Hegel’s Science of Logic
§ 1318
The Notion is, in the first instance, formal, the Notion in its beginning or the immediate Notion. In the immediate unity, its difference or positedness is itself at first simple and only an illusory being [Schein], so that the moments of the difference are immediately the totality of the Notion and are simply the Notion as such.
§ 1319
Secondly, however, because it is absolute negativity, it sunders itself and posits itself as the negative or as the other of itself; and further, because as yet it is only the immediate Notion, this positing or differentiation is characterised by the fact that the moments become indifferent to one another and each becomes for itself; in this partition, its unity is still only an external connection. As such connection of its moments, which are posited as self-subsistent and indifferent, it is Judgment.
§ 1320
Thirdly, though the judgment does contain the unity of the Notion that has vanished into its self-subsistent moments, yet this unity is not posited. It becomes so through the dialectical movement of the judgment, through which it has become the Syllogism, the Notion posited in its completeness; for in the syllogism there is posited not only the moments of the Notion as self-subsistent extremes, but also their mediating unity.
§ 1321
But since this unity itself as the unifying middle, and the moments as self-subsistent extremes, are in the first instance immediately opposed to one another, this contradictory relationship that occurs in the formal syllogism sublates itself, and the completeness of the Notion passes over into the unity of the totality, the subjectivity of the Notion into its Objectivity.
§ 1322
Understanding is the term usually employed to express the faculty of notions; as so used, it is distinguished from the faculty of judgment and the faculty of syllogisms, of the formal reason But it is with reason that it is especially contrasted; in that case, however, it does not signify the faculty of the notion in general, but of determinate notions, and the idea prevails that the notion is only a determinate notion. When the understanding in this signification is distinguished from the formal faculty of judgment and from the formal reason, it is to be taken as the faculty of the single determinate notion. For the judgment and the syllogism or reason are, as formal, only a product of the understanding since they stand under the form of the abstract determinateness of the Notion. Here, however, the Notion emphatically does not rank as something merely abstractly determinate; consequently, the understanding is to be distinguished from reason only in the sense that the former is merely the faculty of the notion in general.
§ 1323
This universal Notion, which we have now to consider here, contains the three moments: universality, particularity and individuality. The difference and the determinations which the Notion gives itself in its distinguishing, constitute the side which was previously called positedness. As this is identical in the Notion with being-in-and-for-self, each of these moments is no less the whole Notion than it is a determinate Notion and a determination of the Notion.
§ 1324
In the first instance, it is the pure Notion or the determination of universality. But the pure or universal Notion is also only a determinate or particular Notion, which takes its place alongside other Notions. Because the Notion is a totality, and therefore in its universality or pure identical self-relation is essentially a determining and a distinguishing, it therefore contains within itself the standard by which this form of its self-identity, in pervading and embracing all the moments, no less immediately determines itself to be only the universal over against the distinguishedness of the moments.
Secondly, the Notion is thereby posited as this particular or determinate Notion, distinct from others.
Thirdly, individuality is the Notion reflecting itself out of the difference into absolute negativity. This is, at the same time, the moment in which it has passed out of its identity into its otherness, and becomes the judgment.
§ 1325
The pure Notion is the absolutely infinite, unconditioned and free. It is here, at the outset of the discussion which has the Notion for its content, that we must look back once more at its genesis. Essence is the outcome of being, and the Notion, the outcome of essence, therefore also of being. But this becoming has the significance of a self-repulsion, so that it is rather the outcome which is the unconditioned and original. Being, in its transition into essence, has become an illusory being or a positedness, and becoming or transition into an other has become a positing; and conversely, the positing or reflection of essence has sublated itself and has restored itself as a being that is not posited, that is original. The Notion is the interfusion of these moments, namely, qualitative and original being is such only as a positing, only as a return-into-self, and this pure reflection-into-self is a sheer becoming-other or determinateness which, consequently, is no less an infinite, self-relating determinateness.
§ 1326
Thus the Notion is, in the first instance, the absolute self-identity that is such only as the negation of negation or as the infinite unity of the negativity with itself. This pure relation of the Notion to itself, which is this relation by positing itself through the negativity, is the universality of the Notion.
§ 1327
As universality is the utterly simple determination, it does not seem capable of any explanation; for an explanation must concern itself with definitions and distinctions and must apply predicates to its object, and to do this to what is simple, would alter rather than explain it. But the simplicity which constitutes the very nature of the universal is such that, through absolute negativity, it contains within itself difference and determinateness in the highest degree. Being is simple as immediate being; for that reason it is only something meant or intended and we cannot say of it what it is; therefore, it is one with its other, with non-being. Its Notion is just this, to be a simplicity that immediately vanishes in its opposite; it is becoming. The universal, on the contrary, is that simplicity which, because it is the Notion, no less possesses within itself the richest content.
§ 1328
First, therefore, it is the simple relation to itself; it is only within itself. Secondly, however, this identity is within itself absolute mediation, but it is not something mediated. The universal that is mediated, namely, the abstract universal that is opposed to the particular and the individual, this will be discussed later when we are dealing with the specific notion. Yet even the abstract universal involves this, that in order to obtain it we are required to leave out other determinations of the concrete. These determinations, simply as such, are negations; equally, too, the omitting of them is a negating. So that even with the abstraction, we have the negation of the negation. But this double negation is conceived of as though it were external to the abstraction, as though not only were the other omitted properties of the concrete distinct from the one retained, which is the content of the abstract universal, but also as though this operation of omitting the other properties and retaining the one were a process outside the properties themselves. To such an externality in face of that movement, the universal has not yet determined itself; it is still within itself that absolute mediation which is, precisely, the negation of the negation or absolute negativity.
§ 1329
By virtue of this original unity it follows, in the first place, that the first negative, or the determination, is not a limitation for the universal which, on the contrary, maintains itself therein and is positively identical with itself. The categories of being were, as Notions, essentially these identities of the determinations with themselves in their limitation or otherness; but this identity was only in itself the Notion; it was not yet manifested. Consequently, the qualitative determination as such was lost in its other and had for its truth a determination distinct from itself. The universal, on the contrary, even when it posits itself in a determination, remains therein what it is. It is the soul [Seele] of the concrete which it indwells, unimpeded and equal to itself in the manifoldness and diversity of the concrete. It is not dragged into the process of becoming, but continues itself through that process undisturbed and possesses the power of unalterable, undying self-preservation.
§ 1330
But even so, it does not merely show, or have an illusory being, in its other, like the determination of reflection; this, as a correlate, is not merely self-related but is a positive relating of itself to its other in which it manifests itself; but, in the first instance, it only shows in it, and this illusory being of each in the other, or their reciprocal determining, along with their self-dependence, has the form of an external act. The universal, on the contrary, is posited as the essential being of its determination, as the latter's own positive nature. For the determination that constitutes its negative is, in the Notion, simply and solely a positedness; in other words, it is, at the same time, essentially only the negative of the negative, and is only as this identity of the negative with itself, which is the universal. Thus the universal is also the substance of its determinations; but in such wise that what was a contingency for substance, is the Notion's own self-mediation, its own immanent reflection. But this mediation which, in the first instance, raises contingency to necessity, is the manifested relation; the Notion is not the abyss of formless substance, or necessity as the inner identity of things or states distinct from, and limiting, one another; on the contrary, as absolute negativity, it is the shaper and creator, and because the determination is not a limitation but is just as much utterly sublated, or posited, the illusory being is now manifestation, the manifestation of the identical.
§ 1331
The universal is therefore free power; it is itself and takes its other within its embrace, but without doing violence to it; on the contrary, the universal is, in its other, in peaceful communion with itself. We have called it free power, but it could also be called free love and boundless blessedness, for it bears itself towards its other as towards its own self; in it, it has returned to itself.
§ 1332
We have just mentioned determinateness, although the Notion, being as yet only the universal and only self-identical, has not yet advanced to that stage. However, we cannot speak of the universal apart from determinateness which to be more precise is particularity and individuality, for the universal, in its absolute negativity, contains determinateness in and for itself. The determinateness, therefore, is not introduced from outside when we speak of it in connection with the universal. As negativity in general or in accordance with the first, immediate negation, the universal contains determinateness generally as particularity; as the second negation, that is, as negation of the negation, it is absolute determinateness or individuality and concreteness. The universal is thus the totality of the Notion; it is a concrete, and far from being empty, it has through its Notion a content, and a content in which it not only maintains itself but one which is its own and immanent in it. We can, indeed, abstract from the content: but in that case we do not obtain the universal of the Notion but only the abstract universal, which is an isolated, imperfect moment of the Notion and has no truth.
