On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part thirty nine.
‘Come, said the Muse’
by Walter Whitman Jr. (1819–1892)
Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born — conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed is waiting.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. ‘The Science of Logic’.
The Universal Notion.
The Universal Notion
In the grand scheme of things the Notion is a grand middle term a negation of the negation or the infinite unity of the negativity with itself and the pure relation of the Notion to itself is Universality.
‘The pure concept is the absolutely infinite, unconditioned and free. It is here, as the content of our treatise begins to be the concept itself, that we must look back once more at its genesis. Essence came to be out of being, and the concept out of essence, therefore also from being. But this becoming has the meaning of a self-repulsion, so that what becomes is rather the unconditional and the originative. In passing over into essence, being became a reflective shine or a positedness, and becoming or the passing over into an other became a positing; conversely, the positing or the reflection of essence sublated itself and restored itself to a non-posited, an original being. The concept is the mutual penetration of these moments, namely, the qualitative and the originative existent is only as positing and as immanent turning back, and this pure immanent reflection simply is the becoming-other or determinateness which is, consequently, no less infinite, self-referring determinateness’.
‘Thus the concept is absolute self-identity by being first just this, the negation of negation or the infinite unity of negativity with itself. This pure self-reference of the concept, which is such by positing itself through the negativity, is the universality of the concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
If Notion is itself and its other and the unity of itself and other, Universality is Notion itself the manifestation of the identical.
‘It also does not simply shine reflectively in its other, as does the determination of reflection. This determination, as something relative, does not refer only to itself but is a relating. It lets itself be known in its other, but at first it only shines reflectively in it, and this reflective shining of each in the other, or their reciprocal determination, has the form of an external activity alongside their self-subsistence. — The universal is posited, on the contrary, as the essence of its determination, as this determination’s own positive nature. For the determination that constitutes the negative of the universal is in the concept simply and solely a positedness; essentially, in other words, it is at the same time the negative of the negative, and only is as this self-identity of the negative which is the universal. To this extent, the universal is also the substance of its determinations, but in such a way that what for the substance as such was an accident, is the concept’s own self mediation, its own immanent reflection. But this mediation, which first raises the accidental to necessity, is the manifested reference; the concept is not the abyss of formless substance, or the necessity which is the inner identity of things or circumstances different from each other and reciprocally constricting; rather, as absolute negativity, it is the informing and creative principle, and since the determination is not as limitation but is just as much simply sublated as determination, is positedness, so is the reflective shine the appearance as appearance of the identical’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Elsewhere Hegel describes the Universal, Particular and Individual as concrete versions of abstract Identity, Difference and Ground.
‘The Concept is what is altogether concrete, because negative unity with itself as being-determined-in-and-for-itself (which is what singularity is) constitutes its own relation to self, or universality. From this point of view, the moments of the Concept cannot be separated; the determinations of reflection are supposed to be grasped and to be valid each on its own, separately from the one opposed to it; but since in the Concept their identity is posited, each of its moments can only be grasped immediately on the basis of and together with the others’.
