On Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Nature’ : A Free Reflex of Spirit — part twenty two.
‘Ode to music’
by Guillaume de Machaut (c1300–1377)
So Music is a science
That makes us laugh and sing and dance.
And a cure for melancholy
or for men who are melancholy
About something which has no worth,
But leaves them uncaring.
Everywhere it goes it brings joy;
The miserable are comforted
And just by hearing it,
It makes men rejoice.
No instrument in all the world
Is not founded upon music,
Nor that with wind or touch or string
Cannot play in consort.
All its deeds are of greater measure
Than any other measure.
It creates all the carols,
In towns, in cities, in schools,
Where one performs the office divine,
Which is offered with bread and wine.
Can one think of anything more fitting
Or make a more gracious offering
Than to exalt God and his glory,
To praise, to serve, to love, and to believe;
And his sweet mother, singing,
Who is so full of grace and good
That the heaven and all the earth
And whatsoever the worlds surround,
Great, small, average, and fine,
Are guarded and sustained by them.
I have heard it said that the angels,
All the saints, and the archangels,
In voices fine, strong, and clear
Praise in song God the father
For he in glory made them
Like true and perfect friends,
And that also through his grace
They may soon see him face to face.
Gloria.
For the saints can only sing
When the music sings in them:
Thus is Music in paradise.
Once David, the prophet,
When he wanted to appease the ire
Of God, he consorted with his lyre,
Which he played so wondrously,
And sang so devotedly
Hymns, psalms, and prayers
Even as we read them,
That his harp and his song
So pleased God that he relented.
Orpheus led Eurydice,
The elegant and fine lady, out of Hades
With his harp and with his sweet song.
This poet about whom to you I sing
Played his harp so beautifully
And sang so sweetly
That the great trees lowered their branches
And the rivers changed their course
To hear him and listen.
So one must believe without doubting
That these are apparent miracles
That Music has made. It’s certainly true.
‘Ode à la Musique’
Et Musique est une science
Qui veut qu’on rie et chante et danse.
Cure n’a de mélancolie
Ni d’homme qui mélancolie
À chose qui ne peut valoir,
Ains met tels gens en non chaloir.
Partout où elle est joie y porte,
Les déconfortés réconforte
Et n’est seulement de l’ouïr,
Fait-elle les gens réjouir.
N’instrument n’en a tout le monde
Qui sur musique ne se fonde,
Ni qui ait souffle ou touche ou corde
Qui par musique ne s’accorde.
Tous ses faits plus à point mesure
Que ne fait nulle autre mesure.
Elle fait toutes les caroles,
Par bourgs, par cités, par écoles,
Où l’on fait l’office divin
Qui est fait de pain et de vin.
Peut-on penser chose plus digne
Ni faire plus gracieux signe
Com d’exhausser Dieu et sa gloire,
Louer, servir, aimer et croire,
Et sa douce mère en chantant
Qui de grâce et de bien a tant
Que le ciel et toute la terre
Et quanque les mondes enserrent,
Grands, petits, moyens et menus,
En sont gardés et soutenus.
J’ai ouï dire que les anges,
Les saints, les saintes, les archanges,
De voix délie, saine et claire
Louent en chantant Dieu le père
Pour ce qu’en gloire les a mis
Com justes et parfaits amis,
Et pour ç’aussi que de sa grâce
Le voient adès face à face.
Gloria.
Or ne peuvent les saints chanter
Qu’il n’ait musique en leur chanter:
Donc est Musique en paradis.
David, le prophète, jadis
Quand il voulait apaiser l’ire
De Dieu, il accordait sa lire
Dont il harpait si proprement
Et chantait si dévotement
Hymnes, psautiers et oraisons
Ainsi comme nous le lisons,
Que sa harpe à Dieu tant plaisait
Et son chant qu’il se rapaisait.
Orpheüs mit hors Eurydice
D’enfer, La cointe, la faitice,
Par sa harpe et par son doux chant.
Ce poète dont je vous chant
Harpait si très joliement
Et si chantait si doucement
Que les grands arbres s’abaissaient
Et les rivières retournaient
Pour li ouïr et écouter,
Si qu’on doit croire sans douter
Que ce sont miracles apertes
Que Musique fait. C’est voir, certes.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831).’The Philosophy of Nature’. ‘Physics’.
Lest one accuse Hegel of demonstrating the futility of speculation, and regarding those scientifically minded finding something positive in his work thereby risking being classified with him a genuine risk in the light of the Hegelian dialectic method having acquired distasteful political implications, I refer to the historian of science to point out how wrong-headed that is given that the dialectic method grew from Greek philosophy, and part of what the Greeks bequeathed to us is atomism, politically suspect from early days unto the eighteenth century. The lesson is there to be learnt from history that philosophy like science can be misinterpreted, abused and misused and Hegel and other proponents of the nature philosophy of the period between about 1790 and 1840 made many remarkable asseverations oft cited as a warning against this type of speculation and prompting Arthur Schopenhauer, (1788–1860), to call Hegel the nonsense scribbler. Bud this period was really a tremendous experiment of the human spirit the positive results of which are as intriguing as its errors. One must beware of underrating the human spirit in science which shines through Hegel’s philosophy of physics.
On the dialectic treatment of cognition. In an early work, the ‘Jenenser Logik’, written in Jena, all the things that he discusses fluctuate or vacillate. Space, time, substance, force are always presented as in a state of change, existing in themselves, identical with themselves, and yet going over into their opposites, following an innate urge to be come their inverted selves, and from infinitely real they turn into absolutely negated, from completely necessary to infinitely free. Urged on by what? Kept under control by what? Such are the demands for an explanation. An explanation of what kind?
‘Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something — a great deal in fact -for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true’.
- Hegel, ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, 1807.
Philosophy is not mathematical despite philosophers have thought that it is. Baruch Spinoza, (1632–1677), authored ‘Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata’, ‘Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order’, wherein ethical arguments are modelled upon reasoning akin to that found in geometry. René Descartes (1596–1650), in his ‘Discourse on Method’, praises the accuracy and certainty of mathematical demonstrations and takes them as inspiration for his own method for avoiding errors in philosophy. But mathematics concerns idealized and abstract objects rather than real existences and does not need to incorporate falsehood or error. Philosophy however concerns the real, actual, and existent, and just as it must muddy its presentations with the peculiarities of empirical particulars it must incorporate the entire coming to be of a content, including the negative, the false, the erroneous steps that are taken along the way. Hegel introduces his system of science through the illusory domain of phenomenal knowing, Why study illusions, errors or falsehoods at all? Because falsehood is part of the whole truth. Hegel was critical of the ways of thinking that cannot accept the false as part of the true, ways of thinking that strive for the ideal of simplicity, of atomic truth. Which anticipates Bertrand Russell, (1872–1970), and logical atomism.