§ 1333
More precisely, the universal shows itself as this totality as follows. In so far as it contains determinateness, it is not merely the first negation, but also the reflection of this negation into itself. Taken expressly with this first negation, it is a particular, and it is as such that we are soon to consider it; but in this determinateness it is essentially still a universal; this side we have here still to consider. For determinateness, being in the Notion, is the total reflection, the two-fold illusory being which on the one hand has an illusory reference outwards, the reflection-into-other, and on the other hand has an illusory reference inwards, the reflection-into-self. The former reflection involves distinction from an other; from this standpoint, the universal possesses a particularity which has its resolution in a higher universal. Now even though it is merely a relative universal, it does not lose its character of universal; it preserves itself in its determinateness, not merely as though in its connection with the determinateness it remained indifferent to it — for then it would be merely compounded with it but so that it is what we have just called the illusory reference inwards. The determinateness, as determinate Notion, is bent back into itself out of the externality; it is the Notion's own immanent character, which is an essential character by virtue of the fact that, in being taken up into the universality and pervaded by it, it equally pervades the universality, being of like compass and identical with it; it is the character that belongs to the genus as the determinateness that is not separated from the universal. Accordingly, the limitation is not outward-going but positive, for the Notion, through its universality, stands in free relation to itself. Thus even the determinate Notion remains within itself infinitely free Notion.
§ 1334
But in regard to the other side, in which the genus is limited by its specific character, it has been observed that this, as a lower genus, has its resolution in a higher universal. The latter, in its turn, can also be grasped as genus but as a more abstract one; but it always pertains only to that side of the determinate Notion which has a reference outwards. The truly higher universal is that in which this outward-going side is taken back into the universal, the second negation, in which the determinateness is present simply as posited or as illusory being. Life, ego, spirit, absolute Notion, are not universals merely in the sense of higher genera, but are concretes whose determinatenesses, too, are not species or lower genera but genera which, in their reality, are absolutely self-contained and self-fulfilled. In so far as life, ego, finite spirit are, as they certainly are, also only determinate Notions, their absolute resolution is in that universal which as truly absolute Notion is to be grasped as the Idea of infinite spirit, whose posited being is infinite, transparent reality wherein it contemplates its creation, and in this creation its own self.
§ 1335
The true, infinite universal which, in itself, is as much particularity as individuality, we have next to consider as particularity. It determines itself freely; the process by which it makes itself finite is not a transition, for this occurs only in the sphere of being; it is creative power as the absolute negativity which relates itself to its own self. As such, it differentiates itself internally, and this is a determining, because the differentiation is one with the universality. Accordingly, the universal is a process in which it posits the differences themselves as universal and self-related. They thereby become fixed, isolated differences. The isolated subsistence of the finite which earlier was determined as its being-for-self, and also as thinghood, as substance, is, in its truth universality, the form with which the infinite Notion clothes its differences — a form that is, in fact, one of its own differences. Herein consists the creative power of the Notion, a power which is to be comprehended only in this, the Notion's innermost core.
§ 1336
Determinateness as such belongs to being and the qualitative sphere; as determinateness of the Notion it is particularity. It is not a limit, as though it were related to an other beyond it; on the contrary, as we have just seen, it is the native, immanent moment of the universal; in particularity, therefore, the universal is not in the presence of an other, but simply of itself.
The particular contains universality, which constitutes its substance; the genus is unaltered in its species, and the species are not different from the universal but only from one another. The particular has one and the same universality as the other particulars to which it is related. At the same time, by virtue of the identity of the particulars with the universal, their diversity is, as such, universal; it is totality. The particular, therefore, not only contains the universal but through its determinateness also exhibits it; consequently, the universal constitutes a sphere that must exhaust the particular. This totality appears, in so far as the determinateness of the particular is taken as mere diversity, as completeness. In this respect, species are complete simply because there are no more of them. There is no inner standard or principle that could apply to them, simply because diversity is the difference without unity in which the universality, which in its own self is absolute unity, is a merely external reflection and an unrestricted, contingent completeness. But diversity passes over into opposition, into an immanent relation of the diverse moments. Particularity, however, because it is universality, is this immanent relation, not through a transition, but in and for itself; it is in its own self totality and simple determinateness, essentially a principle. It has no other determinateness than that posited by the universal itself and resulting from the universal in the following manner.
The particular is the universal itself, but it is its difference or relation to an other, its illusory reference outwards [sein Scheinen nach aussen]; but there is no other present from which the particular could be distinguished, except the universal itself. The universal determines itself, and so is itself the particular; the determinateness is its difference; it is distinguished only from its own self. Therefore its species are only (a) the universal itself, and (b) the particular. The universal as the Notion is itself and its opposite, and this again is the universal itself as its posited determinateness; it embraces its opposite and in it is in union with itself. Thus it is the totality and principle of its diversity, which is determined wholly and solely by the universal itself.
Therefore there is no other true logical classification than this, that the Notion sets itself on one side as immediate indeterminate universality; this very indeterminateness constitutes its determinateness or makes it a particular. Each of them is the particular and is therefore co-ordinate with the other. Each of them as a particular is also determinate as against the universal, and in so far can be said to be subordinate to it. But even this universal, as against which the particular is determined, is for that reason itself merely one of the opposed sides. For if we speak of two opposed sides, we must supplement this by saying that it is not merely together that they constitute the particular – as if they were alike in being particulars only for external reflection – but rather that their determinateness over against one another is at the same time essentially only one determinateness, the negativity, which in the universal is simple.
Difference, as it shows itself here, is in its Notion and therefore in its truth. All previous difference has this unity in principle (im Begriffe). As immediate difference in the sphere of being, it is limit of an other; in reflection it is relative and posited as essentially relating itself to its other; here therefore the unity of the Notion begins to be posited, but at first it is only illusory being in an other. The true meaning and resolution of these determinations is just this, that they attain to their Notion, their truth; being, determinate being, something, or whole and parts, etc. substance and accidents, cause and effect, are by themselves [merely] thought-determinations; but they are grasped as determinate Notions when each is cognized in unity with its other or opposite determination. Whole and parts, cause and effect, for example, are not as yet different terms determined as particulars relatively to each other, because although in themselves they constitute one Notion, their unity has not yet reached the form of universality; thus the difference, too, which is in these relationships, has not as yet the form of being one determinateness. Cause and effect, for example, are not two different Notions, but only one determinate Notion, and causality, like every Notion, is a simple Notion.
With respect to completeness, we have seen that the determinate side of particularity is complete in the difference of the universal and the particular, and that these two alone constitute the particular species. In nature, of course, there are to be found more than two species in a genus, just as between these many species there cannot exist the relationship we have just indicated. This is the impotence of nature, that it cannot adhere to and exhibit the strictness of the Notion and runs wild in this blind irrational [begrifflos] multiplicity. We can wonder at nature’s manifold genera and species and the endless diversity of her formations, for wonderment is unreasoning and its object the irrational. Nature, because it is the self-externality of the Notion, is free to indulge itself in this variety, just as spirit, too, even though it possesses the Notion in the shape of the Notion, engages in pictorial thinking and runs riot in its endless variety. The manifold natural genera or species must not be esteemed as anything more than the capricious fancies of spirit in its representations. Both indeed show traces and inklings of the Notion on all sides, but do not present a faithful copy of it because they are the side of its free self-externality. The Notion is absolute power just because it can freely abandon its difference to the shape of self-subsistent diversity, outer necessity, contingency, caprice, opinion, which however must not be taken for more than the abstract aspect of nothingness.
