Reflection is determinate reflection; hence essence is determinate essence, or it is an essentiality.
Reflection is the showing of the illusory being of essence within essence itself. Essence, as infinite return-into-self, is not immediate but negative simplicity; it is a movement through distinct moments, absolute self-mediation. But it reflects itself into these its moments which consequently are themselves determinations reflected into themselves.
Essence is at first, simple self-relation, pure identity. This is its determination, but as such it is rather the absence of any determination.
Secondly, the proper determination is difference, a difference that is, on the one hand, external or indifferent, diversity in general, and on the other hand, is opposed diversity or opposition.
Thirdly, as contradiction, the opposition is reflected into itself and withdrawn into its ground.
The categories of reflection used to be taken up in the form of propositions, in which they were asserted to be valid for everything. These propositions ranked as the universal laws of thought that lie at the base of all thinking, that are absolute in themselves and incapable of proof, but are immediately and incontestably recognised and accepted as true by all thinking that grasps their meaning.
Thus the essential category of identity is enunciated in the proposition: everything is identical with itself, A = A. Or negatively: A cannot at the same time be A and not A.
In the first place, there is no apparent reason why only these simple determinations of reflection should be grasped in this particular form, and not also the other categories, such as all the determinatenesses of the sphere of being. We should then have the propositions, for example: everything is, everything has a determinate being, and so on, or: everything has a quality, quantity, etc. For being, determinate being, and so forth, are, simply as logical categories, predicates of everything. According to its etymology and Aristotle's definition, category is what is predicated or asserted of the existent. But a determinateness of being is essentially a transition into its opposite; the negative of any determinateness is as necessary as the latter itself; as immediate determinatenesses, each is directly confronted by the other. Consequently, if these categories are put in the form of such propositions, then the opposite propositions equally appear; both present themselves with equal necessity and, as immediate assertions, are at least equally correct. The one, therefore, would demand proof as against the other, and consequently these assertions could no longer be credited with the character of immediately true and incontestable propositions of thought.
The determinations of reflection, on the contrary, are not of a qualitative kind. They are self-related, and so are at the same time determinations removed from determinateness against an other. Further, in that they are determinatenesses which are in themselves relations, to that extent they already contain within themselves the prepositional form. For the difference between proposition and judgement is mainly that in the former the content constitutes the relation itself or is a specific relation. The judgement, on the contrary, transfers the content to the predicate as a universal determinateness which is for itself and is distinct from its relation, the simple copula. When a proposition is to be converted into a judgement, then the specific content — if, for example it is a verb — is changed into a participle, in order to separate in this way the determination itself and its relation to a subject. For the determinations of reflection, on the contrary, as positedness reflected into itself, the prepositional form itself lies immediately at hand. Only, since they are enunciated as universal laws of thought, they still require a subject of their relation, and this subject is: everything, or an A, which equally means each and every existent.
On the one hand, this prepositional form is a superfluity; the determinations of reflection are to be considered in and for themselves. Further, these propositions are defective in that they have for subject, being, everything. In this way, they resuscitate being and enunciate the categories of reflection-identity, and so on-of the something as a quality which something has in it, not in the speculative sense, but meaning that something as subject persists in such a quality as simply affirmative [als seiendes], not that it has passed over into identity, and so on, as into its truth and its essence.
But lastly, although the determinations of reflection have the form of equality-with-self and therefore of being unrelated to an other and without opposition, yet they are determinate against one another, as we shall find on closer examination of them, or as is immediately evident from the categories of identity, difference, and opposition; their form of reflection, therefore, does not exempt them from transition and contradiction. The several propositions which are set up as absolute laws of thought, are, therefore, more closely considered, opposed to one another, they contradict one another and mutually sublate themselves. If everything is identical with itself, then it is not different, not opposed, has no ground. Or, if it is assumed that no two things are the same, that is, everything is different from everything else, then A is not equal to A, nor is A opposed to A, and so on. The assumption of any of these propositions rules out the assumption of the others. The thoughtless consideration of them enumerates them one after the other, so that there does not appear to be any relation between them; it has in mind merely their reflectedness-into-self, ignoring their other moment, positedness or their determinateness as such which sweeps them on into transition and into their negation.
1. Essence is simple immediacy as sublated immediacy. Its negativity is its being; it is self-equal in its absolute negativity, through which otherness and relation-to-other has vanished in its own self into pure equality-with-self. Essence is therefore simple identity with self.
2. This identity-with-self is the immediacy of reflection. It is not that equality-with-self that being or even nothing is, but the equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity, not a restoration of itself from an other, but this pure origination from and within itself, essential identity. Consequently, it is not abstract identity or has not arisen through a relative negating which had taken place outside it, merely separating off the distinguished moment but otherwise leaving it afterwards as simply affirmative [seiend] as it was before. On the contrary, being and every determinateness of being has sublated itself not relatively, but in its own self: and this simple negativity of being in its own self is identity itself. So far, then, identity is still in general the same as essence.
Thinking that keeps to external reflection and knows of no other thinking but external reflection, fails to attain to a grasp of identity in the form just expounded, or of essence, which is the same thing. Such thinking always has before it only abstract identity, and apart from and alongside it, difference. In its opinion, reason is nothing more than a loom on which it externally combines and interweaves the warp, of say, identity, and then the woof of difference; or, also, again proceeding analytically, it now extracts especially identity and then also again obtains difference alongside it, is now a positing of likeness and then also again a positing of unlikeness — likeness when abstraction is made from difference, and unlikeness when abstraction is made from the positing of likeness. These assertions and opinions about what reason does must be completely set aside, since they are in a certain measure merely historical; the truth is rather that a consideration of everything that is, shows that in its own self everything is in its self-sameness different from itself and self-contradictory, and that in its difference, in its contradiction, it is self-identical, and is in its own self this movement of transition of one of these categories into the other, and for this reason, that each is in its own self the opposite of itself. The Notion of identity, that it is simple self-related negativity, is not a product of external reflection but has come from being itself. Whereas, on the contrary, that identity that is aloof from difference, and difference that is aloof from identity, are products of external reflection and abstraction, which arbitrarily clings to this point of indifferent difference.
2. This identity is, in the first instance, essence itself, not yet a determination of it, reflection in its entirety, not a distinct moment of it. As absolute negation it is the negation that immediately negates itself, a non-being and difference that vanishes in its arising, or a distinguishing by which nothing is distinguished, but which immediately collapses within itself. The distinguishing is the positing of non-being as non-being of the other. But the non-being of the other is sublation of the other and therewith of the distinguishing itself. Here, then, distinguishing is present as self-related negativity, as a non-being which is the non-being of itself, a non-being which has its non-being not in another but in its own self. What is present, therefore, is self-related, reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.
In other words, identity is the reflection-into-self that is identity only as internal repulsion, and is this repulsion as reflection-into-self, repulsion which immediately takes itself back into itself. Thus it is identity as difference that is identical with itself. But difference is only identical with itself in so far as it is not identity but absolute non-identity. But non-identity is absolute in so far as it contains nothing of its other but only itself, that is, in so far as it is absolute identity with itself.
Identity, therefore, is in its own self absolute non-identity. But it is also the determination of identity as against non-identity. For as reflection-into-self it posits itself as its own non-being; it is the whole, but, as reflection, it posits itself as its own moment, as positedness, from which it is the return into itself. It is only as such moment of itself that it is identity as such, as determination of simple equality with itself in contrast to absolute difference.
In this remark, I will consider in more detail identity as the law of identity which is usually adduced as the first law of thought.
