On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part thirty.
‘Things Are Seldom What They Seem’
by W. S. Gilbert, (1836–1911)
Buttercup.
Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.
Captain. (puzzled)
Very true,
So they do.
Buttercup.
Black sheep dwell in every fold;
All that glitters is not gold;
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.
Captain. (puzzled)
So they be,
Frequentlee.
Buttercup.
Drops the wind and stops the mill;
Turbot is ambitious brill;
Gild the farthing if you will,
Yet it is a farthing still.
Captain. (puzzled)
Yes, I know.
That is so.
Though to catch your drift I’m striving,
It is shady — it is shady;
I don’t see at what you’re driving,
Mystic lady — mystic lady.
Both. (aside)
Stern conviction’s o’er me/him stealing,
That the mystic lady’s dealing
In oracular revealing.
Captain.
Yes, I know —
Buttercup.
That is so!
Captain.
Though I’m anything but clever,
I could talk like that for ever:
Once a cat was killed by care,
Only brave deserve the fair.
Buttercup.
Very true,
So they do.
Captain.
Wink is often good as nod;
Spoils the child who spares the rod;
Thirsty lambs run foxy dangers;
Dogs are found in many mangers.
Buttercup.
Frequentlee,
I agree.
Captain.
Paw of cat the chestnut snatches;
Worn-out garments show new patches;
Only count the chick that hatches;
Men are grown-up catchy-catchies.
Buttercup.
Yes, I know,
That is so.
(aside)Though to catch my drift he’s striving,
I’ll dissemble — I’ll dissemble;
When he sees at what I’m driving,
Let him tremble — let him tremble!
Both.
Tho’ a mystic tone I/you borrow,
He will/I shall learn the truth with sorrow;
Here today and gone tomorrow.
Captain.
Yes, I know.
Buttercup.
That is so!
— —
Captain.
Incomprehensible as her utterances are, I nevertheless feel
that they are dictated by a sincere regard for me. But to what
new misery is she referring? Time alone can tell!
[‘H.M.S. Pinafore’, or, ‘The Lass That Loved a Sailor’, 1878, updated and sexed-up version. I love it]:-
Anyway, to focus. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831), ‘The Science of Logic’. Appearance. At the end of chapter 13, autochthonous Existence emerged from Ground but then dissolved itself. At the end of its journey from ashes to dust, Existence posited itself as absolute negativity — a reflected immediacy. As such, it was Appearance — an essential Existence:
‘Concrete existence is the immediacy of being to which essence has again restored itself. In itself this immediacy is the reflection of essence into itself. As concrete existence, essence has stepped out of its ground which has itself passed over into it. Concrete existence is this reflected immediacy in so far as, within, it is absolute negativity. It is now also posited as such, in that it has determined itself as appearance. At first, therefore, appearance is essence in its concrete existence; essence is immediately present in it. That it is not immediate, but rather reflected concrete existence, constitutes the moment of essence in it; or concrete existence, as essential concrete existence, is appearance’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The function of unstable Appearance is to disappear. Appearance does not have being-in-and-for-self; it must self-erase. It is the reality that does not correspond to the Notion.
[The idea is the adequate concept, the objectively true, or the true as such. If anything has truth, it has it by virtue of its idea, or something has truth only in so far as it is idea. — The expression ‘idea’ has otherwise also often been used in philosophy as well as in ordinary life for ‘concept’, or even for just a ‘representation’. To say that I still have no idea of this lawsuit, this building, this region, means nothing more than I still have no representation of it. It is Kant who reclaimed the expression ‘idea’ for the ‘concept of reason’. — Now according to Kant the concept of reason should be the concept of the unconditional, but a concept which is transcendent with respect to appearances, that is, one for which no adequate empirical use can be made. The concepts of reason are supposed to serve for the comprehension of perceptions, those of the understanding for the understanding of them. — In fact, however, if these last concepts of the understanding are truly concepts, then they are comprehensions, which means concepts; they will make comprehending possible, and an understanding of perceptions through concepts of the understanding will be a comprehending. But if understanding is only the determining of perceptions by categories such as whole and parts, force, cause, and the like, then it signifies only a determining by means of reflection, just as by understanding one may mean only the determinate representation of a fully determined sensuous content; as when someone is being shown the way, that at the end of the wood he must turn left, and he replies ‘I understand’, understanding means nothing more than a grasp in pictorial representation and in memory. — ‘Concept of reason, too, is a somewhat clumsy expression; for the concept is in general something rational, and in so far as reason is distinguished from the understanding and the concept as such, it is the totality of the concept and objectivity. — The idea is the rational in this sense; it is the unconditioned, because only that has conditions which essentially refers to an objectivity that it does not determine itself but which still stands over against it in the form of indifference and externality, just as the external purpose had conditions’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
[Note: Hegel uses adequate, a Latinate word obviously intended to bring to mind the traditional definition of truth as adequatio rei et intellectus. It is in the idea that this conformity of objectivity and subjectivity will be achieved.]
