On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part six.
‘Space! Space! break paths, wild bosom!’
by Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel (1863–1920)
Space! Space! break paths, wild bosom!
I feel it and marvel every evening,
that not only one sun laughs;
life itself is the joy of life!
Plunge in, plunge in with blind hands,
you have never yet known the goal;
ten thousand stars everywhere
there stand ten thousand suns and pour forth
their beams into our breast!
Raum! Raum! brich Bahnen, wilde Brust!
Ich fühls und staune jede Nacht,
daß nicht blos Eine Sonne lacht;
das Leben ist des Lebens Lust!
Hinein, hinein mit blinden Händen,
du hast noch nie das Ziel gewußt;
zehntausend Sterne, aller Enden
zehntausend Sonnen stehn und spenden
uns ihre Strahlen in die Brust!
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Philosophy of Nature’.
The issues so far covered and it has taken me five articles have been controversial in the sense that various critics have adopted diverse views with regard to Hegel’s meaning, what he is trying to do, and upon the legitimacy of his proceedings in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’. Now to an the exposition of its actual contents of Hegel’s concerning which there is widespread convergence of opinion.
‘What is nature? It is through the knowledge and the philosophy of nature that we propose to find the answer to this general question. We find nature before us as an enigma and a problem, the solution of which seems to both attract and repel us; it attracts us in that spirit has a presentiment of itself in nature; it repulses us in that nature is an alienation in which spirit does not find itself, From this arose Aristotle’s dictum that philosophy has its origin in wonder. We begin to observe, and we collect data from the multifarious formations and laws of nature, which may be pursued for their own sake into endless detail in all directions; and because we can see no end to this procedure, it leaves us unsatisfied. What is more, despite all this wealth of knowledge, the question, ‘What is nature?’ can always be asked and never completely answered. It remains a problem. When we see nature’s processes and transmutations, we want to grasp its simple essence, and force this Proteus to relinquish his transformations, to reveal himself to us, and to speak out; not so that he merely dupes us with an everchanging variety of new forms, but so that he renders himself to consciousness in a more simple way, through language. This quest for being has a multiple meaning. It is merely the matter of a name if we ask, ‘What sort of plant is this? If we know the name, it may be a matter of perception. If for example I do not know what a box-compass is, I merely have to get someone to show me the instrument, and then I can say that I know. In the question, ‘What is this man?’, ‘is’ refers to his status, but this is not its meaning if we ask, ‘What is nature?’ The meaning of this question, when we ask it because we want to know what the philosophy of nature is, is the object of this investigation’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Nature is the antithesis of the triad that is constituted by the Logical Idea, Nature, and Spirit hence it is the opposite of the Idea, it is the Idea gone out of itself into otherness, into self-estrangement and it is for this reason that as the opposite of the Idea which is Reason Nature is irrational and Nature in addition is the moment of particularity which the Idea allows to escape from itself and in accordance with the general principles of the dialectic method the Idea is the universal for the Logic deals only with pure abstract universal thoughts and Nature is the particular, Spirit is the singular, concrete individuality.
‘Nature has yielded itself as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since the Idea is therefore the negative of itself, or external to itself, nature is not merely external relative to this Idea (and to the subjective existence of the same, spirit), but is embodied as nature is the determination of externality’.
‘If God is all sufficient and lacks nothing, how does He come to release Himself into something so clearly unequal to Him? The divine Idea is just this self-release, the expulsion of this other out of itself, and the 15 acceptance of it again, in order to constitute subjectivity and spirit. The philosophy of nature itself belongs to this pathway of return, for it is the philosophy of nature which overcomes the division of nature and spirit, and renders to spirit the recognition of its essence in nature. This then is the position of nature within the whole; its determinateness lies in the self-determination of the Idea, by which it posits difference, another, within itself, whole maintaining infinite good in its indivisibility, and imparting its entire content in what it provides for this otherness. God disposes therefore, while remaining equal to Himself; each of these moments is itself the whole Idea, and must be posited as the divine totality. Distinctiveness can be grasped in three forms; the universal, the particular, and the singular; firstly it is preserved in the eternal unity of the Idea, i.e. the Platonic Ideel, the eternal son of God as it was to Philo. The other of this extreme is singularity, the form of finite spirit. Singularity, as return into self, is certainly spirit, but as otherness to the exclusion of everything else, it is finite or human spirit, for we are not concerned with finite spirits other than men. In so far as the individual man is at the same time received into the unity of the divine essence, he is the object of the Christian religion, which is the most tremendous demand that may be made upon him. Nature is the third form with which we are concerned here, and as the Idea in particularity, it stands between both extremes. This form is the most congenial to the understanding. Spirit is posited as contradiction existing for itself, for there is an objective contradiction between the Idea in its infinite freedom and in the form of singularity, which occurs in nature only as an implicit contradiction, or as a contradiction which has being for us in that otherness appears in the Idea as a stable form. In Christ the contradiction is posited and overcome as life, passion and resurrection. Nature is the Son of God, not as the Son however, but as abiding in otherness, in which the divine Idea is alienated from love and held fast for a moment. Nature is self-alienated spirit; spirit, a bacchantic god innocent of restraint and reflection has merely been let loose into it; in nature, the unity of the Notion conceals itself’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Just as the Idea is a sphere of many thoughts so Nature is a sphere of many things and just as Logic begins with the emptiest and most abstract thoughts and from there deduces a series of more and more concrete categories so the philosophy of Nature will begin at the bottom with the emptiest and most abstract things and will present us with a logical triadic evolution of more and more concrete forms. It begins with empty space whereby space is utterly empty and abstract and has within itself no character, no features, no determinations of any kind, It is the formless, it is an absolutely homogeneous continuous emptiness in which there is no differentiation, it corresponds to the category of Being which is likewise a homogeneous emptiness destitute of all determination and differentiation.
