midpoint --- hegel and his philosophy

A. Consciousness

Chapter III.
Force and Understanding – Appearance and Extrasensory World

1. Consciousness lost sight, hearing, etc. in the dialectic of sense certainty. In perceiving mode consciousness arrived at thoughts, which, however, it only brings together in the unconditioned universal [II. Perception §19.3 M, where it's called the absolute universal cf. §13 below]. ²This unconditional would again be nothing more than the extreme of being for itself on the one side if we take it as simple essence at rest, for then non-essence would confront it on the other. In fact, binding it to non-essence in this way would make it inessential too and consciousness would still not have freed itself from the deceptions of perception. Fortunately, this essence emerged after already having returned into itself from out of just such a conditioned being for itself.

– ³From now on this unconditioned universal is consciousness' true object. The unconditioned universal remains, however, but an object of consciousness, which has not yet grasped its own concept as concept proper [§10.8 below M]. ⁴It is vital to distinguish between the two. Consciousness sees the object return from a relation with another back into itself, so becoming in itself concept for consciousness; but consciousness is not yet concept for itself, which is why it does not recognize itself in the reflected object. ⁵For us, the motion of consciousness has turned the object into something in whose development consciousness itself is intimately involved, so that the reflection on both sides is the same, one. ⁶Still, the content of consciousness in this motion was only objective essence, not consciousness itself, so the result has objective meaning for it, while consciousness continues to hold itself back from the evolved result. Consciousness now takes this result, the unconditioned universal, as objective and as the essence.

2. Understanding has thus overcome its own untruth as well as the untruth of the object. What emerges to the understanding from this is the concept of the true, truth existing in itself, which, lacking that being for itself of consciousness, is still not fully concept as such. Understanding lets this truth have its own way without knowing itself therein. ²This drives its essence for itself and consciousness has no part in its free realization. All consciousness can do is look on in pure reception mode. ³We must now stand in for it, at first at least; we have to be the concept that gives shape to what is contained in the result. Only with such an object fully developed in this way, presenting itself to consciousness as given being, can consciousness become conceptual comprehension.

3. Our result in chapter II above was the unconditioned universal initially in the negative and abstract sense that consciousness negated its one-sided concepts and abstracted, i.e. abandoned, them. ²Nevertheless, the result is implicitly positive in the sense that in the unconditioned universal the unity of being for itself and being for another – the absolute antithesis – is immediately established as that same essence [II. Perception §§16-19 M]. ³This initially appears to be a matter of the relation between the forms of the moments, for each – being for itself and being for another – is itself the content. That's because there can be no other truth to the nature of this antithesis than what has emerged in the result. Namely, that the content taken for the truth in perception in fact only lies in these forms; indeed it resolves itself into their unity. ⁴As content it remains universal. It can't have particular characteristics enabling it to escape return into this unconditioned universal. ⁵They would involve somehow different kinds of being for itself and different ways of relating to others. ⁶But being for itself and relating to others as such are precisely what constitute the content's nature or essence, the truth of which is the unconditioned universal. The result is quite simply universal.

4. Now, being an object for consciousness is what brings out the distinction between form and content clearly in this unconditioned universal. Content is still how the moments appeared when they first entered consciousness. We recall, they were universal medium of many existing materials on the one hand and one reflected into itself, after depriving the many of their independence, on the other [II. Perception §5.1,2]. ²The former, many, is dissolution of the thing's independence, the passivity that is being for another; the latter, one, is being for itself. ³We must now look at how these moments present themselves in unconditioned universality, their essence. ⁴Clearly, simply being in this unconditioned universality renders them no longer disparate at all; now in essence they're just mutually overcoming opponents and all we really have here are their transitions into each other.

[2. Force]

5. One moment now appears to have moved to one side as essence: the universal medium, the persistence of independent materials. ²The independence of the materials, however, is nothing other than this medium; this universal is just the plurality of such distinct universals. ³Saying that the universal is inherently in unbroken unity with this plurality means that each of the materials is there where each of the others is: they mutually interpenetrate, but without touching, for, conversely, the many distinct materials are also independent [II. Perception §3.7, §10.6]. ⁴What we have here is their pure porosity, that state of being overcome. ⁵Being overcome, reducing this plurality to pure being for itself, is nothing other than being the medium, the independence of the differences. ⁶Summing up: the independent materials transit immediately into their unity, their unity transits immediately into their unfolding, and this transits back again into reduction. ⁷Now, this motion is what is commonly called force. One moment, the dispersion of the independent materials in their being, is called expression. The other is their disappearance, force compressed back into itself from its expression, force proper. ⁸First, compressed force must express itself. Second, in expression it remains just as inherently force proper as it remains in that intensification, under compression, expression.

– ⁹Here we have both moments in their immediate unity and we can see now that the understanding, where the concept of force belongs, is itself the concept carrying the distinct moments and keeping them apart, for they are not supposed to be inherently distinct. The difference is only in thought.

– ¹⁰The point is that initially all we have here is the concept of force, not its reality. ¹¹In fact, force is the unconditioned universal; what it is for another is exactly what it is inherently, in itself, i.e. something to which difference – itself nothing other than being for another – is inherent. ¹²Now, for force to be in its own truth, it must be set completely free from thought and established as the substance of these distinctions, i.e. first, as this one whole force remaining in and for itself, and then as its many differences being substantial, moments persisting for themselves, on their own account. ¹³Force proper, compressed into itself, is for itself an exclusive one, for which the unfolding of the materials is a different persisting essence. That makes two distinct independent sides. ¹⁴Force, however, remains the whole, what its concept makes it, which means that these differences remain pure forms, superficial, vanishing moments. ¹⁵The different sides – force proper, compressed, and the unfolding of independent materials – would not exist at all if they had no enduring being. Force would not exist if not in this antithetical manner. Then again, this is the same as saying that both moments are independent too.