Even in ordinary parlance, when we say that X appears to be the case, we are saying that X may be true, but X must erase itself in favour of a deeper truth. Elsewhere Hegel remarks that to say that anything is only an appearance suggests a real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance is still divided against itself and without intrinsic stability.
‘Appearance, in any case, is a very important stage of the logical Idea, and it may be said that philosophy distinguishes itself from ordinary consciousness by regarding what counts for the latter as having being and independence as mere appearance. But what matters here is to grasp the significance of appearance adequately. For, when we say of something that it is ‘only’ appearance, this can be misunderstood as meaning that (in comparison with this thing that only appears) what is, or is immediate, is something higher. In fact the situation is precisely the reverse: appearance is higher than mere being. Appearance is precisely the truth of being and a richer determination than the latter, because it contains the moments of inward reflexion and reflexion-into-another united within it, whereas being or immediacy is still what is one-sidedly without relation, and seems to rest upon itself alone. Of course, the ‘only’ that we attach to appearance certainly does indicate a defect, and this consists in the fact that Appearance is still this inwardly broken [moment] that does not have any stability of its own. What is higher than mere appearance is, in the first place, actuality, which will be treated later, being the third stage of Essence’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Hegel suggests we have all reason to rejoice that the things which environ us are appearances and not steadfast and independent existences; since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, both bodily and mental. If X turns out to be true, then it was no mere appearance. Nevertheless, this verdict can only be reached after X’s appearance sublates itself. Hence, X is appearance only when it self-erases. Hegel should not be read to suggest that certain appearances are true and certain appearances are false. ‘One difference between Plato’s view and Hegel’s is this: According to Plato, ‘show* as it was conceived in the cave is necessarily false, whereas ‘show’ according to Hegel may or may not be false; whether it is, is a contingent matter’, explains Justus Hartnack. Rather, the truth of appearance is in its disappearance. Truth is not correspondence with some thought or appearance to the “real” object. Rather, it is a process, and so is Appearance.
Yet disappearance implies a removal to some place. Appearance is therefore equally immediately a sheer positedness which has aground and an other for its subsistence.
‘Appearance is the concrete existent mediated through its negation, which constitutes its subsistence. This, its negation, is indeed another self-subsistent; but the latter is just as essentially something sublated. The concrete existent is consequently the turning back of itself into itself through its negation and through the negation of this negation; it has, therefore, essential self-subsistence, just as it is equally immediately an absolute positedness that has a ground and an other for its subsistence. — In the first place, therefore, appearance is concrete existence along with its essentiality, the positedness along with its ground; but this ground is the negation, and the other self-subsistent, the ground of the first, is equally only a positedness. Or the concrete existent is, as an appearance, reflected into an other and has this other for its ground, and this ground is itself only this, to be reflected into another. The essential self-subsistence that belongs to it because it is a turning back into itself is, for the sake of the negativity of the moments, the return of nothing through nothing back to itself; the self-subsistence of the concrete existent is therefore only the reflective shine of essence. The linkage of the reciprocally grounding concrete existents consists, therefore, in this reciprocal negation, namely that the subsistence of the one is not the subsistence of the other but is its positedness, where this connection of positedness alone constitutes their subsistence. The ground is present as it is in truth, namely as being a first which is only a presupposed’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Sublation has always meant preservation as well as cancellation. Accordingly, Appearance’s very essence is disappearance in favour of some apparently deeper reality: This constitutes its essentiality, to have within itself the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence.
‘Something is only appearance — in the sense that concrete existence is as such only a posited being, not something that is in- and for-itself. This is what constitutes its essentiality, to have the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence, within it. There is no question here of an alien, external reflection to which essence would belong and which, by comparing this essence with concrete existence, would declare the latter to be appearance. On the contrary, as we have seen, this essentiality of concrete existence, that it is appearance, is concrete existence’s own truth. The reflection by virtue of which it is this is its own’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
We have before us a dialectic moment. Appearance is accordingly the unity of illusory being which erases itself and Existence which endures.
‘Essence reflectively shines at first just within, in its simple identity; as such, it is abstract reflection, the pure movement of nothing through nothing back to itself. Essence appears, and so it now is real shine, since the moments of the shine have concrete existence. Appearance, as we have seen, is the thing as the negative mediation of itself with itself; the differences which it contains are self-subsisting matters which are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence, yet of obtaining their subsistence only in an alien self-subsistence, hence in the negation of their own, but then again, just because of that, also in the negation of that alien self-subsistence or in the negation of their own negation. Reflective shine is this same mediation, but its fleeting moments obtain in appearance the shape of immediate self-subsistence. On the other hand, the immediate self-subsistence which pertains to concrete existence is reduced to a moment. Appearance is therefore the unity of reflective shine and concrete existence’. — ‘The Science of Logic’
Appearance undergoes the usual three stages. First, the Understanding distinguishes Appearance from what endures. These two sides enter into relation with each other. The relation is put forth as simple self-identity which also contains various content determinations.