‘Taken abstractly, universality, particularity, and singularity are the same as identity, distinction, and ground. But the universal is what is identical with itself explicitly in the sense that it contains the particular and the singular at the same time. Furthermore, the particular is what is distinct or the determinacy, but in the sense that it is inwardly universal and is [actual] as something-singular. Similarly, the singular means that it is subject, the foundation that contains the genus and species within itself and is itself substantial. This is the posited unseparatedness of the moments in their distinction — the clarity of the Concept, in which each of the distinctions does not constitute a breach, or blurring, but is transparent precisely as such. There is no greater commonplace than that the Concept is something abstract. This is correct in two ways: inasmuch as the element of the Concept is just thinking, and not the sensible in its empirical concreteness; and inasmuch as the Concept is not yet the Idea. From this point of view the subjective Concept is still formal, but this in no way means that it has to have or to receive any content other than itself.- As the absolute form itself, it is every determinacy, but in the way that it is in its truth. Although it is abstract, therefore, it is also what is concrete, and indeed it is what is altogether concrete, subject as such. What is absolutely concrete is the spirit : the Concept, insofar as it exists as Concept, distinguishing itself from its own objectivity (which remains its own, however, in spite of the distinguishing) . Everything else that is concrete, however rich it may be, is not so intimately identical with itself, and hence not so concrete in itself; and least of all what is commonly understood by ‘concrete’, [i. e., ] a manifold that is externally held together.-What are also called concepts, and indeed determinate concepts, for instance, man, house, animal, etc., are simple determinations and abstract representations; these are abstractions that take only the moment of universality from the Concept, leaving out particularity and singularity, so that they are not developed in themselves and therefore they abstract precisely from the Concept’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
But if Universality is simple, is it not inexplicable? For an explanation must concern itself with definitions and distinctions and must apply predicates to its object.
‘Universality seems incapable of explanation, because it is the simplest of determinations; explanation must rely on determinations and differentiations and must apply predicates to its subject matter, and this would alter rather than explain the simple. But it is precisely of the nature of the universal to be a simple that, by virtue of absolute negativity, contains difference and determinateness in itself in the highest degree. Being is simple as an immediate; for this reason we can only intend it without being able to say what it is; therefore, it is immediately one with its other, non-being. The concept of being is just this, that it is so simple as to vanish into its opposite immediately; it is becoming. The universal is, on the contrary, a simple that is at the same time all the richer in itself, for it is the concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
To explain the Universal would be to introduce distinctions into and thereby distort the Universal and yet the Universal is explicable for albeit it is simple self-relation (the Notion itself) it contains within itself difference and determinateness in the highest degree, and pure Being may have been inexplicable in the above sense, its Notion was to vanish into its opposite and the Universal possesses within itself the richest content.
Universal Notion is abstract and to obtain it it is necessary to omit the Particular and the Individual and these negate the abstract Universal, and, since what is being considered here is the Understanding’s proposition that the Notion is abstractly Universal these must be negated and hence the abstract Universal is still, by this observation, a negation of the negation, it is infected with a negation
‘The beginning, therefore, has for the method no other determinateness than that of being the simple and universal; this is precisely the determinateness that makes it deficient. Universality is the pure, simple concept, and the method, as the consciousness of this concept, is aware that universality is only a moment and that in it the concept is still not determined in and for itself. But with this consciousness that would want to carry the beginning further only for the sake of method, the method is only a formal procedure posited in external reflection. Where the method, however, is the objective and immanent form, the immediate character of the beginning must be a lack inherent in the beginning itself, which must be endowed with the impulse to carry itself further. But in the absolute method the universal has the value not of a mere abstraction but of the objective universal, that is, the universal that is in itself the concrete totality, but a totality as yet not posited, not yet for itself. Even the abstract universal is as such, when considered conceptually, that is, in its truth, not just anything simple, but is, as abstract, already posited afflicted by a negation. For this reason also there is nothing so simple and so abstract, be it in actuality or in thought, as is commonly imagined. Anything as simple as that is a mere presumption that has its ground solely in the lack of awareness of what is actually there. –We said earlier that the beginning is made with the immediate; the immediacy of the universal is the same as what is here expressed as the in-itself that is without being-for-itself. –One may well say, therefore, that every beginning must be made with the absolute, just as every advance is only the exposition of it, in so far as implicit in existence is the concept. But because the absolute exists at first only implicitly, in itself, it equally is not the absolute nor the posited concept, and also not the idea, for the in-itself is only an abstract, one-sided moment, and this is what they are. The advance is not, therefore, a kind of superfluity; this is what it would be if that which is at the beginning were already the absolute; the advance consists rather in this, that the universal determines itself and is the universal for itself, that is, equally a singular and a subject. Only in its consummation is it the absolute’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
‘Far from having a separate existence … the abstract universal cannot have its own identity unless it stands in relation to both particularity and individuality’, said Richard Dien Winfield, (1950 — ).