This proposition in its positive expression A = A is, in the first instance, nothing more than the expression of an empty tautology. It has therefore been rightly remarked that this law of thought has no content and leads no further. It is thus the empty identity that is rigidly adhered to by those who take it, as such, to be something true and are given to saying that identity is not difference, but that identity and difference are different. They do not see that in this very assertion they are themselves saying that identity is different; for they are saying that identity is different from difference; since this must at the same time be admitted to be the nature of identity, their assertion implies that identity, not externally, but in its own self, in its very nature, is this, to be different.
But further, they do not see that, by clinging to this unmoved identity which has its opposite in difference, they thereby convert it into a one-sided determinateness which, as such, has no truth. It is admitted that the law of identity expresses only a one-sided determinatedness, that it contains only formal truth, a truth which is abstract, incomplete. In this correct judgement, however, it is immediately implied that truth is complete only in the unity of identity with difference, and hence consists only in this unity. When asserting that this identity is imperfect, the perfection one has vaguely in mind is this totality, measured against which the identity is imperfect; but since, on the other hand, identity is rigidly held to be absolutely separate from difference and in this separation is taken to be something essential, valid, true, then the only thing to be seen in these conflicting assertions is the failure to bring together these thoughts, namely, that identity as abstract identity is essential, and that as such it is equally imperfect: the lack of awareness of the negative movement which, in these assertions, identity itself is represented to be. Or, when it is said that identity is essential identity as separation from difference, or in the separation from difference, then this is directly the expressed truth about it, namely, that identity consists in being separation as such, or in being essential in separation, that is, it is nothing for itself but is a moment of separation.
Now as regards other confirmation of the absolute truth of the law of identity, this is based on experience in so far as appeal is made to the experience of every consciousness; for anyone to whom this proposition A = A, a tree is a tree, is made, immediately admits it and is satisfied that the proposition as immediately self-evident requires no further confirmation or proof.
On the one hand, this appeal to experience, that the proposition is universally admitted by everyone, is a mere manner of speaking. For it is not pretended that the experiment with the abstract proposition A = A has been made on every consciousness. The appeal, then, to actually carried-out experiment is not to be taken seriously; it is only the assurance that if the experiment were made, the proposition would be universally admitted. But if what were meant were not the abstract proposition as such, but its concrete application from which the former were supposed first to be developed, then the assertion of its universality and immediacy would consist in the fact that every consciousness would treat it as fundamental, even in every utterance it made, or that it lies implicitly in every utterance. But the concrete and the application are, in fact, precisely the connection of the simple identical with a manifold that is different from it. Expressed as a proposition, the concrete would at first be a synthetic proposition. From the concrete itself or its synthetic proposition, abstraction could indeed extract by analysis the proposition of identity; but then, in fact, it would not have left experience as it is, but altered it; for the fact is that experience contains identity in unity with difference and is the immediate refutation of the assertion that abstract identity as such is something true, for the exact opposite, namely, identity only in union with difference, occurs in every experience.
On the other hand, the experiment with the pure law of identity is made only too often, and it is shown clearly enough in this experiment what is thought of the truth it contains. If, for example, to the question "What is a plant?" the answer is given "A plant is a plant", the truth of such a statement is at once admitted by the entire company on whom it is tested, and at the same time it is equally unanimously declared that the statement says nothing. If anyone opens his mouth and promises to state what God is, namely God is — God, expectation is cheated, for what was expected was a different determination; and if this statement is absolute truth, such absolute verbiage is very lightly esteemed; nothing will be held to be more boring and tedious than conversation which merely reiterates the same thing, or than such talk which yet is supposed to be truth.
Looking more closely at this tedious effect produced by such truth, we see that the beginning, 'The plant is—,' sets out to say something, to bring forward a further determination. But since only the same thing is repeated, the opposite has happened, nothing has emerged. Such identical talk therefore contradicts itself. Identity, instead of being in its own self truth and absolute truth, is consequently the very opposite; instead of being the unmoved simple, it is the passage beyond itself into the dissolution of itself.
In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialise; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself. The prepositional form can be regarded as the hidden necessity of adding to abstract identity the more of that movement. And so an A, or a plant, or some other kind of substrate, too, is added which, as a useless content, is of no significance; but it constitutes the difference which seems to be accidentally associated with it. If instead of A or any other substrate, identity itself is taken — identity is identity — then equally it is admitted that also in its place any other substrate could be taken. Consequently, if the appeal is to be made to what experience shows, then it shows that this identity is nothing, that it is negativity, the absolute difference from itself.
The other expression of the law of identity: A cannot at the same time be A and not-A, has a negative form; it is called the law of contradiction. Usually no justification is given of how the form of negation by which this law is distinguished from its predecessor, comes to identity. But this form is implied in the fact that identity, as the pure movement of reflection, is simple negativity which contains in more developed form the second expression of the law just quoted. A is enunciated, and a not-A, the pure other of A; but it only shows itself in order to vanish. In this proposition, therefore, identity is expressed-as negation of the negation. A and not-A are distinguished, and these distinct terms are related to one and the same A. Identity, therefore, is here represented as this distinguishedness in one relation or as simple difference in the terms themselves.
From this it is evident that the law of identity itself, and still more the law of contradiction, is not merely of analytic but of synthetic nature. For the latter contains in its expression not merely empty, simple equality-with-self, and not merely the other of this in general, but, what is more, absolute inequality, contradiction per se. But as has been shown, the law of identity itself contains the movement of reflection, identity as a vanishing of otherness.
What emerges from this consideration is, therefore, first, that the law of identity or of contradiction which purports to express merely abstract identity in contrast to difference as a truth, is not a law of thought, but rather the opposite of it; secondly, that these laws contain more than is meant by them, to wit, this opposite, absolute difference itself.
Difference is the negativity which reflection has within it, the nothing which is said in enunciating identity, the essential moment of identity itself which, as negativity of itself, determines itself and is distinguished from difference.
1. This difference is difference in and for itself, absolute difference, the difference of essence. It is difference in and for itself, not difference resulting from anything external, but self-related, therefore simple difference. It is essential to grasp absolute difference as simple. In the absolute difference of A and not-A from each other, it is the simple not which, as such, constitutes it. Difference itself is the simple Notion. Two things are different, it is said, in that they, etc. 'In that' is, in one and the same respect, in the same ground of determination. It is the difference of reflection, not the otherness of determinate being. One determinate being and another determinate being are posited as falling apart, each of them, as determined against the other, has an immediate being for itself. The other of essence, on the contrary, is the other in and for itself, not the other as other of an other, existing outside it but simple determinateness in itself. In the sphere of determinate being, too, otherness 'and determinateness proved to be of this nature, to be simple determinateness, identical opposition; but this identity revealed itself only as the transition of one determinateness into the other. Here, in the sphere of reflection, difference appears as reflected difference, which is thus posited as it is in itself.
2. Difference in itself is self-related difference; as such, it is the negativity of itself, the difference not of an other, but of itself from itself; it is not itself but its other. But that which is different from difference is identity. Difference is therefore itself and identity. Both together constitute difference; it is the whole, and its moment. It can equally be said that difference, as simple, is no difference; it is this only when it is in relation with identity; but the truth is rather that, as difference, it contains equally identity and this relation itself. Difference is the whole and its own moment, just as identity equally is its whole and its moment. This is to be considered as the essential nature of reflection and as the specific, original ground of all activity and self-movement. Difference and also identity, make themselves into a moment or a positedness because, as reflection, they are negative relation-to-self.