‘The primary or immediate determination of nature is the abstract universality of its self-externality, its unmediated indifference, i.e. space. It is on account of its being self-externality, that space constitutes collaterality of a completely ideal nature; as this extrinsicality is still completely abstract, space is simply continuous, and is devoid of any determinate difference’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Thus the lowest term of Nature is space and at its other end at its highest term it passes over into Spirit and Spirit is reason it is the Idea returned into itself but the ascending stages of Nature constitute the gradual return of the Idea into itself and the completion of this process is Spirit and when in the Logic the subjective Notion passed over into the object this new sphere began with that which was most destitute of subjectivity, which is to say, mechanism. The successive categories of this new sphere constituted the gradual return and emergence of subjectivity and subjectivity, which was lost and buried in mechanism made its definite reappearance in teleology and with that the object passed over into the Idea. The progress of the ascending stages in Nature is in all respects comparable to this and Nature begins with that which is most mindless, most irrational, space, and the Idea, Reason, is here almost wholly lost and buried and in the succeeding stages of Nature, Reason gradually reawakens and with the final stage, the animal organism, Nature attains consciousness and is ready to pass over into Spirit, the rational spirit of the human animal.
Space is hence that which is most empty of mind, of thought, of reason, and Nature is, in Space, in its most extreme opposition to the Idea for Space is in general the extreme opposite of thought for thought is absolute internality and Space absolute externality and the parts of thought do not lie outside each other as the parts of Space do in fact it is only by a metaphor that we can speak of the parts of thought. Things in Space, and Space itself, have parts which means precisely this, that externality is the character of Space and the parts of Space are only parts because they are external to, and lie outside of, each other and this externality is the essential of Space, Space in actual fact is externality.
The very essence of thought, on the other hand, is internality, the Idea is constituted of parts which is to say the various categories of the Logic but to describe the categories as parts of the Idea is only a metaphor as they are not really parts in virtue of the fact that they essentially do not lie outside each other but rather they are inside each other and to prove this is the very purpose of the deduction. Nothing is within Being and it is only because Being has Nothing in it that deduction can produce Nothing out of it and all the succeeding categories are implicitly within Being and all the preceding categories are explicitly within the Absolute Idea. An intermediate category such as Substance explicitly contains all the categories which precede it and implicitly contains all those that follow hence every category contains every other category within it and this is the absolute internality of thought which is the extreme opposite of the externality of space.
The philosophy of nature presents us with a doctrine of evolution, a progress from lower to higher forms but no time element is involved as one phase succeeds another not in order of time but only in logical order for Hegel was around many years prior to Charles Darwin, (1809–1882), and was not amenale to the idea of evolution as a fact in time as well as a process of logical thought and as I mentioned in a previous article he expressly denied the theory of an historical evolution saying that Nature is to be regarded as a system of grades of which the one necessarily arises out of the other and is the proximate truth of the one from which it results but not so that the one were naturally generated out of the other, it has been ‘an inept conception of earlier and later ‘Naturphilosophie’ to regard the progression and transition of one natural form and sphere into a higher as an outwardly actual production … Thinking consideration must deny itself such nebulous, at bottom sensuous, conceptions, as is in especial the so-called origin, for example, of plants and animals from water, and then the origin of the more highly developed animal organizations from the lower’.
Biological evolution has most assuredly been one of the most fruitful of subsequent scientific discoveries and Hege’s error by no means affects the value of his philosophy of evolution as such for firstly Hegel’s actual objective is to explain the phenomena of Nature by deducing them in logical order and it is irrelevant to his aim whether or not events in time happen to correspond with that order or not, the explanation which is to say deduction of the forms of Nature will be the same in either case.
‘Evolution and emanation are the two forms in which the progressive stages of nature have been grasped. The course of evolution begins with what is imperfect and formless, such as humidity and aquatic formations, leads on to what emerged from water, such as plants, polyps, mollusca, and fishes, progresses to land animals, and arrives finally at man, as he emerges out of animals. This gradual alteration is said to be an explanation and comprehension of nature. The doctrine is derived from the philosophy of nature, and is still widely prevalent. Although quantitative difference is easy enough to understand however, it explains nothing. The course of emanation is peculiar to the oriental world, where it is regarded as a series of degradations, beginning with the perfection and absolute totality of God. God has created, and fulgurations, flashes, and likenesses have proceeded from Him, so that the first likeness most resembles Him. The first production is supposed, in its tum, to have given birth to something less perfect than itself, and so on down the scale, so that each thing begotten is in its turn procreative down as far as the negative, which is matter, or the acme of evil. In this way emanation ends in the complete absence of form. Both these progressions are one-sided and superficial, and postulate an indeterminate goal, but the progress from the more to the less perfect has the advantage of holding up the prototype of a perfect organism, which is the picture that must be in our mind’s eye if we are to understand stunted organizations. That which appears to be subordinate within them, such as organs with no functions, may only be clearly understood by means of the higher organizations in which one recognizes the functions they perform. If that which is perfect is to have the advantage over that which is imperfect it must exist in reality, and not only in the imagination’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
The value of the Hegelian conception is that it gives the clue to a rational justification for the belief that some forms of Nature are higher than others for a donkey is a higher being than a snail and a human is higher than a donkey well most humans are anyway but the mere scientific theories of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, (1820–1903), afford no justification for this in that they do not give us a rational scale of values and the development from some ape-like being to human being is not for anything that biology can demonstrate a change from lower to higher but only a change from one indifferent thing to another and indeed it might just as well have been a change from human to ape, in fact if the fittest means best suited to the environment if it is not a tautology to define fittest in this way then evolution from human ack to ape may yet occur anyway some humans are already half way there no offence to apes.
