Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

SYSTEM OF SCIENCE. FIRST PART,
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

Preface
I. Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit
1. Sensory Certainty; or “This” and “Meaning”
2. Perception; or the Thing and Deception
3. Force and Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World
4. The Truth of Self-Certainty
  - A. Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Mastery and Servitude
  - B. Freedom of Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness
II. Certainty and Truth of Reason
- A. Observing Reason
  - a. Observation of Nature
  - b. Observation of Self-Consciousness in Its Purity and Its Relation to Outer Reality: Logical and Psychological Laws
  - c. Observation of the Relation of Self-Consciousness to Its Immediate Reality: Physiognomy and Phrenology
- B. The Realization of Rational Self-Consciousness Through Itself
  - a. Pleasure and Necessity
  - b. The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit
  - c. Virtue and the Course of the World
- C. Individuality, Which Is Real in and for Itself
  - a. The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and Deception, or the Thing Itself
  - b. The Law-Making Reason
  - c. The Law-Examining Reason
III. Spirit
- A. True Spirit, Morality
  - a. The Ethical World: Human and Divine Law, Man and Woman
  - b. Ethical Action: Human and Divine Knowledge, Guilt, and Fate
  - c. Legal Condition
- B. The Alienated Spirit: Education
  - a. Education and Its Realm of Reality
  - b. Faith and Pure Insight
  - c. Enlightenment
    - i. The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition
    - ii. The Truth of Enlightenment
  - d. Absolute Freedom and Terror
- C. Spirit Certain of Itself: Morality
  - a. The Moral Worldview
  - b. Duplicity
  - c. Conscience, the Beautiful Soul, Evil, and Its Forgiveness
IV. Religion
- A. Natural Religion
  - a. The Light Being
  - b. The Plant and the Animal
  - c. The Artisan
- B. Religion of Art
  - a. The Abstract Artwork
  - b. The Living Artwork
  - c. The Spiritual Artwork
- C. Revealed Religion
V. Absolute Knowledge

APPENDICES

Original Transitional Title
Lecture on “Speculative Philosophy”
Self-Announcement of the Phenomenology
Note on the Revision of the Work of 1807

EDITORIAL NOTES

Symbols, Abbreviations
Editorial Report
Annotations
Index of Persons

SYSTEM OF SCIENCE
by
Ge. Wilh. Fr. Hegel,
Doctor and Professor of Philosophy in Jena,
Assessor of the Ducal Mineralogical Society there,
and Member of other learned societies.

First Part,
The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Bamberg and Würzburg,
Published by Joseph Anton Goebhardt,
1807

CONTENTS.

Preface: On Scientific Knowledge. The element of truth is the concept, and its true form is the scientific system.

Current standpoint of spirit (p. VII)
The principle is not the culmination, critique of formalism (p. XV)
The absolute is subject (p. XX) and its meaning (p. XXI)
The element of knowledge (p. XXIX)
The ascent to it is the Phenomenology of Spirit (p. XXXII)
Transformation of representation and the known into thought (p. XXXVI), and thought into the concept (p. XXXIX)
In what sense the Phenomenology is negative or contains the false (p. XLIV)
Historical and mathematical truth (p. XLVII)
Nature of philosophical truth and its method (p. LV), critique of schematic formalism (p. LIX)
Requirements for studying philosophy (p. LXXI)
Reasoning thought in its negative aspect (p. LXXII) and in its positive aspect, its subject (p. LXXIV)
Natural philosophizing as common sense and genius (p. LXXXIV)
Conclusion: Relationship of the author to the public (p. LXXXVII)

Main Sections

Introduction (p. 3)

(A) Consciousness (p. 22–100)

I. Sensory Certainty, “This” and “Meaning” (p. 22–37)
II. Perception, the Thing, and Deception (p. 38–58)
III. Force and Understanding, Appearance, and the Supersensible World (p. 59–100)

(B) Self-Consciousness (p. 101–161)

IV. The Truth of Self-Certainty (p. 101)
- A. Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Mastery and Servitude (p. 114–128)
- B. Freedom of Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness (p. 129–161)

(C) Reason (p. 162–375)

V. Certainty and Truth of Reason (p. 162)
- A. Observing Reason (p. 174–286)
  - Observation of nature (p. 177–233)
  - Observation of self-consciousness in its purity and relation to outer reality (p. 234–242)
  - Observation of its immediate reality: Physiognomy and Phrenology (p. 243–286)
- B. The Realization of Rational Self-Consciousness Through Itself (p. 287)
  - Pleasure and necessity (p. 298–304)
  - The law of the heart and the frenzy of self-conceit (p. 305–317)
  - Virtue and the course of the world (p. 317–329)
- C. Individuality, Which is Real in and for Itself (p. 330)
  - The spiritual animal kingdom and deception, or the Thing Itself (p. 333–358)
  - Law-making reason (p. 358–365)
  - Law-examining reason (p. 365–375)

(BB) Spirit (p. 376–624)

VI. Spirit (p. 376)
- A. True Spirit: Morality (p. 382)
  - The ethical world: human and divine law, man and woman (p. 383–403)
  - Ethical action: human and divine knowledge, guilt, and fate (p. 403–421)
  - The legal condition (p. 422–428)
- B. The Alienated Spirit: Education (p. 429)
  - The world of alienated spirit (p. 434)
    - Education and its realm of reality (p. 435–474)
    - Faith and pure insight (p. 474–485)
  - Enlightenment (p. 486)
    - The struggle of enlightenment with superstition (p. 488–522)
    - The truth of enlightenment (p. 522–532)
    - Absolute freedom and terror (p. 533–547)
- C. Spirit Certain of Itself: Morality (p. 548)
  - The moral worldview (p. 550–564)
  - Duplicity (p. 565–581)
  - Conscience, the beautiful soul, evil, and its forgiveness (p. 581–624)

(CC) Religion (p. 625–741)

VII. Religion (p. 625)
- A. Natural Religion (p. 637)
  - The light being (p. 640–642)
  - The plant and the animal (p. 643–644)
  - The artisan (p. 645–650)
- B. Religion of Art (p. 651)
  - The abstract artwork (p. 655–669)
  - The living artwork (p. 669–676)
  - The spiritual artwork (p. 676–698)
- C. Revealed Religion (p. 699–741)

(DD) Absolute Knowledge (p. 742–End)

VIII. Absolute Knowledge (p. 742)

Appendices

Symbols, Abbreviations (p. 444)
Editorial Report (p. 445)
Notes (p. 446)
Index of Persons (p. 525)

Preface

An explanation, as is customarily provided in the preface to a text—regarding the purpose the author has set for themselves, the circumstances prompting its creation, and the relationship it is believed to bear to earlier or contemporary treatments of the same subject—appears, in the case of a philosophical text, not only superfluous but, due to the nature of the matter itself, inappropriate and counterproductive.

This is because, were such an approach employed, contradictions could arise, as the text itself would expose such methods as incapable of grasping the truth. Similarly, by determining the relationship that a philosophical work is believed to have with other efforts on the same subject, an extraneous interest is introduced, obscuring the focus essential to the cognition of truth.

The common perspective on truth as opposed to falsity tends to expect agreement or disagreement with an existing philosophical system, seeing in any explanation only endorsement or contradiction. It fails to understand the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive development of truth, seeing instead only contradiction in their differences. The bud disappears with the emergence of the blossom, and one might say the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, the fruit declares the blossom to be a false existence of the plant, replacing it as its truth.

These forms not only differ but also seem to displace each other as incompatible. However, their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity, in which they do not merely coexist but are equally necessary to one another. This mutual necessity constitutes the life of the whole.

However, opposition to a philosophical system often fails to grasp itself in this way. Furthermore, the perceiving consciousness generally does not know how to free or preserve such opposition from its one-sidedness, nor does it recognize in the seemingly conflicting and opposing forms their mutual necessity as moments of the whole.

What might be considered appropriate to say about philosophy in a preface—such as a historical account of its tendencies and standpoint, a summary of its general content and results, or a combination of claims and assurances about the truth—cannot determine the manner in which philosophical truth should be presented. Since philosophy fundamentally operates in the element of universality, which encompasses particularity within itself, it creates a greater illusion than other sciences that its purpose or final results express the subject matter in its complete essence, rendering the detailed development seemingly incidental.

By contrast, in general representations, such as the definition of anatomy as the knowledge of the body’s parts viewed in their lifeless existence, one understands that this does not yet capture the subject matter or content of this science. One recognizes the need to engage with the particular details. In contrast, when dealing with a mere aggregation of knowledge that does not rightfully bear the name of science, a discussion about its purpose and other generalities does not differ from the historical or concept-less treatment of its content—for example, nerves, muscles, and so on.

In philosophy, however, such explanations lead to misunderstandings, both by failing to clarify the relationship of particular moments to the whole and by misrepresenting the true nature of philosophical inquiry as a progression through necessary stages. Only in their unity can the apparent contradictions be understood as essential parts of the organic development of truth.

The demand for such explanations, as well as the satisfaction derived from them, may appear to address something essential. What could more thoroughly articulate the core of a philosophical text than its purposes and results? And how might these be more clearly recognized than through their distinction from what the age otherwise produces in the same sphere? However, if such an approach is considered more than an introduction to understanding—if it is taken as actual understanding—it must be regarded as one of those inventions that circumvent the matter itself, combining the appearance of seriousness and effort with its actual avoidance.

The matter itself is not exhausted in its purpose, but in its execution; nor is the result the actual whole, but rather the result together with its process of becoming. Purpose, considered in isolation, is the lifeless universal, just as a mere tendency is an empty striving that still lacks its reality. The bare result is nothing but the corpse of the process, which has left it behind.

Likewise, distinctions are merely the boundaries of the matter; they signify where the matter ends or what it is not. Efforts that concern themselves with purposes or results, as well as with distinctions and evaluations of one thing versus another, are therefore easier tasks than they might appear. For instead of engaging with the matter itself, such activity always operates beyond it. Instead of dwelling within the matter and losing oneself in it, this kind of knowledge continually reaches for something else, remaining with itself rather than immersing itself in the matter and surrendering to it.

The easiest task is to evaluate something of substance and merit; harder is to grasp it; and hardest of all is to produce its representation, uniting both its content and its form.

The beginning of education and the effort to emerge from the immediacy of substantial life will always require acquiring knowledge of general principles and viewpoints, first working one’s way up to the thought of the matter in general, and no less supporting or refuting it with reasons, grasping its concrete and rich content through specific determinations, and learning to provide proper explanations and serious judgments about it.

However, this initial stage of education must give way to the earnestness of a fulfilled life, which leads into the experience of the matter itself. And if, in addition to this, the earnestness of the concept descends into its depth, then such knowledge and judgment will find their proper place in discourse.

The true form in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of truth. Contributing to the advancement of philosophy toward the form of science—toward the goal of shedding the name of “love of knowledge” and becoming actual knowledge—is the task I have set for myself. The inner necessity that knowledge be science lies in its very nature, and the only satisfying explanation for this is the presentation of philosophy itself.

The external necessity, insofar as it is considered apart from the contingencies of the individual person and personal motivations, aligns with the inner necessity, presented in the form in which time gives existence to its moments. Demonstrating that the elevation of philosophy to science is timely would therefore be the only true justification for the attempts aiming at this goal, as it would reveal the necessity of this endeavor and, indeed, simultaneously bring it to fruition.

When the true form of truth is placed in scientificity—or, what is the same, when it is asserted that truth finds the element of its existence solely in the concept—I am aware that this appears to stand in contradiction to a conception and its consequences that have gained both considerable presumption and widespread acceptance in the convictions of the age. An explanation of this contradiction does not, therefore, seem superfluous, even if here it serves merely as an assurance of how the position it opposes can be understood.

If, namely, the true exists only in—or rather only as—that which is alternately called intuition, immediate knowledge of the Absolute, religion, or being—not as being in the center of divine love, but as being itself—then, from that standpoint, the opposite of the form of the concept is demanded for the presentation of philosophy. The Absolute is not to be comprehended but rather felt and intuited; not its concept but its feeling and intuition are to hold sway and be expressed.

When the emergence of such a demand is understood in its broader context and viewed from the standpoint of the stage on which self-conscious spirit presently stands, it becomes evident that spirit has moved beyond the substantial life it once led in the element of thought. It has moved beyond the immediacy of its faith, the satisfaction and certainty of the assurance that consciousness had of its reconciliation with essence and the presence of this essence in its inner and outer reality. Spirit has not only transcended this stage to the opposite extreme of substance-less reflection into itself but has also surpassed even that.

Its essential life is not only lost to it but it is also aware of this loss and of the finitude that constitutes its content. Turning away from the dregs of its current condition—acknowledging and lamenting its wretchedness—it now demands from philosophy not so much knowledge of what it is but rather a restoration, through philosophy, of that substantiality and solidity of being.

Thus, philosophy is expected not to unlock the closed-off nature of substance and elevate it to self-consciousness, nor to bring chaotic consciousness back to the ordered thought and simplicity of the concept. Instead, it is asked to dissolve the distinctions of thought, suppress the differentiating concept, and reestablish the feeling of essence—to provide not insight but edification.

The beautiful, the sacred, the eternal, religion, and love are the bait required to awaken the desire to partake, not the concept but ecstasy; not the coldly progressing necessity of the matter itself but the fermenting enthusiasm is to be the mode and means for unfolding and spreading the richness of substance.

This demand corresponds to the intense and almost fervent, agitated effort to tear people away from their immersion in the sensory, the mundane, and the particular, and to lift their gaze to the stars, as though they had completely forgotten the divine and were on the verge of finding satisfaction merely in dust and water, like a worm.

Previously, they had adorned a heaven with a vast richness of thoughts and images. The meaning of all that exists lay in the thread of light connecting it to heaven. Rather than lingering in the present, their gaze would slip beyond it to the divine essence, to a presence that could be described as beyond this world. The eye of the spirit had to be forcibly directed toward the earthly and held there. It required a long time to work that clarity, which was attributed solely to the supermundane, into the dullness and confusion of the meaning inherent in the worldly. It was a lengthy process to make attention to the present as such, the realm of experience, both interesting and valid.

Now, the opposite necessity appears to prevail. The spirit seems so deeply rooted in the earthly that a similar force is needed to lift it above. The spirit reveals itself to be so impoverished that it seems to long, like a wanderer in the desert for a simple sip of water, only for the meager feeling of the divine to provide refreshment. In this meagerness, which satisfies the spirit, one can measure the magnitude of its loss.

This contentment in receiving or sparingness in giving does not befit science. Those who merely seek edification, who wish to shroud the earthly multiplicity of existence and thought in a mist, and who long for the vague enjoyment of an indeterminate divinity, may look elsewhere for it; they will easily find the means to indulge in self-delusion and to elevate themselves with it. Philosophy, however, must take care not to aim at being edifying.

Even less should this contentment, which renounces science, claim that such enthusiasm and obscurity are something higher than science. This prophetic style of speaking pretends to dwell in the very center and depth of things, looking disdainfully upon precision (horos) and deliberately keeping itself distant from the concept and necessity, as if these were mere reflections confined to finitude. Yet just as there is an empty breadth, so too is there an empty depth. Just as there is an extension of substance that dissipates into finite multiplicity without the strength to hold it together, so too is this a contentless intensity, which, pretending to be pure force without expansion, is no different from superficiality.

The strength of the spirit is only as great as its expression; its depth is only as profound as its willingness to extend itself in exposition and risk losing itself. At the same time, when this concept-less substantial knowledge claims to have submerged the individuality of the self in essence and to philosophize truthfully and reverently, it conceals the fact that, far from submitting to God, it actually indulges either the arbitrariness of its content or the caprice of its own will, rejecting measure and determination.

By surrendering to the unchecked ferment of substance, these thinkers imagine that by veiling self-consciousness and abandoning understanding, they belong to those to whom God gives wisdom in their sleep. Yet what they indeed receive and give birth to in such a slumber are nothing more than dreams.

It is not difficult to see that our time is one of birth and transition to a new epoch. The spirit has broken with the world of its previous existence and representation and is on the verge of casting it into the past, engaging in the labor of its transformation. Admittedly, it is never at rest but always in a state of continuous progression.

Yet, just as in the case of a child, where the first breath disrupts the gradual process of quiet nourishment—a qualitative leap signifying that the child is now born—so too does the forming spirit mature slowly and quietly toward its new shape. Piece by piece, it dismantles the structure of its preceding world, with its instability hinted at only by scattered symptoms: the frivolity and boredom that seep into the existing order, and the vague premonition of an unknown future, all serve as harbingers of something different on the horizon.

This gradual disintegration, which does not immediately alter the outward appearance of the whole, is interrupted by the emergence of a new dawn—a lightning flash that, in an instant, reveals the shape of a new world.

However, this new entity has no more complete reality than a newborn child; and this is something essential not to overlook. Its initial emergence is merely its immediacy or its concept. Just as a building is not complete when its foundation has been laid, the achieved concept of the whole is not yet the whole itself. When we wish to see an oak in the strength of its trunk, the spread of its branches, and the mass of its foliage, we are not satisfied if we are shown only an acorn in its place.

Similarly, science, the crown of a world of spirit, is not perfected at its beginning. The birth of the new spirit is the product of an extensive upheaval of diverse formative processes, the reward of a path marked by numerous twists and turns, as well as repeated effort and exertion. It is the whole, having withdrawn into itself from both its succession and its outward extension, becoming a simple concept of itself.

The reality of this simple whole, however, lies in the fact that those previously formed shapes, now reduced to moments, must once again unfold and take shape anew—but this time within their new element, the element of their achieved meaning.

On the one hand, the initial appearance of the new world is merely the whole concealed in its simplicity, or its general foundation. On the other hand, for consciousness, the richness of the previous existence is still present in memory.

It misses in the newly emerging form the breadth and particularization of content; even more, it misses the development of the form, through which distinctions are securely determined and ordered into stable relations. Without this development, science lacks universal comprehensibility and appears to be an esoteric possession of a few individuals—an esoteric possession because it exists only as its concept or inner essence; of a few individuals because its unexpanded manifestation limits its existence to particularity.

Only that which is fully determined is also exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and becoming the property of all. The intelligible form of science is the path offered to everyone and made equally accessible to all. Reaching rational knowledge through understanding is the rightful demand of consciousness as it approaches science. For understanding is thinking, the pure “I” in general, and the intelligible is what is already familiar and common to both science and unscientific consciousness, enabling the latter to directly transition into the former.

Science, which is only beginning and has therefore not yet achieved either the completeness of detail or the perfection of form, is subject to criticism for these shortcomings. However, if such criticism is aimed at its essence, it would be as unjust as refusing to acknowledge the legitimate demand for that development. This opposition appears to be the central issue upon which contemporary scientific education struggles and about which it has not yet reached proper clarity.

One side insists on the richness of material and comprehensibility, while the other at least dismisses these concerns and insists on immediate rationality and divinity. Even if the first side is silenced—whether through the force of truth alone or by the vehemence of the other—and even if it feels overpowered with respect to the fundamental issue, it remains dissatisfied regarding those demands.

These demands are justified but not fulfilled. Its silence owes itself partly to the triumph of the other side, but also partly to the boredom and indifference that often follow a perpetually heightened expectation and the repeated failure of promises to be realized.

Regarding content, some make their task relatively easy, occasionally boasting of a great breadth of material. They bring into their domain a vast array of materials—namely, what is already known and ordered—and, focusing primarily on peculiarities and curiosities, they seem to possess the rest of what knowledge in its domain has already accomplished. At the same time, they appear to master what remains unorganized and thereby subject everything to the absolute idea, which thus appears to have been recognized in all things and to have developed into an expansive science.

Upon closer examination, however, this breadth reveals itself not as the result of a single principle manifesting itself in diverse forms, but rather as a shapeless repetition of the same, merely applied externally to varying materials. This creates a tedious illusion of diversity. The idea, though true in itself, in fact remains perpetually at its beginning when its development consists solely of such repetition of the same formula.

The single, unchanging form is carried by the knowing subject over existing material, with this material being externally immersed into this static element. This approach fulfills as little the demand for the self-originating richness and self-determining differentiation of forms as arbitrary notions about the content would. Instead, it is a monotonous formalism, producing differences in content only because the material itself was already prepared and familiar.

In this context, such an approach asserts monotony and abstract generality as the absolute, claiming that any dissatisfaction with it reflects an inability to grasp and maintain the absolute standpoint. Previously, the mere possibility of imagining something differently sufficed to refute an idea, with that same mere possibility—an abstract, general thought—being assigned the full positive value of actual knowledge. Here, we see a similar attribution of all value to the general idea in its form of unreality, while the dissolution of distinctions and determinations, or rather their undeveloped and unjustified reduction into the abyss of emptiness, is taken as the hallmark of speculative thought.

To consider some existence as it is in the absolute, under this approach, consists in no more than stating that while it is now being spoken of as something within the absolute (e.g., A=A), such a thing does not truly exist. Instead, all things are said to be one in the absolute. Opposing this one-sided notion—that in the absolute all is equal—to the differentiated and fulfilled knowledge, or to knowledge that seeks and demands fulfillment, is akin to presenting the absolute as the proverbial night in which all cows are black. This is the naïveté of empty cognition.