Difference as thus unity of itself and identity, is in its own self determinate difference. It is not transition into an other, not relation to an other outside it: it has its other, identity, within itself, just as identity, having entered into the determination of difference, has not lost itself in it as its other, but preserves itself in it, is its reflection-into-self and its moment.
3. Difference possesses both moments, identity and difference; both are thus a positedness, a determinateness. But in this positedness each is self-relation. One of them, identity, is itself immediately the moment of reflection-into-self; but equally, the other is difference, difference in itself, reflected difference. Difference, in that it has two moments that are themselves reflections-into-self, is diversity.
1. Identity falls apart within itself into diversity because, as absolute difference, it posits itself as its own negative within itself, and these its moments, namely, itself and the negative of itself, are reflections-into-self, are self-identical; or, in other words, precisely because identity itself immediately sublates its negating and in its determination is reflected into itself. The distinguished terms subsist as indifferently different towards one another because each is self-identical, because identity constitutes its ground and element; in other words, the difference is what it is, only in its very opposite, in identity.
Diversity constitutes the otherness as such of reflection. The other of determinate being has for its ground immediate being in which the negative subsists. But in reflection it is self-identity, reflected immediacy, that constitutes the subsistence of the negative and its indifference.
The moments of difference are identity and difference itself. They are [merely] diverse when they are reflected into themselves, that is, when they are self-related; as such, they are in the determination of identity, they are only relation-to-self; the identity is not related to the difference, nor is the difference related to the identity; as each moment is thus only self-related, they are not determined against one another. Now because in this manner they are not different in themselves, the difference is external to them. The diverse moments are, therefore, mutually related, not as identity and difference, but merely as simply diverse moments, that are indifferent to one another and to their determinateness.
2. In diversity, as the indifference of difference, reflection has become, in general, external to itself; difference is merely a posited or sublated being, but it is itself the total reflection. When considered more closely, both identity and difference, as has just been demonstrated, are reflections, each of which is unity of itself and its other; each is the whole. Consequently, the determinateness in which they are only identity or only difference, is sublated. Therefore they are not qualities, because through the reflection-into-self, their determinateness is at the same time only a negation. What is present, therefore, is this duality, reflection-into-self as such, and determinateness as negation or positedness. Positedness is the reflection that is external to itself; it is the negation as negation-and so therefore in itself or simplicity, the self-related negation and reflection-into-self, but only implicitly; it is relation to the negation as something external to it.
Thus the reflection that is implicit, and external reflection, are the two determinations into which the moments of difference, namely, identity and difference, posited themselves. They are these moments themselves in so far as they have now determined themselves. Reflection in itself is identity, but determined as being indifferent to difference, not as simply not possessing difference, but as being self-identical in its relationship with it; it is diversity. It is identity that has so reflected itself into itself that it is really the one reflection of the two moments into themselves; both are reflections-into-self. Identity is this one reflection of both, which contains difference only as an indifferent difference and is simply diversity. External reflection, on the other hand, is their determinate difference, not as an absolute reflection-into-self, but as a determination to which the [merely] implicit reflection is indifferent; difference's two moments, identity and difference itself, are thus externally posited determinations, not determinations in and for themselves.
Now this external identity is likeness, and external difference, unlikeness. Likeness, it is true, is identity, but only as a positedness, an identity that is not in and for itself. Similarly, unlikeness is difference, but as an external difference that is not in and for itself the difference of the unlike itself. Whether or not something is like something else does not concern either the one or the other; each of them is only self-referred, is in and for itself what it is; identity or non-identity, as likeness or unlikeness, is the verdict of a third party distinct from the two things.
3. External reflection relates what is diverse to likeness and unlikeness. This relation, which is a comparing, passes to and fro between likeness and unlikeness. But this relating to likeness and unlikeness, back and forth, is external to these determinations themselves; also, they are related not to one another but each, by itself, to a third. In this alternation, each stands forth immediately on its own. External reflection is, as such, external to itself; the determinate difference is the negated absolute difference. Therefore it is not simple, not reflection-into-self; on the contrary, it has this outside it. Its moments, therefore, fall asunder and are related also as mutually external to the reflection-into-self confronting them.
In the self-alienated reflection, therefore, likeness and unlikeness appear as mutually unrelated, and in relating them to one and the same thing, it separates them by the introduction of 'in so far', of sides and respects. The diverse, which are one and the same, to which both likeness and unlikeness are related, are therefore, from one side like one another, but from another side are unlike, and in so far as they are like, they are not unlike. Likeness is related only to itself, and similarly unlikeness is only unlikeness.
But by this separation of one from the other they merely sublate themselves. The very thing that was supposed to hold off contradiction and dissolution from them, namely, that something is like something else in one respect, but is unlike it in another - this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness is their destruction. For both are determinations of difference; they are relations to one another, the one being what the other is not; like is not unlike and unlike is not like; and both essentially have this relation and have no meaning apart from it; as determinations of difference, each is what it is as distinct from its other. But through this mutual indifference, likeness is only self-referred, and unlikeness similarly is self-referred and a reflective determination on its own; each, therefore, is like itself; the difference has vanished, since they cannot have any determinateness over against one another; in other words, each therefore is only likeness.
This indifferent point of view or external difference thus sublates itself and is in its own self the negativity of itself. It is the negativity that belongs to the comparer in the act of comparing. The comparer goes from likeness to unlikeness and from this back to likeness, and therefore lets the one vanish in the other and is, in fact, the negative unity of both. This unity, in the first instance, lies beyond the compared and also beyond the moments of the comparison as a subjective act falling outside them. But, as we have seen, this negative unity is, in fact, the very nature of likeness and unlikeness. The independent self-reference which each of them is, is in fact the self-reference that sublates their distinctiveness and so, too, themselves.
From this side, likeness and unlikeness, as moments of external reflection and as external to themselves, vanish together in their likeness. But further, this their negative unity is also posited in them; they have, namely the [merely] implicit reflection outside them, or are the likeness and unlikeness of a third party, of an other than they. And so likeness is not like itself; and unlikeness, as unlike not itself but something else unlike it, is itself likeness. The like and the unlike are therefore unlike themselves. Consequently each is this reflection: likeness, that it is itself and unlikeness, and unlikeness, that it is itself and likeness.
Likeness and unlikeness formed the side of positedness as against the compared or the diverse which had determined itself as the [merely] implicit reflection contrasted with them. But this positedness as thus determined has equally lost its determinateness as against them. But likeness and unlikeness, the determinations of external reflection, are just this merely implicit reflection which the diverse as such is supposed to be, the merely indeterminate difference of the diverse. The implicit reflection is self-relation without the negation, abstract self-identity, and so simply positedness itself. The merely diverse, therefore, passes over through positedness into negative reflection. The diverse is the merely posited difference, therefore the difference that is no difference, and therefore in its own self the negativity on of itself. Thus likeness and unlikeness themselves, that is, positedness, returns through indifference or the implicit reflection back into the negative unity with itself, into the reflection which the difference of likeness and unlikeness in its own self is. Diversity, whose indifferent sides are just as much simply and solely moments of one negative unity, is opposition.
Diversity, like identity, is expressed in its own law. And both these laws are held apart as indifferently different, so that each is valid on its own without respect to the other.
All things are different, or: there are no two things like each other. This proposition is, in fact, opposed to the law of identity, for it declares: A is distinctive, therefore A is also not A; or: A is unlike something else, so that it is not simply A but rather a specific A. A's place in the law of identity can be taken by any other substrate, but A as distinctive [als Ungleiches] can no longer be exchanged with any other. True, it is supposed to be distinctive, not from itself, but only from another; but this distinctiveness is its own determination. As self-identical A, it is indeterminate; but as determinate it is the opposite of this; it no longer has only self-identity, but also a negation and therefore a difference of itself from itself within it.
