On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part fifty one.

David Proud

36 min readApr 25, 2023

‘The Masque of Reason’ (excerpt)

by Robert Frost (1874–1963)

God:

Oh, I remember well: you’re Job, my Patient.

How are you now? I trust you’re quite recovered,

And feel no iII effects from what I gave you.

Job:

Gave me in truth. I like the frank admission

I am a name for being put upon

But, yes, I’m fine, except for now and then

A reminiscent twinge of rheumatism.

The let-up’s heavenly. You perhaps will tell us

If that is all there is to be of Heaven,

Escape from so great pains of life on earth

It gives a sense of let-up calculated

To last a fellow to Eternity.

God:

Yes, by and by. But first a larger matter.

I’ve had you on my mind a thousand years

To thank you someday for the way you helped me

Establish once for all the principle

There’s no connection man can reason out

Between his just deserts and what he gets.

Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed.

’Twas a great demonstration we put on.

I should have spoken sooner had I found

The word I wanted. You would have supposed

One who in the beginning was the Word

Would be in a position to command it.

I have to wait for words like anyone.

Too long I’ve owed you this apology

For the apparently unmeaning sorrow

You were afflicted with In those old days.

But it was of the essence of the trial

You shouldn’t understand it at the time.

It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning.

And it came out all right. I have no doubt

You realize by now the part you played

To stultify the Deuteronomist

And change the tenor of religious thought

My thanks are to you for releasing me

From moral bondage to the human race.

The only free will there at first was man’s,

Who could do good or evil as he chose.

I had no choice but I must follow him

With forfeits and rewards he understood -

Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship.

I had to prosper good and punish evil.

You changed all that. You set me free to reign.

You are the Emancipator of your God,

And as such I promote you to a saint.

Job:

You hear him, Thyatira: we’re a saint.

Salvation in our case is retroactive

We’re saved, we’re saved, whatever else it means.

Job’s Wife:

Well, after all these years!

Job:

This is my wife.

Job’s Wife:

If You’re the deity I assume You are-

(I’d know You by Blake’s picture anywhere)-

God:

The best, I’m told, I ever have had taken.

**‘Job Confessing his Presumption to God who Answers from the Whirlwind’, 1805, William Blake**

‘Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment. And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all’.

- ‘The Book of Job’, 38. 1–18.

=====

Vaughan Williams : Job, a masque for dancing in nine scenes — Scenes I to IV (1927–30)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Science of Logic’

Teleology.

Purposiveness, a great Kantian word, the agreement of a thing with that constitution of things which is only possible according to purposes is called the purposiveness of its form as he so helpfully puts it.

‘But the forms of nature are so manifold, and there are so many modifications of the universal transcendental natural concepts left undetermined by the laws given, a priori, by the pure Understanding, — because these only concern the possibility of a nature in general (as an object of sense), — that there must be laws for these [forms] also. These, as empirical, may be contingent from the point of view of our Understanding, and yet, if they are to be called laws (as the concept of a nature requires), they must be regarded as necessary in virtue of a principle of the unity of the manifold, though it be unknown to us. — The reflective Judgement, which is obliged to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, requires on that account a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, because its function is to establish the unity of all empirical principles under higher ones, and hence to establish the possibility of their systematic subordination. Such a transcendental principle, then, the reflective Judgement can only give as a law from and to itself. It cannot derive it from outside (because then it would be the determinant Judgement); nor can it prescribe it to nature, because reflection upon the laws of nature adjusts itself by nature, and not nature by the conditions according to which we attempt to arrive at a concept of it which is quite contingent in respect of these’.

‘This principle can be no other than the following: As universal laws of nature have their ground in our Understanding, which prescribes them to nature (although only according to the universal concept of it as nature); so particular empirical laws, in respect of what is in them left undetermined by these universal laws, must be considered in accordance with such a unity as they would have if an Understanding (although not our Understanding) had furnished them to our cognitive faculties, so as to make possible a system of experience according to particular laws of nature. Not as if, in this way, such an Understanding must be assumed as actual (for it is only our reflective Judgement to which this Idea serves as a principle — for reflecting, not for determining); but this faculty thus gives a law only to itself and not to nature’.

‘Now the concept of an Object, so far as it contains the ground of the actuality of this Object, is the purpose; and the agreement of a thing with that constitution of things, which is only possible according to purposes, is called the purposiveness of its form. Thus the principle of Judgement, in respect of the form of things of nature under empirical laws generally, is the purposiveness of nature in its manifoldness. That is, nature is represented by means of this concept, as if an Understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws’.

‘The purposiveness of nature is therefore a particular concept, a priori, which has its origin solely in the reflective Judgement. For we cannot ascribe to natural products anything like a reference of nature in them to purposes; we can only use this concept to reflect upon such products in respect of the connexion of phenomena which is given in nature according to empirical laws. This concept is also quite different from practical purposiveness (in human art or in morals), though it is certainly thought according to the analogy of these last’.

