In being-for-self, qualitative being finds its consummation; it is infinite being. The being of the beginning lacks all determination. Determinate being is sublated but only immediately sublated being. It thus contains, to begin with, only the first negation, which is itself immediate; it is true that being, too, is preserved in it and both are united in determinate being in a simple unity, but for that very reason they are in themselves still unequal to each other and their unity is not yet posited. Determinate being is therefore the sphere of difference, of dualism, the field of finitude. Determinateness is determinateness as such, in which being is only relatively, not absolutely determined. In being-for-self, the difference between being and determinateness or negation is posited and equalised; quality, otherness, limit — like reality, being-in-itself, the ought, and so on-are the imperfect embodiments of the negation in being in which the difference of both still lies at the base. Since, however, in finitude the negation has passed into infinity, into the posited negation of negation, it is simple self-relation and consequently in its own self the equalisation with being, absolutely determined being.
Being-for-self is first, immediately a being-for-self — the One.
Secondly, the One passes into a plurality of ones — repulsion — and this otherness of the ones is sublated in their ideality — attraction.
Thirdly, we have the alternating determination of repulsion and attraction in which they collapse into equilibrium, and quality, which in being-for-self reached its climax, passes over into quantity.
We have arrived at the general Notion of being-for-self. All that is now necessary to justify our use of the term for this Notion is to demonstrate that the said Notion corresponds to the general idea associated with the expression, being-for-self. And so indeed it seems; we say that something is for itself in so far as it transcends otherness, its connection and community with other, has repelled them and made abstraction from them. For it, the other has being only as sublated, as its moment; being-for-self consists in having so transcended limitation, its otherness, that it is, as this negation, the infinite return into itself. Consciousness, even as such, contains in principle the determination of being-for-self in that it represents to itself an object which it senses, or intuits, and so forth; that is, it has within it the content of the object, which in this manner has an 'ideal' being; in its very intuiting and, in general, in its entanglement with the negative of itself, with its other, consciousness is still only in the presence of its own self. Being-for-self is the polemical, negative attitude towards the limiting other, and through this negation of the latter is a reflectedness-into-self, although along with this return of consciousness into itself and the ideality of the object, the reality of the object is also still preserved, in that it is at the same time known as an external existence. Consciousness thus belongs to the sphere of Appearance, or is the dualism, on the one hand of knowing an alien object external to it, and on the other hand of being for its own self, having the object ideally [ideell] present in it; of being not only in the presence of the other, but therein being in the presence of its own self. Self-consciousness, on the other hand, is being-for-self as consummated and posited; the side of connection with an other, with an external object, is removed. Self-consciousness is thus the nearest example of the presence of infinity; granted, of an infinity which is still abstract, yet which, at the same time, is a very different concrete determination from being-for-self in general, the infinity of which has a determinateness which is still quite qualitative.
As already mentioned, being-for-self is infinity which has collapsed into simple being; it is determinate being in so far as the negative nature of infinity, which is the negation of negation, is from now on in the explicit form of the immediacy of being, as only negation in general, as simple qualitative determinateness. But being, which in such determinateness is determinate being, is also at once distinct from being-for-self, which is only being-for-self in so far as its determinateness is the infinite one above-mentioned; nevertheless, determinate being is at the same time also a moment of being-for-self; for this latter, of course, also contains being charged with negation. Thus the determinateness which in determinate being as such is an other, and a being-for-other, is bent back into the infinite unity of being-for-self, and the moment of determinate being is present in being-for-self as a being-for-one.
This moment expresses the manner in which the finite is present in its unity with the infinite, or is an ideal being [Ideelles]. In being-for-self, negation is not present as a determinateness or limit, or consequently as a relation to a determinate being which is for it an other. Now though this moment has been designated as being-for-one, there is as yet nothing present for which it would be-no one, of which it would be the moment. There is, in fact, nothing of the kind as yet fixed in being-for-self; that for which something (and here there is no something) would be, whatever the other side as such might be, is likewise a moment, is itself only a being-for-one, not yet a one. Consequently, what we have before us is still an undistinguishedness of the two sides which may be suggested by being-for-one; there is only one being-for-other, and because there is only one, this too is only a being-for-one; there is only the one ideality of that, for which or in which there is supposed to be a determination as moment, and of that which is supposed to be a moment in it. Being-for-one and being-for-self are, therefore, not genuinely opposed determinatenesses. If the difference is assumed for a moment and we speak of a being-for-self, then it is this itself which, as the sublatedness of otherness, relates itself to itself as the sublated other, and is therefore 'for one'; it is related in its other only to its own self. Ideal being [Ideelles] is necessarily 'for one', but it is not for an other; the one for which it is, is only itself. The ego, therefore, spirit as such, or God, are 'ideal' because they are infinite; but as being for themselves they are not 'ideally' different from that which is 'for one'. For if they were, they would be only immediate existences, or, more precisely, determinate being and a being-for-other, because that which would be for them would be, not themselves but an other, if they were supposed to lack the moment of being 'for one'. God is, therefore, for himself in so far as he himself is that which is for him.
To be 'for self' and to be 'for one' are therefore not different meanings of ideality, but are essential, inseparable moments of it.
The German expression for enquiring after the quality of anything — an expression which appears strange at first sight — 'What for a thing [was für ein Ding] something is, brings into prominence, in its reflection-into-self, the moment here considered. This expression is in its origin idealistic, since it does not ask what this thing A is for another thing B, not what this man is for another man; on the contrary, it asks what this thing, this man, is for a thing, for a man, so that this being-for-one has at the same time returned into this thing, into this man himself; in other words that which is, and that for which it is, are one and the same — an identity, such as ideality also must be considered to be.