Such an observation however is strictly for us.
The Notion must further develop before it manifests itself as a negation of the negation.
BEROWNE:
Consider what you first did swear unto:
To fast, to study, and to see no woman-
Flat treason ‘gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And, where that you you have vow’d to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study’s excellence
Without the beauty of a woman’s face?
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why, universal plodding poisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman’s face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,
And study too, the causer of your vow;
For where is author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are our learning likewise is;
Then when ourselves we see in ladies’ eyes,
With ourselves.
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords,
And in that vow we have forsworn our books.
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
Of beauty’s tutors have enrich’d you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;
But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain,
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d.
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:
Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temp’red with Love’s sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish, all the world,
Else none at all in aught proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love;
Or for Love’s sake, a word that loves all men;
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women;
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men-
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn;
For charity itself fulfils the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
- William Shakespeare, (1564–1616), ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, Act 4, Sc.3
The Universal stands for the soul of the concrete which it indwells unimpeded and equal to itself in the manifoldness and diversity of the concrete and it is not dragged into the process of becoming but continues itself through that process undisturbed and possesses the power of unalterable undying self-preservation.
‘Accordingly, because of this original unity, the first negative, or the determination, is not, to begin with, a restriction for the universal; rather, the latter maintains itself in it and its self-identity is positive. The categories of being were, as concepts, essentially these identities of the determinations with themselves in their restriction or their otherness; but this identity was only implicitly the concept, was not yet made manifest. Consequently, the qualitative determination perished as such in its other and had as its truth a determination diverse from it. The universal, on the contrary, even when it posits itself in a determination, remains in it what it is. It is the soul of the concrete which it inhabits, unhindered and equal to itself in its manifoldness and diversity. It is not swept away in the becoming but persists undisturbed through it, endowed with the power of unalterable, undying self-preservation’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Determination is no Limitation for the Universal which diffuses into its own (non-) beyond. In Being, identity-with-self existed within Limitation and such identity-with-self was the Notion only implicitly, because the Notion was only implicit the qualitative determination as such was lost in its other and had for its truth a determination distinct from itself.
‘It also does not simply shine reflectively in its other, as does the determination of reflection. This determination, as something relative, does not refer only to itself but is a relating. It lets itself be known in its other, but at first it only shines reflectively in it, and this reflective shining of each in the other, or their reciprocal determination, has the form of an external activity alongside their self-subsistence. — The universal is posited, on the contrary, as the essence of its determination, as this determination’s own positive nature. For the determination that constitutes the negative of the universal is in the concept simply and solely a positedness; essentially, in other words, it is at the same time the negative of the negative, and only is as this self-identity of the negative which is the universal. To this extent, the universal is also the substance of its determinations, but in such a way that what for the substance as such was an accident, is the concept’s own self mediation, its own immanent reflection. But this mediation, which first raises the accidental to necessity, is the manifested reference; the concept is not the abyss of formless substance, or the necessity which is the inner identity of things or circumstances different from each other and reciprocally constricting; rather, as absolute negativity, it is the informing and creative principle, and since the determination is not as limitation but is just as much simply sublated as determination, is positedness, so is the reflective shine the appearance as appearance of the identical’. — The Science of Logic’.
In the Determinations of Reflection the Universal was show (or Illusory Being) but such a show depended upon otherness and as correlative a determination of Reflection was self-related but also a positive relating of itself to its other in which it manifests itself and each showed itself in the other and so each was reciprocally determined. This reciprocity has the form of an external act while in contrast the Universal is now posited as the essential being of its determination, as the latter’s own positive nature. Which is to say the Universal is the Substance that is to say subsisting manifestation of its own determinations. Substance remember was the unity of Contingency and Necessity and Contingency stood for the groundedness of the Actual in the happenstance of external conditions and what was a contingency for substance is the Notion’s own self-mediation. In the Universal the relation of self to itself is the manifested relation and accordingly the Universal is not the abyss of formless substance nor merely inner. Notion is its own origin the shaper and creator of its own self it is the manifestation of its principle the manifestation of the identical and the Universal is said to be free power, free love and boundless blessedness.
