On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part ten.
Attraction
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
The meadow and the mountain with desire
Gazed on each other, till a fierce unrest
Surged ‘neath the meadow’s seemingly calm breast,
And all the mountain’s fissures ran with fire.
A mighty river rolled between them there.
What could the mountain do but gaze and burn?
What could the meadow do but look and yearn,
And gem its bosom to conceal despair?
Their seething passion agitated space,
Till lo! The lands a sudden earthquake shook,
The river fled: the meadow leaped, and took
The leaning mountain in a close embrace.
And so to the final part of the Quality section of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s, (1770–1831), ‘Science of Logic’ before we move on to Quantity. Repulsion and Attraction, being with the many Ones and Repulsion:
‘The one and the void constitute the first existence of being-for-itself. Each of these moments has negation for its determination, and is posited at the same time as an existence. In accordance with this determination, the one and the void are each the reference of negation to negation as of an other to its other: the one is negation in the determination of being; the void, negation in the determination of non-being. Essentially, however, the one is only self-reference as referring negation, that is, it is itself the same as the void outside it is supposed to be. Both are, however, also posited as each an affirmative existence — the one as being-for-itself as such, the other as indeterminate existence in general — and each as referring to the other as to an other existence. Essentially, however, the being-for-itself of the one is the ideality of the existence and of the other; it does not refer to an other but only to itself. But inasmuch as the being-for-itself is fixed as the one, as existent for itself, as immediately present, its negative reference to itself is at the same time reference to an existent; and since the reference is just as much negative, that to which the being-for-itself refers remains determined as an existence and as an other; as essentially self-reference, the other is not indeterminate negation like the void, but is likewise a one. The one is consequently a becoming of many ones’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The one and the void constitute the first stage of the determinate Being of Being-for-self and each of these moments has negation for its determination, as a matter of fact the One and the Void are nothing but negation as such and yet each stands over against the other, the One is negation in the determination of Being, and the Void is negation in the determination of non-Being. This pure positionality with regard to each other is their somewhat attenuated right to being. The One and the Void diagram, (see previous article) has the regularly encountered attribute of motion, a motion that travels through b (in the diagram):
‘The one and the void constitute the first existence of being-for-itself. Each of these moments has negation for its determination, and is posited at the same time as an existence. In accordance with this determination, the one and the void are each the reference of negation to negation as of an other to its other: the one is negation in the determination of being; the void, negation in the determination of non-being. Essentially, however, the one is only self-reference as referring negation, that is, it is itself the same as the void outside it is supposed to be. Both are, however, also posited as each an affirmative existence — the one as being-for-itself as such, the other as indeterminate existence in general — and each as referring to the other as to an other existence. Essentially, however, the being-for-itself of the one is the ideality of the existence and of the other; it does not refer to an other but only to itself. But inasmuch as the being-for-itself is fixed as the one, as existent for itself, as immediately present, its negative reference to itself is at the same time reference to an existent; and since the reference is just as much negative, that to which the being-for-itself refers remains determined as an existence and as an other; as essentially self-reference, the other is not indeterminate negation like the void, but is likewise a one. The one is consequently a becoming of many ones’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Being-for-self of the one a is, however, essentially the ideality of determinate being b and of other c, it, a, relates itself not to an other c but only to itself and yet since Being-for-self is fixed as a one, as affirmatively for itself, a, as immediately present, its negative relation to itself, b, is at the same time a relation to an affirmative being, c. Here Hegel stresses that a has a voice and it is b albeit a always implies c. Dialectical Reason brings b to the fore but b is forever yet another being, it is a c. Therefore c = a, but also a’s relation to c is, at the same time, a relation to an affirmative being, which is to say, c is radically different from Being-for-self, which can be defined as a, b. Hence c is a determinate being b, c and an other c. It is also as much an affirmative Being-for-self as a was and so a expels b yet b implies c and c is just as much One as b is. The one is consequently a becoming of many ones. A question arises as to the legitimacy of the conclusion for it would appear that all that has been produced is merely a single other One, that is, c. In The One and the Void we may be witnessing a — b — a ad infinitum and if so there is mere alternation and not infinite multiple production and such an alternation is mere Spurious or Bad Infinity.
Such a move would be retrogressive given that the Spurious Infinite is already sublated and therefore c — a violates the Logic of a and constitutes an external reflection on our part:
‘This repulsion, as thus the positing of many ones but through the one itself, is the one’s own coming-forth-from-itself, but to such outside it as are themselves only ones. This is repulsion according to the concept, as it exists implicitly in itself. The second repulsion is distinguished from it. It is the one that first occurs to the representation of external reflection, not as the generation of ones but only as the mutual holding off of ones which are presupposed as already there. To be seen now is how the first repulsion that exists in itself determines itself as the second, the external repulsion’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
One might express it as a infinitely produces the same c and vice versa but the stance of the One is absolute indifference to the other One and it is ourselves that declare the many Ones as a single One. Logic does indeed produce many Ones which thought dictates have to be unified and only external reflection denies the plurality of Ones. To demonstrate this Hegel compares what we have diagrammatically depicted in The One and the Void to Becoming in Quality and Negation. In Quality and Negation, a- c constituted Ceasing-to-be, that is, a went out of existence, but was soon re-established by c — a and this amounted to basic alternation. The One and the Void on the other hand is not a simple Becoming. In The One and the Void, when a — c, a expelled its otherness and continued to be and it did not just cease-to-be, a in The One in the Void is unalterable, whereas a in Becoming had no resilience whatsoever. What occurs in The One and the Void, then, is that the One a, b repels itself b from itself yet by so doing a is and it remains what it is, a does not cease-to-be. ‘The ones therefore are only insofar as they repel each other’ explains Alan H.T. Paterson. Why then did not this attribute of changing-while-remaining appear with Being-for-one? Being-for-one was the first dialectic step after the derivation of True Infinity. Being-for-one refused to recognize otherness at all. It was not until the One emerged over against the Void that the a acknowledged c. Only then did the extremes have the opportunity to show mutual resilience against its other.
When c likewise repels itself from itself, c’s product is not a as such. If it were, then, in a — c, a must have ceased-to-be, such that c can create a anew. Rather, c becomes yet some other a, a a*. If we insist upon c → a, we have reduced Hegel’s Repulsion of the Ones into mere Ceasing-to-be. Hegel calls c — a* repulsion according to its Notion, repulsion in itself. This account of the birth of multiplicity is absent from many analyses of Being-for-self. Terry P. Pinkard, (1947 -), reads Hegel as only establishing, from the notion of Being-for-self and the One, the possibility that many ones exist. But Hegel does show that distinct units are a direct consequence of True Infinity which stays what it is as it becomes something else. Charles Taylor, (1931 — ), entirely misses the derivation of the Many from the One, and so it is not surprising that he names Repulsion as ‘another example of a detour [from] essential notions’. Taylor is stuck on what Hegel called the ‘second repulsion’ of external reflection, which is not productive of the Many.
He calls the illegitimate move of c — a the second repulsion, which is what is immediately suggested to external reflection, repulsion not as the generation of ones, but only as the mutual repelling of ones presupposed as already present. In the false move, c presupposes that what it produces is a, when it is not licensed to say anything about what its Other is — except that it is not c. Of what c produces, Hegel explains, the products of the process are ones, and these are not for an other, but relate themselves infinitely to themselves. The one repels only itself from itself, therefore does not become but already is.
‘We must first establish the determinations that the many ones have as such. The becoming of the many, or their being produced, immediately vanishes as the product of a positing; what is produced are the ones, not for another, but as infinitely referring to themselves. The one repels only itself from itself; it does not come to be but it already is; that which is represented as the repelled is equally a one, an existent; repelling and being repelled applies in like manner to both, and makes no difference’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
If we had said c reproduces the original a, then we admit that c contains Being-for-other: If plurality were a relation of the ones themselves to one another then they would limit one another and there would be affirmatively present in them a being-for- other.