The formalism that recent philosophy has decried and scorned, yet which reproduces itself within philosophy, will not vanish from science, even when its inadequacy is recognized and felt, until the understanding of absolute reality becomes fully clear about its nature.

Insofar as the general idea, when it precedes an attempt at its execution, facilitates comprehension of the latter, it is helpful here to indicate its rough outline. At the same time, this serves as an opportunity to remove certain habitual forms of thought that obstruct philosophical understanding.

In my view, which must justify itself through the presentation of the system, everything depends on understanding and expressing the true not merely as substance but equally as subject. It is also important to note that substantiality encompasses both universality, or the immediacy of knowledge, and that which is being or immediacy for knowledge.

When the notion of God as the one substance was first articulated, it provoked outrage in its time. This was partly due to an instinctive sense that such a conception allowed self-consciousness to dissolve without preserving it. At the same time, the opposing stance, which insists on thought as thought, holds to universality—an identical simplicity, or undifferentiated, unmoving substantiality.

Moreover, when thought unites the being of substance with itself and grasps immediacy or intuition as thought, the question remains whether this intellectual intuition avoids lapsing into inert simplicity and instead represents actuality in a way that is not unreal.

The living substance is, furthermore, being that is in truth subject—or, which amounts to the same, that is truly real only insofar as it is the movement of self-establishment or the mediation of becoming-other with itself. As subject, it is pure, simple negativity, and through this negativity, it is the splitting of the simple into opposition, or the self-doubling into contrasting poles. This division, however, is also the negation of this indifferent difference and its opposition.

Only this self-restoring equality, or the reflection of otherness back into itself—not an original unity as such or an immediacy as such—is the true. It is the becoming of itself, the circle that presupposes its end as its purpose and has it as its beginning, and it is real only through this process of actualization and its completion.

The life of God and divine knowing may indeed be described as a play of love with itself; however, this idea descends into mere edification and even into triviality if the seriousness, pain, patience, and labor of the negative are absent from it. In itself, this life is the unclouded equality and unity with itself, untouched by seriousness about otherness and estrangement, as well as the overcoming of that estrangement. But this “in itself” is merely the abstract universality in which the nature of being-for-itself, and thus the self-movement of form, is disregarded.

When form is stated to be equal to essence, it is a misunderstanding to believe that knowing can be content with the “in itself” or the essence while dispensing with form—that the absolute principle or the absolute intuition renders unnecessary either the execution of the former or the development of the latter. Precisely because form is as essential to essence as essence is to itself, it must not be understood and expressed merely as essence—that is, as immediate substance or as the pure self-intuition of the divine—but equally as form and in the full richness of developed form. Only in this way is it truly grasped and expressed as actual.

The true is the whole. However, the whole is nothing other than the essence that completes itself through its development. It must be said of the absolute that it is essentially a result—that it is what it truly is only at the end—and in this lies its very nature: to be actual, to be subject, or to be the process of becoming itself. As contradictory as it may seem to grasp the absolute essentially as a result, a little reflection dispels this apparent contradiction.

The beginning, the principle, or the absolute as it is first and immediately expressed, is merely the universal. Just as saying “all animals” cannot count as zoology, so too does it become apparent that the terms “divine,” “absolute,” “eternal,” and so forth do not express what is contained within them. Such words, in fact, express only the intuition of the immediate. Anything beyond such a word—even the transition to a simple proposition—is already an alteration, a becoming-other that must be sublated, a mediation.

This mediation, however, is what is often recoiled from, as if by granting it more than just the status of being nothing, by recognizing it as something that exists within the absolute, the very notion of absolute knowledge would be forfeited.

This aversion (perhorresciren) actually arises from unfamiliarity with the nature of mediation and absolute knowing itself. Mediation is nothing other than self-moving self-equality; it is the reflection into itself, the moment of the self-sufficient “I,” pure negativity, or simple becoming. The “I,” or becoming in general—this mediating process—is, by virtue of its simplicity, the very act of becoming immediacy and immediacy itself.

It is, therefore, a misunderstanding of reason to exclude reflection from the true and to fail to grasp it as a positive moment of the absolute. Reflection is what renders the true a result, but it simultaneously sublates the opposition between the true and its becoming. For this becoming is just as simple as the result itself and is therefore not different in form from the true, which reveals itself in the result as simple. Rather, it is precisely the return into simplicity.

If the embryo is a human being in itself, it is not a human being for itself; it is a human being for itself only as a developed reason that has made itself what it is in itself. This is its actuality. Yet this result is itself simple immediacy, for it is self-conscious freedom, resting in itself, which has not cast opposition aside, leaving it there unresolved, but has reconciled with it.

The idea can also be expressed by saying that reason is purposeful activity. The elevation of presumed nature above misunderstood thought, and initially the rejection of external purposiveness, has brought the very form of purpose into disrepute. Yet, as Aristotle also defines nature as purposeful activity, purpose is the immediate, the resting entity, which is itself active and is subject. Its abstract power to move is being-for-itself, or pure negativity.

The result is the same as the beginning only because the beginning is purpose. Similarly, the actual is the same as its concept only because the immediate, as purpose, contains the self or pure actuality within itself. The fulfilled purpose, or the actual existent, is the movement and unfolded becoming. Yet this very unrest is the self.

Thus, it is equal to the immediacy and simplicity of the beginning because it is the result, the returned-to-itself; and this return-to-itself is precisely the self. The self is the self-referential equality and simplicity.

The need to conceive of the absolute as subject has employed statements such as: “God is the eternal,” or “the moral world order,” or “love,” and so forth. In such statements, the true is posited directly as subject but is not represented as the movement of reflecting itself within itself.

A sentence of this kind begins with the word “God.” By itself, this word is a meaningless sound, a mere name. Only the predicate expresses what it is, providing its content and significance. The empty beginning becomes actual knowledge only in this end.

In this context, it becomes unclear why one should not simply speak of “the eternal,” “the moral world order,” or, as the ancients did, of pure concepts such as “being,” “the one,” and so forth—of what the meaning itself is—without adding the meaningless sound of a word like “God.” However, through this word, it is precisely indicated that what is posited is not merely a being, an essence, or a generality, but rather something reflected into itself—a subject.

Yet this subject is only anticipated. It is assumed as a fixed point to which predicates are attached as their anchor through a movement that belongs to the knower and is not regarded as belonging to the point itself. However, it is only through this movement that the content could be represented as a subject. In the manner in which this movement currently operates, it cannot belong to the subject. Yet, given the presupposition of that fixed point, it can only operate externally.

This anticipation that the absolute is subject is therefore not only not the realization of this concept but even makes it impossible. The anticipation posits the subject as a static point, whereas the concept itself is self-movement.

Among the various conclusions that follow from the foregoing, one that stands out is that knowledge is real and can be represented only as science, or as a system. Furthermore, what is called a fundamental principle or starting point of philosophy, even if it is true, is for that very reason also false—because it is a mere principle or starting point. For this reason, it is easily refuted.

The refutation consists in demonstrating its deficiency; it is deficient because it is merely the universal or the principle, the beginning. If the refutation is thorough, it is derived and developed from the principle itself—not achieved through opposing assertions or arbitrary notions introduced from the outside. Such a refutation would, in fact, constitute the development and thus the supplementation of the principle’s deficiency, were it not misled by attending solely to its negative aspect while neglecting to recognize its progression and result in their positive aspect as well.

The proper positive development of the beginning is, conversely, equally a negative engagement with it—namely, with its one-sided form of being merely immediate or a purpose. It can, therefore, just as much be understood as the refutation of what constitutes the foundation of the system, but it is better understood as a demonstration that the foundation or principle of the system is, in fact, only its beginning.

The truth is real only as a system, or the substance is essentially subject—this is expressed in the notion that represents the absolute as spirit, the highest concept, and one that belongs to modern times and its religion. The spiritual alone is the real. It is the essence or the being-in-itself; it is the self-relating or determinate, the being-other and being-for-itself; and in this determinateness or its being-outside-itself, it remains within itself—or it is in and for itself.

However, this being in and for itself exists initially only for us or in itself, as the spiritual substance. It must also exist for itself—it must involve the knowing of the spiritual and the knowing of itself as spirit. That is, it must exist as an object to itself, but equally as an object that is mediated—that is, sublated and reflected into itself. It exists for itself only for us to the extent that its spiritual content is produced through itself. But insofar as it is also for itself, this self-production, the pure concept, is simultaneously the objective element for it, the element in which it has its existence. In this way, it exists in its being-for-itself as an object reflected into itself.

The spirit that knows itself as spirit is science. Science is its actuality and the realm it constructs for itself within its own element.

The pure self-knowing in absolute otherness—this ether as such—is the foundation and ground of science, or knowledge in general. The beginning of philosophy assumes or demands that consciousness already dwells within this element. Yet this element attains its completeness and clarity only through the movement of its becoming.

It is pure spirituality or the universal, which takes on the mode of simple immediacy. Because it is the immediacy of spirit, and because substance in general is spirit, it is the transfigured essence—reflection that is itself simple, or immediacy; being that is reflection into itself.

Science, for its part, demands that self-consciousness elevate itself into this ether in order to live with and within it. Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science at least provide a ladder to this standpoint. This right is grounded in the individual’s absolute independence, which it knows itself to possess in every form of its knowledge—whether that form is acknowledged by science or not, and regardless of the content. In each form, self-consciousness is also the absolute form or possesses the immediate certainty of itself—or, if preferred, unconditional being.

If the standpoint of consciousness—of knowing external objects as opposed to itself and knowing itself in opposition to them—is seen by science as the other, as something in which consciousness remains with itself rather than as the loss of spirit, then the element of science appears to consciousness as a distant beyond in which it no longer possesses itself. Each of these perspectives seems, to the other, to be the opposite of truth.

For natural consciousness to entrust itself to science directly is akin to attempting, drawn by an unknown force, to walk on its head. The coercion to adopt and move in this unfamiliar position seems an unprepared and unnecessary imposition on it. Whatever science may be in itself, in relation to immediate self-consciousness, it appears as something inverted; or, because immediate self-consciousness is the principle of reality, science, existing apart from it, assumes the form of unreality.

Science must therefore unite this element with itself—or rather demonstrate that it belongs to it and how it does so. Lacking reality, science is only an in itself, a purpose that is still an inner, not yet spirit, but only spiritual substance. It must externalize itself and become for itself—which means nothing other than that it must establish self-consciousness as one with itself.

This development of science as a whole, or of knowledge, is what this Phenomenology of Spirit—as the first part of the system—represents. Knowledge, as it initially exists, or the immediate spirit, is spiritless; it is sensory consciousness. To become true knowledge or the element of science, which is its pure concept, it must labor through a long journey.

This becoming, as it is presented in its content and the shapes that emerge within it, appears as something other than merely the guidance of unscientific consciousness toward science; it is also something different from the foundation of science. It stands apart from both this process and from the enthusiasm that, as if fired from a pistol, begins immediately with absolute knowledge and dismisses all other standpoints simply by declaring them irrelevant.

The task of guiding the individual from their uneducated standpoint to knowledge must be understood in its broader sense: as considering the general individual, the world spirit, in its process of development.

Regarding the relationship between the two, in the general individual every moment appears as it takes on a concrete form and its own distinctive shape. The particular individual, however, is an incomplete spirit, a concrete form whose entire existence is confined to a single determination, with the others present only in blurred outlines. In the spirit that stands higher than another, the lower concrete existence has diminished into an inconspicuous moment; what was once the essence itself is now merely a trace, its shape concealed and reduced to a simple nuance.

The individual whose substance is the higher-standing spirit traverses this past in the manner of someone reviewing preparatory knowledge they have long mastered in order to refresh their awareness of it. Such a person recalls this knowledge without engaging deeply or lingering over it. Similarly, each individual passes through the stages of development of the general spirit, but as forms that the spirit has already moved beyond—as stages of a path that has already been worked out and leveled.

Just as, in terms of knowledge, what once occupied the mature minds of earlier eras has now descended to the level of exercises or even games of childhood, so too, in the pedagogical progression, we find the history of the world’s development sketched out in shadowy outlines. This past existence is already an acquired possession of the general spirit, which constitutes the substance or unorganized nature of the individual.

From the perspective of the individual, education consists in acquiring this existing legacy, assimilating this unorganized nature into themselves, and taking possession of it. However, this is nothing other than the general spirit—or substance—granting itself self-consciousness, becoming its own process of becoming and reflection into itself.

Science presents this formative movement both in its full detail and necessity, as well as in the form that has already descended to a mere moment and possession of the spirit, depicted in its specific shape. The goal is the spirit’s understanding of what knowledge is. Impatience demands the impossible—namely, the attainment of the goal without the necessary means. On the one hand, the length of this path must be endured, for every moment is necessary; on the other hand, one must dwell on each moment, for each is itself an individual, complete form, and is considered absolute only insofar as its determinateness is viewed as a whole or as the whole in the distinctiveness of this determination.

Because the substance of the individual, the world spirit, had the patience to pass through these forms over the long stretch of time and to undertake the immense labor of world history—and because it could achieve self-consciousness only through no lesser effort—the individual, too, cannot grasp its substance with any less effort. Yet, at the same time, the individual has a lighter task, for this process has already been accomplished in itself. The content is now an actuality reduced to potentiality, and immediate reality has already been overcome. As something already thought, it is the possession of individuality.

It is no longer a matter of transforming existence into being-in-itself but rather of converting this being-in-itself into the form of being-for-itself, the manner of which must now be more precisely determined.

What is spared for the individual in this movement is the negation of existence itself; what remains is the representation and familiarity with the forms. The existence that has been withdrawn into substance, through that initial negation, is thereby placed immediately into the element of the self. However, it still retains the same character of uncomprehended immediacy or unmoving indifference as existence itself—or it has merely transitioned into representation.

At the same time, through this transition, it becomes something familiar, something with which the spirit has already dealt and in which, therefore, its activity and interest no longer lie. When the activity that overcomes existence is the immediate or existential mediation, and thus merely the movement of the particular, non-comprehending spirit, then, in contrast, knowledge is directed against the representation that arises through this process, against this mere familiarity. Knowledge becomes the action of the universal self and the interest of thought.

What is familiar, precisely because it is familiar, is not truly known. It is the most common form of self-deception, as well as a deception of others, to take something as known in the process of understanding and to be content with this assumption. Despite all back-and-forth discussion, such knowledge fails to advance, unaware of its own stagnation.

Subjects and objects—God, nature, understanding, sensibility, and so on—are uncritically assumed as familiar and treated as valid starting and ending points. They serve as fixed points, both of departure and return. Movement takes place between them, but they themselves remain unmoved, and thus the movement occurs only on the surface.

In this way, comprehension and examination consist merely of checking whether what is said aligns with one’s preconceptions—whether it appears so to the individual and feels familiar or not.

The analysis of a representation, as it has traditionally been practiced, was essentially an act of dissolving its form as something familiar. To break a representation into its original elements is to return to its moments, which at least do not retain the form of the pre-given representation but instead constitute the immediate possession of the self. This analysis, however, arrives only at thoughts, which themselves are familiar, fixed, and stable determinations. Yet a crucial moment is precisely this separation, this unreality itself; for only by separating and rendering itself unreal does the concrete become self-moving.

The activity of separating is the power and labor of understanding, the most wondrous and greatest power—or rather the absolute power. The circle that rests closed within itself, holding its moments as substance, is the immediate and therefore not extraordinary relation. But the act of separating what is contingent from its encompassing whole, of granting what is bound and real only in its connection with others an independent existence and a separate freedom, demonstrates the immense power of the negative. This is the energy of thought, the energy of the pure “I.”

Death, if we may call this unreality by that name, is the most terrifying event; and holding fast to what is dead requires the greatest strength. Powerless beauty abhors understanding because it demands of beauty what it cannot achieve. Yet, it is not life that shies away from death and preserves itself untouched by devastation that constitutes the life of spirit, but rather that which endures death and sustains itself within it. Spirit gains its truth only by finding itself in absolute dismemberment.

Spirit is not this power as something positive that turns away from the negative—as when we say something is “nothing” or “false,” dismiss it, and move on to something else. Rather, spirit is this power only by confronting the negative face-to-face and dwelling with it. This dwelling is the magical force that turns the negative into being.

This force is the same as what was earlier called subject, which, by granting determinations existence within its own element, sublates abstract or merely immediate immediacy. In doing so, it becomes the true substance—being or immediacy that does not have mediation outside itself but is itself this mediation.

The elevation of what is represented into the possession of pure self-consciousness—this rise to universality—is only one side and not yet the completed process of cultivation. The method of study in ancient times differs from that of the modern era in that the former involved the genuine development of natural consciousness. By testing itself in every aspect of its existence and philosophizing about all encountered phenomena, ancient study produced a thoroughly realized universality.

In contrast, in modern times, the individual finds the abstract form already prepared. The effort to grasp and appropriate it is more an immediate inward drive and an isolated production of the universal than the universal arising out of the concrete and the multiplicity of existence. Hence, today the task is not so much to purify the individual from an immediate sensory mode and transform it into a conceptual and thinking substance, but rather the opposite: to actualize and spiritualize the universal by dissolving fixed, determinate thoughts.

However, it is far more difficult to bring fixed thoughts into fluidity than to transform sensory existence. The reason, as stated earlier, is that these determinations have the “I”—the power of the negative or pure actuality—as their substance and as the element of their existence, whereas sensory determinations have only impotent abstract immediacy or being as such.

Thoughts become fluid when pure thinking—this inner immediacy—recognizes itself as a moment, or when the pure certainty of itself abstracts from itself. This does not mean setting itself aside or dismissing itself, but rather relinquishing the fixedness of its self-establishment, whether it is the fixity of the pure concrete (the “I” itself as opposed to differentiated content) or the fixity of differentiated elements, which, when placed into the elements of pure thought, partake in the absoluteness of the “I.”

Through this movement, pure thoughts become concepts and are only then what they truly are: self-movements, circles, and spiritual essences that constitute their substance.

This movement of pure essences constitutes the very nature of scientificity as such. When viewed as the interconnectedness of its content, it is the necessity and expansion of that content into an organic whole. The path by which the concept of knowledge is attained likewise becomes a necessary and complete development. In this way, this preparation ceases to be a contingent philosophizing that attaches itself to various objects, relations, and thoughts of imperfect consciousness as chance might dictate. It also abandons the attempt to ground the true through the back-and-forth of reasoning, deduction, or inference from fixed ideas.

Instead, this path, through the movement of the concept, comprehends the entirety of consciousness’s worldly nature in its necessity.

Such a presentation constitutes the first part of science because the existence of spirit, as the first, is nothing other than the immediate or the beginning. However, the beginning is not yet its return into itself. The element of immediate existence is therefore determinateness, which distinguishes this part of science from the others.

The identification of this distinction leads to the discussion of certain fixed ideas that tend to arise in this context.

The immediate existence of spirit—consciousness—has two moments: knowledge and the objectivity that is negative to this knowledge. As spirit develops within this element and unfolds its moments, these moments take on this opposition and appear as forms of consciousness.

The science of this path is the science of the experience that consciousness undergoes. Substance is observed as it is and as its movement becomes the object of consciousness. Consciousness knows and comprehends only what is within its experience, for what is within its experience is solely the spiritual substance, presented as the object of its self.

Spirit becomes an object because it is this movement: the process of becoming an other—i.e., the object of itself—and sublating this otherness. This process of experience is precisely this movement, in which the immediate or unexperienced—the abstract, whether it be sensory being or a merely conceived simplicity—alienates itself and then returns to itself from this alienation. In this return, it is now first presented in its actuality and truth, and also becomes the possession of consciousness.

The disparity that exists in consciousness between the “I” and the substance, which is its object, constitutes their difference, the negative in general. This negative can be regarded as the deficiency of both, but it is also their soul or the force that moves them. For this reason, some of the ancients understood the void as the moving principle, recognizing the negative as the driving force, though not yet as the self.

When this negative initially appears as the disparity of the “I” with its object, it is equally the disparity of the substance with itself. What seems to occur outside of it, as an activity directed against it, is in fact its own activity, and it thereby reveals itself to be essentially subject. When it has fully demonstrated this, spirit has aligned its existence with its essence; it becomes its own object as it truly is, and the abstract element of immediacy, along with the separation of knowledge and truth, is overcome.

Being is now absolutely mediated; it is substantial content that is equally the immediate possession of the “I,” self-like or conceptual. With this, the Phenomenology of Spirit concludes. What spirit has prepared for itself in this process is the element of knowledge. Within this element, the moments of spirit unfold in the form of simplicity, knowing their object as themselves. They no longer fall into the opposition of being and knowing but remain within the unity of knowledge. They are the true in the form of the true, and their distinctions are merely distinctions of content.

Their movement, which organizes itself into a whole within this element, constitutes logic or speculative philosophy.

Since the system of the experience of spirit encompasses only the appearance of spirit, the progression from it to the science of the true—where the true exists in the form of the true—may seem purely negative. One might wish to bypass the negative, understood as the false, and demand to be led directly to the truth. Why engage with the false at all? This concern echoes what was previously discussed: the desire to begin immediately with science. Here, we address the nature of the negative, particularly as the false.

