midpoint --- hegel and his philosophy

– ³At first spirit/mind is being in and for itself, spirited and mindful substance, for us or in itself. ⁴But it needs to be that, being in and for itself, for itself as well. It has to be knowledge of spirit/mind and knowledge of itself as spirit/mind; it has to become an object to itself, but an object immediately overcome, reflected into itself. ⁵For us, it is only for itself when it generates its own spirited, mindful content autonomously. For it, however, to be for itself means that autonomous generation, the pure concept, is the objective element of its very existence; this is how it exists as an object reflected into itself.

– ⁶Spirit/mind knowing itself developed in this sense is science. And science is spirit/mind's own actual reality and the realm it constructs within its own element.

5. Element of knowledge

26. Pure self-knowledge in absolute otherness [§54.8 below; I. Sense Certainty §18.4; III. Force and Understanding �33.8], this aether as such is the ground, the soil of science or of knowledge in the universal [V. Reason §5.6 (Category)]. ²Starting philosophy requires one to be in this state of consciousness, in this element. ³However, this element acquires its perfection and transparency only through the motion of its becoming. ⁴It is pure spirited mindfulness as the universal in the mode of simple immediacy. ⁵This simplicity, the universal's reality, is the soil, the thinking, that is only available to mindful spirit. This element, this immediacy of spirited mind, is what gives it substance and that's what makes this immediacy transfigured essence or reflection, itself integral, that is immediacy as such for itself; such being is reflection into itself, [self-regeneration §18.2 and §23.6 above]. ⁶Raising itself into this aether is a prerequisite science demands of self-consciousness in order that it live with and in science, indeed to be able to live at all. ⁷The individual, on the other hand, has the right to demand that science provide him with a ladder, at least, to reach this standpoint; that it show him the standpoint within himself. ⁸This right is grounded in the absolute autonomy the individual knows he possesses in every type of his knowledge. For, whether it is recognized by science or not and whatever the content may be, in every kind of knowledge the individual is absolute form, i.e. immediate certainty of himself, and thus, if this expression be preferred, unconditioned being. ⁹When science regards the standpoint of consciousness – that sense of mutual opposition with its objects – as the opposite of science, while that state in which consciousness feels at home with itself counts as the loss of spirit, then science's element is but a distant realm, the beyond, in which it no longer has possession of itself. ¹⁰Each of these attitudes appears to the other as a distortion of the truth. ¹¹When natural consciousness entrusts itself unthinkingly to science, this is an attempt, driven by it knows not what, for once to walk on its head. As unprepared as it is for the sudden compulsion to adopt such an uncomfortable gait, just as unnecessary appears the violence required to pull it off.

– ¹²Science may be in itself whatever it wants to be. The fact is that for immediate self-consciousness, it looks very distorted indeed. What makes self-consciousness actual in principle is its own certainty of itself; self-consciousness is self-confidence. Thus, standing for itself, outside of science, on its own account, self-consciousness doesn't really regard science as actual for it. ¹³Science must connect with the element of self-consciousness, or rather demonstrate that, and how, it is a part of science. ¹⁴Lacking such actual reality, science is mere content, in itself, a goal, still something internal, mental substance, not yet spirit. ¹⁵As yet in itself, science must externalize itself and become for itself establishing self-consciousness as one with it.

6. Rising into that element is what this book is all about

27. This emergence and development of science as such, or knowledge, is what this book, the first part of its System [of Science], is all about. ²Knowledge as it is at first, immediate spirit/mind, is effectively mindless, sensuous consciousness [I. Sense certainty]. ³A lot of work is required to produce the element of science, its own pure concept, to reach genuine knowledge.

– ⁴This process, as it articulates itself through its content and in the structures emerging in it, turns out not to be what might be expected from a user's guide introducing the unscientific consciousness to science. It is something quite distinct from a rationale or foundation for science. Neither does it indulge the enthusiasm that starts right off – like a pistol shot – with the absolute and claims its refusal to take any notice of other standpoints as a position superior to all of them.

28. Leading the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge was meant in its general sense, i.e. we'll be considering the education of the universal individual as self-conscious, mindful spirit.

– ²There is a fundamental difference between the two. In the universal individual every moment itself reveals the process by which it gains concrete form and structuring. ³The particular individual, however, is incomplete spirit, a concrete structure whose whole existence is dominated by one particular feature in high definition with the others only present in blurred outlines. ⁴Lower-level concrete existence sinks to an inconspicuous moment of higher-level mindful spirit. What was formerly the matter itself is now only a trace; now only a rough shading, its shape is obscured. ⁵That individual whose substance is higher-level spirited mind runs through this past in the manner of one taking up a more advanced science and revising the prerequisite knowledge he has already internalized in order to have it all present in his consciousness. He does all that without spending much time on it or getting interested in it as such. ⁶Every single individual must pass through the education stages of universal spirit as structures outgrown by it, as stages on a path that has been worked through and smoothed out. Thus we see that tasks and information which occupied the minds of mature thinkers in former times sink to the level of exercises and even games for schoolboys. Indeed, we see silhouetted in the learning curves of the schoolboy the history of the world's mental advance. ⁷This past is the hard-won property of universal spirit; that's what makes mindful spirit the substance of the individual appearing external to him; it forms his inorganic nature.

– ⁸The educational task of the individual is to acquire this available material, to nourish and strengthen himself on his inorganic nature and take possession of it. ⁹This is essentially the same thing as the universal spirit, substance, giving itself its own self-consciousness, its becoming and reflection into itself.

29. Science demonstrates these growth processes in all their detail and necessity as well as the configurations of what has sunk to the level of moment, the possession of spirited mind. ²The aim is the mind's insight into the nature of knowledge. ³Impatience demands the impossible: to reach the goal without the means. ⁴The full length of this path must be endured, for each moment is necessary; time must be spent on each of them, for each is an integral, structured whole in its own right. A moment can only be grasped in absolute terms when its definition is seen as a whole, concretely; the whole must be grasped in the distinctiveness of these clearly defined features.

– ⁵The substance of the individual, the world spirit, Weltgeist, has had the patience to pass through these forms in the long extension of time and to undertake the incredible work of world history, giving shape to as much of its content that each form can hold. No less was required for the spirit to achieve consciousness of itself. For all these reasons, the individual can't really comprehend his substance with any less work. Of course, his workload is greatly reduced, because in itself the task is already done for him with the content now but reality reduced to possibility, subjugated immediacy, formations reduced to abbreviations, to simple definitions of thought. ⁶Already thought through, the content is now a possession of substance, accessible to the individual. Existence no longer needs to be turned into the form of being in itself. The in itself is now neither original nor immersed in existence; it is firmly ensconced in human memory banks. All that remains is to convert this recollected in itself into the form of being for itself [§33.5 below]. We shall now consider closely how this is done.

7. a. Turning imaging and familiarity into thought –

30. From our standpoint in the process, where we catch up with this motion, overcoming existence is a task we are spared on the whole. What remains to be done now is subjecting the acquired imagery and our familiarity with the forms to deeper rethinking and complete reformulation. ²Existence overcome, drawn back into substance, only transits directly into the element of self through that first negation. So this acquired possession still has the same character of uncomprehended immediacy, passive indifference, as existence itself. All that's happened is that it has transited essentially unchanged into the imagination.