‘Appearance now determines itself further. It is concrete existence as essential; as essential, concrete existence differs from the concrete existence which is unessential, and these two sides refer to each other. — Appearance is, therefore, first, simple self-identity which also contains diverse content determinations and, both as identity and as the connecting reference of these determinations, is that which remains self-equal in the flux of appearance; this is the law of appearance’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In the flux of Appearance, this relation stays constant as the Law of Appearance, or so the Understanding asserts. Dialectical Reason reinterprets the proposition of the Understanding: there must be two worlds opposing each other — the World of Appearance and the world of Existence. Each of these worlds will be a self-subsistent totality. Finally, Speculative Reason establishes that the two worlds collide. Essence is in Appearance, and vice versa. At this point Appearance becomes correlation or essential relation.
‘But, second, the law which is simple in its diversity passes over into opposition; the essential moment of appearance becomes opposed to appearance itself and, confronting the world of appearance, the world that exists in itself comes onto the scene. Third, this opposition returns into its ground; that which is in itself is in the appearance and, conversely, that which appears is determined as taken up into its being-in-itself. Appearance becomes relation’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In Essential Relation, Appearance establishes its being-in-and-for-self.
The Law of Appearance In this section, Appearance is define as that which withdraws into Law, with which it enjoys a unity. Hegel has scientific laws in mind, but what he has to say likewise applies to jurisprudence. As indicated, the subsistence of Appearance lies in its non-subsistence. Appearance is the existent mediated by its negation.
‘Appearance is the concrete existent mediated through its negation, which constitutes its subsistence. This, its negation, is indeed another selfsubsistent; but the latter is just as essentially something sublated. The concrete existent is consequently the turning back of itself into itself through its negation and through the negation of this negation; it has, therefore, essential self-subsistence, just as it is equally immediately an absolute positedness that has a ground and an other for its subsistence. — In the first place, therefore, appearance is concrete existence along with its essentiality, the positedness along with its ground; but this ground is the negation, and the other self-subsistent, the ground of the first, is equally only a positedness. Or the concrete existent is, as an appearance, reflected into an other and has this other for its ground, and this ground is itself only this, to be reflected into another. The essential self-subsistence that belongs to it because it is a turning back into itself is, for the sake of the negativity of the moments, the return of nothing through nothing back to itself; the self-subsistence of the concrete existent is therefore only the reflective shine of essence. The linkage of the reciprocally grounding concrete existents consists, therefore, in this reciprocal negation, namely that the subsistence of the one is not the subsistence of the other but is its positedness, where this connection of positedness alone constitutes their subsistence. The ground is present as it is in truth, namely as being a first which is only a presupposed’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Disappearance is, paradoxically, the one permanent thing about Appearance. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer: ‘Constancy is the truth of disappearance’. This alone is the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.
‘It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, ‘We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God’. So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: ‘May King Darius live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered — in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed. So King Darius put the decree in writing. Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: ‘Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or human being except to you, Your Majesty, would be thrown into the lions’ den?’ The king answered, ‘The decree stands — in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed’. Then they said to the king, ‘Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, Your Majesty, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day.’ When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him. Then the men went as a group to King Darius and said to him, ‘Remember, Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed’. So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, ‘May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!’
- ‘Daniel’ 6. 1–16.
In effect, sublation has been sublated. The existent, Hegel says, is accordingly the return of itself into itself through its negation and through the negation of this its negation. In other words, by negating itself, Appearance shows what it is — a negation of negation. This subsistence of self-erasure shows that Appearance is essential (self-sublation being the very essence of Essence). Accordingly, Appearance is Existence along with its essentiality.
If Appearance erases itself, there must be a place to which it removes — the deeper essence which merely appears. This deeper essence is the Law of Appearance. The Law of Appearance corresponds to the first super-sensual world of the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’.
‘Through this principle, the first super-sensible world, the tranquil kingdom of laws, the immediate copy of the perceived world, is changed into its opposite. The law was, in general, like its differences, that which remains self-same; now, however, it is posited that each of the two worlds is really the opposite of itself. The self-same really repels itself from itself, and what is not self-same really posits itself as self-same. In point of fact, it is only when thus determined that the difference is inner difference, or the difference in its own self, the like being unlike itself, and the unlike, like itself. This second super-sensible world is in this way the inverted world and, moreover, since one aspect is already present in the first super-sensible world, the inversion of the first. With this, the inner world is completed as appearance. For the first super-sensible world was only the immediate raising of the perceived world into the universal element; it had its necessary counterpart in this perceived world which still retained for itself the principle of change and alteration. The first kingdom of laws lacked that principle, but obtains it as an inverted world’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The later Law of Law and Appearance will conform to the second super-sensuous world — the inverted world of the Phenomenology. Meanwhile, Law does not, in the Logic, amount to a ‘world’ says Gadamer. Worldhood must await its moment.