– ¹⁶We must now consider this motion of the two moments constantly going independent from, and mutually overcoming, each other.

– ¹⁷Clearly, what we have here, in general, is the motion of perception. We recall, the two sides, perceiving and perceived, are one and undifferentiated in the reception of what is true, while simultaneously each side is reflected into itself, each side is for itself. ¹⁸Here we have these same two sides, now moments of force; and they too exist in the same kind of unity. That unity now appears as the midpoint of the two independent extremes, constantly breaking itself down into these extremes, which only exist in this process.

– ¹⁹The motion that was previously the self-destruction of contradictory concepts [II. Perception §21 M] has now taken on objective form as the motion of force, the result of which emerges as the unconditioned universal that is not objective at all: the inner realm of things[§11.2].

6. Thus, imagining force as such or reflected into itself gives us but one side of its concept, although certainly a substantiated extreme with the definition of the one. ²This means persistence of the unfolded materials is excluded from force and is something quite distinct from it. ³But force must, as a matter of necessity, be that persistence; force must express itself. This suggests that its expression is solicited by the approach of that distinct something. ⁴In fact, necessarily expressing itself, force has that other essence in itself. ⁵The notion that force is one and its essence, self-expression, is something other approaching it from outside must be abandoned. Rather, force is this universal medium of the persistence of the moments as materials. Briefly, when force has expressed itself what is supposed to be the other, soliciting it, is really force itself. ⁶Force thus now exists as the medium of the unfolded materials. ⁷Just as essentially, force still has the form of the persisting materials already overcome; it remains essentially one. But force is a medium of materials, so this oneness is still something other than force: force has its essence, oneness, outside itself. ⁸Force must necessarily be something that it is not yet established as; so oneness, that something, approaches force and solicits it to reflection into itself overcoming its expression. ⁹In fact, force is itself this state of being reflected into itself, the overcoming of its expression. Oneness vanishes just as it appeared, as something other. Force itself is that other: force is compressed.

7. What appeared to be distinct from it soliciting both expression and return into itself turns out indeed to be none other than force itself. For that other showed itself to be just as much universal medium as one, such that each of these only appears as a vanishing moment. ²Now the other exists for force and it exists for that other, which means force has not yet emerged from its own concept at all. ³What we have are two distinct forces, both with the same concept; two have emerged from out of their concept's unity. ⁴Instead of the antithesis remaining essentially nothing but a moment, it seems to have slipped the yoke of unity by splitting into wholly independent forces. ⁵We must now look more closely into the implications of this independence. ⁶The second force initially emerges as the soliciting one, a universal medium in terms of its content, confronting that designated the one solicited. Since the former is essentially the alternation of these two moments and is itself force, it's really only a universal medium when solicited to become such. Similarly, it is negative unity, soliciting force's retreat, only by virtue of itself being solicited to become such. ⁷Now the distinction above between the two, soliciting and solicited, turns into the same exchange of characteristics.

8. The play of the two forces thus consists in this mutually opposed definition, in their being for each other within this definition process and the absolutely immediate exchange of characteristics. This is the transition that alone establishes the characteristics lending the forces the appearance of independent emergence. ²The soliciting one, for example, is defined as universal medium, the solicited one as compressed force; but the first is only universal medium because the second is compressed force, i.e. the second is the one soliciting the first, which is the only way this becomes a universal medium. ³The first acquires its definition, its characteristic only through the other one: it is soliciting only by virtue of being solicited to solicit by the other. But wait! It also loses its acquired characteristic just as immediately, for that transfers to the other; better: in being asserted it has already passed over to the other. The other one soliciting force appears as universal medium, but only when it has been solicited to do so by that force. This means that the force is what sets this situation up and is in fact itself essentially universal medium. Force establishes the soliciting one in this way precisely because the other characteristic is essential to it, i.e. because this other characteristic is force itself.

9. To complete our insight into the concept of this motion, we need now to become aware that the differences double up. Content: one extreme is force reflected into itself, one, compression; the other extreme is medium of many materials, expression. Form: one is soliciting, active, moving; the other is solicited, passive. ²It is as difference in content that they exist at all or are different for us; but it's difference of form that makes them independent, actively separating themselves from each other in clear opposition. ³Consciousness finds in its perception of the motion of force that these extremes, supposedly the distinct essences of the two sides, are nothing in themselves, just vanishing moments, immediate transition of each into its opposite [§24.3]. ⁴In addition, as explained above, for us the difference also vanished when implicitly distributed between content and form. What was essence, active, soliciting, given being for itself on the form side turned out to be the same thing as what was compressed on the content side. Again, what was passive, solicited, being for another as form was the same thing as the universal medium of many materials on the content side.