- ‘Critique of Judgement’

‘Blooming Flowers with Garden Fence’, Koloman Moser (1868–1918)

=====

Gustav Mahler, (1860–1911), ‘Blumine’:

Teleology signifies the ‘future possibility of an object, at which the object is aimed’ explains Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Is there any possibility of defining teleology in such a way that is actually saying something? For Hegel, the future object is Absolute Knowing, which comes about when Notion purges itself of externality. End (Zweck) produces itself and for this very reason is purposive. Where purposiveness is discerned an intelligence [Verstand] is assumed as its author.

‘Where there is the perception of a purposiveness, an intelligence is assumed as its author; required for purpose is thus the concept’s own free concrete existence. Teleology is above all contrasted with mechanism, in which the determinateness posited in the object, being external, is one that gives no sign of self-determination. The opposition between causæ efficientes and causæ finales, between merely efficient and final causes, refers to this distinction, just as, at a more concrete level, the enquiry whether the absolute essence of the world is to be conceived as blind mechanism or as an intelligence that determines itself in accordance with purposes also comes down to it. The antinomy of fatalism, along with determinism, and freedom is equally concerned with the opposition of mechanism and teleology; for the free is the concept in its concrete existence’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Having discerned purposiveness, we demand that the Notion’s own free Existence should be the author of itself.

Teleology is about final, not efficient or mechanical cause. In efficient cause, externality usurps the place of self-determination. Yet Teleology properly belongs to the object (not the subject). At stake in the dialectic between Mechanism and Teleology is whether the absolute essence of the world is to be conceived as blind natural mechanism or as an intelligence that determines itself in accordance with ends. Fatalism and freedom are in the balance. And while Hegel opts for freedom, this is not to say there is no place in philosophy for mechanistic causation. The truth of Mechanism, however, is more fully expressed in the higher truth of Teleology. End — Notion in its free Existence — has proven to be the truth of Mechanism and Chemism. Opposed to End is the unfreedom of Notion, its submergence in externality.

‘Earlier metaphysics has dealt with these concepts as it dealt with others. It presupposed a certain picture of the world and strived to show that one or the other concept of causality was adequate to it, and the opposite defective because not explainable from the presupposed picture, all the while not examining the concept of mechanical cause and that of purpose to see which possesses truth in and for itself. If this is established independently, it may turn out that the objective world exhibits mechanical and final causes; its actual existence is not the norm of what is true, but what is true is rather the criterion for deciding which of these concrete existences is its true one. Just as the subjective understanding exhibits also errors in it, so the objective world exhibits also aspects and stages of truth that by themselves are still one-sided, incomplete, and only relations of appearances. If mechanism and purposiveness stand opposed to each other, then by that very fact they cannot be taken as indifferent concepts, as if each were by itself a correct concept and had as much validity as the other, the only question being where the one or the other may apply. This equal validity of the two rests only on the fact that they are, that is to say, that we have them both. But since they do stand opposed, the necessary first question is, which of the two concepts is the true one; and the higher and truly telling question is, whether there is a third which is their truth, or whether one of them is the truth of the other. — But purposive connection has proved to be the truth of mechanism. — Regarding chemism, what came under it can be taken together with mechanism, for purpose is the concept in free concrete existence, and the concept’s state of unfreedom, its being sunk into externality, stands opposed to it in any form. Both, mechanism as well as chemism, are therefore included under natural necessity: mechanism, because in it the concept does not exist in the object concretely, for as mechanical the latter lacks self-determination; chemism, either because the concept has in it a one-sided concrete existence in a state of tension, or because, emerging as the unity that creates in the neutral object a tension of extremes, it is external to itself in so far as it sublates this divide’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

This critique proves that the objective world is capable of error. Just as the subjective understanding also exhibits errors in itself, so the objective world also exhibits aspects and stages of truth that by themselves are still one-sided, incomplete and only relationship in the sphere of Appearance. Error will constitute the reason why observing reason cannot reliably induce a Universal from given Particulars. Nature is full of non-notional as well as notional materials. (Irrationality’s role has been investigated by Iain Macdonald). Mechanism and Chemism, then, stand for necessary unfreedom. The Mechanical Object is not self-determining. In Chemism, the Notion either has a one-sided Existence in tension or, as the unity that disjoins the neutral object into tensed extremes, Chemism is dependent on external force and so is external to itself. End, then, is be found in nature, not in some unknowable beyond.

=====

Robert Schumann, (1810–1856), ‘Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taue, die Sonne’:

‘Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taue, die Sonne’

by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)

Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne,

Die liebt’ ich einst alle in Liebeswonne.

