On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part twenty seven.
‘Once I went a‑walking’
by August Kopisch (1799–1853)
Once I went a-walking
Upon the seashore:
Ah, there I lost my heart
In the deep sand.
I asked along the shore
All the shipmen:
That you were carrying it within your bosom,
That’s what they all told me.
Now I have come to ask you,
By love and faith.
I have no heart, but you,
You have two of them!
And do you know what you can do,
You dear little one:
You keep mine for yourself and
Give me yours.
‘Ich ging einmal spazieren’
Ich ging einmal spazieren
Am Meeresstrande:
Ach, da verlor mein Herz ich
Im tiefen Sande.
Da fragt’ ich an dem Strande
Die Schiffer alle:
Daß du es trügst im Busen
Sagten mir alle.
Nun komm’ ich dich zu bitten,
Bei Lieb’ und Treue.
Ich ohne Herz, du aber
Hast deren zweie!
Und weißt du was du thun kannst,
Du liebe Kleine:
Behalt dir meines, schenke
Du mir das deine.
Determinate Ground.
Formal Ground Formal Ground is the realm of tautological explanation, where Moliere’s physicians explain the virtus dormitiva of opium. In this relation of opium to dormitive force, opium is Grounded (or Form). Dormitive force is Ground (or Substrate). At this stage, ground is negatively self-related identity, which thereby makes itself into a positedness.
‘The ground has a determinate content. For the form, as we have seen, the determinateness of content is the substrate, the simple immediate as against the mediation of form. The ground is negatively self-referring identity which, for this reason, makes itself into a positedness; it negatively refers to itself because in its negativity it is identical with itself; this identity is the substrate or the content which thus constitutes the indifferent or positive unity of the ground-connection and, in this connection, is the mediating factor’.
‘In this content, the determinateness that the ground and the grounded have over against one another has at first disappeared. The mediation, however, is also negative unity. The negative implicit in that indifferent substrate is this substrate’s immediate determinateness through which the ground has a determinate content. But then, the negative is the negative reference of form to itself. What has been posited sublates itself on its side and returns to its ground; the ground, however, the essential selfsubsistence, refers negatively to itself and makes itself into a positedness. This negative mediation of ground and grounded is the mediation that belongs to form as such, formal mediation. Now both sides of form, because each passes over into the other, thereby mutually posit themselves into one identity as sublated; in this, they pre-suppose the identity. The latter is the determinate content to which the formal mediation thus refers itself through itself as to the positive mediating factor. That content is the identical element of both, and because the two are distinct, yet in their distinction each is the reference to the other, it is their subsistence, the subsistence of each as the whole itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
How is this so? Negative self-relation is, by now, a familiar contradiction. Negation implies a doubleness at odds with immediacy. The self-relation is negative because it was produced when the extremes — Form and Content in Form and Content — negated themselves. This immediacy, in Formal Ground, has now made itself into a positedness. The Substrate presupposes that it has Form, even within the immediacy of a, b.
The Understanding sees that the job of Form is to self-erase and withdraw into Ground. ‘In a formal ground, there is no difference in content between the ground and what is grounded by it. Any distinction is simply formal, a matter of superficial structure’, explains John W. Burbidge. But Dialectical Reason sees that both sides are Form, because each passes over into the other, mutually posit themselves as sublated in one identity; in doing so they presuppose this identity. One consequence of this insight is that, if form mediates content, then ‘a merely formal theory of knowledge, such as epistemology sets forth, negates itself; it is not possible’, explains Theodor W. Adorno, (1903–1969).
This identity Hegel names Formal Content, or Sufficient Ground.
Since the Formal Content of Form and Ground is that they erase themselves, the Self-Subsistence of Form or Ground is to be found in its other. Both sides, then, are simultaneously Ground and Grounded. It does not matter which of the two determinations is made the first, whether the transition is made from the posited to the other as ground, or from the one as ground to the other as the posited.
