form and essence, these are absolutely extrinsic. The
form is the posited being, the determined being that rests, as it were, on an independent,
indeterminate, and inactive essence (being-in-itself and for-itself still potentially). The
essence is the undifferentiated basis of the form.
This relationship advances towards a superior one in which the form determines the
essence, but giving it the nature of being placed behind which the being in and of the
essence is still hidden. In this relationship the essence is matter; the matter of the
determinations of the existing immediate being is at the same time the matter from which
the determinations of the new being that has to be gestated inside the currently existing
one will sprout; matter is the potential essence (like being-in-itself, the other) of the
determined being.
Form and matter are in the first instance extrinsic to each other.
The form is identical to itself and independent of matter, and matter is equal to itself
and independent of form.

86
 But equality with himself is only established through his relationship with another;
the form is equal to itself in its reference to another, that is, to matter. Matter is equal to
itself only in its relation to another, to form.
The relationship with another is to put oneself in the other. The form overcomes its
independence, it becomes something that is in another, in matter. Matter overcomes its
independence, it becomes something that is in another, in the form.
Both form and matter posit one another and presuppose each other.
The form is negativity in the sphere of being; when relating to himself (establishing
his independence) he refers to himself as something surpassed, as other; This reference to
himself through his relationship with another is to determine the other, that is, to matter,
with which the form determines itself, that is, it has in itself the matter that it determines.
This is the activity of the form that consists in its materialization.
Matter is first the indeterminate and indifferent basis of form.
Matter is reflective negativity. By establishing his identity with himself, he does so by
referring to himself as something surpassed, as other; This relationship with himself
through another is the relationship with the form that determines him; in this way his
relationship with himself is his own determination, it is the movement of matter. Matter
determines itself, has its own form. Matter is formed.
This is the third relation between being-posited (being determined) and being in and
of the essence. Here posited being (immediate being) determines itself as such and at the
same time determines being-in-itself and for-itself, but only as immediate being, as
posited being. The being-in-itself and for-itself of the essence has passed from absolute
indeterminacy and indifference to a first determination, but only as immediate being. It
still has the same nature of being-posited. Being in-itself and for-itself determines itself,
but only through the form and as determined being.
The form presupposes the matter because this is posited as something surpassed.
The overcoming of matter (its negation) is the form. Matter is posited as something
surpassed, as form, and refers to its identity, its indifference, as an other.
The form is presupposed by the matter.
Matter is not only the essence as the absolute reflection (the in self and by self), but it
is also the determined essence as the positive, as the negation overcome, as form.
The form is posited as matter because it eliminates itself.
Therefore, when eliminated, it is not the foundation of matter.
Matter posits itself as form by denying itself.
Therefore, by denying itself it is not the foundation of the form.
Form and matter are determined one like the other, but without being the foundation
of one another.
This second relationship is made up of two parts: one that is the first overcoming of
the extrinsication of form and matter in which the form has an active role and determines
matter and matter a passive role and is determined by the form; another part is in which
the matter also acts on the form, but without yet having the character of determinations
in self and by self.
The essence, as we have already seen, goes from being the positive foundation of the
existence of the determined being to being the negative foundation, that is, its base and
its negation, the other into which it has to be transformed. The essence, as the negation
of immediate being, is both the foundation of this and the other in which it has to
become.
In the process of constituting itself as the other of the determined being, the essence
enters into a first relationship with it, which is that of form and essence, where the latter
is a mere indeterminate and extrinsic substratum that has not yet developed neither its
fundamental nature nor its nature of negation of the determined being, but which already
contains it in germ. Then the relationship becomes the one between form and matter;
matter is the essence that is not yet the foundation or negation of determined being, but
rather its indeterminate basis, but which has ceased to be extrinsic to it: matter is such
through the mediation of form; it denies itself and becomes its other, in the form; the form

87
is itself only through mediation with matter; it refuses and becomes its other, the form.
Form and matter are the same determined being that has not yet developed its essence as
foundation and negation.
For Hegel, the matter that is the foundation or the base of the determined being also
constitutes the substance from which the other determined being that must succeed the
one that exists today must sprout.
In the essence-form relationship, the determinations of being-posited were completely
independent and extrinsic from those of being-in-itself; these were only the indifferent
and indeterminate base of those that also only subsisted in it. In the matter-form
relationship, the formal determinations (of being-posited) are active, they act on the
indifferent and indeterminate base that is matter (being-in-itself and for-itself) and give it
form; but in this relationship, independence and extrinsication have been overcome since
now the form contains the matter itself and the matter has the form itself.
In the relationship between form and essence, these are absolutely extrinsic. The
form is the posited being, the determined being that rests, as it were, on an independent,
indeterminate, and inactive essence (being-in-itself and for-itself still potentially). The
essence is the undifferentiated basis of the form.
This relationship advances towards a superior one in which the form determines the
essence, but giving it the nature of being-posited behind which the being-in-itself and for-
itself of the essence is still hidden. In this relationship the essence is matter; the matter of
the determinations of the existing immediate being is at the same time the matter from
which the determinations of the new being that has to be gestated inside the currently
existing one will sprout; matter is the potential essence (like being-in-itself, the other) of
the determined being.
Form and matter are in the first instance extrinsic to each other.
The form is identical to itself and independent of matter, and matter is equal to itself
and independent of form.
But equality with himself is only established through his relationship with another;
the form is equal to itself in its reference to another, that is, to matter. Matter is equal to
itself only in its relation to another, to form.
The relationship with another is to put oneself in the other. The form overcomes its
independence, it becomes something that is in another, in matter. Matter overcomes its
independence, it becomes something that is in another, in the form.
Both form and matter posit one another and presuppose each other.
Form and matter are independent.
They surpass themselves and refer to another.
The form overcomes its independence and becomes something put on. [Form
determines matter].
It overcomes being-posited; recovers its identity with itself. It becomes independent
again, but through its relationship with matter. This relation is the subsistence of the
form. It is the union with the matter in which the form obtains subsistence.
The form is negativity in the sphere of being; when relating to himself (establishing
his independence) he refers to himself as something surpassed, as other; This reference to
himself through his relationship with another is to determine the other, that is, to matter,
with which the form determines itself, that is, it has in itself the matter that it determines.
This is the activity of the form that consists in its materialization.
Matter determines itself.
Absolute negativity. He denies his identity and independence. It refers to the form as
to its other extrinsic that determines it.
The form, to which matter refers as its extrinsic other, determines it.
By referring to form as to its extrinsic other that determines it, matter determines
itself.
Matter is first the indeterminate and indifferent basis of form.
Matter is reflective negativity. By establishing his identity with himself, he does so by
referring to himself as something surpassed, as other; This relationship with himself

88
through another is the relationship with the form that determines him; in this way his
relationship with himself is his own determination, it is the movement of matter. Matter
determines itself, has its own form. Matter is formed.
This is the third relation between being-posited (being determined) and being in and
of the essence. Here posited being (immediate being) determines itself as such and at the
same time determines being-in itself and for-itself, but only as immediate being, as
posited being. The being-in-itself and for-itself of the essence has passed from absolute
indeterminacy and indifference to a first determination, but only as immediate being. It
still has the same nature of being-posited. Being-in-itself and for-itself determines itself,
but only through the form and how to be determined.
The being itself in and of itself of the essence is determined, in this third relation, as
a posited being, that is, as the self-form of the determined being that is its destiny.
Hegel has succeeded in discerning the three levels of existence of determined being,
the last of which is essence; This is the positive foundation of immediate determinate
being, and its nature is polar contradiction. After this Hegel advances still further on the
path of objectivity and finds that this essence is transformed into the negative ground of
determined being, that is, into its cause of being and its negation, into its other into
which it has to become. This transformation starts from the point in which the negative of
the essence, the being-in itself and for-itself, is only an indeterminate, undifferentiated
and extrinsic base of the determined being; then this extrinsic base becomes the matter of
the form of the determined being: the form determines the matter and this determines
itself through the form. The essence, which is here as matter, is not yet the negative
foundation of the three levels of existence of the determined being, but an indeterminate
substance that receives from them, which are the form, the determination and that
provides them with the matter for that form. The essence of the three levels of existence of
the determined being has not yet developed the characteristics of a negative foundation, it
is, just like the essence in its first form, still the positive foundation of the immediate
determined being. However, this matter as essence is the substance from which the new
being has to be formed, in which the actual being will become.
Here Hegel has surpassed formal logic, simple intellect, to an enormous extent. Not
only because of the revelation that it makes of the rich dialectic existing between form
and matter (never even suspected by traditional logic) but also because of the double
nature that it discovers in matter as essence: matter is the base, the foundation, the
essence, of the immediate determined being, but at the same time it is the matter from
which the new immediate determined being that exists only as a simple possibility must
be formed.
The result of the activity of form and the movement of matter is the unity of being-in-
itself and of being-posited in determined being.
The form, insofar as it presupposes matter as its other, is finite. It is not foundation.
Neither of them is true. Its truth is the unity of both in which each refers to the other.
That unity is the foundation of the two.
In this way, matter is the foundation of form only insofar as it is the absolute unity of
essence (matter) and form.
Likewise, the form is the foundation of the subsistence of its determinations, that is,
of the matter, insofar as it is that same absolute unity of the essence (matter) and of the
form.
This unity of being-in-itself and of being, since it is the relationship between form and
matter, constitutes a single activity in positing, preserving itself as positing in unity,
rejecting itself, referring to itself as itself, and the refer to himself as another.
Or, put another way: the determination of matter by means of form is the mediation
of essence, as a foundation with itself in a single unit, by means of itself and the negation
of itself. The unity of form and matter is not only the unity of the foundation with itself,
but it is the unity (absolute foundation) that contains all the moments at the same time
as eliminated and set at the same time.

89
 The unity of being-in-itself and through itself and of posited being, of matter and
form, of the foundation with itself, in its equality with itself, has been rejected as much as
it has been determined.
This unity, as determination, is the foundation of form and matter. It is formed
matter. But at the same time, due to its negativity, it is indifferent (extrinsic) towards form
and matter and towards what is superseded and inessential.
The unity of being in itself and of being posited, of form and matter, of essence as a
foundation with itself, a unity that is the positing and denying at the same time of the
moments that constitute it and by this means reaching the determination of matter
through the form, a determination that is the foundation and indifferent to the form and
matter, is the content.
In this third relationship that we analyze, the immediate determinations that the
form gives to itself through the determination of matter are the content of the unity of
form and matter.

c) Form and content.

The relationship between being-posited and being-in-itself and for-itself of the

essence has taken a further step in the process of development. The indeterminate
foundation reached as content the determination in the form-matter relationship. This
determination was that of immediate being but which also has the nature of reflection
itself. So, the way is opened for the establishment of the determinations of the being-in-
itself and for-itself of the essence in the foundation.

B) THE DETERMINED FOUNDATION.

a) The formal foundation.

The relationship between immediate being and being-in-itself and by-itself of the
essence was converted from the form-matter relationship into the form-content
relationship. In it the immediate determination has been established both in being-
posited (founded) and in the foundation; both, founded and foundation, have the same
content (the determinations of immediate being) but different form since what is founded is
in the form of being-posited and the foundation is in the form of reflection in itself, of
essentiality. However, it is a question of one and the same determined content that is at
the same time in two different forms; the essence has not yet developed the material in
self and by self of its determinations.
In the formal foundation the determinations of the essence are determinations of the
immediate being that have two formal aspects: the form of the immediate being for which
they are a founded and the form of being-in-itself and for-itself, for which they are a
foundation. But it is a question of the same content for both: the immediate determinations
of being.
The relationship between the immediate being and the being-in-itself and for-itself of
the essence moved from the form-matter relationship to the form-content relationship; the
determinations of immediate being are what is common to form and matter, the content of
their relationship; As content of the form-matter relation, the determinations of immediate
being have two aspects: they are the determinations of immediate being as such and the
reflection (negation) of them, but they are both in the same determination. The form-
content relationship evolves into the foundation-founded relationship; the foundation is
the determinations of the immediate being but taken in its reflexive aspect, in its negative
character, as essential; what is founded are the determinations of immediate being taken
in their character as such, as non-essential; foundation denies itself and engenders the

90
founded; this one in turn, negates itself and engenders the foundation; each is and
becomes the other.
The essence has here acquired its negative character, even if only as an aspect of
determined being; it is the form of the new being in which the one that currently exists has
to become, but preserving its content; This first appearance as a form is the necessary
previous step for the essence to establish itself as specific determinations of the in self and
by self that are the negation of the immediate determined being, material elements of the
other to come.
The foundation that has resulted here is very different from that previously studied;
that was the positive foundation, the third level of the existence of the determined being,
its essence but as such a determined being, within the limits of its existence. This other
foundation, although it is still determined being itself, its immediate determinations, is
their negative aspect: it is the negative foundation of determined being, but only as an
aspect of the immediate determinations themselves. It is already, however, the form of the
other into which the being determined to perish must be transformed.
The foundation has as its content the determinations of immediate being, but in the
form of being-in-itself and for-itself, of reflection, of negation.
What is founded has as its content the determinations of immediate being, but in the
form of posited being, of the inessential.
The foundation is still a formal foundation.
Hegel has here made another of his brilliant discoveries with which he leaves formal,
traditional logic far behind. The essence is the foundation of existing being. But at the
same time it is potentially the other into which it has to be transformed at its expiration.
The essence is the matter of the determinations of the existing immediate being. But it is
equally the matter from which the determinations of the new immediate being that will
replace the previous one will arise. The essence is the content of the determinations of the
existing immediate being, but in the same way it is the content of the form that is the first
thing that is constituted of the new being. The essence is the foundation, the matter and
the content of the existing being and in parallel it is the other in potentiality, the
substance of the other and the content from which the form of the being springs that will
replace the one that exists today. In this process, the essence has been developing its
negativity that existed only in potential until it became an active negativity, engendering
the other.
This positive essence is the foundation of being determined within the limits of its
existence, before its extinction.
The positive essence contains in itself, in a germinal state, the elements of the other
into which something must inevitably become.
Once something is fully constituted with its three levels of existence, the essence
displays its negative character and the development of the elements of its other begins.
The essence is firstly the third level of existence of the determined being, the polar
contradiction that determines the existence of the being; this essence negates itself and is
then also the one that develops in itself the elements of the other into which something
has to be transformed, is the negative essence.
Hegel has made a veritable revolution in the theory of knowledge. For logic and the
theory of knowledge prior to him, the essence is only the foundation, the basis of what the
determined being is. What something becomes once it expires is subject to chance and
arbitrariness or to a necessity based on the simple regularity of the appearance of
phenomena. Hegel discovers the deepest nature of change: the determined being is itself
and the other that is to happen to it; its essence contains in embryo the elements of the
other into which it is to be transformed and is, with this dual nature, the foundation of
the former; the movement of the essence consists in the development of the components
of the other of the determined being until it concludes with its appearance in existence,
through the negation of its progenitor, as another specific determined being; throughout
this period the negative essence is also the foundation of the presently existing
determined being.

91
 The necessity of the objective world thus acquires a deeper meaning: the determined
being is such because it is in itself the other into which it has to become, its being is to
become precisely that other determined being.
The relationship between the determined being and the negative essence is above all
that of form and essence, where the latter is a mere indeterminate and extrinsic
substratum that has not yet displayed its nature of foundation or negation of the former,
but which is already destined to produce the another that has to replace the being that
currently exists.
Then the relationship becomes the one between form and matter; matter is the
essence that is not yet the foundation or negation of determined being, but rather its
indeterminate base, but which has ceased to be extrinsic to it: matter is such through the
mediation of form, it denies itself and becomes its other, in the form; This is it only
through mediation with matter: it negates itself and becomes its other, the matter. Form
and matter are the same determined being that has not yet developed its essence as
foundation and negation. However, the matter of the actual being is the substance from
which the new determined being ought to be constituted.
The form-matter relationship becomes that of form-content. Matter becomes content.
This is the positive essence formed by the positive and negative poles of which the second
is the germ of the other of the determined immediate being. The negative essence is here
only in a latent state. The content of the current being is the one that has to produce the
form and the content of the other that has to succeed it.
The dialectic between the positive pole and the negative pole of the positive essence
(content of the determined being) gives rise to the reflection of the second of them, that is,
to the production by the negative pole of the form of the other that has to replace the
being immediate current, but only in the form, which in this stage coexists with the
content of that one. The positive essence has given birth to the negative essence, that is,
to the elements of the other of the determined being, but only as a form that preserves the
same content of the being from which it comes. The new form acquired by the determined
being eliminates the previous form.

The positive essence negates itself and produces the form of the negative essence.

FORM The form of

of the actual im- actual immedi-
Positive Negative mediate being ate being is dis-
Positive Pole Pole placed by the Founded
essence CONTENT
form of nega-
The determinations of
the actual immediate
tive essential-
being ity
Negative The positive essence firstly FORM
essence generates, through the of the negative essen-
(only the reflection of its negative pole, tiality, of the determi-
form of the form of the other that is nations of the other Formal
the other) to succeed it. towards which it has to Foundation
evolve, but still con-
serving the content of the
current being.

The form-content relationship evolves towards the founded-foundation relation; the

foundation is the determinations of the existing immediate being, but under the form of
essentiality, that is, of the other that has to follow it; what is founded are the
determinations of the present immediate being; the foundation denies itself and
engenders the founded; this in turn negates itself and produces the founded.
The immediate determined being has been split into two: the content of the current
immediate determined being which is the founded and the form of the being that has to

92
replace it, of the other into which the existing being has to be transformed, which is the
foundation.
The essence has thus acquired the form of the new being, but preserving the content of
the previous one; this is the necessary previous step for it to establish itself as the specific
determinations of the next being that are the negation of what exists today.
The determinations of the existing immediate being and its negative form give each
other a mutual impulse that results in the passage of the former to a higher phase of its
existence; already invested with their new nature, their initial action consists in the
annulment of the form of the negative essence and the restoration of the primitive form.

The form of the negative essence is negated

Procreation and denial reciprocal of the negative essence and the positive essence

FORM FOUNDED
of the current im- (Positive
Positive Negative mediate being foundation of
Positive Pole Pole the current
essence CONTENT being)
The determinations of
the actual immediate
being
They procreate and
Negative deny each other
FORM
essence
of the negative essen-
(only the
tiality, of the determi-
form of
nations of the other
the other) FORMAL
towards which it has to
FOUNDATION
evolve, but still con-
Negative foun-
serving the content of the
dation of the
current being.
current being.

FORM They acquire an

of the current im- extreme negativity,
Positive Negative mediate being
annul the form of
Positive Pole Pole
essence CONTENT negative essential-
of the actual immediate ity and recover their
being in a superior phase previous form.
of its existence.
Negative
FORM
essence
(only the
form of
the other)

The determinations of the actual determined being in its new phase of existence are again
only the positive essence, the foundation of what being is; the primitive relationship
between content and form is resumed.

The positive essence is restored

93
 FORM
of the current im-
mediate being
Positive Positive Negative
essence Pole Pole CONTENT
Determinations of the
immediate being in its
new nature; they recover
their role as positive
foundation of what being
is.

The movement of reciprocal implication between form and content of the

determinations of the immediate being in its new nature results in the exacerbation of the
negativity of the content, which causes the currently existing determinations of the
immediate being to give rise to different ones that are already material elements of the
other in which it has to become and that for the moment lack its negative nature; these
new determinations become the real (negative) foundation and those from which they
come, the founded.
The existing determinate being thus comes to have, as the foundation of its existence,
its own negation, the elements of the other into which it will inevitably become.

b) The real foundation

The real foundation is the one in which the foundation has arrived at the
establishment of being-in-itself and for-itself of the essential determinations. However,
when arriving at this situation, he does not immediately establish the relationship as a
foundation with what is founded. In the first place, the essential content of the foundation
is prolonged in the founded, with which there is no place to distinguish between the two;
the essential determinations of the foundation are also determinations of the founded; the
essential content is thus only a base, not a foundation, of the determinations of the
posited being. Secondly, in what is founded there are two contents, the essential content
that is the continuation of the foundation and the inessential content that are the
immediate determinations of being-posited; both are extrinsic to each other; their relation
is not the foundation of the determinations of the posited being of the founded.
The real foundation is the determinations in self and for self, negative, which have
separated from the determinations of immediate being and have acquired their
independence from them; in the previous phase, the same immediate determinations were
once in the form of immediate being and another time in the form of being in and for
itself, of reflection, of negation. In this step forward in the development of the negative
character of the essence, the determinations of the immediate being have been reflected in
themselves and have produced a series of different determinations, negative of those,
which are now indeed existing elements of the other in which it must become the
determined being when it reaches its limit and perishes and which are the specific
content of the foundation. However, when arriving at this situation, the essence does not
immediately establish the relationship as a foundation with what is founded. In the first
place, the essential content of the foundation is prolonged in the founded, with which
there is no place to distinguish between the two; the essential determinations of the
foundation are also determinations of the founded; the essential content is thus only a
base, not a foundation of the determinations of the posited being. Secondly, in what is
founded there are two contents, the essential content, which is a continuation of the
foundation, and the inessential content, which are the immediate determinations of the

94
posited being; both are extrinsic to each other, their relationship is not the foundation of
the determinations of the posited being of the founded.
The form was what made the determinations of immediate being appear once as
essential and another time as posited. It was a single content that was in the form of
immediate being. The form was what established the difference between the essential and
the posited. In the real foundation, this form that establishes the relationship of founded
and foundation in the foundation, that is, the fundamental relationship, disappears.
The fundamental relationship, the relationship between foundation and founded, is
no longer what determines the difference between the two: according to the form, the
foundation has only one content, that of the determinations in self and for self, and this
continues until the founded erasing all difference between them; On the other hand,
according to the form, what is founded also has another content, the determination of
immediate being, but which is not related to the other content as to its foundation, but as
to its pure basis.
The real foundation is the determinations in and for self of the essence which are
different from the immediate determinations of the founded but which still remain
extrinsic to one another; they have not developed the opposition between the two to arrive
at the most complete relationship between foundation and founded, where the
determinations of the two are absolutely contradictory, but nevertheless they engender
each other through that contradiction.