Ideality attaches in the first place to the sublated determinations as distinguished from that in which they are sublated, which by contrast can be taken as the real. But thus the ideal is again one of the moments, and the real the other; but the significance of ideality is that both determinations are equally only for one and count only for one, which one ideality is, without distinction, reality. In this sense self-consciousness, spirit, God, is ideal as an infinite relation purely to self. Ego is for ego, both are the same, the ego is twice named, but so that each of the two is only a 'for-one', is ideal; spirit is only for spirit, God only for God, and this unity alone is God, God as spirit. Self-consciousness, however, as consciousness, enters into the difference of itself and of an other — or of its ideality, in which it produces conceptions, and of its reality, inasmuch as its conception has a determinate content which still has the side of being known as the unsublated negative, as a real, determinate being. However, to call thought, spirit, God, only an ideal being, presupposes the standpoint from which finite being counts as the real, and the ideal being or being-for-one has only a one-sided meaning.
In a previous Remark the principle of idealism was indicated and it was said that in any philosophy the precise question was, how far has the principle been carried through. As to the manner in which it is carried through, a further observation may be made in connection with the category we have reached. This carrying through of the principle depends primarily on whether the finite reality still retains an independent self-subsistence alongside the being-for-self, but also on whether in the infinite itself the moment of being-for-one, a relationship of the ideal to itself as ideal, is posited. Thus the Eleatic Being or Spinoza's substance is only the abstract negation of all determinateness, without ideality being posited in substance itself. With Spinoza, as will be mentioned later, infinity is only the absolute affirmation of a thing, hence only the unmoved unity; consequently, substance does not even reach the determination of being-for-self, much less that of subject and spirit. The idealism of the noble Malebranche is in itself more explicit. It contains the following fundamental thoughts: because God includes within himself all eternal truths, the ideas and perfections of all things, so that they are his and his alone, we see them only in him; God awakens in us our sensations of objects by an action in which there is nothing sensuous, whereby we imagine to ourselves that we obtain not only the idea of the object which represents its essential nature, but also the sensation of its existence. As then the eternal truths and Ideas (essentialities) of things are in God, are ideal, so also is their existence in God ideal, not an actual existence; though they are our objects, they are only for one. This moment of explicit and concrete idealism which is lacking in Spinozism is present here, in that absolute ideality is characterised as a knowing. Pure and profound as this idealism is, the above relations on the one hand still contain much that is indeterminate for thought and, on the other hand, their content is directly quite concrete (sin and salvation, etc., enter directly into them); the logical determination of infinity on which they would have to be based is not explicitly realised, and thus this lofty and rich idealism, though it is the product of a pure, speculative spirit, is still not the product of a pure, speculative thinking which alone can truly establish it.
The Leibnizian idealism lies more within the bounds of the abstract Notion. The ideating being, the monad, of Leibniz is essentially ideal [Ideelles]. Ideation is a being-for-self in which the determinatenesses are not limits, and consequently not a determinate being, but only moments. Ideation is also, it is true, a more concrete determination, but here it has no further signification than that of ideality; for with Leibniz, even that which lacks consciousness is an ideating, percipient being. In this system, then, otherness is sublated; spirit and body, or the monads generally, are not others for one another, they do not limit one another and do not affect one another; all relationships generally which are based on a determinate being fall away. The diversity is only ideal and inner and in it the monad remains related only to itself; the alterations develop within the monad and are not relations of it to others. What is taken to be, in accordance with the real determination, a determinately existent relation of the monads to one another, is an independent, only simultaneous becoming, enclosed within the being-for-self of each of them. That there is a plurality of monads, that therefore they are also determined as others, does not concern the monads themselves; this is the reflection, external to them ' of a third. They are not in themselves others to one another; the being-for-self is kept pure, and is free from the accompaniment of any real being. But herein lies, too, the inadequacy of this system. The monads are such ideating, percipient beings only in themselves, or in God as the monad of monads, or even in the system. Otherness is equally present, whether in the ideation itself or in whatever shape the third assumes which considers them as others, as a plurality. The plurality of their determinate being is only excluded, and that only momentarily, the monads being posited as not-others only by abstraction. If it is a third which posits their otherness, it is also a third which sublates it; but this entire movement which gives them their ideality falls outside them. Should it be pointed out that this movement of thought itself falls, nevertheless, only within an ideating monad, the reply must be that the very content of such thinking is within itself external to itself. The transition from the oneness of absolute ideality (the monad of monads) to the category of the abstract (connectionless) plurality of determinate being, is immediate and uncomprehended (it is effected through the image of creation); and the transition from this plurality back to the oneness is equally abstract. Ideality, ideation generally, remains something formal, as also does ideation raised to the form of consciousness. Just as consciousness is conceived as a one-sided form which is indifferent to its determination and content, in the above-mentioned fancy of Leibniz — namely, that the magnetic needle, if it possessed consciousness, would regard its direction to the north as freely determined by itself — so, too, ideality in the monads is a form remaining external to the plurality. Ideality is supposed to be immanent in them, their nature is supposed to be ideation; but their relationship is on the one hand their harmony, which does not fall within the sphere of their determinate being and is, consequently, pre-established; and on the other hand, this determinate being of theirs is not grasped as a being-for-other, or, further, as ideality, but is determined only as an abstract plurality; the ideality of the plurality and the further determination of it to harmony are not immanent in and proper to this plurality itself.
Other idealisms, as for example those of Kant and Fichte, do not go beyond the ought or the infinite progress, and remain in the dualism of determinate being and being-for-self. True, in these systems, the thing-in-itself or the infinite shock or resistance principle [Anstoss] enters directly into the ego and becomes only something for it; but it proceeds from a free otherness which is perpetuated as a negative being-in-itself. The ego is therefore undoubtedly determined as ideal [das Ideelle], as being for itself, as infinite self-relation; but the moment of being-for-one is not completed to the point where the beyond, or the direction to the beyond, vanishes.
Being-for-self is the simple unity of itself and its moment, being-for-one. There is before us only a single determination, the self-relation of the sublating. The moments of being-for-self have collapsed into the undifferentiatedness which is immediacy or being, but an immediacy based on the negating which is posited as its determination. Being-for-self is thus a being-for-self, and since in this immediacy its inner meaning vanishes, it is the wholly abstract limit of itself-the one.