‘Accordingly, the result is that in the determinate ground we have the following. First, a determinate content is considered from two sides, once in so far as it is ground, then again in so far as it is grounded. The content itself is indifferent to these forms; it is in each simply and solely one determination. Second, the ground is itself just as much a moment of form as what is posited by it; this is its identity according to form. It is a matter of indifference which of the two determinations is made the first, whether the transition is from the one as posited to the other as ground or from the one as ground to the other as posited. The grounded, considered for itself, is the sublating of itself; it thereby makes itself on the one side into a posited, and is at the same time the positing of the ground. The same movement is the ground as such; it makes itself into something posited, and thereby becomes the ground of something, that is to say, is present therein both as a posited and also first as ground. That there be a ground, of that the posited is the ground, and, conversely, the ground is thereby the posited. The mediation begins just as much from the one as from the other; each side is just as much ground as posited, and each is the whole mediation or the whole form. — Further, this whole form is itself, as self-identical, the substrate of the two determinations that constitute the two sides of the ground and the grounded; form and content are thus themselves one and the same identity’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Meanwhile, Formal Content enjoys an immediacy c vis-ä-vis the active extremes. In this immediate moment, it is indifferent to this form; in both it is simply one determination only. Once again, Self-Subsistence is held apart from Ground/Grounded. Ground and Grounded turn into each other. Neither can distinguish the other from itself. Formal Content stands to one side and laughs at the impotence of Ground and Grounded. In Slavoj Žižek’s, (1949 — ), view this self-subsistence that comes into view here is the exception which will develop into subjectivity itself.
Hegel also calls the Formal Content sufficient ground a Leibnizian phrase. (Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz, (1646–1716).
‘Because of this identity of the ground and the grounded, according both to content and form, the ground is sufficient (the sufficiency being limited to this relation); there is nothing in the grounded which is not in the ground. Whenever one asks for a ground, one expects to see the same determination which is the content doubled, once in the form of that which is posited, and again in the form of existence reflected into itself, of essentiality’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In Formal Content (Sufficient Ground), the parts are each other, the parts are themselves, the parts are the whole, and the whole is the parts, there is nothing in the ground that is not in the grounded, and there is nothing in the grounded that is not in the ground.
Formal Ground
In a short Remark, Hegel comments on Leibniz’s concept of sufficient ground. The word sufficient (zureichender), Hegel suggests, is superfluous. Insufficiency means that it is not Ground at all. Leibniz insists that everything has a Ground. According to this concept, everything that is is posited by something else. Being is seen as a bad infinity, in which immediate appearance dissolves itself, and the thing constantly withdraws into its deeper, essential ground. In the law of ground, therefore, the essential character of reflection-into-self in contrast to mere being is expressed.
‘Ground, like all the other determinations of reflection, is expressed in a principle: ‘Everything has a sufficient ground or reason’. — In general, this means nothing but this: Anything which is, is to be considered to exist not as an immediate, but as a posited; there is no stopping at immediate existence but a return must rather be made from it back into its ground, and in this reflection it is a sublated being and is in and for itself. What is expressed by the principle of sufficient reason is, therefore, the essentiality of immanent reflection as against mere being. — That the ground or reason must be sufficient is strictly speaking a totally superfluous addition, for it goes without saying; a thing without sufficient ground would have no ground, yet everything ought to have a ground. But Leibniz, for whom the principle of sufficient reason was especially dear to his heart and even made it the basic principle of his whole philosophy, associated a more profound meaning with ‘sufficient’ than is normally the case when one simply stops at its immediate expression — although, to be sure, even in this ordinary sense the proposition is already to be regarded as important, for it says that being as such, in its immediacy, is an untruth, that it is something essentially posited, and that it is the ground which is rather the true immediate. But Leibniz took the sufficiency of the ground above all in opposition to causality taken in its strict sense as mechanical efficiency. Since this mode of efficiency is as such an external activity restricted to a single determinateness according to content, the determinations that it posits come associated together externally and accidentally; taken one by one, the determinations are comprehended through their causes; but their connection, which constitutes what is essential in a concrete existence, is not to be found in mechanical causes. That connection, the whole as essential unity, is to be found only in the concept, in the purpose. Mechanical causes are not sufficient for this unity, for they do not have as their ground the purpose which is the unity of the determinations. Accordingly, by “sufficient ground” Leibniz understood one that sufficed also for this unity and comprehended, therefore, not just causes but final causes. But this definition of “ground” is at this point still premature; to be a ground in a teleological sense is a property of the concept and of the mediation effected through of it, and this mediation is reason’.