– ³Still, its acquaintance has at least been made, although it is now something that existing spirit is finished with, inactive on, no longer interested in. ⁴Taking care of business in existence is no more than the motion of the particular spirit that does not conceptually comprehend itself; but knowledge pits itself against the images, the familiarity resulting from that motion, for it is the activity of the universal self and the vital interest of thought.

31. What is familiar, being familiar, is not known. ²Assuming something as true just because it is familiar is the most common self-deception in the pursuit of knowledge. It is no less of a deception of others. Despite all its dithering back and forth, this attitude never moves from the spot, although it has no idea why. ³Subject, object, God, nature, the understanding, sensuous reality and so on. They're all laid at the foundation, taken as familiar and valid without scrutiny; they constitute the fixed points for the departure as well as for the return. ⁴Running back and forth between them, while they remain passive, unmoved, the whole movement never gets under their skin. ⁵Reception and scrutiny consist here in nothing more than each individual checking what is said about each of the great terms against his imagination, asking whether it appears to him to be so, whether it is familiar to him or not.

32. Analysing a given image, a stereotype, has never really meant anything other than overcoming its familiarity. ²Dismantling an image into its original elements amounts to a return to its moments, which at least don't have the form of the given image; rather, they are the immediate property of the self. ³Analysis arrives only at thoughts, themselves familiar enough: fixed, static and definite. ⁴But what is separated and lacking vitality is an essential factor. Indeed, self-division and shedding its vital reality is precisely what makes the concrete automotive. ⁵The activity of division is the force and labour of the understanding; most wondrous, greatest – indeed much more: the absolute power. ⁶The circle resting closed within itself, like substance holding its moments together, is an immediate relation and as such not to be wondered at. ⁷Isolating, tearing the accidental from out of its context so that something, which only has vital reality when bound therein with others, acquires its own existence and independent freedom, this is the monstrous power of the negative. It is the energy of thought itself, the ego. ⁸Death – if we really want to call the result of shedding reality that – is the most dreadful thing; and holding on to what is dead demands the greatest strength [compare §45]. ⁹Impotent beauty hates the understanding because it expects precisely this of her, something she's simply not capable of. ¹⁰Not the life that shuns death and preserves itself free of desolation, but the life that endures death and can function within it: this is the life of the spirit. ¹¹Spirit only gains its truth by finding itself within absolute division. ¹²Spirit is not this power as the positive that turns away from the negative, such as when we say of something 'this is false, so done with it and let's move on to something else'. Spirit is only this power by looking the negative squarely in the eye and not blinking. ¹³The solid gaze in confronting the negative is the magic power that converts it into being.

– ¹⁴This is the power we named above the subject [§§17,18], because it gives to definition existence in its own – subject's – element, overcoming abstract – barely existing – immediacy. This is what makes the subject authentic substance: being or immediacy whose mediation is not external to it, for it is this mediation itself.

7. b. – and that into the concept

33. Turning the given image into the property of pure self-consciousness, this elevation to universality as such is only one aspect of education and not yet its fulfilment. ²The method of study in ancient times was a genuine and thorough education of natural consciousness, which is what distinguishes it from education today. ³Testing itself closely on every single part of its existence and philosophizing over everything that came to its attention, it developed itself into a thoroughly animated universality. ⁴Now, however, the individual finds abstract forms already prepared for him. The effort to grasp them and make them one's own is more directly about working them up inside consciousness, withdrawing to produce the universal there rather than its emergence out of the concrete diversity of existence. ⁵Now the task is not about purifying the individual from immediate sensuousness and turning it into thinking, contemplative substance; but the reverse: engaging the universal and infusing it with spirit by freeing up the fixations of determinate thought [§29.6 above]. ⁶Unfortunately, it is far harder to render fixed thoughts fluid than sensuous existence. ⁷The reason for that was given above: substance and element of existence of these fixations is the ego, the power of the negative, pure actual reality [§32.7 above]. In contrast, sensuous features have only impotent, abstract immediacy or being as such for their element. ⁸Thoughts become fluid when pure thinking, this inner immediacy, realizes it is but a moment; when pure self-certainty abstracts from itself. Not by ceasing to think itself, abstracting from itself only happens when self-conscious spirit/mind abandons the rigidities of its own self-assertion. This means two things. 1. Getting over the fixation of pure concreteness, where the ego stands opposed to compartmentalised material. 2. Giving up the rigidities of that material's distinctions too, which, asserted in the element of pure thought, make a significant contribution to propping up the ego's arrogance. ⁹This is the movement that turns pure thoughts into concepts, making them only then what they are in truth: automotions, circles, and what they are in substance: spirited, mindful essences.

34. This motion of pure essences is what makes science science. ²Being the context of its own content likewise makes this motion the necessity and expansion of that content into an organic whole. ³It is also what gives the path that brings us to the concept of knowledge necessity and a complete development with the result that this preparation ceases to be arbitrary philosophizing. No longer latching onto these or those objects, relations or thoughts of incomplete consciousness as chance presents them; no longer trying to justify the truth by ranging around, back and forth in ratiocination, reasoning, drawing conclusions from the fixations of thought. The dynamism of the concept ensures that this path encompasses the complete worldliness of consciousness in its necessity.

35. This kind of demonstration forms the first part of science, because in the first phase of spirit/mind, its existence, it is no more than immediacy or the beginning. The beginning is not yet its return into itself. ²The element of immediate existence is thus what gives this part of science its definition, what distinguishes it from the other parts.

– ³Definition here is also called specific difference and it leads naturally to the discussion of certain fixations that usually arise at this point.

36. Consciousness, spirit/mind's immediate existence, has two moments: knowledge and its negative, objectivity. ²Developing and articulating its moments in the element of consciousness, all of spirit/mind's moments feature this opposition, shaping them as patterns of consciousness. ³Science on this path is the science of consciousness' experience [Introduction §16, §17.1]. Substance and its motion here form consciousness' object. Consciousness knows and comprehends nothing but what it finds in its experience, for what lies there is just spirited, mindful substance as the object of its self. ⁵Spirit/mind does become an object, for it is this motion of becoming something else to itself – i.e. object to itself – and overcoming this otherness. ⁶Experience is the name given to this motion where immediacy, what is not yet experienced – abstract, whether sensuous being or merely simplicity of thought – alienates itself, returns from out of this alienation to itself, and only then emerges in its real vitality and truth as an acquisition of consciousness.

37. The mismatch in consciousness between the ego and its object substance is the difference in substance, the negative as such. ²It can be regarded as a deficiency in both, but what's important here is that this negative is their soul, their motive factor. This is why some ancients regarded emptiness as the motive force. They saw the motive force as the negative, but they didn't make it as far as grasping the negative as the self.