10. It is clear now that the concept of force turns into its actual reality and how it does so: by doubling up into two forces. ²The two forces exist as independent essences, active for themselves. However, their existence is a motion of each towards the other, such that their being is merely that of being set up by another, i.e. their being has the pure significance of vanishing. ³They are not extremes that retain something firm and solid for themselves, transmitting only an external property to each other in the midpoint, in their contact; rather, what they are, they are only in this midpoint and contact. ⁴Here we have immediately both the compression – force's being for itself – as well as the expression, soliciting as well as being solicited. These moments are thus not distributed between two independent extremes, confronting each other with opposing sharpened faces. No, their essence is simply that each is only through the other, while immediately ceasing to be what the other makes of it even as it is precisely that. ⁵They have no substance of their own to support and maintain them. ⁶Rather, the concept of force sustains itself as essence in its very reality. Force is only actual in its expression, which is itself nothing but self-overcoming. ⁷This actual force, imagined as free from its expression and existing for itself, is compressed force and conversely, as has been demonstrated, that compression is but a moment of expression. ⁸The truth of force is still no more than the thought of force; the moments of its actual reality, its substances and its motion, helplessly collapse into an undifferentiated unity. This unity is not compressed force, for that too is just a moment. The unity is force's concept as concept proper [§1.3 above und §21.11 below]. ⁹The realization of force is simultaneously the loss of its reality. In all this force has become something completely different, namely the universality understanding immediately recognized as force's essence at the outset, force proper, which is what it indeed proves to be in what is supposed to be force's reality, in the actual substances.

11. If the force of that first universal is the understanding's concept of it in which force is not yet for itself, then the second now represents force's essence in and for itself. ²Conversely, let's take that first universal as immediate force, what an actual object should be for consciousness; this would make of the second universal the negative of that sensuous, objective force. The negative is force in its true essence only as an object for the understanding. That first universal would give us compressed force, force as substance. The second gives us the inner being of things [§5.19 above]; the interiority that is the same as the concept proper.

[3. Syllogistic motion – midpoint: appearance]

12. The true essence of things has now established itself as something that is not immediate to consciousness. Rather, consciousness has a mediated relation to that inner being. In understanding mode, consciousness now looks through the midpoint of the play of forces into the true background of things. ²This midpoint binding the two extremes – understanding and interiority – together is the developed being of force. From now on it is but a process of vanishing for the understanding. ³This is why it is called appearance. An impression is being that inherently has no being. ⁴What we have here, however, is not only an impression, but appearance as a whole process of impressions [Preface §47.5]. ⁵This whole as such, this universal, is precisely what constitutes interiority and the play of forces as the whole's reflection into itself. ⁶In this play of forces consciousness is presented with the essences of perception objectively as they are in themselves, namely moments without rest or being, ceaselessly turning immediately into their opposites. The one immediately turning into the universal; the essential immediately into the inessential; and vice versa. ⁷The play of forces is thus the developed negative; but its truth is the positive, namely the universal, the object existing in itself.

– ⁸Its being for consciousness is mediated by the motion of appearance, in which being in perception and what is objective in the sense of sensuous only have negative meaning. Consciousness thus reflects itself out of this motion back into itself as truth, but as consciousness it simultaneously turns this truth into an objective interiority, distinguishing this reflection of things from its own reflection into itself, just as it still takes the motion of mediation to be objective. ⁹Interiority is then for consciousness an extreme standing against it. However, interiority is the truth for consciousness precisely because in this in itself consciousness is also certain of itself: it has the moment of its own being for itself. Unfortunately, consciousness is not yet aware of this ground, for the interiority supposedly furnished with being for itself would be nothing other than the negative motion. This motion, however, remains for consciousness objective, vanishing appearance, not yet its own being for itself. Interiority is thus certainly concept for consciousness, but consciousness does not yet know the nature of the concept.

13. This inner truth is the absolute universal [§1.1 above] cleansed of the antithesis of universal and individual and made accessible to the understanding. Only in this does the extrasensory world open up as the true world above and beyond the sensuous world of appearances; the eternal beyond above this transitory here and now. An in itself, it is the first and, therefore, an as yet incomplete appearance of reason; it is but the pure element in which truth has its essence.

14. Our object is now the syllogism that has interiority of things and understanding for its extremes and appearance for its midpoint, the middle term [Preface §47.5]. From now on, this syllogistic motion generates the defining features of what the understanding espies in the interior through the middle term along with its experience of this relation, of being bound within this syllogism.

15. The interior remains a pure beyond for consciousness, for it still doesn't find itself therein. It is empty, being merely the null of appearance; in positive terms, it is the simple universal. ²This, interiority's mode of being, might find ready acceptance among those who claim that the inner being of things cannot be known, except that they would have to come up with something better than that as an explanation for this situation. ³Certainly, there is no knowledge available about this interior as immediately given here. But not because reason is too myopic or limited [Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B XXIV f. M], or however one cares to put it. In fact, nothing is known about that either because we have not yet advanced far enough in our enquiry. We are in this situation because of the simple nature of the matter itself; in emptiness, by definition, nothing is discovered; looked at from the other side, this is because it is defined as being beyond consciousness.

– ⁴Clearly, the result is the same whether a blind man is placed among all the riches of the extrasensory world – if it has such wealth, its own peculiar content or consciousness itself as this content – or a sighted person is put into complete darkness or, if one wishes, into pure light – if that's what the extrasensory world is. The one with sight sees just as little in pure light as he does, who sits in complete darkness, and just as much as the blind man sees in all those riches lying before him. ⁵If there were nothing more to the interior and the bond with it through appearance, then there would be no alternative but to stop at appearance; i.e. to take something as true which we know is not. Surely we should make sure that there is something in the void? At first it is empty as the void of objective things, but it must now be taken as the void in itself including the emptiness of all spiritual/mental relations and of the distinctions of consciousness as themselves consciousness. In order that in this wholly empty void, which is also called the holy, there should indeed be something, we would have to fill it with dreams, appearances generated by consciousness for its own purposes. It would just have to put up with being treated so shabbily, for it would be worthy of no better; after all, even dreams are better than its own vacuity.