And as Hegel remarks elsewhere, we wish to see the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the law of sufficient ground, as it is called; it asserts that things should be viewed as mediated
‘When we ask about the grounds of things, this is precisely the standpoint of reflection that we mentioned earlier; we want to see the thing in question duplicated as it were: first in its immediacy and secondly in its ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is indeed the simple meaning of the so-called principle of sufficient reason or ground. This principle only asserts that things must essentially be regarded as mediated. Moreover, in setting up this law of thought, formal logic gives the other sciences a bad example, since it asks them not to take their content as valid in its immediacy; while, for its own part, it sets up this law of thought without deducing it and exhibiting its process of mediation. With the same right that the logician asserts when he maintains that our faculty of thinking happens to be so constituted that we must always ask for a ground, the doctor could answer that people are so organised that they cannot live under water when he is asked why a person who falls into the water drowns; and in the same way a jurist who is asked why a criminal is punished could answer that civil society is so constituted that crime cannot be allowed to go unpunished’.
- ‘The Encyclopedia Logic’
Hegel gives credit to Leibniz, who made sufficient ground the basis of his entire philosophy. At least this law expresses the idea that immediate being is not the truth of the thing. For Leibniz, Ground was assigned the honour of being the true immediate. Leibniz distinguished the law of sufficient ground from causality. Causality is an external relation between cause and effect, not an immanent one. Sufficiency of ground had to do with immanent unity — final cause. In a paper dated 1697, Leibniz wrote: ‘In eternal things, even though there be no cause, there must be a reason, which, for permanent things, is necessity itself, or essence; but for the series of changing things, if it be supposed that they succeed one another from all eternity, this reason is … the prevailing of inclinations, which consist not in necessitating reasons … but inclining reasons’. An inclining reason is ‘the perception of the good, either by the substance itself, if it be free, or by God, if the substance be not free’. But this, Hegel warns, is not yet the proper place for this determination of ground. Teleology is reserved a spot very late in the Logic. In the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, Hegel spends much time on tautology. But Jean Hyppolite, (1907–1968), defends the expenditure of resources. The very structure of any explanation is that ‘it goes from the same to the same’, he says.
The state of sufficient ground is underwritten by common sense: When we ask for a ground, we want to see the same determination that is content, double, once in the form of something posited, and again in the form of a determinate being reflected into itself, of essentiality.
Formal Content (Sufficient Ground)
Yet Sufficient Ground is pitifully deficient. There is as yet no real determination of the sides of the ground, they have no distinct content.
‘Now inasmuch as in the determined ground, the ground and the grounded are each the whole form, and their content, though determinate, is nevertheless one and the same, the two sides of the ground do not as yet have a real determination, do not have a different content; the determinateness is only one simple determinateness that has yet to pass over into the two sides; the determinate ground is present only in its pure form, as formal ground. — Because the content is only this simple determinateness, one that does not have in it the form of the ground-connection, the determinateness is a self-identical content indifferent to form, and the form is external to it; the content is other than the form’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In Formal Content (Sufficient Ground) the extremes have disappeared into their unity b. This whole is too simple. It does not possess within itself the form of the ground-relation. Hence, Formal Content is indifferent to the form, which is external to it; the content is other than the form. What must occur is that the extremes must expressly show themselves to be different from yet equal to the whole.
Pitiful Formal Ground may be, but it should not be missed that Formal Ground reveals the notional form. Notion is the unity of (1) itself (Universality), (2) its other (Particularity), and (3) the unity of itself and other (Individuality). Notion (or subjectivity) is indeed tautological or, to use the grander term, free. Ground is an activity — the act of self-erasure. Therefore, Clark Butler is correct in referring to Sufficient Ground as ‘the self-determination of an event which can be partially described but never sufficiently ‘explained’,’ explains Clark Butler. If it could be explained, it would be determined by other causes and would not be self-determined.
Tautology. At the stage of Formal Ground, the assignment of a ground remains a mere formalism and empty tautology which expresses in the form of… essentiality the same content that is already present in the form of an immediate being.