Yet this other is likewise a subsisting negative — a positedness. In other words, the existent is, as an Appearance, reflected into an other which it has for its ground, which other is itself only this, to be reflected into an other. Repeating a phrase introduced in chapter 10,(there, Hegel described Reflection as ‘the movement of nothing to nothing, and so back to itself’). Hegel characterizes Appearance as a return-into-self as the return of the nothing through nothing back to itself on account of the negativity of the moments. Nothing is here except the negative. Appearance is therefore essential illusory show. Yet Appearance is a connection of reciprocally grounding existents. ‘It is important to see that appearance doesn’t name simply the field of determinate things but the relation between that field and its unity. It is the difference between these moments that is appearance’, explains Peter Simpson.
Each side of the relation appears only as it erases its other: “the subsistence of the one is not the subsistence of the other.” (501) Since each side finds itself erased when the other side is emphasized, the true subsistence of the sides is in their relationship to each other.
Appearance is therefore a self-identity with two sides. First, it is in the form of positedness or external immediacy. On this side, Appearance is a determinate being, but one which is contingent, unessential and, in keeping with its immediacy, subject to transition.
‘This now constitutes the negative side of appearance. In this negative mediation, however, there is immediately contained the positive identity of the concrete existent with itself. For this concrete existent is not positedness vis-`a-vis an essential ground, or is not the reflective shine in a self-subsistent, but is rather positedness that refers itself to a positedness, or a reflective shine only in a reflective shine. In this, its negation, or in its other which is itself something sublated, it refers to itself and is thus self-identical or positive essentiality. — This identity is not the immediacy that pertains to concrete existence as such and only is its unessential moment of subsisting in an other. It is rather the essential content of appearance which has two sides: first, to be in the form of positedness or external immediacy; second, to be positedness as self-identical. According to the first side, it is as a determinate being, but one which in keeping with its immediacy is accidental, unessential, and subject to transition, to coming-to-be and passing-away. According to the other side, it is the simple content determination exempted from that flux, the permanent element in it’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Law of Appearance
Second, Appearance is self-identical. This side is exempt from flux, the enduring element of the Thing that appears.
It has bothered some that Form and Content, the culmination of Absolute Ground in the Logic (see chapter 12), is placed in the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ with the Law of the Phenomenon (or Law of Appearance). To be sure, the Content of Form is that Form self-erases. That is also the Law of Appearance. The two are obviously connected. It is sometimes overlooked, however, that in the ‘Encyclopaedia Logic’ Hegel states that Form and Content, in its mature phase is the Law of the Phenomenon.
‘The mutual externality of the world of appearance is totality and it is entirely contained within its relation- ta-self. Hence, the relation of appearance to itself is completely determinate, it has the form within itself, and, because it has it in this identity, [it has the form] as its essential subsistence. Hence too, the form is content; and in its developed determinacy it is the law of appearance. The negative of appearance, that which is dependent and alterable, belongs to the form as not reflected within-itself: this is the indifferent, external form. Regarding the antithesis of form and content it is essential to remember that the content is not formless, but that it has the form within itself just as much as the form is something external to it. We have here the doubling of the form: on the one hand, as inwardly reflected, it is the content; on the other hand, as not reflected inwardly, it is the external existence, that is indifferent to the content. What is here present in-itself is the absolute relationship of content and form, i. e., the reciprocal overturning of one into the other, so that ‘content’ is nothing but the overturning of form into content, and ‘form’ nothing but overturning of content into form. This overturning is one of the most important determinations. But it is not posited until we reach absolute relationship’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
This suggests that, even in the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel viewed Form and Content as more primitive than the Law of Appearance. In any case, as G. R. G. Mure remarks, ‘In the greatly simplified version of the [lesser Logic] not only does the articulation of the movement seem sometimes different, but often where it is clearly the same as in [greater Logic] the titles of the categories are nevertheless altered. Nowhere so much as in the Logic of Essence has the reader need to remember that these titles, however, indispensable for exposition, are mere ‘compilations of external reflection’.’ (Though changes in the lesser Logic are intended as an improvement of the greater Logic).
— —
Hawkwind Hash Cake 77 Valium 10:
The Law of Appearance emphasizes the unity between flux and stasis of a Thing. Thus, the Thing is the one and its other.