Taking mathematical truth as an ideal for philosophy leads us astray.
‘To study means coming to see as true what others have thought. But when [the student] then expects to be finished and done with it, as with something false, one does not get to know things at all’.
- Hegel, ‘Wastebook’, 1802.
Hegel thus presents no reasons for these movements nor need he although something akin to an explanation is adduced after a long sequence of such statements, a chapter on ‘Das Erkennen’ starts with: ‘(a) Bisher war das Ubergehen des Begriffs in sein Anderswerden oder in seine Realitat und die Zuriicknahme dieses Anderswerdens unter den Begriff unsere Reflexion; eine dialektische Behandlung, die die Gegensatze entwickelte, welche in dem Gesetzten unentwickelt vorhanden waren’, (‘So far, the shifting of the concept to its inversion or to its reality and the restitution of this inversion under the concept has been our reflection; a dialectical treatment that developed the opposites which were present but undeveloped in the set’). A categorical statement about one of the aspects in ‘Das Erkennen’ can lead to further understanding concerning Hegel’s philosophy of chemistry and physics and concerning certain discussions in contemporary science and philosophy.
‘Physics of universal individuality. Physical qualities in their primary immediacy are external to one another in an independent manner as the heavenly bodies, which are now physically determined. Secondly, they are related to the individual unity of their totality as the physical elements. Thirdly, they are the process, which gives rise to what is individual in these elements — the meteorological process’.
‘1. Light (The Sun, light and its reflection). Matter in its primary qualified state is pure self-identity, unity of intro-reflection; as such it is the primary manifestation, and is itself still abstract. As existent in nature, it is independent self-relation opposed to the other determinations of totality. This existing and universal self of matter is light, which as individuality is the star, and as moment of totality, the sun. … As the abstract self of matter, light is absolute levity, and as matter, it is infinite self-externality. It is this as pure manifestation and material ideality however, in the self-externality of which it is simple and indivisible…. Light, as universal physical identity, relates itself to the matter qualified by the other moments of the Notion. It does this in the first instance as something different from this matter (§ 275), and therefore as something which is distinct from and external to it. The matter is therefore determined as the negation of light, or as a darkness, and in so far as it also subsists for itself, and is different from light, light only enters into relation with its surface, which as the initiation of opacity, is therefore made manifest. If this surface is smooth and devoid of any further particularization however, it also, inseparably, manifests itself, and becomes apparent to another surface. As each therefore appears to the other, and only the other appears to each, the extro-positing of this manifestation is the abstract infinity of intro-reflection, through which there is as yet nothing which appears to itself as self-subsistent. In order that something may ultimately appear and become visible, further particularization of some physical kind or another, such as roughness or colour etc., must therefore be present. … The manifestation of objects to each other, as limited by their opacity, is the self-externality of spatial relation, which, as it has no further determinations, is therefore direct or rectilinear. Since surfaces are so related to each other, and can occupy various positions, the manifestation of one visible object to another in a smooth surface is increased by a third and fourth surface etc. The image of the object, the location of which is taken to be the mirror, is reflected by another surface, i.e. the eye or another mirror etc. In these particularized spatial determinations, equality can be the only law of manifestation, and it entails the equality of the angle of incidence with the angle of reflection, as well as the unity of the plane of this angle. Nothing whatever is present whereby the identity of this relation might be changed’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
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Francesca Campana (1615–1665)
Quando ascoltate che col suo volto ….
Ascoltare:
Hegel stresses act and process in the Jena logic, he says ‘das Erkennen’ and not ‘die Erkenntnis’ hence the English equivalent would not be cognition nor the cognitive act but rather the action of obtaining cognition or the process of discerning. Similarly ‘das Ubergehen’ is not ‘the transition’ but rather ‘the shifting’. As for ‘Anderswerden’, elsewhere ‘das Anderssein’, and the shifting into ‘sein Anderes’, most of the time the correct word would be ‘inversion’ as an abbreviation for becoming its complementary opposite to avoid saying its specific Otherness. ‘Das Gesetzte’ is that which has been posited or set down, it is almost the same as the given, and in both cases, nothing is said about who has posited or given what, and the preferred word for ‘das Gesetzte’ is set with some allusion to its several meanings including the mathematical one but see above.
Hence: So far, the shifting of the concept to its inversion or to its reality and the restitution of this inversion under the concept has been our reflection; a dialectical treatment that developed the opposites which were present but undeveloped in the set. If this meant that cognition is only our reflection it would suggest nothing but an idle game of our imagination yet this is not the case for cognition is aimed at the other and it is the indifferent space of this other and the movement of cognition, that is to say, the reflection into itself, consists in being the simple relation in which this other moves, comes, and disappears.
‘Until now the transition of the concept into its becoming-other, or into its reality, and the taking back of this becoming-other under the concept was our reflection, a dialectical manipulation that developed the antitheses that were present undeveloped in what was posited. The latter, however, or the content, was not of the kind that would thus move on its own to its becoming-other and back from it; rather, it was something dead whose movement was outside it: pure being is sufficient unto itself (fur sich befriedigt). The infinity into which pure being or nothingness went over was this being and not-being of the antitheses, their vanishing and coming forth. But this movement [was] only an external one-that is, one in which only the being of determinacy came forth-and then its not-being as the being of some other. That from which what came forth proceeded and [into which] what vanished lost itself, the inner, the zero of the passage [Durchgang], [was] that empty being, or the nothing itself. The absolute concept is itself what is without concept, uncomprehended; the equivalence is only the nothing’.
- ‘The Jena System’
The dialectic method comes out of our reflection but it corresponds with the set, with the world in a relationship which itself is subjected to the dialectic process or which in itself is this process. A picture of the world is presented whereby it is a systematic relationship between complementary pairs of opposites which exist as the only positions available to things and thoughts and this relationship makes existence possible as the constantly moving transition from one to the other and the firm postulates with which the world is described can be considered as the other, the inverse of what is found as existing and to be described. Therefor the strangeness of this world of Hegelian philosophy is that all change even when it appears to be gradual consists in the process of becoming its own opposite. Change does not proceed in aligned steps least of all in conformance with any idea of preformation or development and if there were a model for it it would be the pendulum in which only the extreme positions of the swinging are considered and not the path between these positions.
Hegel’s basic proposition may be formulated thus: when a reality is set its own negativity is immediately established also. One might elucidate by means of two analogies with physical concepts: The relationship of the posited, or positive, to its own negative is analogous to (1) that of kinetic and potential energy, and (2) that of matter and anti-matter. The first analogy was historically important in the origin of his work albeit Hegel not be regarded as a pre-curser of the hypothesis of anti-matter.