‘Thus plurality appears not as an otherness, but as a determination completely external to the one. The one, in repelling itself, remains reference to itself, just like that which is taken as repelled at the start. That the ones are other to one another, that they are brought together in the determinateness of plurality, does not therefore concern the one. If the plurality were a reference of the ones to one another, the ones would then limit each other and would have the being-for-other affirmatively in them. Their connecting reference (and this they have through their unity which is in itself ), as posited here, is determined as none; it is again the previously posited void. This void is their limit, but an external limit in which they are not supposed to be for one another. The limit is that in which the limited are just as much as are not; but the void is determined as pure non-being, and this alone constitutes the limit of the ones’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This proposition cannot be true. c is the One and is strictly for itself, just as a was. Thus, c cannot be said to reproduce a. Rather it produces some other One. And, for that matter, a reproduces many c’s. As both a and c are infinite processes, they instantaneously fill the universe with Many Ones. I.e., in no time at all. Since the Logic does not occur in time, the universe is instantaneously full of Many Ones. The plurality of ones unconstrainedly produces itself.
‘The repulsion of the one from itself is the making explicit of what the one is implicitly in itself; but, thus laid out as one-outside-the-other, infinity is here an infinity that has externalized itself, and this it has done through the immediacy of the infinite, of the one. Infinity is just as much the simple reference of the one to the one as, on the contrary, the one’s absolute lack of reference; it is the former according to the simple affirmative reference of the one to itself; it is the latter according to the same reference as negative. Or again, the plurality of the ones is the one’s own positing of the one; the one is nothing but the negative reference of the one to itself, and this reference — hence the one itself — is the plural one. But equally, plurality is utterly external to the one, for the one is precisely the sublating of otherness; repulsion is its self-reference and simple equality with itself. The plurality of the ones is infinity as a contradiction that unconstrainedly produces itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Of these mutually indifferent Ones, Hegel writes: ‘This void is their limit, but an external limit in which they are not supposed to be for one another. The limit is that in which the limited are Being-for-itself just as much as are not; but the void is determined as pure non-being, and this alone constitutes the limit of the ones’. The void is their limit but a limit which is external to them, in which they are not to be for one another. It should be apparent that Limit b is external to a, which continues to be as pure negativity toward the other Ones. This negative shedding of content is called, at this stage, Repulsion. Repulsion is the middle term between the One and the Void. It names the very movement by which a — and also c — shed b, so that a and c can be truly One. Repulsion is a simple relating of the one to the one, and no less also the absolute absence of relation in the one. Repulsion is an active process (as all middle terms are). In Repulsion, the One sublates all its otherness. It becomes a purified being. But as such, it has no content at all. Whatever content the One has is somewhere outside it. This is what Hegel meant when he indicated that the One’s Limit b was entirely external to the One.
Repulsion
‘A Pretty Woman’
by Robert Browning (1812–1889)
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
And enfold you,
Ay, and hold you,
And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!
You like us for a glance, you know- -
For a word’s sake
Or a sword’s sake,
All’s the same, whate’er the chance, you know.
And in turn we make you ours, we say- -
You and youth too,
Eyes and mouth too,
All the face composed of flowers, we say.
All’s our own, to make the most of, Sweet- -
Sing and say for,
Watch and pray for,
Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!
But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
Though we prayed you,
Paid you, brayed you
in a mortar- -for you could not, Sweet!
So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
Be its beauty
Its sole duty!
Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
And while the face lies quiet there,
Who shall wonder
That I ponder
A conclusion? I will try it there.
As,- -why must one, for the love foregone,
Scout mere liking?
Thunder-striking
Earth,- -the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
Love with liking?
Crush the fly-king
In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
May not liking be so simple-sweet,
If love grew there
‘Twould undo there
All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
Is the creature too imperfect,
Would you mend it
And so end it?
Since not all addition perfects aye!
Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
Just perfection- -
Whence, rejection
Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
Into tinder,
And so hinder
Sparks from kindling all the place at once?
Or else kiss away one’s soul on her?
Your love-fancies!
- -A sick man sees
Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,- -
Plucks a mould-flower
For his gold flower,
Uses fine things that efface the rose:
Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
Precious metals
Ape the petals,- -
Last, some old king locks it up, morose!
Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
Leave it, rather.
Must you gather?
Smell, kiss, wear it- -at last, throw away!
And so to Repulsion and Attraction and the exclusion of the One We now face some heavy weather. Virtually every turn of phrase within every sentence shall require special attention. There is no other way to follow Hegel through the underbrush of this difficult subsection. John Burbidge’s fragmentary comment on the Logic takes a vacation just before this spot. Errol Eustace Harris, (1908–2009), finds it ‘difficult to understand and interpret’. Pinkard calls this part of the Logic ‘boisterously obscure’. An excellent essay on the upcoming transitions, however, is Murray Greene. The basic trajectory to Repulsion follow shows the One repulsing the Many. These, however, are fused back into One by an external reflection, which Hegel associates with Attraction. Attraction, however, cannot function without the Repulsion by the One of the Many. The equilibrium of Attraction and Repulsion yields Quantity — Being with its content outside itself (i.e., in external reflection). The One is a non-relation — a relation without parts, suggesting absolute indifference of the One toward any other One. The Ones are free-floating entities in the Void. Their Determinate Being is external to them. The Ones are therefore this negative relation to themselves as well as to affirmatively present others — the demonstrated contradiction, infinity posited in the immediacy of being.
‘The many ones are each a being; their existence or their reference to one another is a non-reference, it is external to them: the abstract void. But they themselves are now this negative reference to themselves as to existent others: the demonstrated contradiction, the infinity posited in the immediacy of being. With this, repulsion now finds immediately before it that which is repelled by it. In this determination, it is an excluding; the one repels from itself only the many not generated by it, the ones not posited by it. This repelling is mutual or from all sides — relative, limited by the being of the ones’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
What does it mean for a One to be a negative relation to itself? Fundamentally, it is the posture of the entity that says, I am not that? when it is that. As self-relating in its determining, it is itself that which it posits as a negative.
‘Substance is power — power reflected into itself, not transitive power but power that posits determinations and distinguishes them from itself. As self-referring in its determining, it is itself that which it posits as a negative or makes into a positedness. This positedness is, as such, sublated substantiality, the merely posited, the effect; the substance that exists for itself is, however, cause’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Thus, the One says, I am not the Void. In fact, the One is nothing but this announcement of what it is not. And what it is not is its very Being-in-itself b, which it has repulsed. This is ironic. The One, in its self-hatred, has expelled its own determinateness from itself and has propagated the many Ones. As relation without parts, One is no doubt an absurdity — Hegel’s demonstrated contradiction. It should also be clear why the One is an infinity posited in the immediacy of being. The One is certainly immediate, and, in addition, the One is an Infinite. Recall that the True Infinite was a pure movement of the Finites exceeding their Limitations. This is what the One has accomplished. In effect, the One has gone beyond its Limitations and is nothing at all.
Repulsion now finds itself facing what it repelled, the Many Ones, which, though plural, are taken as a unified whole (even as each of the Ones is completely indifferent to each other One). In Attraction, d, e, f represent the Many Ones, as produced in The One and the Void, These are what Repulsion has excluded. In Being-for-Self, the entire middle term was taken as an immediacy, and it became Being-for-self. In The One in its Own Self, the mere negation of the middle term was taken — the ghostly negative version of d, e, f. It became the One. Now Attraction seemingly shows a retrogression — an expulsion of the mediated part of the middle term. This seizure of mediation by the Understanding was the characteristic move in chapter 2. Have we retrogressed? We have not. In Constitution Hegel designated a role for an external reflection not itself logically derived. This was the silent fourth that makes the system progress. Determination by external reflection was what it meant for Being to be constituted. Yet we progressed only because external reflection acted on the middle term’s immanent materials. Now, in Attraction, Repulsion does all the work of alienating the Many Ones. External reflection has been displaced by the operations of the One. In Attraction, Repulsion itself generates the force needed to expel the Many Ones.