We have seen that the determinateness of the particular is simple as principle, but it is also simple as moment of the totality — as a determinateness opposed to the other determinateness. The Notion, in determining or distinguishing itself, is negatively directed against its unity and gives itself the form of one of its ideal moments, that of being: as a determinate Notion, it has a determinate Being in general. But this Being no longer signifies bare immediacy but Universality — immediacy which through absolute mediation is equal to itself and equally contains the other moment, essential being or reflection. This Universality with which the determinate moment is clothed is abstract Universality. The particular has Universality within it as its essential being; but, in so far as the determinateness of the difference is posited, and thereby has Being, Universality is a form assumed by the difference, and the determinateness as such is the content. The Universality becomes form in so far as the difference is present as the essential moment, just as, on the contrary, in the purely universal it is present only as absolute negativity, not as difference which posited as such. ©
§ 1337
Now determinateness, it is true, is the abstract, as against the other, determinateness; but this other is only universality itself which is, therefore, also abstract, and the determinateness of the Notion, or particularity, is again nothing more than a determinate universality. In this, the Notion is outside itself; since it is the Notion that is here outside itself, the abstract universal contains all the moments of the Notion. It is (a) universality, (b) determinateness, (c) the simple unity of both; but this unity is immediate, and therefore particularity is not present as totality. In itself it is also this totality and mediation; it is essentially an exclusive relation to an other, or sublation of the negation, namely, of the other determinateness – an other, however, that exists only in imagination, for it vanishes immediately and shows itself to be the same as its supposed other. Therefore, what makes this universality abstract is that the mediation is only a condition or is not posited in the universality itself. Because it is not posited, the unity of the abstract universality has the form of immediacy, and the content has the form of indifference to its universality, for the content is not present as the totality which is the universality of absolute negativity. Hence the abstract universal is, indeed, the Notion, yet it is without the Notion; it is the Notion that is not posited as such.
When people talk of the determinate Notion, what is usually meant is merely such an abstract universal. Even by notion as such, what is generally understood is only this notion that is no Notion, and the understanding denotes the faculty of such notions. Demonstration appertains to this understanding in so far as it progresses by notions, that is to say, merely by determinations. Such a progression by notions, therefore, does not get beyond finitude and necessity; for it, the highest is the negative infinite, the abstraction of the supreme being [des höchsten Wesen], which is itself the determinateness of indeterminateness. Absolute substance, too, though it is not this empty abstraction – from the point of view of its content it is rather the totality – is nevertheless abstract because it lacks the absolute form; its inmost truth is not constituted by the Notion; true, it is the identity of universality and particularity, or of thought and asunderness, yet this identity is not the determinateness of the Notion; on the contrary, outside substance there is an understanding – and just because it is outside it, a contingent understanding – in which and for which substance is present in various attributes and modes.
Moreover, abstraction is not empty as it is usually said to be; it is the determinate Notion and has some determinateness or other for its content. Even the supreme being, the pure abstraction, has, as already remarked, the determinateness of indeterminateness; but indeterminateness is a determinateness, because it is supposed to stand opposed to the determinate. But the enunciation of what it is, itself sublates what it is supposed to be; it is enunciated as one with determinateness, and in this way, out of the abstraction is established its truth and the Notion. But every determinate Notion is, of course, empty in so far as it does not contain the totality, but only a one-sided determinateness. Even when it has some other concrete content, for example man, the state, animal, etc., it still remains an empty Notion, since its determinateness is not the principle of its differences; a principle contains the beginning and the essential nature of its development and realization; any other determinateness of the notion, however, is sterile. To reproach the Notion generally with being empty, is to misjudge that absolute determinateness of the Notion which is the difference of the Notion and the only true content in the element of the Notion.
§ 1338
Connected with the above is the reason why latterly the Understanding has been so lightly esteemed and ranked as inferior to Reason; it is the fixity which it imparts to the determinatenesses, and hence to finite determinations. This fixity consists in the form of abstract Universality which has just been considered: through it they become immutable. For qualitative determinateness, and also determinations of reflection, are essentially limited, and, through their limitation, have a relation to their other; hence the necessity of transition and passing away. But universality which they possess in the understanding gives them the form of reflection-into-self by which they are freed from the relation-to-other and have become imperishable. Now though in the pure Notion this eternity belongs to its nature, yet its abstract determinations are eternal essentialities only in respect of their form; but their content is at variance with this form; therefore they are not truth, or imperishable. Their content is at variance with the form, because it is not determinateness itself as universal; that is, it is not totality of the Notion's difference, or not itself the whole form; but the form of the limited understanding is itself the imperfect form, namely, abstract universality. But further, we must recognise the infinite force of the understanding in splitting the concrete into abstract determinatenesses and plumbing the depth of difference, the force that at the same time is alone the power that effects their transition.
The concrete of intuition is a totality, but a sensuous one – a real material which has an indifferent, sundered existence in space and time; but surely this absence of unity in the manifold, where it is the content of intuition, ought not to be counted to it for merit and superiority over intellectual existence. The mutability that it exhibits in intuition already points to the universal; yet all that it brings to view is merely another, equally mutable, material; therefore, only the same thing again, not the universal which should appear and take its place. But least of all in sciences such as geometry and arithmetic, should we count it as a merit that their material involves an intuitive element, or imagine that their propositions are established on it. On the contrary, it is on account of that element that the material of such sciences is of an inferior nature; the intuition of figures or numbers does not procure a scientific knowledge of them; only thinking about them can do this. But if by intuition we are to understand not merely the element of sense but the objective totality, then it is an intellectual intuition; that is to say, intuition has for its object not the external side of existence, but what existence holds of imperishable reality and truth-reality, only in so far as it is essentially in the Notion and determined by it, the Idea, whose more precise nature has to reveal itself at a later stage. The advantage which intuition as such is supposed to have over the Notion is external reality, the Notionless element, which first receives a value through the Notion.
Since, therefore, understanding exhibits the infinite force which determines the universal, or conversely, imparts through the form of Universality a fixity and subsistence to the determinateness that is in and for itself transitory; then it is not the fault of understanding if no further progress is made beyond this point. It is a subjective impotence of reason which adopts these determinatenesses in their fixity, and which is unable to bring them back to their unity through the dialectical force opposed to this abstract universality, in other words, through their own peculiar nature or through their Notion. The understanding does indeed give them, so to speak, a rigidity of being such as they do not possess in the sphere of quality and the sphere of reflection; but at the same time it spiritually impregnates them and so sharpens them, that just at this extreme point alone they acquire the capability to dissolve themselves and pass over into their opposite. The highest maturity, the highest stage, which anything can attain is that in which its downfall begins. The fixity of the determinateness into which the understanding seems to run, the form of the imperishable, is that of self-relating universality. But this belongs properly to the Notion; and consequently in this universality is to be found expressed, and infinitely close at hand, the dissolution of the finite. This Universality directly refutes the determinateness of the finite and expresses its incongruity with the universality. Or rather, the adequacy of the finite is already to hand; the abstract determinate is posited as one with the universality, and for that very reason is posited as not for itself — for then it would only be a determinate — but only as unity of itself and the universal, that is, as Notion. ©
Therefore the usual practice of separating understanding and reason is, from every point of view, to be rejected. When the Notion is regarded as irrational, this should be interpreted rather as an incapacity of reason to recognize itself in the Notion. The determinate and abstract Notion is the condition, or rather an essential moment of reason; it is form spiritually impregnated, in which the finite, through the universality in which it relates itself to itself, spontaneously catches fire, posits itself as dialectical and thereby is the beginning of the manifestation of reason.
In the foregoing, the determinate Notion has been presented in its truth, and therefore it only remains to indicate what it is as already posited therein. Difference, which is an essential moment of the Notion though not yet posited as such in the pure universal, receives its due in the determinate Notion. Determinateness in the form of universality is linked with the universal to form a simple determination; this determinate universal is the self-related determinateness; it is the determinate determinateness or absolute negativity posited for itself. But the self-related determinateness is individuality. Just as universality is immediately in and for itself already particularity, so too particularity is immediately in and for itself also individuality; this individuality is, in the first instance, to be regarded as the third moment of the Notion, in so far as we hold on to its opposition to the two other moments, but it is also to be considered as the absolute return of the Notion into itself, and at the same time as the posited loss of itself.
Remark. Universality, particularity, and individuality are, according to the foregoing exposition, the three determinate Notions, that is, if one insists on counting them. We have already shown that number is an unsuitable form in which to hold Notional determinations; but for the determinations of the Notion itself it is unsuitable in the highest degree; number, since it has the unit [das Eins] for its principle, converts them as counted into completely isolated and mutually indifferent determinations. We have seen from the foregoing that the truth is that the different determinate Notions, far from falling apart into number, are simply only one and the same Notion.