‘When the search for determinate grounds does not go past the form of ground as we have just developed, then the assigning of a ground remains a mere formalism, the empty tautology of repeating in the form of immanent reflection, of essentiality, the same content already present in the form of immediate existence considered as posited. This exercise of assigning grounds is for this reason just as empty as any discourse only governed by the principle of identity. The sciences, especially the physical sciences, are full of tautologies of this kind which apparently constitute the prerogative of science. — For instance, the ground for the planets moving around the sun is given to be the reciprocal attractive force of the sun and the earth. So far as content goes, this says no more than what is contained in the phenomenon, namely that the movements of the two bodies are correlated, except that it is expressed in the form of a determination reflected into itself, that of force. If it is asked what kind of force this attractive force might be, the answer is that it is the force that makes the earth move around the sun, that is to say, it has exactly the same content as the existence for which it is supposed to be the ground; the connection of the earth and sun with respect to motion is the identical substrate of ground and grounded. — When a form of crystallization is explained in this way, namely that it is grounded in the particular arrangement into which the molecules enter with one another, the actual crystallization is this arrangement itself, except expressed as ground. These etiologies, which are the privilege of the sciences, are valued in ordinary life for what they are — tautological, empty talk. If to the question why does this man travel to the city, one were to give as ground that there is in the city an attractive force impelling him to it, this kind of answer would be deemed brainless — yet it is the kind of answer which is sanctioned in the sciences. — Leibniz accused Newton’s force of attraction of being precisely the kind of occult quality that the Scholastics used for the purpose of explanation. One should rather accuse it of being the opposite of occult, that it is all too known a quality, for it has no other content than the phenomenon itself. — What recommends this manner of explanation is its great clarity and easy comprehension, for there is nothing clearer and more open to comprehension than that a plant, for instance, has its ground in a vegetative, that is, plant-producing, force. — Such a force may be called an occult quality only in the sense that a ground ought to have another content than what is to be explained; but no such content is given, and in that sense, of course, the force appealed to for explanation is a hidden ground, the required but not given ground. Something is no more explained by this formalism than is the nature of a plant known when I say that it is a plant; for all the clarity of the statement, or of the claim that the plant has its ground in a plant-producing force, and just because of that clarity, one can indeed call this a very occult manner of explanation’.
— ‘The Science of Logic
This immediate being is taken as posited, and for that very reason we inquire into its ground. At this level, any talk of ground is empty. The sciences are full of tautologies of this kind which constitute as it were a prerogative of science. Why do the planets revolve around the sun? Science answers that the planets and the sun attract each other. As regards content, this expresses nothing other than what is contained in the phenomenon, namely the relation of these bodies to one another, only in the form of force. What kind of force? T]he answer is that it is the force that makes the earth move round the sun; that is, it has precisely the same content as the phenomenon of which it is supposed to be ground. Outside the sciences, such responses count as absurd. To answer the question, why is this person going to town, with the reason, the ground, that is because there is an attractive force in the town which urges him in that direction, is to give the kind of reply that is sanctioned in the sciences but outside them is counted as absurd.
Leibniz complained that Isaac Newton’s, (1642–1726/27) gravity was an occult quality, but the opposite is true. Gravity is a too familiar quality; for it has no other content than the phenomenon itself. What commends this mode of explanation is precisely its great clarity and intelligibility; for there is nothing clearer or more intelligible than that, for example, a plant has its ground in a vegetative, that is, plant-producing force. But nothing is really explained by the invocation of such forces. Hegel shows here his hostility to Newton, for whom he had ‘no very high opinion of Newton’s ability to deal with thoughts’ points out Renate Wahsner.
In this mode of explanation, two opposite directions of the ground relation are present without being generally noticed. The ground is taken as reflection-into-self- the content of the phenomenon which it grounds.