Attention may be drawn in advance to the difficulty involved in the following exposition of the development of the one and to its cause. The moments which constitute the Notion of the one as a being-for-self fall asunder in the development. They are: They are: (1) negation in general, (2) two negations, (3) two that are therefore the same, (4) sheer opposites, (5) self-relation, identity as such, (6) relation which is negative and yet to its own self. The reason for the separation of these moments here is that the form of immediacy, of being enters into being-for-self as a being-for-self; through this immediacy each moment is posited as a distinct, affirmative determination, and yet they are no less inseparable. Hence of each determination the opposite must equally be asserted; it is this contradiction, together with the abstract nature of the moments, which constitutes the difficulty.
The one is the simple self-relation of being-for-self in which its moments have collapsed in themselves and in which, consequently, being-for-self has the form of immediacy, and its moments therefore now have a determinate being.
As self-relation of the negative the one is a process of determining — and as self-relation it is an infinite self-determining. But because being-for-self is now in the form of immediacy, these differences are no longer posited only as moments of one and the same self-determination, but as at the same time affirmatively present. The ideality of being-for-self as a totality thus reverts, in the first place, to reality and that too in its most fixed, abstract form, as the one. In the one, being-for-self is the posited unity of simple being and determinate being, as the absolute union of the relation to other and self-relation; but, further, the determinateness of being also stands opposed to the determination of the infinite negation, to the self-determination, so that what the one is in itself is now only ideally present in it, and the negative consequently is an other distinct from it. What shows itself to be present as distinct from the one is its own self-determining; the unity of the one with itself as thus distinguished from itself is reduced to a relation, and as a negative unity it is a negation of its own self as other, exclusion of the one as other from itself, from the one.
In its own self the one simply is; this its being is neither a determinate being, nor a determinateness as a relation to an other, nor is it a constitution; what it is, in fact, is the accomplished negation of this circle of categories. Consequently, the one is not capable of becoming an other: it is unalterable.
It is indeterminate but not, however, like being; its indeterminateness is the determinateness which is a relation to its own self, an absolute determinedness-posited being-within-self. As the one is in accordance with its Notion a self-related negation, it has difference in it — a turning away from itself to an other; but this movement is immediately turned back on itself, because it follows from this moment of self-determining that there is no other to which the one can go, and the movement has thus returned into itself.
In this simple immediacy the mediation of determinate being and of ideality itself, and with it all difference and manifoldness, has vanished. There is nothing in it; this nothing, the abstraction of self-relation, is here distinguished from the being-within-self itself; it is a posited nothing because this being-within-self no longer has the simple character of something but, as a mediation, has a concrete determination; but as abstract, though it is identical with the one, it is distinct from its determination. This nothing, then, posited as in the one, is the nothing as the void. The void is thus the quality of the one in its immediacy.
The one is the void as the abstract relation of the negation to itself. However, the void as the nothing is absolutely distinct from the simple immediacy, the also affirmative being of the one, and since they stand in one and the same relation, namely, that of the one, their difference is posited; but as distinct from the affirmative being of the one, the nothing as the void is outside it.
Being-for-self determined in this manner as the one and the void has again acquired a determinate being. The one and the void have negative relation to self for their common, simple base. The moments of being-for-self emerge from this unity, become external to themselves; through the simple unity of the moments there enters the determination of being and the unity thus reduces itself to being only one side, and so to a determinate being; and in this it is confronted by its other determination, the negation as such, likewise as a determinate being of the nothing, as the void.
The one in this form of determinate being is the stage of the category which made its appearance with the ancients as the atomistic principle, according to which the essence of things is the atom and the void. The abstraction which has developed into this form has acquired a greater determinateness than the being of Parmenides and the becoming of Heraclitus. Lofty as is this abstraction, in that it makes this simple determinateness of the one and the void the principle of all things, deriving the infinite variety of the world from this simple antithesis and boldly presuming to know the former from the latter, it is equally easy for figurate conception to picture here atoms and alongside them the void. It is, therefore, no wonder that the atomistic principle has at all times been upheld; the equally trivial and external relation of composition which must be added to achieve a semblance of concreteness and variety is no less popular than the atoms themselves and the void. The one and the void is being-for-self, the highest qualitative being-within-self, sunk back into complete externality; the immediacy or being of the one, because it is the negation of all otherness, is posited as being no longer determinable and alterable; such therefore is its absolute, unyielding rigidity that all determination, variety, conjunction remains for it an utterly external relation.
However, with the first thinkers the atomistic principle did not remain in this externality but besides its abstraction had also a speculative determination in the fact that the void was recognised as the source of movement, which is an entirely different relation of the atom and the void from the mere juxtaposition and mutual indifference of these two determinations. That the void is the source of movement has not the trivial meaning that something can only move into an empty space and not into an already occupied space, for in such a space it would not find any more open room — understood in this sense, the void would be only the presupposition or condition of movement, not its ground, just as the movement itself, too, would be presupposed as already existing, the essential point, its ground, being forgotten. The view that the void constitutes the ground of movement contains the profounder thought that in the negative as such there lies the ground of becoming, of the unrest of self-movement — in which sense, however, the negative is to be taken as the veritable negativity of the infinite. The void is the ground of movement only as the negative relation of the one to its negative, to the one, that is to itself, which however is posited as having determinate being.
But in other respects, the further determinations of the ancients concerning the shape and position of the atoms and the direction of their movement, are arbitrary and external enough and, in addition, stand in direct contradiction to the basic determination of the atom. Physics with its molecules and particles suffers from the atom, this principle of extreme externality, which is thus utterly devoid of the Notion, just as much as does that theory of the State which starts from the particular will of individuals.
The one and the void constitute the first stage of the determinate being of being-for-self. Each of these moments has negation for its determination and is at the same time posited as a determinate being; according to the former determination the one and the void are the relation of negation to negation as of an other to its other: the one is negation in the determination of being, and the void is negation in the determination of non-being. But the one is essentially self-relation only as related negation, that is, it is itself that which the void outside it is supposed to be. Each, however, is also posited as an affirmative determinate being, one as a being-for-self as such, the other an unspecified determinate being in general, and each is related to the other as to another determinate being.