– ³This negative appears at first as a disparity between ego and object; but it is just as much a mismatch of the substance to itself. ⁴What appears to happen outside substance, an activity directed against it, is in fact its own doing and this is precisely where substance reveals itself as essentially subject [§17.1]. ⁵Demonstrating this completely is exactly how spirit/mind renders its existence and its essence identical. Now spirit is its own object just as it is, which means that the abstract element of immediacy, the separation of knowledge and truth, is overcome. ⁶Being is absolutely mediated; now substantial content, it is simultaneously the immediate property of the ego; being is self-like or concept. ⁷That all comes at the end of this book. ⁸In this book spirit produces the element of knowledge. ⁹Spirited mind's moments expand throughout this element in the form of the simplicity that knows its object as itself. ¹⁰They no longer succumb to the being/knowledge opposition, but remain within the integrity of knowledge. They are the truth in the form of truth, their difference being only the difference of content. ¹¹Their motion, organizing itself in this element into a whole, is logic or speculative philosophy.

8. Negative book? How false?

38. This book's system of spirited mind's experience only encompasses its appearance [§47.4 below; Introduction §5.1], so progress from this system to the science of truth in the form of truth [i.e. logic] appears to be purely negative [§24.7 above; Introduction §6.2]. One might wish to dispense with the negative, calling it the false, and demand to be lead without more ado directly to the truth. Why bother with what is false?

– ²We talked above about the desire to start right off with science [§27.4]. We have to consider that desire here now from this perspective: in what sense is the negative false? ³Established views here are primary obstacles to access to the truth. ⁴Mathematics will be discussed as one example, although unphilosophical knowledge often regards it as the ideal philosophy strives to reach without any success up to now.

39. Truth and falsity are among the fixations that stand as independent, motionless essences; one here, the other over there, rigid and isolated without anything in common. ²Against this, it has to be said that the truth is not a minted coin, a handy little item that can be passed around and pocketed. ³Neither does there exist such a thing as falsity as such, no more than evil as such. ⁴Evil and falsity cannot be as terrible as the devil, for that would make them particular subjects. In fact they are both but universals, although they are distinguished from each other with their own essences.

– ⁵Falsity, which is the one we're discussing here, would be the other, substance's negative. The content of knowledge, substance is the truth. ⁶But substance is itself essentially the negative, partly as differentiation and definition of content, partly as simple discrimination, i.e. as self and knowledge as such. ⁷One can know falsely. ⁸To say that something is known falsely means that there is a disparity between knowledge and its substance. ⁹However, this mismatch is the activity of drawing distinctions, discrimination, a vital moment. ¹⁰Such distinction is what ultimately gives rise to the identity of the two thereby distinguished; and this achieved identity is the truth. ¹¹Not, however, in the sense that the mismatch is thrown away, like slag from pure metal. Neither, indeed, is it like the tool used in production lying separate from the finished container [Introduction §1.1-§4.1]. No, the mismatch remains immediately present in the true as the negative, the self. ¹²It cannot be said, however, that this makes the false a moment, or even a component, of the true. ¹³When we say there's a bit of truth in every falsehood, we think of the two like oil and water, only externally combined, for they cannot be mixed. ¹⁴Precisely because of their meaning, namely that they designate the moment of complete otherness, we are prevented from using them beyond the point where their otherness is overcome. ¹⁵The same problem occurs with expressions like the unity of subject and object, finite and infinite, being and thought, and so on. For these words designate what they are outside their unity. In their unity they are not what their individual expressions say. This is precisely the sense in which the false is a moment of the true, but no longer as something false.

9. Historical and mathematical truth

40. Dogmatism as a pattern of thought in ordinary life or in philosophy is nothing other than the view that the truth is given in a single proposition, whether that be a fixed result or something known immediately [§24.2 above]. ²A neat answer is expected to questions like, when was Caesar born? or How many toise were there in the stadium unit of length in ancient Greece? It is certainly true that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides of a right-angled triangle. ³But such so-called truth is essentially different from the nature of philosophical truth.

41. Briefly put, it is easy to see that historical truths, as far as their purely historical aspect is concerned, refer to isolated existence, to material that is coincidental, arbitrary, to features of it that are not necessary. ²Still, even the kind of naked truths given above are not free of the motion of self-consciousness. ³Knowing something like that requires a lot of comparing, looking up things in books or checking things in one way or another. Knowledge by immediate intuition too only has true value when the reasons for it are given as well, even if only the naked result is taken seriously.

42. How much less so, when it comes to mathematical truths, would anyone be taken as a geometer just because he knew Euclid's theorems externally, as it were, like memorized poetry, without their proofs, without knowing them, as one might say to point up the contrast, internally, without thoroughly internalizing their proofs as well. ²Acquiring the knowledge that the sides of a right-angled triangle stand in the well-known relationship by measuring many of them would be just as unsatisfying. ³The vitality of proof is still not seen in mathematics in its full significance as something essential, as a moment of the result itself, but disappears as if it were over and done with. ⁴It is as a result that the theorem is grasped as true. ⁵But this added circumstance does not involve its content, but only its relation to the subject. The motion of mathematical proof does not belong to the object, but is an action external to it. ⁶It does not lie in the nature of the right-angled triangle to dismantle itself, as specified in the construction required for the proof of Pythagoras' theorem. The entire process of producing the result, the steps and the devices used in them, that all happens within the knowing subject.

– ⁷In the philosophical pursuit of knowledge too, the becoming of existence as existence of the thing in question is distinct from the becoming of its essence or inner nature. ⁸Firstly, philosophical knowledge contains both existence and essence, while mathematics presents only the generation of existence, i.e. of the being of the nature of the thing in the process of knowledge as such. ⁹Secondly, philosophical knowledge also unites both particular motions. ¹⁰Inner emergence, the becoming of substance – how it comes into being – is direct transition into outer existence, into being for another; and conversely, in the becoming of existence – in its development – it is pulled back into essence. ¹¹This motion is thus the double process in the generation of the whole, such that each simultaneously asserts the other and both have both of them as aspects intrinsic to each of them [§53.2,3 below]. Together they make up the whole by breaking themselves down into its moments [§20.1,2 above].

43. Insight in mathematics is external to the matter. It follows that the true matter is changed by this. ²The means, construction and proof, certainly contain true propositions, but by the same token it has to be said that the content is false. ³The triangle in the theorem is rent asunder, its parts assigned to other figures produced by the construction. ⁴Only at the end is the triangle restored. But the triangle is what it was supposed to be all about. In the progress of the proof, however, it is lost from view; only present in pieces belonging to other wholes.

– ⁵Here we can see how the negativity of the content enters the piece, which ought to be called its falsity if that's how the disappearance of the fixations of thought in the motion of the concept is viewed [§§33,34 above].

44. The real inadequacy of mathematics affects its stuff as well as the process of knowledge involved.

– ²As for the latter, the necessity of the construction is not demonstrated. ³It does not emerge from the concept of the theorem, but is commanded and one must blindly obey the rules that require only certain lines to be drawn, although infinitely many others could just as easily be used. No more knowledge is required here than the good faith that this all serves the progression through the proof. ⁴This focus on the goal does become fully apparent after the proof is complete, but only then and that's what tells us that goal-orientation is merely external.

– ⁵The process starts somewhere, anywhere'll do, and we have no idea in what relation that starting point stands to the result we're aiming at. ⁶Certain definitions and relations are picked up along the way, others left aside, and we have no immediate insight into what necessity determines these choices. An external purpose governs the whole movement.