Change can only become development in the true sense by being perceived from a teleological perspective in relation to an end and unless Nature is moving towards an end there can be no advance and hence no higher or lower for to say that anything is higher can have no meaning unless it refers to some standard of perfection, some perfect end, towards which the world-process is moving and contemporary science provides no conception of such an end yet to Hegel the end is the actualization of reason, the Idea, in the World and this end is at least proximately reached in human for human is a rational being, allegedly, that form is higher in Nature that more nearly approaches this end and it is a further development of reason than the lower form and the mere order of deduction in the philosophy of Nature proves that the later grades are higher than the earlier grades for the process here is the same as in the Logic whereby the latter stage is explicitly what the earlier is only implicitly and the earlier is the mere potentiality of what the later is in actuality and hence the later contains and is all that the earlier contains and is and more also and it is a fuller, completer, more adequate version of the earlier and it is what the earlier was only trying to be. The Logic gave us a series of categories of increasing value and the philosophy of Nature gives us a series of natural forms of increasing value and just as in the Logic the later categories take up the earlier into themselves so that nothing is lost but with each triad something new is added so it is in the philosophy of Nature so that Hegel’s system gives us a genuine basis for a philosophy of evolution and all this is quite unaffected by his dismissal of the evolution of species in Time.
According to W. T. Stace, (1886–1967): ‘It is not necessary for the student to enter elaborately into the detailed deductions of the philosophy of nature. It is almost universally admitted, even by the most ardent Hegelians, that this branch of the system, depending as it does upon physical science for its data, is now out of date owing to the strides which physical science has made since Hegel’s day. Nor will anyone now dispute that, even in his own time, this philosophy of nature was, as regards the details of its deductions, mostly a failure. To deduce the forms of reason, which is the work of the Logic, was a not impossible task. But to deduce the forms of nature, infinitely manifold, tangled, and confused, this was a task at which even the genius of Hegel broke down. His deductions in this sphere depend mostly upon far-fetched and fanciful analogies, and sometimes upon erroneous scientific information. It would be useless to reproduce them here. Nor do I pretend to be competent to expound them. They cannot be regarded as a living part of philosophy. They are of no more than historical interest’.
I couldn’t disagree more, Stace is missing out on something of the most vital importance that I will get to in a moment and if what he says aout the most ardent Hegelians is true I must be the exception then. Stace does concede though that ‘It is, however, profoundly important that the general idea of the philosophy of nature should be understood, for it is an organic part of the Hegelian system. Unless we understand what function it performs, what position it occupies in the system, the Logic and the philosophy of spirit are left hanging in the air. Its general function and position in the system have now been explained, and it only remains to give the briefest possible outline of its actual contents’.
With my series of articles I aim to give a detailed account of its actual contents ut to start off y simplifying Nature exhibits a triad of three stages, which are treated of respectively in (1) mechanics, (2) physics, (3) organics. (1) Mechanics. This is the first phase of Nature, the abstract phase, the Logical Idea, the realm of thought, was internal to itself and this internality passes into its opposite, the absolute externality which seems at first view as an absolute outside-itself-ness, a complete indifference of part to part, a blind and endless multiplicity lacking in any principle of unity and Nature here is governed by sheer mechanism which is the absence of unity, of subjectivity, of the Notion, of reason and nonetheless it is not wholly so for the striving after unity which is the principle of reason, of subjectivity, appears in the form of gravitation and gravitation, because it seeks to draw this blind multiplicity into a system and a unity, manifests even here the governance of thought, that is to say, the principle of internality.
The vitally important point that Stace is missing and those dismissive of the philosophy of Nature also miss, and I can’t believe I am just mentioning it now, is that the bulk of Hegel’s texts and lectures on the philosophy of Nature concern themselves not with laying out the method but with using the method to carry out the task of the philosophy of Nature hence whether or not we provide a detailed account of Hegel’s transformed vision of Nature a satisfactory overview of his idea of the philosophy of Nature demands that we examine at least one case and taking a case from the Organics would allow us to focus upon important aspects of Hegel’s project and strategy, the relation between embodied life and Spirit, his appropriation of Kantian teleology and his endeavour to differentiate his project from Schellingian Naturphilosophie has been well covered, while the Physics covering a wide range of material from chemistry to electromagnetism to acoustics calls for a familiarity with superseded theories but the Mechanics avoids that obstacle since many of its basic concepts are familiar from secondary school physics and it deas with precisely those natural phenomena that appear least likely to exhibit the self-determination Hegel is after and if we can make sense of Hegel’s claim that mechanical objects and phenomena are self-determining we can understand his similar claims in other cases. The main line of argument in the Mechanics traces the relationship between the concept of motion and the concept of a material body and these concepts are implicitly identical in the sense that material bodies are essentially in motion and whatever is in motion is a material body and when this identity is fully concretely articulated there turns out to be one kind of motion, absolute or gravitational motion, whose laws best express that identity. Hence a body moving absolutely is as self-determined as is possible for a natural thing at this stage or level of Nature.
The concepts of matter and motion being implicitly identical through an analysis of the concepts of Space and Time is meant to demonstrate that the concepts of matter and motion both have the concepts of Space and Time as their contents, asserting that they have the same concepts as their contents is another way of asserting their implicit identity and the concepts of Space and Time always come as a pair in the sense that although Space and Time are qualitatively distinct kinds of quantitative multiplicity and neither can be assigned a determinate quantitative value that is to say neither can be employed as a physical quantity without reference to the other. The mutual dependence of Time and Space can be observed directly in our practices of measurement in which we measure time elapsed by distance traversed and distance traversed by time elapsed. Matter and motion as unities of Time and Space are two distinct forms of this mutual dependence and united as Matter, Space and Time mutually determine each other’s identity or persistence, united as motion, Space and Time mutually determine each other’s differences or changes.
Insofar as they are simply two distinct ways in which Time and Space can be unified Matter and motion are independent and a material body has no particular motion or rest proper to it qua material body and this simple independence is the core of the conception of Matter as inert captured by Isaac Newton’s, (1642–1726/27), First Law, every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. Yet Hegel’s method requires that he consider key theoretical terms not only as they are explicitly defined, but as they are actually deployed in description and explanation which in the case of mechanics means considering how the defined terms relate to the physical quantities appearing in the relevant equations and here also are key quantitative determinations that appear to express an external determination of motion, for example the quantitative independence of speed as a quantity of motion and mass as a quantity of matter in the equations expressing the basic laws of the inertial conception captures their essential indifference according to this conception, that is, this quantitative independence captures the fact that inert matter is not self-determined to any motion but rather determined wholly externally.