Attraction
‘Love’s Philosophy’
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? —
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
In Attraction, the One, taken as g, repels from itself only the many ones which are neither generated nor posited by it.
‘The many ones are each a being; their existence or their reference to one another is a non-reference, it is external to them: the abstract void. But they themselves are now this negative reference to themselves as to existent others: the demonstrated contradiction, the infinity posited in the immediacy of being. With this, repulsion now finds immediately before it that which is repelled by it. In this determination, it is an excluding; the one repels from itself only the many not generated by it, the ones not posited by it. This repelling is mutual or from all sides — relative, limited by the being of the ones’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Does this contradict what was said with regard to The One and the Void, where the One generated (and posited) the Void? There we learned that the Void, in turn, was not only another One but was Many Ones. Hence the Void was posited. In Attraction, however, that which Repulsion excretes was not posited. The contradiction is resolved because Repulsion is at a higher level than the positing activity of The One and the Void. Repulsion is a unity between the many Ones — not the producer of the Ones. For this narrow purpose, Repulsion does not generate or posit the Many Ones. The Many ones were posited earlier, by the Ones themselves. Indeed, Repulsion itself was posited by the Many Ones. What Repulsion does in Attraction is to isolate the Ones, thereby unifying them. This grouping of all the diverse Ones is what Hegel will call Attraction. As Hegel explains this mutual or all-round repelling is relative, is limited by the being of the ones. Why is Limit, a sublated term, invoked here? It denotes that Repulsion, being an act, must be correlative. Limit, it will be recalled, was correlative. For this reason, the point (as limit to the line) spontaneously generated the line. There is the repelling One and, necessarily, the repelled One. Being correlative, Repulsion is limited — by the being of the Ones. In other words, repelling takes the form we saw in The One and the Void. By invoking Limit here, Hegel explains that, in Attraction, g is left behind. Thus, gis limited — left behind — by the being of the ones; the ones now become a. Furthermore, if this is Repulsion’s own work — not the work of external reflection — Repulsion limits itself. g refuses to recognize itself beyond this Limit d, e, f. Yet this refusal to recognize is the perfect recognition therefore g defers to and goes beyond its Limit for this is True Infinity and is covertly a.
This means that, in Attraction, g does not remain behind but is swept along with the Many Ones against its will. Its attempt to isolate itself fails. We can view this failure as a representation of Repulsion’s inability to sustain itself as an isolated entity, separate and apart from Attraction. Its dependence on Attraction will soon be explicit. Of a, Hegel explains that the plurality is, in the first place, non-posited Otherness.
‘Plurality is not at first posited otherness; limit is only the void, only that in which the ones are not. But in the limit they also are; they are in the void, or their repulsion is their common connecting reference’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
That d, e, f are not posited we have already seen. Repulsion found the Many Ones given to it. Repulsion therefore proceeded to expel non-posited materials. d, e, f is Limit to g. And, in addition, we know by the law of sublation that the plurality is also the Void, as shown in The One and the Void. This implies that d, e, f are the Many Ones, but also an immediacy — the Void. We thus have further justified the design in Attraction, where the Many Ones became an immediacy, standing over against g — another immediacy. The Many Ones are in the void. Yet each One is in the process of repulsing the Void. Hence, Repulsion is the posited determinate being of the many ones.
‘This mutual repulsion is the posited existence of the many ones; it is not their being-for-itself, in accordance with which they would be distinguished as many only in a third, but is rather their own distinguishing which preserves them. — They mutually negate themselves, posit one another as being only for-one. But at the same time they negate this being only for one just as much; they repel the ideality that they have and are. — So the moments which in ideality are absolutely united come apart. In its being-for-itself, the one is also for-one; but this one, for which it is, is itself; its distinguishing from itself is immediately sublated. But in the plurality the distinguished one has a being; the being-for-one as has been determined in exclusion is therefore a being-for-other. Each thus comes to be repelled by an other, is sublated and made into a one which is not for itself but for-one, and an other one at that’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
But it is not the Being-for-self of the Ones, for according to this they would be differentiated as many only in a third. What does this mean? Being-for-self refuses to recognize otherness. It cannot acknowledge a relation of One to the Void (and hence to another One). Relations, after all, expressly depend on otherness. If the Ones d, e, f had Being-for-self and also a relation to another One g (as Repulsion shows), then external reflection, a third, would have to assert the relation. Repulsion’s very task is to deny all relation. To hear Repulsion tell the tale, the relation would not be immanent to the Ones themselves. But Repulsion is a liar. Instead, their own differentiating preserves the Ones. That is, the Ones are in the process of expelling the Void from themselves — in The One and the Void. This process as such is the middle term in Repulsion. In this middle term, the Ones d, e, f are preserved — though now expelled in Attraction. So the ones are in relation after all.
The Ones also posit one another as being only for one. Being- for-one, it will be recalled, was idealized Being-in-itself- mere memory of a determinateness, brought forth in Being-for-One by dialectical Reason. Now, however, the One a, b expels b, b becomes the Void and hence one of the Many Ones. In this expulsion, the being-for-one as determined in exclusion is, consequently, a being-for-other. This remark is best understood as referring to The One and the Void — not the current Attraction. In The One and the Void, Being-for-one b is expelled and hence is in effect Being-for-other. But if so, then a is other to Being-for-other. This allows Hegel to suggest that b, c likewise expels a. a is now not for itself but for-one, and that another one.
In other words, a is for b, c. Also, if it is true that b, c has now expelled a as its other, then, likewise, in Attraction, the Many Ones d, e, f have expelled g, which is the advanced version of the One. The Many Ones now take the initiative. They have said to g : You can’t fire us. We quit! This initiative is the being-for-self of the many ones. It is their self-preservation, which is achieved by the mutual repulsion of the One and the Many Ones. That is, g fires the Many Ones, and the Many Ones fire g. Not only does the union of the Many Ones repel g, but within d, e, f, the Many Ones repel each other. In other words, the Ones simultaneously preserve and negate themselves, the hallmark of True Infinity and of sublation itself.
The ones maintain themselves by their reciprocal exclusion.
‘The ones not only are but maintain themselves through their reciprocal exclusion. First, it is in their being, and indeed their being-in-itself as contrasted with their reference to the other, that they should now have a firm point of support for their diversity as against their being negated; this in-itselfness rests on their being ones. But they all are this; in their being-in-itself, instead of having there their firm point of support for their diversity, they are all the same. Second, their existence and their way of relating to one another, that is, their positing themselves as one, is their reciprocal negating; this, however, is likewise one and the same determination of all through which they therefore posit themselves as identical; just as, by being in themselves the same, the ideality that should be posited in them through others is their own, and they thus repel just as little. — According to their being and positing, they are, consequently, only one affirmative unity’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This is their Being-for-self, and it is shown by a in Attraction. Being-for-self, then, is the process of repulsing Being-in-itself. Yet the expelled Being-in-itself b ended up being the One b, c just as much as the expelling One a, b] was. All the Ones are b, they are in their being-in-itself the same. Furthermore, b negates its own Determinate Being b, c. But, once again, all the ones do this! In this regard, they are all the same. Consequently, as regards both their being and their positing, they are only one affirmative unity. This again is seen as a in Attraction. This sameness is the Attraction of the supposedly diverse Ones to each other.