‘This content, besides being in general the simple element of the transient, is also a determined content, varied in itself. It is the reflection of appearance, of the negative determinate being, into itself, and therefore contains determinateness essentially. Appearance is however the multifarious diversity of immediately existing beings that revels in unessential manifoldness; its reflected content, on the other hand, is its manifoldness reduced to simple difference. Or, more precisely, the determinate essential content is not just determined in general but, as the essential element of appearance, is complete determinateness; the one and its other. Each of these two has in appearance its subsistence in the other, but in such a way that it is at the same time only in the other’s non-subsistence. This contradiction sublates itself; and its reflection into itself is the identity of their two-sided subsistence, namely that the positedness of the one is also the positedness of the other. The two constitute one subsistence, each at the same time as a different content indifferent to the other. In the essential side of appearance, the negativity of the unessential content, that it sublates itself, has thus gone back into identity; it is an indifferent subsistence which is not the sublatedness of the other but rather its subsistence’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In this formulation, the other a is Appearance and the one b is the beyond of fluxional Appearance — a beyond that cannot exist on its own without appearing as the one. The beyond is therefore just as much present as absent. The Law of Appearance is that the Matters of the Thing constitute one subsistence, but at the same time as a diverse, mutually indifferent content. ‘The thing is a unity and at the same time a multiplicity’, explains Herbert Marcuse. Each side subsists in its other, as a unity. The Law b is the positive side of what appears.
It remains when Appearance disappears. Dialectical Reason intervenes to emphasize that, in Janus-faced Appearance, the presence of the one side depends upon the absence of the other- Dialectical Reason says, You say law is Appearance stable and Appearance is flux. But in truth, Law is just an appearance and therefore a flux. The unity is a failure. The Law is that each of the two sides exists in the sublating of the other. Their positedness as their negativity is the identical, positive positedness of both.
‘The law is thus the positive element of the mediation of what appears. Appearance is at first concrete existence as negative self-mediation, so that the concrete existent, through its own non-subsistence, through an other and again through the non-subsistence of this other, is mediated with itself. In this there is contained, first, the merely reflective shining and the disappearing of both, the unessential appearance; second, also the persistence or the law; for each of the two concretely exists in the sublation of the other, and their positedness is as their negativity at the same time the identical positive positedness of both’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Speculative Reason suggests that the content common to Appearance and Law is the Law itself. Another way of putting this is that, from the fluxional World of Appearance, the Understanding posits a stable realm of many laws. ‘But what the concept of law has not yet done is to account for what kinds of appearances or laws there are’, protests Simpson.
Exclusivity of Law and Appearance
The many Laws themselves are unruly and unstable, and so the logic of the Understanding requires there to be a stable law of the many fluxional laws. So Speculative Reason reduces Law to Appearance and therefore subject to a meta-law. Notice that the universal that unites the two sides is itself one of the sides. This stuttering trope has been seen before, in Hegel’s difference and/or identity of Identity and Difference. There, the unity was also one of the sides. The trope tends to fit with the idea of no beyond — of a thoroughgoing presence, in which genus is present precisely as an absence. That genus is the absent member in the set of species is a theme of Slavoj Žižek, (1949 — ), who attributes to Hegel the view that every genus has two species: itself and its species. He calls this the ‘paradox of pas-tout’. Hegel will suggest that genus and species are the only two species in chapter 19.
This is the very nature of Notion, which is the unity The Law of Law and Appearance of itself, its other, and the unity of itself and other.
The Subsistence of Appearance. In dissolving, the Thing has become an opposition, and Appearance is this very opposition. Yet both sides of the opposition are equally self-erasing Appearance. This is the proposition of The Law of Law and Appearance, where Speculative Reason suggests that Appearance is conformable to its determination — i.e., determined to be a relation between flux and stasis.
‘This permanent subsistence which appearance obtains in the law is thus, as it has determined itself, first, opposed to the immediacy of the being which concrete existence has. This immediacy is indeed one which is in itself reflected, namely the ground that has gone back into itself; but in appearance this simple immediacy is now distinguished from the reflected immediacy that first began to separate itself in the ‘thing’. The concretely existing thing in its dissolution has become this opposition; the positive element of its dissolution is the said self-identity of what appears, a positedness in the positedness of its other. — Second, this reflected immediacy is itself determined as positedness over against the immediate determinate being of concrete existence. This positedness is henceforth what is essential and the true positive. The German expression Gesetz [law] likewise contains this note of positedness or Gesetztsein. In this positedness there lies the essential connection of the two sides of the difference that the law contains; they are a diverse content, each immediate with respect to the other, and they are this as the reflection of the disappearing content belonging to appearance. As essential difference, the different sides are simple, self-referring determinations of content. But just as equally, neither is immediate, just for itself, but is rather essential positedness, or is only to the extent that the other is’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
This is so in three different ways, which correspond to The Law of Appearance, Exclusivity of Law and Appearance, The Law of Law and Appearance. Subsistence g is opposed to the fluxionable immediacy of existence d, e, f. That is, immediacies are diversities which self-erase. But the Law of Law and Appearance g does not self-erase. On the positive side, the Law of Law and Appearance is identity-with-self g. But there is also a negative side d, e, f which announces it is not identity-with-self. Rather, it is a positedness. (2) The Law of Law and Appearance g is just as much d, e, f — a positedness. At this point, Hegel exploits the etymological connection between Law (Gesetz) and positedness (Gesetzsein). In this positedness lies the essential relation of the two sides of the difference which law contains. In The Law of Law and Appearance, g represents the vanishing of the sides. This vanishing is the unity between Appearance and the Law of Appearance.