‘In accordance with the spatial determination in which time is sublated; the body is durable; in accordance with the temporal determination in which indifferent spatial subsistence is sublated, it is transitory; in general, it is a wholly contingent unit. It is indeed the unity which binds both moments in their opposition, i.e. motion; but in its indifferent opposition to space and time (prev. §), and so to the relation of space and time in motion (§ 261), the body has motion external to it in the same way as its negation of motion, or rest. It is in fact inert’.
‘When movement which is external to an inert body and therefore finite, sets this body in motion and so relates it to another, the two form the momentary unit of a single body, for they are both masses, and only differ quantitatively. It is thus that both bodies are united by movement through the imparting of motion, but as each is to an equal extent presupposed as an immediate unit, they also resist one another. In the relationship between them, their being-for-self, which is further particularized by the quantum of mass, constitutes their relative gravity. This is weight as the gravity of a quantitatively distinct mass; it is extensive as a number of weighted parts, and intensive as a specific pressure (see § r03 Rem.). As the real determinateness, together with velocity, or the ideal nature of the quantitative determinateness of motion, it constitutes a single determinability (quantitas motus), within which weight and velocity can reciprocally replace one another’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And the point of vital importance is that Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ is best understood through its contribution to his larger philosophical project of both articulating and actually achieving human freedom. It contributes to this project by demonstrating that Nature and natural things are themselves free in a specific sense of freedom that Hegel not un-critically takes from Kant and he demonstrates this freedom of Nature through the conceptual transformation of natural-scientific representations (laws, kinds, and other universals) into systematically ordered concrete universals in which the empirical content of the sciences is preserved and systematized in a way that emphasizes Nature’s self-determination rather than its alleged sheer givenness and externality and after a general account of the Hegelian understanding of the natural sciences and their results and his transformative method a detailed reconstruction of his treatment of collision, fall, and orbital motion in the Mechanics can follow.
I shall just wrap for now with some thoughts concerning the emergence of Matter from Space, Time, and Place for the breakthrough here can be better understood through a comparison with Aristotle’s account of matter and Kant’s more dynamic account, for with those two in their theories of Nature matter or more particularly material substance is accorded a foundational status whereby matter is present at the start serving as the basis upon which everything else in Nature is to be determined, Aristotelian ontological roots being in substance and his philosophy of Nature, his Physics, sets natural material substance as the ground upon which all natural relations and qualities are assembled and that which distinguishes natural substance from other substances is that natural substance is always subject to motion. Motion here signifies change in general yet Aristotle maintains that locomotion is at the root of all other types of motion or change either accompanying them or comprising the enabling but not determining condition of the other forms of change and the distinction between enabling and determining conditions is a significant difference that features prominently in the fabric of natural processes. An enabling condition permits something to occur without determining what occurs, it permits something to happen yet the specific way it takes place is left open by the enabling condition, hence it allows for a range of possibilities all of which it facilitates without fully determining the outcome and some further principle of determination must be relied upon to completely specify that which the enabling condition permits to occur and in this regard locomotion will permit other changes to occur the specific character of which is determined by some further cause be it formal and/or final, and so Aristotle brings in spatial and temporal determinations from the very outset yet these will be given in respect to material substance which is further determined by its specific nature and so from the outset Space is defined as Place and Time is defined as the measure of the change of Place of material things in motion.
Kant however gets his account off the ground the ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ by applying to material substance the different categories that necessarily determine objects in general as they can be given to us in experience and despite the categories being not presented in any necessary generative order in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ their application to material objects in the ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Nature; certainly appears have a structural order and the section on phoronomy with which it opens (phoronomy, the study of the motions of bodies without regard to forces or the nature of the bodies themselves) which determines material objects with respect to quantity necessarily precedes the discussion of dynamics in virtue of the fact that the dynamical determination of material objects presupposes the abstract relations of points in motion in the absence of which matter could not be considered as moveable and moving force could not be thought or experienced yet nevertheless Kant does not account for Space and Time in themselves rather he starts with reference to Matter as moveable. Upon what warrant does he do this? It is evident that Hegel endeavours to do something that eluded Aristotle and Kant namely to account for what can be regarded as the minimal specification of Nature and that minimal determination of Nature takes no other natural specifications for granted and in so doing takes for granted nothing other than logic or determinacy in general.
In contrast to logical determinacy natural determinacy has the minimal further qualification that makes it other than mere thought and Hegel addresses the issue as to what that minimal threshold can be that is the first determination of what is natural, the specification that takes for granted no other rea, non-logical determinacy and hence can be that upon which all other natural specifications rest, and every further determination of Nature will rest upon this minimal starting point in either incorporating this minimal determination or being predicated upon it, and so Hegel starts off his ‘Philosophy of Nature’ with Space thereby setting himself apart from Aristotle and Kant for he does not start off with moving or moveable material substances for he sees clearly enough that moving bodies already involve Space and Time and Place and Matter in general and to start off with material substance would thus involve presupposing the more rudimentary factors of Nature and preclude establishing what these are and an identical dogmatic incoherence is at hand if Space and Time are regarded from the beginning to involve material substances for that involves going around in circles defining Space and Time in terms of the more concrete natural factors that take spatiotemporal order for granted and it leaves the philosophy of Nature impotent with regard to determining coherently how Place and Matter are themselves constituted and if contentions are to be made about what is moveable or in motion in Nature then Space and Time must be taken for granted.
Kant might be said to have dealt with Space and Time prior to his account of matter as moveable in that the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ already puts the case that Space and Time are forms of our sensible intuition and yet Kant there concedes that beyond identifying Space and Time as forms of sensible intuition nothing more can be said about why they are they are just discovered to be facts of human cognition for which further explanation is not forthcoming they are simply given to us as forms of our sensibility and they have no intrinsic relation to one another nor can it be said that one depends upon the other therefore it makes small difference whether or not the account of one precedes the other they are merely described side by side.