16. It must be remembered, however, that interiority or the extrasensory beyond has emerged into being, it comes from out of appearance; appearance is its mediation. That means that the process of appearance is really the essence of interiority and its filling. ²The extrasensory is what is sensuous and perceived established in its truth. Now, the truth of the sensuous and of the perceived is that it is appearance. ³The extrasensory is thus appearance as appearance, as the process of appearing [Preface §47.5].

– ⁴If this is understood as implying that the extrasensory is the sensuous world or the world as it is for immediate sense-certainty and perception, then that would miss the point entirely. For appearance is now clearly not the given world of sensuous knowledge and perception, but, on the contrary, the world overcome, affirmed in truth as an inner world. ⁵It is often said that the extrasensory is definitely not appearance. Appearance in this view, however, is not really appearance, but just the sensuous world itself, real and actual.

[4. Law of force]

17. The understanding, our object, is now exactly at the point where interiority has come into being for it, but only as the in itself that is universal but not yet filled up. The only negative significance of the play of forces is precisely that of not being in itself and its only positive role is one of mediating, but remaining outside the understanding. ²In fact, understanding's relation to interiority through the mediation is its own motion in which it fills up interiority on its own, the understanding's, terms.

– ³For the understanding, the play of forces is immediate; the truth for it, however, is simple interiority; thus the motion of force is only true as simple, integral. ⁴We have, however, seen that this play of forces is so composed that when a force is solicited by another force, the former is itself a soliciting force for the latter, and only this makes the latter a soliciting force at all. ⁵What we have here is immediate flux or absolute exchange of roles, definitions, which themselves constitute the sole content of the players, i.e. universal medium and negative unity. ⁶Assuming either of these roles or definitions as it steps into play means immediately abandoning it again. Simply by entering the fray, one solicits the other side to express itself, immediately turning it into what the first one was supposed to be. ⁷These two relations, that of soliciting and that of determinate opposed content is, each for itself, absolute role-reversal and replacement. ⁸But these two relations are, once again, one and the same. Form difference: soliciting and being solicited, is the same as content difference: solicited as such, namely passive medium contrasted with soliciting as the active, negative unity or one. ⁹This is how any differentiation between particular forces that find their way into this motion, in mere opposition, vanishes, for it was based solely on those differences. The difference of forces likewise collapses with both those together into just one. ¹⁰None of these: force; soliciting and being solicited; persistent medium and unity reflected into itself amounts to anything singular for itself, on its own account. Neither do either of the two pairs constitute distinct antitheses. Absolute flux! And all there is to it is difference universal, to which the several antitheses have reduced themselves. ¹¹Universal difference is thus what is simple, unitary, integral in the play of force; it is its truth. It is the law of force.

18. Appearance in absolute flux is reduced to simple difference by means of its relationship to the simplicity in interiority or in the understanding. ²Interiority is at first only the implicit universal, which is essentially just as absolutely the universal difference, for it is the result of the flux itself. Indeed, established within it, flux is interiority's essence, what it is in truth, and thereby accepted within as just as absolutely universal, pacified difference remaining identical with itself. ³Negation is an essential moment in the universal! Negation, i.e. mediation, in the universal is universal difference. ⁴It is expressed in law as the abiding image within fleeting appearance. ⁵The extrasensory world is now a peaceful realm of laws, well beyond the world of perception where law is only represented through constant change, if certainly present therein. The extrasensory world is the world of perception's immediate, tranquil simulacrum.

19. This realm of laws is the truth of the understanding and the content of this truth is the difference that lies in law as such. It remains, however, only the understanding's first truth and does not fill up appearance. ²Law is present in appearance, but is not its whole presence. Under constantly changing circumstances, law is, no less constantly, distinctly (differently) actual. ³This is what ensures that there is always an aspect of appearance for itself that never makes it into interiority; better, that aspect is not yet truly established as the process of appearance, as being for itself overcome. ⁴This deficiency in law must emerge within it. ⁵The problem appears to be that, while law does contain difference, that difference is universal and indeterminate. ⁶As one particular law, not just law in general, it is determinate and in that sense there exist indeterminately many laws. ⁷Unfortunately, this plurality is itself a deficiency. It contradicts the principle of the understanding for which, as consciousness of simple interiority, the implicitly universal unity is the truth. ⁸Thus, the understanding must let the many laws come together in one law. ⁹This happened, for instance, when the law of fall for stones and the law of motion of the celestial spheres were comprehended as one and the same. ¹⁰When they fall together in this way, however, laws lose definition; law becomes ever more superficial and what we really have in the above case is not the unity of these two well-defined laws so much as a law that simply dispenses with their distinctive definition. Thus, the one law uniting that of falling terrestrial bodies with that of celestial motion doesn't really express either of them at all. ¹¹The unification of all laws in universal attraction in fact expresses no more content than the bare concept of law itself, which is at least established therein as given being. ¹²Universal attraction says no more than that everything has a persistent difference to everything else. ¹³The understanding fancies it has here a universal law expressing universal reality as such. In fact, all it has come up with is the concept of law with the following import: all reality is implicitly lawful. ¹⁴The great importance of the expression universal attraction lies in its opposition to thoughtless fancy, which sees everything in terms of coincidence and for which definition is nothing more than sensuous independence.