Ich lieb’ sie nicht mehr, ich liebe alleine

Die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine;

Sie selber, aller Liebe Wonne,

Ist Rose und Lilie und Taube und Sonne.

‘Rose, Lily, Dove, Sun’

Rose, lily, dove, sun,

I loved them all once in the bliss of love.

I love them no more, I only love

She who is small, fine, pure, rare;

She, most blissful of all loves,

Is rose and lily and dove and sun.

**‘Im Rosengarten’, Alois Kalvoda, (1875–1934)**

‘Living things … provide the best example of Hegel’s category here. For living things have a form which is inherent in them. That is, the form is not imposed by the hazard of outside efficient causes, but is one which they realize themselves as they grow’, claims Charles Taylor. Piety favours linking Teleology with an extramundane intelligence, a bias tending to separate itself from the investigation of nature.

‘The closer the teleological principle is associated with the concept of an extra-mundane intelligence, and the more it has therefore enjoyed the favour of piety, all the more it has seemed to depart from the true investigation of nature, which aims at a cognition of the properties of nature not as extraneous, but as immanent determinacies, and accepts only such cognition as a valid conceptual comprehension. Since purpose is the concept itself in its concrete existence, it may seem strange that a cognition of objects based on their concept rather appears as an unjustified trespass into a heterogeneous element, whereas mechanism, for which the determinateness of an object is posited in it externally and by an other, is accepted as a more immanent view of things than teleology. Of course mechanism, at least the ordinary unfree mechanism, and chemism as well, must be regarded as an immanent principle in so far as the externally determining object is itself again just another such object, externally determined and indifferent to its being determined, or, in the case of chemism, in so far as the other object must likewise be one that is chemically determined; in general, in so far as an essential moment of the totality always lies in something external. These principles remain confined, therefore, within the same natural form of finitude; but although they do not wish to transcend the finite and, as regards appearances, lead only to finite causes that themselves demand further causes, they nonetheless equally expand themselves, partly into a formal totality in the concept of force, cause, or of such determinations of reflection that are supposed to signify originariness, and partly, through the medium of abstract universality, also into a sum total of forces, a whole of reciprocal causes. Mechanism thus reveals itself to be a striving for totality by the very fact that it seeks to comprehend nature by itself as a whole that has no need of an other for its concept — a totality that is not found in purpose and the extra-mundane intelligence associated with it’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

A true study of nature aims at immanent knowledge. Yet, Hegel complains, science nevertheless thinks Mechanism, not Teleology, is nature’s truth, even though Teleology is the product of immanent development. Yet, in Mechanism, an essential moment of the totality always lies in something outside it. Mechanism is therefore finite knowledge, always devolving into the bad infinity of cause and effect. So conceived, Mechanism is chemistic, because it strives for a totality it never achieves. When piety imagines an external God — a Finite End — that serves to unify all objects, it misconceives the notion of Teleology. Content, in such a view, is finite, contradicting what Teleology ought to be, for end, according to its form, is a totality infinite within itself.

‘Now purposiveness presents itself from the first as something of a generally higher nature, as an intelligence that externally determines the manifoldness of objects through a unity that exists in and for itself, so that the indifferent determinacies of the objects become essential by virtue of this connection. In mechanism they become so through the mere form of necessity that leaves their content indifferent, for they are supposed to remain external and only the understanding as such is expected to find satisfaction by recognizing its principle of union, the abstract identity. In teleology, on the contrary, the content becomes important, for teleology presupposes a concept, something determined in and for itself and consequently self-determining, and has therefore extracted from the connection of differences and their reciprocal determinateness, from the form, a unity that is reflected into itself, something that is determined in and for itself and is consequently a content. But if this content is otherwise finite and insignificant, then it contradicts what it is supposed to be, for according to its form purpose is a totality infinite within itself — especially when the activity operating in accordance with it is assumed to be an absolute will and intelligence. For this reason has teleology drawn the reproach of triviality so much upon itself, for the purposes that it has espoused are, as the case may be, more important or more trivial [than the content], and it was inevitable that the connection of purposiveness in objects would so often appear just a frivolity, since it appears external and therefore contingent. Mechanism, on the contrary, leaves to the determinacies of the objects, as regards their content, their status as accidents indifferent to the object, and these determinacies are not supposed to have, whether for the objects or the subjective understanding, any value higher than that. This principle, combined with external necessity, yields therefore a consciousness of infinite freedom that contrasts with teleology, which sets up as something absolute bits of its content that are trivial and even contemptible, where the more universal thought can only find itself infinitely constricted, even to the point of feeling disgust’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

The purpose should be to evolve toward Idea. Mere finite end, however, seems external and therefore unbelievable.