It is evident that Hegel has something quite different to give to us in how he treats of this matter for to begin with he considers Space as the first factor of Nature, it is more minimal than Time in presupposing no other natural specification whereas Time does and as he will demonstrate Time depends upon Space whereas Space has its rudimentary determination independently of Time as it is the first or immediate determination of Nature.
‘The primary or immediate determination of nature is the abstract universality of its self-externality, its unmediated indifference, i.e. space. It is on account of its being selfexternality, that space constitutes collaterality of a completely ideal nature; as this extrinsicality is still completely abstract, space is simply continuous, and is devoid of any determinate difference’.
‘The nature of space has given rise to many theories. I shall only make mention of the Kantian determination of it as a form of sensuous intuition like time. It is now generally accepted that space must be regarded as a merely subjective element of the representative faculty. If we disregard the determinations of the Kantian Notion and subjective idealism in this theory, we are left with the correct determination of space as a simple form, i.e. an abstraction, the form of immediate externality. It is inadmissible to speak of spatial points as if they constituted the positive element in space, because on account of its lack of difference, space is merely the possibility, not the positedness of juxtaposition and what is negative, and is therefore simply continuous. The point, which is being-for-self, is therefore rather the negation of space, a negation which is posited within space. This also resolves the question of the infinitude of space (§ 100 Obs.). Space is, in general, pure quantity, no longer its merely logical determination, but as an immediate and external being. Consequently, nature begins with quantity and not with quality, because its determination is not a primary abstract and immediate state like logical Being. Essentially, it is already internally mediated externality and otherness’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Whereas Space is unmediated by any other natural determination every other natural specification including Time and Matter involves space and as immediate Space cannot be characterized in terms of motion which of course incorporates Space as well as Time by involving change of location over Time and Space as such cannot be defined in regard to matter or to anything else in Nature and as Hegel observes Space is that which is natural yet immaterial and Space is not just a category or a logical determination but it is not material either, Space has no sensuous character yet it is not merely a thought.
The immateriality of Space is critical for any theory of Matter and the tremendous challenge in conceiving Matter is that Matter cannot be accounted for or constructed out of anything that is itself material and if anything material is to be employed in the determination of matter this is a mere circular run-around whereby it is taking for granted what is in required of an account and somehow Matter must be specifiable using completely immaterial resources and Hegel’s determination of Space provides the first pillar for the immaterial account of Matter and Hegel’s aim is to provide such an account by specifying Matter in terms of Space and Time y which means he does not fall back upon the empty identification of extension and Matter with which Descartes handicapped his theory of Nature. Rather Hegel will demonstrate how relations of Space and Time provide for something material that is irreducible to either.
For starters there is Space and Space has a very minimal determinacy, Space is a totality very much as Kant describes space in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ where Space and Time are identified as pure intuitions rather than concepts because they are totalities in the sense of containing within themselves all particular spaces and times respectively and for Kant concepts inhere in particulars that have other distinguishing features not contained in the inhering concept for otherwise nothing would differentiate the particulars from what they hold in common yet by contrast Space and Time completely contain all places and moments within their respective wholes. Albeit Hegel in his philosophy of Mind will allow that Space and Time figure psychologically as forms of sensible intuition he sidesteps Kant’s subjective idealism by addressing Space and Time in their own right as elementary factors of Nature and Space and Time are very much formal yet not just by being forms of intuition though intuition may indeed involve spatial and temporal orderings of the contents of sensations but Space and Time are themselves elementary immaterial determinations of Nature within which Mind itself has its reality as a worldly embodied self that is not merely reducible to something purely physiological.
Space is a totality encompassing all of its particular instances completely within itself but it is a wholly abstract totality, Space has the character of being external to itself and this self-externality has a logical character that must be defined without invoking spatial relations, Space is self-external in that it renders itself other to itself but not to anything else since every other factor falls within its bounds, Space falls apart from itself ever extending beyond itself in an unbroken continuity, Space has this uninterrupted continuity because there is nothing about the way that Space is external to itself that involves any kind of qualitative real differences, each part of Space as such is indistinguishable from every other, even though they fall asunder, every aspect of space always has more of itself outside itself.
The most minimal distinction of Space is a point, it comprises the most elementary non-space or negation of space and all by itself the point exhibits the same kind of self-externality that applies to everything spatial, a point cannot help but have other points adjacent to it and hence every point is immediately other to itself terminating in another negation of Space that is indistinguishable from itself and each point has another lying immediately beyond itself without any intervening gap and in virtue of every point having another in continuity with itself the point cannot help but form a line consisting of the continuous self-externality of otherwise indistinguishable points.
‘Spatial difference is however essentially determinate and qualitative. As such it is (1) in the first instance the point, i.e. the negation of the immediate and undifferentiated selfexternality of space itself. (2) The negation is however the negation of space, and is therefore itself spatial. In that this relation is essential to the point, the point is self-sublating and constitutes the line, which is the primary otherness or spatial being of the point. (3) The truth of otherness is however the negation of negation, and the line therefore passes over into the plane. Although one aspect of the plane is that it constitutes surface in general, in that it is a determinateness opposed to line and point, it also has the aspect of being the transcended negation of space, or the reinstatement of that spatial totality which now has the negative moment within it. It is therefore an enclosing surface, which divides off and separates a distinct part of space’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Yet a line cannot help but be self-external in addition for at its edge there cannot fail to be another line which has another line beside it involving the same self-externality and so just as the point cannot escape generating the line the line cannot help but generate a plane but the plane has another adjacent to it generating a seamless series of planes comprising a volume of three dimensional space and if that volume is in any manner limited it also cannot help but have other volumes extending beyond itself without end and in each case the successive aspects of Space have beyond them something that is other from them but equally no different generating the ever extending continuity of the totality of space and in this way Space as self-external comprises a totality in continuity with its own negations or externalities.