That everything is different from everything else is a very superfluous proposition, for things in the plural immediately involve manyness and wholly indeterminate diversity. But the proposition that no two things are completely like each other, expresses more, namely, determinate difference. Two things are not merely two — numerical manyness is only one-and-the-sameness — but they are different through a determination. Ordinary thinking is struck by the proposition that no two things are like each other — as in the story of how Leibniz propounded it at court and caused the ladies to look at the leaves of trees to see whether they could find two alike. Happy times for metaphysics when it was the occupation of courtiers and the testing of its propositions called for no more exertion than to compare leaves! The reason why this proposition is striking lies in what has been said, that two, or numerical manyness, does not contain any determinate difference and that diversity as such, in its abstraction, is at first indifferent to likeness and unlikeness. Ordinary thinking, even when it goes on to a determination of diversity, takes these moments themselves to be mutually indifferent, so that one without the other, the mere likeness of things without unlikeness, suffices to determine whether the things are different even when they are only a numerical many, not unlike, but simply different without further qualification. The law of diversity, on the other hand, asserts that things are different from one another through unlikeness, that the determination of unlikeness belongs to them just as much as that of likeness, for determinate difference is constituted only by both together.
Now this proposition that unlikeness must be predicated of all things, surely stands in need of proof; it cannot be set up as an immediate proposition, for even in the ordinary mode of cognition a proof is demanded of the combination of different determinations in a synthetic proposition, or else the indication of a third term in which they are mediated. This proof would have to exhibit the passage of identity into difference, and then the passage of this into determinate difference, into unlikeness. But as a rule this is not done. We have found that diversity or external difference is, in truth, reflected into itself, is difference in its own self, that the indifferent subsistence of the diverse is a mere positedness and therefore not an external, indifferent difference, but a single relation of the two moments.
This involves the dissolution and nullity of the law of diversity. Two things are not perfectly alike; so they are at once alike and unlike; alike, simply because they are things, or just two, without further qualification — for each is a thing and a one, no less than the other — but they are unlike ex hypothesi. We are therefore presented with this determination, that both moments, likeness and unlikeness, are different in one and the same thing, or that the difference, while falling asunder, is at the same time one and the same relation. This has therefore passed over into opposition.
The togetherness of both predicates is held asunder by the 'in so far', namely, when it is said that two things are alike in so far as they are not unlike, or on the one side or in one respect are alike, but on another side or in another respect are unalike. The effect of this is to remove the unity of likeness and unlikeness from the thing, and to adhere to what would be the thing's own reflection and the merely implicit reflection of likeness and unlikeness, as a reflection external to the thing. But it is this reflection that, in one and the same activity, distinguishes the two sides of likeness and unlikeness, hence contains both in one activity, lets the one show, be reflected, in the other. But the usual tenderness for things, whose only care is that they do not contradict themselves, forgets here as elsewhere that in this way the contradiction is not resolved but merely shifted elsewhere, into subjective or external reflection generally, and this reflection in fact contains in one unity as sublated and mutually referred, the two moments which are enunciated by this removal and displacement as a mere positedness.
In opposition, the determinate rejection, difference, finds its completion. It is the unity of identity and difference; its moments are different in one identity and thus are opposites.
Identity and difference are the moments of difference held within itself; they are reflected moments of its unity. But likeness and unlikeness are the self-alienated reflection; their self-identity is not merely the indifference of each towards the other distinguished from it, but towards being-in-and-for-self as such, an identity-with-self over against the identity that is reflected into itself; it is therefore the immediacy that is not reflected into itself. The positedness of the sides of the external reflection is accordingly a being, just as their non-positedness is a non-being.
Closer consideration shows the moments of opposition to be positedness reflected into itself or determination in general. Positedness is likeness and unlikeness; these two reflected into themselves constitute the determinations of opposition. Their reflection-into-self consists in this, that each is in its own self the unity of likeness and unlikeness. Likeness is only in the reflection that compares on the basis of unlikeness, and therefore is mediated by its other, indifferent moment; similarly, unlikeness is only in the same reflective relationship in which likeness is. Therefore each of these moments is, in its determinateness, the whole. It is the whole in so far as it also contains its other moment; but this its other is an indifferent, simple affirmative moment; thus each contains reference to its non-being, and is only reflection-into-self or the whole, as essentially connected with its non-being.
This self-likeness reflected into itself that contains within itself the reference to unlikeness, is the positive; and the unlikeness that contains within itself the reference to its non-being, to likeness, is the negative. Or, both are a positedness; now in so far as the differentiated determinateness is taken as a differentiated determinate self-reference of positedness, the opposition is, on the one hand, positedness reflected into its likeness to itself and on the other hand, positedness reflected into its unlikeness to itself — the positive and the negative. The positive is positedness as reflected into self-likeness; but what is reflected is positedness, that is, the negation as negation, and so this reflection-into-self has reference-to-other for its determination. The negative is positedness as reflected into unlikeness; but the positedness is unlikeness itself, and this reflection is therefore the identity of unlikeness with itself and absolute self-reference. Each is the whole; the positedness reflected into likeness-to-self contains unlikeness, and the positedness reflected into unlikeness-to-self also contains likeness.
The positive and the negative are thus the sides of the opposition that have become self-subsistent. They are self-subsistent in that they are the reflection of the whole into themselves, and they belong to the opposition in so far as this is the determinateness which, as a whole, is reflected into itself. On account of their self-subsistence, they constitute the implicitly determined opposition. Each is itself and its other; consequently, each has its determinateness not in an other, but in its own self. Each is self-referred, and the reference to its other is only a self-reference. This has a twofold aspect: each is a reference to its non-being as a sublating of this otherness within it; thus its non-being is only a moment in it. But on the other hand positedness here has become a being, an indifferent subsistence; consequently, the other of itself which each contains is also the non-being of that in which it is supposed to be contained only as a moment. Each therefore is, only in so far as its non-being is, and is in an identical relationship with it.
The determinations which constitute the positive and negative consist, therefore, in the fact that the positive and negative are, in the first place, absolute moments of the opposition; their subsistence is inseparably one reflection; it is a single mediation in which each is through the non-being of its other, and so is through its other or its own non-being. Thus they are simply opposites; in other words, each is only the opposite of the other, the one is not as yet positive, and the other is not as yet negative, but both are negative to one another. In the first place, then, each is, only in so far as the other is; it is what it is, through the other, through its own non-being; it is only a positedness; secondly, it is, in so far as the other is not; it is what it is, through the non-being of the other; it is reflection-into-self. But these two are the one mediation of the opposition as such, in which they are simply only posited moments
Further, however, this mere positedness is simply reflected into itself; in accordance with this moment of external reflection the positive and negative are indifferent to that first identity in which they are only moments; in other words, since that first reflection is the positive's and negative's own reflection into themselves, each is in its own self its positedness, so each is indifferent to this its reflection into its non-being, to its own positedness. The two sides are thus merely different, and in so far as their being determined as positive and negative constitutes their positedness in relation to one another, each is not in its own self so determined but is only determinateness in general. Therefore, although one of the determinatenesses of positive and negative belongs to each side, they can be changed round, and each side is of such a kind that it can be taken equally well as positive as negative.
But thirdly, the positive and negative are not only something posited, not merely an indifferent something, but their positedness, or the reference-to-other in a unity which they are not themselves, is taken back into each. Each is in its own self positive and negative; the positive and negative are the determination of reflection in and for itself; it is only in this reflection of opposites into themselves that they are positive and negative. The positive has within itself the reference-to-other in which the determinateness of the positive is; similarly, the negative is not a negative as contrasted with an other, but likewise possesses within itself the determinateness whereby it is negative.