Misconceptions about the negative are a principal obstacle to entering the realm of truth. This provides an occasion to discuss mathematical knowledge, which unphilosophical thinking often regards as the ideal that philosophy should aspire to achieve—an aspiration that, to this point, has supposedly failed.

The concepts of truth and falsehood belong to fixed thoughts that are often regarded as independent entities, isolated from one another without any connection. Against this, it must be asserted that truth is not a minted coin ready to be handed over and accepted as it is. Nor does falsehood exist any more than evil exists. Evil and falsehood, though formidable, are not as dire as the devil, for as such, they are elevated to the status of particular subjects. As falsehood and evil, they remain general but are still often thought to have distinct existence relative to one another.

Falsehood, which is the topic here, would be the other, the negative of substance, which as the content of knowledge is the true. However, substance itself is essentially the negative: partly as the differentiation and determination of content, and partly as a simple differentiation—that is, as selfhood and knowledge in general. One can indeed know falsely. To say that something is known falsely means that knowledge is in discord with its substance. Yet this very discord is differentiation as such, which is an essential moment. From this differentiation arises equality, and this achieved equality is truth.

However, truth is not such that discord is simply discarded like slag from pure metal, nor even like a tool left aside once the finished vessel is complete. Rather, discord, as the negative and as selfhood, is still present in truth itself as such.

It cannot, however, be said that falsehood constitutes a moment or component of truth. The claim that there is something true in every falsehood suggests a relationship between the two like oil and water—externally connected yet unmixed. To properly convey the significance of the moment of complete otherness, terms such as “falsehood” should no longer be used in the context where their opposition is sublated.

Just as the expression of the unity of subject and object, finite and infinite, or being and thought suffers from the inadequacy that these terms retain their meaning as separate entities even within their unity, falsehood is no longer, as falsehood, a moment of truth.

The dogmatism of the mindset in knowledge and the study of philosophy consists in the belief that the true resides in a proposition that represents a fixed result or is immediately known. To questions such as: “When was Caesar born?” “How many fathoms make a stadium?” or “What was its measurement?”—one expects a precise answer, just as it is definitively true that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides in a right triangle.

However, the nature of such so-called truths differs fundamentally from the nature of philosophical truths.

Regarding historical truths—briefly to mention them—insofar as their purely historical aspect is considered, it is readily acknowledged that they pertain to particular existences, content characterized by contingency and arbitrariness, with determinations that are not necessary. Even such bare truths, however, like the examples mentioned, are not devoid of the movement of self-consciousness.

To know one of these truths, much must be compared, researched, or investigated in books or by other means. Even in the case of immediate observation, the knowledge of such truths along with their reasons is treated as something of real value, despite the fact that it is ostensibly only the bare result that matters.

Regarding mathematical truths, one would scarcely regard as a geometer someone who merely memorized Euclid’s theorems without understanding their proofs or, as one might phrase it, without knowing them internally. Similarly, knowledge obtained by measuring many right triangles to discover that their sides maintain the known ratio would be considered unsatisfactory.

The necessity of proof in mathematical knowledge does not, however, imbue the proof with the same meaning and nature as a moment of the result itself. In the result, the proof has passed away and disappeared. As a result, the theorem is recognized as true, but this additional aspect pertains only to its relation to the subject, not to the content itself. The movement of mathematical proof does not belong to the object itself but is an external activity imposed on it. For example, the nature of a right triangle does not inherently decompose itself as it is depicted in the construction necessary for proving the theorem that expresses its relationships. The entire process of deriving the result is a pathway and means of cognition.

In philosophical knowing, too, the becoming of existence (Dasein) as existence is distinct from the becoming of essence or the inner nature of the matter. However, philosophical knowledge incorporates both aspects, whereas mathematical knowledge represents only the becoming of existence—that is, the being of the matter’s nature within the act of knowing itself.

Moreover, philosophical knowledge unifies these two distinct movements. The inner emergence, or the becoming of substance, is inseparably its transition into the external or into existence, its being-for-other; conversely, the becoming of existence is its return into essence. Thus, the movement is a double process and the becoming of the whole, wherein each simultaneously posits the other and each, therefore, contains both aspects within itself as two perspectives. Together, they form the whole by resolving themselves into its moments.

In mathematical cognition, insight is an activity external to the matter itself. As a result, the true nature of the object is altered through this process. The methods—construction and proof—indeed contain true propositions, but it must equally be said that the content is, in a sense, false. For example, in the case of the triangle, it is dismantled, and its parts are transformed into other figures created through the construction imposed upon it. Only at the end is the triangle reconstructed, which was the actual focus of the investigation but had been lost from view during the process, appearing only in fragments that belonged to other wholes.

Here, we also observe the negativity of the content, which could just as well be called a falsehood of the content, akin to the way fixed, determinate thoughts dissolve in the movement of the concept.

The true deficiency of this mode of cognition lies in both the process of knowing itself and its subject matter.

Regarding the process of knowing, the necessity of the construction is not immediately evident. The construction does not arise from the concept of the theorem itself but is instead prescribed. One is required to blindly follow this instruction—drawing these specific lines out of the infinite possible alternatives—without knowing why, relying only on the faith that this will serve the proof’s purpose.

This purposefulness becomes apparent only afterward, during the proof, which is why it remains external; its necessity is not intrinsic but revealed retrospectively. Similarly, the proof follows a particular path that begins arbitrarily, without any clear relation to the result it aims to establish. The progression incorporates certain determinations and relations while leaving others aside, without an immediate understanding of the necessity behind these choices. An external purpose governs this movement.

The clarity (Evidenz) that mathematics prides itself on—and which it often uses to boast superiority over philosophy—rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the deficiency of its subject matter. This type of clarity is of a kind that philosophy must disdain.

The purpose or concept of mathematics is magnitude, which is precisely the non-essential, conceptless relation. Thus, the movement of knowledge in mathematics occurs only on the surface; it does not engage with the essence or the concept of the matter and, for this reason, is not genuine comprehension (Begreifen).

The subject matter of mathematics, which provides its pleasing treasury of truths, is space and the unit. Space is the existence in which the concept inscribes its distinctions as if into an empty, lifeless element, where these distinctions likewise remain unmoving and devoid of life. Reality is not spatial in the way it is treated in mathematics; neither concrete sensory intuition nor philosophy concerns itself with such unreality.

In this unreal element, the truths are correspondingly unreal, that is, fixed, dead propositions. Each proposition can stand isolated; the next begins anew without the first transitioning into the second or creating a necessary connection through the nature of the matter itself.

Because of this principle and element—and herein lies the formal aspect of mathematical clarity—mathematical knowledge proceeds along the line of equality. Dead, unmoving elements do not reach distinctions of essence, essential opposition, or inequality, nor do they lead to the transition of opposites into one another. They lack qualitative, immanent, self-movement. Instead, mathematics considers only magnitude, the non-essential difference.

Although it is the concept that divides space into its dimensions and determines their connections and relations, mathematics abstracts from this. For example, it does not consider the relation of the line to the plane. Even when it compares the diameter of a circle to its circumference, it encounters their incommensurability—an infinite relation of the concept that escapes its determinations.

Immanent or so-called pure mathematics does not address time as time in contrast to space as a second material for its consideration. Applied mathematics does deal with time, as well as with motion and other real phenomena, but it derives its synthetic propositions—those concerning their relationships determined by their concepts—from experience and merely applies its formulas to these presuppositions.

The fact that the so-called proofs of such propositions—such as those regarding the equilibrium of the lever or the relation of space and time in falling motion—are given and accepted as proofs is itself evidence of how great the need for proof in cognition is. When no true proof is available, even the empty semblance of one is valued, providing a sense of satisfaction. A critique of such “proofs” would be both remarkable and instructive, serving to cleanse mathematics of this false embellishment, to reveal its limits, and to demonstrate the necessity of another form of knowledge.

As for time, which one might think should serve as the counterpart to space and provide the material for another branch of pure mathematics, it is the very existence of the concept itself. The principle of magnitude—the conceptless difference—and the principle of equality—the abstract, lifeless unity—are incapable of engaging with the pure unrest of life and absolute differentiation that time represents.

This negativity, which constitutes the dynamic and self-moving essence of time, is therefore paralyzed in mathematics, reduced to the concept of the “one” as a second material for this mode of cognition. Mathematics thus diminishes the self-moving to a static and indifferent, external, lifeless content, treating it as a neutral subject for its operations.

Philosophy, in contrast, does not consider inessential determinations but rather those insofar as they are essential. Its element and content are not the abstract or unreal but the real—what posits itself and lives within itself, existence in its concept. Philosophy engages with the process that generates and traverses its moments, with the entirety of this movement constituting the positive and its truth.

This truth, therefore, equally encompasses the negative—what might be called the false, if it were possible to regard it as something separate from which one could abstract. The vanishing aspect is instead to be viewed as essential, not as a fixed determination cut off from the true and left somewhere outside it, nor is the true to be understood as a static, lifeless positive resting on the other side.

Appearance, as the coming-into-being and passing-away, does not itself come into being or pass away but is rather in itself and constitutes the reality and movement of the life of truth. The true is thus the Bacchic revel in which no member is not drunk, yet because every part dissolves as it separates itself, it is equally the transparent and simple calm.

In the flux of this movement, the individual forms of spirit, like determinate thoughts, do not endure; yet they are just as much positive and necessary moments as they are negative and transient. In the whole of the movement, considered as repose, what differentiates itself and gains particular existence within it exists as something remembered and preserved, whose being is the knowledge of itself, just as this knowledge is simultaneously its being.

Regarding the method of this movement or of science, it might seem necessary to provide further elaboration in advance. However, its concept has already been indicated in what has been said, and its full exposition belongs to logic—or, rather, it is logic itself. For the method is nothing other than the structure of the whole, articulated in its pure essence.

We must, however, be aware that the prevailing system of ideas regarding what constitutes philosophical method belongs to an outdated intellectual framework. If this statement seems pretentious or revolutionary—a tone I deliberately avoid—it is worth noting that the scientific model borrowed from mathematics, with its reliance on explanations, divisions, axioms, sequences of theorems and their proofs, principles, and deductions, is already, even in common opinion, largely obsolete. Even where its inadequacy is not explicitly recognized, it is seldom or never used and, if not outright disapproved of, is at least not esteemed.

We must adopt the prejudice that what is excellent becomes established in use and gains favor. Yet it is not difficult to see that the approach of positing a proposition, providing reasons for it, and refuting the opposite proposition with equal reasoning is not the form in which truth can manifest. Truth is the movement of itself within itself, whereas that method is a mode of knowing external to its content. For this reason, it belongs to mathematics, which, as noted, takes the conceptless relation of magnitude as its principle and inert space and the equally inert unit as its subject matter, and it should remain there. It may also persist in a freer, more arbitrary form in common life, in casual conversation or historical instruction, appealing more to curiosity than to knowledge—much like a preface itself.

In ordinary life, consciousness deals with knowledge, experiences, sensory concreteness, and also with thoughts and principles, all of which are treated as fixed, existing entities or as static being or essence. It either moves along these elements or interrupts their continuity through arbitrary will, treating them as objects for external manipulation. It reduces them to some certainty, even if only to the feeling of the moment, and finds satisfaction when its conviction reaches a familiar point of rest.

However, when the necessity of the concept banishes both the looser flow of conversational reasoning and the rigid structure of scientific formalism, it has already been noted above that this gap should not be filled by the unmethodical approach of intuition, enthusiasm, or the arbitrariness of prophetic speech. Such approaches disdain not only that particular form of scientific rigor but scientificity in general.

Likewise, after Kant’s triplicity—initially rediscovered through instinct, though still lifeless and uncomprehended—has been elevated to its absolute significance, establishing the true form alongside its true content and thereby bringing forth the concept of science, it should not be regarded as scientific to misuse this form by reducing it to a lifeless schema or mere schematic framework, thereby degrading the scientific organization into a table of categories.

This formalism, previously discussed in general terms and now examined more specifically, believes it has comprehended and expressed the nature and life of a shape merely by assigning it a predicated determination from the schema—whether it be subjectivity, objectivity, magnetism, electricity, contraction, expansion, the East or West, and so on. Such determinations can multiply endlessly, as each determination or shape can, in turn, be used as the form or moment of the schema for the others, with each reciprocating the favor. This circular reciprocity provides no real insight into the matter itself—neither into what one thing nor the other truly is.

In this approach, sensory determinations from common intuition are incorporated, ostensibly to signify something beyond their literal meaning. At the same time, significant concepts—such as subject, object, substance, cause, universality, and so on—are used as uncritically and indiscriminately as common ideas like strength and weakness, expansion and contraction. As a result, this metaphysics is as unscientific as these sensory representations.

Instead of the inner life and self-movement of its existence, such a formalism expresses a simple determination derived from intuition—that is, sensory knowledge—based on a superficial analogy, calling this external and hollow application of a formula “construction.” This formalism operates in much the same way as any other reductive system. How dull must a mind be that, within a quarter-hour, cannot grasp the theory that there are asthenic, sthenic, and indirect asthenic illnesses and corresponding treatment plans? Such instruction was once deemed sufficient to turn a routine practitioner into a theoretical physician in a short span of time.

When the formalism of so-called natural philosophy teaches, for example, that understanding is electricity, that an animal is nitrogen, or that these phenomena correspond to the South or the North, whether expressed as crudely as here or mixed with more sophisticated terminology, one might marvel at the apparent profundity and the power of such an approach. This method links distant ideas and imposes upon static sensory phenomena the semblance of a concept, without ever articulating the concept itself or the true meaning of the sensory representation. The uninitiated may fall into admiring awe, imagining profound genius in these connections, or find amusement in the liveliness of these determinations, as they replace abstract concepts with more tangible analogies. They may even congratulate themselves on an intuitive affinity with such “brilliant” work.

The trick of this wisdom is as easily learned as it is applied. However, once its mechanism is understood, its repetition becomes as unbearable as the repetition of a once-revealed sleight of hand. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no harder to wield than a painter’s palette with only two colors—say, red and green. One is used to paint a surface when a historical scene is needed, the other for a landscape.

It would be hard to say which is greater: the complacency with which everything in heaven, on earth, and below the earth is painted over with this meager palette, or the arrogance regarding the excellence of this universal tool. Each reinforces the other. What this method produces, by sticking a handful of general schema-determined labels onto every celestial and earthly, natural and spiritual form, is nothing less than a “clear” account of the universe’s organization. However, this “clarity” resembles a diagram with labels stuck onto a skeleton or rows of labeled jars in a spice shop. Just as the skeleton lacks flesh and blood, and the jars hide lifeless contents, so too does this approach strip the living essence of its subject.

This approach, when it evolves into the monochromatic “absolute painting,” forsakes even the distinctions of the schema, as these are deemed too reflective, and sinks everything into the emptiness of the Absolute, achieving a formless white of pure identity. This has already been noted above. The uniformity of the schema and its lifeless determinations, along with the absolute identity and the transition from one to the other, are equally lifeless modes of thought and equally external forms of cognition.

The excellent cannot escape the fate of being dismembered, stripped of its vitality and spirit, and having its skin appropriated by lifeless knowledge and its vanity. Yet even within this fate lies the recognition of the power it exerts—not necessarily on minds (Geister), but at least on dispositions (Gemüther).

This fate also reveals the process of bringing it into universality and definiteness of form, in which its completion resides, and which alone makes it possible for this universality to be misused as superficiality.

Science must organize itself solely through the intrinsic life of the concept. Within it, the determinateness, which in a formal schema is externally attached to existence, becomes the self-moving soul of the filled content. The movement of being consists, on the one hand, in becoming an “other” and thus transforming into its immanent content; on the other hand, it takes this unfolding or its existence back into itself, meaning it reduces itself to a moment and simplifies itself into determinateness.

In this movement, negativity acts as differentiation and the positing of existence; in this return into itself, it is the becoming of determinate simplicity. In this way, the content does not appear to receive its determinateness from something external, nor to have it imposed upon it. Instead, it gives itself its own determinateness, organizing itself into a moment and a place within the whole.

The tabular understanding, however, retains for itself the necessity and concept of the content—the concrete, the reality, and the living movement of the matter it organizes. Or rather, it does not truly retain it but fails to recognize it. For if it had such insight, it would surely reveal it. It does not even recognize the need for such insight; otherwise, it would abandon its schematizing or, at the very least, not consider it more than a mere table of contents. It provides only a content summary, but it does not deliver the content itself.

When determinateness, such as magnetism, for example, is itself something concrete or real, it nevertheless degenerates into something lifeless when it is merely predicated of another being and not understood as the immanent life of that being—when it is not recognized as having its native and unique self-generation and manifestation within it. This essential aspect, however, is left to others by formal understanding.

Instead of immersing itself in the immanent content of the matter, formal understanding merely surveys the whole from above and remains detached from the particular existence it discusses—in other words, it does not truly see it. Scientific knowledge, by contrast, requires surrendering to the life of the object, or what amounts to the same thing, apprehending and articulating its inner necessity. By immersing itself deeply in its object, it abandons the detached overview, which is merely the reflection of knowledge turning back upon itself from the content.

However, while immersed in the matter and advancing within its movement, scientific knowing eventually returns to itself—not until the fulfillment or content withdraws into itself, simplifies into determinateness, reduces itself to one aspect of existence, and transitions into its higher truth. Through this process, the simple, comprehensive whole emerges from the richness in which its reflection seemed to have been lost.

In general, as expressed earlier, the substance is in itself subject, and therefore all content is its own reflection into itself. The persistence or substance of an existence lies in its self-equality, for its inequality with itself would mean its dissolution. This self-equality, however, is pure abstraction, and this abstraction is thought.

When I say quality, I mean simple determinateness. Through quality, one existence is distinguished from another, or it is an existence in and of itself; it persists through this simplicity with itself. However, this makes it essentially thought. Here it is understood that being is thought, which encompasses the insight that diverges from the ordinary, conceptless talk of the identity of being and thought.

Because the persistence of existence is self-equality or pure abstraction, it is also the abstraction of itself from itself—it is its own inequality with itself and its dissolution. It is its own inwardness and withdrawal into itself—its becoming. Through this nature of being, and insofar as being has this nature for knowledge, knowledge is not the activity that handles content as something foreign, nor is it reflection away from content back into itself.

Science, therefore, is not that form of idealism which, as a new dogmatism of self-certainty, replaced the old dogmatism of assertion. Rather, as knowledge observes content retreating into its own inwardness, its activity is both immersed in the content—because it is the immanent self of the content—and simultaneously returned into itself, as it is the pure self-equality in otherness. Thus, knowledge becomes the cunning (List) that, while seemingly refraining from activity, observes how determinateness and its concrete life—precisely in striving for self-preservation and particular interest—engage in actions that are inherently contradictory, dissolve themselves, and transform into moments of the whole.

When the significance of understanding (Verstand) was earlier discussed in relation to the self-consciousness of substance, its significance in terms of the determination of substance as being (Seyendes) now becomes clear through what has been said here. Being is quality, self-equal determinateness or determinate simplicity—determinate thought. This is the understanding of being. Through this, it is Nous, which Anaxagoras was the first to recognize as essence. Those who came after him defined the nature of being more determinately as Eidos or Idea, meaning determinate universality, or kind.

The term kind (Art) may seem too commonplace or insufficient to capture the essence of ideas, such as the beautiful, holy, or eternal, which are currently in vogue. Yet in truth, the idea expresses neither more nor less than kind. However, we often disdain an expression that clearly designates a concept, preferring another that, perhaps simply because it belongs to a foreign language, envelops the concept in a haze, making it sound more edifying.

In that being is determined as kind, it is simple thought; Nous, as simplicity, is substance. Because of its simplicity or self-equality, it appears as stable and enduring. However, this self-equality is equally negativity; through this, that stable being transitions into its dissolution. Determinateness at first seems to exist only by relating to something else, and its movement appears as though imposed by an external force. But the fact that it carries its otherness within itself and is self-moving is already contained in that simplicity of thought. For this simplicity is the self-moving and self-differentiating thought, the very inwardness and pure concept.

Thus, understanding (Verstand) is becoming, and as this becoming, it is reason (Vernunft).

In the nature of what exists—its being identical with its concept—lies the essence of logical necessity. This necessity alone is the rational element and the rhythm of the organic whole. It is as much the knowledge of the content as the content itself is concept and essence—or, in other words, it alone constitutes the speculative.

The concrete form, in moving itself, reduces itself to simple determinateness, thereby elevating itself to logical form and attaining its essentiality. Its concrete existence is nothing other than this movement and is immediately a logical existence. Thus, it is unnecessary to impose formalism externally onto the concrete content; the latter inherently transitions into the former. However, this formalism ceases to be external because form is the intrinsic becoming of the concrete content itself.

The nature of the scientific method—to remain inseparable from its content while determining its rhythm through itself—finds its proper representation in speculative philosophy, as previously mentioned. What has been expressed here conveys the concept but can only be regarded as an anticipatory assertion. Its truth does not lie in this partially narrative exposition, and thus it is no more refuted when contradicted by assurances that things are otherwise or that the matter is understood in such and such a way, based on customary notions treated as established and well-known truths, or when new ideas are conjured up from the treasury of inner divine intuition and asserted.