PRODUCTION OF THE CONTENT OF THE NEGATIVE ESSENCE

FORM
Positive Negative of the current im-
Positive Pole Pole mediate being
essence CONTENT
Founded
Determinations of the
actual immediate being
in a higher phase of its
existence.

The positive essence sub- CONTENT

Negative sequently produces, Determinations of being
essence through the reflection of in-itself and by-itself, Real
(only the its negative pole, the other that is, of the other in foundation
form of content that it will which the something is to
the other) definitely become. be transmuted upon
It is the real foundation perishing.

Immediate determinate being now has the following structure: the determinations of
actual determinate being which are the content of the corresponding form, and the
determinations proper to determinate being in which the existent has to be changed, that
they are a different content from the previous one and which will be given the new form of
negative essentiality through the negation of the previous one. Those and their specific
form are what is founded and these are the real foundation that, when producing its
characteristic form, will be the integral foundation (real and formal).
The determinations of the actual being, which here have the character of a founded,
include the determinations of the positive essence and therefore constitute a polar
relationship (positive pole and negative pole) that is governed by the principles indicated
in the corresponding part of this study; the final result of this relationship is the gestation
of the other's determinations of the actual being.

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 Since, at the moment of their emergence, the determinations of the determined other
being lack their negative character, they are identical to the determinations of the
immediate being that gave them life, they continue in them, and in doing so they
establish a difference between them, which gives what is founded a double content: some
determinations (negative pole of the actual being) that are the continuation of the real
foundation and that therefore are the determinations of the other in what is founded, and
other determinations (positive pole of present being) that are extrinsic both to those like
the foundation.

c) The integral foundation

According to the form one of the somethings is the founded; This something has two
contents: determination B, which is the prolongation of determination B of the
foundation, and determination A, which, although posited by B, is not a determination in
self and for itself, is not founded in itself, nor is its base B a foundation per se. According
to the form, the other something is foundation and has two contents, content B and
content A which are founded in itself. The relationship between B and A in the something
that is founded acquires the nature of the relationship between the foundation itself and
the founded in itself, because this relationship is the one that exists between B and A in
the something that is the foundation. The determination A of the something founded is
linked to B of that same something because that link exists in the original relationship in
the something that is the foundation. The relationship between B and A in the something
that is founded is mediated by the relationship between B and A in the something that is
founded.
The formal foundation evolves towards the real foundation. The essence thus
develops two contents: the foundation contains the determinations in and for self, and the
founded contains the determinations of immediate being. In what is founded there are two
contents: one that is the continuation of the foundation and the other that are the
determinations of immediate being and that are not related to the other content as to its
foundation, but appear as free, abandoned to external accidentality.
The form and content of the negative essence are produced by the negative pole of the
positive essence.

The form and content of the negative essence are produced

by the negative pole of the positive essence.

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 Integral foundation
(Real and formal)
Single content.

The determinations of the other that are found in the foundation acquire their
negative character; [its negativity is manifested by taking to the heart of the foundation
the positive determinations of what is founded, which appeared as extrinsic, and
establishing a negative relationship with them]; In the foundation, a replica of the polar
relationship existing in the foundation arises, but with a different sign, because here the
negative pole exerts an action that seeks to expel the positive pole from existence, which
represents the presently existing determined being, to give rise to the new being
represented here by the other pole.
The content of the foundation is divided into two: one, which is constituted by the
determinations in and for self, and the other, by the determinations of the immediate
being but linked in itself with those; the total form unfolds in the foundation also in
foundation and founded. This ground, which contains the ground and the ground itself, is
the means through which the determinations of immediate being are also linked in
themselves with its essential determinations. Thus we arrive at the foundation and the
integral fundamental relationship: the foundation has a double content, the
determinations in and for self which is the foundation, and the determinations of
immediate being linked in themselves to the former; What is founded also has its double
content through the mediation of the foundation: the determinations of being in and for
self that continue in it and the determinations of immediate being that through that
mediation have lost their exteriority and accidentality and have been linked to the other
content as its foundation. The foundation is the determinations in itself and for itself of
the essence but linked in itself to the determinations of immediate being; the foundation
is it and its another in itself; what is founded are the determinations of immediate being
but linked in themselves to the essential determinations through the mediation of the
foundation; what is founded is it and its other.

The positive essence produces, through the negative pole, the positive and
negative poles of the content of the negative essence

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 Integral foundation
(Real and formal)
Double content.

The content of the negative essence has thus been split into two: the content A, which
is the positive pole and which represents the present being determined in the negative
essence, and the content B, which is the negative pole of the negative essence, which
seeks to annul the now existing being.
When the negative pole and the positive pole of the negative essence are linked in a
negative relationship, the positive pole and the negative pole of the positive essence are
also united in a relationship of engendering of B by A.
The negative pole of the negative essence (content B) establishes the fight with
devastating purposes against the positive pole (content A) of the same; This positive pole
of the negative essence in turn engenders the positive pole of the positive essence which
produces the negative pole which in turn will generate the negative pole of the negative
essence.
The determinations of immediate being are once in the form of being-posited and
once in the form of being-in-itself and for-itself. In their development, these
determinations engender others that are already elements of the other into which the
determined being has to become, the determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself that
for the moment lack its negative nature; these new determinations become the
foundation, and those from which they come, the founded. Since at the moment of their
emergence the determinations in self and for self, lack their negative character, they are
identical to the determinations of the immediate being that engendered them, they
continue in them and in doing so establish a difference between the determinations of the
founded that gives this a double content: some, which are the continuation of the real
foundation (content B of the founded) and others, which are extrinsic both to these and to
the determinations of the foundation (content A of the foundation). The determinations of
the in self and for self acquire their negative character; In this way, they integrate into the
bosom of the foundation the positive determinations of the founded that appeared to be
extrinsic and establish a negative relationship with them: the determinations of the real
foundation that are the determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself, the seed of the
other in which has to be transformed and that they are one of the contents of the
foundation (content B of the foundation), they have to prove their being by denying the
determinations of immediate being, of something existing, another of the contents of the
foundation (content A of the foundation) and they do so in struggle against the positive
pole of the founded in the foundation. The extrinsic and inessential determinations that
were one of the contents of the founded become, through the mediation of the

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fundamental relation (that is, the immediate negative link of the two contents in the
foundation), into a founded that enters into relation with the founded another content of
what is founded which plays the role of foundation here; This relationship is positive, of
engendering the determinations in and of itself of what is founded. Thus, the negative
foundation of the determined being is fully established and the elements whose dialectic
must lead to its transformation into another determined being are well determined.

The two poles of the positive essence engender the two poles of the
content of the negative essence and vice versa.

Integral foundation
(Real and formal)
Double content.

By bringing the B content (negative pole) of the negative essence towards it to the A
content (positive pole) of the positive essence and linking there both contents in an
opposition relationship, they give rise to the unification of the A content (positive pole)
and the content B (negative pole) of the positive essence in a relationship of mutual
procreation.
The immediate determined being is thus composed of the following form: a positive
essence with two contents (positive pole and negative pole) that are reciprocally generated
and which, due to the reflection of its negative pole, gives rise to the emergence of the
negative pole of the negative essence, which it binds itself, bringing it into its domain, to
the positive pole of the positive essence with which it establishes a contentious
relationship; a negative essence integrated by two contents, the negative pole that is the
product of the reflection of the negative pole of the positive essence and the positive pole
that has been brought from the positive essence to the terrain of the negative essence
where it enters into a frank struggle with the another pole and from there it is thrown
back into the bosom of the positive essence.
The total dialectic that springs from here is the following: the positive and negative
poles of the positive essence produce each other; this movement is translated in the
reflection of the negative pole, that is, in its conversion into the negative pole of the
negative essence; the latter brings the positive pole of the positive essence towards the
negative essence and enters into a conflictive relationship with it; this positive pole of the
negative essence is transmuted into the positive pole of the positive essence and there the
whole process resumes again.
The determinations that in the real foundation constitute the elements of the other
into which something has to be transformed and which are one of its contents (its

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negative pole), have to prove their being by denying, with the intention of displacing them
from existence, the determinations of immediate being, of the something existing that is
another of the contents (positive pole) of the foundation.
The extrinsic and inessential determinations that were one of the contents of the
founded (its positive pole) enter, through the mediation of the fundamental relation (that
is, the immediate negative connection of the two contents (positive pole and negative pole)
into the foundation), in relation to the other content of what is founded (its negative pole);
This connection is positive, of creation of the negative determinations of what is founded.
Thus, the negative foundation of the determined being is perfectly structured and the
elements whose dialectic must lead to its metamorphosis into another determined being
are well delimited.
The essence has become a foundation that has two contents, (B) and (A), which are
the determinations of the foundation and of what is founded, linked in themselves
through their mediation; the content determinations (B) and (A) of the founded are also
linked to each other as foundation and founded.
The fundamental relationship (that is, the relationship between founded and
foundation) is twofold: it is a formal relationship between the funded and the foundation
as forms of immediate determined being and of being-in-itself and for-itself respectively; it
is a real relationship between the content determinations of immediate being and of being
in and for itself.
The fundamental relation is, in the foundation, the relation between the real
foundation and the formal foundation: the real foundation is the connection in the
foundation of the determinations B and A, and the formal foundation is the form of this
connection; the foundation as a real connection rejects itself and posits itself as an other
that presupposes it, that is, as the formal foundation; The latter, as a form of real
bonding, rejects itself and posits itself as an other that presupposes it, as the real
foundation.
The foundation, which is the real and formal linking of (B) and (A), is the means by
which the determinations (B) and (A) of the founded are linked as foundation and
founded; once this link is made, what is founded acts through the fundamental
relationship on the foundation, producing the mediation of its moments (formal
foundation and real foundation); In this action, the fundamental relationship is mediation
that conditions and what is founded is the condition of the foundation.
The content B of the foundation (determinations in and for itself) establishes a
negative relationship with the content A of the foundation (determinations of posited
being), which is primarily formal (B has the form of being-in-itself and for-itself and A that
of being-posited); this formal relation transcends itself and posits itself in its other which
is the real relation, that is to say, in which the determinations of B really negate the
determinations of A. The real relation transcends itself and posits the formal relation. The
foundation thus acquires its real and formal negative character from the determinations
of the posited being and therefore its real and formal nature from the other that has to
replace the existing immediate being. This dialectic between the formal foundation and
the real foundation is produced by the formal fundamental relationship, that is, the one
that exists between the founded and the foundation as forms, and by the real
fundamental relationship, that is, the one that exists between the content of the
foundation and that of the founded. This dialectic that occurs in the foundation is
mediated (conditioned) by the fundamental relationship (real and formal) and through this
by what is founded, which is thus a condition of the foundation. What is founded
conditions the complete conversion of the foundation into a negative foundation that
contains the elements of the new something in struggle against those of the primitive
determined being.
When the founded is already well formed as the immediately existent determined
being that has two contents of which they are linked, generating content A (the positive
determinations of the actual determined being) to content B (its negative determinations)
and the foundation also has its two contents whose nexus consists in the negation by

100
content B (which are the determinations of the new immediate being into which the
existing one will become) of content A (which are the determinations of the current being),
then what is founded becomes a condition that produces the foundation and which in
turn is produced by it. The foundation is the generation of the elements of the other in its
interior (content B, negative pole) by content A (determinations of the immediate being,
positive pole); this generation is, in turn, that of the foundation as the negation in it of the
determinations of the immediate being (content A, positive pole) by those of the other
being (content B, negative pole); the foundation in its time produces the founded as a
condition.
The mutual procreation of the condition and the ground gives rise to the content B of
the foundation, that is, the determinations of the other that are found in the form of
actual being, from the content B of the former, that is, the determinations that they are
already an element of the other that is to come after the actual being; Similarly, the
determinations of immediate being found in the foundation are transformed into the
positive determinations of the condition (content A of the founded).
The relationship reaches its climax when the negative pole of the positive essence has
fully become the negative pole of the negative essence; therefore, the positive pole of the
positive essence has also disappeared since its raison d'être is to engender and be
engendered by the negative pole; all its content has been incorporated into the positive
pole of the negative essence. The positive essence disappears; The negative pole (which is
the other of the current immediate being) and the positive pole (which is the current
immediate being but already in its defensive role against the onslaught of the other pole)
of the negative essence are left facing each other in an open struggle, claiming their
mutual disappearance.

C. THE CONDITION

When the founded is already well formed as the immediately existent determined
being that has two contents which are linked generating the content A (the positive
determinations of the actual determined being) to the content B (its negative
determinations) and the foundation also has its two contents, whose nexus consists in
the negation by content B (which are the determinations of the new immediate being that
the existing one will become) of content A (which are the determinations of the current
being), then what is founded becomes a condition that produces the foundation and
which in turn is produced by it. What is founded is the generation of the elements of the
other in its interior (content B, negative pole) by content A (determinations of the
immediate being, positive pole); This generation is in turn that of the foundation as the
negation in it of the determinations of the immediate being (content A, positive pole)' by
those of the other being (content B, negative pole); the foundation in its time produces the
founded as a condition.
The mutual procreation of the condition and the found gives rise to the content B of
the ground, that is, the determinations of the other that are in the form of actual being,
from the content B of the former, that is, the determinations that they are already an
element of the other that is to come after the actual being; in the same way the
determinations of the immediate being that are found in the foundation are transformed
into the positive determinations of the condition (content B of the founded).
The relationship reaches its climax when the negative pole of the positive essence has
fully become the negative pole of the negative essence; therefore, the positive pole of the
positive essence has also disappeared, since its raison d'être is to engender and be
engendered by the positive pole; all its content has been incorporated into the positive
pole of the negative essence. The positive essence disappears; The negative pole (which is
the other of the current immediate being) and the positive pole (which is the actual
immediate being but already in its defensive role against the onslaught of the other pole)

101
of the negative essence are confronted in an open struggle, claiming their mutual
disappearance.
The positive essence disappears and in the negative essence the contest between the
positive pole and the negative pole is established.
They had started from the point at which the condition and the foundation were
indifferent and unconditional; from there it had come to the point where condition and
foundation were mediated one by the other, but preserving different contents: the content
of the foundation was the determinations in self and for self and that of the founded was
the determinations of immediate being. Now the mediation has ended in the unification of
both determinations in a single content: the being itself that contained the foundation has
been displaced and become a moment of the foundation and the being-posited of the
foundation has also become a moment of the foundation. Condition and foundation as
immediate determined being and being-in-itself are two moments of a whole that is the
essence, the thing in itself.
The relationship between condition and foundation disappears; they are reduced to
an appearance: the thing is put as a foundation against its conditions.
The foundation and the founded had a content for each one of them; the foundation
contained the determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself and the founded that of
determined immediate being. The founded appeared as detached from the essence, as a
set of extrinsic and accidental determinations. Subsequently, the content of the
foundation is determined in turn as double: it contains the B determinations of being-in-
itself and the A of being-posited, the latter necessarily linked to the former. What is
founded is also determined as something with two contents, one that is the continuation
of the content B of the foundation and a content A of extrinsic and accidental
determinations that is only later necessarily linked to B, but through the fundamental
relationship (contents B and A of the foundation). By linking A to B in the founded, the
latter's determinations become a condition of the foundation.
At first, condition and foundation are two indifferent and unconditioned extrinsic
things. Later they mediate each other; one is the presupposition of the other. But it still
continues to have two different contents.
The being-in-itself of the condition (the B-determinations of the found) is internalized
and becomes a moment of the ground, and the being-posited of the foundation (the A-
determinations of the ground) a moment of the condition. Condition and foundation are
one and the same, they are two moments of the thing itself. Condition and foundation
have the same content, which is the thing in itself, the true unconditioned.
In the thing in itself, through the movement between its moments, the condition, the
determined immediate being, has become a foundation, being-in-itself; for its part, the
foundation, being-in itself, has become a condition, an immediate determined being. The
thing in itself has arisen into existence, it is the existing essential thing. This existent
essential thing preserves the condition and the foundation as its moments.
The condition is the immediate determined being that has been generated by the
foundation; it is the same being from which the movement towards the essence started,
but now produced by it and containing the being itself within it; this being-in-itself
penetrates into the foundation and carries its determinations towards existence; the
essence comes into existence and the essential thing remains as an immediate in which
both the condition and the foundation have disappeared.
The mutual engendering and negation of condition and foundation first of all results
in the B-content of the former, that is, the determinations of being-in itself and for-itself
which are in the form of immediate being, becoming the B-content of the condition, that
is, in the determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself that are already an element of the
other into which actual being has to become, and, therefore, in a moment of that; in the
same way the determinations of the immediate being that are found in the foundation are
transformed into the positive determinations of the condition. The relationship leads to
the total determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself of the condition becoming a
foundation (into elements of the other immediate being) and that all the determinations of

102
the immediate previous being that were in the foundation become a condition. Only the
foundation, which is the determinations in and of themselves as an element of the new
immediate being, and the condition or founded, constituted solely by the determinations
of the immediate being in the process of disappearing, remain in conflict. The decisive
struggle between the two elements began.
The positive essence disappears and in the negative essence the contest between the
positive pole and the negative pole is established.

Confrontation of the negative pole and the positive pole in the negative essence.

The positive pole

and the negative pole
of the negative es-
sence are confronted
in a decisive strug-
gle.

The dialectic of the relation leads to the fact that all the negative determinations of
the condition (founded) are transmuted into a foundation (into elements of the other of
the immediate being) and that all the determinations of the immediate previous being that
were in the foundation are changed into condition.
Only the foundation, which is the negative determinations as elements of the new
immediate being, and the condition or foundation constituted solely by the
determinations of the immediate being in the process of disappearing, remain in conflict.
The decisive fight between both elements is established.
In this last phase of the development of the essence, the determinations of the
existing immediate being and those of the one that has to replace it at its completion have
been totally polarized. The condition is the determinations of the previous immediate
being and the foundation those of the new immediate determined being; it is found as a
thing in itself, as content of the two moments that are the condition and the foundation
that are in open struggle. From the mutual negation of condition and foundation, the new
immediate being is produced, the essential immediate thing, which still retains them as
its moments. Through the negation of the condition by the foundation, it becomes the
foundation and disappears as a condition; the previous immediate being perishes when
that which conditions it becomes the foundation.
In the negation of the condition by the ground, this is transmuted into being
immediate and disappears as foundation; the new immediate being is coming-to-be when
the foundation is transformed into an essential immediate thing. The new immediate
being is the essential immediate thing that has come into being through the removal of
both its conditions and its foundation. The new immediate being has broken the umbilical
cord that linked it to the previous one.

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 THE RISING OF THE NEW BEING INTO EXISTENCE
Moment Positive Pole Moment of the essential The previous immediate
of the immediate thing being perishes when the
thing CONDITION condition is transformed
Through its negation by the
itself Determinations of the foundation it becomes a into a foundation.
previous immediate being foundation and disappears as a
confronted absolutely with condition.
those of the new being.
IMMEDIATE IMMEDIATE
MUTUAL ESSENTIAL
.
THING ESSENTIAL
CONTENT
DENIAL It is the new immediate being THING
thing in itself
that still has the condition and
It is the other into which the the foundation as its moments. It is the new immediate
actual determined be-ing is being that has come into
about to become. existence through the
Moment of the essen- removal of both its
Moment Negative pole conditions and its
of the tial immediate thing.
foundation.
thing FOUNDATION In the negation of the
itself condition it becomes im- The new immediate being
Determinations of the new im- is born when the
mediate being absolutely negative mediate being and disap-
pears as a foundation. foundation becomes an
and opposed to the determinations essential immediate
of the previous immediate being. thing.