The Ones are attracted to each other in Attraction. But Hegel states that this dissolution of all difference in Attraction and the assertion of a as an immediacy is a comparison made by us.
‘This consideration regarding the ones — that from either side of their determination, whether they just are or refer to one another, they show themselves to be only one and the same, indistinguishable — is a comparison that belongs to us. — Also to be seen, therefore, is what is posited in them in their mutual reference itself. — They are — this much is presupposed in this reference — and they are only inasmuch as they negate themselves reciprocally and at the same time keep away this ideality, their being negated, from themselves, that is, they negate the reciprocal negating. But they are only inasmuch as they negate, and so, since their reciprocal negating is negated, their being is negated. To be sure, since they are, nothing would be negated through this negating which for them is only something external; this negating of the other rebounds off them, coming their way only by striking their surface. And yet, they turn back upon themselves only by negating the others; they are only as this mediation, this turning back of theirs is their self-preservation and their being-for-itself. Since their negating is ineffectual because of the resistance offered by the others, whether as existents or as negating, they do not return back to themselves, do not preserve themselves, and so are not’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
External force welds the Ones together. Earlier I suggested that Repulsion’s expulsion of the Many Ones was not externally caused. Yet the dissolution of all difference in a is external. This appears at first to be contradictory, but the two statements indeed can be reconciled. External reflection no longer wrenches a piece from the middle term; the middle term expels those pieces on its own. But external force is still needed to weld the pieces together. They could still fly apart as in The One and the Void. But such a move is retrogressive. Instead, we the audience decide to move on, which requires the formation of a. So external reflection works on unifying a but not on the expulsion of b, c, d, e.
This reproduces Hegel’s critique of Leibnizian monads. According to Hegel, monads ideate themselves, but their relation-to-other is externally supplied.
‘Leibnizian idealism lies more within the confines of the abstract concept. — The Leibnizian ideating being, the monad, is essentially an idealization. Ideation is a being-for-itself in which the determinacies are not limits and therefore not an existence but rather only moments. Ideation is doubtless also a more concrete determination, but it has here no further meaning than that of ideality, since for Leibniz even the things that lack consciousness are representational, perceptual. In this system, therefore, otherness is sublated; spirit and body or the monads in general are not an other for each other, do not limit each other, have no effect on each other; all relations based on an existence fall away in general. The manifold is such only ideally and internally, the monad persists in it only as referred to itself, alterations unfold within it and entail no references of the one monad to others. What is taken in real determination to be an actually existent reference of monads to each other is an independent, only simultaneous, becoming which is enclosed in the being-for-itself of each. — That there is a plurality of monads, that they are thereby determined as others, is not the affair of the monads but of a reflection external to them, of a third; in themselves they are not others to each other; the being-for-itself is kept pure, without the alongside of an existence. — But herein equally lies the incompleteness of this system. The monads are such ideating beings only in themselves or in God, who is the monad of monads, or also within the system’.
- The Science of Logic’
In the words of Leibniz himself:
1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is nothing but a simple substance, which enters into compounds. By ‘simple’ is meant ‘without parts’.
2. And there must be simple substances, since there are compounds; for a compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simple things.
3. Now where there are no parts, there can be neither extension nor form [figure] nor divisibility. These Monads are the real atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
4. No dissolution of these elements need be feared, and there is no conceivable way in which a simple substance can be destroyed by natural means.
…
7. Further, there is no way of explaining how a Monad can be altered in quality or internally changed by any other created thing; since it is impossible to change the place of anything in it or to conceive in it any internal motion which could be produced, directed, increased or diminished therein, although all this is possible in the case of compounds, in which there are changes among the parts. The Monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out. Accidents cannot separate themselves from substances nor go about outside of them, as the ‘sensible species’ of the Scholastics used to do. Thus neither substance nor accident can come into a Monad from outside.
8. Yet the Monads must have some qualities, otherwise they would not even be existing things. And if simple substances did not differ in quality, there would be absolutely no means of perceiving any change in things. For what is in the compound can come only from the simple elements it contains, and the Monads, if they had no qualities, would be indistinguishable from one another, since they do not differ in quantity. Consequently, space being a plenum, each part of space would always receive, in any motion, exactly the equivalent of what it already had, and no one state of things would be discernible from another.
9. Indeed, each Monad must be different from every other. For in nature there are never two beings which are perfectly alike and in which it is not possible to find an internal difference, or at least a difference founded upon an intrinsic quality [denomination].
…
78. These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.
- ‘Monadology’
Leibnizian idealism does not grasp the ideating monad as a repulsion of the monads.
‘Mention was previously made of Leibnizian idealism. It can here be added that that idealism proceeded from the ideating monad, which is determined as being-for-itself, only up to the repulsion just considered, and indeed, only up to plurality as such in which the ones are each only for itself, indifferent to the existence and the being-for-itself of the others, or in which, quite in general, the others are not for the one. The monad is for itself the entirely closed-in world; it needs none of the others; but this inner manifoldness which it possesses in its ideating activity alters nothing in its determination as being for itself. Leibnizian idealism takes up plurality immediately as something given; it does not conceptualize it as a repulsion of monads; it has plurality, therefore, only on the side of its abstract externality. Atomism lacks the concept of ideality; it does not grasp the one as containing in it the two moments of being-for-itself and being-for-it; it does not grasp it, therefore, as idealized, but only as simple, dry, being-for-itself. It does, however, go beyond mere indifferent plurality; the atoms do come to a further determination with respect to each other even though, if the truth be told, inconsequentially; whereas, on the contrary, in that indifferent independence of the monads plurality remains as a rigid fundamental determination, so that the reference connecting them falls only in the monad of monads, or in the philosopher who contemplates them’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Attraction presages the outside mathematician who breaks up magnitude in general into sets of Units and unifies them again. The sameness of the Ones may be our act of comparison, but we have also to see what is posited in them in their inter-relatedness.
‘This consideration regarding the ones — that from either side of their determination, whether they just are or refer to one another, they show themselves to be only one and the same, indistinguishable — is a comparison that belongs to us. — Also to be seen, therefore, is what is posited in them in their mutual reference itself. — They are — this much is presupposed in this reference — and they are only inasmuch as they negate themselves reciprocally and at the same time keep away this ideality, their being negated, from themselves, that is, they negate the reciprocal negating. But they are only inasmuch as they negate, and so, since their reciprocal negating is negated, their being is negated. To be sure, since they are, nothing would be negated through this negating which for them is only something external; this negating of the other rebounds off them, coming their way only by striking their surface. And yet, they turn back upon themselves only by negating the others; they are only as this mediation, this turning back of theirs is their self-preservation and their being-for-itself. Since their negating is ineffectual because of the resistance offered by the others, whether as existents or as negating, they do not return back to themselves, do not preserve themselves, and so are not’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This is the role of dialectical Reason. Dialectical Reason discovers that the Ones of Attraction nevertheless maintain themselves as Ones by mutual Repulsion. In remaining aloof in this way, they negate their own negatedness — their own act of repulsing b from a, b. But Attraction and the Ones are in a, b only in so far as they Repulsion negate. By negating their negation, they negate their own being. Since negation is their mode of returning into themselves, the negation of their negation prohibits this return. Hence, the Ones repulse Repulsion — their own Being. The Unity of the One and the Many Hegel lays bare the great irony of what has happened. Self-subsistence pushed to the point of the one as a being-for-self is abstract, formal, and destroys itself. It is the supreme, most stubborn error, which takes itself for the highest truth, manifesting in more concrete forms as abstract freedom, pure ego and, further, as Evil.