Thus each [the positive as well as the negative] is a self-subsistent, independent unity-with-self. The positive is, indeed, a positedness, but in such wise that for it the positedness is only positedness as sublated. It is the not-opposite, the sublated opposition, but as a side of the opposition itself. As positive, something is, of course, determined with reference to an otherness, but in such a manner that its nature is to be not something posited; it is the reflection-into-self that negates the otherness. But the other of itself, the negative, is itself no longer a positedness or moment, but a self-subsistent being; thus the negating reflection of the positive is immanently determined as excluding from itself this its non-being.
The negative, as such absolute reflection, is not the immediate negative but the negative as a sublated positedness, the negative in and for itself, which is based positively on itself. As reflection-into-self it negates its relationship to other; its other is the positive, a self-subsistent being; consequently, its negative relation to it is to exclude it. The negative is the independently existing opposite contrasted with the positive, which is the determination of the sublated opposition-the self-based whole opposition opposed to the self-identical positedness.
The positive and negative are therefore not merely implicitly [an sich] positive and negative, but explicitly and actually so [an und für sich]. They are implicitly positive and negative in so far as one makes abstraction from their exclusive relation to other and only takes them in accordance with their determination. Something is in itself positive or negative when it is supposed to be so determined not merely relatively to an other. But when the positive and negative are taken, not as positedness, and therefore not as opposites, then each is the immediate, being and non-being. But the positive and negative are moments of opposition; their in-itself constitutes merely the form of their reflectedness-intoself. Something is in itself positive, apart from the relation to the negative; and something is in itselfnegative, apart from the relation to the positive;' in this determination, one clings merely to the abstract moment of this reflectedness. But the positive or negative in itself essentially implies that to be an opposite is not merely a moment, does not stem from comparison, but is a determination belonging to the sides of the opposition themselves. They are therefore not positive or negative in themselves apart from the relation to other; on the contrary, this relation-an exclusive relation-constitutes their determination or in-itself; in it, therefore, they are at the same time explicitly and actually [an und für sich] positive or negative.
Here is where we must take a look at the notion of the positive and negative as it is employed in arithmetic. There it is assumed as known; but because it is not grasped in its determinate difference, it does not avoid insoluble difficulties and complications. We have just found the two real determinations of the positive and negative — apart from the simple notion of their opposition — namely, first, that the base is a merely different, immediate existence whose simple reflection-into-self is distinguished from its positedness, from the opposition itself. This opposition, therefore, is not regarded as having any truth in and for itself, and though it does belong to the different sides, so that each is simply an opposite, yet, on the other hand, each side exists indifferently on its own, and it does not matter which of the two opposites is regarded as positive or negative. But secondly, the positive is the positive in and for itself, the negative in and for itself the negative, so that the different sides are not mutually indifferent but this their determination is true in and for itself. These two forms of the positive and negative occur in the very first applications of them in arithmetic.
In the first instance, +a and -a are simply opposite magnitudes; a is the implicit [ansichseiende] unity forming their common base; it is indifferent to the opposition itself and serves here, without any further notion, as a dead base. True, -a is defined as the negative, and +a as the positive, but the one is just as much an opposite as the other.
Further, a is not merely the simple unity forming the base but, as +a and -a, it is the reflection of these opposites into themselves; there are present two different a's, and it is a matter of indifference which of them one chooses to define as the positive or negative; both have a separate existence and are positive.
According to the first aspect, +y - y = 0; or in -8 + 3, the 3 positive units are negative in the 8. The opposites are cancelled in their combination. An hour's journey to the east and the same distance travelled back to the west, cancels the first journey; an amount of liabilities reduces the assets by a similar amount, and an amount of assets reduces the liabilities by the same amount. At the same time, the hour's journey to the east is not in itself the positive direction, nor is the journey west the negative direction; on the contrary, these directions are indifferent to this determinateness of the opposition; it is a third point of view outside them that makes one positive and the other negative. Thus the liabilities, too, are not in and for themselves the negative; they are the negative only in relation to the debtor; for the creditor, they are his positive asset; they are an amount of money or something of a certain value, and this is a liability or an asset according to an external point of view.
The opposites certainly cancel one another in their relation, so that the result is zero; but there is also present in them their identical relation, which is indifferent to the opposition itself; in this manner they constitute a one. Just as we have pointed out that the sum of money is only one sum, that the a in +a and -a is only one a, and that the distance covered is only one distance, not two, one going east and the other going west. Similarly, an ordinate y is the same on which ever side of the axis it is taken; so far, +y - y = y; it is only the one ordinate and it has only one determination and law.
But again, the opposites are not only a single indifferent term, but two such. For as opposites, they are also reflected into themselves and thus exist as distinct terms.
Thus in -8 + 3 there are altogether eleven units present; +y and -y are ordinates on opposite sides of the axis, where each is an existence indifferent to this limit and to their opposition; thus +y - y = 2y. — Also the distance travelled cast and west is the sum of a twofold effort or the sum of two periods of time. Similarly, in economics, a quantum of money or of wealth is not only this one quantum as a means of subsistence but is double: it is a means of subsistence both for the creditor and for the debtor. The wealth of the state is computed not merely as the total of ready money plus the value of property movable and immovable, present in the state; still less is it reckoned as the sum remaining after deduction of liabilities from assets. For capital, even if its respective determinations of assets and liabilities nullified each other, remains first, positive capital, as +a - a = a; and secondly, since it is a liability in a great number of ways, being lent and re-lent, this makes it a very much multiplied capital.
But not only are opposite magnitudes, on the one hand, merely opposite as such, and on the other hand, real or indifferent: for although quantum itself is being with an indifferent limit, yet the intrinsically positive and the intrinsically negative also occur in it. For example, a, when it bears no sign, is meant to be taken as positive if it has to be defined. If it were intended to become merely an opposite as such, it could equally well be taken as -a. But the positive sign is given to it immediately, because the positive on its own has the peculiar meaning of the immediate, as self-identical, in contrast to opposition.
Further, when positive and negative magnitudes are added and subtracted, they are counted as positive or negative on their own account and not as becoming positive or negative in an external manner merely through the relation of addition and subtraction.
In 8 - (-3) the first minus means opposite to 8, but the second minus (-3), counts as opposite in itself, apart from this relation.
This becomes more evident in multiplication and division. Here the positive must essentially be taken as the not-opposite, and the negative, on the other hand, as the opposite, not both determinations equally as only opposites in general. The textbooks stop short at the notion of opposite magnitudes as such in the proofs of the behaviour of the signs in these two species of calculation; these proofs are therefore incomplete and entangled in contradiction. But in multiplication and division plus and minus receive the more determinate meaning of the positive and negative in themselves, because the relation of the factors-they are related to one another as unit and amount-is not a mere relation of increasing and decreasing as in the case of addition and subtraction, but is a qualitative relation, with the result that plus and minus, too, are endowed with the qualitative meaning of the positive and negative. Without this determination and merely from the notion of opposite magnitudes, the false conclusion can easily be drawn that if -a times +a = -a2, conversely +a times -a = +a2. Since one factor is amount and the other unity, and the one which comes first usually means that it takes precedence, the difference between the two expressions -a times +a and +a times -a is that in the former +a is the unit and -a the amount, and in the latter the reverse is the case. Now in the first case it is usually said that if I am to take +a -a times, then I take +a not merely a times but also in the opposite manner, +a times -a; therefore since it is plus, I have to take it negatively, and the product is -a2. But if, in the second case, -a is to be taken +a times, then -a likewise is not to be taken -a times but in the opposite determination, namely +a times. Therefore it follows from the reasoning in the first case, that the product must be +a2. And similarly in the case of division.
This is a necessary conclusion in so far as plus and minus are taken only as simply opposite magnitudes: in the first case the minus is credited with the power of altering the plus; but in the second case the plus was not supposed to have the same power over the minus, notwithstanding that it is no less an opposite determination of magnitude than the latter. In point of fact, the plus does not possess this power, for it is to be taken here as qualitatively determined against the minus, the factors having a qualitative relationship to one another. Consequently, the negative here is the intrinsically opposite as such, but the positive is an indeterminate, indifferent sign in general; it is, of course, also the negative, but the negative of the other, not in its own self the negative. A determination as negation, therefore, is introduced solely by the negative, not by the positive.
And so -a times -a is also +a2, because the negative a is to be taken not merely in the opposite manner (in that case it would have to be taken as multiplied by -a), but because it is to be taken negatively. But the negation of negation is the positive.
1. Difference as such contains its two sides as moments; in diversity they fall indifferently apart; in opposition as such, they are sides of the difference, one being determined only by the other, and therefore only moments; but they are no less determined within themselves, mutually indifferent and mutually exclusive: the self-subsistent determinations of reflection.
One is the positive, the other the negative, but the former as the intrinsically positive, the latter as the intrinsically negative. Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that it has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a unity existing on its own and it excludes the other from itself.
The self-subsistent determination of reflection that contains the opposite determination, and is self-subsistent in virtue of this inclusion, at the same time also excludes it; in its self-subsistence, therefore, it excludes from itself its own self-subsistence. For this consists in containing within itself its opposite determination — through which alone it is not a relation to something external — but no less immediately in the fact that it is itself, and also excludes from itself the determination that is negative to it. It is thus contradiction.
Difference as such is already implicitly contradiction; for it is the unity of sides which are, only in so far as they are not one-and it is the separation of sides which are, only as separated in the same relation. But the positive and negative are the posited contradiction because, as negative unities, they are themselves the positing of themselves, and in this positing each is the sublating of itself and the positing of its opposite. They constitute the determining reflection as exclusive; and because the excluding of the sides is a single act of distinguishing and each of the distinguished sides in excluding the other is itself the whole act of exclusion, each side in its own self excludes itself.
If we consider the two determinations of reflection on their own, then the positive is positedness as reflected into likeness to itself, positedness that is not a relation to an other, a subsistence, therefore, in so far as positedness is sublated and excluded. But with this, the positive makes itself into the relation of a non-being — into a positedness. It is thus the contradiction that, in positing identity with itself by excluding the negative, it makes itself into the negative of what it excludes from itself, that is, makes itself into its opposite. This, as excluded, is posited as free from that which excludes it, and therefore as reflected into itself and as itself exclusive. The exclusive reflection is thus a positing of the positive as excluding its opposite, so that this positing is immediately the positing of its opposite which it excludes.
This is the absolute contradiction of the positive, but it is immediately the absolute contradiction of the negative; the positing of each is a single reflection. The negative, considered on its own over against the positive, is positedness as reflected into unlikeness to itself, the negative as negative. But the negative is itself the unlike, the non-being of an opposite; therefore its reflection into its unlikeness is rather its relation to itself. Negation in general is the negative as quality, or immediate determinateness; but the negative as negative, is related to the negative of itself, to its opposite. If this negative is only taken as identical with the first, then it, too, like the first, is merely immediate; and so they are not taken as mutual opposites and therefore not as negatives; the negative is not an immediate at all. But now, since it is also just as much a fact that each is the same as its opposite, this relation of the unlike is just as much their identical relation.
This is therefore the same contradiction that the positive is, namely, positedness or negation as self-relation. But the positive is only implicitly this contradiction, whereas the negative is the contradiction posited; for the latter, in virtue of its reflection-into-self which makes it a negative in and for itself or a negative that is identical with itself, is accordingly determined as a non-identical, as excluding identity. The negative is this, to be identical with itself in opposition to identity, and consequently, through its excluding reflection to exclude itself from itself.
The negative is, therefore, the whole opposition based, as opposition, on itself, absolute difference that is not related to an other; as opposition, it excludes identity from itself — but in doing so excludes itself; for as self-relation it is determined as the very identity that it excludes.
2. Contradiction resolves itself. In the self-excluding reflection we have just considered, positive and negative, each in its self-subsistence, sublates itself; each is simply the transition or rather the self-transposition of itself into its opposite. This ceaseless vanishing of the opposites into themselves is the first unity resulting from contradiction; it is the null.
But contradiction contains not merely the negative, but also the positive; or, the self-excluding reflection is at the same time positing reflection; the result of contradiction is not merely a nullity. The positive and negative constitute the positedness of the self-subsistence. Their own negation of themselves sublates the positedness of the self-subsistence. It is this which in truth perishes in contradiction.
The reflection-into-self whereby the sides of opposition are converted into self-subsistent self-relations is, in the first instance, their self-subsistence as distinct moments; as such they are only implicitly this self-subsistence, for they are still opposites, and the fact that they are implicitly self-subsistent constitutes their positedness. But their excluding reflection sublates this positedness, converts them into explicitly self-subsistent sides, into sides which are self-subsistent not merely implicitly or in themselves but through their negative relation to their opposite; in this way, their self-subsistence is also posited. But further, through this their positing, they make themselves into a positedness. They destroy themselves in that they determine themselves as self-identical, yet in this determination are rather the negative, an identity-with-self that is a relation-to-other.
However, this excluding reflection, looked at more closely, is not merely this formal determination. It is an implicit self-subsistence and is the sublating of this positedness, and it is only through this sublating that it becomes explicitly and in fact a self-subsistent unity. True, through the sublating of otherness or positedness, we are again presented with positedness, the negative of an other. But in point of fact, this negation is not merely the first, immediate relation-to-other again, not positedness as a sublated immediacy, but as a sublated positedness. The excluding reflection of self-subsistence, being exclusive, converts itself into a positedness, but is just as much a sublating of its positedness. It is a sublating self-relation; in this, it first sublates the negative, and secondly, posits itself as a negative, and it is only this negative that it sublates; in sublating the negative, it posits and sublates itself at the same time. In this way, the exclusive determination itself is that other of itself whose negation it is; consequently, the sublating of this positedness is not again a positedness as the negative of an other, but is a uniting with itself, the positive unity with itself. Self-subsistence is thus through its own negation a unity returned into itself, since it returns into itself through the negation of its own positedness. It is the unity of essence, being identical with itself through the negation, not of an other, but of itself.
3. According to this positive side, in which the self-subsistence in opposition, as the excluding reflection, converts itself into a positedness which it no less sublates, opposition is not only destroyed [zugrunde gegangen] but has withdrawn into its ground. The excluding reflection of the self-subsistent opposition converts this into a negative, into something posited; it thereby reduces its primarily self-subsistent determinations, the positive and negative, to the status of mere determinations; and the positedness, being thus made into a positedness, has simply returned into its unity with itself; it is simple essence, but essence as ground. Through the sublating of its inherently self-contradictory determinations, essence has been restored, but with this determination, that it is the excluding unity of reflection-a simple unity that determines itself as a negative, but in this positedness is immediately like itself and united with itself.