At this point, Hegel completes his task of reflecting the objective world in all its
complexity: he has revealed the three levels of existence of determined being (immediate
determined being, infinite determined being, and essence as the positive foundation of the
existent) and the essence of be determined as the development of the other into which it
has to be transmuted upon its demise.
In short, according to Hegel's Logic, being has 3 levels of existence: finite determined
being, infinite determined being, and essence. The finite determined being, which is a
complex combination of the infinite substance, goes into itself and produces its essence.
This is constituted by two opposite poles that are in a relationship of mutual engendering
and negation and is the foundation, the ultimate cause of the determined being. It has a
corresponding form and content.
The essence as the foundation and ultimate cause of the determined being, starting
from the content that is proper to it and conserving it as its base, initiates the
development of the elements of the other immediate being that it has to become upon its
extinction. It engenders a new relationship between the same poles of the positive
essence; in this new relationship the negative pole acts as a negative element of the
current immediate being and constitutive of the new being that has to become; the
positive pole performs as an element of the conservation of the existing immediate being.
But this relationship is between the same poles of the essence of the existing immediate
being that preserves the content that corresponds to it as such; what has been generated,
therefore, is only the form of the new being spliced, so to speak, to the content of the
previous being. This form of the new being emerging from the content of the previous
being is the negative essence, for now only formal, of the latter.
The appearance of the form of the new being makes the essence of the current
immediate being mature, forcing it to pass to a higher phase of its existence. In this new
stage of life, it again gives rise to the development of the elements of the new being that is

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to succeed it, but now as a pair of poles, different from those of the positive essence,
which come to constitute the content of the new immediate being. The negative essence,
which is the form and matter of the new immediate being within the one that precedes it,
is also constituted by two poles between which the definitive struggle is established,
resulting in the elimination of the previous immediate being and the emergence to the
existence of the new immediate being.

SECOND SECTION

The appearance

Hegel has completed the core part of his Logic. In his speculative work he found that
immediate determined being goes into itself and produces its essence, first as its positive
foundation and then as its negation, and that through the negation of its foundation and
its conditions a new being comes into existence as be immediate essential.
This essential immediate being, which arises from the negation of the foundation and
conditions of the previous immediate determined being, is the new object of study in
Hegel's Logic.
The essential immediate being has a double nature: it is the finite determined being,
but at the same time it is the essence that has arisen into existence.
In the first part of the Logic, the determined finite being also had a dual character: it
was itself and its other, the essence, which should be produced by his internment in
himself.
With this new determination of essential immediate being, Hegel will close the circle
of the dialectic of being: immediate determined being becomes its essence and essence
comes into existence as immediate determined being. The immediate determined being
has a double connotation: it is essence by its destiny and as a result.
The immediate determined being is ironlly defined by this double necessity: it is the
essence of the immediate determined being from which it proceeds, and it has within it
the essence that is to come into existence as the new immediate determined being.

First chapter

Existence

A. THE THING AND ITS PROPERTIES

B. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE THING OUT OF MATTERS

C. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE THING

Being is essence and essence is being. This is how Hegel summarizes the dialectical
movement that he has just described in the part of his Logic studied up to now.
In The Doctrine of Being Hegel begins his theoretical journey with finite determined
being; this is something that has a quality; and the something has its other, its negation,
outside of itself, in another something that possesses another quality; the quality of the
determined being has its other (negation) in itself, they are two moments of the something

105
(which remains) and the passage from one to another is the variation of the something;
the other of the quality of the something is its destination; This is the quality at which the
something arrives thanks to the replenishment of its original quality; the variation of
something takes place in its constitution; Changes in the constitution of the something,
taken to the limit, affect the destination of something and make it the ought to be of
something, that is, what the original something must become when it perishes. The
somethings that perish and become other somethings have a substratum: they are
complex combinations of an infinite substance that is the subject of all changes.
At the point to which he has arrived, Hegel returns to the place from which he
started, the finite determined being, the something.
The something is presented as an immediate being, without relation to its foundation
and its conditions, since it has arisen precisely from their negation.
But this something has a new connotation, it is an essential something, something
that arises from the essence. Its nature is completed in this way: the something is essence
(being-in-itself) and essence (being-in-itself) is a something.
In this double signification the something is the thing in itself.
The something is the thing in itself because it has within it the in itself, the essence
as its other.
Likewise, the something is the thing in itself because it is the in itself that is the
essence arisen into existence.
In this field to which Hegelian speculation has reached, the enormous difference that
exists between the philosophy of Kant and that of Hegel is clearly seen.
For Kant, the essence is not the being that has gone into itself, but only its positive
foundation that coexists with it and the in itself, that is, the negative foundation, is
absolutely unknowable.
As we have said in another part of this work, Hegel's Logic constitutes a true
Copernican revolution in the field of philosophy that makes the being and the essence of
the objective world fully knowable.
The quality of the something is considered now as the property of the thing itself.
The property of the thing in itself is continued in the other things in themselves, it is
a matter.
The thing itself is made up of materials.
The substance that is the substratum of the somethings are, from this new
perspective, the materials that make up the thing itself.
What exists is made up of things in themselves that are composed of matter.
In the first part of the Hegelian analysis, in the doctrine of being, the something that
is has a quality and this constitutes a special combination of the substances that form
the infinite substance. What something is, its quality, is determined by the substances
that form it; but that determination is merely casual, accidental. When something is
considered in its character of something essential, of essence come into existence, then
the quality has a new meaning, it is a property, that is, an essential, necessary
characteristic, inherent to the matter that forms the something.
The essential are then the materials that constitute the thing in itself and this is the
inessential.
The something is a single being that exists in itself, that is, it is the essence that has
become and is a meeting of essential matters in an inessential something,
Therefore, the thing in itself is appearance.
Immediately Hegel goes on to study a world of things in themselves that are
appearance because they are the union of essential materials in an inessential being.

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 Second chapter

Appearance

A. THE LAW OF APPEARANCE

B. THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE AND THE WORLD IN ITSELF.

C. DISOLUTION OF APPEARANCE

The somethings that appear in existence are things in themselves made up of

materials that possess specific properties; the materials and their properties are essential
and the things in themselves the inessential.
The things in themselves thus considered are the appearance, the phenomenon.
These things in themselves, which have an essential existence because they are the
essence arisen into existence, nevertheless preserve the nature of the immediate and
accidental, subject to being coming-to-be and to perish, they are like the somethings that
Hegel studies in the Doctrine of being in where the quality of something contains the
destination and the ought to be: it is another quality in itself, it fills its quality with its
other, that is, it varies, and when it perishes it is transformed into another something;
but what something comes from and what something will become is completely outside of
this approximation of the intellect to the object, it is completely random and arbitrary.
Things in themselves form a phenomenal world.
The fact that things in themselves are something essential, arising from the essence,
gives a new meaning to the destination and the ought to be of something; in the same way
that the quality of the thing in itself is an intrinsic (essential) property of matter,
destination and ought to be are now necessary moments of the something whose nature
comes from essence; the ought to be of something is the new something that will
necessarily come into existence at its death, it is the essence of it. The constitution of
something and the transition to its other is a law.
The basis of the phenomenon is the law.
The things themselves form a world where the destination and the ought to be of the
something, the constitution and the passage from one something to another are governed
by laws.
The things in themselves form a world existing in self and by self, governed by laws, a
world of laws.
The world of things in itself is, therefore, a phenomenal world (where the destination
and the ought to be of the something has an accidental character) and a world in and for
itself (where the destination and the ought to be of the something has a necessary
character that derives from their nature as an essential existent).

Third chapter

The essential relation

A. THE RELATION OF WHOLE AND PARTS

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 B. THE RELATION OF FORCE AND ITS EXPRESSION

C. RELATION OF OUTER AND INNER

Hegel has come to the conclusion that the world of things in self is a phenomenal
world and a world in self and for self.
Now we study the relationship established between these two worlds, which Hegel
calls the essential relationship.
The essential relation is the union of essence and existence.
This relationship has a side that is a totality, which is only a phenomenon, an
immediate being.
This totality is itself and its other.
Its other is also a whole.
Is the side that is being-in-itself, essence.
This side is also itself and his other.
The essential relationship is the unity of the totality, which is immediate being, and
of the totality, which is being-in-itself, in which each of them is itself and its other.
That unity is also a totality.
The whole and the parts.
The essential relationship is primarily that between the whole and the parts.
The whole is determined as being-in-itself, as unity; the parts, as the immediate
being, as the multiplicity.
The whole is an immediate unity of being and of being-in-itself that has its parts as
its moment.
The whole consists of the parts.
The whole is equal to the parts.
The parts are an immediate unit of being and of being-in-itself that has the whole as
its moment.
The parts are the whole.
The parts are equal to the whole.
The whole is the parts and the parts are the whole.
But, in addition, the whole has in itself the part; it is all and part at the same time.
The part has the whole in itself; it is part and all at the same time.
Each one is through the mediation of the other, it is itself and its another.
With this last determination, we pass to the other form of the essential relationship,
which is the relationship of force and its extrinsication.
The force and its extrinsication.
The relationship between the phenomenal world and the world in self and for self is
in the first instance that of the whole and the parts, where the whole has the
determination of the in self and the parts that of being, although each one is the unit of
itself and its other because each one is the moment of the other.
This relationship is overcome and another is established in which the whole and the
parts each have the other in themselves, each one is itself and its other.
In this relationship, the whole is the being-in-itself that has the force that acts on the
parts that are the immediate being.
The parts are the immediate being on which the force of being-in-itself acts.
In both cases, the force is extrinsic to the whole and the parts.
But force is not something extrinsic to the whole, that is, to being-in-itself, but rather
it is its own nature.
The whole, the being-in-itself, is the force.
Nor is it something extrinsic to the parts.
The parts are the force.
The force that is the being-in-itself of the whole is requested by the force that is the
being of the parts.
It is, therefore, a passive force.

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 There is a push of the force that requests on the requested. It is its extrinsication.
The requesting force is active.
The force that requests is also in the applicant; it is the other of itself that is in itself.
Therefore, the requested force in turn requests the other to request it.
The latter is also passive.
The requested force exerts a push on the applicant. It is its extrinsication.
The requested force is active.
The force is externalized in its extrinsication because it is also internal.
The externalization of force is immediately its internalization.
What is remarkable in Hegel's conception is the identification that he makes of being
with force.
(Here the example of the relationship between field and particle would fit.)
Relationship between the inside and the outside.
Finally, the essential relationship takes the form of the relationship between the
interior and the exterior.
The interior is determined as the form of the essence and the exterior as the form of
being.
But both have a base full of content.
This base is the absolute thing that is the unity of the inner and the outer.
Thus, the form of the essence and the form of being are the exterior and the absolute
thing is the interior.
The absolute thing remains extrinsic to the form of essence and to that of being. In
the absolute thing the interior and the exterior are the same.
But in the form of essence and being, interiority and exteriority are determined as
opposites; each is immediately the other and is so by the mere fact of being itself.
The interior is exterior because it is interior.
The exterior is interior because it is exterior.
The interior is immediately the exterior.
The exterior is immediately the interior.
Exterior and interior are identical, they each have the other in themselves, they are
the other in themselves and constantly pass through each other.
Exterior and interior are nothing but determinations of being and essence.
Therefore, what is in its essence is for that reason to be immediate and what is to be
immediate for that very reason exists in its essence.
The essence and the being are each one in itself, it and its contrary.
This unity of being and essence as a unity of the interior and the exterior is reality.
Hegel has continued with the examination of the essential existent being, which is the
essence that has come into existence.
This essential existing being was determined by Hegel as a world of things in
themselves that is based on the essential materials that form them.
This world has a double nature: it is the world of the phenomenal and the world of
the being-in-itself.
The phenomenal world, which is one side of essential existent being, is also its other,
a world governed by laws, a world in self and for self. The regularity acquires the
character of the law by the force that gives it the necessity of the passage from being to
the essence and its appearance in existence.
These worlds, the phenomenal world and that of being-in-itself and for-itself, are
united in an essential relationship.
In the first place, that relationship is that of the whole and the parts. The whole is the
world in self and the parts are the phenomenal world. The whole is equal to the parts and
the parts are equal to the whole, or what is not but the same, the whole is made up of
parts and the parts make up a whole. But besides this, the whole has in itself the part
and the part has in itself the whole, that is to say, the whole is a part and the part is the
whole.

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 The parts and the whole, the phenomenal world and the world itself, are related as
forces.
The whole, the being-in-itself, is a force and the parts, the being, are also a force.
The force that is being-in-itself has in itself the force that is being. The force that is
being has in itself the force that is being-in-itself.
Each one has the other in itself, is itself and its other, it constantly transfers itself to
its other.
Each force is active and passive: it pushes and requests the other and is pushed and
requested by the other.
Each force is extrinsicated, that is, it is externalized because it is internal and
internal because it is external.
With this Hegel goes on to consider the last form of the essential relationship, that is,
that which exists between the interior and the exterior.
The world in self and the phenomenal world are determined as the interior and the
exterior respectively.
The world in self has the form of essence and the phenomenal world that of being.
Both forms are based on the absolute thing, where the in self and the being are in an
undifferentiated unit.
The forms of being and the essence are the exterior and the absolute thing is the
interior.
In the forms of being and essence, the exterior and the interior are opposites, that is
to say, that each one has the other in itself, is the other of itself and in it constantly
transforms itself.
The interior is exterior and the exterior is interior; and each is such because at the
same time it is the other.
Since the interior and the exterior have been determined as the essence and the
being, then the essence and the being are opposites that have their other in themselves,
they are the other of themselves and they pass through the one to the other.
Being is the phenomenal world and the essence is the world of being-in-itself.
Therefore, the last relationship between both worlds leads to their unity as exterior
and interior, which is reality.
The unity of the phenomenal world and the world in self by self is reality.

Third Section

Reality

First chapter

Absolute

A. THE EXHIBITION OF THE ABSOLUTE.

B. THE ABSOLUTE ATTRIBUTE

C. THE MODE OF THE ABSOLUTE

In the previous chapter Hegel arrives at the determination of reality as the unity of
essence and existence.

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 Once he has established the existence of a phenomenal world and a world in and for
self and exposed the essential relationship between these two worlds, Hegel proceeds to
the study of their unity.
That unity is reality.
In reality, the phenomenal world and the world itself appear as the exterior that have
their base and subsistence in the absolute undifferentiated identity of being and essence,
which is interior.
The phenomenal world and the world itself are forms that have their base and subsist
in their absolute identity, that is, in the absolute.
The absolute is the absolute unity of being and essence.
It is the identity of the exterior and the exterior.
It is the absolute form and content.
The determinations of being and essence have the absolute as something extrinsic,
like its foundation.
These determinations have, therefore, the absolute as an attribute of theirs.
They have the attribute of the absolute.
But this attribute of the absolute becomes a simple mode, something that disappears
with the finitude of the determinations of being and essence.
This result is so because the determination of the absolute has been extrinsic and not
the product of its own movement.
Starting from absolute identity, the absolute develops its reflective activity and
manifests itself in the determinations of being and essence.
Now the absolute being, which is the absolute identity of being and essence in
exteriority, is the very manifestation of the absolute identity of being and essence in
interiority, which is the absolute absolute.
The essential existent being, which is the essence arisen in existence, is the absolute
being, manifestation of the absolute absolute.
The absolute being, manifestation of the absolute absolute, is reality.

Second chapter

Reality

A. CONTINGENCY OR FORMAL REALITY, POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

The reality has been determined by Hegel as the absolute being, the essential
immediate being that is the manifestation of the absolute.
Essential immediate being is the unity of being and essence; its determinations are in
the form of being.
Being-in-itself, the essence, is in immediate essential being a mere possibility.
Therefore, reality is possibility.
The formal possibility is denied and the fundamental relationship of being-in-itself
(founded and foundation) is established in reality.
The possibility is now a necessity, that is, it is determined to be essence and has
begun the process of its constitution.
But possibility and necessity are here merely formal; they are what essential
immediate being is intended to be but is not yet.
Therefore, possibility and necessity have the character of accident, of contingency;
the being-in-itself of the essential immediate being is possible and not possible at the
same time, its essence can be this or the other, and so on.
Necessity is accident and accident is necessity.

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 B. RELATIVE NECESSITY, OR REAL REALITY, POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

The essential immediate being is also the being that is going into itself to become
essence.
Under the form of being, the determinations of the essence are developed: the
foundation, the conditions, etc.
Reality is now not only formal but real.
The in-itself of immediate essential being exists as its foundation and its conditions;
its possibility is real.
The foundation and the conditions, which are the in itself of immediate essential
being, already point towards the emergence of the essence into existence as a real
necessity.
The real possibility is the real need.
The real reality is the real need.
The unity of accidentality, that is, of reality in which possibility and necessity are
merely formal, and of real necessity, in which possibility and necessity are already the
foundation and conditions of essential immediate being, is the absolute necessity.
Formal reality is immediate existence, accidentality; she moves towards the formal
possibility, which is the in itself as pure possibility; this becomes the formal necessity,
that is, the development of being-in-itself as the fundamental relation (foundation and
founded); formal reality becomes real reality, the multiple existence that contains being-
in-itself as its conditions of existence, for which reason being-in-itself is a real possibility;
this real possibility advances towards the real necessity that is the emergence of the in
itself into existence through the negation of its conditions. The starting point of all this
movement was immediate existence, accidentality; now its result, necessity, returns to its
origin, accidentality, immediate existence.
This necessity that Hegel has arrived at in his speculative journey is absolute
necessity, the union of accidentality (formal reality, possibility, and necessity) and
necessity (real reality, possibility, and necessity) in immediate being. Thus, absolute
reality is that which is absolute necessity, immediate absolute being that contains the
essence as (1) pure possibility, (2) formal necessity, -relationship between the founded
and the foundation-, (3) real possibility -set of the conditions of existence of being-in-
itself- and (3) real necessity –denial of the conditions of being-in-itself and its emergence
into existence-. The absolute existent being is simultaneously and successively being and
essence in the various phases of its development, it is absolute necessity.

C. ABSOLUTE NECESSITY

The absolute necessity is the union of the formal necessity and the real necessity.
It is the being that contains its own determinations (immediate determined being) and
those of the essence in its phases of constitution (foundation) and emergence into
existence (conditions and essential immediate being), all in the form of the being; it
contains them simultaneously, coexisting with each other, and successively, constantly
transforming one into the other (being in essence and essence in being) under the rule of
an iron necessity.
The absolute necessity is the absolute being that at the same time is reflection in
itself, essence.
It is pure being and pure essence.
It is simple immediacy that is absolute negativity.
It is absolute being that is absolute reflection (essence).
Absolute being is absolute essence.
Absolute being is a multiplicity of existents, of somethings.
These are each necessary in themselves.

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 At the same time their mutual relationship is accidental.
But since the immediate is at the same time reflection, essence, the mutual relation
of the somethings is also absolutely necessary.
The somethings of the multiplicity are necessary in themselves, essence, but at the
same time they are immediate, existent.
As immediate existents, the somethings perish and give rise to another.
They are appearance that is the evolution of reflection, the transfer of being into
nothingness.
And they are also appearance, which is the becoming of being, the transfer of
nothingness into being.
This multiplicity of somethings, absolute being, is the absolute identity of exteriority
and interiority, of accidentality and necessity, of the real and the possible, of being and
nothingness.
The identity, through its negation, of being with itself in the absolute being that is the
absolute necessity in the multiplicity of things, is the substance.
Absolute being is also absolute accidentality; this is the negation of absolute being
which is absolute necessity.
Absolute accidentality, which is the negation of absolute being, is also substance.
Being is the relation of the substance to itself as necessity and accident, the relation
of the substance to its accidents.
Hegel has brought the study of objective logic to an end at this point.
Starting from being in general, from what exists, Hegel delved into the nature of finite
determined being, infinite determined being and essence. This he showed as being formed
through the internment of the determined being into itself and coming into being through
the negation of foundation and conditions. What appears in existence is essential
immediate being. This is being in general again, but now with a great wealth of
determinations: it is a totality of things-in-itself that form two worlds, that of the
phenomenal and that of being-in-itself, that is, that of immediate being and the world of
essence, which are in indissoluble unity and which are each one itself and its other. The
phenomenal world is also a world in itself, a world of laws.
There is an essential relationship between the two worlds that make up the whole.
This relationship is first that of the whole and the parts, then that of force and its
extrinsication, and finally that of the interior and the exterior.
The relationship between the interior and the exterior is the essential relationship
between being and essence. It's reality.
In reality, being and essence are identical and different.
The identity is the essence and the difference is the being.
The identity of essence and being in reality is the absolute.
In the difference, the essence that is identical to being is the absolute and being
(somethings) only have the attribute of the absolute.
But being is also essence, so it has identity in itself and is also an absolute.
This absolute being is the absolute absolute; it's reality.
The reality that is the absolute absolute is first of all accidentality, the formal reality
that contains the essence as a possibility, also formal, and as the necessity that is the
fundamental relationship (foundation-founded).
Secondly, reality is necessity, the real reality that has in itself the essence as a real
possibility (a multiplicity of circumstances and conditions that are the essence in action)
and as a real necessity (foundation and conditions that are denied by the essence) that
springs into existence).
The reality that is the absolute absolute is the unity of accident and necessity, it is
absolute necessity.
It is the reality that includes the existing being that has the essence as what is
destined to be, what is already in action and what is emerging into existence.
In absolute reality, absolute being is absolute necessity.