The being-for-self of the one, is, however, essentially the ideality of determinate being and of other: it relates itself not to an other but only to itself. But since being-for-self is fixed as a one, as affirmatively for itself, as immediately present, its negative relation to itself is at the same time a relation to an affirmative being; and since the relation is just as much negative, that to which it relates itself remains determined as a determinate being and an other; as essentially self-relation, the other is not indeterminate negation as the void, but is likewise a one. The one is consequently a becoming of many ones.
Strictly, however, this is not really a becoming, for becoming is a transition of being into nothing: the one, on the other hand, becomes only one. The one, as related, contains the negative as a relation, has it therefore within it. Instead of a becoming, then, there is present first the immanent relation of the one itself; and secondly, since the relation is negative and the one is at the same time affirmatively present, the one repels itself from itself. The negative relation of the one to itself is repulsion.
This repulsion as thus the positing of many ones but through the one itself, is the one's own coming-forth-from-itself but to such outside it as are themselves only ones. This is repulsion according to its Notion, repulsion in itself. The second repulsion is different from it, it is what is immediately suggested to external reflection: repulsion not as the generation of ones, but only as the mutual repelling of ones presupposed as already present. We have now to see how the first repulsion, repulsion in itself, determines itself to the second, to external repulsion.
First of all we must establish what determinations are possessed by the many ones as such. As an explication of what the one is in itself, the becoming of the many, or the generation of the many, vanishes immediately; the products of the process are ones, and these are not for an other, but relate themselves infinitely to themselves. The one repels only itself from itself, therefore does not become but already is; and what is represented as repelled is likewise a one, a one that is. To repel and to be repelled applies equally to both, and makes no difference.
The ones are thus presupposed relatively to one another — supposed or posited by the repulsion of the one from itself; pre-supposed as not posited. Their positedness is sublated, and as related only to themselves they are affirmative beings relatively to one another.
Thus plurality appears not as an otherness, but as a determination completely external to the one. The one, in repelling itself, remains self-related, like that which to begin with is taken as repelled. That the ones are related to one another as others, are brought together into the determinateness of plurality, does not therefore concern the ones. If plurality were a relation of the ones themselves to one another then they would limit one another and there would be affirmatively present in them a being-for-other. Their relation-and this they have through their implicit unity — as here posited is determined as none: it is again the previously posited void. The void is their limit but a limit which is external to them, in which they are not to be for one another. The limit is that in which what are limited both are and are not: but the void is determined as pure non-being, and this alone constitutes their limit.
The repulsion of the one from itself is the explication of that which the one is in itself; but infinity as explicated is here the infinity which has come forth from itself; it has come forth from itself by virtue of the immediacy of the infinite, the one. It is a simple relating of the one to the one, and no less also the absolute absence of relation in the one; it is the former according to the simple, affirmative self-relation of the one, and the latter according to the self-same relation as negative. In other words, the plurality of the one is its own positing; the one is nothing but the negative relation of the one to itself, and this relation-and therefore the one itself-is the plural one. But equally, plurality is absolutely external to the one; for the one is, precisely, the sublating of otherness; repulsion is its self-relation and simple equality with itself. The plurality of ones is infinity as a contradiction which unconstrainedly produces itself.
We have previously referred to the Leibnizian idealism. We may add here that this idealism which started from the ideating monad, which is determined as being for itself, advanced only as far as the repulsion just considered, and indeed only to plurality as such, in which each of the ones is only for its own self and is indifferent to the determinate being and being-for-self of the others; or, in general, for the one, there are no others at all. The monad is, by itself, the entire closed universe; it requires none of the others. But this inner manifoldness which it possesses in its ideational activity in no way affects its character as a being-for-self. The Leibnizian idealism takes up the plurality immediately as something given and does not grasp it as a repulsion of the monads. Consequently, it possesses plurality only on the side of its abstract externality. The atomistic philosophy does not possess the Notion of ideality; it does not grasp the one as an ideal being, that is, as containing within itself the two moments of being-for-self and being-for-it, but only as a simple, dry, real being-for-self. It does, however, go beyond mere indifferent plurality; the atoms become further determined in regard to one another even though, strictly speaking, this involves an inconsistency; whereas, on the contrary, in that indifferent independence of the monads, plurality remains as a fixed fundamental determination, so that the connection between them falls only in the monad of monads, or in the philosopher who contemplates them.
The many ones have affirmative being; their determinate being or relation to one another is a non-relation, is external to them — the abstract void. But they themselves are now this negative relation to themselves as to affirmatively present others — the demonstrated contradiction, infinity posited in the immediacy of being. Thus repulsion now simply finds immediately before it that which is repelled by it. In this determination repulsion is an exclusion; the one repels from itself only the many ones which are neither generated nor posited by it. This mutual or all-round repelling is relative, is limited by the being of the ones.
The plurality is, in the first place, non-posited otherness, the limit is only the void, only that in which the ones are not. But in the limit they also are; they are in the void, or their repulsion is their common relation.
This mutual repulsion is the posited determinate being of the many ones; it is not their being-for-self, for according to this they would be differentiated as many only in a third, but it is their own differentiating which preserves them. They negate one another reciprocally, posit one another as being only for-one. But at the same time they equally negate this being only for-one; they repel this their ideality and are. Thus the moments which in ideality are absolutely united are separated. The one is, in its being-for-self, also for-one, but this one for which it is is its own self; its differentiation of itself is immediately sublated. But in plurality the differentiated one has a being; the being-for-one as determined in exclusion is, consequently, a being-for-other. Each is thus repelled by an other, is sublated and made into that which is not for itself but for-one, and that another one.
The being-for-self of the many ones shows itself, therefore, as their self-preservation through the mediation of their mutual repulsion in which they mutually sublate themselves and each posits the others as a mere being-for-other; but the self-preservation at the same time consists in repelling this ideality and in positing the ones as not being for-an-other. This self-preservation of the ones through their negative relation to one another is, however, rather their dissolution.