‘Driven to the extreme of the one as being-for-itself, self-subsistence is an abstract, formal self-subsistence that destroys itself. It is the ultimate, most stubborn error, one which takes itself as the ultimate truth, whether it assumes the more concrete form of abstract freedom, of pure ‘I’, and further still of evil. It is the freedom which so misconceives itself as to place its essence in this abstraction, and, in thus shutting itself up within itself, flatters itself that it attains itself in all purity. This self-subsistence, to determine it further, is the error of considering its own essence negatively and of relating itself to it negatively. It is thus a negative relating to itself which, while wanting to gain its own being, destroys it — and this, his doing, is only the manifestation of the nullity of the doing. Reconciliation is the recognition that that towards which the negative relating is directed is rather its essence, and this is only in the desisting from the negativity of its being-for-itself rather than in holding fast to it’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The One has expelled all being from itself. What was supposed to be perfectly self-subsistent and liberated from the other has surrendered all its being to the Other. This, Hegel says, is egotism and evil. In one of his late works, ‘Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason’, Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804), admitted that the famous categorical imperative — ‘Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a particular of universal legislation’27 — was a mere procedure, which called for a person to suppress his or her pathology (i.e., emotion, inclination, or being-for-other) so that only the voice of universal reason (being-for-self) could speak. The test of morality was independent of its content. This raised the question, what if the voice of reason spoke absolute evil for its own sake, not for the sake of inclination? Kant had to admit that the resulting evil could not be distinguished from morality. Kant called this possibility ‘diabolical evil’.
Attraction and Repulsion
Kant confesses that the highest morality flips around and becomes the worst evil. This reversal is the dynamic of Being-for-self that Hegel has described. Of diabolical evil, Hegel explains it is that freedom which so misapprehends itself as to place its essence in this abstraction of Being-for-self, and flatters itself that in thus being with itself it possesses itself in its purity. More specifically, this self-subsistence is the error of regarding as negative that which is its own essence, and of adopting a negative attitude towards it. Thus it is the negative attitude towards itself which, in seeking to possess its own being destroys it, and this its act is only the manifestation of the futility of this act. Clark Butler quotes Hegel as saying, ‘evil is to be apprehended as the existence of contradiction’. According to Butler, ‘the fallen individual soul persistently acts on the contradictory belief that it exists like an atom whose existence or good is detached both from that of other individuals and from the community of individuals in which it has been reared’.
The implication for the egotistical self is to let go of Being-for-self and submit to the jurisdiction of the more dominant Other, the symbolic realm of law and language, hence the final lesson that Reason has to give before ostensibly announcing itself as Spirit is that law is law, and it just has to be accepted, because who are we, after all, to proclaim, through the law of the heart, that we are above the law? Similarly, in the ‘Philosophy of Right’, morality ends in the nightmare of Being-for-self.
‘If we were to say that, since evil lies in the conception, and exists of necessity, men are no longer responsible when they adopt it, it must be replied that their decision is their own deed, the act of their freedom, and therefore to be laid at their door. In religious fable it is said that man is like God in his having a knowledge of good and evil. The resemblance to God is a fact so far as the necessity is not a necessity of nature, but rather a decision transcending the state in which good and evil are involved alike. Since both good and evil confront me, I may choose either, resolve upon either, and take up either into my subjectivity. It is the nature of evil that man may will it, although he is not forced by necessity to do so’.
- ‘The Philosophy of Right’
What the free individual must do is to submit to Sittlichkeit (Ethical Life). There, traditions of the family, the market, and the state will anchor the individual to prevent Being-for-self from turning mad. Returning to the theme of the One and the Many, Hegel ponders the ancient proposition that the one is many and especially that the many are one. The truth of this, Hegel claims, cannot be expressed in fixed propositions. Truth exists as a becoming, a process, a repulsion and attraction — not as being. Mortals such as ourselves know only the traces of this movement and endeavour through our Understanding to fix the movement in propositions.
‘It is an ancient proposition that the one is many and especially that the many is one. It should again be observed in this connection that, as expressed in propositions, the truth of the one and the many appears in inadequate form; such a truth is to be grasped and expressed only as a becoming, as a process, a repulsion and attraction — not as being, in the way the latter is posited in a proposition as inert unity. Earlier mention was made recalling Plato’s dialectic in the Parmenides on the derivation of the many from the one, specifically from the proposition: the one is. It is the internal dialectic of the concept that has been expounded; it is easiest to grasp the dialectic of the proposition, that the many is one, as external reflection; and, inasmuch as the subject matter also, the many, is a mutual externality, reflection may indeed be external here. This comparison of the many with one another immediately shows that each is absolutely determined just as any other; each is a one, each a one of many; each is by excluding the others — so that they are absolutely the same; absolutely one determination is present. This is a matter of fact, and all that needs to be done is simply to grasp the fact. If in its stubbornness the understanding refuses to do it, it is only because it also has distinction in mind, and rightly so; but distinction is not left out because of that fact, as surely as the fact is no less there despite distinction. One could, as it were, reassure the understanding concerning this simple grasp of the fact of unity that distinction will also come in again’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
It is too easy, Hegel warns, to assume that there are many that are welded by the Understanding into the One (just as modern utilitarians assume that the good is an aggregate of human preferences). This given one is presented as a self-sufficient atom — a fact, and all that has to be done is to grasp this simple fact. Of course, Hegel strongly opposes any such atomistic dogmas. Which brings us to the One One of Attraction. At this point, the Many Ones have no relation inter se — a negative relation. This relation is without effect because the Ones presuppose one another as affirmatively present.
‘Repulsion is the fragmentation of the one, first into the many of which it is the negative relating, since they presuppose each other as each existent; it is only the ought of ideality; this ideality will, however, be realized in attraction. Repulsion passes over into attraction, the many ones into one one. Both, repulsion and attraction, are at first distinguished from each other, repulsion as the reality of the ones, attraction as their posited ideality. Attraction refers to repulsion by having it for a presupposition. Repulsion delivers the material for attraction. If there were no ones, there would be nothing to attract; the representation of continuing attraction, of the consumption of the ones, presupposes an equally continuing generation of the ones; the sense representation of spatial attraction gives continuity to the flow of ones to be attracted; to replace the atoms that vanish at the point of attraction, another multitude comes forth from the void, infinitely if one so wishes. If attraction were represented as accomplished, that is, the many as brought to the point of the one one, the result would be just an inert one, no longer any attraction. The ideality immediately present in attraction still also has in it the determination of the negation of itself, the many ones to which it refers; attraction is inseparable from repulsion’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
When this relation is posited as Repulsion — in Repulsion, the relation is only the ought- to-be of ideality. By this Hegel means that the relationship of Repulsion is not (but ought to be) self-subsistent. Repulsion’s ideality is realized in Attraction. Repulsion passes over into attraction, the many ones into one one. That is, Repulsion g is present in Attraction a, but only as a memory, not as an express immediacy. This is shown in Attraction, where Repulsion sought to stay aloof but covertly traveled along and became part of a. Attraction now has a resilience that Repulsion lacks. The Many Ones are now One One.
But now repulsion and attraction must be considered in relation, as shown in Attraction and Repulsion. Repulsion is said to be the reality of the ones. Attraction is their posited ideality. In Repulsion, the Ones are negatively related. Hence, the Ones demonstrate their Determinate Being — being in relation with nothing. In Attraction as such in Attraction, this negative relation is sublated. It is only a memory. For the Ones, relation is a “posited ideality. Thus, Hegel can say that the relation of attraction to repulsion is such that Attraction has Repulsion for presupposition. Repulsion provides the material for attraction. If there were no ones there would be nothing to attract; the conception of a perpetual attraction, of an absorption of the ones, presupposes an equally perpetual production of them.