20. We now have determinate laws set against universal attraction, the pure concept of law. ²If this pure concept is considered as essence, true interiority, then the definition, the definiteness, of the determinate law still belongs to appearance or rather to sensuous being. ³It's important to note here that the pure concept of law does not simply supersede that law which is well-defined by contrast with other determinate laws, it supersedes law as such too. ⁴The definition we discussed above is here but a vanishing moment and as such it can no longer be present as something essential, for all that's available now is law as truth. Now the concept of law has turned against law itself. ⁵Difference is immediately grasped in the law and incorporated into the universal endowing the moments, whose relation the law expresses, with the persistence of indifferent and implicit essential elements. ⁶These parts of the difference in the law are also themselves determinate sides of it. To get its true meaning, the pure concept of law, universal attraction, must be grasped as absolute simplicity such that within it the differences present in the law themselves return again into interiority, to simple unity. This simple unity is the law's inner necessity.

21. Law is now available doubled up: once with the different parts expressed as autonomous moments and then again as something simple, integral that has returned back into itself. This latter form can also be called force, not compressed force, however, but force in general, the concept of force, an abstraction absorbing the differences between what attracts and what is attracted. ²This is the sense in which e.g. simple electricity is force. The explicit expression of difference, however, falls into the law; the difference here is positive and negative electricity. ³In falling motion, the force is simple, gravity, whose law is that the magnitudes of the different moments of motion, space traversed and time elapsed, relate to each other as root and square. ⁴Electricity itself is not the implicit difference of positive and negative electricity doubling up in its own essence. That's why one says it has the law of being in this mode and it has the property of expressing itself in this way. ⁵This is the essential and indeed, the sole property of this force; it is necessary to electricity. ⁶Necessity here is, however, but an empty word. The force must double itself simply because it must. ⁷Certainly, when positive electricity is given, then the negative form is implicitly necessary; for the positive only exists as a relation to a negative; the positive is implicitly its own difference with itself, just like the negative in that respect. ⁸The fact that electricity divides itself in this way is not what is necessary as such. Electricity as simple force is indifferent to its law of being positive and negative. If we call the former, simple force, its concept and the latter, being positive and negative, its being, then its concept is indifferent to its being. It merely has this property, which is thus not in itself necessary to it.

– ⁹This indifference looks very different when the formal definition of electricity is said to include being positive and negative, that being positive and negative is simply its concept and essence. ¹⁰In this case, its being would mean its existence as such; but there is no necessity of existence in that definition; it exists either because one finds it (i.e. it's not necessary at all) or its existence is determined by other forces (i.e. its necessity is external to it). ¹¹Defining necessity in terms of being by virtue of another throws us back into that plurality of determinate laws we just left behind in order to grasp the law as law. Only with this can its concept as concept [§10.8 above], i.e. its necessity, be compared; while necessity has shown itself in all these other forms to be nothing but an empty word.

22. Concept is indifferent to being and law to force also in another way. ²In the law of motion, for example, it is necessary that motion split itself into time and space, also into distance and speed. ³Since motion is merely the relation between these moments, it is, as the universal, here certainly split in itself. However, these parts, time and space, distance and speed, do not bear expression of their origin from one in themselves. They are indifferent to each other. Space is imagined without time, time without space and distance without speed, at least as a possibility, just as their magnitudes are indifferent to each other. They do not relate to each other as positive and negative and, as such, not through their essence. ⁴The necessity of the split is certainly there, but the same cannot be said of the parts as such for each other. ⁵That's why the first necessity is simulated and phoney. The point is that motion is not imagined itself as simple, integral, unitary, as pure being; the image itself is already split. Time and space are motion's autonomous parts, essences in their own right. Distance and speed are modes of being or fancy: each can exist without the other. In this scenario motion is merely their superficial relation not their essence. ⁶Imagined as simple essence or force, motion is in fact gravity, which does not contain any of these differences.

23. The difference is thus in both cases not difference in itself. Either the universal, force, is indifferent to the splitting in the law or the differences, parts of the law, are indifferent to each other. ²Understanding, however, possesses the concept of this difference in itself precisely because the law is the inner existing in itself and at the same time implicitly differentiated. That this is now inner difference is given by the fact that the law is simple force, the concept of difference, and hence a difference of the concept. ³Still, this inner difference at first falls only within the understanding and is not yet established in the matter itself. ⁴The understanding only expresses its own necessity here; thus it only draws the difference while at the same time flatly stating that it is not a difference in the matter itself. ⁵A mere word, this necessity is now nothing but a recital of the moments forming its cycle. The moments are certainly distinguished, but their difference is expressed in such a manner as to make it clear that it is not a difference of the matter itself and is, thus, immediately overcome, cancelled. This procedure is commonly called explanation. ⁶A law is uttered and the force, its implicit universal, its ground, is distinguished from it. What this really says is that the difference is no difference at all, for the ground is composed exactly like the law. ⁷An isolated occurrence of lightning, for example, is grasped as a universal and this is presented as the law of electricity; then the explanation concentrates the law into the force as its essence. ⁸This force is so constituted that, when it manifests, opposite electricities appear, which just as soon vanish into each other. The conclusion is clear: force is constituted exactly the same as law. What this really says is that the two are not different at all. ⁹The different components are pure universal manifestation, law, and pure force; but both have the same content, the same constitution. In all this, the difference as difference of content, i.e. of the matter, is, once again, withdrawn.