**‘Garland of flowers surrounding a mocking of Christ’, figures by Simon de Vos, (1603–1676), Daniël Seghers, (1590–1661)**

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

- 1 ‘Corinthians’ 3. 1–10

=====

In comparison to this, Mechanism does not purport to find any purpose in the objects it considers. When the ego confronts mechanism and Finite End -which is dismissed as an unproved form of Mechanism — it feels infinite freedom. Finite End sets up as absolute what is trivial and even contemptible in its content compared to what egotism beholds in a merely mechanistic universe. Finite End only goes as far as external purposiveness. We therefore have only the form of purposiveness.

‘The formal disadvantage from which this teleology immediately suffers is that it only goes as far as external purposiveness. The content of concept, since the latter is thereby posited as something formal, is for teleology also externally given to it in the manifoldness of the objective world — in those very determinacies that are also the content of mechanism, but are there as something external and accidental. Because of this commonality of content, only the form of purposiveness constitutes by itself the essential element of the teleological. In this respect, without as yet considering the distinction between external and internal purposiveness, the connection of purpose in general has proven itself to be the truth of mechanism. — Teleology possesses in general the higher principle, the concept in its concrete existence, which is in and for itself the infinite and absolute — a principle of freedom which, utterly certain of its self-determination, is absolutely withdrawn from the external determining of mechanism’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Yet, properly, Teleology arises from Mechanism itself. The Third Antinomy. Kant did great service to philosophy by distinguishing between external and internal purposiveness, Hegel says. Reason was raised by Kant above mere reflective determinations, and Kant was important in opposing freedom and necessity in his third antinomy.5 According to this antinomy, there is an uncaused thing, or everything is caused. Proof is apagogic: each side is proved by showing its opposite to be impossible. Hegel’s contempt for apagogy continues: “The whole round-about method of proof could therefore be spared; the proof consists in nothing but the assertorical affirmation of the two opposed propositions.” (738) According to Hegel, Kant bids thinkers to pass from thesis to antithesis according to subjective whim; “this whole standpoint fails to examine the sole question to which philosophic interest demands an answer, namely, which of the two principles possesses truth in and for itself.” (739)

Kant knew, of course, that the third antinomy could be solved only dogmatically. Reason therefore licenses but does not require a belief or disbelief in freedom. “They are treated as subalterns rather than as contraries.”6 Hegel, however, insists that the truth of the matter is accessible through reason. And the truth is that each side of the antinomy has its moment of truth.

Hegel does draw a lesson from Kant’s discussion of the third antinomy: the unity between the two sides is located in a reflective judgment. For Kant, if only the particular is given, for which the universal must be found, the judgment is reflective. It ascends from the particular to the universal.

‘THIRD CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS. THESIS’.

‘Causality according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating to originate the phenomena of the world. A causality of freedom is also necessary to account fully for these phenomena’.

‘PROOF: Let it be supposed, that there is no other kind of causality than that according to the laws of nature. Consequently, everything that happens presupposes a previous condition, which it follows with absolute certainty, in conformity with a rule. But this previous condition must itself be something that has happened (that has arisen in time, as it did not exist before), for, if it has always been in existence, its consequence or effect would not thus originate for the first time, but would likewise have always existed. The causality, therefore, of a cause, whereby something happens, is itself a thing that has happened. Now this again presupposes, in conformity with the law of nature, a previous condition and its causality, and this another anterior to the former, and so on. If, then, everything happens solely in accordance with the laws of nature, there cannot be any real first beginning of things, but only a subaltern or comparative beginning. There cannot, therefore, be a completeness of series on the side of the causes which originate the one from the other. But the law of nature is that nothing can happen without a sufficient à priori determined cause. The proposition therefore — if all causality is possible only in accordance with the laws of nature — is, when stated in this unlimited and general manner, self-contradictory. It follows that this cannot be the only kind of causality. From what has been said, it follows that a causality must be admitted, by means of which something happens, without its cause being determined according to necessary laws by some other cause preceding. That is to say, there must exist an absolute spontaneity of cause, which of itself originates a series of phenomena which proceeds according to natural laws — consequently transcendental freedom, without which even in the course of nature the succession of phenomena on the side of causes is never complete’.

‘ANTITHESIS: There is no such thing as freedom, but everything in the world happens solely according to the laws of nature’.