The Infinite relationship. Such analogies are warranted in several respects. First, they may contribute to overcoming the barrier erected by Hegel’s language and serve as a general guide to a translation of its sense and this represents a relatively external use of these analogies. An internal use proceeds from the language to the intention in Hegel’s work. He stated it clearly a few years after the ‘Jenenser Logik’ in the ‘Phanomenologie des Geistes’ whereby the true form in which truth exists can only be its scientific system and the goal that philosophy should approach in the form of science so that it will be able to discard its name love of knowledge and be real knowledge.
‘Knowledge’
by Emma Scarr Booth (1835–1927)
Who is it with the grandly towering form,
The stately head, the brow magnificent,
The calm reposeful eyes, the noble mien,
The limbs indicative of strength and grace?
Knowledge. Who else could be so self-contained,
So undisturbed among the whirl of change,
The crash of systems, when Destruction drives
His flaming chariot through the Universe.
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‘The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing — that is what I have set myself to do. The inner necessity that knowing should be Science lies in its nature, and only the systematic exposition of philosophy itself provides it. But the external necessity, so far as its grasped in a general way, setting aside accidental matters of person and motivation, is the same as the inner, or in other words it lies in the shape in which time sets forth the sequential existence of its moments. To show that now is the time for philosophy to be raised to the status of a Science would therefore be the only true justification of any effort that has this aim, for to do so would demonstrate the necessity of the aim, would indeed at the same time be the accomplishing of it’.
— ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’
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Hegel indicates as much once more in the Encyclopaedia where dialectics has a positive result because it has a specified content hence philosophy does not at all deal with mere abstractions of formal thoughts but solely with concrete thoughts which is to say thoughts that are full of definite contents.
‘The speculative or positively rational apprehends the unity of the determinations in their opposition, the affirmative that is contained in their dissolution and in their transition. (1) The dialectic has a positive result, because it has a determinate content, or because its result is truly not empty, abstract nothing, but the negation of certain determinations, which are contained in the result precisely because it is not an immediate nothing, but a result. (2) Hence this rational [result}, although it is something-thought and something-abstract, is at the same time something-concrete, because it is not simple, formal unity, but a unity of distinct determinations. For this reason philosophy does not deal with mere abstractions or formal thoughts at all, but only with concrete thoughts. (3) The mere logic of the understanding is contained in the speculative Logic and can easily be made out of the latter; nothing more is needed for this than the omission of the dialectical and the rational; in this way it becomes what is usually called logic, a descriptive collection of determinations of thought put together in various ways, which in their finitude count for something infinite’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Dialectics were of service to Hegel in the place of the first law of thermodynamics. The total energy in a system remains constant, although it may be converted from one form to another. The quantitative equality of the positive with its negative corresponds to a law of conservation and beyond that point and actually prior to it Hegel had to define what he means by the Quantum so he distinguished between the definiteness of the quantum and the thing itself. The thing remains, independent of magnitudes. In the absolute Small, the thing does not disappear-just as it does not exceed itself in the absolute Large.
‘The determinacy of quantum as a limit of the many is no determinacy whatever of the Thing itself; its concept is not affected thereby. The realization of the concept is an otherness that is posited with respect to it and through itself, one in which [the concept] remains what it is, that is, one that is just as absolutely sublated within it. The other[ ness] of its quantum indeed leaves the concept what it is, but it is not otherness posited with respect to it, and therefore its sublatedness is not for and through the concept itself either; in other words, the concept is simply sameness, only the sameness of something dead. Therefore no becoming other, be it of space or time or mass or heat, colour, etc., or of sensibility, irritability, etc., or of subjectivity and objectivity, etc., is posited, be they posited as great or small as you will, and in both cases either extensively or intensively. The limit of quantum is something that does not touch them at all and which, where it is determined, can just as well be either drawn closer or removed further. The Thing does not disappear in the absolutely small any more than it goes beyond itself in the absolutely large; the disappearance does not become intelligible by increase or decrease because it is of the essence of magnitude that it be not a determinacy of the Thing itself. “The disappearing of consciousness as of a force having a determinate degree, as resulting from a gradual diminution of this faculty of apperception’, is an empty thought which in the first place introduces into the essence of spirit the determination of magnitude (that is, the determination that a determinacy be absolutely external to it), whereas its essence is rather that no determinacy be external but be simply sublated within it, and so the diminution is to pass into a disappearing of consciousness. Of course, the sublating of magnitude would indeed sublate that to which it is ascribed, if [magnitude] were essential to it; but it is of the nature of magnitude to be accidental, an excluding which in truth however does not exclude, a limit which in truth however is no limit. The disappearance of what is here intrinsically accidental to a magnitude is so far from resulting in the disappearance of that with respect to which it was posited that now this last rather comes forth purely as what it truly is in itself. Only consciousness having no degree is true consciousness. This is at the same time the true meaning of the disappearing magnitudes of analysis; the infinitely small is not to be nothing, and yet is no longer to have magnitude. After this concept had been in use a hundred years, it was made into a prize essay topic, whether it actually has a meaning, and we can see that the answers given have not come clear’.
- ‘The Jena System’
Notes:
‘empty thought’: This is not a direct quotation but a plain echo of Kant’s refutation of Moses Mendelssohn’s, (1729–1786), doctrine of immortality in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’.
‘Refutation of the Argument of Mendelssohn for the Substantiality or Permanence of the Soul. This acute philosopher easily perceived the insufficiency of the common argument which attempts to prove that the soul — it being granted that it is a simple being — cannot perish by dissolution or decomposition; he saw it is not impossible for it to cease to be by extinction, or disappearance. He endeavoured to prove in his Phaedo, that the soul cannot be annihilated, by showing that a simple being cannot cease to exist. Inasmuch as, he said, a simple existence cannot diminish, nor gradually lose portions of its being, and thus be by degrees reduced to nothing (for it possesses no parts, and therefore no multiplicity), between the moment in which it is, and the moment in which it is not, no time can be discovered — which is impossible. But this philosopher did not consider that, granting the soul to possess this simple nature, which contains no parts external to each other and consequently no extensive quantity, we cannot refuse to it any less than to any other being, intensive quantity, that is, a degree of reality in regard to all its faculties, nay, to all that constitutes its existence. But this degree of reality can become less and less through an infinite series of smaller degrees. It follows, therefore, that this supposed substance — this thing, the permanence of which is not assured in any other way, may, if not by decomposition, by gradual loss (remissio) of its powers (consequently by elanguescence, if I may employ this expression), be changed into nothing. For consciousness itself has always a degree, which may be lessened. Consequently the faculty of being conscious may be diminished; and so with all other faculties. The permanence of the soul, therefore, as an object of the internal sense, remains undemonstrated, nay, even indemonstrable. Its permanence in life is evident, per se, inasmuch as the thinking being (as man) is to itself, at the same time, an object of the external senses. But this does not authorize the rational psychologist to affirm, from mere conceptions, its permanence beyond life’.
- ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
‘prize essay topic’: In 1784 Joseph-Louis Lagrange, (1736–1813), set a prize question for award in 1786: ‘Une theorie claire et precise de ce qu’on appelle Infinie en Mathematique’.
In the method of analysis by calculus, the magnitudes are made to be come infinitely small but this only brings out the infinite reality of the proportions or ratios. By the very course in which a magnitude, set in a system of magnitudes, is made to disappear absolutely, the concept of that which is to be specified emerges as absolute relationship and it is this relationship alone with which we are concerned, not any definite magnitudes; therefore, those invariant magnitudes fall completely away which do not only ex press what relationship they have, but include things outside of this relationship.
‘The issue is not whether something relatively very small can be left out of account; that can be satisfied by an imprecise determination of the magnitude, be the imprecision as small as you like. But in spite of the small bit that is left out of account, the determination made in the use of infinitesimal calculus is absolutely precise. In other words, when one lets a posited magnitude within a system of magnitudes disappear absolutely, just for that reason the concept of what is to be determined comes forth purely as an absolute ratio, which is all we want to know, not the determinate magnitudes. Therefore the unchangeable magnitudes, which do not just express how they are in a ratio but how they are on their own account outside of this ratio, fall away completely; the products in which the ratio of the factors likewise disappears set themselves up as sums, etc. The differentials are semblances of differentiations in magnitude that are forthwith sublated again; they are used where a system of reciprocally determining moments has been duplicated for the purpose of expressing it as an equivalence of diverse moments. In the duplication one moment appears in diverse magnitudes; but conceptually these two diverse magnitudes are completely the same, and since the diversity has been presented as a differential, nothing occurs but the elimination of the diverse magnitudes and the establishment of the concept’.
— ‘The Jena System’
Lasciatemi qui solo
Torante augelli al nido
Mentre l’anim’e ‘l duolo
Spiro su questo lido
Altri meco non voglio
Ch’un freddo scoglio
E ‘l moi fatal martire
Lasciatemi morire
Dolcissime sirene
Che’n si pietoso canto
Raddolcite mie pene
Fate soave il pianto
Movet’ il nuoto altronde
Togliete all’onde
I crudi sdegni, e l’ire
Lasciatemi morire
Placidissimi venti
Torante al vostro speco
Sol miei duri lamenti
Chieggo che restin meco
Vostri sospir non chiamo
Solingo bramo
I miei dolori finire
Lasciatemi morire
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In the derivation, for instance dx/dy, neither dx nor dy have a magnitude for themselves but only in relation to each other. Hegel expands this thought from differential calculus to any quantum that has only an absolutely relative magnitude in a system and he exemplifies this by the hypothenuse a = y (b2 + c2) which represents the hypothenuse as it actually is, not a line outside of a rectangular triangle.
‘… with regard to quality, reality is a doubling of unity; or unity is only as unity and multiplicity, which are both the same, or [unity] itself. Now, the system-which, if it is a system, posited in the form of unity, reduces itself to zero-comes to be an equivalence of diverse [terms]; and the positing of the differential of the moments is a form of doubling for the sake of expressing as an equation the determinacy of the moments by means of the whole, and so by means of each other. Because each single moment as differential acquires the semblance of a diversified magnitude, therefore, since the two wholes are the same in essence (that is, in their internal ratio of moments), an equivalence of ratios can be posited in which there are the moments as magnitudes. However, this determination of magnitudes disappears because it has no significance in connection with the internal ratios, which is the essential determinacy of the moment with respect to itself, not as the external quantitative determinacy but rather as its concept. And what results is determination as a determination within this internal ratio. In this ratio the moments do not have magnitude on their own account but purely and simply a magnitude as ratio; and what is determined is not their magnitude as [the magnitude] of singulars, but only their ratio to each other. In other words, the moment is in truth sublated as quantum in the diminution ad infinitum, and it has a magnitude only within the system, an absolutely relative one, or one that is determined with respect to itself by the whole. In this way, the hypotenuse as a = Y(b2(squared) + c2(squared)) and the ordinate as, for instance, y = Y(px),etc., are set forth as they are in themselves, namely not as a line apart from the right-angled [triangle] or apart from the determinate curved line, etc., which is what they are simply as quanta, but as being essentially hypotenuse, ordinate, etc.’.
- ‘The Jena System’
Further on he distinguishes between the division a/ b and its unity, the quotient c = a/b.
‘In cognition, therefore, the preceding is recapitulated; it is the totality of the totality of simple connection, of quantum, and of both relations; and in itself [it is] this circular movement whose content (that passes through this movement) is the definition of this circle. Cognition equates the whole divided into parts to the one distinguished into moments-the former undifferentiated equivalence to the latter differentiated equivalence. The whole alone, through its determinacy, is capable of division. It itself is determinacy reflected into itself; and in its indifference it preserves itself through abstraction from the opposites. The other division into moments is the inner determinacy, which, opposed to itself, does not abstract but posits both in itself; only thereby is it the whole equivalent to itself and connected with itself. The relation, or the second division, is as such a/b; but as unity it is the c, = alb, the quotient and indeed a determinacy, the simple determinacy of the whole, which has the opposite outside itself. What is self-equivalent in the relation is something coming back out of its inequality, something sublating the inequality, and just thereby an opposite, which has, however, annihilated in itself the form of inequality. Thus it has in itself only the form of universality, but in fact is determinately abstract’.
- ‘The Jena System’
The importance of relationships extends from mathematics to things. ‘… das Ding ist nur das System seiner Momente, und diese sind nur, was sie sind, im Verhiiltnis zu einander, und das Ding selbst ist dieses Verhiiltnis: indem das einzelne Moment sich veriindert, ver iindert es ein Verhaltnis zu den andern, das ganze Verhiiltnis, das Ding selbst wird ein anderes’.
‘It has been shown that the quantum as limit of the many is indeterminate in itself and how this external accidental determination becomes a determinacy of the Thing itself through its annihilation as a quantum in differential calculus. Moreover, this is just what will be necessary with respect to things as systems of moments; in other words, the opposition of the moments is not to be considered as this external, quantitative opposition but as opposition as it is in itself-that is, as qualitative opposition, or as determinacy. The quantitative differentiation of the moment of a thing does not affect the concept of the moment or the concept of the thing; but the thing is only the system of its moments, and these only are what they are in relation to each other, and the thing itself is this relation; in that the singular moment changes, it changes its relationship to the others; the whole relation, the thing itself, becomes something else. And it is in truth not a change of the moment that takes place; rather, the life cycle of the Thing itself is expressed since the moment is not on its own account, and its change is wholly determined solely by its relationship, by the being it has in the Thing itself. But this concept of the moment is precisely what the diversity as quantitative does not affect: the determinacy as it is within the Thing itself, or as it is in itself. And the rise and fall on the ladder of degree or of extensive magnitude is only to be regarded as an external indicator. The differentiation of the internal ratio turns the differentiation of the quantum as one of that sort into something quite other than [what] it expresses’.