[5. Magnetic idealism? – Inverted world!]

24. In this tautological movement it has emerged that the understanding cleaves to the tranquil unity of its object. The movement never ranges beyond the understanding itself into the object. Such explanation not only explains nothing, it says nothing at all. It is so transparent that in purporting to announce something different from what has already been stated, it says nothing by simply repeating it. ²Nothing new emerges in the matter itself in this process, in this movement; it is only considered as a motion of the understanding. ³This is where we find what is missing in the law: absolute flux; for when we look at this motion more closely, it turns out to be immediately its own opposite [§9.3 above and §32.1 below]. ⁴The motion draws a difference, but not only is it not a difference for us, the motion itself immediately overcomes it. ⁵This flux turns out to be that play of forces, which had the difference between soliciting and solicited, expressed and compressed force. These turned out to be, in truth, no difference at all; the difference immediately overcame itself. ⁶Not that all we have is mere unity, as if no difference were asserted in the first place. No, the motion does in fact take place and it does indeed draw a difference, but it is then overcome, cancelled, because it turns out to be not one after all.

– ⁷With explanation therefore, the flux and transformation that was formerly outside interiority and only in appearance has infiltrated into the extrasensory itself. Our consciousness has now moved out of interiority as object over to the other side, into the understanding. Our consciousness now has flux right there in the understanding.

25. Not yet flux in the matter itself, all we have here is pure flux precisely because the content of its moments does not change. ²Now, since the concept as concept of the understanding is the same as the interiority of things, this flux becomes the law of interiority for the understanding. ³The understanding thus has the experience that it is the law of appearance itself for differences to emerge which are no differences at all, which is basically the same thing as saying that each polarity repels itself from itself. Likewise, the differences are, in truth, nothing of the kind and overcome, cancel themselves. Briefly put: unlike poles attract each other.

– ⁴A second kind of law has a content that is directly opposed to what was called law above, namely difference that constantly remains the same [§18 above M]. This law says that equals become unequal and unequals become equal. ⁵The concept demands of thoughtlessness that it bring the two laws together and become aware of their opposition.

– ⁶This second kind is certainly law in the sense of internally self-identical being, but it is a self-identity rather of inequality; a constancy of inconstancy.

– ⁷This law emerged in the play of forces precisely as absolute transition and pure flux [§§8-10 above M]. A like pole, the force, split itself into an antithesis, which at first appeared as an independent difference, but which in fact turned out to be nothing of the kind. For it is the like pole, it repels itself from itself; what is repelled in this way essentially attracts itself precisely because it is the same. This is how the difference drawn, since it is no difference, overcomes, cancels itself. ⁸It thus establishes itself as a difference in the matter itself, as absolute difference. This difference in the matter is thus nothing other than the like pole that has repelled itself from itself, generating an antithesis which is none at all.

26. By means of this principle the first extrasensory, tranquil realm of laws, immediate simulacrum of the perceived world [§18.5 above], is inverted into its opposite. Law was the persistently self-identical as such, its differences too. Now, however, it is established that both are rather their own opposites. Self-identity is now self-repulsion, while what is not identical to itself establishes itself indeed as self-identical. ²Only with this characteristic – like being unlike and unlike, like – does difference really become inner difference, difference in itself as such.

– ³This second extrasensory world is in this way the inverted world and since one side is already available in the first extrasensory world, the second is the inversion of the first. ⁴This completes interiority as appearance. ⁵For the first extrasensory world was only the immediate elevation of the perceived world into the universal element. It found its necessary obverse in the world of perception, which retained for itself the principle of flux and change. That first realm of laws lacked that principle of flux, but acquires it now as an inverted world.

27. Under the law of this inverted world then the like pole of the first is unlike to itself and what is unlike in that world is likewise unlike to itself, i.e. it becomes like to itself. ²In the case of well-defined moments, it emerges that what is sweet in the law of the first is sour here in this inverted in itself; what is black in the former is white in the latter. ³North pole of the magnet there under the law of the first world is, in its other, extrasensory in itself (i.e. in the earth) south pole; likewise, south pole there is north pole here. ⁴Again, oxygen pole in the law of electricity of the first becomes in its other, extrasensory essence, hydrogen pole; and conversely, hydrogen pole there becomes oxygen pole here. ⁵In another sphere, revenge on an enemy is, under immediate law, the supreme satisfaction of injured individuality. ⁶This law, however, requires me to confront someone, who does not treat me as a person endowed with a self, but to show myself to be just such a person and to overcome him as one too. The principle of the other world inverts this law into its opposite by turning my restoration as a person through the overcoming of the opponent into self-destruction. ⁷Embodied in the punishment of crime, if this inversion is made into law, this too is again only the law of the one world with an inverted, extrasensory world as its obverse where what is despised there is honoured here, and conversely. ⁸Punishment discrediting and destroying a man under the law of the first world turns in its inverted world into the pardon preserving his essence as a person and bringing him to honour.