‘PROOF: Granted, that there does exist freedom in the transcendental sense, as a peculiar kind of causality, operating to produce events in the world — a faculty, that is to say, of originating a state, and consequently a series of consequences from that state. In this case, not only the series originated by this spontaneity, but the determination of this spontaneity itself to the production of the series, that is to say, the causality itself must have an absolute commencement, such that nothing can precede to determine this action according to unvarying laws. But every beginning of action presupposes in the acting cause a state of inaction; and a dynamically primal beginning of action presupposes a state, which has no connection — as regards causality — with the preceding state of the cause — which does not, that is, in any wise result from it. Transcendental freedom is therefore opposed to the natural law of cause and effect, and such a conjunction of successive states in effective causes is destructive of the possibility of unity in experience and for that reason not to be found in experience — is consequently a mere fiction of thought. We have, therefore, nothing but nature to which we must look for connection and order in cosmical events. Freedom — independence of the laws of nature — is certainly a deliverance from restraint, but it is also a relinquishing of the guidance of law and rule. For it cannot be alleged that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may be introduced into the causality of the course of nature. For, if freedom were determined according to laws, it would be no longer freedom, but merely nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental freedom are distinguishable as conformity to law and lawlessness. The former imposes upon understanding the difficulty of seeking the origin of events ever higher and higher in the series of causes, inasmuch as causality is always conditioned thereby; while it compensates this labour by the guarantee of a unity complete and in conformity with law. The latter, on the contrary, holds out to the understanding the promise of a point of rest in the chain of causes, by conducting it to an unconditioned causality, which professes to have the power of spontaneous origination, but which, in its own utter blindness, deprives it of the guidance of rules, by which alone a completely connected experience is possible’.

- ‘Critique of Pure Reason’

Reflective judgment points to a middle term between universal reason and subjective intuition. For Hegel, the middle term that subsumes the two sides of the antinomy is Idea.

Properly conceived, End is the concrete Universal, which possesses in its own self the moment of particularity and externality and is therefore active and the urge to repel itself from itself.

‘However unsatisfactory is for this reason Kant’s discussion of the teleological principle with respect to its essential viewpoint, still worthy of note is the place that Kant assigns to it. Since he ascribes it to a reflective faculty of judgment, he makes it into a mediating link between the universal of reason and the singular of intuition; further, he distinguishes this reflective judgment from the determining judgment, the latter one that merely subsumes the particular under the universal. Such a universal that only subsumes is an abstraction that becomes concrete only in an other, in the particular. Purpose, on the contrary, is the concrete universal containing within itself the moment of particularity and of externality; it is therefore active and the impulse to repel itself from itself. The concept, as purpose, is of course an objective judgment in which one determination, the subject, namely the concrete concept, is self-determined, while the other is not only a predicate but external objectivity. But for that reason the connection of purpose is not a reflective judgment that considers external objects only according to a unity, as though an intelligence had given them to us for the convenience of our faculty of cognition; on the contrary, it is the truth that exists in and for itself and judges objectively, determining the external objectivity absolutely. The connection of purpose is therefore more than judgment; it is the syllogism of the self-subsistent free concept that through objectivity unites itself with itself in conclusion’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

That is to say, externality was sublated at the end of Chemism and therefore preserved. This externalizing of externality was a self-externalizing — an actualization of what End is. In short, End is manifestation/externalization of self through the act negating all externality. Terry Pinkard finds Teleology deficient, because it is ‘empirically vacuous’. That is, Hegel does not tell us what the goal is. ‘Either one must extrapolate it from observation of current processes, or it must be revealed to one — most likely through some kind of religious vision’. In truth, the goal is known and derived. The goal is to purge Notion of any dependence on external reflection. For Pinkard, teleology can only be a subjective state. But this overlooks the Ought — the imperative that finite objects must logically cease to be. That is their purpose.

End still acknowledges a division between internal and external. It is therefore a judgment — an original partition. But it is no longer a subjective judgment. It is objective, because the subject of the judgment is already proven. The other to such a subject is not merely a predicate but is the subject’s own external objectivity. This judgment is not, however, a Kantian reflective judgment “that considers external objects only according to a unity, as though an intelligence had given this unity for the convenience of our cognitive faculty. Rather, it is necessary that the subject-object now show its objectivity by shedding its externality through negative activity. The end-relation is therefore more than judgment; it is the syllogism of the self-subsistent free Notion that unites itself with itself through objectivity. So far, End has proven to be the third to Mechanism and Chemism. It is, however, still in the sphere of objectivity, which is its fault. End — the objectivity of the subject — still confronts an objective world to which it is related. In Mechanism, Notion was external to Mechanical Objects. Chemism brought Notion into a unity with its other. End is the middle term between the neutrality of Mechanism and the striving in Chemism — the realm in which stasis and striving coexist.

Subjective End. End is both the urge to posit externally (Tension, or self-repellant negativity) and immunity from transition (Neutrality). This very immunity means that End is not Force expressing itself or Substance manifesting itself in its Accidents. These earlier stages have actuality only in their effects; accordingly, their activity is transition, against which they do not maintain themselves in freedom.