In the customary treatment of logic hitherto, various classifications and species of notions occur. We are at once struck by the inconsequential way in which the species of notions are introduced: there are, in respect of quantity, quality, etc., the following notions. There are, expresses no other justification than that we find such species already to hand and they present themselves empirically. In this way, we obtain an empirical logic – an odd science this, an irrational cognition of the rational. In proceeding thus, logic sets a very bad example of obedience to its own precepts; it permits itself for its own purpose to do the opposite of what it prescribes as a rule, namely that notions should be deduced, and scientific propositions (therefore also the proposition: there are such and such species of notions) should be proved. In this matter, the Kantian philosophy commits a further inconsequence: it borrows the categories, as so-called root notions, for the transcendental logic, from the subjective logic in which they were adopted empirically. Since it admits the latter fact, it is hard to see why transcendental logic resolves to borrow from such a science instead of directly resorting to experience.
To cite some details of this, notions are mainly classified according to their clearness, into clear and obscure, distinct and indistinct, adequate and inadequate. To these we can also add complete, profuse, [überfliessend] notions and suchlike superfluities. As regards the classification by clearness, it is readily seen that this standpoint and its related distinctions are taken from psychological, not from logical, determinations. The so-called clear notion is supposed to suffice for distinguishing one object from another; but this is not yet a notion, it is nothing more than a subjective representation. What an obscure notion is must be left to itself, for otherwise it would not be an obscure but a distinct notion. The distinct notion is supposed to be one whose marks can be indicated. As such it is, strictly speaking, the determinate notion. The mark, if it is taken in its correct meaning, is none other than the determinateness or the simple content of the notion, in so far as it is distinguished from the form of universality. But the mark, in the first instance, does not have quite this preciser meaning but is in general merely a determination whereby a third something takes note of an object, or the notion; it can therefore be a very contingent circumstance. In general it expresses not so much the immanence and essential nature of the determination as its relation to an understanding external to it. If this is really an understanding, it has the notion before it and distinguishes this only and solely by what is in the notion. But if the mark is supposed to be distinct from the notion, then it is a sign or some other determination which belongs to the representation of the thing, not to its notion. What the indistinct notion may be, can be passed over as superfluous.
But the adequate notion is something higher; what it really implies is the agreement of the Notion with reality, which is not the Notion as such but the Idea.
If the mark of the distinct notion were really supposed to be the determination of the notion itself, logic would find itself in difficulty over the simple notions which, according to another classification, are opposed to compound. For if a true, that is an immanent, mark of the simple notion were to be indicated, we should not be regarding it as simple; but in so far as no mark was given, it would not be a distinct notion. But here, now, the clear notion helps out, Unity, reality, and suchlike determinations are supposed to be simple notions, probably only because logicians were unable to discover their specific nature and contented themselves with having merely a clear notion of them, that is, no notion at all. Definition, that is, the statement of the notion, in general demands the statement of the genus and the specific difference. Therefore it presents the notion, not as something simple, but in two countable components. Yet surely no one will for that reason suppose such notion to be a compound. The simple notion seems to suggest abstract simplicity, a unity which does not contain within itself difference and determinateness and which therefore, too, is not the unity that belongs to the Notion. In so far as an object is present in ordinary thinking, especially in memory, or even as an abstract thought determination, it can be quite simple. Even the object that is richest in content, such as, for example, spirit, nature, the world, even God, when uncomprehendingly taken up into the simple representation of the equally simple expression: spirit, nature, the world, God, is doubtless something simple at which consciousness can stop short without going on to pick out its peculiar determination or its mark. But the objects of consciousness should not remain simple, should not remain such representations or abstract thought determinations; on the contrary, they should be comprehended, that is to say, their simplicity should be determined with their inner difference. The compound notion, however, is a contradiction in terms. We can, of course, have a notion of something composite; but a compound notion would be something worse than materialism, which assumes only the substance of the soul to be composite, yet none the less takes thought to be simple. Uneducated reflection first stumbles on the idea of composition, because it is the completely external relation, the worst form in which anything can be considered; even the lowest natures must be an inner unity. That the form of the untruest existence should be assigned, above all, to the ego, to the Notion, that is something we should not have expected and that can only be described as inept and barbarous.
Further, notions are divided mainly into contrary and contradictory. If, in our treatment of the notion, we are supposed to state what determinate notions there are, then we must adduce all possible determinations – for all determinations are notions, consequently determinate notions – and all the categories of being as well as all determinations of essence, would have to be adduced under the species of notions. Just as in the text-books of logic – to a greater or lesser degree, according to the whim of the author – it is related that there are affirmative, negative, identical, conditional, necessary notions, and so on. As the nature of the Notion itself has progressed beyond all such determinations and therefore these, if adduced in connexion with the Notion, occur out of their proper place, they only admit of superficial definitions and appear at this stage devoid of all interest. At the basis of contrary and contradictory notions – a distinction to which particular attention is paid here – lies the reflective determination of diversity and opposition. They are regarded as two particular species, that is, each as firmly fixed on its own account and indifferent to the other, without any thought of the dialectic and the inner nullity of these differences – as though what is contrary must not equally be determined as contradictory. The nature and the essential transition of the forms of reflection which they express have been considered in their proper place. In the Notion, identity has developed into universality, difference into particularity, opposition, which withdraws into the ground, into individuality. In these forms, those categories of reflection are present as they are in their Notion. The universal has proved itself to be not only the identical, but at the same time the different or contrary as against the particular and individual, and in addition, also to be opposed to them or contradictory; in this opposition, however, it is identical with them and is their true ground in which they are sublated. The same holds good of particularity and individuality which are likewise the totality of the determinations of reflection.
A further classification of notions is into subordinate and coordinate – a distinction which approaches more closely to the determination of the Notion, namely, the relationship of universality and particularity, where these terms, too, have been mentioned in passing. Only it is customary to regard them likewise as completely rigid relationships and from this point of view to put forward a number of sterile propositions about them. The most prolix discussion on this point concerns again the relation of contrariety and contradiction to subordination and co-ordination. Since the judgment is the relation of determinate Notions, it is only at that stage that the true relationship will come to view. That fashion of comparing these determinations without a thought for their dialectic or for the progressive alteration of their determination, or rather for the conjunction of opposed determinations present in them, makes the whole consideration of what is concordant or not concordant in them – as though the concord or discord were something separate and permanent – into something merely sterile and meaningless.
The great Euler, who displayed an infinitely fertile and acute mind in seizing and combining the deeper relations of algebraic magnitudes, the dry, prosaic Lambert in particular, and others, have attempted to construct a notation for this class of relation between determinations of the Notion by lines, figures and the like, the general intention being to elevate, or rather in fact to degrade, the logical modes of relation to a calculus. The utter futility of even attempting a notation is at once apparent when one compares the nature of the sign and what it is supposed to signify. The determinations of the Notion, universality, particularity and individuality, are certainly diverse, as are lines, or the letters of algebra; further, they are also opposed, and to this extent would also admit of the signs plus and minus. But they themselves, and above all their relations – even if one stops at subsumption and inherence – are in their essential nature entirely different from letters and lines and their relationships, the equality or difference of magnitude, the plus and minus, or a superimposition of lines, or their joining to form angles and the dispositions of spaces enclosed by them. It is characteristic of such objects that, in contrast to determinations of the Notion, they are mutually external, and have a fixed character. Now when Notions are so taken that they correspond to such signs, they cease to be Notions. Their determinations are not inert entities like numbers and lines whose relation does not itself belong to them; they are living movements; the distinguished determinateness of the one side is immediately internal to the other side too. What would be a complete contradiction in the case of numbers and lines is essential to the nature of the Notion. Higher mathematics, which also goes on to the infinite and allows itself contradictions, can no longer employ its usual signs for representing such determinations. To denote the conception – which is still very far from being a Notion – of the infinite approximation of two ordinates, or in equating a curve with an infinite number of infinitesimal straight lines, all it does is to draw two straight lines apart from each other and to make the straight lines approach the curve but remain distinct from it; for the infinite, which is here the point of interest, it refers us to pictorial thinking.