The ones not only are, but they maintain themselves through their reciprocal exclusion. Now in the first place that which should enable the ones to maintain their diversity in opposition to their being negated is their being, in fact, their being-in-itself as opposed to their relation-to-other; this being-in-itself is that they are ones. But this is what they all are; they are in their being-in-itself the same instead of this latter being the fixed point of their diversity. Secondly, their determinate being and their relation to one another, that is, their positing of themselves as ones, is the reciprocal negating of themselves; but this likewise is one and the same determination of them all, through which then they rather posit themselves as identical; similarly, because they are in themselves the same, their ideality, instead of being posited through others, is their own, and they therefore repel it just as little. Consequently, as regards both their being and their positing, they are only one affirmative unity.
This reflection that the ones, determined both as simply being and as inter-related, show themselves to be one and the same and indistinguishable, is a comparison made by us. But we have also to see what is posited in them in their interrelatedness. They are — this is presupposed in this inter-relatedness — and they are only in so far as they reciprocally negate one another and at the same time hold themselves aloof from this their ideality, their negatedness, that is, negate this reciprocal negating. But they are only in so far as they negate; consequently, since this their negating is negated, their being is negated. It is true that since they are, they would not be negated by this negating, which for them is only something external; this negating by the other rebounds off them and touches only their surface. And yet it is only through this negating of the others that the ones return into themselves: they are only as this mediation, and this their return is their self-preservation and their being-for-self. Since their negating is ineffectual because of the resistance offered by the ones either as simply affirmative or as negating, they do not return into themselves, do not preserve themselves, and so are not.
The observation was made above that the ones are the same, each of them is a one like the other. This is not only a relating of them by us, an external bringing of them together; on the contrary, repulsion is itself a relating; the one which excludes the ones relates itself to them, to the ones, that is, to its own self. Hence the negative relationship of the ones to one another is only a going-together-with-self. This identity into which their repelling passes over is the sublating of their diversity and externality which they, as excluding, ought rather to maintain relatively to one another.
This positing of themselves by the many ones into a single one is attraction.
Self-subsistence pushed to the point of the one as a being-for-self is abstract, formal, and destroys itself. It is the supreme, most stubborn error, which takes itself for the highest truth, manifesting in more concrete forms as abstract freedom, pure ego and, further, as Evil. It is that freedom which so misapprehends itself as to place its essence in this abstraction, and flatters itself that in thus being with itself it possesses itself in its purity. More specifically, this self-subsistence is the error of regarding as negative that which is its own essence, and of adopting a negative attitude towards it. Thus it is the negative attitude towards itself which, in seeking to possess its own being destroys it, and this its act is only the manifestation of the futility of this act. The reconciliation is the recognition that the object of this negative attitude is rather its own essence, and is only the letting go of the negativity of its being-for-self instead of holding fast to it.
It is an ancient proposition that the one is many and especially that the many are one. We may repeat here the observation that the truth of the one and the many expressed in propositions appears in an inappropriate form, that this truth is to be grasped and expressed only as a becoming, as a process, a repulsion and attraction-not as being, which in a proposition has the character of a stable unity. We have already mentioned and recalled the dialectic of Plato in the Parmenides concerning the derivation of the many from the one, namely, from the proposition: the one is. The inner dialectic of the Notion has been stated; it is easiest to grasp the dialectic of the proposition, that the many are one, as an external reflection; and it may properly be grasped externally here inasmuch as the object too, the many, are mutually external. It directly follows from this comparison of the many with one another that any one is determined simply like any other one; each is a one, each is one of the many, is by excluding the others — so that they are absolutely the same, there is present one and only one determination. This is the fact, and all that has to be done is to grasp this simple fact. The only reason why the understanding stubbornly refuses to do so is that it has also in mind, and indeed rightly so, the difference; but the existence of this difference is just as little excluded because of the said fact, as is the certain existence of the said fact in spite of the difference. One could, as it were, comfort understanding for the naive manner in which it grasps the fact of the difference, by assuring it that the difference will also come in again.
Repulsion is the self-differentiating of the one, at first into many, whose negative relationship is without effect because they presuppose one another as affirmatively present; it is only the ought-to-be of ideality. In attraction, however, ideality is realised. Repulsion passes over into attraction, the many ones into one one. Both repulsion and attraction are in the first place distinct from each other, the former as the reality of the ones, the latter as their posited ideality. The relation of attraction to repulsion is such that the former has the latter for presupposition. Repulsion provides the material for attraction. If there were no ones there would be nothing to attract; the conception of a perpetual attraction, of an absorption of the ones, presupposes an equally perpetual production of them. Spatial attraction as pictorially conceived makes the flow of attracted ones proceed uninterruptedly; in place of the atoms which vanish in the centre of attraction, another multitude comes forth from the void, and so on to infinity if one wishes. If attraction were conceived as accomplished, the many being brought to the point of the one one, then there would be present only an inert one and no longer any attraction. The ideality present in attraction still also bears within itself the determination of the negation of itself, the many ones of which it is the relatedness: attraction is inseparable from repulsion.
In the first place, attraction belongs equally to each of the many ones as immediately present; none has any precedence over another; this would result in an equilibrium in attraction, or, strictly speaking, an equilibrium of attraction and repulsion itself, and an inert state of rest in which ideality would have no determinate being. But there can be no question here of a precedence of such a one over another, for this would presuppose a specific difference between them; rather is attraction the positing of the immediately present undifferentiatedness of the ones. It is only attraction itself that is a positing of a one distinct from other ones; these are only immediate ones which should maintain themselves through repulsion; but through their posited negation arises the one of attraction, which is consequently determined as mediated, the one posited as one. The first ones, as immediate, do not in their ideality return into themselves but have this ideality in another one.
The one one, however, is the realised ideality, posited in the one; it is attraction through the mediation of repulsion, and it contains this mediation within itself as its determination. Thus it does not absorb the attracted ones into itself as into a centre, that is, it does not sublate them abstractly. Since it contains repulsion in its determination, this latter at the same time preserves the ones as many in it; through its attracting, so to speak, it acquires something for itself, obtains an extension or filling. There is thus in it the unity of repulsion and attraction in general.