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 The reality that is the absolute absolute is the absolute identity of exteriority and
interiority, of the real and the possible, of being and nothingness, of accidentality and
necessity.
Absolute reality is absolute necessity, the movement from formal possibility to real
necessity.
Absolute reality as absolute necessity is the substance.
Absolute reality as absolute accidentality is the substance.
Absolute reality is the relationship that the substance has with itself.
It is the relationship of the substance with its accidents.
The existing immediate being is the substance.
The substance is the absolute necessity (essence).

Third chapter

The absolute relation

A. THE RELATION OF SUBSTANTIALITY

B. THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY

C. RECIPROCITY

The essential immediate being was determined in all of the above as the reality that is
absolute being (the absolute unity (identity) of being and essence, of the phenomenal
world and the world in itself, of the interior and the exterior, of the form and the content,
etc.) which is at the same time absolute necessity (the unity of formal necessity
(accidentality) and real necessity) and essential immediate being that contains its own
determinations (immediate determined being) and those of the essence in its phases of
constitution (foundation) and emergence into existence (conditions and essential
immediate being) simultaneously, coexisting with each other, and successively, constantly
turning one into the other (being in essence and essence in being).
Absolute being is absolute necessity.
Absolute being is a multiplicity of existents, of somethings, which are necessary in
themselves and are necessarily related to each other.
The somethings of the multiplicity of absolute being are both essence and
immediately existent.
As existents, they are finite, they have a future, they perish and give rise to others.
They are appearance.
This becoming is the reflection of the somethings, the going from their possibility to
reality and from their reality to possibility.
As a multiplicity of immediate existents, the somethings are absolute accidentality.
Absolute being is also absolute accidentality.
Absolute necessity is absolute accidentality.
Absolute being is absolute necessity and absolute accidentality.
The absolute being that is the identity with itself in its negation is substance.
Absolute being as absolute accidentality is equally substance.
Here Hegel has returned, albeit on a higher basis, to the concept of substance that he
had developed in the Doctrine of Being.
In this part of his argument, the infinite substance was determined as the being that
is conserved in all changes of the finite determined being, which possesses the most
general properties of matter and exists in the form of the finite being with its specific

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properties. The finite beings, the somethings are, according to Hegel, finite substances
formed by determined combinations of the infinite substance.
But after this, there was nothing more to the concept of infinite substance
established in the Doctrine of being.
Now that Hegel is considering essential immediate being, that which is the result of
the arising of essence into existence, he returns to that primitive notion and adds new
determinations to it.
In addition to a matter with general properties that manifests itself in finite beings
with specific qualities, substance is also the following:
- the unity between the phenomenal world and the world in itself, the whole and the
parts, the force and its extrinsication, the interior and the exterior, being and the essence
and the incessant turning of one into the other;
- absolute necessity, that is, formal possibility and necessity (accidentality) and real
possibility and necessity (absolute necessity); this includes the determinations of the
being and those of its internalization in itself to produce its essence and those of the
essence and those of its emergence into existence, all of them existing simultaneously and
successively and changing into one another;
- the finite substance, the absolute accidentality, that is, the multiplicity of
somethings, whose existence is the becoming, the emergence into existence, the ceasing-
to-be and the giving rise to other somethings;
- and all this existing in a universal matter with general properties that manifests
itself in the finite substance of determined beings that possess specific qualities.
Existing immediate being is, therefore, absolute being, absolute necessity, and
absolute accidentality; it is substance (infinite and finite).
The substance is itself and its accidents.
The substance relates to itself in its negation.

The absolute relationship.

The relation of the substance to itself is the absolute relation.
The absolute relationship is the ultimate relationship between being and essence.

The relationship of substantiality.

The absolute relation is first that of substantiality.
The substance is the unity of being and essence.
The substance as a unity of being and essence is their appearing and being-posited.
The appearing is the substance.
The appearing are the accidents.
The appearing that is accidentality is the becoming (arising and ceasing-to-be), of
accidents as the passage from possibility to reality.
It is, therefore, the appearance, in something immediate, of the categories of being
and reflexive determinations.
This movement of the appearance of the substance in accidents is produced by the
power of the substance.
It is a creative power that brings forth the accidents of being itself and the possibility
of other accidents.
It is also a destructive power because in order to bring about accidents it has to
destroy those from which they come.

The causal relationship.

The absolute relationship is, secondly, the causal relationship.
The substance, as creative power, produces accidents, is the cause of them.
The substance to produce accidents puts itself as an effect.
The substance that is creative power is itself cause and effect.

Formal causation.

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 The cause is the original and the effect is the derivative.
The substance as absolute power exposes being-in-itself in the accident; therefore, it
is the cause of it.
The accident in which the being itself of the substance is exposed is the effect.
Substance as power is necessity; the cause is necessity.
The effect is also necessary because the cause is.
Consequently, the effect contains nothing that is not in the cause, nor is there
anything that is not in its effect.
This constitutes the identity of the cause with the effect.
In the identity of cause and effect, the cause fades into the effect and the effect fades
with the cause.
What remains is the immediate being, to which the causal relationship is extrinsic.

The determined causal relationship.

In the above, Hegel took into consideration the causal relationship between
substance and accidents, which he called formal causation.
In what follows he will direct his attention to the causal relationship in the accidents
themselves.
In formal causality the point was reached where cause and effect are identical.
But since they are identical, they remain extrinsic to the content, which is the
accidents, in which they exhaust themselves.
However, causality is reconstituted in accidents that are now independent and free
from formal causation.
The accident, which is a finite substance, is a cause because it is the in itself of
another accident that is to arise from it, and it is at the same time an effect because it has
arisen from another accident that is its cause.
But the nature of cause and effect can also be distributed among the accidents that
coexist.
Thus, according to its form, one accident is a cause and another is an effect.
In this way, the cause and its effect are two different accidents.
Accidents that are one cause and another effect are things with multiple
determinations.
They are the causal finite substance.
In accidents they have, therefore, causality extrinsic to themselves, but they also
have it in themselves.
The first is the causality of infinite substance and the second that of finite substance.
Causality is also presupposed in accidents.

Action and reaction.

Faced with the causality of the infinite substance, accidents, which are the finite
substance, are a passive substance; they are the effect that an extrinsic cause has, in the
power of the infinite substance.
But at the same time, this passive substance possesses its own potency [violence] by
which it exerts an action on another finite substance; therefore, the finite substance that
is passive towards the infinite substance is active towards another finite substance, which
is passive. The active finite substance is the cause and the passive finite substance the
effect.
The finite substance that is passive is at the same time active and as such acts on
the substance that acted on it, which is now passive finite substance.
Before the action of the active finite substance, the passive finite substance exerts a
reaction on it.

The reciprocal action.

There is a reciprocal action relationship between finite substances that are each the
unity of passive substance and acting substance.

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 The action of the active finite substance is the cause; the passive finite substance
receives the action as an effect; this effect causes the reaction of the passive substance,
which is an action on the first acting finite substance; the cause is thus the cause of itself
and the effect the effect of itself.
Accidents are finite substances that are passive and active at the same time and
between which there is a causal relationship of reciprocal action.
These finite substances that are the accidents are independent of the infinite
substance that is their formal cause; they are free because they have been detached from
their formal cause and from the necessity of formal causality; necessity has been elevated
to freedom.
The existing essential immediate being has been determined, in the end, as an
absolute substance that is itself an infinite, active substance, which is the formal cause,
and passive finite substances that are its effect and between which there is a real causal
relationship by which they are active and passive at the same time and there is a
relationship of reciprocal action between them.

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 THIRD BOOK
SCIENCE OF SUBJECTIVE LOGIC OR
THE DOCTRINE OF THE CONCEPT

Hegel's Science of Logic is made up of two Volumes: Volume I, Objective Logic and
Volume II, The Science of Subjective Logic or Doctrine of the Concept.
Objective Logic is the exposure of absolute reality, that is, of the totality of immediate
being that is at the same time and successively being, essence, reality and substance.
Substantial reality becomes substance that knows itself, thought, concept.
This formulation of Hegel is very profound. It is equivalent to the materialist-
dialectical principle that expresses that inorganic matter has in itself, like its other, and
in it is transformed, thinking organic matter.
The doctrine of the concept is the treatise (1) on the instruments (logical categories,
etc.) that the human species has developed for the knowledge of objective reality and (2)
on the process followed in its assimilation until reaching the consciousness of the totality
in the absolute idea, which is the statement of absolute reality and absolute knowledge
Hegel brings together what previous science and philosophy have done in this matter
and comes to the conclusion that, despite advances in the science of knowing, it has
stopped at the point where it only reflects the superficial and accidental of being and it is
powerless to provide a true picture of the whole.
He intuits that reality is something much more than those incomplete, fixed and
unilateral representations.
Reality itself, through the practical action that the species exerts on it, reveals itself,
more and more clearly, as an object in constant change, as a being that has the other in
itself and in it is constantly transformed.
The logical categories also, under the influence of the changing and profuse reality,
manifest themselves as the unity of themselves and their other and as the constant
passage from one to the other.
Philosophical intuition, the imperious reality and thought that goes beyond formal
logic impel Hegel to develop a new cognitive method, the dialectical method, which he calls
the absolute method.
Armed with this powerful instrument, the philosopher reorganizes the logical
categories inherited from old philosophy and endows them with dialectical tension, thus
creating a powerful cognitive tool, a new epistemology that allows him to enrich and
reorder the determinations of being and knowing developed by science and previous
philosophy and forge a totalizing, complete and exact vision of reality, the most complete
worldview that any thinker has ever thought of; all this work is carried out in his works
the Science of Logic, the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Encyclopedia of Philosophical
Sciences (logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit),

The concept in general

The concept is the third with respect to being and essence, to the immediate and
reflection.

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 Being and essence are the moments of its becoming; but it is their foundation and
truth, the identity where they have perished and are contained because this is their
result.
Objective logic, which considers being and essence, constitutes the genetic exposure of
the concept.
The substance is already the real essence, that is, the essence that is in unity with
being and has penetrated into reality.
The concept has the substance as its immediate presupposition, the substance
represents in-itself what the concept is as manifested.
The dialectical movement of the substance through causality and reciprocal action is
the immediate generation of the concept, through which its becoming is presented.
The concept is the truth of the substance and, as the determined manner of
relationship of the substance is necessity, freedom appears as the truth of necessity, and
as the manner of relationship of the concept.
The proper and necessary progressive determination of the substance is the positing
of what exists in and for itself; the concept is the following absolute unity of being and
reflection; being in-itself and for-itself exists above all because it is also reflection or being-
posited and being-posited is being-in-itself and for-itself

Determination of the nature of the concept.

Substance is the absolute, the real that exists in and for itself.
-in itself, as a simple identity of possibility and reality, as an absolute essence that
contains in itself all reality and possibility;
-for itself, because it is this identity as an absolute power, or as a negativity that
refers to itself in absolute.
The movement of substantiality:
The substance, as an absolute power, that is, a negativity that refers to itself,
differentiates itself and becomes a relationship in which the in-itself and the-for-itself,
which were initially only mere moments, exist as substances and as original
presuppositions.
the relationship is between
-a passive substance, being–in-itself, which represents an original and
-an active substance, being-for-itself, the negativity that refers to itself, has posited
itself as another and refers to this other, the passive substance, which the active has
presupposed for itself as a condition.
The movement of the substance is primarily in the form of a moment of its concept,
that is, of being-in-itself.
The other moment is being-for-itself, in which power is posited as a negativity that
refers to itself, in such a way that it once again eliminates what is presupposed (being-in-
itself).

The passive substance.

The active substance is the cause; it acts, that is to say, that now it is the positing (it
posits the passive substance), just as the presupposing was before (it presupposed the
passive substance).
-the cause acts on the passive substance, and changes the determination of that one;
but this is the being-posited,
-the other determination, which it receives, is causality; the passive substance thus
becomes cause, potency and activity,
-in it is put the effect by part of the cause; but what is posited by the cause is the
cause itself, identical with itself in its acting, and it is this that is posited in the place of
the passive substance.

The active substance.

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 -Acting is the transfer of the cause into the effect, into its other, the being-placed in
the effect,
-the cause shows itself as what it is; the effect is identical with the cause, it is not
another; Thus, the cause shows in its action the being-posited, as what it essentially is.
Each one becomes the opposite of himself; but this opposite becomes each one, so
that the other, and therefore each one, remains identical with itself.
The identical and the negative referring are one and the same; the substance is
identical with itself only in its opposite, and this constitutes the absolute identity of what
was posited as two substances.
The active substance manifests itself as cause, that is, as original substantiality, by
means of its acting, that is, by placing itself as the opposite of itself, which at the same
time is the elimination of its being-another presupposition, that is to say, of the passive
substance.
Conversely, through its influence, the posited being manifests itself as posited being,
the negative as negative, and thus the passive substance manifests itself as negativity
that refers to itself, and the cause, in this other of itself, coincides absolutely only with
itself. So, by means of this posing, presupposed originality, that is, that it is in itself,
becomes by itself; but this being-in-itself and for-itself occurs only because this positing is
at the same time an elimination of the presupposed, that is, because the absolute
substance has returned to itself only from its being-posited and in its being-posited and is
thus absolute substance.
This infinite reflection in itself, that is to say, that being-in-itself and for-itself exists
only because it is a posited being, is the completion of substance. But this completion is
no longer the substance itself, but something higher, that is, the concept, the subject. The
transfer of the relation of substantiality is verified by its own immanent necessity, and it
is nothing other than its manifestation, by which it is manifested that the concept is its
truth, and freedom is the truth of necessity.
Here we find ourselves with another of Hegel's classic mystifications.
The absolute substance is being in and for itself, the being that has all the
determinations of reality (being and essence). The philosopher has reached full knowledge
of the substance through a whole system of categories and logical principles that have the
dialectical method as their guiding axis. After establishing the nature of the absolute
substance, he considers that it only has existence when it is placed in the knowing
subject. Hence, the absolute substance must be completed by developing the instruments
and logical processes, all encompassed in the concept, by means of which it places being
in itself and for itself in the subject.
In this way, the absolute substance evolves from being in and for itself to the concept.
The result is the configuration of a mental image of the absolute substance.
For the metaphysician par excellence, the being in itself and for itself of the absolute
substance only exists when it is placed in the subject, that is, when it is a logical entity, a
concept, an idea. Thought gives life to substantial reality.

-The concept is the unity of being and essence.

The essence is the first negation of being,
Thus, it becomes appearance.
The concept is the negation of the essence, the negation of the negation.
It is being restored, but as the infinite mediation and negativity of this being itself.

-The concept is the truth of the substantial relationship.

The truth of substantiality is substantial identity, which exists equally and only as
being-posited.
The being-in-itself and for-itself has achieved, in the concept, an existence adequate
to itself and true, for the being-posited that is the concept is being-in-itself and for-itself.
This is the concept of the concept.

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 -The concept is, first of all, the truth only in itself.
Therefore, it is an internal that at the same time is only an external.
It is in generally an immediate.
His moments have the form of immediate, firm determinations.
The concept is, then, the determined concept; it is the sphere of pure intellect.
The concept is a subjective thinking, extrinsic to the thing.
This degree of existence of the concept constitutes subjectivity, the formal concept.
The identity of the concept, which is the internal or subjective essence of those
determinations, sets them in dialectical movement.
This movement eliminates the isolation of determinations and with it the separation
of the concept from the thing.
From the meeting of the concept and the thing arises the totality, which is the
objective concept.

-The objective concept is the thing itself existing in itself and for itself.
The formal concept has become itself the thing.
It thus loses its relationship of subjectivity and exteriority with respect to the thing.
The objective concept is the real concept that has come out of its interiority and has
passed into existence.
In this identity with the thing, the concept has its own free existence.
But it is an immediate freedom that is not yet negative.
The objective concept is the unity of the subjective concept and the thing; the
subjective concept is internal and the thing is external.
-The next step is for the concept to take the form of subjectivity, for it to become exterior.
This is the finished concept, which in its objectivity also has the form of subjectivity,
the form of freedom.
This finished concept is the Idea.

Reason, which is the sphere of the idea, is the self-unveiled truth in which the concept
attains the realization absolutely adequate to it, and is free inasmuch as in this real
world, in its objectivity, it recognizes its subjectivity, and in this subjectivity
recognizes that objective world.20

The concept is the result of the becoming of being and essence.

The substance, which is the real essence, in its dialectical movement generates the
concept.
The concept is the substance aware of itself.
The substance is the absolute reality, being in-itself and for-itself.
As a concept, its movement consists in appropriating, conceiving (putting) in the
immediate being the in-itself and for-itself, the essence, the reality, the substance.
The concept is the truth of the substance.

Hegel has determined objectivity as the absolute substance.

The absolute substance is reality, the finite determined being that is essential
immediate being: being whose destiny is to enter into itself to be essence and essence that
has arisen into existence, the absolute unity (identity) of being and essence, of the world
phenomenal and world in itself, of the interior and the exterior, of the form and the
content, etc., which at the same time is the absolute necessity (the unity of the formal
necessity (accidentality) and of the real necessity); and being that contains its own
determinations (immediate determined being) which are also those of the essence in its

20
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, The Science of Logic, Cambridge Hegel Translations, translated
and edited by George di Giovanni, McGill University, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010,
p. 527

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phases of constitution (foundation) and emergence into existence (conditions and
essential immediate being) simultaneously, coexisting with each other, and successively,
constantly turning one into the other (being in essence and essence in being).
Absolute being is a multiplicity of existents, of somethings, which are necessary in
themselves and are necessarily related to each other.
The somethings of the multiplicity of absolute being are both essence and
immediately existent.
The existent essential immediate being has been determined, in the end, as an
absolute substance that is itself an infinite, active substance, which is the formal cause,
and passive finite substances (somethings, accidents) that are the effect of that and
between the which there is a real causal relationship by which they are active and passive
(cause and effect) at the same time and there is a reciprocal action relationship between
them.
Thus the substance is completed. It is itself being-in-itself (passive substance) and
being-for-itself (active substance) in the immediately existing being (being-posited).
This immediately existent being that is the absolute substance is the being that has
exhausted all the determinations of being and essence and has become a concept.
In this sense, Hegel says that, when completed, the substance is no longer itself, but
something higher, that is, the concept, the subject.
The concept, which has left the absolute substance behind, is freed from the
necessity to which it is subject; the concept is therefore free.
It is notable that Hegel considers here the thought, the concept, not as something
pre-existing, but as the result of the development of the substance.
However, for the needs of his metaphysical scheme he makes this result the
progenitor of substance.
Translated into dialectical materialism, Hegel's proposition is expressed as follows:
matter (substance) is the unity of inorganic matter and thinking organic matter; the
inorganic matter has in itself as its other the thinking organic matter and in it, it is
transformed; in turn, thinking organic matter has inorganic matter as its other and is
transformed into it. Reality is the simultaneous and successive existence of inorganic
matter and thinking organic matter; In infinite places of the universe, matter exists as
inorganic matter, venting the different phases of its internalization in itself to produce its
essence, exhausting the stages of the emergence into existence of the essence, that is, of
the thinking matter; in infinite places the thinking matter is going through the instances
of its regression to inorganic material.

FIRST SECTION

THE SUBJECTIVITY

First chapter

The Concept

Hegel places the conceptualizing faculty on the one hand and on the other the
passive and active substance that is in the form of immediate being.
To conceptualize is, firstly, to form a mental image that integrates the individual
determinations of immediate being into particulars and universals.
It is a task of collecting individual determinations and their organization into classes,
species and genera.