What has misled logicians into this attempt is primarily the quantitative relationship in which universality, particularity and individuality are supposed to stand to one another; the universal means, more extensive than the particular and the individual, and the particular means, more extensive than the individual. The Notion is the most concrete and richest determination because it is the ground and the totality of the preceding determinations, of the categories of being and of the determinations of reflection; these, therefore, are certainly also present in it. But its nature is completely misunderstood when they are retained in it in their former abstraction, when the wider extent of the universal is taken to mean that it is something more or a greater quantum than the particular and the individual. As absolute ground, it is the possibility of quantity, but equally so of quality, that is, its determinations are just as much qualitatively distinct; therefore they are taken in direct opposition to their truth when they are posited under the form of quantity alone. Thus, too, the determination of reflection is a correlate in which its opposite has an illusory being [scheint]; it is not in an external relationship like a quantum. But the Notion is more than all this; its determinations are determinate Notions, are themselves essentially the totality of all determinations. It is therefore quite inappropriate for the purpose of grasping such an inner totality, to seek to apply numerical and spatial relationships in which all determinations fall asunder; on the contrary, they are the last and worst medium which could be employed. Natural relationships such as magnetism, or colour relations, would be infinitely higher and truer symbols for the purpose. Since man has in language a means of designation peculiar to Reason, it is an idle fancy to search for a less perfect mode of representation to plague oneself with. It is essentially only spirit that can comprehend the Notion as Notion; for this is not merely the property of spirit but spirit’s pure self. It is futile to seek to fix it by spatial figures and algebraic signs for the purpose of the outer eye and an uncomprehending, mechanical mode of treatment such as a calculus. In fact, anything else which might be supposed to serve as a symbol can at most, like symbols for the nature of God, evoke intimations and echoes of the Notion; if, however, one should seriously propose to employ them for expressing and cognizing the Notion, then the external nature of all symbols is inadequate to the task; the truth about the relationship is rather the converse, namely, that what in symbols is an echo of a higher determination, is only truly known through the Notion and can be approximated to the Notion only by separating off the sensuous, unessential part that was meant to express it.
§ 1339
Individuality, as we have seen, is already posited by particularity; this is determinate universality and therefore self-related determinateness, the determinate determinate.
1. In the first instance, therefore, individuality appears as the reflection of the Notion out of its determinateness into itself. It is the self-mediation of the Notion in so far as its otherness has made itself into an other again, whereby the Notion has reinstated itself as self-identical, but in the determination of absolute negativity. The negative in the universal whereby this is a particular, was defined above as a two-fold illusory being: in so far as the negative is an illusory being within the universal, the particular remains a universal; through the reference of the illusory being outwards it is a determinate; the return of this side into the universal is two-fold: either through abstraction which lets drop the particular and rises to the higher and the highest genus, or else through the individuality to which the universal in the determinateness itself descends. Here is where the false path branches off and abstraction strays from the highway of the Notion and forsakes the truth. Its higher and highest universal to which it raises itself is only the surface, which becomes ever more destitute of content; the individuality it despises is the profundity in which the Notion seizes itself and is posited as Notion. ©
§ 1340
Universality and particularity appeared, on the one hand, as moments of the becoming of individuality. But it has already been shown that they are in themselves the total Notion, and consequently in individuality do not pass over into an other, but that in individuality there is only posited that they are in and for themselves. The universal is in and for itself because it is in its own self absolute mediation, self-reference only as absolute negativity. It is an abstract universal in so far as this sublating is an external act and so a dropping of the determinateness.
§ 1341
Life, Spirit, God — the pure Notion itself, are beyond the grasp of abstraction, because it deprives its products of singularity, of the principle of individuality and personality, and so arrives at nothing but universalities devoid of life and spirit, colour and content.
§ 1342
Yet the unity of the Notion is so indissoluble that even these products of abstraction, though they are supposed to drop individuality are, on the contrary, individuals themselves. Abstraction raises the concrete into universality in which, however, the universal is grasped only as a determinate universality; and this is precisely the individuality that has shown itself to be self-related determinateness. Abstraction, therefore, is a sundering of the concrete and an isolating of its determinations; through it only single properties and moments are seized; for its product must contain what it is itself. But the difference between this individuality of its products and the Notion's individuality is that, in the former, the individual as content and the universal as form are distinct from one another — just because the former is not present as absolute form, as the Notion itself, or the latter is not present as the totality of form. However this more detailed consideration shows that the abstract product itself is a unity of the individual content and abstract universality, and is, therefore, a concrete — and the opposite of what it aims to be.
§ 1343
For the same reason the particular, because it is only the determinate universal, is also an individual, and conversely the individual, because it is the determinate universal, is just as much a particular. If we stick to this abstract determinateness, then the Notion has the three particular determinations, the universal, the particular, and the individual; whereas previously we had given only the universal and the particular as the species of the particular. Since individuality is the return of the Notion, as negative, into itself, this very return from the abstraction which, strictly speaking, is sublated in the return, can be placed along with the others as an indifferent moment and counted with them.
If individuality is reckoned as one of the particular determinations of the Notion, then particularity is the totality which embraces them all; precisely in being this totality it is the concretion of them or individuality itself. But it is also the concrete in accordance with its aspect, noted above, of determinate universality; as such it is the immediate unity in which none of these moments is posited as distinct or as the determinant, and in this form it will constitute the middle term of the formal syllogism.
It is self-evident that each determination made in the preceding exposition of the Notion has immediately dissolved itself and lost itself in its other. Each distinction is confounded in the very attempt to isolate and fix it. Only mere representational thinking, for which abstraction has isolated them, is capable of holding the universal, particular and individual rigidly apart; in this way they can be counted, and for a further distinction such thinking holds to the completely external one of being, namely, quantity, which is nowhere less appropriate than here. In individuality, the true relationship mentioned above, the inseparability of the Notion’s determinations is posited; for as negation of the negation it contains their opposition and at the same time contains it in its ground or unity, the effected coincidence of each with its other. As this reflection is in its very own nature universality, it is essentially the negativity of the Notion’s determinations, but not merely as if it were a third something distinct from them; on the contrary, it is now posited that posited being [Gesetztsein] is being-in-and-for-itself; that is, that each of the determinations pertaining to the difference is itself the totality. The return of the determinate Notion into itself means that it has the determination of being, in its determinateness, the whole Notion.
2. But Individuality is not only the return of the Notion into itself; but immediately its loss. Through individuality, where the Notion is internal to itself, it becomes external to itself and enters into actuality. Abstraction which, as the soul of individuality is the relation of the negative to the negative; and, as we have shown not external to the universal and the particular but immanent in them; and through it they are concrete, content, an individual. But as this negativity, individuality is the determinate determinateness, is differentiation as such; through this reflection of the difference into itself, the difference becomes fixed; it is only through individuality that the determining of the particular takes place, for individuality is that abstraction which simply as individuality, is now posited abstraction.
§ 1344
The individual, therefore, as self-related negativity, is immediate identity of the negative with itself; it is a being-for-self. Or it is the abstraction that determines the Notion, according to its ideal moment of being, as an immediate. In this way, the individual is a qualitative one or this. With this quality it is, first, repulsion of itself from itself, whereby the many other ones are presupposed; secondly, it is now a negative relation towards these presupposed others; and, the individual is in so far exclusive.
§ 1345
Universality, when related to these individuals as indifferent ones – and related to them it must be because it is a moment of the Notion of individuality – is merely their common element. When one understands by the universal, that which is common to several individuals, one is starting from the indifferent subsistence of these individuals and confounding the immediacy of being with the determination of the Notion. The lowest possible conception of the universal in its connection with the individual is this external relation of it as merely a common element. ©
The individual, which in the sphere of reflection exists as a this, does not have the exclusive relation to another one which belongs to qualitative being-for-self. This, as the one reflected into itself, is for itself and without repulsion; or repulsion in this reflection is one with abstraction and is the reflecting mediation which attaches to the this in such wise that the this is a posited immediacy pointed out by someone external to it. The this is; it is immediate; but it is only this in so far as it is pointed out. The ‘pointing out’ is the reflecting movement which collects itself inwardly and posits immediacy, but as a self-external immediacy. Now the individual is certainly a this, as the immediate restored out of mediation; but it does not have the mediation outside it – it is itself a repelling separation, posited abstraction, yet in its very act of separating, it is a positive relation.
This act of abstraction by the individual, being the reflection of the difference into itself, is first a positing of the differentiated moments as self-subsistent and reflected-into-self. They immediately are; but further, this sundering is reflection as such, the illusory being of the one in the other; thus they stand in essential relation. Further, the individuals are not merely inertly present in relation to one another; such plurality belongs to being; the individuality, in positing itself as determinate, posits itself not in an external difference but in the difference of the Notion. It therefore excludes the universal from itself; yet since this is a moment of individuality, the universal is equally essentially related to it.