The difference of the one and the many is now determined as the difference of their relation to one another, with each other, a relation which splits into two, repulsion and attraction, each of which is at first independent of the other and stands apart from it, the two nevertheless being essentially connected with each other. Their as yet indeterminate unity is to be more precisely ascertained.
Repulsion, as the basic determination of the one, appears first and as immediate, like its ones which although generated by repulsion are yet also posited as immediate. As such, repulsion is indifferent to attraction which is externally added to it as thus presupposed. Attraction on the other hand is not presupposed by repulsion in such a manner that the former is supposed to have no part in the positing and being of the latter, that is, as if repulsion were not already in its own self the negation of itself and the ones were not already in themselves negated. In this way we have repulsion abstractly on its own account and, similarly, attraction relatively to the ones as affirmatively present, has the side of an immediate determinate being and comes to them as an other.
If repulsion is thus taken merely by itself, then it is the dispersion of the many ones into somewhere undetermined, outside the sphere of repulsion itself; for repulsion is this, to negate the interrelatedness of the many: the absence of any relation between them is the determination of the many taken abstractly. But repulsion is not merely the void; the ones, as unrelated, do not repel or exclude one another, this constitutes their determination. Repulsion is, although negative, still essentially relation; the mutual repulsion and flight is not a liberation from what is repelled and fled from, the one as excluding still remains related to what it excludes. But this moment of relation is attraction and thus is in repulsion itself; it is the negating of that abstract repulsion according to which the ones would be only self-related affirmative beings not excluding one another.
In starting, however, with the repulsion of the determinately present ones and so, too, with attraction posited as externally connected with it, the two determinations although inseparable are held apart as distinct; but it has been found that not merely is repulsion presupposed by attraction, but equally, too, there is a reverse relation of repulsion to attraction, and the former equally has its presupposition in the latter.
As thus determined they are inseparable and at the same time each is determined as an ought and a limitation relatively to the other. Their ought is their abstract determinateness in the form of the in-itself, but with this determinateness each is simply directed away from itself and relates itself to the other, and thus each is through the mediation of the other as other; their self-subsistence consists in the fact that in this mediation each is posited for the other as a different determining: repulsion as the positing of the many, attraction as the positing of the one, the latter as at the same time a negation of the many, and the former as a negation of their ideality in the one, so that attraction, too, is attraction only through the mediation of repulsion, just as repulsion is repulsion through the mediation of attraction. But the fact that in this interdependence the mediation of each through the other is rather negated, each of these determinations being a self-mediation, becomes evident after a closer consideration of them and brings them back to the unity of their Notion.
In the first place, that each presupposes itself, is related only to itself in its presupposition, this is already implied in the relationship between repulsion and attraction in their initially still relative character.
Relative repulsion is the mutual repelling of the present many ones which are supposed to be immediately given. But that there are many ones, this is repulsion itself; any presupposition which it might have is only its own positing. Further, the determination of being which might belong to the ones apart from the circumstance that they are posited — whereby they would be already there-belongs likewise to repulsion. The repelling is that whereby the ones manifest and maintain themselves as ones, whereby they are as such. Their being is repulsion itself, which is thus not a relative determinate being over against another such, but relates itself simply and solely to its own self.
Attraction is the positing of the one as such, of the real one, in contrast to which the many in their determinate being are determined as only ideal [ideell] and as vanishing. Attraction thus directly presupposes itself — in the determination, namely, of the other ones as ideal, which ones are otherwise supposed to be for themselves, repelling others, and therefore also any attracting one. Ideality, as opposed to this determination of repulsion, does not belong to the ones only through the relation to attraction; on the contrary, it is presupposed, it is the ideality inherent in the ones in that, as ones — including the one conceived as attracting — they are not distinguished from one another, are one and the same.
Further, this self-presupposing of the two determinations each for itself, means that each contains the other as a moment within it. The self-presupposing as such is the one's positing of itself in a one as the negative of itself-repulsion; and what is therein presupposed is the same as that which presupposes-attraction. That each is in itself only a moment, is the transition of each out of itself into the other, the self-negating of each in itself and the self-positing of each as its own other. The one as such, then, is a coming-out-of-itself, is only the positing of itself as its own other, as many; and the many, similarly, is only this, to collapse within itself and to posit itself as its other, as one, and in this very act to be related only to its own self, each continuing itself in its other. Thus there is already present in principle (an sich) the undividedness of the coming-out-of-itself (repulsion) and the self-positing as one (attraction). But in the relative repulsion and attraction, which presuppose immediate, determinates existent ones, it is posited that each is in its own self this negation of itself and is thus also the continuity of itself in its other. The repulsion of the determinately existent ones is the self-preservation of the one through the mutual repulsion of the others, so that (1) the other ones are negated in it-this is the side of its determinate being or of its being-for-other; but this is thus attraction as the ideality of the ones; and (2) the one is in itself, without relation to the others; but not only has being-in-itself as such long since passed over into being-for-self, but the one in itself, by its determination, is the aforesaid becoming of many ones. The attraction of the determinately existent ones is their ideality and the positing of the one, in which, accordingly, attraction as a negating and a generating of the one sublates itself, and as a positing of the one is in its own self the negative of itself, repulsion.
With this, the development of being-for-self is completed and has reached its conclusion. The one as infinitely self-related — infinitely, as the posited negation of negation — is the mediation in which it repels from itself its own self as its absolute (that is, abstract) otherness, (the many), and in relating itself negatively to this its non-being, that is, in sublating it, it is only self-relation; and one is only this becoming in which it is no longer determined as having a beginning, that is, is no longer posited as an immediate, affirmative being, neither is it as result, as having restored itself as the one, that is, the one as equally immediate and excluding; the process which it is posits and contains it throughout only as sublated. The sublating, at first determined as only a relative sublating of the relation to another determinately existent one-a relation which is thus itself not an indifferent repulsion and attraction — equally displays itself as passing over into the infinite relation of mediation through negation of the external relations of the immediate, determinately existent ones, and as having for result that very process of becoming which, in the instability of its moments, is the collapse, or rather going-together-with-itself, into simple immediacy. This being, in the determination it has now acquired, is quantity.