‘The universal is therefore free power; it is itself while reaching out to its other and embracing it, but without doing violence to it; on the contrary, it is at rest in its other as in its own. Just as it has been called free power, it could also be called free love and boundless blessedness, for it relates to that which is distinct from it as to itself; in it, it has returned to itself. Mention has just been made of determinateness, even though the concept has not yet progressed to it, being at first only as the universal and only self-identical. But one cannot speak of the universal apart from determinateness which, to be more precise, is particularity and singularity. For in its absolute negativity the universal contains determinateness in and for itself, so that, when speaking of determinateness in connection with the universal, the determinateness is not being imported into the latter from outside. As negativity in general, that is, according to the first immediate negation, the universal has determinateness in it above all as particularity; as a second universal, as the negation of negation, it is absolute determinateness, that is, singularity and concreteness. — The universal is thus the totality of the concept; it is what is concrete, is not empty but, on the contrary, has content by virtue of its concept — a content in which the universal does not just preserve itself but is rather the universal’s own, immanent to it. It is of course possible to abstract from this content, but what we have then is not the universal element of the concept but the abstract universal, which is an isolated and imperfect moment of the concept, void of truth’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
That Notion is free power was established in Absolute Relation (Unity of Substance and Accident), where it was seen that Substance is self-manifestation. It must go forth into Accident from which it is alienated and when it goes forth into its other the Universal Notion is itself and takes its other within its embrace, but without doing violence to it. In brief, the Universal does unto others as it does unto itself, ‘not by force but by quietly being present in it’, as John W. Burbidge puts it. In becoming other it returns to itself and these are indeed the very hallmarks of love.
ROMEO:
Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops, —
JULIET:
O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
ROMEO:
What shall I swear by?
JULIET:
Do not swear at all.
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee.
ROMEO:
If my heart’s dear love, —
JULIET:
Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight;
It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say It lightens. Sweet, good night.
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night. As sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast.
ROMEO:
O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
JULIET:
What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?
ROMEO:
Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.
JULIET:
I gave thee mine before thou didst request it;
And yet I would it were to give again.
ROMEO:
Would’st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
JULIET:
But to be frank and give it thee again.
And yet I wish but for the thing I have;
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu.
[Nurse calls within.]
Anon, good Nurse! — Sweet Montague be true.
Stay but a little, I will come again.
[Exit.]
ROMEO:
O blessed, blessed night. I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering sweet to be substantial.
Enter Juliet above.
JULIET:
Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,
By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
- William Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Act 2, Sc. 2
[Hegel refers to Shakespeare often in the ‘Lecture on Aesthetics’ and we may suppose ‘Romeo and Juliet was his favourite as that is the play he refers to the most. So when he says of the Universal that it is free love and boundless blessedness almost certainly he has the words of Juliet in mind: ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite’].
Love implies otherness, however, and we are only at the stage of the Universal Notion — the Notion as itself (and not yet Notion as its other or Notion as the unity of the two). In truth, we cannot speak of the universal apart from determinateness which to be more precise is particularity and universality. As the absolute is now before us, there is no other to the Notion, even in the initial stage of Universal Notion. Rather, Notion contains all moments within it. The determinateness of the Notion is not introduced from the outside, what the Notion must do is to develop those moments until the moments and the whole completely coincide.
Abstraction. When the Universal isolates itself from its other moments it ceases to be itself, rather than Universal it reveals itself to be Particular, determinate, and abstract and the Particular as such does not appear to be a unity of itself, its other and the unity of both and particularity is not present as a totality.