Repulsion is therefore the truth of Attraction, as dialectical Reason discovers in Attraction and Repulsion. But for the constraint of repulsing force, Attraction long ago would have gathered all the ones into a single inert One. When this is hypothetically accomplished when we achieve the One One of Attraction Attraction abolishes itself and goes out of existence. Attraction therefore must have negativity within itself, attraction is inseparable from repulsion. In Attraction, Attraction was our license to say that the Many Ones were one. In order to say this, we had to presuppose that the Many Ones were diverse. In short, Attraction is a force — an activity. Hegel later warns that the word force is not to be used in connection with Attraction, if force is taken to mean a self-subsisting, self-identical meaning. I use the word force here, but not in the disapproved manner Hegel describes.
But it cannot be permitted to succeed. Otherwise, our license to unify abolishes itself. This important point is called the play of forces in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’. The idea of it is that force is never perceptible unless another force opposes it. Otherwise, the first force would have obliterated everything long ago. The same point can be made about society. If we view personality as a becoming — a force — it must have another force — another person — to oppose it. Otherwise it could not recognize itself. Human beings are forces that need other human beings to recognize them as such. Persons, in Hegelian psychology, are not self-sufficient but social for this very reason.
Hegel warns against an illegitimate view of Attraction. In Attraction, Attraction is the name Hegel gives to the unity of all the Ones. The One One of Attraction is the result if Repulsion is not present in Attraction as a negative moment. Hence, Attraction could be taken as a diagram of this One One, whose impossibility is posited only in Attraction and Repulsion. What Hegel warns against is to picture the One One as king of the Ones — a primus inter pares with precedence over the peasant Ones. Such a picture is wrong for several reasons.This picture turns out to be Intensive Magnitude in Intensive Magnitude (Degree), see following article. First attraction belongs equally to each of the many ones as immediately present. Furthermore, the illegitimate picture grants self-identity to all the Ones, including the primus inter pares, which Hegel describes as an equilibrium of attraction and repulsion. Self-identity is always an error. The illegitimate picture also suggests “a specific difference” between the One One and the Many Ones, when Attraction is supposed to be the positing of the immediately, present undifferentiatedness of the ones.
‘To attract pertains at first in equal measure to each of the many ones as immediately present; none has advantage over an other; what would result then is an equilibrium in the attraction, or more precisely, an equilibrium in the attraction and the repulsion themselves, and an inert state of rest without any ideality present there. But there can be no question here of any such immediately present one taking precedence over another, for this would presuppose a determinate distinction between them; attraction is rather the positing of the given lack of distinction among the ones. Attraction is itself the positing in the first place of a one distinct from other ones; these are only the immediate ones that are to preserve themselves through repulsion; through their posited negation, however, what proceeds is the one of attraction which is therefore determined as the mediated one, the one posited as one. The first ones, as immediate, do not in their ideality return into themselves, but have this ideality each in another’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Nevertheless, on the law of sublation, the Many Ones are idealized and are indeed within the One One. In Attraction and Repulsion, the Many Ones are b in the unity of a, b. In an earlier guise, they were d, e, f in Repulsion; for this reason, Hegel says of the Many Ones that through their posited negation arises the one of attraction, which is consequently determined as mediated, the one posited as one. In other words, a in Attraction depends on the suppression of what becomes b in Attraction and Repulsion.
Hegel has said that the One One of Attraction is determined as mediated and posited as one. How can this One One be determined as mediated, when it is shown in Attraction as an immediacy? The answer is that Hegel refers to Repulsion’s act of positing. In Attraction, we saw Repulsion repelling itself from itself. This act is mediated — it implies the actor (Repulsion) and the excrement (the Many Ones). Of course, Repulsion itself denies that it is positing at all. Rather, it claims that it is merely refusing to recognize the Many Ones. But Repulsion has already been revealed to be a liar. For us, we know that Repulsion has de-posited the Many Ones. The Understanding now intervenes. It peers into the toilet and interprets the excremental materials as the One One. In other words, the act of positing is mediated and concrete, but the result is an immediacy.
The Many Ones were sublated in Attraction, but they return as b in Attraction and Repulsion. Repulsion is the Many Ones. And the Many Ones are the negative internal voice of Attraction a, b itself. Thus, Attraction does not absorb the attracted ones into itself as into a centre.
‘The one one is, however, ideality that has been realized, posited in the one; it attracts through the mediation of repulsion; it contains in itself this mediation as its determination. It thus does not swallow the attracted ones within it as into one point, that is, does not sublate them abstractly. Since it contains repulsion in its determination, the latter equally preserves the ones as many within it; by its attracting, it musters, so to speak, something before it, gains an area or a filling. Thus there is in it the unity of repulsion and attraction in general’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Rather, Repulsion, from the inside of Attraction, reserves the ones as many in it.
Which brings us to the relation of Repulsion and Attraction. In chapter 3fs final subsection, the difference between the One and the Many is a difference of their relation to one another. This relation is now cleft in twain — Repulsion and Attraction. In Attraction and Repulsion, each is different yet essentially connected. Repulsion appeared first, initially as immediate g in Repulsion. Many Ones were repulsed and, in this action, de-posited as immediate — as the unitary Void, or as Attraction. Thus, the Many Ones became a relation — Attraction. The two immediates — Repulsion and Attraction — were, at that point, indifferent to each other. Attraction — the unity of the Many Ones — was externally added to it as thus presupposed.
‘As the fundamental determination of the one, repulsion appears first, and it appears as immediate, like its ones which are indeed generated by it and yet are at the same time posited as immediate, and it is therefore indifferent to the attraction which is added to it externally as thus presupposed. Rather, attraction is not presupposed by repulsion: it is not supposed to have any part in the positing and in the being of the latter, that is, as if repulsion were not, already in it, the negation of itself, or the ones were not already negated in it. In this way, we have repulsion in abstraction, by itself, and attraction likewise holds out to the ones, as each an existent, the side of an immediate existence which comes to them by itself as an other’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
We must pause to consider: what does it mean to say that Attraction was presupposed? Here Hegel echoes his comments on atomism, in an earlier Remark. Atomists presuppose the Void in which the atoms move about. Hegel, however, dialectically established in The One and the Void that the Void is the Many Ones. The Many Ones, in Attraction, are made into the One One in Attraction. So just as atomism presupposes the Void (Attraction), Repulsion also assumes the Void (Attraction) when it expels the Many Ones. In Essence, the very act of positing is always coupled with presupposition. If an entity announces, I am not that (the act of positing), it presupposes a that from which it differentiates itself. The point is vital for the commencement of the ‘Philosophy of Right’, Hegel’s dialectic of liberal freedom. There, he starts with the most negative of negative freedom — the self freed of all inclination, desires, and even embodiment. The self is indeterminate. But, Hegel emphasizes, if such a self is indeterminate, there must be determinacy. So the self announces, I am not that — the determined. Determinacy is thus presupposed by the liberal subject.
‘The completed idea of the will is found when the conception has realized itself fully, and in such a manner that the embodiment of the conception is nothing but the development of the conception itself. But at the outset the conception is abstract. All its future characters are implied in it, it is true, but as yet no more than implied. They are, in other words, potential, and are not yet developed into an articulate whole. If I say, ‘I am free’, the I, here, is still implicit and has no real object opposed to it. But from the standpoint of morality as contrasted with abstract right there is opposition, because there I am a particular will, while the good, though within me, is the universal. Hence, at that stage, the will contains within itself the contrast between particular and universal, and in that way is made definite. But at the beginning such a distinction does not occur, because in the first abstract unity there is as yet no progress or modification of any kind. That is what is meant by saying that the will has the mark of self-involved simplicity or immediate being. The chief thing to notice at this point is that this very absence of definite features is itself a definite feature. Absence of determinate character exists where there is as yet no distinction between the will and its content. But when this lack of definiteness is set in opposition to the definite, it becomes itself something definite. In other words, abstract identity becomes the distinguishing feature of the will, and the will thereby becomes an individual will or person’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
If it posits itself as not the Many Ones, Repulsion must presuppose that there is such a thing as the Many Ones. Repulsion is an activity. Activity requires an actor and a thing acted upon. So Repulsion is a slave to what it repulses. Repulsion and flight is not a liberation from what is repelled and fled from. The one as excluding still remains related to what it excludes.