- ‘The Jena System’
The word moment here means specific property or quality but the translation characteristic is preferable since it avoids the narrower meaning of quality therefore Hegel’s sentence expresses the thought that a substance and its characteristics are mutually connected in a reversible relationship and the substance as a thing is the system of the characteristics and their change involves the substance itself. Actually not a change of one of the characteristics occurs, any change is ‘der Lebenslauf der Sache selbst, the life story or life cycle of the thing itself. Hegel would have concurred with Henry Margenau’s, (1901–1997), statement: ‘Facts are not interesting or important ingredients of science, unless they point to relations, unless they suggest ideas combined into what is called a theory’ with the addition that these relations are a built-in feature of the facts and the true function of a theory is to bring out this feature.
Tautologies. Just as a substance, being a thing, is only the relationship of its characteristics, so force, as moving force, is in itself product of mass and velocity, a product equal to itself, and at the same time mass in its being as one with velocity and thus as one with the change of motion in it self.
‘Force itself is just substance that (as relation) has necessity in itself, is inherently self-equal, and as this equality is the unity of opposites. Moving force is with respect to itself product of mass and velocity, a self-equal product, and at the same time a mass that, through itself as one with velocity, is the alteration of motion with respect to it. Just as the attracting force is self-equal and infinite within itself as the connection of one to an other with respect to it, and the connection itself embraces this one as well as the other-each is contained in its simplicity-so moving force not only grasps the opposites of location within itself, as motion does, but also comprehends within itself motion and mass together as one. In the same way, magnetic or electric force, etc., is not a substance that would have what is magnetic or electric outside itself, but it is posited with respect to it as one with it, so that this being is not contingently, but essentially, magnetic or electric. Whereas substance as such would only possibly have in itself what is electric or magnetic as well as motion, but would have the actuality of what is electric or magnetic outside it, substance as force has its actuality immediately within its possibility’.
- ‘The Jena System’
Thus, the attractive force is not a substance that is for itself and to which the definiteness of attraction as a relationship to others could externally be added or not added; rather, the attractive force is in itself directly the being-re lated to others.
‘Force is the whole, the whole magnitude of the motion, the product of mass and velocity, whereas in causal linkage, on the other hand, mass is on its own account, and it makes no difference to it whether motion is conjoined with it, whether it connects with other substances through motion, and whether it is cause, or not. Just so attracting force is not a substance that is on its own account and to which the determinacy of attracting may or may not be added externally as a connection with others; rather, attracting force is in itself simultaneously the connecting with another. Since force thus expresses the idea of relationship itself and what falls asunder in causal linkage is sublated, the duality of substances falls away too. Force itself is just substance that (as relation) has necessity in itself, is inherently self-equal, and as this equality is the unity of opposites. Moving force is with respect to itself product of mass and velocity, a self-equal product, and at the same time a mass that, through itself as one with velocity, is the alteration of motion with respect to it. Just as the attracting force is self-equal and infinite within itself as the connection of one to an other with respect to it, and the connection itself embraces this one as well as the other-each is contained in its simplicity-so moving force not only grasps the opposites of location within itself, as motion does, but also comprehends within itself motion and mass together as one. In the same way, magnetic or electric force, etc., is not a substance that would have what is magnetic or electric outside itself, but it is posited with respect to it as one with it, so that this being is not contingently, but essentially, magnetic or electric. Whereas substance as such would only possibly have in itself what is electric or magnetic as well as motion, but would have the actuality of what is electric or magnetic outside it, substance as force has its actuality immediately within its possibility. On the contrary, the substance that is cause is to be cause with respect to it only possibly, and has actuality outside itself’.
- ‘The Jena System’
In place of velocity read acceleration but the point is the rejection of the duplication in giving a separate name, that is to say, force, to the product. The so-called forces of attraction between substances, or affinities, are nothing but the relationship itself. When substances are entirely for themselves they are also for each other. We either have a contra diction or a tautology, the latter when we place the being-related into the sub stances, and the reason for their relationship is the tautology that they simply are related.
‘What is absolutely incomprehensible is the binding of self-subsistent substances with their connection, which posits them more [or] less as one and sublates them. And what is absolutely incomprehensible leaves one nothing more to say but ‘That is just how it is’. Comprehension-in other words, positing the necessity-would be nothing else but the substances’ being connected with each other through themselves-that is, their absolutely not being per se, absolutely not substances, but being with respect to one another each only in its opposite, outside itself, the contrary of itself. But upon the presupposition of absolute being per se, this necessity is not possible. So there is no necessity at all, but instead the connection is on its own account, separate from the substances, as they are from it and from each other; and the ground of their connection is the tautology that they are indeed connected. The pure being of ‘That is how it is’ is empty identity, the absence of necessity; [it is] the space of absolute contingency, in which all things have their places, lying quietly and indifferently beside one another without mutual hurt, [or] particular substances that stay as they are on their own account; then, in addition, there is also a connecting — that is, a sublating — of the substances. But the staying as they are on their own account and the not staying so are external to each other; they do not touch each other; they lie quietly next to each other; all relationship has disappeared’.
- ‘The Jena System’
It follows, that there is no force for our cognition, which, being infinite in itself, Teaches only for the infinite and necessary; there is not the moving, accelerating force but movement, acceleration, etc., not magnetic, electric etc. force but magnetism, electricity etc. for this cognition, nor the force of imagination, memory, or the ability of imagination, memory, reason, understanding itself, least of all, how ever, a force of attraction or of affinity.
‘… for the cognition that is infinite in itself [and] is only concerned with the infinite and the necessary, there is no force; and that it does not consider moving or accelerating force but motion, acceleration, etc., not the magnetic, electrical force, etc., but magnetism, electricity, etc. Just as little does it consider the force of imagination, of memory, or the faculty of imagination, memory, understanding, reason, etc., but imagination, memory, understanding, reason themselves; and least of all does it consider attractive force or the force of affinity. For, although the electrical, magnetic, intellectual, etc., forces are nothing but pure identities and, despite the differentiation [produced] by explanation, are tautologies, these names do signify this determinacy of electrical, magnetic connection. But the forces of attraction and of affinity are completely empty; they express nothing at all except connection as such. It is indeed remarkable to find investigations of the question whether attractive force may not be an entirely universal force of nature, perhaps even of spiritual nature. This is in fact the case, for attractive force is connection as such, and there is, to be sure, no force more universal than the force of connection. The force of affinity is in fact much too empty, as is also the attractive force’.