‘Now the determinateness is indeed an abstraction, as against the other determinateness; but the other determinateness is only universality itself, and this too is therefore abstract universality; and the determinateness of the concept, or particularity, is again nothing more than determinate universality. In this universality, the concept is outside itself, and because it is it, the concept, which is there outside itself, the abstract-universal contains all the moments of the concept. It is (a) universality, (b) determinateness, © the simple unity of the two; but this unity is immediate, and the particularity is not therefore as totality. Implicitly it is this totality also, and mediation; it is essentially a reference to the other excluding it, or the sublation of negation, namely of the other determinateness — an other that lingers on only as an intention, for it vanishes immediately revealing itself to be the same as its other is supposed to be. Therefore, what makes this universality an abstraction is that the mediation is only a condition, or is not posited in it. Because it is not posited, the unity of the abstraction has the form of immediacy, and the content has the form of indifference to its universality, for the content is nothing but this totality which is the universality of absolute negativity. Hence the abstract universal is indeed the concept, but the unconceptualized concept, the concept not posited as such’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Notion is outside itself. As an abstract, the Universal is, indeed, the Notion, yet it is without the Notion; it is the Notion that is not posited as such. Yet Particularization is something the Universal does to itself. ‘In a first move, universality has to be asserted in its negativity, as exclusive of all particular content — that is to say, not as an all-encompassing container, but as the destructive force which undermines every particular content … the true Hegelian concrete universality is the very movement of negativity which splits universality from within, reducing it to one of the particular elements, one of its own species. It is only at this moment, when universality, as it were, loses the distance of an abstract container, and enters its own frame, that it becomes truly concrete’ says Slavoj Žižek, (1949 — ).
When people specie of notions, they usually mean an abstract universal. The Understanding’s the faculty of such Notions. The Understanding takesTitselfto be outside Substance, and just because it is outside it, a contingent understanding — in which and for which substance is present in various attributes and modes.
‘When we speak of the determinate concept, what we ordinarily mean is precisely just this abstract universal. Even by concept as such, what is generally understood is only this unconceptualized concept, and the understanding is designated as its faculty. Demonstration belongs to this understanding inasmuch as it proceeds by way of concepts, that is to say, only in determinations. This progression by way of concepts does not therefore reach past finitude and necessity; the highest it reaches is the negative infinite, the abstraction of the highest essence which is itself the determinateness of the indeterminateness. Absolute substance, too, although not this empty abstraction but on the contrary a totality according to content, is still abstract, for since it is without absolute form, its innermost truth is not constituted by the concept; although it is the identity of universality and particularity, or of thought and externality, this identity is not the determinateness of the concept; there is rather an understanding outside it — an understanding which is contingent precisely because it is outside it — in which and for which substance exists in diverse attributes and modes’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Hegel refers to Spinoza here.
Yet abstraction is not as empty as usually thought, Hegel suggests. Abstraction to the point of indeterminateness is, after all, a determinateness, just as nothing is and always has been something. The Understanding should not be lightly esteemed because it abstracts, the Understanding fixes propositions, it proposes abstract universals but these abstract universals also contain the genuine Universal and for this very reason the fixities of the Understanding do not stay fixed and accordingly one must recognize the infinite force of the understanding in splitting the concrete into abstract determinatenesses and plumbing the depth of notional difference and the Understanding is alone the power that effects their transition.