28. Looked at superficially, this inverted world is an opposite of the first standing outside it, repelling that first world from it as an inverted reality, as if the first were appearance and the other, in itself. In this scenario, the first is the world as it is for another, while the other, in contrast, is what it is for itself. Then, to return to the examples above, what tastes sweet is in reality, or internally, sour; what is the north pole in the actual magnet in the world of appearance would be the south pole internally or in essential being. The oxygen pole in appearing [flowing] electricity would be the hydrogen pole in non-appearing [potential] electricity. ²Another example is that the action, which when undertaken in the world of appearance amounts to a crime, could supposedly be good internally, as when a bad act has a good intention; then punishment is only punishment in the world of appearance, in itself or in another world, it is an act of kindness to the offender. ³Unfortunately, however, such antitheses of inner and outer, appearance and extrasensory, as if they were distinct realities, are no longer available here. ⁴Repelled differences do not distribute themselves anew to two such substances carrying them and giving them separate persistence, pushing the understanding back out of interiority into its previous position [§18.1 ff. M]. ⁵One side, substance, would again be the world of perception, in which one of the two laws would be effective; against it would stand the inner world, just the same kind of sensuous world as the first only now in fancy. It could not be indicated, pointed out, as a sensuous world, not seen, heard, tasted and yet it would be imagined as being such a sensuous world. ⁶But that would mean that if the one given world is amenable to perception and its in itself, the inversion, is the same kind of sensuous image, then sourness, which would be the in itself of the sweet thing, is just as real a thing as the sweet and hence a sour thing. Blackness, which would be the in itself of whiteness, is actually black. North pole, in itself of the south pole, is the north pole there in the same magnet. Oxygen pole, in itself of the hydrogen pole, is the real oxygen pole of the same voltaic pile or battery. ⁷The actual crime has its inversion, its in itself as possibility, in the intention as such, but not in a good intention, for the truth of the intention is only the act itself. ⁸In terms of content, crime has its reflection into itself, its inversion, in the actual punishment; this is the reconciliation of the law with the reality opposed to it in the crime. ⁹Finally, actual punishment contains its own inverted reality making it the kind of implementation of the law in which the activity in its punishment overcomes, eliminates itself. Active law is in this way returned to tranquil, standing law, with the motion of individuality against the law and vice versa erased.

[6. Infinite automotion – self-consciousness]

29. It is clear now that our image of inversion constituting the essence of one side, the extrasensory world, must be purged of the sensuous image of fixing differences in a distinct element of persistence. This we do by demonstrating the absolute concept of difference pure as inner difference – repulsion of the like pole as like from itself and equality of the unlike as unlike – grasping it clearly in these terms. ²We literally have to think pure flux, antithesis in itself: contradiction! ³For in the difference that is inner, one opposed side of it is not merely one of two – that would make it a given being and not one side of an opposition – rather, here it is the opponent of an opponent; its other is immediately present within it. ⁴I set up the opposite over here and the other, of which it is the opposite, over there; this gives me the opposite on one side, in and for itself without the other. ⁵However, precisely because I have here the opposite in and for itself, it is its own opposite and it really does have the other immediately within it.

– ⁶This is how the extrasensory world, which is the inverted world, has simultaneously reached beyond the other world and has it present within it. The extrasensory world is inverted for itself, i.e. it is its own inversion. It is itself and its opposite in a single unity. ⁷Only this makes it the difference that is inner, difference in itself: infinity!

30. With infinity we have law internally perfected into necessity and all moments of appearance absorbed into interiority. ²The simplicity of law is infinity. After all we've been through above this means three things. α) Law is a self-identity with inherent difference; it is the like pole that repels itself from itself splitting itself into two. ³What was called simple force [§21 above M] doubles itself, its infinity making it law. ⁴β) The split, constituting what in the law are imagined as its parts, presents itself as persistent. Force without the concept of inner difference is space and time or distance and speed, which emerge from gravity as its moments indifferent to, and without necessity for, each other as they are in relation to gravity itself; just as simple gravity is indifferent to them and simple electricity to the positive and the negative. ⁵γ) The concept of inner difference, however, renders these unlike and indifferent moments, space and time etc., differences that are nothing of the kind, only a difference of the like pole whose essence is unity. They are mutually infused with spirit as opposing positive and negative; their being in fact consists in asserting itself as non-being and overcoming both in a unity. ⁶The differentiated parts both persist; they are both in itself; they are implicitly antithetical, i.e. each is its own opposite, they have their own others within themselves constituting just one unity.

31. This simple infinity, absolute concept, can be called the simple essence of life, soul of the world, universal blood; omnipresent, it is not muddied or interrupted by any difference whatsoever. Indeed, it is all differences together with their overcoming; internally pulsating without moving itself; trembling inside without losing its poise. ²It is self-identical, for the differences are tautological; they are no differences at all. ³This self-identical essence thus relates only to itself. To its self: to self as an other to which it relates. Relating to itself is in fact self-splitting; self-identity is inner difference. ⁴The split pair exist in and for themselves; each is an opposite – of an other; uttering one simultaneously expresses the other. ⁵Or, neither is the opposite of an other, each is rather a pure opposite, thus inherently its own opposite. ⁶Or, they are not opposites, but simply exist purely for themselves; each is a purely self-identical essence without difference in it. In this case we don't need to ask the big question at all, much less regard torturing ourselves with it as philosophy, or declare it to be unanswerable by philosophy. The big question, of course, is: how does difference or otherness emerge from out of this pure essence? For division is already there once difference is excluded from the self-identical and set up beside it. In this scenario, what was supposed to be self-identical is but one of the split pair, not absolute essence at all. ⁷Asserting that the self-identical splits itself includes the assertion that it overcomes itself as already split, it overcomes its own otherness. ⁸That unity of which it is common to say difference cannot emerge from it is really only one moment of the split; it is the abstraction of simplicity standing opposed to difference. ⁹Being an abstraction, only one of the opposed pair, means already that it is splitting; for if unity is a negative, something with an opposite, then unity is asserted as being something that has opposition within it. ¹⁰Self-splitting and becoming self-identical constitute in exactly the same way just the difference that generates the motion of self-overcoming. For if the self-identical that's supposed first to split itself or turn into its opposite is an abstraction, already split itself, then this makes its division an overcoming of what it is and consequently the overcoming of its split state. ¹¹Becoming self-identical is simultaneously a self-splitting; what becomes identical to itself stands against the split, opposing its own division, hence placing itself to one side: it turns into something split itself.