Such a reaction is typical of the initial response of knowledge encountering something unfamiliar. It arises to safeguard freedom, personal insight, and one’s authority against the foreign—since what is newly encountered appears as such. This reaction also serves to dispel any perceived shame in having learned something, just as, in the approving acceptance of the unknown, a similar reaction can manifest as what, in another sphere, would be ultra-revolutionary rhetoric and behavior.

What is essential in the study of science, therefore, is the willingness to undertake the effort of engaging with the concept. This requires attention to the concept as such, to simple determinations like being-in-itself, being-for-itself, self-equality, and so on, for these are pure self-movements—what one might call souls, if their notion did not designate something even higher than that.

For those accustomed to running along the track of representations, the interruption of this flow by the concept is as unpleasant as it is for formal thinking, which oscillates between unreal thoughts. The former habit could be called material thinking, a form of contingent consciousness immersed in its content, finding it burdensome to simultaneously lift itself out of the material and remain with itself. The latter, mere reasoning (Räsonniren), represents freedom from content and vanity over it.

To both, the effort is demanded: for material thinking, to lift itself out of its immersion; for reasoning, to relinquish its arbitrary freedom and refrain from acting as the principle of content. Instead, it must immerse itself into content, allow it to move through its own nature—that is, through the self as its essence—and observe this movement. To abstain from arbitrary interventions and previously acquired wisdom, to refrain from interfering with the immanent rhythm of the concepts—this self-restraint is itself an essential moment of attentiveness to the concept.

In reasoning (räsonnirendes Verhalten), two aspects can be noted, in contrast to which conceptual thinking (begreifendes Denken) stands opposed.

First, reasoning often adopts a negative stance toward the content it engages with, demonstrating the ability to refute and nullify it. The realization that something is not so—that insight—is purely negative. It does not transcend itself to produce new content; instead, it must seek some other content elsewhere to proceed. This is reflection into the empty self (Ich), the vanity of its knowledge. However, this vanity does not only reveal that the content is vain but also that the insight itself is vain, as it represents negativity that fails to recognize the positive within itself.

Because this reflection does not turn its negativity into content, it remains external to the matter at hand and never fully engages with it. Consequently, it imagines itself to be more advanced by asserting emptiness rather than possessing any substantive insight.

In contrast, as previously shown, in conceptual thinking, negativity belongs to the content itself. It is the immanent movement and determination of the content, and as the totality of this movement, it is also positive. When understood as a result, it emerges from this movement as determinate negativity, which is thus also a positive content.

Regarding the fact that such thinking possesses content—whether consisting of representations, thoughts, or a mixture of both—it presents another aspect that makes comprehension (Begreifen) challenging. This peculiar nature closely relates to the essence of the idea described earlier or rather expresses it as it appears in its motion, as thinking apprehension.

In its negative mode, reasoning (räsonnierendes Denken) reflects content back into the self, making the self the center to which all content returns. In its positive mode, however, reasoning treats the self as a static subject upon which the content rests as an accident or predicate. This subject serves as the foundation for the movement of thought, moving back and forth, anchoring the content in place.

In conceptual thinking (begreifendes Denken), the situation is different. Here, the concept is the self of the object, manifesting as its becoming. It is not a static subject carrying accidents, but rather a dynamic process in which the subject itself dissolves into its distinctions and content. It actively constitutes the determinations—the differentiated content and its movement—rather than merely standing apart from them. Consequently, the fixed foundation on which reasoning depends—the static subject—is no longer stable. Instead, movement itself becomes the object.

In this framework, the subject, now filled by its content, no longer stands apart or allows for further predicates or accidents. The scattered nature of content is, in turn, bound to the self. The content is no longer an external predicate of the subject but instead becomes the substance, the essence, and the concept of what is discussed. Representational thinking, accustomed to moving among predicates and accidents—and rightly so, as they are no more than that—finds itself disrupted because what appears as a predicate is now the substance itself.

Starting from the subject, representational thinking expects the subject to remain as a foundation. Yet, when it discovers that the predicate has become the substance, the subject transitions into a predicate and is thus annulled. Since what appears to be a predicate transforms into a complete and independent whole, thinking cannot wander freely but is constrained by this substantial weight.

In the usual mode of thought, the subject is initially posited as a fixed, objective self. From this starting point, thought moves necessarily toward the multiplicity of determinations or predicates. However, in conceptual thinking, the knowing self—the second subject—finds the first subject, which it assumed to have already resolved, embedded within the predicates themselves. Instead of simply engaging in the act of reasoning, determining whether this or that predicate applies to the subject, the knowing self must still grapple with the self of the content. It cannot remain independent but must unite with this content.

Formally, the stated idea can be expressed as follows: the nature of the judgment or proposition, which inherently includes the distinction between subject and predicate, is disrupted by the speculative proposition. In the speculative proposition, the identical statement into which the former transforms carries a tension against the distinction inherent in the original form.

This conflict between the structure of a proposition and the unifying concept that dissolves it is analogous to the tension found in rhythm, between meter and accent. Rhythm arises from the suspension and unification of both elements. Similarly, in a philosophical proposition, the identity of subject and predicate should not annihilate the distinction expressed by the form of the proposition but rather reveal their unity as a harmony.

The structure of the proposition represents the appearance of determinate meaning or the accent that differentiates its fulfillment. However, the predicate, which conveys the substance, absorbs the subject into universality, and this unity resolves the distinction in a way where the accent fades into harmony.

To illustrate the above with examples: in the proposition God is Being, the predicate Being carries a substantial meaning, dissolving the subject. Here, Being is not merely meant as a predicate but as the essence itself. This appears to make God cease to be what He is posited as in the structure of the sentence—namely, a fixed subject.

Instead of advancing through the transition from subject to predicate, thinking finds itself obstructed as the subject is lost and is compelled to return to the idea of the subject because it feels its absence. Alternatively, it discovers that the predicate itself is posited as a subject—as Being, as essence—and thus encompasses the nature of the subject. Consequently, rather than moving freely in the predicate, as reasoning might allow, thought remains immersed in or is at least required to immerse itself in the content.

Similarly, in the statement The actual is the universal, the actual as subject dissolves into its predicate, the universal. The universal is not simply meant as a predicate in the sense that the proposition states the actual is universal, but rather it expresses the essence of the actual.

Thus, thought loses its stable, objective grounding in the subject, only to be thrown back onto the predicate, where it does not return to itself but instead into the subject of the content.

This unfamiliar obstacle is largely the basis for the frequent complaints about the unintelligibility of philosophical texts, assuming the individual otherwise possesses the requisite conditions of education to understand them. In the aforementioned, we find the reason for the specific criticism often leveled at such texts: that they must be read multiple times before they can be understood—a critique often delivered as though it were an ultimate and irrefutable indictment.

The explanation of this phenomenon is evident from what has been said. The philosophical proposition, by virtue of being a proposition, gives rise to the expectation of the conventional relationship between subject and predicate, as well as the usual engagement with knowledge. The philosophical content of the proposition, however, disrupts this expectation; the assumption turns out to be different from what was intended. This correction of the assumption compels the mind to revisit the proposition and apprehend it differently.

A difficulty to be avoided arises from the mixing of speculative and discursive approaches when, at one moment, what is said of the subject carries the meaning of its concept, while at another moment it holds only the significance of its predicate or accident. This alternation disrupts coherence between the two modes.

The speculative mode demands that every statement reflect the internal necessity and unity of the subject’s concept, while the discursive or reasoning mode allows for looser, external relationships between subject and predicate. The interference between these two methods can create confusion and undermine clarity.

Thus, only a philosophical exposition that rigorously excludes the conventional relationships between the components of a sentence—those of subject, predicate, and accidental attributes—would succeed in achieving a truly “plastic” form. In such a presentation, the unity and movement of the speculative idea would be presented without the interruptions caused by ordinary propositional structure.

Indeed, non-speculative thinking has its legitimacy, which, however, is not respected in the speculative sentence. The lifting of the form of the sentence must not occur solely through the immediate content of the sentence. Rather, the opposing movement must be explicitly expressed; it must not only manifest as an internal hindrance but also as the concept’s return into itself. This movement, constituting what would traditionally be achieved by proof, is the dialectical movement of the sentence itself. Only this constitutes the truly speculative element, and only the articulation of this movement qualifies as speculative presentation.

As a mere sentence, the speculative remains an internal impediment and the unrealized return of the essence into itself. Therefore, we often find ourselves referred, by philosophical expositions, to this inner intuition, thereby foregoing the presentation of the dialectical movement of the sentence that we seek.

The sentence aims to express the truth, yet its essence lies in being a subject; as such, it is only the dialectical movement—this self-generating, self-guiding, and self-returning process. In conventional cognition, the proof provides this aspect of the articulated interiority. However, with the separation of dialectic from proof, the concept of philosophical proof itself has been fundamentally lost.

It may be noted here that the dialectical movement also comprises propositions as its parts or elements. This raises the apparent difficulty that it seems to perpetually recur, appearing as a fundamental challenge inherent to the process itself. This is analogous to what happens in traditional proofs, where the reasons employed require further substantiation, leading to an infinite regress. However, this form of grounding and conditioning pertains to that type of proving which is external to dialectical movement and characteristic of external cognition.

Regarding dialectical cognition itself, its element is the pure concept, which inherently possesses a content that is entirely subject unto itself. Thus, no content appears as a foundational subject that relates to a predicate as its mere meaning. In this way, the sentence becomes immediately recognized as merely an empty form.

Beyond sensory or representational selfhood, it is primarily the name as such—the proper name—that denotes a pure subject, a static and concept-less unity. For this reason, it may, for example, be beneficial to avoid the term “God,” as this word functions not simultaneously as a concept but as a proper name, anchoring itself as the fixed repose of an underlying subject. On the other hand, terms such as “being,” “the one,” “singularity,” or “subject” directly imply concepts.

Even when speculative truths are ascribed to the aforementioned subject, their content often lacks the immanent concept because it exists merely as a static subject. Consequently, these truths easily assume the form of mere edification. From this perspective, the habit of interpreting speculative predicates according to the static form of a sentence—rather than as concepts and essences—is further exacerbated by shortcomings in philosophical exposition itself. However, this issue can also be mitigated. The presentation must, in fidelity to the understanding of the speculative nature, adhere strictly to the dialectical form and include nothing that is not conceptualized and grounded in the concept itself.

Just as a reasoning approach can hinder philosophical study, so too can a reliance on presumed, unexamined truths that one claims to possess and considers unnecessary to revisit. Those who hold such “truths” often believe they can invoke, evaluate, and judge using them without further scrutiny. From this perspective, it is especially urgent to restore a sense of earnest and rigorous engagement with philosophy.

In every other field of science, art, craft, or skill, there is a general acknowledgment that mastery requires considerable effort, learning, and practice. By contrast, there appears to be a prevailing prejudice when it comes to philosophy: while no one would claim to make shoes merely because they have eyes, hands, leather, and tools, it is commonly assumed that anyone can philosophize and critique philosophy simply by virtue of possessing “natural reason.” This attitude suggests that just as one measures shoes against one’s feet, one might measure philosophical truths against one’s innate sense of reason.

This misconception leads to the paradoxical belief that the absence of specialized knowledge and study is a qualification for possessing philosophy, and that philosophy somehow ceases to exist where rigorous inquiry begins. Philosophy is frequently regarded as a formal, contentless pursuit, with little appreciation for the fact that, in terms of substance, any truth in knowledge or science genuinely deserves that name only when it is generated through philosophy. Other sciences, regardless of how much they reason and experiment without philosophy, cannot attain vitality, spirit, or truth without its influence.

In the realm of genuine philosophy, the arduous journey of intellectual development, with its intricate and profound movement through which the spirit attains knowledge, is often dismissed in favor of shortcuts. The immediate revelation of the divine and the so-called “common sense” of the untrained mind are frequently viewed as sufficient substitutes for dedicated philosophical inquiry and rigorous education. This attitude parallels the misguided claim that chicory serves as an equivalent substitute for coffee.

It is disheartening to observe how ignorance and unrefined thought—incapable of sustaining focus even on a single abstract proposition, let alone the coherence of multiple interrelated ideas—proclaim themselves as champions of intellectual freedom or even genius. This self-ascribed genius, which now flourishes in philosophy, once plagued the field of poetry. In poetry, this approach yielded either trivial prose that lacked poetic quality or nonsensical ramblings when attempting to transcend mediocrity.

Similarly, today’s “natural” philosophizing, which considers itself above the discipline of the concept, mistakes its lack of rigor for an intuitive or poetic mode of thought. It produces arbitrary combinations of a disordered imagination, disrupted by the absence of clear reasoning—creations that are neither fully poetic nor genuinely philosophical, but an incoherent mix of both, amounting to neither “fish nor fowl.” Such efforts fail to honor the depth and discipline required for true philosophical or artistic excellence.

The so-called “natural philosophizing,” flowing comfortably within the channel of common sense, often delivers rhetorical presentations of trivial truths. When confronted with the insignificance of these truths, it insists that their true meaning and depth lie in the heart, claiming that this should be evident to others as well. It assumes that invoking concepts like the innocence of the heart or the purity of conscience suffices, as these are supposedly ultimate principles against which no argument can be raised or further demand made.

However, the task is not to leave these supposed treasures buried within but to bring them forth into the open. The effort to articulate such “ultimate truths” has long been unnecessary, as they are already present in catechisms, proverbs, and similar sources. It is easy to challenge such truths by exposing their vagueness or contradictions, often demonstrating within their own framework the opposite of what they claim. In their attempt to extricate themselves from the confusion thereby created, proponents of this natural philosophizing often fall into deeper contradictions. This may lead them to resort to the dismissive assertion that their stance is self-evident and everything else is mere sophistry—a common defensive reaction of untrained reason against cultivated understanding. Terms like “sophistry” serve as catchphrases for common sense to resist reasoned critique, much like how “dreaminess” has become a dismissive term for ignorance to disparage philosophy.

By appealing to feeling as their ultimate authority—their “inner oracle”—such thinkers often cut off dialogue with those who disagree, declaring they have nothing further to say to anyone who does not share the same sentiments. This attitude, in effect, tramples upon the very roots of humanity. Human nature inherently seeks agreement with others, finding its true existence only in the achieved commonality of consciousness. To remain confined to feeling and rely solely on it for communication is to regress into the inhuman, the animalistic, which lacks the shared rationality essential to human connection and discourse.

When asked for a “royal road” to science, the most convenient suggestion might be to rely on common sense and, to keep pace with the times and with philosophy, read reviews of philosophical writings—or even just the prefaces and first paragraphs of these works. These often provide the general principles on which everything rests. Reviews, alongside historical notes, also offer judgments that, because they are judgments, claim to stand above what they critique.

This ordinary approach may present itself humbly, as if in a housecoat. But in the high-priestly robes of loftiness, it takes the guise of the eternal, sacred, and infinite, walking a path that proclaims itself to be already in the center of being—a wellspring of genius, deep original ideas, and flashes of profound thought. Yet, just as such profundity does not reveal the true source of essence, these intellectual fireworks do not reach the heavens of true understanding.

True insights and scientific knowledge can only be attained through the work of the concept. The concept alone can generate a universality of knowledge that is neither the vague and barren generality of common sense, nor the unrestrained universality of reason, corrupted by laziness and self-conceit disguised as genius. Instead, the concept leads to truth in its native form—a cultivated and complete knowledge, capable of becoming the possession of all self-conscious reason.

By placing the existence of science in the self-movement of the concept, I recognize that this approach diverges significantly—and indeed is contrary—to many contemporary notions about the nature and form of truth. Such a divergence might seem to promise an unfavorable reception for an attempt to present the system of science in this determination. Yet I may take comfort in the fact that, for instance, the excellence of Plato’s philosophy has sometimes been ascribed to its scientifically worthless myths, even though there were times—called “times of enthusiasm”—when Aristotle’s philosophy was esteemed for its speculative depth. During those times, Plato’s Parmenides, perhaps the greatest masterpiece of ancient dialectics, was regarded as the true revelation and positive expression of divine life. Even amidst the confusion often produced by ecstatic inspiration, this misunderstood ecstasy was, in truth, nothing but the pure concept.

Moreover, the excellence of contemporary philosophy places its value in scientific rigor. Even when others interpret it differently, it asserts itself through that rigor. Thus, I may hope that this attempt to vindicate science for the concept and to present it in its proper element will find acceptance through the intrinsic truth of the matter itself. We must trust that truth has the nature to prevail when its time has come and that it never emerges too early or finds an unprepared audience. It appears only when its time has matured.

The individual also needs this effect to validate what was initially their private concern, experiencing their conviction as something universal. However, we must often distinguish the public from those who claim to represent and speak for it. The public sometimes reacts differently—even oppositely—to these self-proclaimed representatives. While the public may humbly attribute its inability to appreciate a philosophical work to its own shortcomings, these representatives—confident in their competence—lay all blame on the author. The effect on the public is quieter than the noisy actions of these individuals, who, like the dead, bury the dead.

In an age when general understanding is more cultivated, curiosity sharper, and judgment more quickly formed, the rejection of new ideas often comes swiftly. Yet this immediate reaction must be distinguished from the slower, more enduring effect of ideas that correct the fleeting impressions of bold declarations and dismissive critiques. Some works eventually find their contemporaries, even if it takes time, while others—despite initial attention—fail to leave any legacy.

In an era where the generality of spirit has gained such strength and individuality has, as is proper, become correspondingly less significant, the collective breadth and cultivated richness of spirit hold their rightful place and are rightly demanded. Consequently, the share of the individual in the overall work of spirit is necessarily modest. This reality, intrinsic to the nature of science itself, requires the individual to embrace self-forgetfulness—to focus on becoming and doing what they can, without undue concern for personal recognition or achievement.

At the same time, less must be demanded of the individual, just as they themselves must temper their expectations and demands upon themselves. Science, as the expression of universal spirit, transcends the singular contributions of any one person. The individual’s role lies not in claiming importance but in contributing, however modestly, to the larger endeavor of understanding and articulating the truth. This self-effacing participation aligns with the nature of the scientific enterprise, which values the collective progression of spirit over individual prominence.

I.
SCIENCE
OF THE
PHENOMENOLOGY
OF
SPIRIT

INTRODUCTION

It is a natural assumption that in philosophy, when one approaches the matter itself—that is, the actual cognition of what is true in its essence—one must first come to an understanding about cognition. Cognition is regarded either as the instrument through which one seizes the Absolute or as the medium through which it is perceived. This concern seems justified, partly because there are various kinds of cognition, some of which might be more suited than others to achieving this ultimate goal, and thus, through a mistaken choice among them, one might fail. Partly, too, the concern arises because cognition, as a faculty with a specific nature and scope, might, without a precise determination of its nature and limits, grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth.

This concern might even develop into the conviction that the entire endeavor to make what is “in itself” accessible to consciousness through cognition is inherently absurd, and that an absolute boundary separates cognition from the Absolute. For if cognition is the tool used to seize absolute essence, it becomes evident that applying a tool to an object does not leave it as it is in itself but rather modifies and transforms it. Or if cognition is not an instrument of our activity but instead a passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then we still do not obtain it as it is in itself but only as it is shaped by and within this medium.

In both cases, we employ a means that directly produces the opposite of its purpose; or rather, it is absurd to use a means at all. It may seem, however, that this difficulty can be resolved through an understanding of the workings of the tool, since such knowledge allows us to subtract from the result the part that belongs to the tool and thus retain the truth in its purity. Yet this improvement would merely bring us back to where we started. If we remove from a formed object what the tool has done to it, we are left with the object—here the Absolute—just as it was before this, rendering the effort superfluous.

If the Absolute were brought closer to us through the tool without being altered, as a bird might be caught with a limed twig, it would surely mock this trickery if it did not already intend to be with us in and of itself. For in such a case, cognition would be a kind of cunning, presenting itself as engaging in complex efforts while actually producing nothing more than an immediate and thus effortless connection.

Or, if the examination of cognition as a medium teaches us the laws of its refraction, it is equally futile to subtract these from the result. For it is not the refraction of the ray but the ray itself, through which truth touches us, that constitutes cognition. If we subtract this, we are left only with the pure direction or an empty space indicated.

Meanwhile, when concern degenerates into error, establishing a distrust in science—which proceeds to work itself without such reservations and truly recognizes—it is not foreseeable why, conversely, a distrust in this distrust should not be established. Moreover, it should be feared that this fear of being wrong is itself the error. In fact, it presupposes certain things as truth and bases its concerns and consequences on them, which must themselves be examined beforehand to determine whether they are indeed true. Specifically, it assumes notions of cognition as a tool and medium, as well as a distinction between ourselves and this cognition. More particularly, it assumes that the Absolute stands on one side, and cognition stands on the other side as something real in itself and separate from the Absolute. In other words, it posits that cognition, which, being apart from the Absolute—and probably also apart from the truth—is nevertheless true. This is a presumption whereby what is called a fear of error rather presents itself as a fear of recognizing the truth.

This conclusion arises from the assertion that the Absolute alone is true, or that the true is solely the Absolute. It can be rejected by distinguishing that cognition, even if it does not grasp the Absolute as science demands, might still be true; and that cognition in general, even if incapable of apprehending the Absolute, might nevertheless be capable of apprehending other truths. However, we gradually come to see that such back-and-forth reasoning leads to a nebulous distinction between an “absolute truth” and some “other kind of truth.” Moreover, terms like the Absolute, cognition, and so forth presuppose a meaning, which is precisely what must first be established through effort.