45. The evident certainty of this defective form of knowledge, of which mathematics is so proud and which she boasts of against philosophy, is founded solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its stuff. Philosophy must therefore spurn it.

– ²Mathematics' goal or concept is magnitude. ³Magnitude is the most inessential relation utterly devoid of the concept. ⁴This is what keeps the movement of knowledge here strictly on the surface. It does not touch the matter itself [§50.2 end], not the essence nor the concept and thus it cannot reach comprehension.

– ⁵The stuff of which mathematics has accumulated such a heart-warming treasure of truths is space and the quantum, the one. ⁶Space is that existence where the concept writes its distinctions as in an empty, dead element; in which they remain just as motionless and lifeless. ⁷The actual is not spatial in the sense that mathematics understands space. Neither concrete sense intuition nor philosophy itself have anything to do with the things of mathematics, which lack actual reality. ⁸Absent the actual and you have an element offering nothing but truths that absent the actual too; nothing but fixations, dead propositions. You can stop at any one of them. The next one starts quite separately. The one before does not propel itself to this one. Indeed, there is no such propulsion at all here that could establish any necessary connection between them rooted in the nature of the matter itself.

– ⁹In the service of that principle and element, this kind of knowledge proceeds along the line of equality [§18.2 above] – and herein lies the formalism of mathematics' evident certainty. ¹⁰For what is dead does not move itself and hence never attains differentiation of its essence, never makes it to essential opposition, essential inequality; thus also not to transition of one pole of an opposition into the other, not to qualitative, immanent motion, self-propulsion, automotion [compare §32.8 f.]. ¹¹Mathematics sees everything in terms of magnitude, the inessential distinction. ¹²It abstracts from the fact that it is the concept which divides space into its dimensions, establishing and projecting the links between them into space. It does not bother with, for example, the relationship between line and plane; and when it comes to comparing the diameter of a circle with its circumference, it runs into incommensurability, a relation of the concept, something infinite and beyond its grasp.

46. Immanent, so-called pure mathematics does not take time, juxtaposed to space, as its second stuff. ²Applied mathematics deals with time just as it does motion and other actual things. However, it takes the synthetic propositions, i.e. statements of relations determined by their concept, from experience and applies its formulas only on the basis of these premises. ³Purported proofs of theorems on the equilibrium of the lever or the relations of time and space in the motion of falling bodies are popular examples, but the fact that they are presented and accepted as proofs is nothing more than a proof itself of just how great the need is for proof in the pursuit of knowledge. Where none is available, it finds some satisfaction in accepting the empty appearance of proof. ⁴A critique of such proofs would be as unusual as instructive in cleansing mathematics from this false adornment while also demonstrating its limits and the need for a very different kind of knowledge.

– ⁵Let us consider time for a moment. One might have expected that it would be the stuff of the other department of pure mathematics as the counterpart to space. Time is the existing concept itself. ⁶The principles of magnitude, the unconceptual distinction, and equality, abstract, lifeless unity, can't even begin to come to grips with the pure tumult of life and the process of absolute differentiation [§18.2 above]. ⁷Such negativity is adopted as the second stuff in this kind of knowledge only paralysed as the quantum or one. Mathematics remains aloof and subjugates the automotion, the negativity, to provide itself with an indifferent, external, lifeless content for its second stuff.

10. a. Philosophical truth and its method –

47. Philosophy, in contrast, does not consider inessential features, but only the essential variety. Not what is abstract or lacking actuality is its element and content, but the actual, self-defining, that which has life in it, existence in its concept. ²It is the process that generates its own moments as it moves through them. This whole movement constitutes the positive and its truth. ³This truth thus includes the negative within in, what would be called false, if it could be understood as something from which one could abstract. ⁴Transience has to be taken seriously as essential, not in the sense of something fixed, cut off from the truth, lying somewhere outside it, who knows where; no more than truth is something lying over there on the other side, the dead positive [§38.1 above]. ⁵Appearance is the process of emerging and disappearing that does not itself emerge or disappear, for it is in itself, essential, constituting the actual reality and motion of the life of truth [III. Force and Understanding §12.4, §14, §16.3]. ⁶Truth is at once the bacchanalian whirl leaving no reveller sober and, since each's exit would be their instant demise, transparent and imperturbable tranquillity. ⁷In the opulent banquet of these motions, individual structures of mindful spirit are not found in the same form as definite thoughts, but they are every bit as necessary and positive moments as they are negative and transient.

– ⁸In the whole of this motion, grasped as rest, is preserved whatever distinguishes itself within it achieving particular existence, as something that internalizes itself, remembering itself. Just as its existence is self-knowledge, so is this knowledge itself immediately existence.

48. More could be said about the method of this movement, that is about science. ²Its concept lies in what has already been said and its full demonstration belongs to logic, or rather it is logic as such. ³For the method is nothing other than the construction of the whole, presented in its pure essence. ⁴We must, however, realize that the entire system of current approaches to philosophical method belongs to a lost culture.

– ⁵If this sounds boastful or even revolutionary – a far cry indeed from the tone I know to be my own – it should be remembered that the scientific court and its ceremonial created by mathematics – explanations, classifications, axioms, series of theorems, their proofs, fundamental principles and implications and deductions from them – is, in current opinion at least, rather old-fashioned. ⁶Even if its inadequacy is not clearly understood, little or no use is made of it all these days; and if it is not deprecated, it is certainly not well liked. ⁷We must hope that what is excellent establishes itself in common usage and is appreciated. ⁸But it is not hard to see that stating a proposition, offering grounds in favour of it and using others to refute its opposite is not the form in which truth can emerge. ⁹Truth is automotion, the motion of itself within itself. That method, however, is an approach to knowledge remaining external to the stuff. ¹⁰That's why it's so typical of mathematics, which we characterized above as motivated by the principle of the concept-free relation of magnitude along with dead space and dead quantum for its stuff. The method should be left to mathematics. ¹¹In a freer form, mixed with flights of fancy and arbitrariness, it is also common in everyday life, in conversation and in historical edification addressing curiosity more than the pursuit of knowledge. In prefaces, for example! ¹²In everyday life consciousness has information, experiences, things from the sensuous concrete, thoughts, principles and so on for its content, all of which is available to it as fixed being, essence at rest. ¹³It ploughs on merrily through all of this, interrupting the flow arbitrarily and generally behaving like an authority externally manipulating it all. ¹⁴Its boast is to explain itself from certain, hard facts. Even if they actually come down to no more than the feeling of the moment; it rests content when it reaches familiar ground.

49. If the necessity of the concept bans the loose approach of conversational argument along with stiffer scientific pomp, then, as mentioned above, these cannot be replaced by the unmethod of intimation and enthusiasm and the arbitrariness of prophetic speech, which despises not only scientific pomp, but all science as such [§10.2 above].

10. b. – against schematizing formalism

50. The same has to be said about another form. The use of the triad as a lifeless schema, a real shadow in fact, and the degradation of scientific organisation to tables, can no longer be viewed as scientific. Kant rediscovered triplicity only through instinct and in his philosophy it remains dead and uncomprehended. Once Kantian triplicity was elevated to its absolute significance, thereby presenting true form in its true content, the concept of science emerged from this move.