The Notion, as this relation of its self-subsistent determinations, has lost itself; for as such it is no longer their posited unity, and they are no longer present as moments, as the illusory being, of the Notion, but as subsistent in and for themselves. As individuality, the Notion in its determinateness returns into itself, and therewith the determinate moment has itself become a totality. Its return into itself is therefore the absolute, original partition of itself, or, in other words, it is posited as judgment.
§ 1346
The judgment is the determinateness of the Notion posited in the Notion itself. The Notion's determinations, or what we have seen to be the same thing, the determinate Notions, have already been considered on their own; but this consideration was more a subjective reflection or subjective abstraction. But the Notion is itself this abstractive process, the opposing of its determinations is its own determining activity. The judgment is this positing of the determinate Notions by the Notion itself. Judging is thus another function than comprehension, or rather it is the other function of the Notion as the determining of the Notion by itself, and the further progress of the judgment into the diversity of judgments is the progressive determination of the Notion. What kinds of determinate Notions there are, and how these determinations of the Notion are arrived at, has to reveal itself in the judgment.
§ 1347
The judgment can therefore be called the proximate realisation of the Notion, inasmuch as reality denotes in general entry into existence as a determinate being. More precisely, the nature of this realisation has presented itself in such a manner that, on the one hand, the moments of the Notion through its reflection-into-self or its individuality are self-subsistent totalities, while on the other hand the unity of the Notion is their relation. The determinations reflected into themselves are determinate totalities, no less essentially in their indifferent and disconnected subsistence as through their reciprocal mediation with one another. The determining itself is only totality in that it contains these totalities and their connection. This totality is the judgment. It contains, therefore, first, the two self-subsistents which are called subject and predicate. What each is cannot yet really be said; they are still indeterminate, for it is only through the judgment that they are to be determined. The judgment, being the Notion as determinate, the only distinction present is the general one that the judgment contains the determinate Notion over against the still indeterminate Notion. The subject can therefore, in the first instance, be taken in relation to the predicate as the individual over against the universal, or even as the particular over against the universal, or as the individual over against the particular; so far, they confront each other only in general, as the more determinate and the more universal.
§ 1348
It is therefore appropriate and necessary to have these names, subject and predicate for the determinations of the judgment; as names, they are something indeterminate that still awaits its determination, and are, therefore, no more than names. It is partly for this reason that the Notion determinations themselves could not be used for the two sides of the judgment; but a stronger reason is because the nature of the Notion determination is emphatically to be, not something abstract and fixed, but to have and to posit its opposite within it; since the sides of the judgment are themselves Notions and therefore the totality of its determinations, each side must run through all these determinations and exhibit them within itself, whether in abstract or concrete form. Now in order to fix the sides of the judgment in a general way when their determination is altered, those names are most serviceable which remain the same throughout the alteration. The name however stands over against the matter in hand or the Notion; this distinction presents itself in the judgment as such; now the subject is in general the determinate, and is therefore more that which immediately is, whereas the predicate expresses the universal, the essential nature or the Notion; therefore the subject as such is, in the first instance, only a kind of name; for what it is is first enunciated by the predicate which contains being in the sense of the Notion. In the question: what is this? or: what kind of a plant is this? what is often understood by the being enquired after, is merely the name, and when this is learned one is satisfied and now knows what the thing is. This is being in the sense of the subject. But the Notion, or at least the essence and the universal in general, is first given by the predicate, and it is this that is asked for in the sense of the judgment. Consequently, God, spirit, nature, or whatever it may be, is as the subject of a judgment at first only the name; what such a subject is as regards its Notion is first enunciated in the predicate. When enquiry is made as to the kind of predicate belonging to such subject, the act of judgment necessarily implies an underlying Notion. But this Notion is first enunciated by the predicate itself. Properly speaking, therefore, it is the mere general idea that constitutes the presupposed meaning of the subject and that leads to the naming of it; and in doing this it is contingent and a historical fact, what is, or is not, to be understood by a name. So many disputes about whether a predicate does or does not belong to a certain subject are therefore nothing more than verbal disputes, because they start from the form above mentioned; what lies at the base is so far nothing more than the name.
§ 1349
We have now to examine, secondly, how the relation of subject and predicate in the judgment is determined and how subject and predicate themselves are at first determined through this very relation. The judgment has in general for its sides totalities which to begin with are essentially self-subsistent. The unity of the Notion is, therefore, at first only a relation of self-subsistents; not as yet the concrete and pregnant unity that has returned into itself from this reality, but only a unity outside which the self-subsistent sides persist as extremes that are not sublated in it. Now consideration of the judgment can begin from the original unity of the Notion, or from the self-subsistence of the extremes. The judgment is the self-diremption of the Notion; this unity is, therefore, the ground from which the consideration of the judgment in accordance with its true objectivity begins. It is thus the original division [Teilung] of what is originally one; thus the word Urteil refers to what judgment is in and for itself. But regarded from the side of externality, the Notion is present in the judgment as Appearance, since its moments therein attain self-subsistence, and it is on this external side that ordinary thinking tends to fasten.
§ 1350
From this subjective standpoint, then, subject and predicate are considered to be complete, each on its own account, apart from the other: the subject as an object that would exist even if it did not possess this predicate; the predicate as a universal determination that would exist even if it did not belong to this subject. From this standpoint, the act of judgment involves the reflection, whether this or that predicate which is in someone's head can and should be attached to the object which exists on its own account outside; the very act of judging consists in this, that only through it is a predicate combined with a subject, so that, if this combination did not take place, each on its own would still remain what it is, the latter an existent object, the former an idea in someone's head. The predicate which is attached to the subject should, however, also belong to it, that is, be in and for itself identical with it. Through this significance of attachment, the subjective meaning of judgment and the indifferent, outer subsistence of subject and predicate are sublated again: this action is good; the copula indicates that the predicate belongs to the being of the subject and is not merely externally combined with it. In the grammatical sense, that subjective relationship in which one starts from the indifferent externality of the subject and predicate has its complete validity; for it is words that are here externally combined. We may take this opportunity of remarking, too, that though a proposition has a subject and predicate in the grammatical sense, this does not make it a judgment. The latter requires that the predicate be related to the subject as one Notion determination to another, and therefore as a universal to a particular or individual. If a statement about a particular subject only enunciates something individual, then this is a mere proposition, For example, 'Aristotle died at the age of 73, in the fourth year of the 115th Olympiad,' is a mere proposition, not a judgment. It would partake of the nature of a judgment only if doubt had been thrown on one of the circumstances, the date of the death, or the age of that philosopher, and the given figures had been asserted on the strength of some reason or other. In that case, these figures would be taken as something universal, as time that still subsists apart from this particular content of the death of Aristotle, whether as time filled with some other content, or even as empty time. Similarly, the news that my friend N. has died is a proposition; and it would be a judgment only if there were a question whether he was really dead or only in a state of catalepsy.
§ 1351
In the usual way of defining the judgment we may indeed accept the indeterminate expression connection for the external copula, as also that the connected terms are at least supposed to be notions. But in other respects this definition is superficial in the extreme: not only, for example, that in the disjunctive judgment more than two so-called notions are connected, but rather that the definition is far better than its subject matter; for it is not notions at all that are meant, hardly determinations of the Notion, but really only determinations of representational thought; it was remarked in connection with the Notion in general and the determinate Notion, that what is usually so named by no means deserves the name of Notion; where then should Notions come from in the case of the judgment? Above all, in this definition the essential feature of the judgment, namely, the difference of its determinations, is passed over; still less does it take into account the relationship of the judgment to the Notion.
§ 1352
As regards the further determination of the subject and predicate, we have remarked that it is really in the judgment first that they have to receive their determination. Since the judgment is the posited determinateness of the Notion, this determinateness possesses the said differences immediately and abstractly as individuality and universality. But in so far as the judgment is in general the determinate being or otherness of the Notion which has not yet restored itself to the unity whereby it is as Notion, there emerges also-the determinateness which is notionless, the opposition of being and reflection or the in-itself. But since the Notion constitutes the essential ground of the judgment, these determinations are at least indifferent to the extent that when one belongs to the subject and the other to the predicate, the converse relationship equally holds good. The subject as the individual appears, in the first instance, as that which simply is or is for itself in accordance with the specific determinateness of the individual — as an actual object, even though it be only an object in representational thought — as for example bravery, right, agreement, etc. — on which judgment is being made. The predicate, on the other hand, as the universal, appears as this reflection on the object, or rather as the object's reflection into itself, which goes beyond that immediacy and sublates the determinatenesses in their form of mere being; that is, it is the object's in-itself. In this way, one starts from the individual as the first, the immediate, and it is raised by the judgment into universality, just as, conversely, the universal that is only in itself descends in the individual into determinate being or becomes a being that is for itself.