‘If we take mere repulsion in this way, for itself, it is then the dispersion of the many ones in indeterminacy, outside the sphere of repulsion itself; for repulsion is the negating of the connection of the many to one another; lack of connection is their determination when abstractly taken. But repulsion is not just the void; the ones, although unconnected, do not repel what constitutes their determination, do not exclude it. Although negative, repulsion is nonetheless essentially connection; the mutual repulsion and flight is not a liberation from what is repelled and fled from; that which is excluded still stands in connection with what is excluded from it. But this moment of connection is attraction, which is thus within repulsion itself; it is the negating of that abstract repulsion by which the ones would each be an existent referring only to itself without mutual exclusion’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This is a Lacanian truth — the repressed is a bloody instruction that always returns to haunt the inventor. What is foreclosed in the symbolic returns in the real, Slavoj Žižek, (1949 — ) claims. (Jacques Marie Émile Lacan, (1901–1981)). This moment of relation is Attraction itself and thus implicitly is inside Repulsion. In Repulsion, Attraction can be viewed as d, e, f. In this capacity, Attraction negates abstract repulsion g. If Attraction is internal to Repulsion, Hegel likewise emphasizes that Repulsion is internal to Attraction in Attraction and Repulsion. There, Repulsion is b. But if Repulsion is Attraction’s negative voice — the voice of Dialectical Reason — then Hegel likewise implies that, in Quantity, Repulsion is just as much Attraction, and Attraction is just as much Repulsion. Instead of placing Attraction on the left, we could have placed it on the right, and vice versa. The extremes, then, cannot distinguish themselves. It took outside determination to name them. We saw something similar to Being-for-Other and Being-in-Itself, (see previous article), where the leftward extreme was Something/Other and the rightward extreme was Being-in-itself/Being-for-other. There also an outside force had to determine whether being was truly on the left or on the right. This helpless state of the extremes portends no self-subsistence. This is the great irony of Being-for-self in general. It purports to expel otherness so that it can be for itself. Yet, in the end, it has no idea what it is. Only an outsider can assign to Being-for-self a content. Hence, in the Phenomenology, Hegel refers to the Unhappy Consciousness as having Being-for-self and not Being-in-itself. The Unhappy Consciousness perceives that he is nothing and God is everything. ‘For the Unhappy Consciousness the in-itself is the beyond of itself’.
Repulsion and Attraction are inseparable. At the same time each is determined as an ought and a limitation relatively to the other.
‘As thus determined, they are inseparable, and at the same time each is determined as an ought and a limitation with respect to the other. Their ought is their abstract determinateness as each an existent in itself — a determinateness, however, which is thereby directed beyond itself and refers to the other. And so, through the mediation of the other, each is as other; their self-subsistence consists in their being mutually posited in this mediation as an other determining. — Thus, repulsion is the positing of the many; attraction the positing of the one; this latter is equally the negation of the many and the former the negation of the ideality of such a many in the one; so that attraction too is attraction only through the mediation of repulsion, just as repulsion is repulsion through the mediation of attraction. In all this, however, the mediation of each with itself through the other is in fact negated; each of the two determinations is its own self-mediation. This will result from a closer examination of the two determinations and will bring us back to the unity of their concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
As mere Oughts, they ought to exceed their Limitations. As the ought, something is raised above its limitation, but conversely, it is only as the ought that it has its limitation:
‘As ought something is thus elevated above its restriction, but conversely it has its restriction only as ought. The two are indivisible. Something has a restriction in so far as it has negation in its determination, and the determination is also the being sublated of the restriction’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Ought of these opposing forces is their abstract determinateness in the form of the in-itself b. Taken abstractly, b — the very determinateness of both Attraction and Repulsion — is the in-itself to both forces. From b will spring the new middle term. For the moment, however, Hegel draws attention to the fact that, in b, each of Attraction or Repulsion is simply directed away from itself and relates itself to the other. Each is through the mediation of the other as other. In other words, a repulses b — its very being. Hence, a is because its essence b is utterly other. The obverse is true of c, which likewise repulses b. At this point, these forces are self-subsistent only in the sense that each is posited for the other as a different determining. But, simultaneous to being for other in b, each is for self in a and c respectively. Thus, in this interdependence the mediation of each through the other b is rather negated, each of these determinations being a self-mediation. In what sense a self-mediation? Of a and c, Hegel writes that each presupposes itself, is related only to itself in its presupposition.
‘In the first place, that each presupposes itself, that in its presupposition each refers only to itself, this is already present in the way the still relative repulsion and attraction behave at first’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This is fully implied in Attraction and Repulsion, which emphasizes the relatedness of Attraction and Repulsion. Attraction (now revealed to be just as much Repulsion) expels b — its own self. It says, I’m not b. In saying this, a presupposes there is such a thing as b to expel. And furthermore, b is just as much Attraction as a was. Attraction therefore presupposes itself and is related only to itself. The same could have been said about Repulsion (which is just as much Attraction as Repulsion).In Attraction, Repulsion repelled the Many Ones. Attraction became the Many Ones, unified by the force of external reflection. Now Hegel says that the Many Ones have not disappeared. They are Repulsion itself — taken as the negative of Attraction. Attraction and Repulsion, then, could have been drawn as the opposition of the One and the Many. Thus, the Many Ones were presupposed by Repulsion in Attraction, but now Repulsion is its own presupposition. This will become the archetypical move of Reflection in the Doctrine of Essence. Reflection typically expels itself from itself only to become precisely what it repelled. This has now happened to Repulsion. It expelled the Many Ones. Now it is the Many Ones — the opposite of the One One of Attraction and the very failure of Attraction to unite the Ones.
Both sides at this point are identical in their activity. Each side self presupposes. It posits itself as the negative of itself. It sheds its Being-in-itself b and attributes it to the other. This shedding activity is Repulsion — a self-preservation. Within a or c it is a self-identity — Attraction. Each thus has both moments of Repulsion and Attraction — self-preservation and self-alienation. Each expels itself into the other. In this activity, each is the transition of each out of itself into the other.
‘This self-presupposing of the two determinations, each for itself, implies further that each contains within itself the other as moment. Self-presupposing in general is the positing of oneself in a one as the negative of oneself (repulsion), and what is presupposed in this positing is the same as that which presupposes (attraction). That each is in itself only a moment, this is the transition of each from itself into the other, the negation of itself in the other and the positing of itself as the other of itself. The one, as such, is thus a coming-out-of-itself; is itself only the positing of itself as its other, as the many. And the many, for its part, is only the falling back upon itself and the positing of itself as its other, as a one, and is in this equally only the connecting of itself to itself, each continuing itself in its other. Therefore, the coming-out-of-itself (repulsion) and the self-positing-as-one (attraction) are already inherently present as undivided. But in the repulsion and attraction which are relative, that is, which presuppose immediate, determinedly existent ones, it is posited that the two are each, within it, this negation of itself, and consequently also the continuity of itself in its other. The repulsion of the determinedly existent ones is the self-preservation of the one through the mutual holding off of the others, so that (1) the other ones are negated in it (this is the side of its existence or of its being-for-another and is therefore attraction as the ideality of the ones); and (2) the one is in itself, without reference to the others (however, not only has the in-itself in general long since passed over into being-for-itself; the one in itself, according to its determination, is the coming to be of many). — The attraction of the existent ones is their ideality and the positing of the one, and in this, as both the negating and the producing of the one, attraction sublates itself, and as a positing within it of the one, is the negative of itself: it is repulsion’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Each posits itself as its own other. The one as such, then, is a coming-out-of-itself, is only the positing of itself as its own other, as many; and the many, similarly, is only this, to collapse within itself and to posit itself as its other, as one, and in this very act to be related only to its own self, each continuing itself in its other. Being-for-self has now reached its conclusion in a middle term which names the activity of repelling all content: Quantity. Quantity is the one as infinitely self-related. What does this mean? Recall that the Infinite is what goes beyond all Limitation. So, in Quantity, Repulsion/Attraction has gone beyond its Limitation. It is the mediation in which the One repels from itself its own self as its absolute (that is, abstract) otherness. Quantity, then, becomes itself when it becomes other.