‘It is because of their Notion that the line does not consist of points nor the plane of lines, the line being rather the self-externality of the point in that is relates itself to space and is self-sublating, and the plane likewise, being the transcended self-externality of the line. The point is here presented as that which is primary and positive, and it is from this that a beginning is made. The contrary is also true however, for space may be considered as that which is positive, the plane as the first negation of space, and the line as the second negation, which, because it is the second, is in truth the self-relating negation of the point. The necessity of this transition is the same as it was in the first case. The necessity of this transition is not realized when the point and the line etc. are grasped and defined in an external manner; the former kind of transition is however grasped, as something contingent, when a manner of definition is used in which the line is said to arise from the movement of the point etc. The other figurations of space treated in geometry are further qualitative limitations of an abstract division of space, of the plane, or of a bounded spatial unit. Moments of necessity also occur here; in the triangle for example, which is the primary rectilinear figure, to which, with the square, all other figures must be reduced if they are to be determined etc. The principle of these constructions is the identity of the understanding, which determines the figurations into regularity and so establishes the relations hip s by which they may be understood’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
A question arises as to what this continuous totality signifies for determinate spatial locations or places and what here can be as opposed to there, for here is immediately different from there yet they are distinguishable, in some way, what is there is not here but what is not here is also a here different from other heres or theres and on its own Space provides nothing that allows one to distinguish one here from another and every location is equally here and there in respect to other theres and heres and such a convergence of the difference and identity of every abstract spatial location leads Hegel to discourse upon Space as being in itself absolute rather than relative and absolute Space is only the abstraction of Space.
‘To ask whether space by itself is real, or whether it is only a property of things, is to ask one of the most well-worn of all metaphysical questions. If one says that it is something inherently substantial, then it must resemble a box, which, even if there is nothing in it, is still something subsisting within itself. Space is absolutely yielding and utterly devoid of opposition however; and if something is real, it is necessary that it should be incompatible with something else. One cannot point to a part of space which is space for itself, for space is always filled, and no part of it is separated from that which fills it. It is therefore a non-sensuous sensibility and a sensuous insensibility. The things of nature are in space, and as nature is subject to the condition of externality, space remains the foundation of nature. If one says, as Leibnitz did, that space is an order of things which does not concern the noumena, and which has its substrata in things, we assume that if one removes the things which fill space, the spatial relationships between them still persist independently. It may certainly be said that space is an order, for it is of course an external determination, but it is much more than a merely external determination, it is externality itself’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Relative Space is a more concrete spatial determination in which distinguishable frameworks of moving objects stand in relation to one another and these involve further specifications that are not provided by the mere self-externality of space and its generation of extension, and Space by itself without yet involving Time never mind Motion and Matter cannot be anything other than absolute because it lacks any concrete filling that could provide for the contrast of different determinate spatial contexts, such as inertial frames of reference or material Gaussian co-ordinate systems those things that Albert Einstein, (1879–1955), invoked as the fundamental contexts of his general theory of relativity.
The absolute character of formal Space is very much different from what Aristotle asserted to be the absolute nature of Place for he saw that considered abstractly right and left could be considered relative since if one changed one’s vantage point what was right could become left and vice versa yet if one considers what is up and down Aristotle maintains that one encounters an absolute spatial distinction and this difference is rooted in natural Place which is connected to the specific nature of material substances and reference to the unmoved mover may give no more absolute direction than the eternal orbit of celestial motion yet the active form of natural things directs them to a specific place whose location is thereby absolutely grounded in the causal principle of nature, that which is earth tends to move down in an absolute sense just as that which is fire tends to move up in an absolute sense and these are not relative directions because they are tied to the unequivocal place to which things of a certain kind gravitate and without that connection there would be no way to distinguish one direction from another in any unqualified absolute manner and Kant eliminates all such connection through understanding natural necessity to be restricted to material laws indifferent to the specific form of things an as far as Kant conceives the Space of Nature with reference to moveable bodies Space is relative, together with the motion that proceeds within it.
Discourse upon the relativity of Space typically invokes inertial frames of reference where spatial relations refer to the motion of a body in relation to some physical background involving moveable and/or moving bodies of its own and in this concrete framework of a plurality of bodies in motion relative to one another it is arbitrary which frame of reference is regarded as stationary and there seems to be no objective means of determining whether any particular body is in motion or whether its background is moving in the opposite direction while it remains stationary for both scenarios appear equivalent just as do all the numberless intermediate schemes in which the bodies move in opposite directions at various speeds and accelerations while retaining the same difference in speed. Albeit Hegel was very much cognisant of this relativity of spatial relationships in the concrete setting of bodies in motion he maintained that Space in itself is absolute, Space without further qualification that is to say Space still unqualified by Time, Matter and Motion permits of no relativity in virtue of the fact that it lacks what is necessary for there to be determinate spatial frames of reference and the self-externality of Space that generates lines from points, planes from lines, and volumes from planes has nothing to which it can be relative and Space on its own provides no basis for establishing any determinate differences that make room if I may so put it for distinct spatial frameworks.
Hegel rather demonstrates that Space gives rise to Time and what is truly a breakthrough in Hegel’s account of the transition from Space to Time is the twofold insight that Time presupposes Space and that Space cannot help but yield itself to Time and there cannot be Time apart from Space and Space cannot fail to engender Time a situation in no need for supernatural powers to be called upon to save the day if I may use a temporal metaphor to account for the space-time continuum and Nature can have no more indeterminate rudimentary factor than Space and Space is sufficient to provide for the emergence of Time. This does raise the question as to what exactly is the basic minimal determination of Time and whether it needs to be characterized in respect to Space and Hegel maintains that Time is what Space becomes which then raises the question as to how Space becomes Time and how Time be thought of in terms of Space.