– ²We discussed formalism above in general terms [§§15,16], and we shall now go into it in greater detail. It claims to comprehend and define the nature and the life of a structure when it can assign one of the terms of the schema to it as a predicate. That may be subjectivity or objectivity, or it may be something like magnetism, electricity etc., contraction or expansion, east or west etc., the list is endless. In this manner, each term or structure can be used as form or moment of the schema for another, each can perform the same service for another, and they're all happy with each other. This circle of mutuality never really exposes us to the matter itself [§45.4], neither the one term nor the other. ³Sensuous features from common intuition are taken up, although they're supposed to mean something other than what they say; then also terms of thought, meaningful in themselves, like subject, object, substance, cause, the universal etc. are used just as unscrutinised, uncritically as strengths and weaknesses, expansion and contraction are used in everyday life. In all this the metaphysics is quite as unscientific as these sensuous impressions.

51. Instead of the inner life and the automotion of its existence, a simple feature is taken from intuition, i.e. knowledge from the senses here, and formulated along the lines of a superficial analogy. This external and empty application of the formula is then dubbed 'construction'.

– ²The same thing happens in this type of formalism as in all the rest. ³How dull must the brain be that cannot grasp in fifteen minutes the theory that there are asthenic, sthenic and indirect asthenic diseases and just as many therapies? What practising doctor could not be transformed into a theoretical physician with just this instruction since, after all, this sufficed even in recent times to precisely that end? ⁴When formalist natural philosophy teaches that the understanding is electricity or animals are nitrogen or equivalent to the south, or the north etc., or they represent one of these, stating it baldly or cobbling its claims together with more terminology, then inexperience may lead people to succumb to amazement and admiration at the force that brings together things apparently so far apart as well as at the violence suffered by passive sensuous features through these associations. It's all designed to lend its formulations a conceptual appearance, although the main task, to state the concept itself or the meaning of the sensuous impressions, remains undone. The inexperienced can be moved to a respect for such awesome genius and to a sense of joy over such associations, replacing abstract concepts as they do with intuitive material. They will enjoy all this and congratulate themselves on becoming part of the select few who command such ecstatic insight. ⁵The kick of this wisdom is as soon forgotten as it was induced; repeating the formulas, once they're all familiar, soon becomes as unbearable as repeating an old card trick everyone has seen through. ⁶The instrument of this monotone formalism is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter with only two colours, say red and green. Red for a historical painting, green for a landscape.

– ⁷It would be difficult to decide which would be greater, the smugness with which everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth [Philippians 2 v. 11; Revelation 5 v.3 and v.13 M] could be touched up with such an insipid broth or the self-delusion of the excellence of this universal recipe, for they prop each other up. ⁸This method of sticking one or other of the few descriptors from the universal schema on everything earthly and heavenly, every natural, mental, and spiritual structure and using them to neatly arrange it all, amounts to nothing but a sun-clear clear report [Fichte] on that organism we call the universe. Once again a table! Like a skeleton with bits of paper stuck all over it, or like rows of drawers in a grocer's stall, all duly labelled, the one as obvious as the other. Just as flesh and blood is removed from the skeleton, what these drawers conceal within them are not living things. The living essence is left out or well concealed in the report.

– ⁹As we have seen, this mannerism ends up like some monotone absolute painting for, ashamed that the distinctions of the schema are reflection forms, they are drowned in the emptiness of the absolute from which pure identity, formless white, is produced [§15.6-§16.4 M]. ¹⁰The single colour of the schema with its lifeless features and this absolute identity, along with the transitions between them, each is the same kind of dead understanding as the other and all are equally external knowledge.

52. Excellence, however, cannot avoid such a fate. To be deprived of life and spirit in this way, flayed, the skin wrapped around lifeless knowledge and its vanity. ²More, it is precisely in this process that we recognize the power it exercises on the feelings, if not on the spirit, just as much as its own unfolding to universality and formal definition, which is where its perfection really lies and which alone makes it possible for this universality to be abused as superficiality.

53. Science may organize itself only through the concept's own life. Definition in science is the automotive soul of its rich content; this is the source of what in the schema is externally attached to existence. ²Given being's motion is one of making itself into something else in order to become its own immanent content and then taking back this unfolding, the existence resulting, into itself. This means turning itself into one of its own moments and simplifying itself to definiteness, giving itself definition. ³Negativity in that motion is the drawing of distinctions in the unfolding of the existence; in this return into itself negativity is the process of becoming determinate simplicity, a process of acquiring definition. ⁴This is how the content shows that it does not receive its definition as an external imposition, stuck onto it. Content generates its own definition and assigns itself its position as a moment within the whole [§42.7-11 above]. ⁵Tabular understanding monopolizes the necessity and concept of the content, the concrete, the actuality and living motion of the matter it arranges. In fact, it does no such thing, for it does not even recognize that living motion. If it really had this insight, it would display it clearly. ⁶It does not even know of the need for such insight, otherwise it would abandon its schematizing, or at least acknowledge that this produces no more than a table of contents. Tabular understanding offers only the table of contents; the contents itself it cannot deliver.

– ⁷When a feature, such as magnetism, is concrete and actual in itself, it nevertheless drops dead when it is merely predicated of another existence and not recognized as the immanent life of that existent thing, where it is at home and presents its characteristic self-generation. ⁸Adding this primary factor is something formal understanding prefers to leave to others.

– ⁹Declining to enter into the immanent content of the matter, it always surveys the whole standing above the individual existence of which it speaks, i.e. it doesn't even see it. ¹⁰The scientific process of knowledge, however, requires much more. We must give ourselves over to the life of the object or, what amounts to the same thing, confront its inner necessity directly and state this clearly. ¹¹Immersing ourselves thus in the object, we forget that attitude of surveying oversight, which is merely the reflection of knowledge out of the content into itself. ¹²Submerged in the material and moving forward in its motion, it returns to itself, but not before abundant content simplifies itself to definition through pulling back into itself, reducing itself to one side of an existence and transiting into its higher truth. ¹³This is how the integral whole, overseeing itself, emerges from out of the abundance in which its reflection seemed to have got lost.

54. Precisely because, as we put it above, substance is in itself subject [§17.1 and §18 M], all content is its own reflection into itself. ²Persistence or the substance of an existence is self-identity, for its non-identity with itself would be its dissolution. ³Self-identity, however, is pure abstraction, while the latter is thinking. ⁴When I say quality, I utter the simple feature. Quality is what distinguishes one existence from another or establishes its existence; it is for itself or it persists through this simplicity with itself. ⁵The point is that's what makes it essentially a thought.

– ⁶Being is thinking. Here we have the conceptual insight absent from the usual uncomprehending talk of the identity of thought and being.

– ⁷The persistence of existence is self-identity or pure abstraction and this is what makes it its own abstraction from itself, thus non-identity with itself and its own dissolution – its own interiority and pulling back into itself – its becoming.