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 The result is individuals that belong to a determined species and genus, that is, the
individual is in itself a particular and a universal and this in turn is a particular and an
individual.
The first determination of the substance in the concept is the species and the genus
of the individual.
It is being-posited that is being-in-itself and for-itself (not yet the totality of the
determinations of being-in-itself and for-itself).
It is a this that presupposes and excludes the many these that have a common
universality.
This individual is the result of the primitive conceptualizing activity of the self and
the raw material for the next phase of concept development, judgment.
The object is always being-in-itself and being-for-itself, it is essential immediate being.
The subject, through his faculties of perceiving and representing (which have been
formed in the productive activity of the species), makes as his own the determinations of
the finite immediate being of the object, which is the first thing that appears before the
self; Absolutely outside of this representation remains the nature of the object as being-in-
itself and for-itself (as essential immediate being).
Hegel postulates that the spirit has an internal dialectic that leads it to ascend to
higher degrees of the intellectual faculty and activity. The I gives birth from within to a
series of categories, forms of thought, etc., which have the capacity to penetrate more
deeply into the nature of the object, into its being-in-itself and for-itself, which the subject
places in the be immediate finite.
Using these cognitive elements, the subject produces a mental image of the object, a
concept, in which in the immediate being the being in and for itself has been posited.
The subject incorporates that image into himself, integrates it with the self, with self-
awareness.
The concept is then declared by Hegel as the true objectivity.
In the foregoing Hegel has described the general form of human knowledge, the
process of conceptualization.
On the side of the subject, the categories and forms of thought are developed in
ascending phases, until arriving, with Hegel, at the speculative dialectic, which is the
superior method of human knowledge; the mental image that thought forms with these
increasingly perfected instruments reflects more and more fully the being-in-itself and for-
itself of the object.
In what follows, Hegel first addresses the forms that thought adopts for the
incorporation of being-in-itself and for-itself into immediate being, that is, to place essence
in finite immediate being.
He then exposes the development of the concept through the ascending phases of
judgment and syllogism, that is, the increasingly elevated forms of the relationship
between being-in-itself and for-itself (universality, essence) and being-posited (the
singularity, the immediate being).
He immediately uses this powerful cognitive instrument for the formation of the
concept of nature, that is, the same natural sciences that are the result of previous
scientific research, but now converted into being-posited since it is the manifestation of
being-in-itself and for-itself of the natural world.

Second chapter

The judgment

A. THE EXISTENCE JUDGMENT

a) The positive judgment

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 The judgment is the relationship between subject and predicate. For example: The
rose is red.
The elements of judgment are universality, particularity and individuality.
In the judgment of existence - the rose is red - the subject and the predicate are
alternately universal and individual abstract.
The subject is an abstract individual, a finite determined being; the predicate is an
abstract universal, a general quality. The individual is universal.
The subject is a unit of multiple determinations, a universal; the predicate is only one
of those determinations, an individual. The universal is an individual.
In the judgment of existence, the subject and the predicate are simultaneously
universal and individual.
The predicate, as a general quality, has a greater extension than the subject, which is
an existing immediate being.
The subject, as a unit of multiple determinations, has a greater extension than the
predicate, which expresses only one of them.
The two propositions: the individual is universal and the universal is individual, due to
the non-concordance of the extension of subject and predicate have to be denied.
In the judgment of existence (the rose is red) the determination belongs to the mere
surface of the substance. The rose is something substantial, a being in and for itself: a
unit of multiple characteristics and properties that is a particularity and a universality, a
being essential and a necessary being; the concept begins its existence with the collection
of the immediate characteristics of something, which are first indistinct and therefore
have to be grouped into classes, species and genera and thus acquire the character of
particularity and universality. Then they must be discriminated in determinations of
being and essence so that the concept integrates being and essence into itself.

b) The negative judgment

In the negative judgment, the determination of the predicate as an abstract universal,

as a color, and as an abstract individual, as a determined color, is denied; in the positive
form that same negation is the postulation of the determined universal, of the abstract
particular, of the other colors that the rose can have. The subject is an abstract universal,
a unit of multiple determinations and an individual (this subject). The abstract particular
is what mediates between universality and individuality. The judgment of existence is
reflected in itself and the particularity passes to the individuality; the individuality
contained in the subject has become concrete.
The rose is the abstract universal. It is the subject.
It is not red; it is the negation of individual determination.
But it can have another color, it is the abstract particular. It is the predicate in its
negative form.
It is white, it is the concrete individual. It is the predicate in its positive form. It is the
determination of the particularity.
The predicate thus passes from universality to absolute determination and has
become equal to the subject.
The rose is something determined, an individual, and its white color is its individual
determination.
The individual of the subject is equated with the individual of the predicate. The
individual is individual.
Hegel says that this is a mere tautology: This rose is the white rose.
In the same way, the universality of the subject, the abstraction "the rose", is equated
with the universality of the predicate, "the white". The universal is universal.
In these two judgments: the individual is the individual and the universal is the
universal, the predicate is expressed in its positivity.

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 c) The infinite judgment

The infinite judgment is the truth of the negative judgment.

The rose is not red; it is the negative judgment.
The positive infinite judgment is: but it can be any of a multitude of colors and it is
white. The universality of color has transferred to the particularity of all colors other than
red and the particularity to the individuality of the color white.
The negative infinite judgment is: The rose is non-red. Particularity and the passage to
individuality are eliminated in this judgment

B. THE JUDGMENT OF REFLECTION

The universal judgment All men are mortal evolves to the judgment of necessity Man
(gender) is mortal, where the predicate is a necessary attribute of the subject, it is
subsumed in it. The judgment of necessity could be expressed more concisely thus: Man
is; In being, finitude, ceasing to be, is necessarily contained.
The judgment of existence is the attribution of an individual determination to a finite
immediate being, to something. It is the prior activity of the concept to the constitution of
particularity and universality.
In the judgment of reflection, the subject is a fully constituted universal to which a
characteristic of that same universality is attributed.

a) The singular reflective judgment

This, the man, is an essential universal, he is mortal.

b) The particular reflective judgment.

Some these are an essential universal directly implies its negation: some these are not
an essential universal.
Here the universality of the subject has been lost, but the essential universality of the
predicate is preserved.

c) The universal reflective judgment.

The subject that is constituted universality goes from being a mere gathering of all
the equal individuals to having the category of gender.
Man (the genus rather than the whole) is mortal.
Gender is an objective universality.
This objective universality is a posited being of being-in-itself and for-itself of
substance.
The genre contains the totality of the essential universal determinations of the
subject. Therefore, the only thing that remains is the copula is: man is, a judgment in
which all the essential universal determinations of the subject are integrated, which are
those of the individual and the particular.

C. THE JUDGMENT OF NECESSITY

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In the judgment of necessity, the subject, the predicate or both are objective universalities
that contain all the essential, necessary determinations. Objective universality
corresponds to substance in the sphere of essence. The objective universality is the genus
and the species.
In its upward path, the concept, after collecting the immediate characteristics and
organizing them into individual, particular and universal, identifies those that are
essential and necessary and forms with them an objective universality, the immanent
nature of the subject.

a) Categorical judgment.

Objective universality is attributed to a determined subject: the rose is a flower. In

the objective universal flower are contained all the essential, necessary determinations of
the rose.

b) Hypothetical judgment.

A relationship of implication is attributed between two objective universals. If A is,

then B is. This relationship is of reason and consequence, condition and conditioned,
causality, and so on. Each universality is itself and its other.
This relationship can also be that of being and essence, where being has its essence
in itself, that is, the other that it must necessarily become.

c) The disjunctive judgment.

An objective universal is one or another objective universal. A is either B or it is C. If

it is B it is not C and if it is C it is not B. The task of the concept consists in equating A
with B and with C and determining the correspondence.

D. THE JUDGMENT OF THE CONCEPT

Hegel considers that the judgment of the concept is the absolute judgment on all
reality. NB The supreme instance of knowledge.
The truth (objectivity) of the subject, of existing being, is in correspondence with the
ought to be of the predicate, the concept of the individual with the concept of the
universality.
Formulating a judgment of the concept consists of confronting the concept of existing
being with the concept of should be [previously established by the concept] and
determining their correspondence.
The gender and the individuality of the predicate are an absolute presupposition of
the knowledge process; the mental operation that is carried out consists of elaborating the
hypothesis of the gender and individuality of the object and comparing them with the
assumed gender and individuality. If there is a coincidence between both, then the
concept of the subject is true and, therefore, objective.
The pre-existing concept endows the subject with objectivity and truth.
Here is the key to the substantivization of thought: the concept provides objectivity
and truth to being, being springs from thought.
The judgment of the concept is absolute objectivity because its content is the existing
being.

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 It is the absolute subjectivity because subject and predicate have the form of the
concept.
In the judgment of the concept, the object is related to its concept as it should be.
The judgment has the purpose of determining if the object in its reality and constitution
corresponds or not to the presupposed universal concept (objective universality).

a) The assertoric judgment.

The subject is a particular (individual) that possesses such and such characteristics.
The predicate is the ought to be of that particular. The subject and the predicate are
extrinsic. The attribution of the predicate to the subject establishes the correspondence of
the being of the subject with its ought to be.

b) The problematic judgment.

The subject is an individual and its ought to be and the predicate an individual and
its ought to be. What is problematic consists in whether the individual and its ought to be
of the subject correspond or not to those of the predicate.

c) The apodictic judgment.

The subject is an individual and the ought to be of the concept and the predicate the
ought to be of the concept.
The apodictic judgment is the absolute judgment on all reality. It is both the individual
that exists and the ought to be of the same.
It is truly remarkable that Hegel has not sufficiently exploited, in the treatment of
judgment, which is the soul of knowledge, this crucial concept of ought and limits himself
to providing truly inane examples about the concepts of utility, goodness, beauty, justice,
etc.
He had already dealt with this subject at length in the first part of his Logic, in the
doctrine of Being. But here, where the theory of judgment is developed, he simply leaves
aside everything he had done in this regard.
The ought to be is the essence, the other in which the existing being must necessarily
be transformed at its term.
The concept, to be a complete reflection of reality, has to include both the being and
the ought to be (the essence, the other) of the immediate being, constituted as a
speculative dialectical concept.
In the speculative apodictic judgment, the subject is an individual and its other, what
it must become, and its concept (which Hegel calls the ought to be), and the predicate is
the concept, the objective universal, and its other, which is what the subject should be.
This judging is the highest task of thought and its result is scientific concepts and
theories.
It is the fundamental activity through which he puts into itself the being-in-itself and
for-itself of the substance.
In its practical activity, the species makes reality its own through the formation of
concepts, that is, the production of mental images that incorporate in a unit more and
more determinations of immediate being, of essence, of necessity, of the in-itself and for-
itself, until conforming the dialectical concept, which contains in unity the immediate
being and its other, its ought to be.
These concepts are judgments, in which the predicate expresses a determination of
the subject; the determination can be immediate or of the substance and the subject an
individual, some individuals or the totality of the individuals, but at the base of the

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subject and the predicate there is always a specific concept. Thus, for example, in the
judgment the rose is red the base of the subject is the concept flower (rose) and that of the
predicate the concept color (red); the concept of the subject is the judgment, the rose is a
flower, and the concept of the predicate the red is a color.
In its conceptualizing activity, which is based on the sensory and perceptive faculties
that it has developed in production, the species generates a multitude of mental images of
various types and at different levels of substance depth (being determined, essence,
reality, etc.), which constitute a web of judgments that implicate each other.
In the judgments of existence (positive, negative and infinite) individual and
particular determinations of the immediate being are established; in those of reflection
(singular, particular and universal) concepts of the multiple determinations of the
immediate being in its unity; in those of necessity, the concepts that determine the
immediate being as an essential being; and in the judgments of the concept the ought to
be of the immediate being is established.
The judgmental activity first establishes the determinations of existence of the
immediate being, and based on them it generates those of the substance (essence, reality,
necessity, etc.).
Human knowledge is formed, in the first instance, of concepts that it elaborates from
the immediate being; later, he develops them as categories, organizes them systematically
and returns to the immediate being to find determinations of another sector of reality or
of deeper levels of it; The instrument that it uses in this work is the syllogism, which
constitutes the highest relationship between concepts and is the soul of science and
philosophy.
The somethings (essential beings, finite substances) have certain characteristics and
properties that thought makes its own through sensory perception; in its concipient
activity he gathers individual determinations into particular mental images, these into
generals and finally into universals. Generality corresponds to the characteristics and
properties that are common to the individuals considered (all roses are flowers).
Individuality is subsumed in particularity and generality and this is found in individuality
and particularity.

Third chapter

The syllogism

The syllogism is the restoration of the concept in the judgment; it is the unity and
truth of both.
In the syllogism the determinations of the concept are the extremes of the judgment
[the universality and individuality of being in the subject and the universality and
individuality of the ought to be in the predicate] and also the determined unity of both is
set.
The syllogism is the fully posited concept and, therefore, the rational.
The intellect [a cognitive instance inferior (and prior) to reason] deals with the
determined concept, with abstract universality.
In the reason [in the syllogism] the determined concepts are placed in their totality
and unity.
Consequently, the syllogism is rational and equally everything rational is a syllogism.

A. THE SYLLOGISM OF EXISTENCE

The determinations of the concept are singular (they belong to the individual).

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 The extremes of the concept in this syllogism are individuality (this) and universality
(all).
The concept also appears as the particularity (these) which is the middle term that
immediately brings together universality and individuality.

First figure I-P-U.

It is the universal scheme of the syllogism in its determination.

The major premise is a universal that has a singular determination (all individuals).
The minor premise is the particularity (these individuals).
The conclusion is the determination of the individual (this individual).

Second Figure P-I-U.

The major premise is a universal (all particularities).

The minor is an individual (this individual).
The conclusion a particular (these individuals).
The universal is only one of its species through individuality.

Third figure I-U-P.

The major premise is a particular.

The minor premise a universal.
The conclusion an individual.
In the syllogisms of existence, the determinations are always singular (all these, these
and this one) and the determinations do not have a necessity character.

B. THE SYLLOGISM OF REFLECTION.

In the reflection syllogism

-the extremes are the determinations of the judgment of reflection,
-are the true and proper universality and individuality,
-that is, an individual as such, which is a universality of multiple properties and
existences, gender, and the essential universal, the foundation against which the subject
is measured and determined;
-the middle term contains
--individuality expanded to universality (everyone),
--the universality that is found as a base (genre), that is, the universality that unites
in itself individuality and abstract universality,
--and it is set as the totality of the determinations.

a) The syllogism of totality.

It is under the scheme of the first figure: I-P-U.

In the major premise, the subject is the middle term and is made up of all the
individuals that belong to the same gender. The predicate is an essentiality of the subject,
an essential universal.

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 In the minor premise the subject is a species of the genus and the predicate the
subject of the major premise, which is thus the middle term.
In the conclusion, the subject is an individual of the totality that has the genre in
itself and therefore the same predicate of the subject of the major premise, the essential
universality, belongs to it.

b) The syllogism of induction

It is under the scheme of the second figure: U-I-P.

The major premise has a group of individuals as its subject and the predicate is a
characteristic common to all of them; the minor premise has an individual as its subject
and the predicate is the group, the species; In the conclusion, the subject is the infinity of
individuals that has as its predicate the same characteristic that is now the genus, it is
universality. The middle term is the particularity, the species.
The syllogism of induction is the syllogism of experience, it is the subjective collection
of individuals in the genus and the link of the genus with a universal determination,
which is found in all individuals.
The syllogism of induction also means that the immediate gender is determined by
means of the totality of individuality, as a universal property.
In the syllogism of reflection, the universal is the genus, the particularity, the species
(the specific difference) and the individual is the individual that has the genus and the
specific difference within itself.

c) The syllogism of analogy

It has the third figure as a scheme: I-U-P.

The middle term is an individual in his universal nature and the minor premise is
also an individual who has the same universal nature as the middle term (the earth, the
moon).
In the conclusion certain characteristics of the middle term are attributed to the
subject of the minor premise due to the fact that they have the same universal nature,
that is, by analogy.

C. THE SYLLOGISM OF NECESSITY

The middle term is the self-reflection of the determination of the extremes.

The subject of the major premise and the predicate of the minor premise have in
themselves the universal determination of their nature (genre) and the essential
universality of the characteristic or property that is attributed.

a) The categorical syllogism

It is found under the scheme of the first figure: I-P-U

It is the first syllogism of necessity.
Its premises (both or only one) are categorical judgments.
The middle term (the subject of the major premise and the predicate of the minor
premise) is objective universality.
The subject is linked to a predicate through its substance, that is, its being in and for
itself.
Universality and individuality are the extremes of this syllogism.

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 In the major premise, which is a categorical judgment, the subject is the objective
universality, the genus, the being in and for itself of the substance.
In the minor premise, the subject is the individual, accidentality, which here has the
nature of the specific difference of the substantial genre (it is something, the essential
immediate being, the finite substance). This extreme is also a categorical judgment.
The extremes and the middle term exist in and for itself.
A single essence runs through the three terms.
In this identity of the terms begins the objectivity of the syllogism.

b) The hypothetical syllogism

Its formal expression is the following:

If A exists, then B exists.
Now, A exists,
Then B exists.
In the minor premise the existence of A is predicated. The subject A is an objective
universality, the genus, the being in self and for self of the substance, and its predicate is
the immediate determination of that universality, its existence. This universality is itself
an individuality.
In the major premise, the existence of B is conditioned on the existence of A.
B is also an objective universality that comes into existence as individuality.
The existence of A is the middle term of the syllogism.
The relationship between A and B is necessity. If A is, then necessarily B is.
The subject of the major premise, If A exists, is a universality that contains all the
conditions for the predicate, the existence of B, to be true.
The minor premise expresses that these conditions have been met and that B exists,
has reality.
The relationship between the condition and the conditioned can also be considered as
the relationship between cause and effect and foundation and consequence.
What brings the conditions to reality is what being is in its concept, that is, becoming.
A becomes B.
[Here Hegel missed the opportunity to develop on this ground what is the core of his
philosophy: the postulate of the nature of being as the being that is itself and its other,
that is, its destiny and its ought to be. The speculative dialectical hypothetical syllogism
must be put like this:
[If A is A and B, B is the other, the ought to be of A
[A is A and B
[Therefore B is the other, the ought to be of A.]

c) The disjunctive syllogism.

It is found under the scheme of the third figure of the formal syllogism: I-U-P.
It is expressed like this:

A is B, or C, or D,
But A is B.
Therefore, A is neither C nor D.
Or also
A is B, or C, or D,
But A is neither C nor D.
Then he is B.

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 The subject of the major premise is an objective universality, of which its conditioned
is unknown, which can be any of the objective universalities B, or C, or D. Hegel considers
the latter as species of A, among which must be determined what the conditioned is. In
reality, there is not in this syllogism the relationship that Hegel postulates. B, C and D are
not species of A, but rather independent universals that show traits that can refer to
universal A as its determining factor. Investigation or analysis will then be able to decide
if any of these universals is the condition of A. This syllogism is one of the main
instruments of rational knowledge.
In its speculative dialectical form this syllogism would look like this:
A is A and B, or C, or D; B, or C, or D is the other, the ought to be from A,
A is neither C nor D.
Consequently, A is A and B (B is the other, the ought to be of A).

A is subject in both premises and in the conclusion.

The predicate of the major premise is, according to Hegel, the totality of the species of
A (B, C and D).
In the subject of the major premise, A is universal.
In the predicate, it is the universal sphere of the totality of its species.
In the minor premise it is set as one of the species, as a determined.
In the conclusion it is an exclusive singular determination, an individuality.
The universality of A appears as mediated by the individuality of A.
The mediator is the universal sphere of the totality of the species of A.
A is, in itself, universality, particularity and individuality.
A is being-in itself and for-itself placed in the concept.
A -the reflection of something, of essential being, of finite substance in the concept-
has in itself all the determinations that characterize it, the universal, particular and
individual determinations: it is the concept of the object.
The concept has reached the point where all the logical elements are ready for it to
undertake the task of integrating the objects of external reality into itself, subjecting them
to the legality of the syllogism, in which the forms have been developed to elevate
knowledge from the being immediate to the essence and substance, that is to say to being
in and for itself, which is achieved in the disjunctive syllogism.

Every general (and later universal) mental image gathers in itself the determination of
the individual, of the species and of the totality. It is a syllogism.
Thought has developed a series of rules to which each syllogism must submit in order
to fulfill the requirement of being the mental reflection of the existing being.
According to these rules it is established whether this individual is subsumed in such
a particularity and generality (universality), if this particularity corresponds to this
generality and if this generality includes this particularity and this individual.
The syllogistic rules not only make it possible to ensure that the elements of the
syllogism fulfill their specific function; they also make it possible for new individuals to
join particularity and generality and for it to evolve towards universality (of being) and
speculative universality (of being and should be).
Human knowledge is then a multiplicity of universal mental reflexes, of syllogisms of
the most varied kind, which come together in larger units, also in the form of syllogisms,
which become scientific concepts and theories.
The syllogism is the form of rational knowledge.
Thought elaborates a multiplicity of judgments of existence, reflection, necessity and
of the concept, which have to be organized in their totality and unity. The relationship
between individuality, particularity and universality must be established. It is necessary
to form syllogisms.
Syllogisms are basically classified in the same way as judgments: of existence,
reflection, and necessity, depending on whether their content is immediate being,
essence, or what should be.