Quantity
Quantity is the most attenuated of entities as all its content is expelled, it is a mere spectre of Being. For Quantity, its expelled Quality is its very non-Being, yet Quantity was impoverished through its own initiative, a meagreness warranting little attention and Quantity is only self-relation, and a Becoming in which it is no longer determined as having a beginning.
‘With this, the development of being-for-itself is completed and has attained its result. In connecting itself to itself infinitely, that is, as the posited negation of negation, the one is the mediation by which it repels itself as its absolute (that is, abstract) otherness (the many) from itself, and in thus negatively connecting itself to this, its non-being, it sublates it and is in it precisely only the connection to itself. The one is only this becoming in which the determination ‘it begins’, that is, its being posited as an immediate existent, and equally that, as result, it has restored itself as the one, that is, the equally immediate and exclusive one, have vanished; the process which it is, posits and contains it from all sides only as something sublated. The sublation, determined at first only as a relative sublating of the connection to another existent, a connection which is therefore itself not an indifferent repulsion and attraction, equally proves itself to pass over into the infinite connection of mediation through the negation of the external connection of immediate and determinate existents, and to have for result precisely that becoming which, in the instability of its moments, is the collapse, or rather the going-together-with-itself, into simple immediacy. This being, according to the determination which it has now acquired, is quantity’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Quantity has sublated immediacy itself. Among the things outside itself are the Many Ones. This is ironic. We are inclined to think of Quantity as numbers, but, so far, distinguishable integers are too advanced for us. We must think of Quantity as such, with no Determinate Being of its own. Thus, Quantity is a sublating that is at first determined as only a relative sublating of the relation to another determinately existent one. This non-relation is even less than an indifferent repulsion and attraction. Repulsion and Attraction are, after all, posited as relations. Quantity has moved beyond relation (or so it thinks). But in its radically negative attitude toward its own being, Quantity equally displays itself as passing over into the infinite relation of mediation through negation of the external relations of the immediate, determinately existent ones, and as having for result that very process of becoming which is the collapse into simple immediacy.
Thus, by negating immediacy, Quantity is it goes without saying naught but mediation, as a matter of fact consider it in the more advanced notion of ordinary numbers and Quantity does nothing but relate various qualities. The number three can refer to three people, three pebbles, three unicorns, and so on The number three is a great mediator of things and Quality is now Quantity and Hegel reviews the moments of the transition. The fundamental determination of Quality, the first three chapters of the Science of Logic, was Being and immediacy. In these chapters, Limit and Determinateness are so identical with the Being of Something, that with its alteration the Something itself vanishes.
‘If we briefly review the moments of this transition of quality into quantity, we find that the qualitative has being and immediacy for its fundamental determination, and the limit and the determinateness are in this immediacy so identical with the being of something, that the something itself vanishes along with its alteration; as thus posited, it is determined as finite. Because of the immediacy of this unity in which the distinction has disappeared, although it is implicitly present in the unity of being and nothing, the distinction falls outside that unity as otherness in general. This reference to the other contradicts the immediacy in which qualitative determinateness is self-reference. This otherness is sublated in the infinity of the being-for-itself, the being-for-itself that has realized the distinction implicitly present in it in the negation of negation: has realized it as the one and the many and as their connecting references, and has also elevated the qualitative to true unity, that is, a unity which is no longer immediate but posited as accordant with itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Here, Hegel summarizes the trajectory of Something, which alters itself and becomes an Infinite Being. Infinite Being has now repelled from itself its own being, and hence it too has now vanished. This was foretold when the Something became the Finite. The very Ought of the Finite was that it must cease-to-be. In Quantity, its destiny is fulfilled. Failure to grasp that the Ought predicts the abolition of being leads Taylor to announce that this transition from being-for-self to Quantity is ‘a little strained’. Of this transition, Taylor writes: ‘It offers another example of a twist we have often noticed in the Hegelian dialectic: where Hegel ‘goes back’ from the advanced point he has reached in order to take up and ‘feed into’ his dialectic some other important range of concepts or transitions’. Taylor takes the True Infinite to be both ceasing-to-be and coming-to-be, and he implies that Hegel privileges one over the other solely in order to produce Quantity — the realm in which the content of being is strictly beyond itself. Yet, if we concentrate on the feature of the Ought — that it names ceasing-to-be as the soul of the Finite — then the pursuit of ceasing-to-be at the expense of coming-to-be — is (like the quality of mercy) not strained.
Quantity as an immediate unity, in which the difference has vanished but is implicitly present in the unity of being and nothing. It is pure relation without parts — a contradiction. Yet, by virtue of being a relation without parts — an immediate unity — Quantity implies its parts. Hence, Quantity cannot remain an immediacy but must make express what it is. This relation to other contradicts the immediacy in which qualitative determinateness, that is, Quantity is self-relation. In other words, having expelled its being, Quantity must now recapture it by bringing Quality back within itself.
And so to conclude. The most enduring result of Hegelian logic is that the individual is not flatly for himself. In himself, he is his otherness and linked with others, as Theodor W. Adorno, (1903–1969). In its journey, Being started by placing an accent on its affirmative side. But this accent was no more than the announcement of what Being was not: Being is not nothing. The substance by which Being manifested itself was therefore beyond it. Being sustained itself only by refusing to recognize the other. It became nothing else but this refusal, and hence it enslaved itself to its other. ‘Dasein is a determinate^ qualitative finite being determined by what it excludes’, explains Harris. It became the very act of expelling its own content. As this expelling force, it is Quantity. This expulsion of content from what is immediately is of the utmost spiritual significance. It is the heart of idealism, as opposed to materialism. Hegel’s idealism ‘ascribes being to the infinite, the Spirit, God [and] denies that things and the finite world have true reality’, explains Lucio Colletti, (1924–2001).
Thus, if Quality has chased its being elsewhere, it does so only to retrieve it at a deeper spiritual level. Quality, then, does not lose all. It retains Being-for-self — empty though this is. This retained Being-for-self was responsible for the very idea of multiplicity. Because the True Infinite never entirely gave up its place, its expelled content, itself a Being-for-self that expels content, counted as a new One, which in turn produced another One, etc. Later, in Quantity, being will discover that its other is really itself. Quantity continues to go outside itself but recognizes that its destination is still its own self, as Lucio Colletti, (1924–2001), sees it. ‘Moreover, its other is not a qualitative other, but is an extension of itself beyond its own limit, and is still indifferently the same all over again, the limit notwithstanding’.
This realization culminating in Measure, is the threshold to Essence where return-to-Self is named Reflection and here Being’s vanishedness implicates a profounder soul that has staying power and the essential thing endures but the thing that merely is is finite and therefore must become and always already is what is not, and what is and is not as handled by Hegelian logic engenders the seemingly paradoxical and contradictory indeed, all of which is to be resolved in Absolute knowing.
Ooh, in this darkness
Please light my way
Light my way (out of the darkness)
Ooh, in this darkness
Please light my way
Light my way (light my way)
Coming up next:
Pure Quantity.
To be continued…..