‘Here we have the circumstance that explains why the understanding is nowadays held in such a low repute and is so much discredited when measured against reason; it is the fixity which it imparts to determinacies and consequently to anything finite. This fixity consists in the form of the abstract universality just considered that makes them unalterable. For qualitative determinateness, and also the determination of reflection, are essentially limited, and because of their limitation they entail a reference to their other; hence the necessity of their transition and passing away. But the universality which they possess in the understanding gives them the form of immanent reflection and, because this form removes from them the reference to the other, they have become unalterable. Now although this eternity belongs to the pure concept by nature, the determinations of the concept are eternal essentialities only according to form; but their content is not proportionate to this form and, therefore, they are not truth, or imperishable. Their content is not proportionate to the form because it is not the determinateness itself as universal, that is, not as totality of the difference of the concept, or is not itself the whole form; the form of the limited understanding is for this reason itself imperfect universality, that is to say, abstract universality. — But further, we must pay due respect to the infinite force of the understanding in splitting the concrete into abstract determinacies and plumbing the depth of the difference — this force which alone is at the same time the mighty power causing the transition of the determinacies. The concrete of intuition is a totality, but a sensuous totality, a real material that subsists in space and time, part outside part, each indifferent to the other; surely this lack of unity in a manifold that makes it the content of intuition ought not to be credited as privileging it over the universal of the understanding. The mutability that the manifold exhibits in intuition already points to the universal; but all of the manifold that comes to intuition is just more of the same, an equally alterable other — not the universal that one would expect to appear and take its place. But least of all should we reckon to the credit of such sciences as for example Geometry and Arithmetic that their material carries an intuitive element with it, or imagine that their propositions are grounded by it. On the contrary, the presence of that element renders the material of these sciences of an inferior nature; the intuition of figures or numbers is of no help to the science of figures and numbers; only the thought of them produces this science. — But if by intuition we understand not merely a sensuous material but the objective totality, then the intuition is an intellectual one, that is, its subject matter is not existence in its externalization but that element in existence which is unalterable reality and truth — the reality only in so far as it is essentially in the concept and is determined by it; the idea, of whose more precise nature more will be said later. What intuition as such is supposed to have over the concept is external reality, the reality that lacks the concept and receives value only through the concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
More precisely, the fixity of the Understanding presupposes Limit and Limit implies relation to an other and Limited, finite things ought to pass away to travel past their limit. And yet because these fixities are the genuine Universal they are freed from the relation-to-other and have become imperishable. Most assuredly the abstract universal of the Understanding has the form but not the content of the genuine Universal and the abstract universal will perish in virtue of its content being at variance with the form.
The Understanding or mere intuition presupposes a material world which has an indifferent sundered existence in space and time but surely this absence of unity in the manifold ought not to be counted to it for merit and superiority over intellectual that is to say Notional existence. The fixities of the Understanding are mutable, and this points to the Universal and yet unless the mechanics of True Infinity are understood, dissolution of one abstract universal simply brings another into view, a Spurious Infinity of abstractions.
The Understanding is lauded for according to logical moments a rigidity of being such as they do not possess in the qualitative sphere and in the sphere of reflection.
‘Consequently, since the understanding exhibits the infinite force that determines the universal, or conversely, since it is the understanding that through the form of universality imparts stable subsistence to the otherwise inherent instability of determinateness, then it is not the fault of the understanding if there is no further advance. It is a subjective impotence of reason that allows these determinacies to remain so dispersed, and is unable to bring them back to their unity through the dialectical force opposed to that abstract universality, that is to say, through the determinacies’ own nature which is their concept. To be sure, the understanding does give them through the form of abstract universality a rigidity of being, so to speak, which they do not otherwise possess in the qualitative sphere and in the sphere of reflection; but by thus simplifying them, the understanding at the same time quickens them with spirit, and it so sharpens them that only at that point, only there, do they also obtain the capacity to dissolve themselves and to pass over into their opposite. The ripest maturity, the highest stage, that anything can attain is the one at which its fall begins. The fixity of the determinacies which the understanding appears to run up against, the form of the imperishable, is that of self-referring universality. But this universality belongs to the concept as its own, and for this reason what is found expressed in it, infinitely close at hand, is the dissolution of the finite. This universality directly contradicts the determinateness of the finite and makes explicit its disproportion with respect to it. — Or rather, that disproportion is already at hand; the abstract determinate is posited as one with universality and, for this reason, not for itself (for it would then be only a determinate) but, on the contrary, only as the unity of itself and the universal, that is, as concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Understanding is likewise given credit because it spiritually impregnates (begeistet) these isolated moments such that they acquire the capability to dissolve themselves and to pass over into their opposite and accordingly, the highest maturity, the highest stage, which anything can attain is that in which its downfall begins. The dissolution of the finite, Hegel suggests, is the core idea of the genuine Universal. In accordance with this thought, Zizek suggests that the self-sacrifice of the Universal is the core of Christianity itself and therefore the finite moments of the Understanding are actually a unity of themselves and genuine Universality.