The Law of Law and Appearance
— —
‘Once or twice, weary of wandering, I rested in a favourite spot, and my heart went out towards the men and women and children whose faces were becoming familiar to me: but I was driven away again in terror at the approach of my old insight-driven away to live continually with the one Unknown Presence revealed and yet hidden by the moving curtain of the earth and sky. Till at last disease took hold of me and forced me to rest here-forced me to live in dependence on my servants. And then the curse of insight-of my double consciousness, came again, and has never left me. I know all their narrow thoughts, their feeble regard, their half-wearied pity’.
‘It is the 20th of September 1850. I know these figures I have just written, as if they were a long familiar inscription. I have seen them on this page in my desk unnumbered times, when the scene of my dying struggle has opened upon me. . . .
(1859.)
- George Eliot, (1819–1880), ‘The Lifted Veil’
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(3) The Law of Law and Appearance is the unity of Law and Appearance in that both sides of the syllogism self-erase. The Law of Law and Appearance stands for the proposition that appearance and law have one and the same content.
‘This content thus constitutes the substrate of appearance; the law is this substrate itself, appearance is the same content but contains still more, namely the unessential content of its immediate being. And so is also the form determination by which appearance as such is distinguished from the law, namely a content and equally a content distinguished from the content of the law. For concrete existence, as immediacy in general, is likewise a self-identity of matter and form which is indifferent to its form determinations and is, therefore, a content; the concrete existence is the thinghood with its properties and matters. But it is the content whose self-subsisting immediacy is at the same time also only a non-subsistence. But the self-identity of the content in this its non-subsistence is the other, essential content. This identity, the substrate of appearance, which constitutes law, is appearances’s own moment; it is the positive side of the essentiality by virtue of which concrete existence is appearance’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Initially, this did not appear to be the case. Law was supposed to be the withdrawal from flux into deeper stasis. Appearance was supposed to be the null immediate which opposes reflection-into-self. In truth, both sides self-erase; one is no more or no less Appearance than the other side.
‘Third, appearance and law have one and the same content. The law is the reflection of appearance into self-identity; appearance, as an immediate which is null, thus stands opposed to that which is immanently reflected, and the two are distinguished according to form. But the reflection of appearance by virtue of which this difference is, is also the essential identity of appearance itself and its reflection, and this is in general the nature of reflection; it is what in the positedness is self-identical and indifferent to that difference, which is form or positedness — hence a content continuous from appearance to law, the content of the law and of the appearance’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The beyond of Appearance is therefore a myth, a dogma. The Understanding now interprets The Law of Law and Appearance. If Law is the unity of itself and Appearance, Appearance contains more than Law, namely, the unessential content of its immediate being. This, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, is where freedom proves to be ‘the law or the necessity that posits the self outside of itself. It is thus the law of what posits itself without law, whose law lies, precisely, in that positing. But this law … cannot be represented as a law, for a (physical or moral) law is always ‘the stable image … unaware of the restlessness of negativity’.’
The function of unessential content is to erase itself. Yet Law erases itself. So Law must be just as unessential as Appearance. The Law is that Law is only an Appearance. This is the Law that endures. Accordingly, law is not beyond Appearance but is immediately present in it; the realm of laws is the stable image of the world of Existence or Appearance.
‘The law, therefore, is not beyond appearance but is immediately present in it; the kingdom of laws is the restful copy of the concretely existing or appearing world. But, more to the point, the two are one totality, and the concretely existing world is itself the kingdom of laws which, simple identity, is at the same time self-identical in the positedness or in the self-dissolving self-subsistence of concrete existence. In the law, concrete existence returns to its ground; appearance contains both of these, the simple ground and the dissolving movement of the appearing universe, of which the law is the essentiality’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Before us is a single totality — the World of Appearance. The World of Appearance includes Law and lawlessness. Paradoxically, since Law is self-dissolution, lawlessness is what endures. Lawlessness constitutes the external connection of Appearance with a positive law. So the World of Appearance is full of multiple laws, none of which is adequate to its subject matter. Proper Law is self-erasure.
The World of Appearance
Improper law is what science or jurisprudence puts forth as separate and apart from immanent logic. This is Hegel’s ultimate judgment of positive law. In the ‘Philosophy of Right’, wrong is defined as the positivization of right. As an example of lawlessness, Hegel considers Galileo’s law of the falling body: s = at(to the square root of 2), where s is space, t is time, and a is the acceleration effect of gravity. In this expression, spatial and temporal magnitudes are brought together empirically. Notionally, the unity of the two sides would be their negativity.