‘Secondly, as regards form, in this kind of explanation the two opposite directions of the ground-connection are adduced without being apprehended in their determinate relation. On the one hand, the ground is ground as the immanently reflected content determination of the existence which it grounds; on the other hand, it is that which is posited. It is that on the basis of which that existence is supposed to be understood; but, conversely, it is inferred from the latter and is understood from it. The main business of this reflection thus consists in gleaning the ground from an existence, that is, in converting the immediate existence into the form of reflected being; consequently the ground, instead of being self-subsisting in and for itself, is rather that which is posited and derived. And since on this procedure the ground is arranged to fit the phenomenon, and its determinations depend on the latter, the phenomenon unhindered flows smoothly out of the ground with full wind in its sails. But in this way, knowledge has not advanced an inch; it runs in circles, making formal distinctions which the procedure itself overturns and sublates. One of the main difficulties in making progress in the study of the sciences in which this procedure is the rule is due precisely to this wrongheaded procedure, of premising as ground that which is in fact derived, and in fact producing in what follows, once one gets there, the ground of this previously supposed ground. The exposition begins with grounds that are floated as principles and original concepts. They are simple determinations lacking necessity in and for themselves; what follows is supposed to be based on them. Therefore, anyone who would penetrate such sciences must begin by assimilating these grounds, and this is a business that reason finds unsavoury, for it requires accepting as groundwork what is in fact groundless. More conducive to progress is to accept such principles as given without much reflection, and then to use them as fundamental rules of one’s understanding. Without this method, one cannot make a start; nor without it can one make any advance. But the advance is hindered the moment the method shows its hand by reversing itself, and looks for the derived in the consequent when in fact it is the derived that alone contains the grounds of the above presuppositions. Further, because the consequent proves to be the phenomenon from which the ground was derived, this relation into which the phenomenon is cast raises suspicion about the way it is presented, for the phenomenon is not in fact expressed in the immediacy of a phenomenon but as evidence for the ground. But because the latter, though the ground, is derived from the phenomenon, all the more so would one wish to see the phenomenon in its immediacy in order to be able to pass judgment on how the ground is derived from it. In an exposition of this kind, where the true ground comes out as the derived, one never knows what to make of either the ground or the phenomenon. And the uncertainty grows — particularly when the procedure is not rigorously consistent but is more honest — when the phenomenon betrays traces and circumstances that point to other things, and often entirely different things, than are contained in the principles alone. Lastly, the confusion grows even greater when hypothetical determinations that are the product of reflection are blended with the immediate determinations of the phenomenon itself, and are then spoken of as if they belonged to immediate experience. Many who come to these sciences in good faith may well believe, from the way in which these things are spoken of in them as immediate determinations of existence, that molecules, empty interstices, centrifugal force, ether, the separate ray of light, electrical and magnetic matter, and an assortment of other like things or relations, are actually to be found in perception. They serve as first grounds for other things; they are spoken of, and deliberately made use of, as actual things; in good faith one accepts them as such, before one realizes that they are determinations inferred from that which they are supposed to ground, hypotheses and fictions derived by an uncritical reflection. In fact one finds oneself in a kind of witches’ circle in which determinations of existence and determinations of reflection, ground and grounded, phenomena and phantoms, mix in promiscuous company enjoying equal rank in common’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
As a reflection-into-self, it is an immediacy. But it is likewise posited by the phenomenon. It is that from which the phenomenon is to be understood. Yet we know of the ground only because we inferred it from the phenomenon. This business of converting the immediate phenomenon into the form of reflected being contributes nothing to knowledge. Any such movement is confined within a difference of form which this same procedure inverts and sublates. Explanation at this level, Hegel says, is a distasteful business. The exposition begins with grounds that are placed in mid-air as principles and primary concepts; they are simple determinations devoid of any necessity in and for themselves. Reason is asked to treat what is groundless as a valid foundation. Success comes most easily when, without much reflection, the principles are simply accepted as given and one then proceeds to use them as fundamental rules of one’s understanding. When caught in this mode of explanation, one finds oneself in a kind of witches’ circle in which determinations of real being and determinations of reflection, ground and grounded, phenomena and phantoms, run riot in indiscriminate company and enjoy equal rank with one another. Scientists have notoriously confessed that they do not understand the inner nature of forces like gravity. This amounts, Hegel says, only to a confession that this assigning of grounds is itself completely inadequate; that something quite different from such grounds is required.