Instead of engaging with such useless conceptions and expressions about cognition—such as treating it as a tool to grasp the Absolute, or as a medium through which we perceive the truth, and so on—relations that ultimately rely on the notion of a separation between cognition and the Absolute, it would be better to discard these arbitrary and contingent notions altogether. Likewise, the corresponding use of terms such as the Absolute, cognition, objectivity, subjectivity, and countless others, whose meanings are presumed to be universally understood, might rightly be regarded as deceptive. For the pretense that their meanings are either commonly known or that one has fully grasped their concept seems to aim at avoiding the primary task of articulating their true concept.

More justifiably, one could avoid even taking note of these notions and expressions, which aim only to undermine science itself, for they amount to nothing more than a hollow semblance of knowledge that vanishes immediately in the face of genuine science. However, in its initial emergence, science itself appears as a phenomenon. Its appearance, though, is not yet science fully realized and unfolded in its truth. It matters little whether this appearance is conceived as arising alongside other forms of knowledge or whether the other forms of false knowledge are considered its mere appearance.

Nonetheless, science must free itself from this semblance, and it can only do so by directly opposing it. Science cannot dismiss untrue knowledge merely as a common or superficial view of things, simply asserting that it operates on an entirely different level of cognition and that such false knowledge is irrelevant to it. Nor can it appeal to the vague anticipation of a better understanding within the framework of untrue knowledge itself. If it were to take this latter route, it would still be relying on something that merely exists, or worse, on its own inadequate form of existence as it manifests within false knowledge—on its appearance, rather than on its essential and actual nature. For this reason, the task here will be to present a systematic account of appearing knowledge.

Since this exposition takes appearing knowledge as its object, it may itself seem not to be the free and self-moving science in its proper form. Instead, from this standpoint, it can be understood as the path of natural consciousness that progresses toward true knowledge, or as the journey of the soul. Along this journey, the soul traverses a series of its own configurations, which present themselves as stations set by its very nature. Through these stages, the soul purifies itself into spirit, attaining, through the complete experience of itself, the knowledge of what it truly is in its essence.

The completeness of the forms of non-real consciousness will emerge through the necessity inherent in its progression and interconnection. To make this comprehensible in general terms, it can be noted in advance that the presentation of non-true consciousness in its untruth is not merely a negative movement. Such a one-sided view is characteristic of natural consciousness in general, and a knowledge that adopts this one-sidedness as its essence constitutes one of the forms of incomplete consciousness. This form appears along the course of the path and will present itself therein.

Specifically, this is skepticism, which perceives in its result only pure nothingness, failing to recognize that this nothingness is determined as the negation of that from which it results. However, nothingness, considered as the negation of that from which it originates, is in fact the true result; it is therefore itself determinate and possesses content. Skepticism, which concludes with the abstraction of nothingness or emptiness, cannot progress further but must await whatever new content might present itself, only to cast it into the same empty abyss.

By contrast, when the result is understood as it truly is—namely, as a determinate negation—this immediately gives rise to a new form. In the negation, the transition to this new form is made, and thus the progression through the complete series of forms unfolds of its own accord.

The goal is as necessary to knowledge as is the progression of its development. It is reached where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where it finds itself, and where concept corresponds to object, and object to concept. The progression toward this goal is therefore relentless and cannot find satisfaction at any earlier stage. That which is confined to a natural life cannot transcend its immediate existence by its own means; it is driven beyond itself by something external, and this compulsion to transcend its bounds constitutes its death.

Consciousness, however, is for itself its own concept. Through this, it is inherently the act of transcending the limited, and, since the limited belongs to it, also transcending itself. With the particular, consciousness simultaneously sets the beyond—even if only, as in spatial perception, as something adjacent to the limited. Consciousness thus suffers this compulsion to disrupt its limited satisfaction from within itself.

In the awareness of this compulsion, there may well arise a fear of truth, leading to an attempt to preserve what appears to be at risk of being lost. Yet such attempts can find no lasting peace. Whether it remains in thoughtless inertia, where thought undermines thoughtlessness and its unrest disrupts inertia; or whether it takes refuge in sentimentality, which insists that everything is good in its own way, this assurance too is subjected to the force of reason, which rejects anything as good simply because it is of a certain kind.

Alternatively, the fear of truth might hide itself from itself and others, cloaking itself in the appearance of a fervent zeal for truth. It may claim that it is this very passion for truth that makes it so difficult, even impossible, to find any other truth than the singular one of its own vanity—the belief in being ever wiser than any thoughts, whether one’s own or others’. This vanity, which knows how to annul every truth and retreat into itself, feeding on its self-perception of dissolving all thoughts and finding nothing but the barren “I” in place of content, is a satisfaction that must be left to itself. It flees the universal and seeks only self-isolation.

As was preliminarily and generally stated regarding the nature and necessity of progression, it may also be helpful to make some remarks about the method of execution. This presentation, conceived as the relationship of science to appearing knowledge and as an investigation and examination of the reality of cognition, seems incapable of proceeding without some assumption serving as a standard of measurement. For examination consists of applying an assumed standard and deciding, based on the resulting agreement or disagreement of the examined object with this standard, whether it is correct or incorrect. The standard itself, and likewise science—if it were to serve as the standard—is thereby presupposed as the essence or as what is “in itself.”

However, at this stage, where science is just emerging, neither science itself nor anything else has yet justified itself as the essence or as what is “in itself.” Without such a justification, it seems that no examination can take place.

This contradiction and its resolution will become clearer if we first recall the abstract determinations of knowledge and truth as they appear in consciousness. Consciousness distinguishes something from itself while simultaneously relating to it—or, as it is often expressed, something exists for it. The definite aspect of this relation, or the existence of something for consciousness, is what we call knowledge.

However, we distinguish this existence-for-another from existence in-itself. What is related to knowledge is likewise distinguished from it and posited as existing independently of this relation. The aspect of being in-itself is referred to as truth.

What these determinations actually entail does not concern us further at this point. Since appearing knowledge is our object, its determinations will be considered as they present themselves directly and as they have been conceived. It suffices for now that they do indeed present themselves in this way.

When we investigate the truth of knowledge, it seems that we are examining what it is in itself. However, in this investigation, knowledge becomes our object—it exists for us. The in-itself of knowledge, which would emerge from this examination, would thus be its being for us. What we claim as its essence would not be its truth but merely our knowledge of it.

The essence or standard would reside within us, and that which is compared to it and judged through this comparison would have no necessity to acknowledge it as valid.

However, the nature of the object we are investigating transcends this separation or the appearance of separation and presupposition. Consciousness provides its standard within itself, and the investigation thus becomes a comparison of consciousness with itself, as the distinction just made is internal to it. In consciousness, one element exists for another, or it inherently contains the determination of the moment of knowledge. At the same time, this “other” exists not merely for it but also independently of this relation, or in itself—this is the moment of truth.

Thus, in what consciousness itself declares to be in itself or the true, we find the standard it establishes to measure its knowledge. If we call knowledge the concept and the essence or truth the being or the object, the examination consists in determining whether the concept corresponds to the object. Conversely, if we call the essence or the in itself of the object the concept, and understand the object as it is for another, then the examination consists in determining whether the object corresponds to its concept.

It is clear that both are the same. The essential point for the entire investigation, however, is to maintain that these two moments—concept and object, being for another and being in itself—are contained within the very knowledge we are investigating. Thus, we have no need to bring in external standards or apply our own assumptions and ideas to the investigation. By setting aside these external elements, we are able to consider the matter as it is in and for itself.

Not only in the sense that concept and object—the standard and what is to be examined—are present within consciousness itself does any external contribution from us become superfluous, but we are also relieved of the effort of comparing the two and performing the actual examination. Thus, as consciousness examines itself, our role is merely to observe.

Consciousness is, on one side, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself—consciousness of what it holds as the true, and consciousness of its knowledge of this truth. Since both aspects exist for consciousness, it itself constitutes their comparison. For consciousness, it becomes evident whether its knowledge of the object corresponds to the object or not.

At first, the object appears to consciousness only as it knows it, and consciousness seems unable to get behind the object to see it not as it is for consciousness, but as it is in itself. Consequently, it might seem incapable of testing its knowledge against the object as it exists independently. However, the very act of knowing an object already involves a distinction: one moment is the object in itself, while another is the knowledge of the object, or the object’s being for consciousness. The examination is based on this distinction, which is inherent in consciousness.

If, in this comparison, the two do not correspond, consciousness appears to need to alter its knowledge to align it with the object. Yet, in modifying its knowledge, the object itself also changes, for the existing knowledge was essentially a knowledge of the object; thus, with the change in knowledge, the object also becomes something different, as it was intrinsically tied to this knowledge.

As a result, consciousness realizes that what it previously regarded as the object in itself is not actually in itself, but merely for consciousness. When consciousness finds that its knowledge does not align with its object, the object itself no longer holds firm. In other words, the standard of examination shifts when that which was supposed to be its standard does not withstand the examination. Thus, the examination is not merely a test of knowledge but also a test of its standard.

This dialectical movement, which consciousness exercises upon itself—both upon its knowledge and its object—insofar as a new true object emerges from it, is what is properly called experience. In this process, a specific moment can be highlighted, shedding new light on the scientific nature of the following exposition.

Consciousness knows something, and this object is its essence or what is in itself. However, this object is also for consciousness what is in itself. This introduces an ambiguity in what is regarded as true. At this stage, we observe that consciousness now has two objects: the first is the original in itself, and the second is the being-for-consciousness of this in itself.

The latter initially seems to be nothing more than a reflection of consciousness into itself—a representation not of an object, but of its knowledge of the first object. However, as previously demonstrated, this process alters the first object: it ceases to be what is in itself and becomes, for consciousness, something that is only for it what is in itself. Consequently, this being-for-consciousness of the original in itself becomes the true—it becomes the essence or the new object of consciousness.

This new object encapsulates the nullity of the first object; it represents the experience that has been made about the first.

In this presentation of the process of experience, there is an aspect that seems to diverge from the usual understanding of what is meant by experience. Specifically, the transition from the first object and its knowledge to the second object—the one of which experience is said to have been made—was described in such a way that the knowledge of the first object, or what is for consciousness as the first in itself, becomes the second object itself.

By contrast, the common understanding of experience suggests that we come to recognize the untruth of our initial concept through another object, one that we happen upon externally and contingently, with our role reduced to the pure apprehension of what is in and for itself. In the previous view, however, the new object is revealed as having emerged through a reversal within consciousness itself.

This perspective represents our addition to the matter, elevating the series of experiences of consciousness to the level of a scientific progression—an addition that is not present for the consciousness under consideration. Yet this is precisely the same point previously mentioned regarding the relationship of this presentation to skepticism: namely, that the result of any given untrue knowledge must not collapse into a barren nothingness but must necessarily be understood as the negation of that which produced the result. This result retains what was true in the preceding knowledge.

This process is illustrated here such that what initially appeared as the object sinks down for consciousness into its knowledge of it, with the in itself becoming merely a being-for-consciousness. This transformation constitutes the new object, along with which a new shape of consciousness emerges, for which something different is essential compared to the preceding shape.

This dynamic governs the entire sequence of the shapes of consciousness in their necessity. It is this necessity itself—the emergence of the new object, which presents itself to consciousness without its knowing how it happens—that proceeds, as it were, behind consciousness’s back. Through this, the movement incorporates an element of the in itself, or of being for us, which is not apparent to the consciousness engaged in the experience.

The content of what arises, however, is present for consciousness, while we grasp only the formal aspect of it—its pure emergence. For consciousness, what arises appears merely as an object; for us, it is simultaneously a movement and a becoming.

Through this necessity, the path to science is already science itself and, in terms of its content, is thus the science of the experience of consciousness.

The experience that consciousness undergoes concerning itself must, by its very concept, encompass nothing less than the entire system of consciousness or the entire realm of the truth of spirit. In this process, the moments of this system are not presented as abstract, pure moments but rather as they are for consciousness, or as consciousness itself appears in its relation to them. Through this, the moments of the whole become shapes of consciousness.

As consciousness drives itself toward its true existence, it will reach a point where it sheds the semblance of being burdened by something foreign—something that exists only for it and as something other. At this point, appearance will coincide with essence, and its presentation will thus converge with the very point of the actual science of spirit. Finally, when consciousness grasps this essence as its own, it will reveal the nature of absolute knowing itself.

I.
SENSORY CERTAINTY;
OR THE THIS AND MEANING

The knowledge that is first or immediate as our object can only be that which is itself immediate knowledge—knowledge of the immediate or of what is. We must likewise comport ourselves immediately or receptively toward it, altering nothing as it presents itself, and refraining from transforming apprehension into comprehension.

The concrete content of sensory certainty initially presents itself as the richest form of knowledge, indeed as a knowledge of infinite abundance. Whether we extend outward in space and time, where this abundance unfolds, or take a fragment of this fullness and divide it further, no limit appears to exist. Moreover, sensory certainty seems to be the truest form of knowledge, for it has omitted nothing from the object but holds it before itself in its complete fullness.

However, this certainty, in truth, declares itself to be the most abstract and impoverished form of truth. It expresses only this about what it knows: it is. Its truth consists solely in the being of the thing. For consciousness, in this certainty, the subject appears merely as a pure I, or as a pure “this,” and the object equally as a pure “this.”

The “I,” as this, is certain of the object not because it develops itself as consciousness through manifold thoughts or activities. Nor is it certain of the object because the object, of which it is certain, possesses a variety of distinct qualities or manifold relations to other things. Both are irrelevant to the truth of sensory certainty. In this certainty, neither the “I” nor the object involves the meaning of diverse mediations. The “I” does not signify a complex act of representing or thinking, nor does the object signify a diversity of properties. Instead, the object simply is, and it is solely because it is.

For sensory knowing, this pure being, or this simple immediacy, constitutes its essence and truth. Similarly, the certainty itself, as a relation, is an immediate and pure relation. Consciousness is merely an “I,” nothing more—a pure “this”; and the individual knows a pure “this,” or the particular.

In the pure being that constitutes the essence of this certainty and which it declares as its truth, much more is at play when we observe closely. A concrete sensory certainty is not merely this pure immediacy but rather an example of it. Among the countless differences present in such cases, we consistently find the primary distinction: namely, that from the pure being, the two aforementioned “thises” emerge—a “this” as I and a “this” as object.

Reflecting on this distinction, it becomes evident that neither the one nor the other exists purely and immediately within sensory certainty. Both are, at the same time, mediated. I possess certainty through something else, namely the object; and similarly, the object exists in certainty through something else, namely I.

This distinction between essence and example, between immediacy and mediation, is not something we impose but rather something we find within sensory certainty itself. It must be considered as it appears in sensory certainty, not as we have just determined it conceptually.

Within sensory certainty, one aspect is posited as the simple, immediately existing element, or as the essence—the object. The other aspect is posited as unessential and mediated, existing not in itself but through something else—I, a knowing that knows the object only because the object exists, and that could just as easily exist or not exist. The object, however, is what is true and essential. It exists independently, indifferent to whether it is known or not. It remains even if it is not known, whereas knowing ceases to exist if the object is not.

The object, therefore, must be examined to determine whether it truly exists, within sensory certainty itself, as the essence it is claimed to be. We must assess whether its concept—its essence as such—corresponds to how it is present within sensory certainty.

To this end, we are not to reflect upon or speculate about what the object might be in truth but must instead observe it purely as it is held within sensory certainty.

Sensory certainty itself must then be asked: What is the This? Let us take it in its dual form of existence—as the Now and as the Here—so that the dialectic inherent in it becomes as straightforward and comprehensible as the sensory certainty itself.

In response to the question, What is the Now? we might, for example, answer: The Now is the night. To test the truth of this sensory certainty, a simple experiment suffices. We write down this truth; a truth cannot lose its validity simply by being written down, nor by being preserved.

However, when we later look at the recorded truth—perhaps at midday—we must say that it has become stale. What was true then is no longer true now.

The Now, which is identified as night, is preserved—that is, it is treated as something that truly is, as something existent. However, it proves to be, instead, something that is not. The Now itself persists, but as something that is no longer night. Likewise, it persists in opposition to the day, which it now is, as something that is also not day—or, more generally, as a negative.

This persistent Now is therefore not something immediate but something mediated. Its determination as enduring and self-preserving arises through the negation of something else—namely, the day and the night, which are not. At the same time, it remains as simple as it was before, merely a Now, indifferent to what might happen to be associated with it. Just as its being is neither the night nor the day, so too it is both night and day. It is unaffected by its being something other.

Such a simplicity, which exists through negation—neither this nor that, a not-this, and equally indifferent to being this or that—we call a universal. The universal is, therefore, in truth, the essence of sensory certainty.

As something universal, we also express the sensory: what we say is This, meaning the universal This; or we say It is, meaning being in general. Admittedly, in doing so, we do not imagine the universal This or being in general, but we nevertheless express the universal. In other words, we do not speak in the way we mean it in this sensory certainty.

Language, as we see, is the truer medium. Through it, we immediately refute our own intended meaning. Since the universal is the truth of sensory certainty, and language expresses only this truth, it is fundamentally impossible for us to ever articulate the sensory being we mean.

The same situation arises with the other form of This, namely, the Here. For example, Here is the tree. I turn around, and this truth has vanished, transforming into its opposite: Here is no longer a tree but rather a house.

The Here itself does not disappear; instead, it remains constant amid the disappearance of the house, the tree, and so forth. It is indifferent to being a house or a tree. Thus, the This again reveals itself as a mediated simplicity, or as a universality.

For this sensory certainty, as it demonstrates within itself that the universal is the truth of its object, pure being remains its essence. However, this being is no longer immediate; rather, it is such that negation and mediation are essential to it. Consequently, it is not the being we typically associate with the term, but being with the determination that it is abstraction or pure universality.

Thus, our opinion, for which the true essence of sensory certainty is not the universal, remains opposed only to this empty or indifferent Now and Here.

If we compare the relationship between knowledge and the object as it first appeared with the relationship they assume in this result, we find that it has been reversed. The object, which was supposed to be the essential element of sensory certainty, has now become its inessential aspect. The universal, into which the object has transformed, is no longer the essential object it was supposed to be. Instead, the essence of sensory certainty is now found in its opposite, namely, in knowledge, which was previously considered inessential.

The truth of sensory certainty is now located in the object as my object, or in the act of meaning—the idea that the object is because I know it. Sensory certainty has thus been driven out of the object but has not yet been abolished; instead, it has been pushed back into the I. It remains to be seen what experience reveals about this reality of sensory certainty.

The strength of sensory certainty now lies in the I, in the immediacy of my seeing, hearing, and so forth. The disappearance of the individual Now and Here that we intend to mean is prevented by the fact that I hold them firmly. The Now is day because I see it; the Here is a tree for the same reason.

However, sensory certainty experiences in this relation the same dialectic as in the previous one. I, this individual, see the tree and assert that the tree is the Here. Yet another I sees the house and asserts that the Here is not a tree but rather a house. Both truths rest on the same validation: the immediacy of seeing and the assurance and conviction each person has regarding their knowledge. Yet one truth disappears in the face of the other.

What does not disappear in this process is the I as universal, whose seeing is not the seeing of this tree or that house, but a simple seeing. This seeing is mediated through the negation of this house, and so on, and remains just as simple and indifferent to whatever else might be present—whether it be the house, the tree, or something else. The I is universal, just as the Now, the Here, or the This are universal.

I might intend to mean a particular I, but just as I cannot say what I mean when I speak of the Now or the Here, I cannot articulate what I mean with I. When I say this Here, this Now, or a particular, I actually say all Heres, all Nows, all particulars. Similarly, when I say I, this particular I, I am in fact saying I universally—every I is what I am expressing: I, this particular, individual I.

If science is challenged with the demand, presented as an absolute test it supposedly cannot meet, to deduce, construct, or identify a so-called this thing or this person a priori—however one might phrase this demand—it is reasonable to require that the challenger specify which this thing or which this I they mean. But it is impossible to specify this.

Sensory certainty thus discovers that its essence lies neither in the object nor in the I, and that immediacy is not the immediacy of either one or the other. For in both, what I mean proves to be inessential, and both the object and the I turn out to be universals in which the specific Now, Here, and I that I intend do not persist or exist.

This realization leads us to consider the entirety of sensory certainty itself as its essence, rather than merely one of its moments, as was the case in the previous instances where first the object, opposed to the I, and then the I itself, were taken as its reality. Thus, it is only the entirety of sensory certainty, held as immediacy, that excludes from itself all the oppositions that previously arose.

This pure immediacy no longer concerns itself with the variability of the Here—as a tree, which becomes a Here that is not a tree—or the variability of the Now—as day, which transitions into a Now that is night—or with another I for whom something else is the object. Its truth persists as a self-consistent relation that makes no distinction between the essentiality and inessentiality of the I and the object. Consequently, no difference can enter into it at all.

Thus, I, this particular I, assert that the Here is a tree and do not turn around such that the Here would become something other than a tree. Nor do I take notice that another I sees the Here as something other than a tree, or that I myself, at another time, may take the Here as not a tree, or the Now as not day. Instead, I am pure intuition. I remain with the statement: the Now is day, or similarly, the Here is a tree. I make no comparisons between the Here and the Now themselves but hold to a single immediate relation: the Now is day.