‘In the centrality of the objective sphere, which is an indifference to determinateness, the subjective concept has first rediscovered and posited the negative point of unity, and in chemism it has first rediscovered and posited the objectivity of the determinations of the concept by which it is first posited as concrete objective concept. Its determinateness or its simple difference now has the determinateness of externality within it, and its simple unity is therefore the unity that repels itself from itself and in this repelling maintains itself. Purpose, therefore, is the subjective concept as an essential striving and impulse to posit itself externally. In this, it is exempt from transition. It is neither a force expressing itself, nor a substance or a cause manifesting itself in its accidents or effects. To the extent that force has not expressed itself, it is only an abstract inner; or again, it first has existence in an externalization to which it has to be solicited. The same applies to cause and to substance. Since they have actuality only in the accidents and in the effects, their activity is a transition against which they do not maintain themselves in freedom. Purpose can of course also be defined as a force or a cause, but these expressions cover only an incomplete side of its signification; if they are to be said of purpose according to its truth, this can be done only in a way that sublates their concept — as a cause that solicits itself to expression, or a cause that is a cause of itself or whose effect is immediately the cause’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

It is an advanced True Infinite — the unity that repels itself from itself and in so doing maintains itself. This contradiction is precisely the rational in its concrete existence.

‘When purposiveness is attributed to an intelligence, as was said above, this is done with specific reference to a certain content. But, as such, purpose is to be taken as the rational in its concrete existence. It manifests rationality by being the concrete concept that holds the objective difference in its absolute unity. Within, therefore, it is essentially syllogism. It is the self-equal universal; more precisely, inasmuch as it contains self-repelling negativity, it is universal though at first still indeterminate activity. But since this activity is negative self-reference, it determines itself immediately and gives itself the moment of particularity, and this particularity, as likewise the totality of the form reflected into itself, is content as against the posited differences of the form. The same negativity, through its self-reference, is just as immediately the reflection of the form into itself and singularity. From the one side, this reflection is the inner universality of the subject; from the other side, however, it is outwards reflection; and to this extent purpose is still something subjective, its activity still directed to an external objectivity’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Rationality consists in holding objective difference in unity. As rational, Subjective End is a syllogism — a middle term that simultaneously refers to its extremes. The moments of Notion, however, still exist in mutual indifference; this is Subjective End’s defect. But it is an improvement over the self-partition that Subjective End Judgment was. In the Judgment of Existence, subject and predicate had self-subsistence, but such self-subsistence was mere abstract universality. Now the moments are concrete, objective, and enclosed within the simple unity of the Notion.

‘For purpose is the concept that has come to itself in objectivity; the determinateness that it has given itself there is that of objective indifference and externality of determinateness; its self-repelling negativity is therefore one whose moments, being only determinations of the concept itself, also have the form of objective indifference to one another. — Already in the formal judgment are subject and predicate determined as self-subsistent over against each other; but their self-subsistence is still only abstract universality. It has now attained the determination of objectivity, but, as a moment of the concept, this complete difference is enclosed within the simple unity of the concept. Now in so far as purpose is this total reflection of objectivity into itself and is such immediately, in the first place, the self-determination or the particularity as simple reflection into itself is distinguished from the concrete form, and is a determinate content. Accordingly, purpose is finite, even though according to form it is equally infinite subjectivity. Secondly, since its determinateness has the form of objective indifference, it has the shape of a presupposition, and from this side its finitude consists in its having before it an objective, mechanical and chemical world to which its activity is directed as to something already there; its self-determining activity is in its identity thus immediately external to itself, reflection into itself just as much as reflection outwards. To this extent purpose still has a truly extra-mundane concrete existence — to the extent, namely, that this objectivity stands opposed to it, just as the latter, as a mechanical and chemical whole still not determined and not pervaded by purpose, stands on its side opposed to it’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

For Subjective (i.e., unrealized) End, self-determination is distinct from external form. Because its determinateness has the form of indifference, it has the shape of presupposition. Subjective End thinks it confronts a mechanical and chemical world. Notion relates itself to this world as if it were given independently of Notion’s own work. Alienated from itself and confronted by an alien object, Subjective End must cancel the objective world and posit the world as its own.

This absolute opposition to and obliteration of external objectivity (so that freedom can reign) is what Hegel will later call the Good. .

Subjective End

‘The flower that you had thrown me, I kept with me in prison… I became intoxicated by its fragrance…’

JOSÉ:

Yes, you shall hear me!

I insist, Carmen!

You shall hear me!

(He reaches inside his tunic and takes out the cassia flower Carmen threw him in Act One.)

The flower that you threw to me

stayed with me in my prison.

Withered and dried up, that flower

always kept its sweet perfume;

and for hours at a time,

with my eyes closed,

I became drunk with its smell

and in the night I used to see you!

I took to cursing you,

detesting you, asking myself

why did destiny

have to throw her across my path?

Then I accused myself of blasphemy,

and felt within myself,

I felt but one desire,

one desire, one hope:

to see you again, Carmen, to see you again!

For you had only to appear,

only to throw a glance my way,

to take possession of my whole being,

O my Carmen,

and I was your chattel!