- ‘The Jena System’
They are the functions themselves and they do not need something behind them that must make them active. Elsewhere Hegel expresses this functionality more succinctly.
‘The law of magnetism is expressed by saying that like poles s repulse each other and unlike poles attract, like poles being hostile to each other while unlike poles are friendly. The only determination implied by this likeness is however that poles are like if they are both equally attracted or repulsed by a third term. However, the precise determination of this term too is simply that it repulses or attracts, either these like poles, or some other term. All these determinations are purely relative, and are devoid of distinct, sensible, neutral existence. It has already been observed (Rem. § 312). that terms such as north and south contain no such original primary or immediate determination. Consequently, the attraction of unlike and the repulsion of like poles, are certainly not the secondary nor yet the particular phenomenon of a presupposed magnetic principle which already has its own determinateness. They express nothing but the nature of magnetism itself, and are therefore expressions of the pure nature of the Notion, when it is posited within this sphere as activity’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
The friendship of the opposite poles and the enmity of the equal poles are thus not a subsequent or an additional, separate manifestation belonging to a presupposed and specifically predefined magnetism, they express nothing else than the nature of magnetism itself and, with that, the nature of the concept when it is posited as activity in this sphere, however, the picture of force in the Encyclopaedia has two sides, on one side it is an empty tautology to explain all events by a force, on the other hand, the nature of force is indeed an unknown, because we do not see the necessity by which its content in itself is connected with the specificity imposed by external events.
‘Welcome me, O benign Hill, O river’
by Gaspara Stampa (1523–1554)
Welcome me, O benign Hill, O river,
Home of the divine Graces, and of Love,
I, who shall your noble Lord approve,
Burn, and live, solely by his light ever;
And if you can make my inflamed heart,
Perchance, consume itself less fiercely,
I’ll ask the winds to be your friends, truly,
And every nymph and god to take your part.
And I’ll carve, in the bark of your fair trees,
When, finally, I am forced to leave you,
My memories of all your courtesies.
Yet alas, I feel, my flame leaps anew,
That should lessen, and, despite my pleas,
Here, both my love and my desire renew.
Recandosi a soggiornare nei luoghi dov’egli è nato.
Accogliete benigni, o colle, o fiume,
albergo de le Grazie alme e d’Amore,
quella ch’arde del vostro alto signore,
e vive sol de’ raggi del suo lume;
e, se fate ch’amando si consume
men aspramente il mio infiammato core,
pregherò che vi sieno amiche l’ôre,
ogni ninfa silvestre ed ogni nume,
e lascerò scolpita in qualche scorza
la memoria di tanta cortesia,
quando di lasciar voi mi sará forza.
Ma, lassa, io sento che la fiamma mia,
che devrebbe scemar, piú si rinforza,
e piú ch’altrove qui s’ama e disia.
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A century later Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (1885–1955), wrote: ‘The fundamental law of mechanics: Mass X Acceleration = Force, teaches what kind of movement of masses results from the influence of given forces ( at given initial velocities). However, mechanics does not teach what force is; that we learn in physics. The fundamental law of mechanics is an -0pen schema that acquires a solid content when the concept of force in this schema is filled in by physics’. By comparing the two quotations we can assess to what extent the dual aspect of force in Hegel’s philosophy disclosed a basic truth, he arrived at it by rejecting the ‘Vermogen’ with indirect reference to Kant and to the preformation theories that flourished at that time and since the notion of a preformation is hidden in frequently so-called explanations, he characterizes them as representing a tautology. In the example that he specifically mentions tautology is again linked with contradiction. Rain is first considered as cause, but then also as effect, not as rain any more but as wetness, a property of state of the ground (on which the rain fell) and the dry ground has become different from what it was before through the effect of the rain. The differentiation between rain and humidity is null and void; what was supposed to be separated into rain and wetness is always the same: in truth, there is no separation here, and the action of rain to produce wetness is a completely empty tautology, the dry ness has, to express it in this manner, gone to the place where before there was rain.
‘The superficial concept that does not come to infinity takes THE ABSOLUTE BEING PER SE OF THE SUBSTANCES to be fundamental, and then connects them with each other. It posits them together as one, but just slightly so, so that their remaining on their own account does not suffer by it. But rather there cannot be any connection at all between such absolutely self-subsistent beings; for every connection, be it ever so slight, would be a sublation of substantiality. Because each is in this way on its own account, there also emerges in truth no opposition, no difference, for that would be a connection such that each of them would not be on its own account but only in its connection with the other; but the substances are to be strictly on their own account. In fact, no relation at all has been posited in general-and neither cause nor effect. The cause is to be something other than what it is as effect; yet both remain strictly the same. And what is separated is not something that is cause and something that is effected; on the contrary, just the one substance (which was to distinguish itself as cause and what is effected, yet remains the same) is posited at one time quite externally separate from another: two things that have nothing to do with each other and are quite accidental to each other and then are bound up with one another-just so externally, however, and in the bonding remain so much on their own account that they are connected with one another neither before the bonding nor when they are bonded; that is, they get bonded by something quite other than what they are themselves. Thus, for instance, the rain is posited as cause of the wetness of the soil, the wetness as effect; and the causality relation has the form A: a + B, where A signifies the rain, B the soil. The rain is at one time cause, but then also, as effect, is no longer rain but wetness, a property or condition of the soil; and the dry soil has become something other than it was before through the agency [Eznwirkung] of the rain. In this relation both rain and soil are and continue to be substances; but the rain is the actual that posits itself as actuality to the extent that it sublates the possibility that is outside it, that is, the dryness; and only thereby is it in truth rain as cause of dampness. But what has been posited here [is] not in truth a relation but merely its semblance; the rain does not therein become genuinely actual substance or infinity. Its opposition as rain and as dampness is radically null and void; [for] it is always one and the same thing that is to be separated into rain and dampness. There is in truth no separation here, and the causal action of the rain, [namely,] in producing wetness, is a completely empty tautology. Or if the opposition is conceived in such a way that on the one side rain, on the other dryness, are opposed absolutely, then the one is the possibility of the other. Yet in its acting [Wirken] the rain does not make itself so infinite that it posits its possibility, dryness, within itself, but only sublates the dryness with respect to this place, this determinate soil. This sublation would be a pure negating of dryness but never a positing of its possibility within the rain itself, not a genuine actualization [Verwirklichung]. However it is not even a sublation but purely a change of place of the dryness and the rain, or of the identical wetness; for the dryness has, so to speak, only gone to where the rain was previously. The rain itself has gone over to the other substance; but this is perfectly contingent for both: the wetness could have remained dampness of the air, even as it is now dampness of the soil, just as the wind that is cause of a motion of the leaf might as easily not have moved it — the soil could have stayed dry, the leaf at rest. Still less is necessity or the necessary connection to wetness or to wind posited in this determinate soil or in this determinate leaf-and soil and leaf are nothing if they are not ‘thises’. Just as it is contingent for both to be bound, so they are contingent for each other within the bond itself; the damp substance and the inherently dry substance must simply continue as what they are, for they are both posited as beings on their own account. In all the moments of this alteration nothing is posited of the essence of the relationship, [that is,] the being in connection with an other, or determinacy as it [is] in itself, namely infinite’.