In the end Hegel suggests it is a mistake to separate the Understanding from reason in the manner of Kant for if the Notion is regarded as irrational that is to say if reason dissolves into antinomies then reason has failed to recognize itself in the Notion. Notion is the very condition of reason, it is form spiritually impregnated, in which the finite, through the universality in which it relates itself to itself, spontaneously catches fire, posits itself as dialectical and thereby is the beginning of the manifestation of reason.
‘Therefore the common practice of separating understanding and reason is to be rejected on all counts. On the contrary, to consider the concept as void of reason should itself be considered as an incapacity of reason to recognize itself in the concept. The determinate and abstract concept is the condition, or rather an essential moment, of reason; it is form quickened by spirit in which the finite, through the universality in which it refers to itself, is internally kindled, is posited as dialectical and thereby is the beginning of the appearance of reason’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
PROTEUS:
Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.
SYLVIA:
What’s your will?
PROTEUS:
That I may compass yours.
SYLVIA:
You have your wish; my will is even this:
That presently you hie you home to bed.
Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man!
Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,
To be seduced by thy flattery,
That hast deceived so many with thy vows?
Return, return, and make thy love amends.
For me, — by this pale queen of night I swear,
I am so far from granting thy request,
That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit;
And by and by intend to chide myself
Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.
PROTEUS:
I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady;
But she is dead.
JULIA [Aside]:
’Twere false, if I should speak it;
For I am sure she is not buried.
SYLVIA:
Say that she be; yet Valentine thy friend
Survives; to whom, thyself art witness,
I am betroth’d: and art thou not ashamed
To wrong him with thy importunacy?
PROTEUS:
I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.
SYLVIA:
And so suppose am I; for in his grave
Assure thyself my love is buried.
PROTEUS:
Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.
SYLVIA:
Go to thy lady’s grave, and call hers thence;
Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.
JULIA [Aside]:
He heard not that.
PROTEUS:
Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,
Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,
The picture that is hanging in your chamber;
To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep:
For since the substance of your perfect self
Is else devoted, I am but a shadow;
And to your shadow will I make true love.
JULIA [Aside]:
If ’twere a substance, you would, sure, deceive it,
And make it but a shadow, as I am.
SYLVIA:
I am very loath to be your idol, sir;
But since your falsehood shall become you well
To worship shadows and adore false shapes,
Send to me in the morning, and I’ll send it:
And so, good rest.
PROTEUS:
As wretches have o’ernight
That wait for execution in the morn.
Henry Bishop, (1787–1855): ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ — Incidental Music — ‘Oh! never say that I was false of heart’:
Dedicated to the One. True love indeed is everlasting for the individual is accepted into the universal, (the latter is free blessedness after all), foibles and oddities and downright cussedness notwithstanding. Acceptance is a most wonderful thing, how blessed are those granted it. I will get on to the individual after the particular and if you wonder what the difference is all will be revealed.
Hold me, kiss me,
Whisper sweetly
That you love me
Forever.
Hold me, kiss me,
Whisper sweetly
That you love me
Forever.
Little Dippers — ‘Forever’ 1960:
Coming up next:
The Particular Notion.
To be continued …