Since this certainty no longer wishes to engage when we draw its attention to a Now that is night or to an I for whom it is night, we must approach it directly and have the Now that is being asserted shown to us. It must be shown to us because the truth of this immediate relation is tied to the truth of this specific I, which is confined to a particular Now or Here.

If we were to later take up this truth or observe it from a distance, it would have no meaning, as we would be negating the immediacy that is essential to it. We must therefore enter the same point in time or space and have it shown to us—meaning, we must become this specific I that possesses the certainty.

Let us then see what the immediate, which is shown to us, truly consists of.

The Now is shown—this Now. However, as soon as it is shown, it has already ceased to be. The Now that is is different from the Now that was shown, and we observe that the Now, in the very act of being, already ceases to be.

The Now, as it is presented to us, is something that has been, and this is its truth. It does not possess the truth of being. Thus, what is true is only that it has been. But what has been is, in fact, no essence; it is not, and yet it was the being that was at stake.

In the act of pointing to the Now, we observe a movement and the following progression:

I point to the Now and assert it as the truth. However, I show it as something that has been, something annulled, thus negating the initial truth.
I then assert a second truth: that the Now has been—it is annulled.
But what has been no longer is. I negate the having-been or annulled state, the second truth, and in doing so, I negate the negation of the Now, thereby returning to the original assertion: the Now is.

Thus, the Now and the act of pointing to it are not immediate simplicities but a movement consisting of different moments. A Now is posited, yet another Now is posited instead, annulling the first. This otherness, or the annulment of the first, is itself annulled, returning us to the initial assertion. However, this initial Now, now reflected upon, is not exactly the same as it was at first, as something immediate. Instead, it is a reflected simplicity, something that remains itself even in its otherness—a Now that is absolutely many Nows. This is the true Now: the Now as a simple day containing many Nows within it, such as hours. Each hour is itself many Nows, such as minutes, and each of these Nows is, in turn, many Nows, and so on.

The act of pointing thus reveals itself to be the very movement that articulates what the Now truly is: a result or a collection of many Nows. The act of pointing becomes the experience that the Now is a universal.

The Here that is pointed to and held as fixed is similarly a this Here, which in reality is not this singular Here, but rather a before and behind, an above and below, a right and left. Each above is itself a multiplicity of otherness—above, below, and so forth. The Here that was to be pointed out dissolves into other Heres, and these, in turn, also disappear.

What is pointed to, held as fixed and enduring, is thus a negative This, which exists only insofar as the Heres are taken as they appear but are simultaneously annulled within it. This results in a simple collection of many Heres. The Here that is meant to be specific might seem to be a point, but this point does not exist. Instead, when it is pointed to as existing, the act of pointing reveals itself not as immediate knowledge but as a movement: a transition from the intended specific Here, through many Heres, into the universal Here.

This universal Here, like the Now, is a simple multiplicity: just as the day is a simple unity of many Nows, so too is the Here a simple unity of many Heres.

It becomes evident that the dialectic of sensory certainty is nothing other than the simple story of its movement or its experience, and that sensory certainty itself is nothing other than this story. Natural consciousness, therefore, always progresses on its own to this result—what is true about it—and undergoes this experience. However, it just as consistently forgets it and restarts the process from the beginning.

It is surprising, then, that despite this universal experience—even when presented as a philosophical assertion or as the result of skepticism—the claim persists that the reality or being of external things as this or as sensory objects holds absolute truth for consciousness. Such a claim does not know what it is saying and inadvertently states the opposite of what it intends to assert.

The supposed truth of the sensory This for consciousness is said to be a universal experience; but in fact, the opposite is universally experienced. Every consciousness negates such truths as, for example, Here is a tree or Now is midday, and instead asserts their opposite: Here is not a tree but a house. Each assertion of a sensory This is continually annulled, and in all sensory certainty, the truth experienced is what we have already observed: that the This is a universal, precisely the opposite of what such a claim calls “universal experience.”

In invoking this “universal experience,” it may be permissible to anticipate a practical perspective. From this viewpoint, those who insist on the truth and certainty of the reality of sensory objects may be reminded of the foundational lessons of wisdom—the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Dionysus. They must first learn the secret of eating bread and drinking wine. For those initiated into these mysteries not only arrive at doubt about the being of sensory things but also at despair over it, actively realizing their nullity or witnessing it unfold.

Even animals are not excluded from this wisdom. On the contrary, they prove to be the deepest initiates. They do not stop before sensory things as though these were things-in-themselves; instead, in complete certainty of their nullity, they reach out, seize them, and devour them. All of nature celebrates, as they do, these evident mysteries, which reveal what the truth of sensory things really is.

Those who make such claims, according to the preceding observations, themselves directly say the opposite of what they intend. This phenomenon may be one of the most compelling to provoke reflection on the nature of sensory certainty. They speak of the existence of external objects, which can be further defined as actual, absolutely singular, entirely unique, individual things—each of which is entirely without its equal. This existence, they claim, possesses absolute certainty and truth.

They mean this particular piece of paper upon which I am now writing—or rather, have written. But what they mean they cannot express. If they truly wished to express this particular piece of paper they mean and attempted to do so, they would find it impossible because the sensory This, as it is meant, is inaccessible to language, which belongs to consciousness as inherently universal.

In the very act of attempting to articulate it, this This would deteriorate. Even if they began describing it, they could not complete the description, leaving the task to others, who would ultimately have to admit that they were speaking about something that does not exist. Thus, they mean this particular piece of paper, which is entirely different from the one previously mentioned, but instead they speak only in terms of universals: real things, external objects, sensory objects, or absolutely singular beings. In other words, they express only the universal. What is often referred to as the unspeakable is nothing but the untrue, the irrational, the merely meant.

When it is said of something only that it is a real thing, an external object, its most general nature is expressed, emphasizing its similarity to everything else rather than its distinctiveness. When I say a singular thing, I likewise speak in universal terms, for all things are singular things, and any this thing can be whatever one might wish.

Even if I attempt to specify more precisely by saying this piece of paper, I still express only the universal, as every piece of paper is a this piece of paper. I have said nothing but the general.

If, in an effort to bypass this limitation of speech—which has a divine nature in its capacity to transform meaning—I try instead to point to this piece of paper, I come to realize the true nature of sensory certainty. In pointing to it as a Here, I reveal it as a Here composed of other Heres, or as a unity of many Heres. In essence, I grasp it as a universal. By taking it up as it truly is, I cease to know it as something immediate and instead perceive it in its truth.

II.
PERCEPTION;
OR THE THING AND DECEPTION

Immediate certainty does not grasp the true, for its truth lies in the universal, while it seeks to grasp the This. Perception, on the other hand, takes what is for it the existent as universal. Just as universality is its principle in general, so too are the moments that distinguish themselves within perception: the I is a universal, and the object is a universal.

This principle has now emerged for us, and our engagement with perception is therefore no longer a contingent engagement, as was the case with sensory certainty, but a necessary one. In the emergence of the principle, the two moments, which in sensory certainty simply emerged from its appearance, are now constituted: one is the movement of pointing-out, and the other is the same movement understood as a simplicity. The former corresponds to perceiving, the latter to the object.

The object, in its essence, is the same as the movement: the unfolding and differentiation of moments in perception corresponds to the unity and synthesis of these moments in the object. For us, or in itself, universality as a principle is the essence of perception, while the abstraction of perceiving and the perceived, as differentiated moments, appears inessential.

However, because both the perceiving subject and the perceived object are themselves universals or essences, they are both essential. Yet, in their opposition, their relationship allows only one of them to take the role of the essential. The distinction between essential and inessential must therefore be distributed between them.

The object, being determined as simple, is the essence and remains indifferent to whether it is perceived or not. Perception, as the movement, is unstable; it can exist or not, and it is therefore inessential.

The object must now be further determined, and this determination briefly developed from the result that has emerged; a more detailed elaboration lies beyond the scope of this discussion. Since the principle of the object is universality, which in its simplicity is mediated, the object must express this as its nature. It thus reveals itself as a thing with many properties.

The richness of sensory knowledge belongs to perception, not to immediate certainty, where it was merely incidental. Perception, by contrast, has negation, differentiation, or multiplicity as part of its essence.

The This is thus posited as not being this, or as annulled. However, it is not a simple nothing, but rather a determinate nothing, a nothing with content—namely, the content of the This. In this way, the sensory is still present, but not as it was supposed to be in immediate certainty, as the meant particular. Instead, it appears as universal, or as something that will be determined as properties.

This annulment demonstrates its true double meaning, as we have seen in the negative: it is both a negation and a preservation. The nothing, as the nothing of the This, preserves immediacy and remains sensory, but as a universal immediacy. Being becomes universal by incorporating mediation or negativity within itself. By expressing this within its immediacy, being becomes differentiated and determined as a property.

At the same time, many such properties are posited, each being the negation of the others. Expressed within the simplicity of the universal, these determinations, which become properties through further specification, relate to themselves and are indifferent to one another. Each exists for itself, independent of the others.

The simple, self-same universality itself, however, is distinct and free from these determinations. It is pure self-relation, or the medium in which all these determinations coexist as a simple unity, interpenetrating without interacting. By participating in this universality, the properties remain indifferent to one another.

This abstract universal medium, which can be called thinghood in general or pure essence, is nothing other than the Here and Now, as previously shown: a simple unity of many, in which the many are themselves simple universals. For instance, this salt is a simple Here and, at the same time, manifold: it is white, sharp, cubic, of a certain weight, and so forth.

All these many properties coexist in one simple Here, interpenetrating within it. None has a different Here from the others; rather, each exists wherever the others are. At the same time, despite their interpenetration, they do not affect one another. The whiteness does not alter or influence the cubic shape, nor do either affect the sharpness, and so forth. Each property, as a simple self-relation, remains unaffected by the others and relates to them only through the indifferent also.

This also is thus the pure universality itself, or the medium that unifies the properties into the thinghood that constitutes the object.

In the relationship that has been established, only the aspect of positive universality has so far been observed and developed. However, another dimension must also be included. Namely, if the many determinate properties were absolutely indifferent and entirely self-referential, they would not be determinate at all. Properties are determinate only insofar as they are differentiated and relate to others as opposites.

Given this opposition, the properties cannot coexist within the simple unity of their medium, even though this unity is as essential to them as their negation. The differentiation of the properties, insofar as it is not indifferent but exclusive—negating otherness—falls outside this simple medium. Thus, the medium is not only an also, a unity of indifference, but also a one, an exclusive unity.

The one is the moment of negation as it relates to itself in a simple way, excluding otherness, thereby determining the thing as a distinct thing. In a property, negation appears as determinateness, which is immediately unified with the immediacy of being. This immediacy, through its unity with negation, is universality. However, as the one, the property becomes independent, freed from its unity with its opposite, and exists in and for itself.

In these moments taken together, the thing is fully developed as the truth of perception, insofar as it is necessary to do so here. The thing consists of:

(a) The indifferent, passive universality, the also of its many properties or, more precisely, materials.
(b) Negation, equally simple, or the one, which excludes opposing properties.
(c) The many properties themselves, which arise from the relation between the first two moments—the negation as it relates to the indifferent element, spreading itself out as a multiplicity of distinctions. It is the point of singularity radiating into a manifold within the medium of existence.

On the one hand, these distinctions belong to the indifferent medium and are therefore universal, self-referential, and unaffected by each other. On the other hand, as belonging to the negative unity, they are mutually exclusive and necessarily stand in opposition to properties that lie outside their also.

Sensory universality, or the immediate unity of being and negation, becomes a property only insofar as the one and pure universality are developed from it and differentiated, while being unified by it. The relation of these essential pure moments completes the thing.

This is the nature of the thing in perception, and consciousness is determined as perceiving insofar as this thing is its object. Consciousness must merely take up the object and comport itself as pure apprehension. What results from this process is the true. If consciousness were to add or subtract anything, it would thereby alter the truth.

Since the object is the true, universal, and self-consistent, while consciousness is mutable and inessential, it is possible for consciousness to misapprehend the object and deceive itself. The perceiving consciousness is aware of the possibility of deception because, in the universality that serves as its principle, otherness is immediately present to it, though only as nullified and annulled.

Thus, its criterion for truth is self-consistency, and its task is to apprehend the object in a manner consistent with itself. However, since differences are also present for it, perception involves relating these various moments to one another. If a discrepancy emerges in this comparison, it is not the object that is untrue—since the object is self-consistent—but rather the perception itself.

Let us now examine the experience that consciousness undergoes in actual perception. This experience is already contained for us in the preceding development of the object and the relationship of consciousness to it. It will simply be the unfolding of the contradictions inherent in that development.

The object I apprehend initially presents itself as a pure one. Yet, I become aware of a property in it, which is universal and thus goes beyond singularity. Therefore, the object’s initial being as a one was not its true being. Since the object is supposed to be the true, its untruth falls back upon me, and my apprehension was incorrect. Because of the universality of the property, I must instead understand the object as a totality, a community of properties.

Next, I perceive the property as determinate, opposed to and excluding others. Consequently, I did not correctly apprehend the object when I took it as a continuity or community. To account for the determinateness of the property, I must break this continuity and regard the object as an exclusive one.

In this exclusive one, I find many properties that do not affect one another but remain indifferent to each other. Thus, I did not correctly perceive the object when I regarded it as exclusively one; instead, it is, as before, a general, communal medium. Now, however, it is one in which multiple properties, as sensory universals, exist individually. Each property exists for itself as determinate and excludes others.

Yet the simple and true object I perceive is not just a general medium. It is rather a single property by itself, which, however, is neither truly a property nor a determinate being. This is because a property exists only in relation to a one and is determinate only in relation to others. When isolated, the property becomes a pure self-relation, merely sensory being in general, lacking the character of negativity.

At this stage, consciousness—now faced with a purely sensory being—is reduced to meaning. That is, it has withdrawn entirely from perception and retreated into itself. However, sensory being and meaning inevitably return to perception. I am cast back to the beginning and once again drawn into the same cycle, wherein each moment and the whole continually negate themselves.

Thus, perception unfolds as a circular process in which consciousness confronts and overcomes contradictions, only to re-enter them anew.

Consciousness thus necessarily traverses this cycle again, but not in the same manner as the first time. It has now gained the experience that the result and truth of perception lie in its dissolution—its reflection into itself from what was taken as true. For consciousness, it has now become evident that perception is not a simple, pure apprehension but that, in its act of apprehending, consciousness simultaneously reflects into itself, moving away from what it initially apprehended as true.

This return of consciousness into itself, which intermingles directly with the act of pure apprehension—since it has been shown to be essential to perception—alters what is taken as true. Consciousness recognizes this reflexive aspect as its own and takes responsibility for it. By doing so, it will now strive to preserve the true object in its purity.

At this stage, as was the case with sensory certainty, perception has the aspect of driving consciousness back into itself. However, it does so not in the same sense as with sensory certainty, where the truth was thought to reside within consciousness. Instead, consciousness now recognizes that any untruth arising in perception is due to itself. Through this recognition, consciousness becomes capable of negating the untruth. It distinguishes its apprehension of the true from the untruth of its perception, corrects this untruth, and, by performing this correction, the truth of perception indeed resides within consciousness.

The mode of consciousness that we must now consider is thus characterized by its dual awareness: it no longer merely perceives but is also conscious of its reflection into itself and distinguishes this reflection from the act of simple apprehension. This separation enables consciousness to refine its perception and aim for the preservation of truth.

I first become aware of the thing as one and must firmly hold on to this true determination. If, in the movement of perception, something arises that contradicts this unity, it must be recognized as stemming from my reflection.

In perception, various properties appear, which seem to belong to the thing itself. However, the thing is one, and we recognize that the differences, which would disrupt its unity, arise within us. For example, the thing is only white when brought to our eye, sharp when brought to our tongue, cubic when felt by touch, and so forth.

The complete distinctness of these aspects is not derived from the thing but from us. These distinctions are due to the separation of our sensory faculties—the eye, tongue, and touch are entirely distinct from one another. Thus, we are the universal medium within which these moments are separated and exist independently.

By understanding that this determination of being a universal medium is our own reflection, we preserve the self-consistency and truth of the thing as being one.

These various aspects, which consciousness attributes to itself, are also determined when each is considered as existing within the universal medium. For example, whiteness is defined only in opposition to blackness, and so on, while the thing is one precisely because it stands in opposition to others.

However, the thing does not exclude others by virtue of being one. Being one is a universal self-relation, and in that universality, it is equal to all others. Instead, the thing differentiates itself from others through its determinateness. Thus, things are determinate in and for themselves. They possess properties that distinguish them from other things.

Firstly, the thing is the true; it exists in itself, and whatever is in it belongs to its own essence, not for the sake of others.
Secondly, the determinate properties are not only relative to other things or for other things but also belong to the thing itself.
Thirdly, these determinate properties are properties of the thing only insofar as they are multiple and distinct from one another. Yet, as part of the thing’s essence, they are independent and indifferent to one another.

Thus, in truth, it is the thing itself that is white, cubic, sharp, and so forth. The thing is the also—the universal medium in which the many properties exist independently, without touching or negating one another. Taken in this way, the thing is understood as the true.

In perception, consciousness is simultaneously aware of its reflection into itself, and thus, alongside the also, the opposing moment appears. This opposing moment is the unity of the thing with itself, which excludes differences. Consciousness, therefore, must take this unity upon itself, as the thing itself is the sustaining of many distinct and independent properties.

It is said of the thing: it is white, also cubic, also sharp, and so forth. However, insofar as it is white, it is not cubic, and insofar as it is cubic and white, it is not sharp, and so on. The unification of these properties occurs only within consciousness, which, therefore, must not allow them to collapse into a singular unity within the thing itself. To this end, consciousness introduces the notion of insofar, which separates the properties and maintains the thing as the also.

In doing so, consciousness essentially reassigns the unity of the properties to itself, treating what were previously called “properties” as independent, free-standing matters. The thing is thus elevated to a true also, becoming a collection of materials rather than a single one, reduced instead to a mere encompassing surface.

Reflecting on what consciousness previously attributed to the thing and now attributes to itself, we see that it alternates between assigning both itself and the thing as either a pure, featureless one or as a also resolved into independent materials. Through this comparison, consciousness finds that not only does its act of perceiving involve the difference between apprehension and reflection, but, more importantly, the truth itself—the thing—manifests in this dual manner.

Consciousness thus experiences that the thing presents itself to perceiving consciousness in a specific way but is simultaneously reflected out of this presentation and into itself, possessing within itself an opposing truth.

Consciousness thus moves beyond this second way of relating to perception, where it took the thing as the true and self-consistent, while regarding itself as inconsistent and reflecting back into itself. Now, consciousness projects itself outward, and the object becomes for it the entire movement that was previously divided between the object and consciousness.

The thing is now seen as one, reflected into itself; it exists for itself. However, it also exists for another and is different in being for itself than it is for another. Thus, the thing possesses a dual, differentiated being: it is both for itself and for another. Yet, it is also a unity, and this unity contradicts its differentiated nature. Consciousness would now be required to reconcile this contradiction by taking it upon itself once again, keeping the unification of these opposing aspects from the thing itself. It would need to assert that the thing, insofar as it is for itself, is not for another.

However, as consciousness has already experienced, the thing itself also possesses unity—it is inherently reflected into itself. Thus, both the also (indifferent difference) and the oneness belong to the thing. But since these aspects are distinct and cannot coexist within the same thing, they are distributed across different things. The contradiction inherent in the essence of the object is thus divided among two objects.

Consequently, the thing is indeed in and for itself, self-consistent. However, this unity with itself is disrupted by other things. In this way, the unity of the thing is preserved, while its otherness is situated outside itself, as well as outside consciousness.

Although the contradiction within the essence of the object is distributed across various things, this distinction inevitably returns to the individual, separate thing itself. The various things are posited as distinct, and the conflict manifests in them reciprocally, such that each is not distinguished by itself but only in relation to the other.

Each thing, however, is thereby determined as distinct in itself and possesses an essential difference from the others. Yet, this difference is not an internal opposition within the thing itself but rather a simple determinateness that constitutes its essential character, distinguishing it from the others.

In truth, since difference is inherent in the thing, it necessarily manifests as a real difference of various properties within it. However, because the determinateness that defines the thing’s essence—its distinction from others—constitutes its being for itself, this multiplicity of other properties is rendered inessential.

Thus, the thing incorporates within its unity a dual insofar: one that signifies the essential determinateness that distinguishes it absolutely from others, and another that represents the inessential multiplicity of properties. This opposition does not become an actual contradiction within the thing itself. Instead, the absolute difference places the opposition outside the thing, in relation to another thing external to it.

The remaining multiplicity of properties, while necessarily belonging to the thing, is nonetheless inessential to its essence. It cannot be entirely removed from the thing, but it does not define its fundamental character.

The determinateness that constitutes the essential character of the thing and distinguishes it from all others is defined such that the thing is in opposition to others while maintaining itself as independent. However, the thing, as a one existing for itself, can only be so insofar as it does not stand in this relation to others. For in being related to others, a connection with them is established, and this connection implies the cessation of being for itself.

It is precisely through its absolute character and opposition that the thing relates to others and is, by its very nature, nothing more than this relation. However, this relation is a negation of its independence, and the thing, through its essential property, undermines its own self-sufficiency and ceases to exist as an independent entity.

The necessity of the experience for consciousness—that the thing, through the very determinateness constituting its essence and its being-for-itself, undermines itself—can be briefly considered through its simple concept.

The thing is posited as being-for-itself, or as the absolute negation of all otherness. As such, it is an absolute self-relation, a negation that refers only to itself. However, a negation that refers solely to itself is, in essence, the negation of itself—it annuls itself and finds its essence in something other than itself.

Indeed, the determination of the object, as it has emerged, contains nothing else. The object is supposed to have an essential property that constitutes its simple being-for-itself, while simultaneously possessing a diversity within itself that, although necessary, is not meant to define its essential determinateness.

However, this distinction exists only in words. The inessential, which is nonetheless necessary, annuls itself—or, as just described, it is the negation of itself.

With this, the final insofar, which separated being-for-itself from being-for-another, collapses. The object is now, in one and the same respect, the contradiction of itself: it is for itself insofar as it is for another, and it is for another insofar as it is for itself.

The object is for itself, reflected into itself, and a unity. Yet, this being-for-itself, this self-reflected unity, exists in unity with its opposite—being-for-another—and is thus posited only as annulled. In other words, being-for-itself is just as inessential as what was supposed to be the sole inessential aspect: the relation to another.

Through this process, the object is annulled in its pure determinations—those that were supposed to constitute its essence—just as it was annulled in its sensory being. From sensory being, the object becomes a universal. However, this universal, arising from the sensory, is essentially conditioned by it and thus not a truly self-consistent universal. Instead, it is a universal affected by contradiction, splitting into the extremes of singularity and universality, the one of properties and the also of free-standing matters.

These pure determinations seem to express the essence itself, yet they are merely a being-for-itself that remains tied to being-for-another. However, since both are fundamentally unified, unconditional and absolute universality now emerges. At this point, consciousness truly enters the realm of the understanding.

Sensory singularity disappears in the dialectical movement of immediate certainty, transforming into universality—but only into sensory universality. The act of meaning is annulled, and perception now apprehends the object as it is in itself, or as universality in general. In this context, singularity emerges in the object as true singularity, as being-for-itself, or as self-reflection.

However, this being-for-itself is still conditional; alongside it exists another being-for-itself—universality opposed to singularity and conditioned by it. These two contradictory extremes do not merely coexist but are unified within a single whole. In other words, their shared essence is that being-for-itself is inherently marked by contradiction, meaning it is simultaneously not truly being-for-itself.

The sophistry of perception attempts to salvage these moments from their contradiction, relying on distinctions of perspective—such as also, insofar, and the separation of the inessential from its opposing essence—to grasp the truth. Yet, these strategies, instead of preventing deception in perception, prove themselves to be untenable. The supposed truth, sought through this logic of perception, reveals itself in one and the same respect to be its opposite.

Thus, the essence of the object resolves into an undifferentiated and indeterminate universality, which contains within it the inability to uphold the distinctions or determinations on which perception relies.

These empty abstractions of singularity and its opposing universality, as well as essence tied to something inessential yet simultaneously necessary, are the forces at play in what is often called the “sound common sense” of perception. This common sense, which considers itself robust and grounded in reality, is in fact nothing more than the plaything of these abstractions. It is at its poorest precisely when it believes itself richest.

Driven back and forth by these futile entities—tossed from one to the arms of its opposite—common sense employs sophistry to alternately cling to and assert one abstraction, then its direct contradiction, resisting the truth all the while. It believes philosophy deals only with empty conceptual entities. Indeed, philosophy does engage with such entities, recognizing them as pure essences, the fundamental elements and forces. However, philosophy also apprehends these essences in their full determination and, for that reason, masters them. In contrast, the perceiving mind takes these abstractions as truths and is helplessly sent spiraling from one error to another by their internal contradictions.

This mind does not become aware that these simple essences are what dominate it; rather, it assumes it is dealing with solid substances and concrete content. Similarly, sensory certainty does not realize that the empty abstraction of pure being constitutes its essence. Yet, it is precisely these abstractions—these essential forces—that operate through all the material and content, governing the relations of consciousness to the sensory world and determining the movement of perception and its truth.

The process of perception unfolds as a constant alternation between determining something as true and negating this determination. This perpetual oscillation defines the daily and continuous activity of perceiving consciousness, which believes it moves within the realm of truth. Consciousness proceeds inevitably toward the result of negating all these so-called essential essences or determinations. However, in each particular moment, it is only conscious of a single determination as true, only to switch to its opposite. It senses their lack of substance and attempts to rescue them from the threat of collapse through sophistry, asserting as true what it just declared untrue.

What these abstractions—the notions of universality and singularity, also and one, essence tied to inessentiality, and inessentiality deemed necessary—urge this mind toward is to reconcile them, bring them together, and thereby annul them. Yet, common sense resists this, relying on distinctions like insofar or separated perspectives, or taking one thought upon itself to preserve the other as the true one.

However, the nature of these abstractions inherently unites them. Common sense becomes their victim, spun about in their swirling cycle. As it seeks to give them truth—sometimes by taking their untruth upon itself, other times by dismissing the deception as mere appearances or separating the essential from the supposedly necessary but inessential—it fails to uphold their truth and instead grants itself untruth.

III.
FORCE AND UNDERSTANDING,
APPEARANCE AND THE SUPERSENSIBLE WORLD

In the dialectic of sensory certainty, consciousness has moved beyond hearing, seeing, and other such immediate experiences. As perception, it has advanced to thoughts, which it now integrates into the unconditionally universal. However, if this unconditional universal were taken as a static, simple essence, it would merely represent one extreme of being-for-itself, opposed by an unessential counterpart. In such a relation, the universal itself would become inessential, and consciousness would not have escaped the deceptions of perception.

Instead, this unconditional universal has revealed itself as something that returns into itself from such conditioned being-for-itself. This unconditional universal, which is now the true object of consciousness, still exists as an object for consciousness; its concept, as a concept, has not yet been fully grasped. These two aspects—being in itself and being for consciousness—must be carefully distinguished.

The object has returned into itself from its relation to another and has thereby become a concept in itself. However, consciousness has not yet recognized itself as the concept; it does not yet perceive its own reflection within the object. As a result, consciousness does not recognize itself in the reflected object.

For us, through the movement of consciousness, this object has come to be in such a way that consciousness is intertwined in its becoming, and the reflection on both sides—the object and consciousness—is ultimately one and the same. However, because consciousness, in this movement, has regarded only the object as essential and not consciousness itself, the result is perceived as having objective significance. Consciousness, standing apart from what has become, still regards this object as the essence.

Thus, the understanding has indeed annulled both its own untruth and the untruth of the object. What has emerged from this process is the concept of the true—as the true that exists in itself but is not yet a concept in the full sense. It lacks the for-itself aspect of consciousness and is something the understanding allows to unfold without recognizing itself within it.

This true operates independently, actualizing its essence on its own, while consciousness has no active part in its realization. Instead, consciousness observes, apprehending it purely as it unfolds.

At this point, we must temporarily take the place of consciousness and act as the concept that develops what is contained in the result. It is only through engaging with this developed object, which presents itself to consciousness as something being, that consciousness will finally become a comprehending consciousness.

The result of the previous process was the unconditionally universal, initially understood in a negative and abstract sense. Consciousness negated its one-sided concepts, abstracted them, and thereby relinquished them. However, this result carries a positive significance: it establishes the unity of being-for-itself and being-for-another, or the absolute opposition, as one and the same essence.

At first glance, this might appear to concern only the form of the moments in relation to one another. However, being-for-itself and being-for-another are also the very content itself, as the opposition in its truth can have no other nature than that revealed in the result—namely, that the content considered true in perception belongs only to the form and resolves into its unity.

This content is simultaneously universal; there can be no other content that resists returning to this unconditional universality through its particular characteristics. Any such content would merely represent a specific mode of being-for-itself and relating to another. Yet, being-for-itself and relating to another constitute the very nature and essence of such content. Their truth lies in being unconditionally universal, and thus the result is inherently universal.

Since this unconditioned universal is an object for consciousness, the distinction between form and content arises within it. In the shape of content, the moments appear as they initially did: on the one hand, as the universal medium of many subsisting matters, and on the other, as the self-reflected one in which their independence is annihilated.

The former is the dissolution of the independence of the thing, or its passivity—a being-for-another. The latter is the being-for-itself. It is to be seen how these moments present themselves within the unconditioned universality that constitutes their essence.

It becomes clear, first of all, that because they are only within this universality, they no longer lie apart but are essentially self-negating sides and only the transition of these moments into one another is posited.

Force, as it has been determined, when it is considered as such or as reflected into itself, is one side of its concept; but as a substantiated extreme and indeed as placed under the determination of the one. In this way, the subsistence of the unfolded matters is excluded from it and posited as something other than it. Since it is necessary that force itself be this subsistence, or that it externalize itself, its externalization appears in such a way that this other is added to it and solicits it.

But, in fact, since force necessarily externalizes itself, it has this “other,” which was posited as something else, within itself. It must be retracted that force is posited as a one, and its essence—its externalization—is posited as something external to it, as an other that approaches it from the outside. Rather, force is itself this universal medium of the subsistence of the moments as matters; or, it has externalized itself, and what was supposed to be the other soliciting it is actually itself. Thus, it now exists as the medium of the unfolded matters.

However, it equally essentially has the form of the negation of the subsisting matters, or it is essentially one. This being-a-one is thus now, since it is posited as the medium of matters, something other than itself, and it has this essence outside of itself. But since it must necessarily be what it has not yet been posited as, this other steps in and solicits it to reflect into itself or to cancel its externalization.

In truth, however, force itself is this being-reflected-into-itself or this cancellation of externalization; the being-a-one vanishes as it appeared, namely as an other. Force is itself this being-a-one; it is force recoiled into itself.

That which appears as the other and solicits force both to externalize itself and to return into itself is, as immediately evident, itself force. For the other presents itself equally as a universal medium and as a one, such that each of these forms appears only as a vanishing moment. Thus, by the fact that something other is for force, and force is for something other, force has not yet stepped outside of its concept.

At the same time, however, there are two forces present. The concept of both is the same, but it has emerged from its unity into duality. Instead of the opposition remaining purely as an essential moment, it appears, through this division, as entirely independent forces that have seemingly escaped the dominion of their unity. It must be examined more closely what this supposed independence entails.

Initially, the second force appears as the soliciting force and, in its essence, as the universal medium in opposition to the first force, which is determined as solicited. However, since the second force is essentially the alternation of these two moments and itself force, it is, in fact, also merely a universal medium insofar as it is solicited, and likewise only a negative unity—or soliciting force—by virtue of being solicited.

Thus, the distinction between the two forces, where one was to be the soliciting force and the other the solicited, also transforms into the same interchange of determinations between them.

The interplay of the two forces thus consists in their being oppositely determined, their being-for-one-another in this determination, and the absolute, immediate interchange of these determinations—a transition through which alone these determinations exist, in which the forces seem to appear as independent.

For example, the soliciting force is posited as the universal medium, while the solicited force is posited as recoiled force. Yet the former is a universal medium only because the latter is recoiled force—or rather, the latter is truly the soliciting force for the former and first makes it into the medium. The former has its determination only through the latter, and it is soliciting only insofar as it is solicited by the latter to be soliciting.

And just as immediately, it loses this determination given to it, for this determination passes over to the other—or, rather, it has already passed over to it. The other force, which solicits this one, now appears as the universal medium, but only because it was solicited by the first force to take on this role. In other words, the first force posits the second as such and is, in fact, itself essentially the universal medium. It posits the soliciting force in this way precisely because this other determination is essential to it—in other words, because it is, in fact, itself.

To complete the understanding of the concept of this movement, it can further be pointed out that the differences themselves appear in a dual distinction: first, as differences of content, where one extreme is inwardly reflected force and the other is the medium of matters; and second, as differences of form, where one is soliciting, the other solicited, the former active, and the latter passive.

According to the difference of content, the forces are distinct in general or for us. According to the difference of form, however, they are independent, separating themselves from each other and opposing one another in their relation.

That the extremes, in these two aspects, have nothing in themselves, and that these aspects, in which their distinct nature should consist, are only vanishing moments—an immediate transition of each into its opposite—becomes evident to consciousness in the perception of the movement of force.

For us, as was noted earlier, the distinctions as differences of content and form also vanish in themselves. On the side of form, the active, soliciting, or being-for-itself is essentially the same as what appears on the side of content as force recoiled into itself. Conversely, the passive, solicited, or being-for-another on the side of form is the same as what presents itself on the side of content as the universal medium of the many matters.

It follows from this that the concept of force becomes actual through its duplication into two forces and reveals how it becomes so. These two forces exist as beings for themselves, but their existence is a movement against one another such that their being is, in fact, purely a being-posited-through-another. In other words, their being has the pure meaning of vanishing.

They are not extremes that retain something fixed for themselves, merely sending an external property into the middle, into their interaction. Rather, what they are, they are only in this middle and interaction. In this middle, their being-for-itself (as recoiled force) is just as immediately present as their externalization, their soliciting, and their being-solicited. These moments are therefore not distributed across two independent extremes, which merely offer one another opposing tips. Instead, their essence is that each exists only through the other, and what each is through the other, it immediately ceases to be as soon as it is.

Thus, they have no proper substances that sustain or preserve them. Rather, the concept of force maintains itself as the essence within its very actuality. Force, as actual, exists solely in its externalization, which is simultaneously nothing other than a self-annulment.

If this actual force is conceived as free from its externalization and existing for itself, it becomes the recoiled force. However, this determination, as shown, is itself only a moment of externalization. Thus, the truth of force remains only its thought; the moments of its actuality, its substances, and their movement collapse into an undifferentiated unity.

This unity is not the recoiled force, for even that is only a moment. Instead, this unity is the concept of force as concept. The realization of force is thus simultaneously the loss of its reality. In this realization, force becomes something entirely different—namely, this universality, which understanding initially or immediately recognizes as its essence and which proves itself as its essence in the supposed reality of force in the actual substances.

Insofar as we consider the first universal as the concept of understanding, where force is not yet for itself, the second now represents its essence as it reveals itself in and for itself. Or, conversely, if we consider the first universal as the immediate, which was supposed to be a real object for consciousness, then the second is determined as the negation of sensory-objective force. It is force as it exists in its true essence, only as an object of understanding.

The first would then be the recoiled force, or force as substance. The second, however, is the inner aspect of things, as their interiority, which is identical to the concept as concept.

This true essence of things is now determined in such a way that it is not immediately accessible to consciousness but rather that consciousness has a mediated relationship to the inner aspect. As understanding, consciousness gazes into the true background of things through the mediation of the interplay of forces.

The mediation, which connects the two extremes—understanding and the inner aspect—is the developed being of force, which for understanding now becomes a vanishing. This is called appearance, for we call semblance that being which, in itself, is immediately a non-being. However, it is not merely semblance but appearance—a totality of semblance. This totality, as a whole or universal, constitutes the inner aspect: the play of forces as the reflection of itself into itself.

In this play, the essences of perception are presented to consciousness in an objective manner, as they are in themselves, namely, as moments that immediately transform into their opposite without rest or stability—the one immediately into the universal, the essential immediately into the inessential, and vice versa. This play of forces is, therefore, the developed negative, but its truth is the positive, namely, the universal, the object existing in itself.

Its being for consciousness is mediated through the movement of appearance, in which the being of perception and sensory-objective reality in general has only negative significance. Consciousness, therefore, reflects itself inwardly into what is true, but as consciousness, it again posits this truth as the objective inner aspect, distinguishing the reflection of things from its own self-reflection. The mediating movement is still objective for it.

Thus, the inner aspect is an extreme opposed to consciousness; yet it is the truth for consciousness because, in it, as in what exists in itself, consciousness simultaneously has the certainty of itself or the moment of its being-for-itself. However, consciousness is not yet aware of this ground, for the being-for-itself that the inner aspect should have is nothing other than the negative movement. But this movement is, for consciousness, still the vanishing objective appearance, not yet its own being-for-itself.

The inner aspect is thus for consciousness indeed a concept, but it does not yet know the nature of the concept.

In this inner truth, as the absolutely universal, which is purified of the opposition between the universal and the individual and has become accessible to understanding, a supersensible world as the true world first unfolds above the sensory world as the world of appearance—above the vanishing “this-side” emerges the abiding “beyond.”

This in-itself is the initial and therefore still incomplete appearance of reason, or merely the pure element in which truth has its essence.

Our object is thus now the syllogism, whose extremes are the inner aspect of things and understanding, and whose middle term is appearance. The movement of this syllogism, however, provides the further determination of what understanding perceives in the inner aspect through the middle term and the experience it gains regarding this relationship of interconnectedness.

The inner aspect is still a pure beyond for consciousness, for it does not yet find itself in it. It is empty because it is merely the negation of appearance and, positively, the simple universal. This way of being of the inner corresponds directly to those who say that the inner essence of things cannot be known. However, the reasoning would need to be understood differently.

Regarding this inner, as it is here immediately presented, there is indeed no knowledge, but not because reason is too short-sighted, limited, or whatever one may call it—about which nothing is yet known, as we have not delved so deeply—but due to the simple nature of the matter itself. That is to say, in emptiness, nothing can be known. Or, expressed otherwise, because it is precisely determined as the beyond of consciousness.

The result is, of course, the same whether a blind person is placed before the richness of the supersensible world—whether this richness consists of an intrinsic content or whether consciousness itself constitutes this content—or whether a sighted person is placed in pure darkness or, if one prefers, in pure light, provided it is only pure light. In pure light, the sighted person perceives just as little as in pure darkness, and precisely as much as the blind person perceives in the fullness of the wealth that might lie before him.

If the inner aspect and its connection to appearance were nothing more than this, then nothing would remain but to cling to appearance—that is, to take as true something we know is not true. Or, to ensure that within this emptiness—which, though initially arising as the emptiness of objective things, must also be taken as the emptiness of all spiritual relations and distinctions of consciousness as consciousness—there is something nonetheless, it would have to be filled with dreams or appearances generated by consciousness itself.

Consciousness would have to accept being treated so poorly, for it would deserve nothing better, as even dreams are better than such emptiness.

The inner aspect, or the supersensible beyond, has come into being; it arises from appearance, and appearance is its mediation—or, appearance is its essence and, indeed, its fulfillment. The supersensible is the sensory and perceived posited as it truly is; but the truth of the sensory and perceived is to be appearance. The supersensible is, therefore, appearance as appearance.

If it is thought that the supersensible is thus the sensory world or the world as it is for immediate sensory certainty and perception, this is a misunderstanding. For appearance is not the world of sensory knowing and perceiving as being, but rather as sublated or, in truth, posited as inner.

It is often said that the supersensible is not appearance; however, in such statements, what is meant by appearance is not appearance in its proper sense but rather the sensory world as real actuality.

The understanding, which is our subject, finds itself at this stage where the inner aspect has only just become the general, as yet unfulfilled in-itself. The play of forces has only this negative significance, of not being in-itself, and this positive significance, of being the mediating factor, but external to it. Its relation to the inner aspect through mediation is its movement, through which it will be fulfilled for the understanding.

Immediately for it, the play of forces is present; however, the true is the simple inner aspect. The movement of force is thus also true only as the simple, in general. But we have seen that this play of forces has the characteristic that the force, which is solicited by another force, is equally the soliciting force for the other, which only becomes soliciting through this process.

In this, there is only the immediate interchange or the absolute exchange of determinateness, which constitutes the sole content of what emerges—either being the general medium or the negative unity. In its determinate emergence, it immediately ceases to be what it appeared as. Through its determinate emergence, it solicits the other side, which then expresses itself. That is, this other side is now immediately what the first was supposed to be.

These two sides—the relation of soliciting and the relation of the determinate opposing content—are, each for itself, absolute inversion and exchange. Yet these two relations are themselves the same, and the difference in form (being the solicited or soliciting) is the same as the difference in content: the solicited, as such, being the passive medium, while the soliciting is the active, the negative unity, or the one.

Through this, all distinction between particular forces present in this movement disappears entirely. These distinctions depended solely on those differences, and the difference between the forces collapses into those two aspects, which in turn merge into one.

Thus, neither force nor the act of soliciting and being solicited, nor the determinateness of being the existing medium or the inwardly reflected unity, is anything individual or distinct opposites. Rather, what exists in this absolute exchange is only the difference as universal, or as a difference in which the many oppositions are reduced.

This difference as universal is, therefore, the simplicity within the play of forces itself and the truth of it; it is the law of force.

Through its relation to the simplicity of the inner or of understanding, the absolutely shifting appearance becomes the simple difference. The inner is at first merely the in-itself universal; this in-itself simple universal, however, is just as essentially the absolute universal difference. For it is the result of the flux itself, or the flux is its essence; but the flux, as posited within the inner, as it truly is, is thereby taken up into the inner as an equally absolute, universal, tranquil, self-same difference.

Or, negation is an essential moment of the universal, and thus mediation within the universal is universal difference. This is expressed in the law, as the stable image of the restless appearance.