– ⁸This nature of given being – to the extent that it has this nature for knowledge at least – ensures that knowledge is not an activity handling the content as something alien, not reflection into itself away from the content. Science is not that idealism which set itself up as a dogmatism of assurance, certain of itself, to replace the dogmatism of assertion [compare V. Certainty and Truth of Reason §4 M]. Rather, observing the content return into its own interiority, knowledge's activity is simultaneously one of immersing itself in the content – for this activity is the immanent self of the content – and pulling back into itself – for its activity is pure self-identity within otherness [§26.1 above; I. Sense Certainty §18.4; III. Force and Understanding §33.8]. Knowledge is thus the cunning, which appears to refrain from activity while watching as the definite content in its concrete life, fancying itself pursuing its own survival and special interest, in fact does exactly the reverse: dissolving itself and making itself into a moment of the whole.

55. The meaning of the understanding in terms of the self-consciousness of substance was given above [§32.5 f.]. What has just been said clarifies its meaning in terms of substance as given being.

– ²Existence is quality, self-identical definition or determinate simplicity, determinate thought. This is how the understanding sees existence. ³It's what makes existence νους (nous). Anaxagoras was the first to see essence as νους. ⁴Those who came later comprehended the nature of existence with more clarity as ειδος (eidos) or ιδεα (idea), i.e. determinate universal, species. ⁵The term 'species' appears too common and belittling for ideas, for the beautiful, the holy, the eternal. They're so fashionable just now. ⁶But the fact is that 'idea' expresses nothing more nor less than 'species'. ⁷Unfortunately, we see all too often these days that an expression used to designate a concept precisely is spurned and another is preferred merely because it comes from a foreign language, shrouding the concept in mist and sounding more edifying.

– ⁸Specifying existence as species is precisely what makes it a simple thought; νους, simplicity, integrity, is substance. ⁹Its simplicity or self-identity lends it the appearance of something fixed and persistent. ¹⁰But this self-identity is also the negativity pushing it to the dissolution of its fixity. ¹¹Definition appears at first only to be so fixed because it relies on another; its motion appears to be imposed on it by an alien power; but that simplicity of thought includes the fact that definition has its otherness in itself and is automotion. Simplicity, integrity, is the automotive, self-differentiating thought as well as being its own interiority, the pure concept. ¹²Hence common understanding itself is a becoming, which is what makes it rationality.

56. Its own concept within its own being, this is the nature of what is and it is what constitutes logical necessity, which alone is rationality, rhythm of the organic whole. Rationality is just as much knowledge of content as content is concept and essence. In short, rationality alone is speculative.

– ²Automotive, concrete, embodied structure renders itself simple definition therewith elevating itself to logical form and arriving at its own essence. Its concrete existence is nothing but this motion, which itself is nothing but logical existence. ³This all makes it unnecessary externally to attach formalism onto concrete content, for this is itself transition into form. It is no longer external formalism, because form turns out to be the innate becoming of the concrete content itself.

57. This characteristic of scientific method in partly being inseparable from the content and partly determining its own rhythm itself finds, as already mentioned, its complete expression in speculative philosophy.

– ²What has been stated here renders the concept well enough, but it cannot be taken as anything more than a promise, yet to be fulfilled. ³Its truth does not lie in the occasionally narrative exposition presented here. Neither can it be refuted by assurances to the contrary and declarations that things in fact are thus and so; nor when conventional opinions are presented as established and familiar truths; nor even when new revelations are dished up from the shrine of inner divine intuition.

– ⁴The first reaction to something new and unfamiliar has often been outright opposition, a defensive reaction to save the freedom and independence of authority against something alien, which is how all accepted views first appeared. A desire to eliminate the appearance that something had been learned, along with the shame that supposedly lies therein, was no less important. Applause for the unfamiliar too involves a reaction of the same sort; a reaction which, in another sphere, was regarded as ultrarevolutionary speech and behaviour.

11. Requirements for studying philosophy

58. Taking upon oneself the exertion of the concept is, therefore, the central issue in the study of science. ²This demands a keen awareness of the concept, of its simple terms like being in itself, being for itself, self-identity and so on. They are the kind of pure automotions one could call soul were it not for the fact that their concept designates something even higher than soul. ³Deploying the concept to disrupt the habit of proceeding through opinions is quite as vexatious to that attitude as it is to the formal thinking that rambles around through disconnected thoughts, disconnected from actual reality. ⁴The habit can be dubbed a material style of thinking, an accidental consciousness, merely submerged in the stuff, which thus finds it very uncomfortable to pull its self whole out of the material and be alone with it. ⁵Then there's the ratiocinative, argumentative type, whose vanity keeps it aloof from the content. Now it must exert itself to give up that freedom and, instead of lording it around as the principle arbitrarily moving the content, immerse its freedom therein, let it move spontaneously of its own nature, i.e. through the self as its own, and to focus on this motion. ⁶It must resist the temptation to intervene in the immanent rhythm of the concepts arbitrarily or with wisdom taken from elsewhere, for such abstinence is itself an essential moment in that focus on the concept.

12. a. Ratiocinative thinking negative –

59. Conceptual thinking differs from the ratiocinative argumentative style in two important respects.

– ²The latter is good at operating negatively against the given content, at refuting and destroying it. ³Whatever is asserted about it should not be so. This insight is mere negation, terminal, incapable of going beyond itself to a new content. Instead something must be brought in from elsewhere to fill the gap. ⁴What we have here is reflection into the empty ego, the vanity of its knowledge.

– ⁵Its vanity covers not only the content, but the insight too, for it is the negative that does not see what is positive within itself. ⁶Failing to grasp its own negativity as content, this reflection remains literally beside the point, always aloof from it, and this stance allows it to delude itself that the vacuity of its conclusion puts it in a more advanced position than a rich insight. ⁷In contrast, as we have shown above [§47 M], in conceptual thinking the negative is an integral part of the content itself, being positive in both senses: its immanent motion and definition and as the whole of this process. ⁸As a result, it is the determinate negative emerging from this motion and hence a positive content.

12. b. – positive, its subject

60. Still, this kind of thinking does have content, of images and thoughts, which is another aspect preventing it from comprehending. ²Its peculiar nature has a lot to do with the essence of the idea given above [§55 M], expressing the idea appearing as that motion which is receptive thinking.

– ³Ratiocinative thinking in its negative behaviour, as we have seen, is itself the self into which content returns; while in its positive pursuit of knowledge the self is the subject as a mental image to which the content refers as accident and predicate. ⁴This subject is the base to which content is attached and on which the motion runs back and forth. ⁵Conceptual thinking is a very different matter. ⁶The concept is the object's own self, which manifests as the object's becoming. This self is thus not a passive subject, motionless, carrying the accidents. It is the automotive concept pulling its features back into itself. ⁷Perishing in this motion, that passive base-subject disappears into the differences and the content becoming their definition, i.e. both the differentiated content and its motion, rather than remaining aloof from it all. ⁸The firm ground ratiocination had in the passive subject quakes and this motion itself is what becomes the object. ⁹The subject filling its content ceases to go beyond it and can no longer have other predicates or attributes. ¹⁰This reverses the dispersion of the content, binding it under the self. Content is not a universal free from the subject which would apply to other subjects. ¹¹The content is, in fact, no longer a predicate of the subject. It is now substance, the essence and the concept of the matter under scrutiny. ¹²Image-based thought's nature is to proceed through attributes or predicates and to go beyond them, and justifiably too, since they are nothing more than predicates and accidents. It is, however, hindered in its progress because what looks like a predicate in the proposition is the substance itself. ¹³It suffers, one could say, a counterpunch. ¹⁴Starting from the subject, as if this remained its ground, it finds that, predicate now being substance, subject has turned into predicate and is thereby overcome. More, what appeared to be the predicate has grown into the whole, independent mass, preventing thought from rambling freely. Now thought is held in check by the gravity of this mass.