32. Infinity, this absolute turbulence of pure automotion – that something with definition of any sort whatsoever, e.g. being, is rather the opposite of that [§24.3 above and IV.A. Lordship and bondage §1.3] – this infinite automotion is certainly the soul of everything we have been through up to now, but it first emerges freely and autonomously in interiority. ²Appearance, the play of forces, displays it already, but there it first emerges freely as explanation. Here, at last, object for consciousness as what it is, object for consciousness in its own right, this infinity is what makes consciousness self-consciousness. ³Explanation by the understanding is initially only the narrative description of what self-consciousness is. ⁴Understanding overcomes the now pure yet still indifferent differences present in law establishing them in one unity, the unity of force. ⁵This equalization is simultaneously a splitting, for understanding only overcomes the differences and asserts the one, force, by drawing another difference between law and force, which is, however, no difference at all. Given now that this difference too is no difference, proceeding on the same path, understanding overcomes the difference by endowing force with exactly the same features as law.

– ⁶That all leaves this motion, necessity, still firmly ensconced in the understanding. As such, it is not the understanding's object. Rather, the understanding has in it positive and negative electricity, distance, speed, force of attraction and a thousand other things as objects, content of moments of this motion. ⁷There is so much self-satisfaction in explanation precisely because consciousness is therein, as one might put it, engaged directly in a conversation with itself, just enjoying its own company. Although it appears to be doing something quite different, in fact it is only concerned with itself.

33. Infinity certainly becomes object for the understanding in the opposite law, the inversion of the first law, and in inner difference, but the understanding misses it as usual by distributing implicit difference – self-repelling like and attracting unlikes – to two worlds or two substantial elements. Motion, as in experience, is here an occurrence for the understanding; like and unlike are predicates each with an existing substrate for its essence. ²The same thing that for the understanding is its object in sensuous coating is now present for us in its essential shape as pure concept. ³This grasp of difference as it is in truth, grasp of infinity as such, is for us or in itself. ⁴Explication and demonstration of its concept belong to science [i.e logic]. Consciousness, however, now as immediate grasp of the concept re-emerges as an autonomous form, a new pattern of consciousness that does not find its essence in what has gone before, but sees it as something completely different.

– ⁵This concept of infinity is its object and that means it is now consciousness simultaneously of difference as such and difference immediately overcome. It is for itself ; consciousness is differentiation of the undifferentiated. Self-consciousness! ⁶I distinguish me from myself and this means simultaneously for me that what has been differentiated is not different at all. ⁷I, the like, repel me from myself, but what has been differentiated here, asserted as unlike, is, precisely in the act of distinguishing, no difference for me. ⁸Consciousness of another, of any object whatever, is itself necessarily self-consciousness, being reflected into itself, consciousness of itself within its own otherness [Preface §26.1, §54.8; I. Sense Certainty §18.1]. ⁹The necessary advance from the former patterns of consciousness, in each of which its truth was a thing, something other than itself, expresses precisely this: that not only is consciousness of the thing only possible for a self-consciousness, but that self-consciousness itself is the sole truth of those patterns. ¹⁰This truth is given only for us, not yet for consciousness. ¹¹Self-consciousness has come into being for itself, but it is not yet a unity with consciousness as such.

34. We see that in the interiority of appearance, understanding experiences nothing other than appearance itself. No mere play of forces, however, understanding now has that play in its absolutely universal moments and their motion in which, in fact, it only really experiences itself. ²Raised above perception, consciousness binds itself into union with the extrasensory through the midpoint of appearance, through which it looks into the extrasensory background. ³The two extremes of pure interiority and the inner being [ego, I] looking into it now fall together. Just as they are no longer extremes, neither is the midpoint distinct from them any more. ⁴The curtain has been drawn away from interiority and what we have now is the gaze of the inner being into interiority. That is the gaze of the undifferentiated like [I] that repels itself as differentiated interiority, but for which simultaneously both remain undifferentiated, and this is self-consciousness. ⁵It turns out that behind the so-called curtain, supposedly screening interiority, there is nothing to see unless we ourselves get behind it, just to have something back there to look at as much as to make looking possible in the first place. ⁶By the same token, we can't just go directly back there without more ado. After all, to reach this knowledge of the truth of the common image of appearance and its interiority we have struggled through some highly complex moves, in which the modes of consciousness – meaning (opinion), perception and understanding – disappeared. There's more of that complexity ahead, for determining just exactly what consciousness knows in knowing itself involves further challenges, which we must take up in what follows.

Contents
II. Perception ««	»» B. Self-Consciousness