Carmen, I love you!

CARMEN:

No, you don’t love me,

no! For if you did,

you’d follow me

over there.

JOSÉ:

Carmen!

CARMEN:

Yes! -

Away over there into the mountains,

away over there you’d follow me.

You’d take me up behind you on your horse

and like a daredevil you’d carry me off

across the country!

Away over there into the mountains!

JOSÉ:

Carmen!

CARMEN:

Away over there you’d follow me,

if you loved me!

=====

‘In the Cage’ by Henry James, (1843 – 1916), is a story centring upon an unnamed sensitive and intelligent London telegraphist who deciphers clues to her clients’ personal lives from the often cryptic telegrams they submit to her eventually finding out more than she cares to know as she sits in her cage at the post office from which she escapes through her imagination:

‘She was perfectly aware that her imaginative life was the life in which she spent most of her time; and she would have been ready, had it been at all worthwhile, to contend that, since her outward occupation didn’t kill it, it must be strong indeed’.

The telegraphist feeds her imagination with books she ‘borrows at a ha’penny a day”, and we are told that: ‘The amusements of captives are full of a desperate contrivance, and one of our young friend’s ha’pennyworths had been the charming tale of ‘Picciola’.’ This latter is the tale of a political prisoner who maintains his reason through cultivating almost venerative practices with regard to a tiny flower growing between the paving stones of his prison yard. The telegraphist achieves a similar imaginative transformation of her situation in the cage, the concept of her veneration being Everard the guy with whom she is smitten. On one occasion she delays her departure from the cage, subsequent to Everard’s reappearance after having being absent for some time:

‘She did last things or pretended to do them: to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she was afraid’.

=====

‘Picciola’, by Xavier Boniface Saintine, (1798–1865), the story of Count Charney a former soldier who lost his trust in man and has been jailed for conspiring against Napoleon and one day he discovers a plant growing between two paving stones of his cell. This plant becomes for him a distraction then an obsession then a passion and finally it becomes a symbol of life and love. Through the physiological development of the plant he calls Picciola he learns to love and appreciate beauty through this real example of the evolution of nature. The image of a small flower that grows and survives with the care provided by Charney in a place so sinister as a prison, is an image of the force of nature and persistence and Charney follows the example of the flower and seeks to enrich his mind and soul amidst the walls that imprison him.

‘How had that tender, delicate plantlet, so fragile that a touch would destroy it, managed to lift up, divide and cast aside that soil baked and hardened by the sun, trodden down by himself, and almost cemented to the two fragments of stone between which it was confined?’

‘These things you would have known long since, Sir Count, if, stooping from the abstract regions of human knowledge, you had ever deigned to lower your gaze to the simple, humble works of God’.

- ‘Picciola’

=====

Why must it do so? This urge for self-repulsion is simply the workings of the Ought, whereby the negativity of the Finite strives through selfnegation to be for-itself by becoming other. For this reason, Subjective End is a new beginning — an urge to develop. We will get to this with the Absolute Idea:

‘It may also be mentioned that a beginning which is in itself a concrete totality may as such also be free and its immediacy have the determination of an external existence; the germ of anything living, and subjective purpose in general, have shown themselves to be such beginnings; hence both are themselves impulses. The non-spiritual and inanimate, on the contrary, are the concrete concept only as real possibility; cause is the highest stage in which the concrete concept has, as the beginning in the sphere of necessity, an immediate existence; but it is not yet a subject that maintains itself as such in the course of its effective realization. The sun, for instance, and in general all things inanimate, are determinate concrete existences in which real possibility remains an inner totality; the moments of the latter are not posited in them in subjective form and therefore, in so far as they are realized, they attain concrete existence through other corporeal individuals’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Here, at our advanced stage, however, self-negation does not mean Subjective End goes out of existence (like Quality, which went outside itself to become Quantity). Subjective End stays what it is even as it becomes the objective world it faces. Unity with the object is End’s realization. End is nothing but this urge for self-realization. Teleology is therefore appropriation: ‘To appropriate is at bottom only to manifest the majesty of my will towards things, by demonstrating that they are not self-complete and have no purpose of their own. This is brought about by my instilling into the object another end than that which it primarily had’, explains Herbert Marcuse. Yet, if this unity is to be realized, the objective world must be posited, not presupposed. What Subjective End must do is to make itself Particular by revealing that the objective world is the Notion. So far, the content of the Notion is still When objectivity is shown to be the Notion’s self-expression, objectivity is reduced to the Means (Mittel).

End’s self-expression. Means For Subjective End to express itself, internality must posit externality. Subjective End communicates when it subsumes the Means. This presupposes a difference between End and its expression (i.e., the objective world). The End- Means distinction is therefore the first negation in which Subjective End erases itself and renders itself external. But, having posited Means, Subjective End attacks it, like a bird that sees its reflection in a mirror. End does not recognize itself as Means. End is the soul of Means, and Means has no power against it. Means is absolutely penetrable, and receptive of this communication, because it is in itself identical with the end.