– ¹⁵Usually, the subject is at first taken as the foundation, an objective, fixed self. The necessary motion to multiplicity of features or predicates moves forward form here. Replacing that subject, the knowing ego emerges as the binding of the predicates, the real subject holding them together. ¹⁶That first subject enters into the features as their soul. The second subject, the knowing ego, finds the first – which it would prefer to be done with, going beyond it back into itself – still there in the predicate. But instead of being able to push around the predicate – bickering over this or that predicate in relation to the first subject – the ego is still preoccupied with the self of the content. The ego should not be for itself, but should be getting it together with the content's self.

61. We can put this in formal terms. The nature of the judgement, or the proposition as such with its distinction between subject and predicate, is destroyed by the speculative sentence. This identical proposition, which is what becomes of the first one, contains the counterpunch to the subject-predicate relation.

– ²This conflict between the form of the proposition as such and the conceptual unity destroying it is similar to the conflict that happens in rhythm between metre and accent. ³Rhythm results from the hovering midpoint and the unification of the two. ⁴Similarly, in the philosophical proposition the identity of subject and predicate is not about destroying the distinction between them, expressed by the form of the sentence; rather their unity is meant to emerge as a harmony. ⁵The form of the sentence is the mode of appearance of the determinate sense, or the accent that distinguishes its fulfilment; the predicate, however, expresses the substance and the subject falls into the universal; this is the unity in which the accent subsides.

62. Some examples may illustrate. In the sentence 'God is being', the predicate is 'being'. The predicate has substantial meaning in which the subject dissolves. ²However, 'being' should not be a mere predicate in this sentence, but the essence, God's essence. Now, unfortunately, God seems to cease to be what the structure of the sentence indicates, namely the fixed subject.

– ³Instead of making an advance with the transition from subject to predicate, thinking feels blocked at the dissolution of the subject and, missing it, reels back onto the thought of the subject. What is happening here is that since the predicate itself is expressed as a subject, the being, an essence that exhausts the nature of the subject, thinking finds the subject immediately in the predicate. Now that the subject has returned into itself within the predicate, instead of acquiring the freedom for argument, it delves deeper into the content, or at least the demand is there to enter more deeply into the content.

– ⁴Another example is 'The actual is the universal'. In this case too the subject, the actual, disappears into its predicate. ⁵But the universal should be no mere predicate, adjective, as if the sentence were saying 'the actual is universal'. The universal should express the essence of the actual.

– ⁶Thus, the measure of thinking's loss of that firm, objective ground it had in the subject is given by the force with which the predicate knocks it back into the subject, for it falls back not into itself but into the subject of the content.

63. Most of the complaints about the incomprehensibility of philosophical texts from people who should have sufficient education to deal with them derive from this unfamiliar inhibition. ²The examples reveal the reasons for the very specific complaint, often heard, that large sections must be read repeatedly before the text can be understood. This reproach suggests something improper in the text and is intended to be conclusive and, backed up with specifics, countenancing no objections.

– ³It is clear from the above discussion, however, what this all amounts to. ⁴The philosophical proposition, precisely because it is a sentence, gives the impression of the common relation between subject and predicate and of familiar procedures in the pursuit of knowledge. ⁵Its own philosophical content, however, destroys such procedures and opinions. The common attitude discovers that the philosophical sentence means something quite different from what it thought. This correction forces knowledge to return to the sentence and grasp it in a new way.

64. One difficulty to be avoided arises from mixing speculative and ratiocinative approaches when, at one point, the statement concerning the subject means its concept, but at another, it only means its predicate or accidental feature, attribute.

– ²The one disrupts the other. To be really plastic, vivid, philosophical exposition must strictly exclude the familiar relation between sentence parts.

65. Non-speculative thinking has its valid rights too, of course, and they tend to be ignored in the speculative proposition. ²The direct assault through its content as such is not all there is to overcoming the form of the proposition. ³The reverse motion must be clearly stated. And not just against that internal inhibition either, the return of the concept into itself must also be demonstrated. ⁴This is the motion that accomplishes what elsewhere is the role of the proof. It is the dialectical motion of the sentence itself. ⁵Only this dialectical motion is actually speculative and speculative demonstration can only be achieved by the clear statement of the dialectical motion. ⁶What is speculative in the proposition as such is only that internal inhibition and the felt absence of the essence's return into itself. ⁷This is why we are often referred to an inner intuition in philosophical texts, neatly sparing us demonstration of the dialectical motion of the sentence, which is precisely what we demand.

– ⁸The proposition is supposed to tell us what the truth is. But the truth is essentially subject and as such it is nothing but dialectical dynamic: the path that generates itself, moving outward and returning back into itself.

– ⁹In other approaches to knowledge proof takes the place of this aspect of expressed, unfolding interiority. ¹⁰Once the dialectic was expelled from proof, the whole concept of philosophical proof was completely lost.

66. Dialectical motion too has propositions for its parts or elements, so the difficulty seems to be perennial and a problem inherent to the matter itself.

– ²This is the kind of thing that happens in common proof procedures when the reasons deployed need further reasons to support them and so on ad infinitum. ³Dialectical dynamic is very different from this external approach to knowledge. ⁴Dialectical motion's element is the pure concept, which gives it a content that is intrinsically subject through and through. ⁵There is thus no content behaving like an underlying base-subject whose meaning is given to it by a predicate; the proposition here is merely an empty form.

– ⁶Apart from the sensuous intuition or image of the self, it is primarily the name as name that denotes the pure subject, the empty, non-conceptual one. ⁷For this reason it may be advisable to avoid the name God since this word is not simultaneously concept, but only the actual name, the fixed point of rest in the underlying subject. ⁸In contrast, being, for example, or the one, singularity, subject and so on all immediately indicate concepts themselves.

– ⁹When speculative truths are uttered about that subject, God, their content lacks the immanent concept because the content is no more than a subject at rest, which easily lends those truths the form of mere edification.

– ¹⁰It should now be clear that the way philosophy is presented is responsible for increasing the hindrance inherent to the habit of viewing the speculative predicate in the form of the proposition and not as concept and essence; but that can also be reduced. ¹¹Demonstration must stay true to the insight into the nature of speculation and maintain dialectical form, including nothing that is not comprehended, nothing that is not concept.

13. Natural philosophizing: common sense, genius

67. Ratiocinative reasoning hinders progress in the study of philosophy no less than the arrogance that declines to offer reasons at all with its prepackaged truths, which, once stated, the owner does not consider it necessary to re-examine. He takes them as given, makes judgements with them and condemns with them. ²This makes it particularly urgent now to turn philosophy into a serious endeavour once again. ³Nobody doubts that taking possession of any science, art, skill or craft requires considerable effort in study and practice. Nobody is able to make shoes just because he has eyes and hands and can hold and handle leather and tools. ⁴And yet when it comes to philosophy, the assumption seems to be that everyone can philosophise without more ado. Anyone can make judgements about philosophy because he can take the measure of it as part of his natural reason. As if having the measure of the shoe in one's own foot were enough to make anyone a cobbler!