§ 1353
This signification of the judgment is to be taken as its objective meaning, and at the same time as the truth of the earlier forms of the transition. In the sphere of being, the object becomes and others itself, the finite perishes or goes under in the infinite; in the sphere of Existence, the object issues from its ground into Appearance and falls to the ground, the accident manifests the wealth of substance as well as its power; in being, there is transition into an other, in essence, reflected being in an other by which the necessary relation is revealed. This movement of transition and reflection has now passed over into the original partition of the Notion which, while bringing back the individual to the in-itself of its universality, equally determines the universal as something actual. These two acts are one and the same process in which individuality is posited in its reflection-into-self, and the universal as determinate.
§ 1354
But now this objective signification equally implies that the said differences, in reappearing in the determinateness of the Notion, are at the same time posited only as Appearances, that is, that they are not anything fixed, but apply just as much to the one Notion determination as to the other. The subject is, therefore, just as much to be taken as the in-itself, and the predicate, on the other hand, as determinate being. The subject without predicate is what the thing without qualities, the thing-in-itself is in the sphere of Appearance — an empty, indeterminate ground; as such, it is the Notion enclosed within itself, which only receives a differentiation and determinateness in the predicate; the predicate therefore constitutes the side of the determinate being of the subject. Through this determinate universality the subject stands in relation to an externality, is open to the influence of other things and thereby becomes actively opposed to them. What is there comes forth from its being-within-self and enters into the universal element of connection and relationship, into the negative connections and the interplay of actuality, which is a continuation of the individual into other individuals and therefore universality.
§ 1355
The identity just demonstrated, namely, that the determination of the subject equally applies to the predicate and vice versa, is not, however, something only for us; it is not merely in itself, but is also posited in the judgment; for the judgment is the connection of the two; the copula expresses that the subject is the predicate. The subject is the specific determinateness, and the predicate is this posited determinateness of the subject; the subject is determined only in its predicate, or, only in the predicate is it a subject; in the predicate it has returned into itself and is therein the universal. Now in so far as the subject is the self-subsistent, this identity has the relationship that the predicate does not possess a self-subsistence of its own, but has its subsistence only in the subject; it inheres in the subject. Since the predicate is thus distinct from the subject, it is only an isolated determinateness of the latter, only one of its properties; while the subject itself is the concrete, the totality of manifold determinatenesses, just as the predicate contains one; it is the universal.
§ 1356
But on the other hand the predicate, too, is a self-subsistent universality and the subject, conversely, only a determination of it. Looked at this way, the predicate subsumes the subject; individuality and particularity are not for themselves, but have their essence and substance in the universal. The predicate expresses the subject in its Notion; the individual and the particular are contingent determinations in the subject; it is their absolute possibility. When in the case of subsumption one thinks of an external connection of subject and predicate and the subject is conceived of as a self-subsistent something, the subsumption refers to the subjective act of judgment above-mentioned in which one starts from the self-subsistence of both subject and predicate. From this standpoint subsumption is only the application of the universal to a particular or an individual, which is placed under the universal in accordance with a vague idea that it is of inferior quality.
§ 1357
When the identity of subject and predicate are so taken that at one time one Notion determination applies to the former and the other to the latter, and at another time the converse equally holds good, then the identity is as yet still only an implicit one; on account of the self-subsistent diversity of the two sides of the judgment, their posited unity also has these two sides, in the first instance as different. But differenceless identity really constitutes the true relation of the subject to the predicate. The Notion determination is itself essentially relation for it is a universal; therefore the same determinations possessed by the subject and predicate are also possessed by their relation itself. The relation is universal, for it is the positive identity of the two, of subject and predicate; but it is also determinate, for the determinateness of the predicate is that of the subject; further, it is also individual, for in it the self-subsistent extremes are sublated as in their negative unity. However, in the judgment this identity is not as yet posited; the copula is present as the still indeterminate relation of being as such: A is B; for in the judgment, the self-subsistence of the Notion determinatenesses or the extremes, is the reality which the Notion has within it. If the is of the copula were already posited as the above determinate and pregnant unity of subject and predicate, as their Notion, it would already be the syllogism.
§ 1358
To restore this identity of the Notion, or rather to posit it, is the goal of the movement of the judgment. What is already present in the judgment is, on the one hand, the self-subsistence of subject and predicate, but also their mutually opposed determinateness, and on the other hand their none the less abstract relation. What the judgment enunciates to start with is that the subject is the predicate; but since the predicate is supposed not to be what the subject is, we are faced with a contradiction which must resolve itself, pass over into a result. Or rather, since subject and predicate are in and for themselves the totality of the Notion, and the judgment is the reality of the Notion, its forward movement is only a development; there is already present in it what comes forth from it, so that proof is merely an exposition, a reflection as a positing of that which is already present in the extremes of the judgment; but even this positing itself is already present; it is the relation of the extremes.
§ 1359
The judgment in its immediacy is in the first instance the judgment of existence; its subject is immediately an abstract individual which simply is, and the predicate is an immediate determinateness or property of the subject, an abstract universal.
This qualitative character of subject and predicate being sublated, the determination of the one is reflected, to begin with, in the other; the judgment is now, secondly, the judgment of reflection.
But this more external conjunction passes over into the essential identity of a substantial, necessary connection; as such it is, thirdly, the judgment of necessity.
Fourthly, since in this essential identity the difference of subject and predicate has become a form, the judgment becomes subjective; it contains the opposition of the Notion and its reality and the equation of the two; it is the judgment of the Notion.
This emergence of the Notion establishes the transition of the Judgment into the syllogism.
§ 1360
In the subjective judgment we want to see one and the same object double, first in its individual actuality, and then in its essential identity or in its Notion: the individual raised into its universality, or, what is the same thing, the universal individualised into its actuality. In this way the judgment is truth: for it is the agreement of the Notion and reality. But this is not the nature of the judgment at first; for at first it is immediate, since as yet no reflection and movement of the determinations has appeared in it. This immediacy makes the first judgment a judgment of existence; it can also be called the qualitative judgment, but only in so far as quality does not apply only to the determinateness of being but also includes the abstract universality which, on account of its simplicity, likewise has the form of immediacy.
§ 1361
The judgment of existence is also the judgment of inherence; because it is in the form of immediacy, and because the subject as distinguished from the predicate is the immediate, and consequently the primary and essential feature in a judgment of this kind, the predicate has the form of a non-self-subsistent determination that has its foundation in the subject.
§ 1387
In the judgment that has now arisen, the subject is an individual as such; and similarly the universal is no longer an abstract universality or a single property, but is posited as a universal that has gathered itself together into a unity through the relation of distinct terms; or, regarding it from the point of view of the content of various determinations in general, as the taking together of various properties and existences. If examples are to be given of predicates of judgments of reflection, they must be of another kind than for judgments of existence. It is in the judgment of reflection that we first have, strictly speaking, a determinate content, that is, a content as such; for the content is the form determination which is reflected into identity as distinct from the form in so far as this is a distinct determinateness — as it still is in the judgment. In the judgment of existence the content is merely an immediate, or abstract, indeterminate content. The following may therefore serve as examples of judgments of reflection: man is mortal, things are perishable, this thing is useful, harmful; hardness, elasticity of bodies, happiness, etc. are predicates of this peculiar kind. They express an essential determination, but one which is in a relationship or is a unifying universality.
§ 1388
This universality, which will further determine itself in the movement of the judgment of reflection, is still distinct from the universality of the Notion as such; true, it is no longer the abstract universality of the qualitative judgment, but it still possesses a relation to the immediate from which it proceeds and has the latter as the basis of its negativity. The Notion determines the existent, in the first instance, to determinations of relation, to self-continuities in the diverse multiplicity of concrete existence-yet in such a manner that the genuine universal, though it is the inner essence of that multiplicity, is still in the sphere of Appearance, and this relative nature-or even the mark-of this multiplicity is still not the moment of being-in-and-for-self of the latter.