‘This whole middle term is thus the totality of the syllogism in which the abstract activity and the external means constitute the extremes, while the determinateness of the object through the purpose, by virtue of which it is a means, constitutes the middle term. — But further, universality is the connection of purposiveness and the means. This means is object, in itself the totality of the concept; it does not have with respect to purpose any of the power of resistance that it initially has against another immediate object. To the purpose, therefore, which is the posited concept, it is utterly penetrable, and it is receptive to this communication because it is in itself identical with it. But it is now also posited that it is penetrable by the concept, for in centrality it is an object striving towards negative unity; in chemism, too, whether as neutral or non-indifferent, it is no longer self-subsistent. — Its non-self-subsistence consists precisely in its being the totality of the concept only implicitly; but the concept is being-for-itself. Consequently, with respect to purpose the object has the character of being powerless and of serving it; purpose is the subjectivity or soul of the object that has in the latter its external side’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Means

Indeed, Means strives towards End like a Chemical Object. Although Means represents Teleology’s dialectic moment, it serves as a middle term between Subjective End and Realized End. That is to say, Means is a syllogism, standing for the proposition that End needs externality to be what it must become: The end unites itself through a means with objectivity. Means at this point has the shape of an external existence indifferent to the end itself and its realization.

‘Through a means the purpose unites with objectivity and in objectivity unites with itself. This means is the middle term of the syllogism. Purpose is in need of a means for its realization, because it is finite — in need of a means, that is to say, of a middle term that has at the same time the shape of an external existence indifferent towards the purpose itself and its realization. The absolute concept has mediation within itself in such a manner that the first positing of it is not a presupposition in whose object the fundamental determination would be an indifferent externality; on the contrary, the world as creation has only the form of such an externality; it is its negativity and the positedness that rather constitute its fundamental determination. — Accordingly, the finitude of purpose consists in this, that its determining is as such external to itself; accordingly, its first determining, as we have seen, falls apart into a supposing and a presupposing; the negation of this determining is therefore only according to one side already immanent reflection; according to the other side, it is rather only first negation. Or again, the immanent reflection is itself also self-external and a reflection outwards’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Externality, however, is merely a show. The absolute Notion possesses mediation within itself in such a manner that its first positing is not a presupposing whose object would have indifferent externality for its fundamental determination; on the contrary, the world as a creation has only the form of such externality, but its fundamental determination is really constituted by its negativity and positedness. The world is Subjective End’s expression, which now supposes its creation is external. Notion at this point divides itself into a positing and a presupposing. So Means is only a formal middle term. It insists upon difference from Subjective End. Yet Means without End is an impossibility. Because it requires End and has its very being there, Means is a mechanical object.

‘Concept and objectivity, therefore, are in the means only externally linked; hence the means is only a merely mechanical object. The reference of the object to purpose is a premise or the immediate reference which, as we have seen, is with respect to purpose an immanent reflection; the means is an inhering predicate; its objectivity is subsumed under the determination of purpose which, on account of its concreteness, is universality. Through this purposive determination present in it, the means is now also subsumptive with respect to the other extreme, the at the moment still indeterminate objectivity. — Conversely, as contrasted with the subjective purpose, the means has as immediate objectivity a universality of existence which the subjective singularity of purpose still misses. — Thus, since purpose is in the means as only an external determinateness at first, it is itself, as the negative unity, outside the means; the means, for its part, is a mechanical object that possesses purpose only as a determinateness, not as the simple concretion of totality. But as the unifying means, the middle term must itself be the totality of the purpose. It has been shown that the determination of purpose is in the middle term at the same time immanent reflection; as this reflection, it is a formal self-reference, since the determinateness is posited as real indifference, as the objectivity of the middle term. But precisely for this reason this subjectivity, which is in one respect pure subjectivity, is at the same time also activity. — In the subjective purpose the negative self-reference is still identical with determinateness as such, with the content and the externality. However, in the initial objectification of purpose which is a becoming-other of the simple concept, those moments come apart, each outside the other, or, conversely, the becoming-other or the externality itself consists in this coming apart’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

It is externally used by Subjective End to make itself Realized End. But Means is more advanced than Mechanical Object. As middle term to Subjective and Realized End, Means reflects the being of these two extremes. Accordingly, “in contrast to the subjective end, the means, as immediate objectivity, has a universality of existence that the subjective individuality of the end still lacks. Means therefore is a totality that contains End. ‘Teleological explanation is ‘explanation out of totality’,’ explains Taylor.

=====

Dedicated to my lovely One. I love the flower that saved me. A rose for a rose: