Being is determined, first, as against another in general;
Secondly, as immanently self-determining;
Thirdly, setting aside the preliminary character of this division, it is the abstract indeterminateness and immediacy in which it must be the beginning.
According to the first determination, being is classified as distinct from essence, for later in its development it proves to be in its totality only one sphere of the Notion and to this sphere as moment, it opposes another sphere.
According to the second determination, it is the sphere within which fall the determinations and the entire movement of its reflection. Here, being will posit itself in three determinations:
I as determinateness as such: quality
II as sublated determinateness: magnitude, quantity
III as qualitatively determined quantity: measure.
At this stage, this division is, as was remarked of these divisions generally in the Introduction, a preliminary statement; its determinations have first to arise from the movement of being itself and in so doing define and justify themselves. As regards the divergence of this classification from the usual presentation of the categories, namely, as quantity, quality, relation and modality — these moreover with Kant are supposed to be only titles for his categories though they are, in fact, themselves categories, only more general ones — this calls for no special comment here, as the entire exposition will show a complete divergence from the usual arrangement and significance of the categories.
This only perhaps can be remarked, that hitherto the determination of quantity has been made to precede quality and this as is mostly the case — for no given reason. It has already been shown that the beginning is made with being as such, therefore, with qualitative being. It is easily seen from a comparison of quality with quantity that the former by its nature is first. For quantity is quality which has already become negative; magnitude is the determinateness which is no longer one with being but is already differentiated from it, sublated quality which has become indifferent. It includes the alterableness of being, although the category itself, namely Being, of which it is the determination, is not altered by it. The qualitative determinateness, on the other hand, is one with its being: it neither goes beyond it nor is internal to it, but is its immediate limitedness. Quality therefore, as the immediate determinateness, is primary and it is with it that the beginning must be made.
Measure is a relation, but not relation in general, for it is the specific relation between quality and quantity; the categories which Kant includes under relation will come up for consideration in quite another place. Measure can also, if one wishes, be regarded as a modality; but since with Kant modality is supposed no longer to constitute a determination of the content, but to concern only the relation of the content to thought, to the subjective element, it is a quite heterogeneous relation and is not pertinent here.
The third determination of being falls within the section Quality, for as abstract immediacy it reduces itself to a single determinateness in relation to its other determinatenesses within its sphere.