The supersensible world is thus a tranquil realm of laws—indeed beyond the perceived world, for the latter only represents the law through constant change—but at the same time, it is just as present within it, and its immediate, silent reflection.

This realm of laws is indeed the truth of understanding, which has its content in the distinction found within the law; yet, it is only its first truth and does not fully encompass appearance. The law is present within appearance, but it is not the entirety of its presence; under ever-changing circumstances, it assumes ever-different realities. Thus, appearance retains an aspect for itself that is not within the inner, or it is not yet truly posited as appearance—as sublated being-for-itself. This deficiency of the law must also reveal itself within the law itself.

What seems to be lacking in the law is that, while it indeed contains distinction, it does so as a general, indeterminate distinction. Insofar as it is not law in general, but a specific law, it contains determinacy; and thus, there are an indeterminate number of laws. However, this multiplicity itself becomes a deficiency, as it contradicts the principle of understanding, for which, as the consciousness of the simple inner, the in-itself universal unity is the true. Therefore, understanding must rather unite the many laws into one law.

For example, the law by which a stone falls and the law by which the celestial spheres move have been comprehended as one law. However, with this unification, the laws lose their determinacy; the law becomes increasingly superficial, and what is found is not truly the unity of these specific laws but a law that omits their determinacy. For instance, the one law that unites the laws of falling bodies on Earth and celestial motion does not, in fact, express them both. The unification of all laws in the general attraction expresses no further content than the bare concept of law itself, which is posited as existing within it.

The general attraction says only this: that everything has a constant distinction from something else. Understanding imagines that it has found a universal law that expresses universal actuality as such, but in fact, it has only found the concept of the law itself—yet in such a way that it also states: all actuality is inherently lawful.

The expression of general attraction is therefore significant, insofar as it opposes thoughtless representation, which presents everything in the form of contingency and assigns determinacy the form of sensory independence.

Thus, the general attraction, or the pure concept of the law, stands opposed to the specific laws. Insofar as this pure concept is regarded as the essence or as the true inner, the determinacy of the specific law itself still belongs to appearance or, rather, to sensory being. However, the pure concept of the law not only transcends the specific law, which, being itself determinate, stands in opposition to other specific laws, but it also transcends the law as such.

The determinacy mentioned is essentially just a vanishing moment, which can no longer appear here as essential; for only the law as the true is present. Yet, the concept of the law is directed against the law itself. In the law, distinction is indeed immediately grasped and incorporated into the universal, but in doing so, the moments whose relation it expresses acquire an existence as indifferent and in-itself existent entities.

These parts of the distinction in the law, however, are themselves determinate aspects. The pure concept of the law, as universal attraction, must be understood in its true significance such that the distinctions present in the law as such also return into the inner as a simple unity; it is the inner necessity of the law.

The law is thus present in a twofold manner: on the one hand, as law, in which the distinctions are expressed as independent moments; on the other hand, in the form of the simple inwardly reflected unity, which can again be called force, but now in such a way that it is not the force pushed back, but force in general or as the concept of force—a mere abstraction that absorbs within itself the distinctions of what attracts and is attracted.

For example, simple electricity is the force, whereas the expression of the distinction falls under the law; this distinction is positive and negative electricity. In the motion of falling, force is the simple, gravity, which has the law that the magnitudes of the distinct moments of motion—elapsed time and distance covered—relate to each other as square root and square.

Electricity itself is not the distinction in itself or, in its essence, the duality of positive and negative electricity; thus, it is often said that it has the law of being this way, or even that it has the property of manifesting itself in this way. This property is indeed the essential and sole property of this force, or it is necessary for it. But here, necessity is an empty word; force must, simply because it must, divide itself in this way.

If, indeed, positive electricity is posited, negative is also necessarily implied; for the positive exists only in relation to the negative, or the positive is in itself the distinction from itself, just as the negative is. But that electricity, as such, divides itself in this way, is not in itself necessary; as simple force, it is indifferent to its law of being positive and negative. And if we call the former its concept and the latter its being, then its concept is indifferent to its being; it merely has this property—in other words, it is not necessary in itself.

This indifference takes on another form when it is said that it belongs to the definition of electricity to be positive and negative, or that this is simply its concept and essence. In that case, its being would mean its existence in general. However, this definition does not contain the necessity of its existence; it exists either because it is found (that is, it is not necessary at all), or its existence is due to other forces (that is, its necessity is external).

But in attributing necessity to its determinacy of being through another, we fall back into the multiplicity of specific laws that we had just set aside in order to consider the law as law. Its concept as a concept, or its necessity, which in all these forms has revealed itself only as an empty word, is what remains to be compared.

The indifference of the law and the force, or of the concept and the being, exists in ways other than those already indicated. In the law of motion, for example, it is necessary that motion divides itself into time and space, or also into distance and velocity. While motion, as the general, is here indeed divided in itself, these parts—time and space, or distance and velocity—do not express this origin from one and the same in themselves; they are indifferent to one another. Space is conceived without time, time without space, and distance at least without velocity—as if they could exist separately—just as their magnitudes are indifferent to one another. They do not relate to one another in the manner of positive and negative; hence, they are not related to each other through their essence.

The necessity of division is therefore present here, but not the necessity of the parts as such for each other. But because of this, even the initial necessity is itself merely an illusory, false necessity. That is, motion is not conceived as simple or as pure essence; instead, it is already conceived as divided. Time and space are its independent parts or essences in and of themselves, or distance and velocity are ways of being or conceiving, one of which can exist without the other, and motion is therefore only their superficial relation, not their essence. Conceived as simple essence or as force, motion would indeed be gravity, which, however, does not contain these distinctions within itself at all.

The difference, therefore, is in both cases not a difference in itself; either the universal, the force, is indifferent to the division present in the law, or the differences, the parts of the law, are indifferent to one another. However, understanding holds the concept of this difference in itself precisely in that the law is, on one hand, the inner, inherently existing, but at the same time differentiated in itself; that this difference is therefore an internal difference is inherent in the fact that the law is a simple force, or as its concept, and thus a difference of the concept.

But this internal difference still falls only within understanding and is not yet posited in the thing itself. Thus, what understanding expresses is only its own necessity—a difference it produces in such a way that it simultaneously states that this difference is not a difference in the thing itself. This necessity, which resides only in the word, is therefore the recounting of the moments that form their circle; they are indeed distinguished, but their difference is simultaneously expressed as not being a difference in the thing itself and is therefore immediately canceled again. This movement is called explanation.

A law is thus expressed, and its inherent universality, or the ground, is distinguished from it as the force. But it is said of this distinction that it is not one, and rather that the ground is entirely like the law. For example, the specific phenomenon of lightning is understood as universal, and this universal is expressed as the law of electricity. The explanation condenses the law into the force, as the essence of the law.

This force is then described as being such that, when it manifests, opposing electric charges arise, which again dissolve into one another. That is, the force is precisely as constituted as the law. It is stated that there is no difference between the two at all. The differences are the pure universal manifestation, or the law, and the pure force; but both have the same content, the same nature. Thus, the difference as a difference in content, i.e., in the thing, is also withdrawn again.

In this tautological movement, understanding, as it turns out, remains steadfast in the calm unity of its object, and the movement occurs only within itself, not within the object; it is an explaining that not only explains nothing but is so clear that, while attempting to say something different from what has already been said, it in fact says nothing new and merely repeats the same thing. Nothing new arises in the matter itself through this movement; instead, it is considered as a movement of understanding.

In this movement, however, we now recognize precisely what was lacking in the law—namely, the absolute flux itself. For this movement, when examined more closely, is immediately the opposite of itself. It posits a distinction that is not only no distinction for us but one that it itself cancels as a distinction. This is the same flux that presented itself as the play of forces; in it was the distinction between the soliciting and solicited, the manifesting force and the force withdrawn into itself. But these distinctions were, in truth, no distinctions at all and therefore immediately canceled themselves out.

It is not merely the simple unity where no distinction is posited, but rather this movement, wherein a distinction is indeed made but is canceled again because it is no distinction. Thus, with explaining, the flux and variation, which previously existed only outside the inner realm and in the realm of appearance, have now penetrated the supersensible itself.

However, our consciousness has transitioned from the inner realm, as the object, over to the other side, into understanding, and now holds this flux within itself.

This flux is not yet a flux of the matter itself but rather presents itself as a pure flux precisely because the content of the moments of the flux remains the same. However, since the concept, as the concept of understanding, is the same as the inner essence of things, this flux becomes, for it, a law of the inner realm. It thus learns that it is the law of appearance itself that distinctions arise, which are no distinctions; or that the like repels itself; and likewise, that distinctions are only such as are in truth no distinctions and cancel themselves; or that the unlike attracts itself.

A second law, whose content is opposed to what was previously called law—namely, the law of enduring, constant distinction—is now introduced. This new law instead expresses the becoming-unlike of the like and the becoming-like of the unlike. The concept demands of thoughtlessness that it bring both laws together and become aware of their opposition.

…

This second law is, of course, also a law or an inner self-sameness, but rather a self-sameness of unlikeness, a constancy of inconstancy. In the play of forces, this law appeared as precisely this absolute transition and as pure flux: the like (the force) dissolves itself into an opposition, which initially appears as an independent distinction but, in fact, proves not to be one; for it is the like that repels itself, and what is repelled thus essentially attracts itself because it is the same. The distinction made, since it is no distinction, thus cancels itself again.

This presents itself as the distinction of the thing itself, or as an absolute distinction, and this distinction of the thing is thus nothing other than the like that has repelled itself and thereby posits only an opposition that is no opposition.

Through this principle, the first supersensible realm, the tranquil domain of laws, the immediate image of the perceived world, is transformed into its opposite. The law, which was in general the self-same, as were its distinctions, is now established as being rather the opposite of itself: the self-same instead repels itself, and the unlike rather establishes itself as the like. In fact, only through this determination does the difference become internal, or a difference in itself, since the like becomes unlike, and the unlike becomes like.

This second supersensible world is thus, in this way, the inverted world; and indeed, since one side is already present in the first supersensible world, this is the inversion of that first one. The inner essence is thereby completed as appearance. For the first supersensible world was only the immediate elevation of the perceived world into the universal element; it had its necessary counterpart in the perceived world, which still retained for itself the principle of flux and change. The first domain of laws lacked this, but now gains it as the inverted world.

According to the law of this inverted world, what is alike in the first world is unlike itself, and what is unlike in the first world is likewise unlike itself, or it becomes like itself. In specific moments, this will appear such that what, in the law of the first world, is sweet, in this inverted essence becomes sour; what in the first is black, in the other is white. What, according to the law of the first, is the North Pole of a magnet, is in its other supersensible essence (namely, in the Earth) the South Pole; and what is the South Pole there is here the North Pole. Similarly, what in the first law of electricity is the oxygen pole becomes, in its other supersensible nature, the hydrogen pole; and conversely, what there is the hydrogen pole here becomes the oxygen pole.

In another sphere, according to the immediate law, revenge upon the enemy is the highest satisfaction of the injured individuality. However, this law — that to one who does not treat me as a self, I must show myself as a being against him and negate his being as such — is inverted by the principle of the other world into its opposite: the restoration of my being as essential through the negation of the foreign being by self-destruction.

When this inversion, which is represented in the punishment of crime, is made into a law, it is again only the law of one world, which stands opposite to an inverted supersensible world, where what is despised in the former is honored, and what is honored in the former is despised. The punishment that degrades and destroys a person in the law of the first world transforms, in its inverted world, into an act that preserves their essence and brings them honor through pardon.

Superficially considered, this inverted world is the opposite of the first in such a way that it has the latter outside itself and repels it as an inverted reality. One is appearance, the other is the essence (Ansich); one is as it exists for another, while the other is as it exists for itself. To use the previous examples: what tastes sweet is actually, or inwardly in the thing, sour; or what in the actual magnet of appearance is the North Pole, in the inner or essential being, is the South Pole; what in the appearing electricity is presented as the oxygen pole, in the non-apparent electricity, would be the hydrogen pole. Or an action that in appearance is a crime might, in its essence, actually be good (a bad action might have a good intention); the punishment, only appearing as a punishment, might in itself or in another world be a benefit to the criminal.

However, such oppositions between inner and outer, between appearance and the supersensible, as two distinct realities, no longer exist here. The rejected differences are no longer distributed between two such substances that would carry them and grant them a separate existence. If they were, the understanding would again fall out of the inner realm back onto its former position. One side or substance would once more be the world of perception, in which one of the two laws would have its essence, while opposite to it would stand an inner world—a world just like the first, but in representation. It could not be shown as a sensible world, nor seen, heard, or tasted, and yet it would be represented as such a sensible world.

But in fact, if what is posited is perceived and its Ansich, as the inverted counterpart of it, is likewise sensibly represented, then the sour, which would be the Ansich of the sweet thing, is a thing just as real as the sour thing itself; the black, which would be the Ansich of the white, is the actual black; the North Pole, which would be the Ansich of the South Pole, is the North Pole present on the same magnet; the oxygen pole, which is the Ansich of the hydrogen pole, is the present oxygen pole of the same column.

However, the actual crime finds its inversion and its Ansich as a possibility in the intention as such, but not in a good one; for the truth of the intention is only the act itself. The crime, in terms of its content, finds its reflection within itself or its inversion in the actual punishment; this is the reconciliation of the law with the reality opposed to it in the crime. Finally, the actual punishment finds its inverted reality within itself insofar as it is a realization of the law, through which the activity it has as punishment annuls itself, reverting from an active to a calm and valid law, and the movement of the individuality against it, and of it against the individuality, is extinguished.

Thus, from the representation of inversion, which constitutes the essence of one side of the supersensible world, the sensory representation of fixing differences in a distinct element of existence must be removed. This absolute concept of difference, as inner difference—the repulsion of the like as like from itself and the equivalence of the unlike as unlike—must be purely presented and understood. It is pure alternation or opposition within itself, the contradiction to be thought.

For in the difference, which is an inner difference, the opposed is not merely one of two—otherwise, it would be a being and not an opposed—but it is the opposed of an opposed, or the other is immediately present within it itself. I may indeed place the opposite here and, over there, what it is opposed to—thus the opposite on one side, in and for itself, without the other. Precisely for this reason, however, in having the opposite here in and for itself, it is the opposite of itself, or it actually contains the other immediately within itself.

Thus, the supersensible world, which is the inverted one, has at the same time encompassed the other and contains it within itself; it is for itself the inverted, that is, the inversion of itself; it is itself and its opposite in a single unity. Only in this way is it the difference as inner or difference in itself, or it exists as infinity.

Through infinity, we see the law completed in its necessity and all moments of appearance absorbed into the inner. The simplicity of the law, which is infinity, means, according to what has emerged, x) it is something self-same that, however, is difference in itself; or it is the like, which repels itself from itself or splits itself. What was called the simple force duplicates itself and becomes the law through its infinity.

β) The split, which constitutes the parts represented in the law, presents itself as existing; and these, when considered without the concept of inner difference, are space and time, or distance and speed, which appear as moments of gravity, just as indifferent and unnecessary for each other as for gravity itself, just as this simple gravity is indifferent to them, or the simple electricity is to the positive and negative.

γ) However, through the concept of inner difference, this unequal and indifferent—space and time, etc.—is a difference that is no difference, or only a difference of the like, and its essence is unity; they are opposed to one another as positive and negative, and their being consists rather in positing themselves as non-being and resolving themselves in unity. Both opposites exist; they are in themselves; they are in themselves as opposites, that is, the opposite of themselves; they contain their other within them and are only one unity.

This simple infinity, or absolute concept, is the simple essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood, so to speak, which, omnipresent, is neither clouded nor interrupted by any difference, but is rather itself all differences as well as their sublation. It thus pulses within itself without moving, trembles within itself without being restless. It is self-same, for the differences are tautological—they are differences that are none.

This self-same essence therefore relates only to itself; relating to itself, however, it becomes an other upon which this relation is directed, and this relation to itself is rather the splitting, or precisely this self-sameness is internal difference. These split entities are thus in and for themselves, each an opposite—of another, and in so being, the other is already expressed along with it. Or, it is not the opposite of another, but only the pure opposite, and thus it is inherently the opposite of itself. Or, it is not an opposite at all, but purely for itself, a pure self-same essence without any difference within it. In this case, there is no need to ask—let alone consider it a torment for philosophy or regard it as unanswerable—how difference or otherness arises from this pure essence, for the splitting has already occurred, the difference has been excluded from the self-same and placed alongside it. What was supposed to be the self-same is thus already one of the split entities rather than being the absolute essence.

The self-same splits itself; this equally means it sublates itself as already split—it sublates itself as otherness. The unity, of which it is often said that difference cannot arise from it, is in fact itself only one moment of the splitting; it is the abstraction of simplicity opposed to difference. But since it is an abstraction, only one of the opposites, it has already been stated that it is the splitting; for if unity is a negative, an opposite, then it is thereby posited as that which contains opposition within itself.

The distinctions of splitting and becoming self-same are therefore only this movement of sublation; for since the self-same, which is to split or become its opposite, is an abstraction or is itself already split, its splitting is thereby a sublation of what it is, and thus the sublation of its being split. Becoming self-same is equally a splitting; what becomes self-same thus stands opposed to splitting, meaning it places itself on that side or rather becomes itself a split entity.

Infinity, or this absolute restlessness of pure self-movement, wherein what is determined in any way—for example, as being—is rather the opposite of this determination, has indeed been the soul of all that has preceded, but only within does it itself emerge freely. Appearance, or the play of forces, already represents it, but as explanation, it initially steps forth freely; and finally, when it becomes an object for consciousness as what it is, consciousness is self-consciousness.

The explanation of the understanding initially merely describes what self-consciousness is. It removes the already purified but still indifferent differences present in the law and unites them in one unity, the force. However, this becoming-equal is equally and immediately a splitting, for it only abolishes the differences and posits the unity of force by making a new difference between law and force, which, at the same time, is no difference. And to the extent that this difference is equally no difference, the understanding continues by again abolishing this difference, allowing force to be constituted in just the same way as the law.

This movement or necessity is thus still necessity and the movement of understanding, or as such, it is not its object. Instead, it has as objects positive and negative electricity, distance, velocity, gravitational force, and countless other things that make up the content of the moments of the movement. In explanation, there is thus so much self-satisfaction because consciousness, in this process, as it might be expressed, is in immediate dialogue with itself, enjoying only itself, seemingly occupied with something else but, in truth, only revolving around itself.

In the opposite law, as the inversion of the first law, or in the inner difference, infinity itself does indeed become the object of understanding. Yet, the understanding misses it as such again by distributing the difference in itself, the self-repulsion of the like, and the attraction of the unlike, into two worlds or two substantial elements. The movement, as it exists in experience, appears to it here as an event, and the like and unlike are predicates whose essence is a being-like substrate.

What is an object to the understanding in a sensory guise is for us, in its essential form, a pure concept. This grasping of the difference as it truly is, or the grasping of infinity as such, is for us or in itself. The exposition of its concept belongs to science; however, consciousness, as it immediately holds it, emerges again as its own form or as a new shape of consciousness, which does not recognize its essence in the preceding but perceives it as something entirely different.

Thus, as this concept of infinity becomes its object, it is consciousness of the difference as one that is immediately equally annulled; it is for itself, it is the distinguishing of the undistinguished, or self-consciousness.

I distinguish myself from myself, and in doing so, it is immediately apparent to me that this differentiated is not distinct. I, the like, repel myself from myself; but this differentiated, opposed, is, in its being distinct, immediately no difference for me.

The consciousness of another, of an object in general, is indeed necessarily self-consciousness—reflection into itself, consciousness of itself in its otherness. The necessary progression from the previous shapes of consciousness, whose truth was a thing, something other than themselves, precisely expresses this: that not only is the consciousness of a thing only possible for a self-consciousness, but that this alone is the truth of those shapes. However, this truth exists only for us, not yet for consciousness itself.

Self-consciousness has only now become for itself, not yet as unity with consciousness in general.

We see that, in the inner aspect of appearance, understanding is in truth nothing other than the appearance itself, though not as it is in the play of forces, but the same in its absolutely general moments and their movement, and indeed it experiences only itself. Elevated above perception, consciousness presents itself as connected with the supersensible through the mediation of appearance, through which it looks into this background. The two extremes—one being the pure inner essence, the other the inner that looks into this pure essence—have now collapsed into one, and as these extremes dissolve, so too does the mediation, as something distinct from them, disappear.

Thus, this curtain is drawn away from the inner, and the sight of the inner into itself becomes present: the sight of the undifferentiated, like-named [essence], which repels itself, positing itself as a differentiated inner, but for which the undifferentiation of both is just as immediate—self-consciousness.

It is revealed that behind the so-called curtain, which is supposed to conceal the inner, there is nothing to see unless we ourselves go behind it, making it evident both that something is there to be seen and that the act of seeing it requires our going there. Yet, it is also revealed that one cannot simply go behind it without due preparation. This knowledge—what is the truth of the representation of appearance and its inner essence—is itself only the result of an elaborate movement through which the modes of consciousness, such as opinion, perception, and understanding, vanish. It will also become clear that the recognition of what consciousness knows, in knowing itself, requires further steps, whose elucidation will follow.

V.
THE TRUTH
OF THE
CERTAINTY OF ITSELF