Real Ground. Formal Ground was determinate, which means that it was double. It was part Substrate and part Form (or Ground Relation). But which was Ground and which Grounded? This could only be determined externally and arbitrarily, as Formal Content (Sufficient Ground) showed. There, Ground/Grounded was quite external to Content. Yet Dialectical Reason can be made to confess that Content is essentially connected to Ground/ Grounded. We are not ready to present the move of Speculative Reason, but perhaps Hegel borrows some lessons of Speculative Reason to point out that Formal Content (Sufficient Ground) can be already viewed as Real Ground. In Formal Content (Sufficient Ground), the two are not external to one another.
The true content of both sides is that Ground and Grounded are truly in unity. Ground is Grounded (i.e., is posited); Grounded is Ground. Each is in itself this identity of the whole.
‘The determinateness of ground is, as we have seen, on the one hand determinateness of the substrate or content determination; on the other hand, it is the otherness in the ground-connection itself, namely the distinctness of its content and the form; the connection of ground and grounded strays in the content as an external form, and the content is indifferent to these determinations. — But in fact the two are not external to each other; for this is what the content is: to be the identity of the ground with itself in the grounded, and of the grounded in the ground. The side of the ground has shown itself to be itself a posited, and the side of the grounded to be itself ground; each side is this identity of the whole within it. But since they equally belong to form and constitute its determinate difference, each is in its determinateness the identity of the whole with itself. Consequently, each has a diverse content as against the other. — Or, considering the matter from the side of the content, since the latter is the self-identity of the ground-connection, it essentially possesses this difference of form within, and is as ground something other than what it is as grounded’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Speculative Reason watches the Grounded withdraw into Ground and the Ground withdraw into Grounded (proving it was Grounded after all). In naming this activity Real (or realized) Ground, Speculative Reason shows that Ground is no longer a stupid tautology. Earlier, tautology did not escape the confines of immediacy. Now, by definition, immediacy is transcended. Ground must be mediated. At this stage, when we ask for a ground, we really demand that the content of the ground be a different determination from that of the phenomenon whose ground we are seeking.
‘Now the moment ground and grounded have a diverse content, the ground-connection has ceased to be a formal one; the turning back to the ground and the procession forward from ground to posited is no longer a tautology; the ground is realized. Henceforth, whenever we ask for a ground, we actually demand another content determination for it than the determination of the content whose ground we are asking for’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Real Ground therefore implies a synthesis of new material not present in the Grounded. ‘In a real ground the process of grounding introduces a real change or transformation in the content. The result is not simply the sum of its constituents, but something qualitatively different. So the shift is not reversible’, explains Burbidge. In other words, Formal Content, standing over against what it grounds, represents the proposition that, in the search for Ground, something real and substantial takes place. Tautology is productive after all.
Underlying this last remark and, indeed, the whole idea of Real Ground, is that Form has many Essences. One of them is the true Ground. But which? Real Ground is a disappointment. In effect, Real Ground knows there is a ground. It is the theatre of sophistry — argumentation from grounds.
‘So in general every existence can have several grounds; each of its content determinations pervades the concrete whole while retaining its identity, and thus allows the possibility that it be regarded as essential; because of the contingency of the link connecting them, the door is left wide open to a multitude of points of view, that is, determinations that lie outside the fact itself. — Whether a ground has this or that consequence is therefore equally accidental. For instance, moral motives are essential determinations of ethical nature, but what follows from them is at the same time an externality distinct from them, one that may or may not follow from them but is attached to them only by virtue of a third factor. Or to be more precise, if the moral determination is a ground, it is not accidental to it that it should have a consequence or that something be grounded by it; but that it should be made into a ground in the first place, that is accidental. But again, since the content which is its consequence has the nature of externality when the determination is made into a ground, it can be immediately sublated by some other externality. From a moral motive, therefore, an action can proceed but can also not proceed. Conversely, an action can have several grounds; as something concrete, it contains a manifold of essential determinations, each of which can therefore be offered as the ground. The search and the assigning of grounds which is the special domain of argumentation is for this reason an endless meandering without final destination; for each and every thing good grounds can be adduced, but so they can for its opposite just as well, and there can be a great many grounds with nothing following from them. What Socrates and Plato call sophistry is nothing else than argumentation from grounds; Plato opposed to it the examination of the idea, that is, of a fact in and for itself or in its concept. Grounds are taken only from essential determinations of content, relations and points of view, of which each fact and also its opposite can have several; in their form of essentiality, each is just as valid as the next; each is a one-sided ground, because none contains the whole compass of the fact for which other particular sides then provide other particular grounds, and none exhausts the fact that links them together and contains them all; none is the sufficient ground or reason, that is, the concept’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
As Hegel explains elsewhere to get no further than mere grounds, especially on questions of law and morality, is the position and principle of the Sophists. Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching it by grounds which are as available for attack as for defence. In a time so rich in reflection and so devoted to raisonnement as our own, he must be a poor creature who cannot advance a good ground for everything, even for what is worst and most depraved.