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 The higher form of the syllogism is the syllogism of necessity. In it the individual is
determined with all the properties and characteristics of the species and the genus, which
are determinations of the being-in-itself and for-itself of the substance.
The syllogism of necessity has its climax in the speculative dialectical syllogism,
which Hegel does not develop, although it is implicit in the fundamental postulate of his
philosophy: the individual is it with all the determinations of the universality and
particularity of being in and for itself, and these are at the same time those that must
necessarily produce those of the other into which the actual being ought to be
transformed.
Human knowledge, in its various fields, passes successively through all these forms
of the syllogism until reaching its plenitude in the syllogism of necessity. It integrates a
wealth of knowledge that is the raw material of the sciences, where the prescriptions of
syllogistics are applied to their full extent.
The concept has thus been completely formed as the instrument through which
thought processes the determinations of reality to forge an integral mental image of it.

SECOND SECTION

Objectivity

It has been shown that the concept is determined by becoming objectivity.

The concept determines itself and is posited in the judgment as a real, existing
individuality.
This reality is in the judgment still abstract and is completed in objectivity.
The determination of an object is at the same time the realization and objectification
of the concept.
Objectivity is the immediacy to which the concept is determined by means of the
elimination of its abstraction and mediation.
Objectivity has a double meaning:
-is in front of the independent concept and
-it is what exists in and for-itself.
In the first sense the object means an object in general.
In the second, what exists in and for-itself.
First of all, objectivity is in it immediation
Its moments subsist as objects one outside of the other.
Objectivity is a multiplicity of independent objects.
Its unit is the mechanism.

First chapter

The mechanism

Objectivity is an immediate totality.

The difference of the concept is found in it [in objectivity] as complete and
independent objects.
In their relationship and in each connection they behave as mutually extrinsic.
This constitutes the character of the mechanism.

A. THE MECHANICAL OBJECT

The object is the syllogism.

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 It is a universal in and for-itself, not as a community of properties but as the
universality that immediate individuality represents in it.
It is, first of all, indeterminate.
Each of the objects of objectivity contains in itself its determination reflected in its
universality, without appearing outside.
The object has the determination of its totality outside of itself, in other objects.
They also have their determination outside of them.
And so on.
This return to itself of the object from going out into infinity determines it as a
totality.
The object in its determination is indifferent to it.
The object is determined by something outside itself (passive behavior) and
determines other objects (active behavior) for which it is also indifferent to be determined
or those who determine.
The determination of the object is found in another.
The determination of the objects is identical and is extrinsic to them.
There is a contradiction between its perfect exteriority and the identity of its
determination.
This contradiction is the negative unity of multiples that reject each other absolutely.
It is the mechanical process.

B. THE MECHANICAL PROCESS

a) The formal mechanical process.

It is the reciprocal action of objects.

The object is the acting cause; it has this determination by means of another object.
The object is also an effect.
The mechanical process is the cause and effect relationship between objects.
Objects are able to mix and add and become a single object.
It is the development of a contradiction.
The determination of the object is given the form of universality, which is the
communication that has no transfer into the opposite.
The influence between objects is an unhindered continuation of the determination of
one object on the other.
It is a relationship between their identical universality.
All objects, a universality, exert an action on the other objects.
These other objects, a particularity, have a reaction to the previous action of the
object.
This object, an individual that has in itself the universal, is, through particularity, a
unity of action and reaction.
The activity of the causal substance is lost in its performance.
On the contrary, the acting object alone becomes a universal.
His performance is a particularization.
The entire determination of universality becomes a species of its own.
The mechanical process was determined from the action of the object.
The syllogism that comprises this part of the process is the following:
All objects have an action on other objects. (Universality).
The other objects have a reaction on the acting object. (Particularity).
This object is active and reactive at the same time. (Individuality).
The reaction is equal to the action.
The other object has taken in everything universal and is now active against the first.
The universality of the object is particularized in the reacting objects.

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 The reaction is totally negative action because it is rejecting the action of the other
and confirming his relationship with himself [his independence].
Particularity thus returns to individuality.
And the action passes into rest.
The return of the object to its independent universality is the result of the mechanical
process.
In this result, the object is immediately presupposed as an individual.
In addition, also as a particular.
Likewise, as universal.
The object unites in itself universality, particularity and individuality.
The product is the presupposed totality of the concept that now is posited
It is the conclusion of the syllogism in which the communicated universal (the action)
is united, through the particularity, with the individual.
In the repose the mechanical process has returned to the point from which it started.
The object is again a universal in itself, independent, just as it was at the beginning
of the process.
But now it is object only as a product.
It is what it had to be in and for-itself: a compound, an ordering and arrangement of
the parts.

b) The real mechanical process.

The objects that have returned to themselves and are at rest are not only different but
distinct from each other.
The opposition that the object in general has in itself is distributed among several
objects that are related to each other mechanically.
The first relationship in the real mechanical process is communication.
The stronger prevails over the weaker and forms a single sphere with it.
It is the power through which the object exerts violence on the other and subjugates
him.
Next is the resistance of one object to subjugation by the other.
Potency is objective universality, which as violence against the object is called destiny.
Objective universality is not recognized by the subject in his specific particularity.

c) The product of the mechanical process

The product of the formal mechanism is the object in general.

The objective be-one of the objects.
The object that has in itself universality, particularity and individuality as the unit of
action and reaction, of subjugation and rejection.
The object in general is individual independence, it is the center.
It is universality that is a destiny determined in itself, rational.
It is a universality that particularizes itself.
It is the law and the truth and thus the basis of the mechanical process.

C. THE ABSOLUTE MECHANISM

a) The center.

The object, an objective individuality, is the simple center.

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 Its determination is a reciprocal exteriority of many objects.
It is the real center between the objects that act on each other.
By him they are mutually linked in and by themselves.
The real center is the objective universality of objects, their essence that pervades
them and is immanent in them.
The identity of the objects with the central body is rest, being in its center.
The tendency towards the center is the concrete repose of the objects.
The central body no longer only has being in-itself, but also the being for-itself of the
objective totality; is an individual.
Objects outside the first center are also centers.
The secondary centers are linked through the absolute center.
The relative central individuals constitute the middle term of a second syllogism.
The major premise of the syllogism is the other objects lacking in independence that
are relative centers.
The minor premise, this object that is at the same time absolute and relative center.
The conclusion is the objective universality and power of the absolute center that is
also a relative center.
The relative centers are the middle term of this syllogism.
They are also middle term of a third syllogism because they constitute the link
between the absolute and the relative central individuality.
The relative central individuality has the reference to itself that is a tendency towards
an absolute middle point.
Objects have as their essence the same gravity as their immediate central body.
They are the particularity.
The major premise of the syllogism is this object that has gravity.
The minor premise is the objective universality and power of the absolute center that
has gravity.
The conclusion is that the objects have the same gravity as the central body.
In the mechanical process the three objects (the universal, the particular and the
individual) successively go through the places of the extremes and the middle.
This totality constitutes the free mechanism.
The free mechanism is the law.

Objectivity is an immediate totality.

It is made up of a multiplicity of complete and independent, mutually extrinsic
objects.
The object has the determination of its totality outside of it, in other objects.
The determination of the object is found in another.
The object is determined by something outside itself (passive behavior) and
determines other objects (active behavior).
It is the reciprocal action of objects.
The object is the acting cause; has this determination by means of another object.
The object is also an effect.
The cause and effect relationship between objects is the mechanical process.
Reaction equals action.
The reaction is a totally negative action because it is rejecting the action of the other
and confirming his relationship with himself [his independence].
Action transfers to rest.
The return of the object to its independent universality is the result of the mechanical
process.
The mechanical process is the incessant passage from the object of independence to
the mutual relationship of action and reaction and from there to rest, which is the
restoration of its independence.
The formal relationship of action and reaction acquires a specific content.
The first relationship in the real mechanical process is communication.

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 The strongest prevails over the weakest and forms a single sphere with it.
It is the power through which the object exerts violence on the other and subjugates
it.
Next is the resistance of one object to subjugation by the other.
When subjugation and rejection of it cease, the object returns to its individual
independence, to rest.
The product of the formal mechanism is the object in general.
The object in general is individual independence, it is the center.
The object, an objective individuality, is the simple center.
It is the real center between objects that act on each other.
The real center is the objective universality of objects, their essence that permeates
them and is immanent to them.
The identity of objects with the central body is rest, being in their center.
The tendency towards the center is the concrete rest of objects.
The objects outside the first center are also centers.
The secondary centers are linked through the absolute center.
Objects, which are centers (absolute and relative), tend to the center, they have
gravity.
The essence of the absolute center and the relative centers is gravity.
The relationship of objects through their centers by means of gravity is the free
mechanism.
The free mechanism is the law.

b) The law.

There is a difference between an ideal reality of objectivity and external reality.

The object as the immediate totality of the concept does not yet have exteriority as
distinct from the concept, since the latter is only in itself.
The object is only a formal syllogism, as it has resulted from the development of the
subjective concept. The reality is completely external.
The object is first immediate and independent. It comes out of itself, establishes a
relationship with the other objects and returns to itself.
In this movement the opposition between the simple centrality and the exteriority that
is now the exteriority of the concept is presented.
The centrality of the object is an ideality, that is, a category formed by the concept
that confronts reality. It is the ought to be of the object.
In this ideality the relationship between the center and the objects is only a tendency.
In the return to itself, the object is a totality, an individuality that is a unit of
determined differences.
This difference within pure ideality is the reality that corresponds to the concept, the
ideal reality; it is more than just the trend.
It is a plurality of objects welcomed in its essence and in pure universality.
It is the reality in which the essence of the absolute center and that of the relative
centers is gravity.
This real ideality is the soul of the objective totality, it is the principle of self-
movement, it is the law.
It is the very determination of pure individuality, of the concept that is in-itself and
for-itself.
It is the imperishable source of a movement that animates itself.
The concept is first the system of syllogisms that has resulted from its subjective
evolution, then it is the simple ideality that is the object's ought to be, its tendency to the
center, which has resulted from the immediate application of the syllogistic to reality;
finally, it is the real ideality, which is the mechanical process of objects. The mechanical

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process is a law that governs the relationships between objects and is incorporated into
the concept as real ideality. The concept and reality are still mutually external, but the
latter, as far as the relationship between objects is concerned, is now found as a real
ideality in the concept.
The law is the truth, the free necessity.

Second chapter

Chemism

A. THE CHEMICAL OBJECT

The mechanical object is a totality indifferent to its determination.

The mechanical process is the extrinsic relationship between objects as wholes.
Its internal nature remains oblivious to this exteriority.
In the chemical object the determination and its relationship with another, as well as
the form and manner of that relationship belong to its nature.
This determination is a particularity welcomed in universality.
The universal determination is that of a singular object and that of the other.
In the object are distinguished:
-its concept, which is the internal totality of both determinations and
-The determination of the nature of the particular object in its exteriority and
existence.
The object is itself the whole concept.
It has in himself the need and the impulse to eliminate its opposite, unilateral
subsistence and to become existence, the real whole, just as it is according to its concept.
The chemical object is an independent totality reflected on itself.
It is different from its being reflected outward.
Being reflected outwards is determination of the immediacy and existence of the
object.
The chemical object returns to itself the individual totality through the opposition of
another chemical object.
It is the opposition of two particular objects.
A chemical object cannot be conceived by itself, but in unity with the other chemical
object.
The being of one is the being of another.
The particular chemical object has an immediate and existing determination. It is a
real genre, a universal essence.
It is in opposition to another particular chemical object.
The relationship between the two particular chemical objects is the tendency to
overcome this determination of their existence and give existence to the objective totality,
which comprises the two particular objects.
This tendency is counteracted by an external violence that keeps them in their
separation and in their lack of completion [that is, it prevents them from constituting a
unit].

B. THE CHEMICAL PROCESS

In the objective totality, the singular objects are linked by the middle term, which is
the nature of both as members of the unit.
Their absolute unity is an element different from them, existing.

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 It is an element of communication where singular objects enter into an extrinsic
community.
The singular objects of the unit are the extremes to which the real difference belongs.
The middle term is neutrality, the real possibility of those.
Examples of this extrinsic community are water in the physical world and language
in the human.
The objects communicate in that common element and their relationship is one of a
calm fusion.
Its singular determination is eliminated in its union, which is adequate to the
concept.
The opposition between them subsides and a calm neutrality is established.
The extremes of the syllogism, which are the singular objects, lose their opposition
and therefore cease to be extremes between them and with respect to the middle term.
The product of the chemical process is a neutral product, in which its ingredients do
not have tension with each other or the properties that they had when they were objects
in tension.
However, they retain the capacity of their former independence and tension.
The unity of particular objects exists, but it comes out of the neutral object.
This independent negativity is now in tension within itself.
This tension is the real possibility of reestablishing the original opposition of the
singular objects that have been diluted in this community.
Neutrality is now concrete and determined in itself.
The object is the middle term of neutrality
The extreme of the negative unit now determines the object and divides it, thus
restoring the opposition of the objects in tension.
With this the chemical process returns to the point from which it had started.
The determination of the object by the negative unity does not constitute the other
extreme of the syllogism that belongs to the immediate relation of the differentiating
principle to the middle term, in which this principle is given its immediate reality; it is
that determination that in the disjunctive syllogism has at the same time the middle term,
as well as that of being the universal nature of the object.
By means of this determination, the object is both objective universality and
determined particularity.
One end of the syllogism is the extrinsic independent end of individuality and the
other is the extrinsic independent end of universality.
This disjunctive syllogism is the totality of chemism.
In it the objective whole itself appears as the independent negative unit and in the
middle term as the real unit.
The mechanical process is the relationship between independent and extrinsic objects
in which their determination is abstracted.
On the way to its realization, the concept now considers those same objects, but in
their determination, that is, in their nature as objects with specific properties and
characteristics.
According to its determination, the objects have affinities with each other.
An object has affinity with another that is its opposite.
The affinity relationship is one of opposition (tension) and unity.
Kindred objects tend to merge into one unit.
There is an extrinsic violence that prevents the meeting of opposites.
That violence is overcome by the tendency to unity.
A new object is then formed with the opposites in which the specific determination of
the opposites ceases to exist and a new determination arises.
This new object has in itself the tendency to reconstitute the particular objects from
which it comes, its specific determination and the tension between them.
The repulsion overcomes the attraction and the separation between the singular
objects and the old determination and tension is established again.

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 The chemical process returns to the starting point.
The chemical process can be represented in a disjunctive syllogism:
A is (has an affinity with) B, or C, or D.
A is not (has no affinity with) neither C nor D.
A is (has an affinity with) B.

Certain objects that are alike (opposite) attract and repel each other.
A and B are definite affine objects.
A and B attract and repel each other.

The opposition between determined objects is resolved in their fusion to form a new
determined object.
A and B are opposite determinate objects.
A and B become the determined object C.

The new determined object tends to restore particular objects to their original
determination and tension.
C comes from A and B.
C becomes A and B.

C. TRANSFER OF CHEMISTRY

The concept has established, through syllogistics, which is its characteristic

instrument of knowledge, the mental reflection of objectivity at its two levels: mechanism
and chemistry.
The objectivity thus considered is the existing immediate being: the objects that have
a relationship according to their mutual gravity and their specific determination.
Objectivity is itself and its other, its ought to be.
The should be is the end of existing immediate being, of the mechanism and
chemistry of objects.
The concept now has to develop the moments according to which the end
transgresses into reality and integrate them into itself.

Third chapter

The teleology

A. THE SUBJECTIVE END

The objects of mechanism and chemism are units of being-in-itself and of self-
rejection. This internal tension impels them to get out of themselves and establish a
mechanical or chemical relationship with other objects. It is an impulse or tendency, an
end that for the concept only has, for now, a subjective existence.
The concept determines the objectives Mechanism and chemistry as independents
that reject themselves and tend to get out of themselves and relate to other objects.
Objectivity contains the relationships that exist between these mechanical and
chemical objects.
But the concept does not yet have in itself the mental images of these relations.
The next phase of concept development is to forge mental reflections of those
relationships and incorporate them into itself.

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 Having achieved this, the concept now has the complete determination of objectivity:
the objects of mechanism and chemistry and the mechanical and chemical relations
between them.
It only remains to determine the relationship between these two parts of the concept.
The mechanical and chemical relations between objects are the end, what the objects
are destined to be, and the objects with their specific nature, mechanical and chemical,
are the means for the realization of the end.

B. THE MEDIUM

The subjective-objective end is 1) the tendency of objects to achieve what is their

destination: the full development of the mechanical-chemical relationship between them
and 2) the very process of realization of that relationship.
In the concept these two moments appear separated: 1) it is the subjective end, that
is, when the reality of the movement is found in the objects as tendency and tension and
2) it is the objective end, the deployment in the objectivity of the tendency and
mechanical-chemical stress of objects.
When the total concept is applied to objectivity, it first determines the subjective end
of objects, and through it attributes the objective end to them, that is, their mechanical-
chemical performance.
The concept, as an instrument of knowledge, has been used for the full
understanding of the mechanical-chemical nature of objects.
The finality, theoretically established by the concept, finds itself as real in objectivity.
The syllogism could be expressed thus:

All objects have a tendency and a tension (medium) that impels them to develop
mechanical and chemical processes (end).
A, B, C… are objects (media).
A, B and C establish mechanical and chemical relationships with other objects (ends).

First syllogism.
Major premise. Medium: Objects are independent and indifferent to internal
determination.
Minor premise. Subjective end: These objects have a tendency and a tension that
drive them to relate to other objects.
Conclusion: This independent and indifferent object contains the propensity to
establish a relationship with the other objects.

Second syllogism.
Major premise. Medium: Objects have a tendency and a tension that drive them to
relate to other objects
Minor premise. Objective end: These objects are related in mechanical and chemical
processes.
Conclusion: This object, which has a tendency to interact with others, engages in
mechanical and chemical processes with other objects.

C. THE END REALIZED

The object has in itself, as a tendency and a tension, what it is destined to be.
Under certain conditions, the object puts its inclination to work and enters into
mechanical-chemical relations with other objects.
Hegel transforms objectivity into logical categories: the natural tendency and tension
in the finality and the object in a means.

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 In the concept, the end acts on the mean, that is, a logical category exercises a logical
action on another.
The result of the activity of the finality is the reencounter with itself in the object, that
is, the return of a logical category to itself.
All of Hegel's argument rests on these logical categories and their syllogistic relations.
The object has in itself the mechanism and chemistry.
The object is the medium on which the end acts from the concept, to which it is
integrated.
By setting the mechanism in motion, the activity of the end makes objectivity return
to itself, that is, to the object that accomplishes what is presupposed as an end. But this
relationship remains outside the concept.
The first elimination of objectivity is when it is only presupposed and remains
extrinsic to the concept.
The second elimination occurs when objectivity is denied, but is incorporated into the
concept.
Hegel says, which is to say a lot for the one who is called Hegel the obscure, that the
interrelationship of the concept is difficult and intricate
The concept was determined by Hegel in the first place as the syllogism, that is, a
logical instrument for the knowledge of reality.
Through syllogizing, the individual determinations of reality obtained by sensible
perception are brought together and organized into particular and universal
determinations.
Thus, a body of knowledge of the universal characteristics and properties of objects is
formed.
The syllogism is used to organize objects into genera and species, form new genera,
determine other species, fix the genus and species of objects hitherto unclassified, and so
on.
Hegel calls the concept that develops the syllogism subjective concept.
From the syllogism establishes a higher form of knowledge.
It is about incorporating into the concept, which as a subjective concept only
includes the individual determinations of the objects and groups them into genera and
species, the relationships of the objects among themselves, either as indifferent and
extrinsic objects or as specific determinations.
Objectivity is a multiplicity of independent individual objects.
These objects are determined immediate beings.
Its determination includes the existing immediate being and its purpose, what by its
nature it is destined to be.
The finality is in the immediate being first as a tendency, as an impulse.
It is the subjective finality.
Objects tend to establish specific relationships among themselves.
Those relationships are mechanical and chemical.
The finality is realized when the objects develop mechanical and chemical processes.
It is the objective finality.
The existing immediate being is, simultaneously and successively, determined being,
finality or destination, means and end realized.
The concept integrates into itself the mental images of objective relations and adds
them to those of the syllogistic system that it has previously developed.
In this way, the concept is perfectly formed as the cognitive instrument that reflects
objectivity in the fullest way.
According to Hegel, at the end of his evolution the concept is not only ought to be and
tendency, but is identical with immediate objectivity.
The concept thus considered is the Idea.
The Idea is the most powerful instrument of knowledge.
It is the appropriate means to obtain the most complete mental reflection of being in
and of the various sectors of reality.