§ 1389
It may suggest itself to define the judgment of reflection as a judgment of quantity, just as the judgment of existence was also defined as qualitative judgment. But just as immediacy in the latter was not merely an immediacy which simply is, but one which was essentially also mediated and abstract, so here, too, that sublated immediacy is not merely sublated quality, and therefore not merely quantity; on the contrary, just as quality is the most external immediacy, so is quantity, in the same way, the most external determination belonging to mediation.
§ 1390
Further, as regards the determination as it appears in its movement in the judgment of reflection, it should be remarked that in the judgment of existence the movement of the determination showed itself in the predicate, because this judgment was in the determination of immediacy and the subject consequently appeared as the basis. For a similar reason, in the judgment of reflection, the onward movement of determining runs its course in the subject, because this judgment has for its determination the reflected in-itself. Here therefore the essential element is the universal or the predicate; hence it constitutes the basis by which, and in accordance with which, the subject is to be measured and determined. However, the predicate also receives a further determination through the further development of the form of the subject; but this occurs indirectly, whereas the development of the subject is, for the reason stated, a direct advance.
§ 1391
As regards the objective signification of the judgment, the individual, through its universality, enters into existence, but in an essential determination of relationship, in an essentiality which maintains itself throughout the multiplicity of the world of Appearance; the subject is supposed to be determinate in and for itself; this determinateness it possesses in its predicate. The individual, on the other hand, is reflected into this its predicate which is its universal essence; the subject is in so far a concrete existence in the world of Appearance. The predicate in this judgment no longer inheres in the subject; it is rather the implicit being under which this individual is subsumed as an accidental. If the judgments of existence may also be defined as judgments of inherence, judgments of reflection are, on the contrary, judgments of subsumption.
§ 1405
The determination to which universality has advanced is, as we have seen, the universality which is in and for itself or objective, to which in the sphere of essence substantiality corresponds. It is distinguished from the latter in that it belongs to the Notion and is therefore not merely the inner but also the posited necessity of its determinations; or, in other words, the difference is immanent in it, whereas substance has its difference only in its accidents, but not as principle within itself.
§ 1406
Now in the judgment, this objective universality is posited; first, therefore, with this its essential determinateness as immanent in it, secondly, with its determinateness distinguished from it as particularity, of which this universality constitutes the substantial basis. In this way it is determined as genus and species.
§ 1417
The ability to form judgments of existence such as 'the rose is red', 'snow is white', and so forth, will hardly count as evidence of great powers of judgment. The judgments of reflection are rather propositions; in the judgment of necessity the object appears, it is true, in its objective universality, but it is only in the judgment now to be considered that its relation to the Notion is found. In this judgment the Notion is laid down as the basis, and since it is in relation to the object, it is an ought-to-be to which the reality may or may not be adequate. Therefore it is only a judgment of this kind that contains a true appreciation; the predicates good, bad, true, beautiful, correct, etc. express that the thing is measured against its universal Notion as the simply presupposed ought-to-be and is, or is not, in agreement with it.
§ 1418
The judgment of the Notion has been called the judgment of modality and it has been regarded as containing that form of the relationship between subject and predicate which is found in an external understanding, and to be concerned with the value of the copula only in relation to thinking.
§ 1419
According to this view, the problematical judgment is one where the affirmation or denial is taken as optional or possible; the assertoric, where it is taken as true, that is as actual; and the apodeictic, where it is taken as necessary. It is easy to see why it is so natural in the case of this judgment to step out of the sphere of judgment itself and to regard its determination as something merely subjective. For here it is the Notion, or the subjective, that reappears in the judgment and stands in relationship to an external actuality. But this subjectivity is not to be confused with external reflection, which of course is also something subjective, but in a different sense from the Notion itself; on the contrary, the Notion that re-emerges from the disjunctive judgment is the opposite of a mere contingent mode. The earlier judgments are in this sense merely subjective, for they are based on an abstraction and one-sidedness in which the Notion is lost. The judgment of the Notion, on the contrary, is objective and the truth as against those earlier judgments, just because it has for its basis the Notion, not the Notion in external reflection or in relation to a subjective, that is contingent, thinking, but the Notion in its determinateness as Notion.
§ 1420
In the disjunctive judgment the Notion was posited as identity of the universal nature with its particularisation; consequently the relation of the judgment was cancelled. This concretion of universality and particularisation is, at first, a simple result; it has now to develop itself further into totality, since the moments which it contains are at first swallowed up in it and as yet do not confront one another in determinate self-subsistence. The defect of the result may also be more definitely expressed by saying that in the disjunctive judgment, although objective universality has completed itself in its particularisation, yet the negative unity of the latter merely returns into the former and has not yet determined itself to the third moment, that of individuality. Yet in so far as the result itself is negative unity, it is indeed already this individuality; but as such it is only this one determinateness, which has now to posit its negativity, sunder itself into the extremes and in this way finally develop into the syllogism.
§ 1421
The proximate diremption of this unity is the judgment in which it is posited first as subject, as an immediate individual, and then as predicate, as the determinate relation of its moments.
§ 1431
This judgment, then, is truly objective; or it is the truth of the judgment in general. Subject and predicate correspond to each other and have the same content, and this content is itself the posited concrete universality; it contains, namely, the two moments, the objective universal or the enus, and the individualised universal. Here, therefore, we have the universal which is itself and continues itself through its opposite and is a universal only as unity with this opposite. A universal of this kind, such as the predicate good, suitable, correct, etc., is based on an ought-to-be and at the same time contains the correspondence of existence to that ought-to-be; it is not this ought-to-be or the genus by itself, but this correspondence that is the universality which constitutes the predicate of the apodeictic judgment.
§ 1432
The subject likewise contains these two moments in immediate unity as the fact. But it is the truth of the fact that it is internally split into what it ought-to-be and what it is; this is the absolute judgment on all actuality. It is because this original partition, which is the omnipotence of the Notion, is just as much a return into its unity and an absolute relation of the ought-to-be and being to each other that makes what is actual into a fact; its inner relation, this concrete identity, constitutes the soul of the fact.
§ 1433
The transition from the immediate simplicity of the fact to the correspondence which is the determinate relation of its ought-to-be and its being — or the copula — is now seen, on closer examination, to lie in the particular determinateness of the fact. The genus is the universal in and for itself, which as such appears as the unrelated; while the determinateness is that which in that universal is reflected into itself, yet at the same time is reflected into an other. The judgment therefore has its ground in the constitution of the subject and thereby is apodeictic. Hence we now have before us the determinate and fulfilled copula, which formerly consisted in the abstract 'is', but has now further developed itself into ground in general. It appears at first as an immediate determinateness in the subject, but it is no less the relation to the predicate which has no other content than this very correspondence, or the relation of the subject to the universality.
§ 1434
Thus the form of the judgment has perished; first because subject and predicate are in themselves the same content; secondly because the subject through its determinateness points beyond itself and relates itself to the predicate; but also, thirdly, this relating has passed over into the predicate, alone. constitutes its content, and is thus the posited relation, or the judgment itself. Thus the concrete identity of the Notion which was the result of the disjunctive judgment and which constitutes the inner basis of the Notion judgment — which identity was at first posited only in the predicate — is now restored in the whole.
§ 1435
If we examine the positive element of this result which effects the transition of the judgment into another form, we find, as we have seen, that subject and predicate in the apodeictic judgment are each the whole Notion. The unity of the Notion as the determinateness constituting the copula that relates them, is at the same time distinct from them. At first, it stands only on the other side of the subject as the latter's immediate constitution. But since it is essentially that which relates subject and predicate, it is not merely such immediate constitution but the universal that permeates both subject and predicate. While subject and predicate have the same content, the form relation, on the other hand, is posited through this determinateness, determinateness as a universal or particularity. Thus it contains within itself the two form determinations of the extremes and is the determinate relation of subject and predicate; it is the fulfilled copula of the judgment, the copula pregnant with content, the unity of the Notion that has re-emerged from the judgment in which it was lost in the extremes. Through this impregnation of the copula the judgment has become the syllogism.
Highlighted text is Lenin's underlining. The ® accesses Lenin's annotations; © accesses annotations by C L R James.
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