‘The law is therefore the essential appearance; it is the latter’s reflection into itself in its positedness, the identical content of itself and the unessential concrete existence. In the first place, this identity of the law with its concrete existence is now, to start with, immediate, simple identity, and the law is indifferent with respect to its concrete existence; appearance still has another content as contrasted with the content of the law. That content is indeed the unessential one and the return into the latter; but for the law it is an original starting point not posited by it; as content, therefore, it is externally bound up with the law. Appearance is an aggregate of more detailed determinations that belong to the ‘this’ or the concrete, and are not contained in the law but are rather determined each by an other. — Secondly, that which appearance contains distinct from the law determined itself as something positive or as another content; but it is essentially a negative; it is the form and its movement is a movement that belongs to appearance. The kingdom of laws is the restful content of appearance; the latter is this same content but displayed in restless flux and as reflection-into-other. It is the law as negative, relentlessly self-mutating concrete existence, the movement of the passing over into the opposite, of self-sublation and return into unity. This side of the restless form or of the negativity does not contain the law; as against the law, therefore, appearance is the totality, for it contains the law but more yet, namely the moment of the self-moving form. — Thirdly, this shortcoming is manifested in the law in the mere diversity at first, and the consequent internal indifference, of its content; the identity of its sides with one another is at first, therefore, only immediate and hence inner, not yet necessary in other words. In a law two content determinations are essentially bound together (for instance, spatial and temporal magnitudes in the law of falling bodies: the traversed spaces vary as the squares of the elapsed times); they are bound together; this connection is at first only an immediate one. At first, therefore, it is likewise only a posited connection, just as the immediate has obtained in appearance the meaning of positedness in general. The essential unity of the two sides of the law would be their negativity, namely that each contains the other in it; but in the law this essential unity has not yet come the fore. (Thus it is not contained in the concept of the space traversed by a falling body that time corresponds to it as a square. Because the falling is a sensible movement, it is the ratio of space and time; but first, that time refers to space and space to time does not lie in the determination of time itself, that is to say, in time as ordinarily represented; it is said that time can very well be represented without space and space without time; the one thus comes to the other externally, and their external reference to each other is movement. Second, the more particular determination of how the magnitudes further relate to each other in movement is indifferent. The relevant law here is drawn from experience and is to this extent immediate; there is still required a proof, that is, a mediation, in order to know that the law not only occurs but is necessary; the law as such does not contain this proof and its objective necessity.) The law is, therefore, only the positive essentiality of appearance, not its negative essentiality according to which the content determinations are moments of the form, as such pass over into their other and are in their own selves not themselves but their other. In the law, therefore, although the positedness of the one side of it is the positedness of the other side, the content of the two sides is indifferent to this connection; it does not contain this positedness in it. Law, therefore, is indeed essential form, but not as yet real form which is reflected into its sides as content’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The one would contain its other within itself. But this essential unity has not yet emerged in Galileo’s law. The relation of time and space is merely posited. The Notion of space traversed by a falling body does not imply that time corresponds to it as a square. The determination of time — as it is commonly imagined — does not imply a relation to space. Commonly, it is said that time can quite well be imagined without space and space without time. So conceived, the two are only externally related to each other. The magnitude by which time and space is related (a, in s = at2) is also empirically ascertained.
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Philosophy, however, demands a notional proof, showing that the law not only occurs but is necessary. For a description of Hegel’s notional derivation of the law of the fall — undertaken in the ‘Philosophy of Nature’, consult Stefan Büttner. In this proof, time is unit and internal space is amount and external. The fact that time is in a ratio of power and in velocity’s denominator (s/t2) shows that the Notion of falling bodies manifests itself externally in the space it covers. For other remarks by Hegel on Galileo, see chapter 7.
The law as stated does not rest on its necessity. Law is, therefore, only the positive and not the negative, essentiality of Appearance. If scientific explanation does not contain necessity, then it ‘is no really explanation at all, but merely re-description of the phenomena as they happen to appear to Consciousness, i.e., logically indifferent to one another’, explains Michael Baur. In the negative essentiality of Appearance, content determinations are moments of form. They pass over into their other. In Law, the positedness of one side is the positedness of the other. Yet their content is indifferent to this relation. That is, when we assert the true Law about the realm of Appearances, we state some positive law, such as the law of falling bodies. The real law, however, is that Law is Appearance, and so this so-called Law of falling must itself fall to the ground. Law is essential in form — it self-erases. But, as expressed in s = at2, it is not yet real Form which is reflected into its sides as content. Its self-erasure is merely implicit. ‘Newton, for example’, explains Jean Hyppolite, ‘presents phenomena as diverse as the free fall of a body on earth and the general planetary movement around the sun … as universal gravitation. But ever since his Jena dissertation on planetary movement, Hegel had tried to show the error of such a reduction; it can only reach an abstract formula which, though it has, no doubt, the merit of setting forth lawfulness as lawfulness, completely obscures the qualitative diversity of the content’. According to Gadamer, the significance of Galileo’s law is that, because of friction, the law (as it exists in the World of Appearance) is never pure but is always compromised or perverted. Galileo’s law must therefore always be corrected by yet more law, in a bad infinity. But this does not mean Hegel discounts Galileo’s contribution. Hegel praises the immortal service which Galileo performed with his empirical discovery:
‘Regarding the absolute relations of measure, it should be noted that the Mathematics of Nature, if at all worthy of the name of science, would have to be essentially the science of measure — a science to which much has indeed been contributed empirically, but still preciously little scientifically, that is, philosophically. Mathematical principles of natural philosophy, as Newton called his work, if they are to live up to this title in a deeper sense than Newton and those of the entire Baconian lineage of philosophy did, would have to contain things of quite a different nature in order to shed some light on these regions, still dark yet eminently worthy of attention. — It is a great service to discover the empirical numbers of nature, e.g. the distances of the planets from each other; but an infinitely greater service would be to make the empirical quanta disappear by raising them to a universal form of quantitative determinations in which they become the moments of law or of measure — immortal services which, for instance, Galilei achieved for the motion of falling bodies and Kepler for the movement of the celestial bodies. These men have proven the laws they have discovered by showing that the full compass of the singular things of perception conform to them. But a still higher proof of these laws must be demanded — nothing less, namely, than of knowing their quantitative determinations from the qualities or determinate concepts connected in them (such as space and time). Of this kind of proof there is still no trace in the cited mathematical principles of natural philosophy, as also there is none in subsequent works of the same kind. It has already been remarked — in connection with the semblance of mathematical proofs of certain natural relations, a semblance based on the misuse of the infinitely small — that the attempt to conduct any such proof on a truly mathematical basis, that is, neither empirically nor conceptually, is an absurd undertaking. Proofs of this kind presuppose their theorems and even the laws to be proved from experience; what they manage to accomplish amounts to this, that they reduce such theorems and such laws to abstract expressions and convenient formulas. A better informed day will come when the entire and truly real merit that will be attributed to Newton in these matters as against Kepler — once the sham scaffolding of proofs has been cast aside, undoubtedly because of a clearer awareness of what mathematics can deliver and has delivered — will be restricted to Newton’s said transformation of Kepler’s formula and to his albeit still incipient introduction of analysis’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Although Hegel is usually viewed as an opponent of English common law, his discussion of the Law of Appearance actually describes its basis perfectly. On Hegel’s covert sympathy for the common law process, consult Arthur J. Jacobson. In the common law tradition, the judge states the law, based upon his reading of the cases. But this statement is merely the appearance of law. Subsequent generations of judges must find their own law. If the original case is upheld, the original statement may appear to endure, but in fact it is the new statement, not the old one, which is the law. The original statement fades away into memory as wise saws and modern instances displace it. No one can ever state what the common law is, except in the sense of Hegel’s Law of Appearance. The true common law, then, is that no statement of the law can endure.
In Galileo’s case, every new empirical measurement of bodies in fall is the law — not Galileo’s original publication of it. That is to say, empirical observation is king; should empirical observation depart from s = at2, Galileo’s law would be dead. Baur argues that Galileo’s law has a static, non-rational, lawless moment in it: the amount of the fall is trivial compared to the earth’s diameter. In effect, for Galileo’s law the earth’s diameter is infinitely wide. Only then can his law hold for all objects. For Newton, gravitational attraction works even if the falling object is significant compared to the earth’s diameter, but space and time are immutably fixed. But this is because the things we observe moving do not approach the speed of light. For Einstein, space and time are mutable, but the speed of light is fixed. In the above examples, law cannot escape the irrational, unnecessary moment of fixity. ‘If that which must be assumed by the Understanding is truly non-reducible to the other relations specified within the law, yet nevertheless relevant to the truth of the law itself, then necessarily it must find its way back into the law’ says Baur.
Hegel, then, turns the tables on H.L.A. Hart, who argued that the meta-law was the rule of recognition. In effect, these rules tell the judge how to tell the difference between law and non-law. Of course, Hart is only able to give examples of such rules — such as, when the two houses of Congress enact a bill by the requisite majorities and the president signs it, the result is a law. He does not define the entire process of legal recognition, except to assure us that law is recognized, and that judges occasionally formulate the rule they supposedly followed in this act of recognition. Hegel says something entirely different. He implies a rule of nonrecognition. Whatever a rule of recognition empirically causes to be recognized, that appearance is precisely what law is not. The only real law is that empirical law — an Appearance — must disappear.
Dedicated to the One. I am her Captain Corcoran and she is my Buttercup, (Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘H.M.S.Pinafore’ … you saw them cavorting at the beginning of this article).
Someday, when I’m awfully low
And the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight
Yes, you’re lovely
With your smile so warm and your cheek so soft
There is nothing for me but to love you
Just the way you look tonight
With each word your tenderness grows
Tearing my fear apart
And that smile that wrinkles your nose
Touches my foolish heart
Lovely, never, never change
Keep that breathless charm
Won’t you please arrange it ’cause I love you
Just the way you look tonight
Just the way you look tonight
The Way You Look Tonight….
Coming up next:
The World of Appearance and the World-in-Itself.
To be continued …