- ‘Philosophy of Nature’
With this kind of explaining we do not state a true relationship, between cause and effect a network of contradiction is created when they are not properly recognized. ‘Die Ursache also ist absolut nur in der Wirkung’, cause is only the potential acting substance and there fore it exists only as force. Force is properly speaking the whole causality relationship, or it is the cause as being at one with the effect and in truth real substance, but also being the cancelled causality relationship. Tautology is avoided when force is recognized as the unity of opposites, as being in itself and also as being related to others and this unity is not static and when we endeavour to hold it at any fixed points we achieve only contradiction or tautology. The key here is Hegel’s concept of Aufhebung in the meaning of cancellation not in the other one of suspension but with the somewhat contradictory meaning of conservation also implied and this process of this Aufhebung is not further explained but then why should it be given the tautologous nature of explanations? But it forms the keystone for the edifice of Hegelian philosophy without which the whole edifice crumbles to dust.
One might say that without cancellation the whole system would be cancelled. Aufhebung as a process does not cancel itself, it is a movement in a circle. Kant dissolved antinomies by declaring that the principle of pure reason is an indefinitely continued regressus (in indefinitum) not a regress into the infinite and for this regress Hegel substitutes the movement in a circle and instead of an either-or relationship between opposite members he postulates the absolute, immediate unity of both the absolute concept, which in itself is the opposite of definiteness and cancelled definiteness and the circle symbolizes the fact that cancellation is not eradication and the opposition of separating against unifying, of unity against separation, leaves a positive result in the reality which encloses both.
‘This movement of cognition has until now always been the exposition of a concept as reality or totality. The first potency was the concept or the definition itself; the second, its construction or its exposition as bad reality, its coming-outside-itself or its becoming-other; and the third, the true reality, or the totality, the moment of sublating this becoming-other through its subsumption under the first unity. With respect to the first unity it was demonstrated that it has in fact a separation in itself; in the face of this separation [it was demonstrated] that the connection rather is essential to it. The negative turning of the separating against the unity, of the unity against the separating, becomes a positive result in reality, which interlocks both [of them] in that it is a universal, self-reflexive definition in which the first and [second] potency are not nothing but are posited as sublated or as ideal. The spinning forward of the concept through its moments is in this [way] a movement turning back into itself, and its circle is reflection; self-subsistent being is only as this whole of the circle or of reflection’.
- ‘The Jena System
The Absolute Fluid. With some poetic and philosophical imagining Thales (6th century B.C.) saw water as the primordial element in all matter and in a philosophical extrapolation Hegel proceeded from the specific substance water to its fundamental concept whereby the reality of matter is the absolute Fluid, the truly real, terrestrial matter. This Fluid is something singular but since it also is absolute motion its being equal to itself is cancelled by absolute communication of its motion and this motion is ‘ein Erzittern in sich selbst’, a rotation in which the centrum is not differentiated from the circumference, ‘sondern in welcher das Ganze Achse und Mittelpunkt ist’.
‘Cognition was the circular movement of the return into itself, and thus the in-itself. Qua this in-itself it sublates itself, as that in which the posited is changed; it is the self-equivalent in which something other than it, as something self-equivalent, is connected only with itself. Its content is the determinacy that is in itself, posited according to the first principle as a self-equivalent determinacy. For cognition it is initially the formal in-itself, or it posits itself as its first moment; and indeed according to the determinacy of this first moment [it posits itself] in a simple form. The necessity of once again becoming itself out of its having become-in which case a start is made with itself in the form of the first power lies in cognition’s coming to a point as reflection while it is circumference as movement. In its movement positive self-equivalence is, as it were, its universal space; but it is at the same time negative unity, the one of the point, that in which the distinguishing of its moments sublates itself, a unity as its negative connection in which cognition is sublated. This unity is its moment and is opposed to it in its motion, which simply is connected with it; and this one is the one that appears as content of cognition and what comes to be the ground’.
- ‘The Jena System’
One is reminded of Thales and Robert Boyle, (1627–1691) and one can assume kinship to the universal fluid (there is no precise and determinate shape to things, shape contains something imaginary and relative to perception), of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, (1646–1716), but at least this trembling in itself has no precedents. This motion resumed into itself as moving motion is the simple Ton, it is a sound for us, liberated from the Fluid in which it is completely immersed. Matter, the absolute Fluid, is this unit of the sound and the being-equal to itself and what went before was the absolute construction of matter. Hegel may have been inspired by a vision or premonition of something akin to the general basis of present wave mechanics and he defines the absolute singularity of substance, the sound (tone) that is not yet sound for itself or while it is absolutely internal or external, that is to say, light (Licht). The very specific way in which Hegel elaborates on this further invites connection of these speculations with subsequent developments. What then follows is the definition of chemical elements and the chemical process, a description of relationships between fire, air, and its constituents, nitrogen is, so to say, the present becoming the past; hydrogen, on the other hand, the future becoming the present. The new system of chemistry is mixed with remnants of phlogiston theory but in his later works, Hegel corrected many of the erroneous connections which he constructed here.
The Infinite process. Hegel’s construction exemplifies poetic vision fed by ancient thoughts combined with the more recent vocabulary of latent heat. The speculations of Thales, Boyle, and Leibniz, and the insight gained by Joseph Black, (1728–1799), and from a general liquifier heat becomes the general Fluid, the general dissolution, as general Fluid, is unity in itself; the specific characteristics, with which it is endowed, are in fact related to each other and cancel each other in this relatedness by existing, or in their Becoming vanishing and in their Vanishing becoming, and their essence is this unity. The application of these thoughts to a construction of matter, of elements and the chemical process, spread over many pages in the Jenenser Logik is intriguing.
‘… in ihrem Entstehen vergehend und in ihrem Verge hen entstehend …’, the thought of the universal process. A thought expressed elsewhere later. Nothingness as immediately equal to itself is as well, in reverse, the same as what Being is the truth of Being and Nothingness is, therefore, the unity of the two; this unity is the Becoming.