In the first place, therefore, the self-subsistent opposition through its contradiction withdraws into ground; this opposition is the prius, the immediate, that forms the starting point, and the sublated opposition or the sublated positedness is itself a positedness. Thus essence as ground is a positedness, something that has become. But conversely, what has been posited is only this, that opposition or positedness is a sublated positedness, only is as positedness. Therefore essence as ground is the excluding reflection in such wise that it makes its own self into a positedness, that the opposition from which we started and which was the immediate, is the merely posited, determinate self-subsistence of essence, and that opposition is merely that which sublates itself within itself, whereas essence is that which, in its determinateness, is reflected into itself. Essence as ground excludes itself from itself, it posits itself; its positedness — which is what is excluded — is only as positedness, as identity, of the negative with itself. This self-subsistent is the negative posited as negative; it is self-contradictory and therefore remains immediately in essence as in its ground.
The resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and negative. In opposition, the determination has attained to self-subsistence; but ground is this completed self-subsistence; in it, the negative is self-subsistent essence, but as a negative; as self-identical in this negativity, ground is just as much the positive. Opposition and its contradiction is, therefore, in ground as much abolished as preserved. Ground is essence as positive identity-with-self, which, however, at the same time relates itself to itself as negativity, and therefore determines itself and converts itself into an excluded positedness; but this positedness is the whole self-subsistent essence, and essence is ground, as self-identical and positive in this its negation. The self-contradictory, self-subsistent opposition was therefore already itself ground; all that was added to it was the determination of unity-with-self, which results from the fact that each of the self-subsistent opposites sublates itself and makes itself into its opposite, thus falling to the ground [zugrunde geht]; but in this process it at the same time only unites with itself; therefore, it is only in falling to the ground [in seinem Untergange], that is, in its positedness or negation, that the opposite is really the essence that is reflected into and identical with itself.
The positive and negative are the same. This expression stems from external reflection in so far as this draws a comparison between these two determinations. But it is not an external comparison that should be drawn between them any more than between any other categories; rather must they be considered in themselves, that is, we have to consider what their own reflection is. But we have found that each is essentially the mere show or illusory being of itself in the other and is itself the positing of itself as the other.
But the superficial thinking that does not consider the positive and negative as they are in and for themselves, can, of course, be referred to comparison in order to bring to its notice the untenability of these distinguished sides which it assumes to be fixed in their opposition to one another.Even a slight experience in reflective thinking will make it apparent that if something has been defined as positive and one moves forward from this basis, then straightway the positive has secretly turned into a negative, and conversely, the negatively determined into a positive, and that reflective thinking gets confused and contradicts itself in these determinations. Unfamiliarity with their nature imagines this confusion to be an error that ought not to happen, and ascribes it to a subjective mistake. This transition also, in fact, remains a mere confusion when there is no awareness of the necessity of the transformation.But even for external reflection, it is a simple first place, the positive is not an immediately identical, but on the one hand is an opposite to a negative, having meaning only in this relation, so that the negative itself is contained in its notion; on the other hand, that it is in its own self the self-related negation of mere positedness or the negative, is therefore itself absolute negation within itself. Similarly, the negative which stands over against the positive, has meaning only in this relation to its other; it therefore contains this in its notion. But the negative also has a subsistence of its own apart from this relation to the positive; it is self-identical; but as such it is itself that which the positive was supposed to be.
The opposition between the positive and negative is taken chiefly in the sense that the former (although etymologically it expresses positedness) is supposed to be an objective, and the latter a subjective that stems only from an external reflection and is no concern of the objective, which exists in and for itself and for which the subjective does not exist at all. Indeed, if the negative expresses nothing else but the abstraction of a subjective caprice or a determination of an external comparison, then of course it does not exist for the objective positive, that is, this is not related in its own self to such empty abstraction; that case the determination that it is a positive is likewise merely external to it. Thus, to take an example of the fixed opposition of these reflective determinations, light as such is reckoned as the pure positive and darkness as the pure negative. But light essentially possesses in its infinite expansion and in its power to promote growth and to animate, the nature of absolute negativity. Darkness, on the other hand, as a non-manifold or as the non-self-differentiating womb of generation, is the simply self-identical, the positive. It is taken as the pure negative in the sense that, as the mere absence of light, it simply does not exist for it, so that light, in its relation with darkness, is supposed to be in relation, not with an other but purely with itself, darkness therefore simply vanishing before it. But it is a familiar fact that light is dimmed to grey by darkness; and besides this merely quantitative alteration it suffers also the qualitative change of being determined to colour by its relation to darkness. Thus, for example virtue too is not without conflict; rather is it the supreme, finished conflict; as such it is not merely the positive, but is absolute negativity; also it is virtue not only in comparison with vice, but is in its own self opposition and conflict. Or again, vice is not merely the lack of virtue-innocence, too, is this lack-nor is it distinct from virtue only for an external reflection; on the contrary, it is in its own self opposed to it, it is evil. Evil consists in being self-poised in opposition to the good; it is a positive negativity. But innocence, being neither good nor evil, is indifferent to both determinations, is neither positive nor negative. But at the same time this lack must also be taken as a determinateness: on the one hand, it is to be considered as the positive nature of something; on the other, it is related to an opposite, and every nature emerging from its innocency, from its indifferent self-identity, spontaneously relates itself to its other and thereby falls to the ground or, in the positive sense, withdraws into its ground.
also is the positive as the knowing that agrees with the object; but it is only this likeness to itself in so far as the knower had put himself into a negative relation with the other, has penetrated the object and sublated the negation which it is. Error is a positive, as an opinion asserting what is not in and for itself, an opinion that is aware of itself and asserts itself. But ignorance is either indifferent to truth and error, and therefore neither positively not negatively determined, its determination stemming from external reflection; or else as objective, as a nature's own determination, it is the impulse that is directed against itself, a negative that contains a positive direction within it. It is of the greatest importance to perceive and to bear in mind this nature of the reflective determinations we have just here considered, namely, that their truth consists only in their relation to one another, that therefore each in its very Notion contains the other; without this knowledge, not a single step can really be taken in philosophy.
The determination of opposition has also been made into a law, the so-called law of the excluded middle: something is either A or not-A; there is no third.
This law implies first, that everything is an opposite, is determined as either positive or negative. An important proposition, which has its necessity in the fact that identity passes over into difference, and this into opposition. Only it is usually not understood in this sense, but usually means nothing more than that, of all predicates, either this particular predicate or its non-being belongs to a thing.
The opposite means here merely the lack lot a predicate or rather indeterminateness; and the proposition is so trivial that it is not worth the trouble of saying it. When the determinations sweet, green, square are taken-and all predicates are meant to be taken-and then it is said that spirit is either sweet or not sweet, green or not green, and so on, this is a triviality leading nowhere. The determinateness, the predicate, is referred to something; the proposition asserts that the something is determined; now it ought essentially to imply this: that the determinateness further determine itself, become an intrinsic determinateness, become opposition. Instead of this, however, it merely passes over, in the trivial sense just mentioned, from the determinateness into its non-being in general, back to indeterminateness.
The law of the excluded middle is also distinguished from the laws of identity and contradiction considered above; the latter of these asserted that there is nothing that is at once A and not-A. It implies that there is nothing that is neither A nor not-A, that there is not a third that is indifferent to the opposition. But in fact the third that is indifferent to the opposition is given in the law itself, namely, A itself is present in it. This A is neither +A nor -A, and is equally well +A as -A. The something that was supposed to be either -A or not A is therefore related to both +A and not-A; and again, in being related to A, it is supposed not to be related to not-A, nor to A, if it is related to not-A. The something itself, therefore, is the third which was supposed to be excluded. Since the opposite determinations in the something are just as much posited as sublated in this positing, the third which has here the form of a dead something, when taken more profoundly, is the unity of reflection into which the opposition withdraws as into ground.