‘Space is the immediate determinate being of quantity, in which everything remains subsistent, and even limit has the form of a subsistence. This is its deficiency. Space is a contradiction, for the negation within it disintegrates into indifferent subsistence. As space is merely this inner negation of itself, its truth is the self-transcendence of its moments. It is precisely the existence of this perpetual self-transcendence which constitutes time. In time therefore the point has actuality. Through the generation of difference within it, space ceases to be mere indifference, and through all its changes, is no longer paralysed, but is for itself This pure quantity, as: difference existing for itself, is that which is implicitly negative, i.e. time; it is the negation of the negation, or self-relating negation. Negation in space is negation relative to another; in space therefore the negative does not yet come into its own. In space the plane is certainly negation of the negation, but in its truth it is different from space. The truth of space is time, so that space becomes time; our transition to time is not subjective, space itself makes the transition. Space and time are generally taken to be poles apart: space is there, and then we also have time. Philosophy calls this ‘also’ in question’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
And the further question as to whether or not every stage in the development of Space from point to line to plane to volume is a moment in Time for the development at issue is not merely a logical succession of categories of thought. Point, line, plane, and volume are real spatial determinations and they are non-logical albeit they are immaterial and the yet further question arises as to whether their succession is a passage in time and thereby a generation of Time. In each case the move from one spatial determinacy to another is immediate without any intervening intermediary stage and further there is no separate persisting backdrop against which these developments proceed and they comprise differentiations of and within the totality of Space by which its self-externality unfolds.
They are simply spatial differences without any temporal distinction and the continuity of points, lines, and planes is a continuity of spatial distinctions and not of moments in Time for something extra must be supplied to provide for any differences that can count as temporal, for there to be any Time then non-logical differences must no longer simply fall within Space as negations internal to its self-externality but rather Time as non-spatial must involve a negation or becoming other to spatial determinacy as a whole and Hegel provides an elementary solution to the challenge which is to say Time is the totality of Space being external to itself and instead of setting a part of Space such as a point, a line, a plane, or a determinate volume external to some other spatial factor, Time sets Space other to or outside itself in its entirety and the question arises as to how Space can be self-external in its totality. By being Space now, which becomes other to Space before.
The succession of Time is none other than the continuous othering of the totality of Space whereby Space is external to itself as a whole and each moment in Time is the totality of Space as supplanting its own totality and immediately giving way to its own totality once more and so on and whereas Space was external to itself in a spatial manner in the development from point to line to plane to volume the self-externality of Space in its totality involves a development that can no longer be spatial in character. The self-externality basic to Space pushes Space beyond itself, for once Space has exhausted the intra-spatial options provided by the negations of point, line, plane, and volume, the defining character of Space pushes it beyond itself a beyond that consists in nothing more than the continuous self-externalization of Space in its entirety, and this involves no other resources than Space itself provides and it is generated by nothing other than the self-externality intrinsic to Space.
The totality of Space can be outside itself only from one moment to the next and the passage of Time is nothing but the ongoing differentiation of Space in its totality and here the totality of Space is negated and Time is that in which Space becomes its own non-being. The now is immediately Space that is no longer, that has passed into the past, now is that which the future will be in that the now becomes the past making the future present and there is no other resource ready to hand for distinguishing the past from the present other than the totality of Space being external to itself and any other natural factor presupposes Space and Time and hence cannot be employed in constituting time, Time is the self-externality of Space as a whole where Space is continually set in an external relationship to itself and the present, past, and future cannot be distinguished by anything other than the non-being of the totality of Space that is just as much the totality of Space as external to itself while (if I may use that term) the present is immediately past and the future is immediately present insofar as Space as a whole is self-external and this self-externality is Time. Such distinctions of the ever succeeding otherings or self-negations of the totality of Space are just as equivalent as the differences in Space itself, just as every point, line, and plane is identical in character to every other, so there is no way of distinguishing any now from any other now in terms of time itself.
‘The present, future, and past, the dimensions of time, constitute the becoming of externality as such, and its dissolution into the differences of being as passing over into nothing, and of nothing as passing over into being. The immediate disappearance of these differences into individuality is the present as now, which, as it excludes individuality and is at the same time simply continuous in the other moments, is itself merely this disappearance of its being into nothing, and of nothing into its being’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Every now emerges from the past and is pregnant with the future and the spatial totality that has replaced what has slipped into the past is no different from its predecessor or successor and only more concrete determinations of Nature involving bodies in motion, can provide for any real contrasts, but matter and motion themselves presuppose space and time and their seamless continuities. In and of themselves, the temporally distinguished totalities of space contain nothing that can concretely distinguish them from one another. Each moment of time, each distinction of past, present, and future, presents the same self-external spatial totality. The now is Space that is other than Space that was and Space that will be but that otherness is completely devoid of any further content and this difference that is no difference is what allows Kant to designate the now the same thing as eternity and the now may instantaneously slip into the past but another now no different from it just as instantaneously replaces it to be instantaneously replaced by another now without end indeed the very character of the now is such that it keeps on returning to itself in slipping into the past and giving way to the future.
The resulting continuity of Time has a totally abstract determination yet it is more concrete than that of Space in particular in virtue of the flow of time containing Space in its totality with a further qualification and that qualification is that Time encompasses Space together with the process by which the totality of Space becomes external to itself taking on the additional character of being now extending across past and future and the totality of Space has become poised between these temporal dimensions into which it is endlessly drawn perpetually reverting to the same timely situation and the dimensions of Time are just as abstract as the dimensions of Space. In the same way that depth, height, and width have no abiding difference so every moment of Time is just as much present, past, and future and the past was the future and the present, the future became present only to fall into the past, and the present becomes past and takes on the future, and like the dimensions of Space so the dimensions of Time finish up having equivalent specifications.
Space and time demonstrate themselves to have an intrinsic relationship to one another, Space is the minimal threshold of what can be considered natural and Space cannot help but give rise to time which incorporates Space within its process and the emergence of Time from Space is not a temporal event for there is no Time prior to Time and there cannot be a Time when there was Space without Time yet upon Time emerging and encompassing Space in temporality Space is in a position to become more concretely determined that is to say with Space and Time at hand Place can both be and be conceived which can be demonstrated by outlining how Place issues from a unity of Space and Time and once there is Time setting the totality of Space external to itself the totally abstract spatial location of a point can take on a more determinate character making possible the distinguishing of Place which raises the question as to what is the concrete character that is suitable to identify with Place, Place cannot be characterized by making reference to Matter for Matter cannot be invoked for Matter itself will incorporate Place in its own constitution and we are left wondering what Place can be if all it involves is Space and Time.