‘And similarly, but conversely, nothing, as this immediate [term] that is equal to itself, is the same as being. Hence, the truth of being and nothing alike is the unity of both of them; this unity is becoming … Becoming is the first concrete thought and hence the first concept, whereas being and nothing, in contrast, are empty abstractions. If we speak of the concept of being, this can only consist in becoming, for as being it is the empty nothing, but as the latter it is empty being. So, in being we have nothing, and in nothing being; but this being which abides with itself in nothing is becoming. The unity of becoming cannot leave out the distinction, for without that we would return once more to abstract being’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Becoming is simply the positedness of what being is in its truth while the emphasis is on the universal process and thereby this expressed elsewhere philosophy is characterized as one of functionalism. Substance, force, and cause are the actors in this functionalism and man and woman the experimenter is the actor in modern operationism and in functionalism manand woman must be understood in a much larger and wider role than that of the experimenter who uses an objectively given material, he and she is made in the image of the Creator. All of nature is freely released by a decision of free Idea.
‘Considered according to this unity that it has with itself, the Idea that is for itself is intuiting and the intuiting Idea is Nature. But as intuiting, the Idea is posited in the one-sided determination of immediacy or negation, through external reflection. The absolute freedom of the Idea, however, is that it does not merely pass over into life, nor that it lets life shine within itself as finite cognition, but that, in the absolute truth of itself, it resolves to release out of itself into freedom the moment of its particularity or of the initial determining and otherness, [i. e., ] the immediate Idea as its reflexion,a or itself as Nature. Addition. We have now returned to the Concept of the Idea with which we began. At the same time this return to the beginning is an advance. What we began with was being, abstract being, while now we have the Idea as being; and this Idea that is, is Nature’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Operationism is thus made universal and referred to the free acting of Idea and operationism is merely a part of the universal process albeit this part is the infinite sum of all little operations in the sphere produced by Idea and operationism hence becomes only a microcosm compared with the macrocosm of this functionalism.
Idea and experiment. An Hegelian process, the shifting from one position to its opposite, Anderssein, may be regarded as that free idea uniting in itself the opposites of power and impotence, Ohnmacht. The task is to establish the limits of the power that Hegel did not recognize, existence is change but this differs essentially from the constant flux we are accustomed to associate with the name of Heraclitus and the Hegelian world is limited to changes defined as inversion, therefore, coming into being is bound to fading away, and a further consequence is that in our reflection we can separate the trembling-in-itself into components, for instance, by spectroscopic analysis yet we must not omit the constitutional relatedness be tween these components, for instance in the atom constituted by vibrations.
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The concern is not with the question to which Kant devoted his philosophical work: How is it possible to make synthetic statements, that is to say, to find anything that is new and not contained in the premises? In this answer Kant introduced the limitation of all a priori which consists in the endeavour to furnish us with the knowledge of what is accessible to human experience, we cannot be in formed of anything supposed to be out side of this range: ‘Nuominibus non datur scientia’. Nuomena are the imagined counterparts of phenomena and do not impress on our senses; therefore, there can be no science about nuomena. Knowledge is not given to humans a pure product of the period of Enlightenment placing humans into the centre of a world he or she can know since he or she can want to know it only to the extent within his or her reach and what lies beyond is not open to knowledge but for an Hegelian this limitation is not binding.
‘Der Geist hat fiir uns die Natur zu seiner Voraussetzung, deren Wahrheit, und damit deren absolut Erstes er ist’. Spirit, for us, has Nature as its precondition of which spirit is the truth and, therefore, the absolute First. Spirit and Nature, subject and object, idea and experiment are connected by the universal processes of inversion and reversion not by the assumed purpose in the subject and force and affinity are to be rejected when they are constructed as something existing separately from the relatedness between mass and movement or between substance and substance thereby initiating a battle to be continued later by Ernst Mach, (1838–1916), John Bernard Stallo, (1823–1900), and John Dewey, (1859–1952), in their particular ways and Hegel would have characterized Wilhelm Ostwald’s, (1853–1932), concept of energy as a typical tautology.
By declaring that coming-into-being and fading-away are complementary Hegel eliminated Parmenides’ argument against the possibility of change. Philosophy was not converted into science by the dialectic process, this philosophy could not have predicted vitamins yet upon their discovery the existence of anti-vitamins could be foreseen on the basis of the science and the ability to predict is the test by which we can guard against tautologies although tautologies are not always such a bad thing. The Absolute is Spirit: this is the highest definition of this Absolute.
‘For us mind has nature as its presupposition, though mind is the truth of nature, and is thus absolutely first with respect to it.1 In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has emerged as the Idea that has reached its being-for-self. The object of the Idea as well as the subject is the concept. This identity is absolute negativity, since in nature the concept has its complete, external objectivity, but this externalization of the concept has been sublated and the concept has, in this externalization, become identical with itself. And so the concept is this identity only so far as it is at the same time a return out of nature’.
‘The absolute is mind. This is the highest definition of the absolute. To find this definition and to comprehend its meaning and content was, we may say, the absolute tendency of all culture and philosophy; it was the point towards which all religion and science pressed on; only this impetus enables us to comprehend the history of the world.-The word ‘mind’, and the representation of mind, were found early on, and the contep.t of the Christian religion is to make God known as mind. It is the task of philosophy to grasp in its own element, the concept, what is here given to representation and what is in itself the essence. That problem is not genuinely and immanently solved until freedom and the concept become the object and the soul of philosophy’.
- ‘Philosophy of Mind’
With this emphasis on the freedom of the spirit room is made for creativity and refuted in advance the grotesque distortions of his ideas by Karl Marx, (1818–1883). Hegel’s physical world postulates continuous transformations from each position to its opposite counterpart a world where coming-into-being and fading-away are intertwined and matter is characterized by a trembling in itself, a world familiar to the physics of our day where particle and wave are intertwined and where the solidity of a body is explained by the vibrations of its parts albeit the relatedness of the two views would be incorrectly interpreted by presuming that Hegel foresaw what happened a century after his work, rather Hegel continued and specified thoughts which in his day were old already, back to the ancient philosophies about the unity of opposites, with the Yin and Yang of the classical Chinese as an example and the persistence of these philosophies then appears clearly as the proper subject either of metaphysics or of anthropology an alternative that would be resolved in Hegel’s view of Spirit as the truth of Nature.
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Dedicated to my lovely One, my Renaissance woman. You are my @Kira A (see below).
Anima mea liquefacta est…
My soul melted…
_______________________________
You got to trust yourself
Be who you are
Do what you want to do
Discover you
Your point of view
Know yourself through and through
Renaissance woman in a golden age
An open mind on a golden stage
I left my troubles behind and I turn the page
It’s a privilege of this modern age
I want to make it clear
I’m the new frontier
What you see is what you get
I’m not afraid I just insist
On avoiding emotional death…
There’s a time for work
And a time for love
Ain’t got time to talk
It’s time to walk ….
I love the outfit.
Coming up next:
The Elements
To be continued….