If, now, the first determinations of reflection, namely, identity, difference and opposition, have been put in the form of a law, still more should the determination into which they pass as their truth, namely, contradiction, be grasped and enunciated as a law: everything is inherently contradictory, and in the sense that this law in contrast to the others expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of things. The contradiction which makes its appearance in opposition, is only the developed nothing that is contained in identity and that appears in the expression that the law of identity says nothing. This negation further determines itself into difference and opposition, which now is the posited contradiction.
But it is one of the fundamental prejudices of logic as hitherto understood and of ordinary thinking that contradiction is not so characteristically essential and immanent a determination as identity; but in fact, if it were a question of grading the two determinations and they had to be kept separate, then contradiction would have to be taken as the profounder determination and more characteristic of essence. For as against contradiction, identity is merely the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.
In the first place, contradiction is usually kept aloof from things, from the sphere of being and of truth generally; it is asserted that there is nothing that is contradictory. Secondly, it is shifted into subjective reflection by which it is first posited in the process of relating and comparing. But even in this reflection, it does not really exist, for it is said that the contradictory cannot be imagined or thought. Whether it occurs in actual things or in reflective thinking, it ranks in general as a contingency, a kind of abnormality and a passing paroxysm or sickness.
Now as regards the assertion that there is no contradiction, that it does not exist, this statement need not cause us any concern; an absolute determination of essence must be present in every experience, in everything actual, as in every notion. We made the same remark above in connection with the infinite, which is the contradiction as displayed in the sphere of being. But common experience itself enunciates it when it says that at least there is a host of contradictory things, contradictory arrangements, whose contradiction exists not merely in an external reflection but in themselves. Further, it is not to be taken merely as an abnormality which occurs only here and there, but is rather the negative as determined in the sphere of essence, the principle of all self-movement, which consists solely in an exhibition of it. External, sensuous movement itself is contradiction's immediate existence. Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this 'here', it at once is and is not. The ancient dialecticians must be granted the contradictions that they pointed out in motion; but it does not follow that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is existent contradiction itself.
Similarly, internal self-movement proper, instinctive urge in general, (the appetite or nisus of the monad, the entelechy of absolutely simple essence), is nothing else but the fact that something is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself. Abstract self-identity has no vitality, but the positive, being in its own self a negativity, goes outside itself and undergoes alteration. Something is therefore alive only in so far as it contains contradiction within it, and moreover is this power to hold and endure the contradiction within it. But if an existent in its positive determination is at the same time incapable of reaching beyond its negative determination and holding the one firmly in the other, is incapable of containing contradiction within it, then it is not the living unity itself, not ground, but in the contradiction falls to the ground. Speculative thinking consists solely in the fact that thought holds fast contradiction, and in it, its own self, but does not allow itself to be dominated by it as in ordinary thinking, where its determinations are resolved by contradiction only into other determinations or into nothing.
If the contradiction in motion, instinctive urge, and the like, is masked for ordinary thinking, in the simplicity of these determinations, contradiction is, on the other hand, immediately represented in the determinations of relationship. The most trivial examples of above and below, right and left, father and son, and so on ad infinitum, all contain opposition in each term. That is above, which is not below; 'above' is specifically just this, not to be 'below', and only is, in so far as there is a 'below'; and conversely, each determination implies its opposite. Father is the other of son, and the son the other of father, and each only is as this other of the other; and at the same time, the one determination only is, in relation to the other; their being is a single subsistence. The father also has an existence of his own apart from the son-relationship; but then he is not father but simply man; just as above and below, right and left, are each also a reflection-into-self and are something apart from their relationship, but then only places in general. Opposites, therefore, contain contradiction in so far as they are, in the same respect, negatively related to one another or sublate each other and are indifferent to one another. Ordinary thinking when it passes over to the moment of the indifference of the determinations, forgets their negative unity and so retains them merely as 'differents' in general, in which determination right is no longer right, nor left left, etc. But since it has, in fact, right and left before it, these determinations are before it as self-negating, the one being in the other, and each in this unity being not self-negating but indifferently for itself.
Therefore though ordinary thinking everywhere has contradiction for its content, it does not become aware of it, but remains an external reflection which passes from likeness to unlikeness, or from the negative relation to the reflection-into-self, of the distinct sides. It holds these two determinations over against one another and has in mind only them, but not their transition, which is the essential point and which contains the contradiction.
Intelligent reflection, to mention this here, consists, on the contrary, in grasping and asserting contradiction. Even though it does not express the Notion of things and their relationships and has for its material and content only the determinations of ordinary thinking, it does bring these into a relation that contains their contradiction and allows their Notion to show or shine through the contradiction. Thinking reason, however, sharpens, so to say, the blunt difference of diverse terms, the mere manifoldness of pictorial thinking, into essential difference, into opposition. Only when the manifold terms have been driven to the point of contradiction do they become active and lively towards one another, receiving in contradiction the negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and spontaneous activity.
We have already remarked that the basic determination in the ontological proof of the existence of God is the sum total of all realities. It is usually shown, first of all, that this determination is possible because it is free from contradiction, reality being taken only as reality without any limitation. We remarked that this sum total thus becomes simple indeterminate being, or if the realities are, in fact, taken as a plurality of determinate beings, into the sum-total of all negations. More precisely, when the difference of reality is taken into account, it develops from difference into opposition, and from this into contradiction, so that in the end the sum total of all realities simply becomes absolute contradiction within itself. Ordinary — but not speculative — thinking, which abhors contradiction, as nature abhors a vacuum, rejects this conclusion; for in considering contradiction, it stops short at the one-sided resolution of it into nothing, and fails to recognise the positive side of contradiction where it becomes absolute activity and absolute ground.
In general, our consciousness of the nature of contradiction has shown that it is not, so to speak, a blemish, an imperfection or a defect in something if a contradiction can be pointed out in it. On the contrary, every determination, every concrete thing, every Notion, is essentially a unity of distinguished and distinguishable moments, which, by virtue of the determinate, essential difference, pass over into contradictory moments. This contradictory side of course resolves itself into nothing — it withdraws into its negative unity. Now the thing, the subject, the Notion is just this negative unity itself: it is inherently self-contradictory, but it is no less contradiction resolved; it is the ground which contains and supports its determinations. The thing, subject, or Notion, as reflected into itself in its sphere, is its resolved Contradiction; but its entire sphere again is also determinate, different; it is therefore finite, and this means a contradictory one. Itself it is not the resolution of this higher Contradiction; but it has a higher sphere for its negative unity, for its Ground. Accordingly, finite things in the indifferent multiplicity are simply this, to be contradictory in themselves, to be contradictory and disrupted within themselves and to return into their Ground. As will be demonstrated later, the true inference from a finite and contingent being to an absolutely necessary Being does not consist in inferring the latter from the former as from a Being which is and remains Ground, on the contrary, the inference is from a being that, as is also implied immediately in contingency, is only in a state of collapse and is inherently self-contradictory; or rather, the true inference consists in showing that contingent Being in its own self withdraws into its Ground, in which it is sublated — and, further, that by this withdrawal it posits Ground in such a manner only that it makes itself into the posited element. In an ordinary inference the being of the finite appears as the Ground of the absolute: because the finite is the inherently self-contradictory opposition, because it is not. In the former meaning an inference runs thus: The Being of the finite is the Being of the absolute; but in the latter: The non-being of the finite is the being of the absolute.