The issue is whether Motion determines Space and Time as Place or Motion like Matter presupposes Place and Aristotle apparently characterizes Place in reference to natural substances and the motion to which they tend by nature and yet the primary motion comprising locomotion is change of place so Motion takes Place for granted and Place must hence be determinable prior to locomotion and moving substance and with Motion and Matter excluded from the determination of Place one might regard Place as something merely spatial in character yet Place is not just here for here is assignable to every point without exception yet place is a determinate location and so the question arises as to what Space and Time have to offer that permits Place to be more determinate than here.
Well, because of Time and its encompassing of Space Place can be both here and now, Place combines Space and Time, it is spatiotemporal location and Place is a here that is mediated by Time and a now that is mediated by Space and Place is still relatively abstract but it is more concrete than either here or now in virtue of nothing other than uniting them both. By itself here has no temporal determination yet Time does encompass Space, nevertheless the present like the past and future involves reference to only the totality of Space not to any particular here. Now therefore has no specific spatial connection and Place provides the elementary juncture of Space and Time, of here and now, doing so in virtue of nothing but what is contained in the ongoing process of space-time.
Motion depends upon Place just as does Matter if Matter requires a dynamic account involving moving forces and Motion understood as locomotion involves change of Place that is to say a change of spatiotemporal location from one here and now to another here and now and Motion involves the succession of time exhibiting itself in spatial determinations and the change of location exhibiting itself in the passage of Time. And the question arises concerning from whence such a dual process of Motion arises and the bare process in question is formal, since it does not involve Matter and any of the real differentiations of Place that material bodies in motion provide and this is what Kant addresses in his discussion of phoronomy, what leads Place to generate Motion is the same self-externality that leads points to generate lines, lines to generate planes, planes to generate volumes, and spatial totality to generate Time and since each here and now is indistinguishable from every other in a seamless continuity the same continuity applies to each space-time unity.
Each place is in continuity with others since none retains any abiding distinction from what it has outside and before and after itself and the self-externality of Place is Motion and the transition of each particular place into others separated yet adjacent in both Space and Time and the issue is then about what must be added to formal motion to provide for Matter for two deficits must be overcome, first if something occupied merely a point in space time we have to ask if there is any way of distinguishing between its presence and its absence and the infinitesimal spatial punctuality of a point precludes any material actuality that could hold itself apart from the void, and likewise, if something were just now at hand for a mere moment of Time we further need to know if there could be any way of distinguishing between its presence and its absence, any material actuality would be instantaneously cancelled as the present moment immediately passes away and so for anything material to be it must both endure and occupy a determinate volume and Matter must have an extended as well as a persisting presence. Any actual body must occupy a bounded volume and endure for some time otherwise there is nothing material and so as to what the minimal specification of Matter must involve Matter will combine Space and Time comprising a here that is now and a now that is here yet Matter must be more than the here and now of Place or the formal motion of points in space-time. Matter must lay hold of some extended Space over Time and do so in a way that distinguishes its enduring occupancy from that of empty space-time and by itself Place offers nothing to prevent one place from passing over into another.
What is other to Place is merely a not-here-and-now which cannot hold itself apart from any other not-here-and-now, every not-now is another now just as every not-here is another here and every not here-now is a here-now and every other place is a place as well. And so there is no way of preventing Place from becoming other than it is, Place cannot help being identical with other places.
‘Initially, the place which is thus the posited identity of space and time is also the posited contradiction set up by the mutual exclusiveness of space and time. Place is spatial and therefore indifferent singularity, and is this only as the spatial now, or time. As this place, it is therefore in a condition of immediate indifference to itself; it is external to itself, the negation of itself, and constitutes another place. This passing away and self-regeneration of space in time and time in space, in which time posits itself spatially as place, while this indifferent spatiality is likewise posited immediately in a temporal manner, constitutes motion. To an equal extent however, this becoming is itself the internal collapse of its contradiction, it is therefore the immediately identical and existent unity of place and motion, i.e. matter’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Nature’
Place becomes other places and in so doing Place gives rise to Motion in a completely formal way and he motion is completely formal because all it comprises is how the passage of Time becomes a change of Place and alternately how change in Place becomes a change through Time. Kant develops this formal motion in his discussion of phoronomy as if it somehow applied to Matter as moveable with abstraction made of every material feature except for quantity, thinking of matter just as a point moving through Space and Kant presents the formal account of Matter as paving the way for the dynamic constitution of Matter and Hegel follows him in this only so far as to present the formal specification of Motion as giving rise to the minimal specification of Matter and Matter will once more be intrinsically connected to Motion, and upon such a foundation aspects of the dynamic discussion that Kant forged ae renewed but it is to be done in a significantly different way.
‘Spessori di spazio’, c. 1913, Giacomo Balla
My muse is doing such an excellent job she merits a pay rise, i.e., more love, but when one’s love is infinite that is not possible, although apparently, and this is not my area of expertise, according to mathematician Georg Cantor, (1845–1918), infinity comes in different sizes, and so my infinite love for my muse is infinity of the largest sort.
Long awaited darkness falls
Casting shadows on the walls
In the twilight hour, I am alone
Sitting near the fireplace
Dying embers warm my face
In this peaceful solitude
All the outside world subdued
Everything comes back to me again
In the gloom
Like an angel passing through my room
Half awake and half in dreams
Seeing long forgotten scenes
So the present runs into the past
Now and then become entwined
Playing games within my mind
Like the embers, as they die
Love was one prolonged goodbye
And it all comes back to me tonight
In the gloom
Like an angel passing through my room
I close my eyes
And my twilight images go by
All too soon
Like an angel passing through my room
Abba: ‘Like An Angel Passing Through My Room’:
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Coming up next:
Another Time. Another Place.
To be continued ..