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 For example, Marx's theory of the capitalist production regime is an idea that
includes the being, the destination and the ought to be of that socio-economic formation.
As an idea it is a model against which to compare the economies of different
countries and thus determine their current nature, their history and future evolution.
The theories of Kepler and Newton, which establish the laws of universal gravitation,
are equally ideas that integrate the being-in-itself and for itself of the celestial bodies.
The theory of the sky and the Kant-Laplace Celestial Mechanics is also an idea. It is
the concept of being, destination and ought to be of the solar system.
Darwin's theory of evolution is the idea about the being and the essence of the
species.

THIRD SECTION

The idea

Reality has not yet been considered by the concept as consciousness.

The concept incorporates within itself the process of formation of consciousness.
The concept is then aware of itself.
The self-awareness of the concept gives the Idea its full form.
Thus, then, the idea is life.
The concept incorporates within itself the process by which individual determinations
are converted into universals and then consciousness and the consciousness of
consciousness are reached; this movement is life.
The idea thus acquires a greater extension, for now it also contains the vital process.

First chapter

Life

The idea is the formally complete concept. Its immediate evolution is that the concept
returns to itself and unfolds as knowledge of reality.

A. THE LIVING INDIVIDUAL

The presupposition of life is the fully formed idea as a logical category by means of
which it is possible to know the in-itself and for-itself of reality.
The total formal concept, that is, the logical instrument par excellence of knowledge, is
the one that is present as the foundation of life; the unfolding of life is first of all the self-
reference of the concept which forms a unit within the multiplicity of objective being. As
such a unit it faces the rest of the objective world.
The exteriorization of life is the determination of the concept as a unit referred to
itself, its distinction with respect to multiplicity.
The living individual was determined as the unit that has in itself the total formal
concept and an objectivity that is different from and indifferent to general objectivity; In
the vital process, life -the living individual- denies the exteriority of objectivity and
submits it to its power, that is, it uses the categories of the total concept to forge the idea
that is the truth of reality.
In the vital process, life is the unity of the living individual that is the universality of
the concept and its other, the universality of objectivity that is in the idea.

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 The idea is the total concept that integrates to itself the judicative, syllogistic,
relational and teleological forms that are the necessary logical instrument for the full
knowledge of the being-in-itself and for-itself of reality.
The application of this gnoseological tool in the different fields of reality makes it
possible to form ideas about each of them, which constitute the most faithful reflection of
objectivity.
An idea comprises, therefore, the organization of sensible perceptions into judgments
and syllogisms, the determination of the relationships between objects (mechanical and
chemical) and the finality that animates them (teleology).
The idea thus forged is the truth.
What Hegel has developed is the general form of the idea, an epistemological
instrument whose fundamental characteristic is that it allows one to apprehend being,
destiny and ought to be, that is, being and his other, through the category of teleology.
Hegel places the formal idea on one side and in front of it the objectivity to which it
has to be applied to obtain true knowledge of reality.
He now must work on the process and the subject of that cognitive activity.
The starting point is the immediate idea.
He calls this movement life, by which the subject that must carry out the cognitive
activity is constituted and the phases of development of the latter are determined.
He emphasizes that it is not about the natural process of life, but about the logical
concept, the pure thought referred to knowing and acting.
The living individual is the subject of the life process, who has reality before him.
The life process is the relationship between the living individual and reality.
The subject uses the logical category of the idea to form a full mental image of reality.
This image is the truth.
The vital activity is knowledge.

B. THE LIFE PROCESS

The corporeality of the living individual, determined as the sensation, irritability and
reproduction that make it a real individual, is in relation to the extrinsic objective totality;
that relationship is a process.

C. THE GENDER

The idea is the total concept.

It includes the logical categories of judgment, syllogism, mechanism, chemism, and
teleology.
It is an instrument of pure thought with which it is possible to know the being-in-
itself and for-itself of reality.
It is the truth of reality.
But this truth is only a possibility, because the idea in its formality is indifferent to
objectivity. It is a mere logical category with no content or drive toward objectivity.
Hegel, the metaphysician par excellence, makes this abstract idea unfold and produce
from its core the subject that must bring it to reality.
The metaphysical inversion is evident here. It is the subject who, in his practical
relationship with reality, rises from sensitive perception to the most complex logical
categories. All this in an incessant interaction between the practical activity of the subject
(the human species) and objectivity.
Hegel denatures the real relationship and makes the son the begetter of the father.
The idea has an immediate existence.
It is a special objectivity, different from general objectivity.
That special objectivity is life.

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 It is not life in general, but conscious life.
Life splits in two: it refers to itself as an existent and it refers to general objectivity as
its other that is indifferent to it and to whom it is indifferent. It is a dichotomized unit.
That unity is life (the idea of life) objectified, a living (thinking) individual.
This objectification is corporeality of nature.
The living individual is related to external objectivity and is determined as sensitivity,
irritability and reproduction.
The individual's first relationship with exteriority is sensation, the sensitive
perception that he has of external objectivity.
The second is irritability: the immediate reaction of the individual to the action of
external nature.
The third is reproduction, the activity by which the individual takes the objects and
the mechanical and chemical processes of nature and assimilates them to constitute his
own objectivity.
The impulse of the living individual towards exteriority comes from necessity, from
the lack in which his objectivity finds itself in the elements of his constitution and
reconstitution, which exist in nature.
Pain is the feeling that brings to the consciousness of the living individual the need
that afflicts him.
The living individual who interacts with nature to reproduce his own objectivity is the
universality of the genre, that is, the unity of the objectivity of the concept and external
objectivity.
Life is a multiplicity of living individuals.
The living individual recognizes himself in another living individual.
Thus a community of living individuals is formed.
This community is the real generic universality. It is the real genre.
The real genre is a unity of the idea (logical categories: judgment, syllogism,
mechanism, chemism and teleology) and its specific objectivity (the human race).
The subject of knowledge has been fully formed: the human race and the idea; and its
object, general objectivity.
Knowing is the process of assimilation of reality by the subject.
In the real genus the particular individual has perished and in his place the spirit
arises.

Second chapter

The idea of knowing

Life is the immediate idea, the idea as its unrealized concept in itself.
The concept is in the immediate idea as a concept by itself, as an abstract
universality, as a genre.
It is the concept that is pure identity with itself that differs in itself.
What is differentiated, the identity of the concept, is not an objectivity.
It is a subjectivity, the concept that has the concept as its object.
The concept rises above life.
The idea is duplicated: the subjective concept, whose reality is itself, and the objective
concept, which exists as life.
The idea as a subjective concept has as its determinations thinking, spirit, self-
awareness.
From the idea of life has arisen the idea of spirit.
The idea of the spirit constitutes the truth.
This idea has in and of itself its truth.
The truth of life is to eliminate immediate individuality and establish gender.
This idea is the spirit.

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 The idea of spirit is a logical object found in pure science.
In the logical idea of spirit, the self is immediately the free concept. The concept as its
idea.
The object is transformed by the subject in a determination of the concept.
The concept acts and manifests itself in the object.
In it, it refers to itself and by giving itself in the object its reality finds the truth.

The concept acts on the object.

It transforms it into a determination of the concept: judgment, syllogism, mechanism,
chemism, teleology.
The object is transposed into a mental image that the subject makes using the logical
categories of the concept.
In the mental image of the object the concept is given its reality. The logical categories
are objectified in that one.
In this way the concept finds the truth.

The idea that is the concept that has itself as a subjective reality is one extreme of a
syllogism.
The idea that is [refers to] the objective world is the other extreme.
The two extremes are identical.
Its unity is the concept that in the subjective extreme is by-itself and in-itself in the
objective extreme.
The reality of the subjective idea is abstract.
That of the objective idea is concrete exteriority.
The unity of extremes is effected through knowledge.
Knowledge is the middle term of the syllogism.
The one who knows refers by means of the determination of its concept, by the
abstract being-for-itself, to the external world.
It raises its reality in itself and thus raises the formal truth to the degree of real truth.
In the concept it has all the essentiality of the objective world.
It posits the content of this world as identical with the concept.
And he puts the concept as identical with objectivity.
Knowledge is, first of all, the relation of the objective world that has the form of
immediacy -being for the self-existing concept- with the concept as it originally exists, as
the abstract, immediate self-concept.
This abstract concept is constituted by the simple determinations of universality and
particularity.
Individuality comes from outside; it is the determined determination, the content.

The idea is divided into subjective idea and objective idea.

The subjective idea is the real genre, the abstract concept that has its objectivity as a
genre.
The objective idea is the objective world in general.
The union between these extremes is knowledge.
He who knows has the concept of essential determinations.
He puts the object in them and gives them full objectivity.
He makes the object identical to the concept and the latter identical to the object.
The first relationship of the knowing subject is with objectivity as an immediate
being.
In this relationship the concept has the determination of universality and
particularity and the object is concrete individuality.
The idea that life is acquires the nature of a real genre.
In it, the particular individual has been overcome and gender has been established as
the objectivity of the concept.

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 The idea now comprises the conceptual formality (the logical instrument: judgment,
syllogism, mechanism, chemism, and teleology) and its objectivity, the generic subject
(which has been produced in the vital process), and the reference to general objectivity as
a another indifferent.
The idea thus determined comes up against general objectivity.
It develops an activity through which it conceptually assimilates external reality.
The idea is then knowing, the spirit, self-awareness.
The knowing subject has the concept of essentialities, that is, of all the logical
categories of the concept.
He applies these determinations to objectivity and makes a mental image of the
object.
This mental image is constituted by the same abstract determinations of the concept
transferred to the concrete determinations of the object, it is the objectification of the
logical categories.
It is also the transfer of the determinations of the object to the concept, the
conceptualization of the object.
The subject thus establishes the identity of the concept and the object.
Concept and object are identical: the truth of reality.
In the relationship of knowing, the subject acts first as an immediate concept that
has the determinations of universality and particularity, on the individuality of the
immediate being of objectivity.

A. THE IDEA OF THE TRUE

The subjective idea is primarily an impulse.

It is the tendency to eliminate it subjectivity and fill it reality with the content of the
world that have presupposed.
The concept is the impulse to eliminate the being-other of objectivity and consider the
identity with itself in the object.
The subject puts individuality as the content of the concept.
The impulse is the impulse of truth.
The objective truth is the idea itself.
An object may or may not be true.
But the subjective concept, knowledge, is always the truth because the predicate
represents both the objectivity of the concept and the comparison that relates the concept
to reality.
The first relation of the subjective idea is with the immediate being of objectivity.
In this knowledge, objectivity is placed in the concept in its immediacy, as concrete
individuality.
It is not placed in-itself and through-itself.
The truth of the idea is not yet the full truth here.
The object is placed in the concept as a neutral unit or a synthesis, a unit of the
terms that were separated and that are linked in an extrinsic way.
In this knowledge, being-in-itself presupposed against the concept has not been
eliminated.
The same concept is an end in itself and this is fulfilled in its realization, that is,
when it eliminates its subjectivity and the presupposed being-in-itself.
The idea is the impulse of the concept to realize itself.
Its activity consists in determining the object and relating to itself in it.
The object is that which can be determined absolutely and which is in-itself and
through-itself in the idea.
When in the subjective idea only the immediate being of objectivity is assimilated, the
concept has only put into itself the universality and particularity of the singular object.

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Another part of the being-in-itself and for itself of objectivity still remains presupposed for
the concept.
Objectivity has the essential determination of being determinable through the
concept.
The idea, aware of itself, achieves the realization of its own concept in the object.
The idea has the impulse to assimilate the totality of the in-itself and for-itself of the
object.

The immediate concept has carried out a first phase of the determination of the
being-in-itself and for-itself of the object; in it he has placed in itself the universality,
particularity and singularity of immediate being.

In the syllogism the major premise is the determination of immediate being.

It is the first denial of the presupposition.
This activity of the concept, putting this first determination of the object, limits itself
to find the presupposition and collect data, remaining passive in the face of what is
present
It is like removing an obstacle so that the object is presented not as determined by
the subject but as it is in itself.
This knowing does not appear as an application of the logical categories but as a
receiving and collecting them as something already ready.
This knowing is analytic knowing.

a) Analytical knowing.

Analytical knowing, like the first premise of the syllogism, is the immediate
communication of the concept, which does not yet contain the being-other.
The difference is still found as a difference in the object itself, only presupposed by
the concept.
The concept is, in this knowing, the simple identity, the abstract universality.
This is the characteristic of analytic knowing.
The transfer to the other, the link with different others, are excluded from it.
Analytical knowing begins from an individual, concrete presupposed object, which
can be an object already ready for representation or a problem, not yet revealed by itself.
The analysis has as its products the determinations of the concept, which are
immediately contained in the object.
The activity of the subjective concept in analytic knowledge is, on the one hand, only
the development of what is already in the object because this is the totality of the concept.
Analytic knowing is two things in one at the same time.
A putting that is equally a presupposing.
By the latter it is considered that the logical element is already in the object.
By putting, the logicality of the object is the result of the activity of the concept.
The determinations of analytic knowledge are immediate.
They belong to the object and are received by it without subjective mediation.
Knowledge, however, must also proceed to the development of differences.
For analytical knowledge these differences are only a presupposition that is not placed
in the concept.
In analytical knowledge, the subjective abstract identity is determined, the
universality of the object that is a concrete singular.
Differences that are outside the concept are also determined, but this activity is a
new analysis of a particular object.
The transfer from analytic to synthetic knowledge is found in the passage from
abstract identity to difference, from the determination that refers to itself to the
determination that refers to itself and to the other.

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 b) Synthetic knowing.

Synthetic knowledge is the second premise of the syllogism.

His activity consists in understanding what exists, in capturing the multiplicity of
determinations in their unity, the relationships of what is different in their necessity.
It is the peculiarity of the concept.
The determinations of the existing multiplicity are not put into the concept yet.
Synthetic knowledge finds them in the object and acts on them establishing their
unity, their differences, their relationships and their necessity.
Find propositions and laws and demonstrate their necessity.
But this necessity is not that of the thing in and for itself, that is to say, that which is
extracted from the concept, but rather that which the concept finds in the given
determinations.

The moments of synthetic knowing.

1. THE DEFINITION.

The moments of understanding are the same as those of the concept: universality
(analysis), particularity (synthesis) and individuality (definition).
The individual is the object itself, which has to be defined.
The individual object is a universal.
This universality is the next genre.
It is the basis for the differentiation of the particular.
This differentiation is the specific difference that makes it a particular species and
grounds its disjunction from other species.
The concept now contains the differential determinations of the object.
They are in the object and the concept puts them in itself.
The object is a universal and at the same time a determined.
However, the object still preserves its exteriority because the choice of the generic
characteristic and the special differences is an arbitrary activity of the concept, based on
accidentality.
The content of the concept is something given and accidental.
In the definition, knowing part of the multiplicity of characteristics and relationships
of the object, determines one of them as the one that corresponds to the totality of the
individuals, that is, it establishes the genre, then groups the individuals of the genre into
classes of special characteristics and, finally, attributes to the individuals such gender
and specific difference.

2. THE DIVISION

Division is the particularization of the universal.

The individual content of the definition is elevated, through particularity, to
universality.
The universal is now the objective basis and the division is its disjunction, its
separation into particular species.
It is a progress from the universal to the particular that constitutes the basis and
possibility of synthetic science, of a system and systematic knowledge.
The starting point is the object in the form of a universal.
The universal is the first conceptual moment because it is simple.

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 The particular is the following moment because it is mediated.
The concrete, which is what is differentiated in itself, is mediated, presupposes a
transfer from a first.
In the division or in the particular, the difference between this particular and the
universal is presented. But this universal is already a determinate, so it has the difference
with a superior universal, and so on.
The task of knowing can only consist, on the one hand, in arranging what is found in
empirical matter in order, and on the other, in finding universal determinations in that
matter by means of comparison.
These universal determinations are valid as principles of division.
These principles can be multiple and multiple the divisions.
They are accidental and therefore the division too.
The division has to exhaust the concept.
As empirical knowledge expands, it may be that there are species that do not conform
to the accepted determination of the genus. In this case it must be modified.
This is an act without concept.

3. THE THEOREM

From division, this knowledge transfers to the theorem.

It is the passage from particularity to individuality,
It is the determination that refers to itself; what must be considered is the difference of
the object itself and the relation between the differentiated determinations.
The definition contains only a single determination.
The division contains the determination against the others.
In individuality the object goes into itself.
In the theorem the object is known in its reality, in the conditions and forms of its
real existence.
The theorem, along with the definition, presents the idea, which is the unity of the
concept and reality.
But this idea is still incomplete because in it reality does not arise from the concept,
but is found by it.
The theorem is properly synthetic knowledge of an object because the relationships
between its determinations are necessary since they are founded on the inner identity of
the concept.
In definition and division, the synthetic is a link taken from abroad.
In the definition and in the division the content is shown by the concept.
In the theorem the object must be proved.
In individuality, the concept has transferred to the other-being, to the reality through
which it becomes an idea.
The object of the theorem has resulted from the definition and division
The demonstrated proposition is the unity of the concept and reality; it is the idea.
This form of synthetic knowing is characteristic of mathematics and geometry. In the
other sciences it is used to a lesser extent.

The Pythagorean theorem.

The triangle is universality: a closed flat geometric figure, limited by three line
segments joined at their ends. The points where two segments intersect are called vertices
of the triangle and the segments sides.
The particularity are the various species of triangles.
A theorem is established about an individual triangle, the right triangle.
The theorem develops:
Hypothesis: in the right triangle there is a certain relationship between its sides.

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 Thesis: in a right triangle the sum of the squares of the legs is equal to the square of
the hypotenuse.
Demonstration. Since Pythagoras there have been tens of demonstrations of the most
diverse types: algebraic, geometric, etc.
The demonstrated thesis is a proposition with an axiomatic value, a superior
synthetic knowledge.

The proven proposition is necessary.

But this need is given extrinsically, it is not that of the concept.
The concept is not, in this knowing, by itself, it has not yet reached the knowledge of
the truth.
Necessity trespasses in and of itself to the freedom of the concept.
The concept is now what is determined in and for itself, it is the practical idea, the
act.

B. THE IDEA OF THE GOOD

The good is for Hegel everything that has as its finality the constitution and
development of the individual and his world. It is the ideal of the human individual and
the world, as they should be, which has been forged throughout the evolution of the
private property regime and to which Hegel honors considering it as the ultimate goal of
history: the human individual, that he has achieved full freedom and exercises it through
his all-encompassing will, and the economic and social organization (state) that has that
free individual as its presupposition and finality.
All individual activity, absolutely all, economic, social, religious, family, etc., is
subject, according to Hegel, to this principle of wanting the good.
The individual is immersed in an objectivity on which he acts.
His options for action are multiple, and among them he must choose the most
appropriate under the criteria of feasibility, opportunity, etc., and confront them with the
idea of the good that is an ought to be, a pre-existing concept, an ideal.
It is the practical idea, which in union with the theoretical idea forms the totality of
the idea.
The idea has the following constitution: a set of logical categories, a knowing generic
subject -the human race- and an external objectivity alien to the subject.
The subject has an impulse that moves him to relate to objectivity to form concepts -
mental images- about it.
Knowing is the activity that the subject develops in order to mentally appropriate
objectivity through concepts.
Knowledge begins with the immediate being.
The subject determines immediate being as a simple concrete universal. [The red
rose, Socrates the man, etc.]
The concept presupposes the differences -oppositions- and the particularities of the
object and finds them through analysis.
These determinations are not yet in the concept; he establishes them from the
analysis.
The concept captures the multiple determinations of the object in its particularity
and opposition and organizes them -synthesizes- in genus and species.
The concept fixes, by means of the synthesis of the determinations that the analysis
provides it, the proximate genre and the specific difference of the object.
Through the division of the simple universal, which integrates the genus and the
difference, the concept unfolds the differences and works with them to find more species,
new genera, etc.

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 The concept has been expanded and the mental image now includes the
determinations of the particularity of the object -which is the second premise of the
syllogism-, which are added to the determination of simple universality -the first premise-.
The concept thus increased moves toward the individuality, that is, into the theorem.
From the multiplicity of particularities that arise from the division of the universal,
possible relationships that do not appear explicitly stand out; They are hypotheses that
are proposed as theses that have to be demonstrated based on the results obtained and
that are incorporated attached to the concept It is a theorem.
Once the theorem has been proved, it is assumed by the concept as a legitimate part
of it.
This was the case with the Pythagorean theorem, which, once proven, became a
component of the concept of a right triangle.