A brief survey of the moments of this transition of quality into quantity shows us that the fundamental determination of quality is being and immediacy, in which limit and determinateness are so identical with the being of something, that with its alteration the something itself vanishes; as thus posited it is determined as finite. Because of the immediacy of this unity, in which the difference has vanished but is implicitly present in the unity of being and nothing, the difference as otherness in general falls outside this unity. This relation to other contradicts the immediacy in which qualitative determinateness is self-relation. This otherness sublates itself in the infinity of being-for-self which makes explicit the difference (which in the negation of the negation is present in it) in the form of the one and the many and their relations, and has raised the qualitative moment to a genuine unity, that is, a unity which is no longer immediate but is posited as accordant with itself.
This unity is, therefore, [a] being, only as affirmative, that is immediacy, which is self-mediated through negation of the negation; being is posited as the unity which pervades its determinatenesses, limit, etc., which are posited in it as sublated; [b] determinate being: in such determination it is the negation or determinateness as a moment of affirmative being, yet determinateness no longer as immediate, but as reflected into itself, as related not to an other but to itself; a being determined simply in itself-the one; the otherness as such is itself a being-for-self; [c] being-for-self, as that being which continues itself right through the determinateness and in which the one and the intrinsic determinedness is itself posited as sublated. The one is determined simultaneously as having gone beyond itself, and as unity; hence the one, the absolutely determined limit, is posited as the limit which is no limit, which is present in being but is indifferent to it.
Attraction and repulsion, as we know, are usually regarded as forces. This determination of them and — the relationships connected with it have to be compared with the Notions which have resulted from our consideration of them. Conceived as forces, they are regarded as self-subsistent and therefore as not connected with each other through their own nature; that is, they are considered not as moments, each of which is supposed to pass into the other, but rather as fixed in their opposition to each other. Further, they are imagined as meeting in a third, in matter, but in such a manner, that this unification is, counted, as their truth., on the contrary; each is regarded also as a first, as being in and for itself, and matter, or its determinations, are supposed to be realised and produced by them. When it is said that matter has the forces within itself, they are understood to be so conjoined in this unity that they are at the same time presupposed as intrinsically free and independent of each other.
Kant, as we know, constructed matter from the forces of attraction and repulsion, or at least he has, to use his own words, set up the metaphysical elements of this construction. It will not be without interest to examine this construction more closely. This metaphysical exposition of a subject matter which not only itself but also in its determinations seemed to belong only to experience is noteworthy, partly because as an experiment with the Notion it at least gave the impulse to the more recent philosophy of nature, to a philosophy which does not make nature as given in sense-perception the basis of science, but which goes to the absolute Notion for its determinations; and partly because in many cases no advance is made beyond the Kantian construction which is held to be a philosophical beginning and foundation for physics.
Now it is true that matter as it exists for sense perception is no more a subject matter of logic than are space and its determinations. But the forces of attraction and repulsion, in so far as they are regarded as forces of empirical matter, are also based on the pure determinations here considered of the one and the many and their inter-relationships, which, because these names are most obvious, I have called repulsion and attraction.
Kant's method in the deduction of matter from these forces, which he calls a construction, when looked at more closely does not deserve this name, unless any exercise of reflection, even analytical reflection, is to be called a construction; and later philosophers of nature have in fact given the name of construction to the shallowest reasoning and the most baseless concoction of unbridled imagination and thoughtless reflection — and it is especially for the so-called factors of attraction and repulsion that such philosophers have shown a predilection.
For Kant's method is basically analytical, not constructive. He presupposes the idea of matter and then asks what forces are required to maintain the determinations he has presupposed. Thus, on the one hand, he demands the force of attraction because, properly speaking, through repulsion alone and without attraction matter could not exist; and on the other hand he derives repulsion, too, from matter and gives as the reason that we think of matter as impenetrable, since it presents itself under this category to the sense of touch by which it manifests itself to us. Consequently, he proceeds, repulsion is at once thought in the concept of matter because it is immediately given therein, whereas attraction is added to the concept syllogistically. But these syllogisms, too, are based on what has just been said, namely, that matter which possessed repulsive force alone, would not exhaust our conception of matter.
It is evident that this is the method of a cognition which reflects on experience, which first perceives the determinations in a phenomenon, then makes these the foundation, and for their so-called explanation assumes corresponding basic elements or forces which are supposed to produce those determinations of the phenomenon.
With respect to this difference as to the way in which cognition finds the forces of repulsion and attraction in matter, Kant further remarks that the force of attraction certainly just as much belongs to the concept of matter 'although it is not contained in it'; this last expression is italicised by Kant. However, it is hard to perceive what this difference is supposed to be; for a determination which belongs to the concept of anything must be truly contained in it.
What causes the difficulty and gives rise to this vain subterfuge, is that Kant from the start one-sidedly attributes to the concept of matter only the determination of impenetrability, which we are supposed to perceive by the sense of touch, for which reason the force of repulsion as the holding off of an other from itself is immediately given. But if, further, the existence of matter is supposed to be impossible without attraction, then this assertion is based on a conception of matter taken from sense perception; consequently, the determination of attraction, too, must come within the range of sense perception. It is indeed easy to perceive that matter, besides its being-for-self, which sublates the being-for-other (offers resistance), has also a relation between its self-determined parts, a spatial extension and cohesion, and in rigidity and solidity the cohesion is very firm. Physics explains that the tearing apart, etc., of a body requires a force which shall be stronger than the mutual attraction of the parts of the body. From this observation reflection can just as directly derive the force of attraction or assume it as given, as it did with the force of repulsion. In point of fact, if we consider Kant's arguments from which the force of attraction is supposed to be deduced (the proof of the proposition that the possibility of matter requires a force of attraction as a second fundamental force, loc. cit.), it is apparent that their sole content is this, that through repulsion alone matter would not be spatial Matter being presupposed as filling space, it is credited with continuity, the ground of which is assumed to be the force of attraction.