– ⁵The absence of knowledge and study of philosophy seem to assure a command of it, as if they were prejudicial to it. ⁶It is often described as formal and devoid of content and the insight is sorely lacking that whatever there may be of truth in the content of any given kind of knowledge or science, it only deserves the name of truth when that knowledge has been generated by philosophy. Other sciences may try their luck with ratiocination and ignore philosophy as much as they like, but they can have no life, spirit, truth in them without philosophy.

68. Common sense educates itself without bothering with other kinds of knowledge much less with genuine philosophy. Together with revelation direct from heaven, these two are now taken to be complete equivalents of equal standing to the long march of culture, a movement as rich as it is profound, through which spirit/mind reaches knowledge. They both see themselves as good surrogates for genuine philosophy, rather as cheap chicory is prized as a substitute for good coffee. ²Dispiriting it is to see this ignorance, formless and tasteless brutishness, incapable of capturing its thought in an abstract sentence much less in the combination of several of them, trumpeting itself now as tolerance and freedom of thought, now as genius itself. ³Genius, astonishingly abundant in philosophy at present, was not so long ago just as abundant in poetry. When the products of poetic genius made any sense at all, it was not poetry but trivial prose, or if it went beyond that, mad ranting. ⁴And now a natural style of philosophy, an insightful and poetic kind of thought considering itself too good for the concept, brings only arbitrary combinations of a deranged fancy to market. Misshapen things, neither fish nor foul, neither poetry nor philosophy.

69. Flowing with the current in the more pacific waters of common sense, natural philosophizing makes bold with a rhetoric of trivial truths of its own. ²Confronted with their insignificance, it counters that their meaning and fulfilment lie in its heart and so should also lie in the hearts of others, for it works with the innocence of the heart and the purity of conscience and such like last words. Against these no objections are possible; neither may anything further be asked of it. ³But the whole point of the exercise was that the best should not remain behind in the interior, but should be brought out of this dark shaft into the light of day. ⁴No need to bother dragging those last words out anyway. They are, after all, already there in the catechism and in popular proverbs and sayings.

– ⁵It is not difficult to show how unclear or oblique such final truths are and that they often mean the exact opposite of what the speakers intend with them. ⁶Struggling to pull itself out of the confusion inherent in this approach, it falls into new confusions and sooner or later comes the outburst that it's claims are simply thus and so and their opponents can only resort to sophistry. Sophistry is a popular slogan of common sense in the attack on educated reason, like the pejorative 'spinning dreams', so expressive of the ignorance of philosophy.

– ⁷Relying on feeling, its inner oracle, it stands firm and decisive against those who disagree. It declares that it has nothing more to say to those who do not feel the same way and do not find the same truths within themselves. In other words, it tramples on the roots of humanity. ⁸For the nature of humanity is to press for agreement with our fellows and it is only actual in a really existing meeting of minds. ⁹Inhumanity, the animal in us, consists precisely in remaining imprisoned in our feelings and being incapable of communicating with others in any other way than through feelings.

70. Is there a royal road to science? Certainly, none is more comfortable than relying on common sense, keeping abreast of the times and staying well-informed on the latest developments in philosophy by reading reviews of philosophical works; perhaps their prefaces and opening paragraphs too. These will provide you with the general principles, which is all that really matters anyway, while the reviews furnish both historical context and a reasoned assessment, which, as a judgement, is, of course, superior to the judged text. ²You can do all this of a morning without getting out of your pyjamas! Dread robes of the high priest must be donned, however, to stride about with the high feelings of the eternal, the holy, the infinite on the path of great lighting-bursts of genius, height, depth, originality, ideas! At its core, this path is immediate being itself. ³This depth somehow fails to reveal the wellsprings of essence; neither do the explosive flashes of inspiration rise to the empyrean. ⁴True thoughts and scientific insight are only gained through the hard work of the concept. ⁵Only the concept can generate the universality of knowledge. A lazy lack of clarity and poverty of thought make this impossible for common sense and only available to an educated and comprehensive philosophical approach to knowledge. Overblown universality from a talent for reason corrupted by indolence and the conceit of genius is no more capable of it than common sense. Only truth flourishing within its own indigenous forms is capable of becoming the property of all who possess self-conscious reason.

14. Conclusion – author and public

71. My view is that science is generated by the automotion of the concept. Against this are arrayed the positions discussed above on the nature and form of truth prevalent in our time, along with other not so prevalent views of the matter. Under the circumstances, the prospects for an attempt to present the system of science in terms of the automotion of the concept don't look rosy. ²I observe, however, that if there have been times when, for example, the best of Plato's philosophy was thought to lie in his scientifically worthless myths, there have also been times, even times denounced for their rapturousness, when Aristotle's philosophy was cherished for its speculative depth. Times, indeed, when Plato's Parmenides, unquestionably the greatest work of art of ancient dialectic, was hailed as the full disclosure and positive expression of divine life when, despite so much obscurity accompanying the notion of ecstasy, this misunderstood ecstasy was actually viewed as the pure concept itself. I would add that the best of the philosophy of our time finds its own value in its scientific character and, even if other standpoints understand this differently, that philosophy only really gains recognition by virtue of this scientific character. ³Thus I may hope that this attempt to vindicate science for the concept will hit its mark and that the presentation of science in this its genuine element will find acceptance through its own inner truth. ⁴We must be confident that the truth will find its way out into the light when its time has come, that it only appears when its time has come, and, for this reason, that it never appears too early, nor does it find a public unprepared for its reception. Further, we must understand that the individual needs these conditions in which to prove himself – still a lonely business – and to experience the conviction, initially confined to the particular, as something universal. ⁵It is important here to distinguish between the public and those who set themselves up as its representatives and spokespersons. ⁶The public often behaves very differently from these; indeed, even directly opposed to them. ⁷When it good-naturedly accepts the blame itself for the fact that a philosophical work does not make much of an impression on it, its representatives, confident of their competence, are happy to shift the blame onto the writer. ⁸The effect is quieter in the public than the noise of those dead representatives when they bury their dead [Matthew 8 v.22; Luke 9 v.60. M]. ⁹Now the standard of education is higher, curiosity more lively, and judgement quicker, so the feet of them which shall carry thee out are already at the door! [Apostles 5 v.9. M] Still, there is also the gradual effect, which corrects the attention extorted by windy assurances and hasty condemnation. The public may give its attention to some writers only after time has elapsed, when others have already lost their future.

72. Finally, it must be said that in a time when the universality of spirit/mind has become so strong and the details, appropriately, have become so much less important, as universality demands and secures spirit/mind's riches to the full, the portion of its total output falling to the individual must needs be very small. The individual must, as demanded by the nature of science too, forget himself now more than ever. To be sure, he must make of himself and achieve what he can. Less should be expected of him, however, just as he should demand and expect less of himself.

Contents
Ad ««	»» Introduction