Third chapter

The absolute idea

The idea has been completed and now includes the logical categories of knowledge
and willing (judgment, syllogism, mechanism, chemism and teleology), the subject who
knows and acts (generic individual), the subject's drive towards external objectivity to
convert it into concepts, in mental images, and the instances of knowledge (analysis,
synthesis, definition, division and theorem).
The result is the idea, that is, the identity between the concept and reality.
The production of ideas in the different fields of knowledge is the task of the concept.
Ideas (speculative concepts) of the solar system, of the evolution of species, of the
nature and development of human societies, of the capitalist regime, etc., are forged.
In its development, the idea reaches the point where it comprises the totality of being
and knowing -absolute knowledge and absolute reality- and is therefore the absolute
truth.
It is the absolute idea.
The absolute idea is the absolute identity of the theoretical idea and the practical
idea.
It is the absolute rational concept -the absolute reality incorporated into the concept
as a mental image-, and the absolute free subjective concept that is personality, that is,
universality and total knowledge.
The absolute idea is the totality of being, the incessant vital process, the truth
because the concept is identical with reality, and the whole truth because it is the totality
of reality that is incorporated into the concept.
The logical idea is the essence of the absolute idea and represents its own movement.
It is the method.
The method is the form and way of knowing characteristic of the concept and the
concept itself that reality has in itself.
The method is the movement of the total concept, the absolute universal activity that
determines and realizes itself.
It is the infinite way and force, external and internal, that penetrates and moves all
objects.
It is the movement of the concept and of being, and the force that moves them.
It is the soul and substance of all things, so they can be known in their truth when
the concept, which is the method, submits them.
The method is the way of knowing, of the concept and of objectivity.
It has the determinations and relations of the concept.
It first determination is the beginning.

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 The beginning is a simple universal immediate.
The previous movement to conceptual knowledge is the formation of universals.
The generality of the determinations of the object is established through perception
and representation.
The object appears before the concept as a determined universal that has its other in
itself.
The second determination of the method is the dialectic.
The first action of the concept is to give impulse to the other and thus deny the
determined universal.
The concept denies the simple universal and develops all the activity that belongs to
it as a cognitive instance.
It finds other determinations in the object, which it includes in the universal.
It is the negation of the negation, the affirmation of the simple universal that
preserves and surpasses its previous determination.
The result is a simple universal that has its other in itself and is the starting point of
a new beginning.
By means of the method (alternating movement of the moments of the beginning and
of the dialectic) the concept incorporates to itself the determinations of the different
spheres of being; it makes the being that is only in-itself pass into being in-itself and for-
itself.
At the peak of this process, the idea has become absolute knowledge and absolute
reality.
Absolute knowledge, which is the absolute method, has its beginning in immediate
being, in being without any determination.
Through the sciences and philosophy assimilates the totality of the determinations of
being, the absolute reality.
Absolute knowledge ends again in immediate being, but now this is being with all its
determinations.
The idea that is absolute reality is Logic.
The Logic begins with the indeterminate being and concludes with the being that is
the absolute reality, the immediate being that is, simultaneously and successively, being
determined finite, being determined infinite, essence, reality and substance.
The soul of absolute reality is also, like the concept, the absolute method, the
dialectic.
The dialectical method is exposed in a more complete and detailed manner in the
section of the Logic dealing with the doctrine of essence.
Hegel's Logic is, as an idea of absolute reality, the only scientific conception of the
totality, of the world, of the universe.

Objective view of the world.

In the above, Hegel has configured the most complete objective vision of the world
ever forged:
The existing being is the absolute reality, an infinite substance (matter) that is itself
and its accidents (the determined finite beings, the somethings).
The substance is the existent being that is the finite determined being.
The existent being is the becoming of a multiplicity of things that are coming-to-be,
perish and become another; They are finite determined beings.
The somethings have a quality; the something has its other, its negation, outside of
itself, in another something that has another quality; the quality of the determined being

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has its other (negation) in itself, they are two moments of the something (which remains)
and the passage from one to another is the variation of the something; the other of the
quality of the something is its destination; This is the quality at which the something
arrives thanks to the replenishment of its original quality; the variation of something
takes place in its constitution; Changes in the constitution of the something, taken to the
limit, affect its destination and make it the ought to be of the something, that is, what the
original something must become when it perishes.
The somethings are coming-to-be and perish, but there is a being that is preserved in that
becoming, the infinite substance that possesses the most general properties of matter and
exists as finite determined beings that have specific qualities.
The substance is the infinite substance that is the subject of all the changes of the
finite determined being.
The substance is the being that goes into itself and produces its essence.
The substance is essence.
The essence is polar contradiction.
As a polar contradiction, it is the positive foundation of being that is founded.
The essence is the negative foundation of being; in this character it produces the
elements of the negation of being and those of the constitution of its other.
The essence is the fight between the poles that form it and the elimination of the
positive pole.
The essence is the emergence of the new being into existence through the negation of
the foundation and conditions.
The essence is the essential being that has arisen into existence.
The substance is the unity, in the essential being, of existence and essence, the
incessant turning from one to the other.
The substance is the essential existing being, a multiplicity of things in themselves, of
something that is essence arisen to existence and essence towards which being points.
These somethings have an essential existence in the substance, they have qualities
that are specific properties of the materials that form them, whose destination, filling,
constitution and ought to be are governed by laws.
The things in themselves integrate two worlds that are one and the same, a
phenomenal world subject to finitude and accidentality and a world in and for itself,
governed by laws, between which there is an essential relationship that is first that of the
whole and the parts: the parts are the phenomenal world and the whole is the world in
and for itself, but the whole is in turn a part and the part is also the whole, so that the
substance is the unity of the phenomenal world and of the world in itself which is at the
same time whole and part.
The essential relationship between the two worlds is also that of force and its
externalization: force is what the whole exerts on the parts and these are the ones that
request force from the whole; but since the whole is part and the part is the whole, force
is both exerted and requested by the whole and the parts.
The substance is the whole and the parts, part and whole and force and
externalization of the same.
Force is not something extrinsic to everything, that is, to being itself, but rather it is
its own nature. The whole, the being itself, is the force.
Nor is force extrinsic to the parts. The parts are the force.
The substance is, therefore, also the force that is being-in-itself (whole) and the force
that is being (part).
The ultimate essential relationship is that of the interior and the exterior: the
phenomenal world is the exterior and the world in self and for self is the interior, but the
in self and for self becomes exterior as the essence that arises into existence and the
phenomenal is transformed into the interior because the immediate being internalizes
itself and produces its essence, so that the exterior and phenomenal is at the same time
interior and in self and for self and vice versa; substance is interior and exterior.

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 The substance is the whole and the parts, force and externalization of the same and
exteriority and interiority.
The unity of the phenomenal world and the world itself, of existence and essence is
reality.
The substance is reality.
Reality is the absolute identity of essence and existence in essence and of essence
and existence in being.
Reality is absolute reality.
The substance is the absolute reality.
Absolute reality is absolute necessity.
The substance (matter) is the absolute necessity because it has in itself the essence,
its other, as a possibility of what it is destined to be, as what it is in act and as what it
necessarily is through the negation of the foundation and the conditions.
The substance is the essential existent being, the absolute being, dominated by
accidentality, which has in itself its essence as possibility, as reality in act and as a real
need.
The substance is the absolute necessity.
The essential existing being is also accidentality.
The substance is absolute accidentality.
The substance is absolute necessity and absolute accidentality.
The substance is, in addition to a matter with general properties that manifests itself
in finite beings with specific qualities, also the following:
- the unity between the phenomenal world and the world in itself, the whole and the
parts, the force and its extrinsication, the interior and the exterior, being and the essence
and the incessant turning of one into the other;
- absolute necessity, that is, formal possibility and necessity (accidentality) and real
possibility and necessity (absolute necessity); this includes the determinations of the
being and those of its internalization in itself to produce its essence and those of the
essence and those of its emergence into existence, all of them existing simultaneously and
successively and changing into one another;
- the finite substance, the absolute accidentality, that is, the multiplicity of
somethings, whose existence is the becoming, the emergence into existence, the ceasing-
to-be and the giving rise to other somethings;
- and all this existing in a universal matter with general properties that manifests
itself in the finite substance of determined beings that possess specific qualities.
The substance is it and its accidents.
Accidents are the very substance.
Accidents are the appearance of the substance.
The substance that is appearance is the unity of possibility and reality, a becoming,
an arising and passing away.
The substance is the accidents that arise and perish, the somethings in which the
determinations of being (quality, quantity, etc.) and those of the essence (diversity,
opposition, contradiction, foundation, etc.) appear.
The substance is the absolute power.
It is the power that produces accidents from being itself and the possibility of other
accidents.
It is a destructive power that eliminates the accidents from which the accidents it
creates proceed.
As a creative power, it is the cause of accidents, which are the effect.
As destructive power is the effect of accidents, which are the cause.
As cause, it places itself in the effect.
As an effect, it contains within itself the entire cause.
The substance is the cause and effect of its accidents.
The substance that is the cause of accidents is infinite substance.
Accidents are also finite substances.

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 As such they have a specific causality.
A finite substance has power and is active.
Another finite substance (accident) is passive.
The active finite substance exerts its action (violence) on the other that is passive.
This one receives the action and has a reaction on the first one.
The action of the active finite substance is the cause; the reaction of the passive
substance that is now also active is the effect. The cause is thus the cause of itself and
the effect of itself.
Finite substances are units of acting finite substance and passive finite substance,
between which there is a mutual causal relationship, a reciprocal action relationship.
The substance is the infinite substance that is the cause of the finite substances that
are its effect.
The substance is the finite substances that have causality in themselves so that there
is a relationship of reciprocal action between them.
The substance is the infinite substance and the finite substance.
The finite substance is the existent being.
The substance is the existent being.
The existing immediate being has been determined, in the end, as an absolute
substance that is itself an infinite, active substance, which is the formal cause, and
passive finite substances that are its effect and between which there is a real causal
relationship. by which they are active and passive at the same time and there is a
relationship of reciprocal action.

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 The scientific conception of the universe
(Outline)

The scientific, dialectical-materialist conception of the universe is made up of the

following elements.
-The theory of the mechanics of the solar system developed by Copernicus, Kepler
and Newton.
-The theory of the origin of the solar system explained by Kant-Laplace, which, with
the corrections and additions that are imposed in response to advances in atomic and
corpuscular physics, continues to be fundamentally valid.
-The modern theory of the birth, evolution and extinction of galactic formations,
which is based precisely on the advances of modern rational physics (not, of course, on
the anti-scientific theory of relativity).
-The materialist principles developed by the Greek and later philosophers, up to the
end of their evolution in Feuerbach's materialism.
-Dialectical materialism formulated by Marx and Engels.
-Hegel's Philosophy, the crowning glory of the historical evolution of human
knowledge, a compendium of the laws of being and knowing, placed on its feet, as Marx
and Engels pointed out; that is, taking the materialistic content once it is extracted from
the metaphysical layer that covers it. Hegel enunciates the objective vision of the world
that is the core of his philosophy in The Science of Logic, his masterpiece, in the Second
Section, Appearance (that is: the phenomenon) and in the Third Section, Reality, of the
Book II, The doctrine of the essence, and in book III, The doctrine of the concept.
Philosophy is the highest instance of human knowledge; it is a mental image that
includes the totality of being and knowing and is formed with the partial images provided
by all the sciences; its historical function is the structuring of the scientific conception of
the universe, considered as an infinite totality.
The highest stage of this evolution of knowledge is Hegel's philosophy, in which
human knowledge reaches the highest point of its development, although under the
alienated form of “absolute spirit”.
In the above, only some parts of this whole had been addressed: the solar system, the
“Milky Way”, the galaxies contained in the “visible universe”, etc.; now it is philosophy
that takes all these parts and integrates them into a unit to forge the scientific vision of
the universe.
Taking all these elements into account, the scientific conception of the universe is
expressed as follows:
The universe is reality, the absolute substance of Hegelian ontology.
The universe is the existing being, the absolute reality, a substance, matter, of infinite
extension.
The universe is the evolution of a multiplicity of things that are coming-to-be, perish
and become another; They are finite determined beings.
The somethings have a quality; the something has its other, the negation of it,
outside of itself, in another something that possesses another quality; the quality of the
determined being has its other (negation) in itself, they are two moments of the something
(which remains) and the passage from one to another is the variation of the something;
the other of the quality of the something is its destination; This is the quality at which the
something arrives thanks to the replenishment of its original quality; the variation of the

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something takes place in its constitution; Changes in the constitution of the something,
taken to the limit, affect the destination of the something and make it the ought to be of
the something, that is, what the original something must necessarily become.
The universe is an infinite substance made up of ones (atoms, subatomic particles)
and the void.
The ones have emptiness in themselves and on the outside, they are units of
attraction and repulsion and they are related to each other through attraction and
repulsion.
The universe is the being that goes into itself and produces its essence.
The universe is essence.
The essence is polar contradiction.
As a polar contradiction, it is the positive foundation of being that is founded.
The essence is the negative foundation of being; in this character it produces the
elements of the negation of being and those of the constitution of its other.
The essence is the fight between the poles that form it and the elimination of the
positive pole.
The essence is the emergence of the new being into existence through the negation of
the foundation and conditions.
The essence is the essential being that has arisen into existence.
The universe, the substance, is the unity, in the essential being, of existence and
essence, the incessant pass from one to the other.
The universe exists simultaneously and successively as being and essence, being that
goes into itself to produce its essence, essence that arises into existence and acquires the
category of being, and in all the phases of these two processes.
The universe, the existing totality, is in a constant movement from being to essence
and from essence to being.
In the universe, matter in its maximum disaggregation (substance existing as a
conglomerate of elementary particles separated to an extreme degree by repulsion -an
undifferentiated nebula-), and inorganic matter, are the being that becomes matter
condensed by attraction and thinking organic matter, which are its essence.
The highly condensed matter and the thinking organic matter, which are the essence
arisen into existence, the essential being, have in themselves the maximum separation
and the inorganic matter as the other in which they have to transform,
In its different parts, the universe is, successively and simultaneously, in all the
phases of this movement, in such a way that there are infinite places in which the highly
fractionated inorganic matter exists at the starting point or in some stage of the transit
towards cohesive matter that develops to be thinking organic matter and many others in
which they exist as such or at some point in their negation, of the deployment of its
essence, which is the return to the point of origin, the undifferentiated nebula
The universe is an infinite totality of matter immersed in infinite space and time.
The universe is made up of an infinity of groups of matter called galaxies, which are
simultaneously in some phase of their evolution.
Galaxies have a life process that goes through the following stages: the matter that
forms them is originally in a state of great disaggregation of its elementary particles; This
mutual repulsion of the particles turns into attraction, for which reason, through a long
process of condensation, stellar bodies are formed that evolve according to a defined
pattern of growth and maturation that can eventually lead to the formation of planetary
systems and in these to the appearance of living matter and, ultimately, to the formation
of thinking matter; the stars of the galaxies decline and become extremely massive bodies
that possess a great force of attraction; all or most of the stars that make up a galaxy
decay and their mutual attraction leads them to form a single massive body that has a
great attractive force; that enormous attraction is at the same time a gigantic repulsion,
and in it is transmuted; the great body into which the galaxy has become, of enormous
mass and powerful attractive force, becomes a nebula of elementary particles separated

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by a powerful repulsive force; from this point, by converting repulsion into attraction, the
entire movement described begins again.
The galaxies that populate the universe in infinite number are, simultaneously and
successively, in one of the phases of evolution that we have just reviewed.
The transformations of each one of the galaxies occur in a specific space, neighboring
the spaces occupied by the other galaxies, and in a determined time, which is the
continuation of past sidereal time and the antecedent of future sidereal time, measured
geocentrically, as physics and astronomy have done so far (in seconds, minutes, hours,
days, years, etc.), or with some regular astronomical movement (for example, the life cycle
of a particular galaxy), which ultimately it would have to be translated into geocentric
time.
The space occupied by galaxies is the continent of the matter from which they are
formed and of the processes that occur in it. The being of galactic matter and its
metamorphoses exist and develop in that environment, whose only physical characteristic
is to be the receptacle of those. That galactic space is not created, nor does it expand,
contract, or curve, nor, of course, it is destroyed. It is a localized part of the infinite space
that contains the infinite universe.
The time of existence of the galaxies is the same as that in which all the phenomena
of the universe take place; objectively it is the constant rotation of the terrestrial globe on
its own axis that determines today, yesterday and tomorrow, or the cycle of a special
galaxy that fixes the present, the past and the future. Galactic time is the same universal
time. That time is not created, nor is it expanded, nor is it contracted, much less is it
destroyed. It is a local manifestation of universal time.
The universe is the essential existing being, a multiplicity of things in themselves, of
the something that is essence arisen to existence and essence towards which the being
goes in.
These somethings have an essential existence in the substance, they have qualities
that are specific properties of the materials that form them, whose destination, filling,
constitution and ought to be are governed by laws.
The things in themselves integrate two worlds that are one and the same, a
phenomenal world subject to finitude and accidentality and a world in and for itself,
governed by laws, between which there is an essential relationship that is first that of the
whole and the parts: the parts are the phenomenal world and the whole is the world in
and for itself, but the whole is in turn a part and the part is also the whole, so that the
substance is the unity of the phenomenal world and of the world in itself which is at the
same time whole and part.
The essential relationship between the two worlds is also that of force and its
externalization: force is what the whole exerts on the parts and these are the ones that
request force from the whole; but since the whole is part and the part is the whole, force
is both exerted and requested by the whole and the parts; the substance is the whole and
the parts, part and whole and force and exteriorization of the same.
The ultimate essential relationship is that of the interior and the exterior: the
phenomenal world is the exterior and the world in and for itself is the interior, but the in
and for itself becomes exterior as the essence that arises into existence and the
phenomenal is transformed into the interior because the immediate being internalizes
itself and produces its essence, so that the exterior and phenomenal is at the same time
interior and in itself and for itself and vice versa; substance is interior and exterior.
The universe is the whole and parts, the force and it externalization and the exteriority
and interiority.
The unity of the phenomenal world and the world in itself, of existence and essence is
reality.
The universe is reality.
Reality is the absolute identity of essence and existence in essence and of essence
and existence in being.
Reality is absolute reality.

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 The universe is absolute reality.
Absolute reality is absolute necessity.
It is the essential existent being, the absolute being dominated by accidentality,
which has its essence as possibility, as actual reality and as real necessity.
The universe is the absolute necessity.
The Universe is also absolute accidentality.
The universe is absolute necessity and absolute accidentality
The universe is the existent being.
In the universe, in the form of the existing being, the being that has the essence as a
possibility, the one that has the essence in act, in progress, and the one that has the
essence as the other that has denied the foundation and the conditions coexists.
In the universe, in the form of existing being, there is a constant transition from
being that has essence as possibility to that which has essence in action and to that
which has arisen into existence, and vice versa, an incessant turning of essence into
being.
Necessity is the most important determination of substance (matter): the movement
from being to essence and from essence to being occurs through ineluctable necessity; the
need manifests itself in accidentality and this in necessity.
The universe that is the essential immediate being was determined in all of the above
as the reality that is the absolute being (the absolute unity (identity) of being and essence,
of the phenomenal world and the world in itself, of the interior and the exterior, of form and
content, etc.) which is at the same time absolute necessity (the unity of formal necessity
(accidentality) and real necessity) and essential immediate being that contains its own
determinations (immediate being determined) and those of the essence in its phases of
constitution (foundation) and emergence into existence (conditions and essential immediate
being) simultaneously, coexisting with each other, and successively, constantly turning one
into the other (being in essence and the essence in being), the finite substance, the absolute
accidentality, that is, the multiplicity of somethings, whose existence is the becoming, the
emergence into existence, the ceasing-to-be and giving rise to other somethings; and all this
existing in a universal matter with general properties that manifests itself in the finite
substance of determined beings that possess specific qualities.
Infinite matter, the substance of the universe, is found simultaneously and
successively in the physical form of elementary particles separated by repulsion (Kant-
Laplace's undifferentiated nebula) and in that of their aggregates united by attraction
(planetary bodies, such as those of the solar system) that eventually evolve into thinking
matter, and in all phases of the passage from one form to the other.

Rise into existence of thinking matter (the essence of inorganic matter)

On our planet the essence of undifferentiated infinite substance, thinking matter, has
come into being.
The human species (thinking matter) is the other, the negative essence of inorganic
matter; its development necessarily leads to the appearance of its essence, to the
conversion of thinking matter (human species) into an existent.

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