Now if the merit of such a construction of matter were at most that of an analysis (though a merit diminished by the faulty exposition), still the fundamental thought, namely, the derivation of matter from these two opposite determinations as its fundamental forces, must always be highly esteemed. Kant is chiefly concerned to banish the vulgar mechanistic way of thinking which stops short at the one determination of impenetrability, of self-determined and self-subsistent puncticity, and converts into something external the opposite determination, the relation of matter within itself or the relation of a plurality of matters, which in turn are regarded as particular ones — a way of thinking which, as Kant says, will admit no motive forces except pressure and thrust, that is, only action from without. This external manner of thinking always presupposes motion as already externally present in matter, and it does not occur to it to regard motion as something immanent and to comprehend motion itself in matter, which latter is thus assumed as, on its own account, motionless and inert. This stand-point has before it only ordinary mechanics, not immanent and free motion. It is true that Kant sublates this externality in so far as he makes attraction (the relation of matters to one another in so far as these are assumed as separated from one another, or matter generally in its self-externality) a force of matter itself; still, on the other hand, his two fundamental forces within matter remain external to and completely independent of each other.
The fixed difference of these two forces attributed to them from that external standpoint is no less null than any other distinction must show itself to be which, in respect of its specific content, is made into something supposedly fixed; because these forces are only moments which pass over into each other, as we saw above when they were considered in their truth. I go on to consider these other distinctions as they are stated by Kant.
He defines the force of attraction as a penetrative force by which one bit of matter can act directly on the parts of another even beyond the area of contact; the force of repulsion, on the other hand, he defines as a surface force through which bits of matter can act on each other only in the common area of contact. The reason adduced that the latter can be only a surface force is as follows: ‘The parts in contact each limit the sphere of action of the other, and the force of repulsion cannot move any more distant part except through the agency of the intervening parts; an immediate action of one part of matter on another passing right across these intervening parts by forces of expansion (which means here, forces of repulsion) is impossible.’
But here we must remember that in assuming 'nearer' or 'more distant' parts of matter, the same distinction would likewise arise with respect to attraction, namely, that though one atom acted on another, yet a third, more distant atom (between which and the first atom, the second atom would be), would first enter into the sphere of attraction of the intervening atom nearer to it; therefore the first atom would not have an immediate, simple action on the third, from which it would follow that the action of the force of attraction, like that of repulsion, is equally mediated. Further, the genuine penetration of the force of attraction could of necessity consist only in this, that every part of matter was in and for itself attractive, not that a certain number of atoms behaved passively and only one atom actively. But we must at once remark with respect to the force of repulsion itself that in the passage quoted, 'parts in contact' are mentioned which implies solidity and continuity of a matter already finished and complete which would not permit the passage through it of a repelling force. But this solidity of matter in which parts are in contact and are no longer separated by the void already presupposes that the force of repulsion is sublated; according to the sensuous conception of repulsion which prevails here, parts in contact are to be taken as those which do not repel each other. It therefore follows, quite tautologically, that where repulsion is assumed to be not, there no repulsion can take place. But from this nothing else follows which could serve to determine the force of repulsion. However, reflection on the statement that parts in contact are in contact only in so far as they hold themselves apart, leads directly to the conclusion that the force of repulsion is not merely on the surface of matter but within the sphere which was supposed to be only a sphere of attraction.
Kant assumes further that 'through the force of attraction, matter only occupies space but does not fill it'; and 'because matter through the force of attraction does not fill space, this force can act across empty space since there is no intervening matter to limit it'. This distinction is much the same as the one mentioned above where a determination was supposed to belong to the concept of a thing but not to be contained in it; here, then, matter is supposed only to occupy a space but not to fill it. There it is repulsion, if we stop at the first determination of matter, through which the ones repel one another and so are only negatively related to one another, here that means, by empty space. Here, however, it is the force of attraction which keeps space empty; it does not fill space by its connection of the atoms, in other words, it keeps the atoms in a negative relation to one another. We see that Kant here unconsciously realises what is implicit in the nature of the subject matter, when he attributes to the force of attraction precisely what, in accordance with the first determination, he attributed to the opposite force. While he was busy with establishing the difference between the two forces, it happened that one had passed over into the other. Thus through repulsion, on the other hand, matter is supposed to fill a space, and consequently through repulsion the empty space left by the force of attraction vanishes. In point of fact repulsion, in doing away with empty space, also destroys the negative relation of the atoms or ones, that is, their repulsion of one another; in other words, repulsion is determined as the opposite of itself.
To this effacing of the differences there is added the confusion arising from the fact that, as we observed at the beginning, Kant's exposition of the opposed forces is analytic; and whereas matter is supposed to be derived from its elements, it is presented throughout the entire discourse as already formed and constituted. In the definition of surface and penetrative force both are assumed as motive forces by means of which matter is supposed to be able to act in one or other of these ways. Here, therefore, they are represented as forces, not through which matter first comes into being but through which matter, as an already finished product, is only set in motion. But in so far as we are speaking of the forces through which different bodies act on one another and are set in motion, this is something quite different from the determination and relation which these forces were supposed to have as [constitutive] moments of matter.
The same opposition of attractive and repulsive forces is made by their more developed form of centripetal and centrifugal forces. These appear to offer an essential distinction, since in their sphere there is a fixed single one, a centre, in relation to which the other ones behave as not for themselves, so that the difference between the forces can be linked to this presupposed difference between a single central one and the others which are not independent relatively to it. But if they are to be used for explanation — for which purpose they are assumed to be (like the forces of repulsion and attraction) in an inverse quantitative ratio so that the one increases as the other decreases — then the phenomenon of the motion and its inequality ought to be the result of these forces which were assumed for the purpose of explanation. However, one need only examine the accounts (any of them will do) of a phenomenon like the unequal velocity of a planet in its orbit round the sun, based on the opposition of these forces, to become aware of the confusion which prevails in such explanations, and the impossibility of disentangling the magnitudes of the forces, so that the one which in the explanation is assumed to be decreasing can just as well be assumed to be increasing, and vice versa. To make this evident would require a lengthier exposition than could be given here; but what is necessary for this purpose is adduced later on in connection with the inverted relation.