‘We may also remark at this point that to go no further than mere grounds, especially in the domain of law and ethics, is the general standpoint and principle of the Sophists. When people speak of ‘sophistry’ they frequently understand by it just a mode of consideration which aims to distort what is correct and true, and quite generally to present things in a false light. But this tendency is not what is immediately involved in sophistry, the standpoint of which is primarily nothing but that of abstract argumentation. The Sophists came on the scene among the Greeks at a time when they were no longer satisfied with mere authority and tradition in the domain of religion and ethics. They felt the need at that time to become conscious of what was to be valid for them as a content mediated by thought. This demand was met by the Sophists because they taught people how to seek out the various points of view from which things can be considered; and these points of view are, in the first instance, simply nothing else but grounds. As we remarked earlier, however, since a ground does not yet have a content that is determined in and for itself, and grounds can be found for what is unethical and contrary to law no less than for what is ethical and lawful, the decision as to what grounds are to count as valid falls to the subject. The ground of the subject’s decision becomes a matter of his individual disposition and aims. In this way the objective basis of what is valid in and for itself, and recognised by all, was undermined, and it is this negative side of sophistry that has deservedly given it the bad name referred to above’.
‘As is well known, Socrates fought the Sophists on all fronts; but he did not do so just by setting authority and tradition against their abstract argumentation, but rather by exhibiting the untenability of mere grounds dialectically, and by vindicating against them the validity of what is just and good, the validity of the universal generally, or of the concept of willing. We prefer to go to work only in an abstractly argumentative way nowadays, not only in discussions about secular things, but also in sermons. Thus, for example, all possible grounds for gratitude to God are brought forward. Socrates, and Plato, too, would not have scrupled to declare all this to be sophistry, since sophistry is primarily a matter not of content, which may well be true, but of the form of [arguing about] grounds, an argumentation by which everything can be defended, but also everything can be attacked. In our time, rich as we are in reflection, and given to abstract argumentation, someone who does not know how to advance a good ground for everything, even for the worst and most perverse views, cannot have come far. Everything in the world that has been corrupted, has been corrupted on good grounds. When an appeal is made to ‘grounds’ people are at first inclined to give way to them; but if they have had experience of this procedure, they will turn a deaf ear and not let themselves be imposed upon any further’.
- ‘The Encyclopedia Logic’
But it also knows that every Form implies a different ground. Which are the essential and which are the inessential grounds? Real Ground cannot tell, except that everything must have its ground. Nevertheless, Real Ground plays a vital role in the progression of the Logic. Here, Ground is recognized as reflected into (and is the same as) Grounded. Grounded has its Self-Subsistence only in an other — in the Ground. But grounded now has its own distinctive content. This Content is the unity of Ground and Grounded. The Grounded thus displays the notional form — it is (1) itself, (2) its other, and (3) the unity of itself and other.
The trouble is that the Grounded thing is a unity of attributes that is separate and apart from the authentic Ground Relation; the unity of Ground and Grounded is empty, intrinsically contentless relation.
‘This connection now determines itself further. For inasmuch as its two sides are of different content, they are indifferent to each other; each is an immediate, self-identical determination. Moreover, as referred to each other as ground and grounded, the ground reflects itself in the other, as in something posited by it, back to itself; the content on the side of the ground, therefore, is equally in the grounded; the latter, as the posited, has its self-identity and subsistence only in the ground. But besides this content of the ground, the grounded also now possesses a content of its own and is accordingly the unity of a twofold content. Now this unity, as the unity of sides that are different, is indeed their negative unity; but since the two determinations of content are indifferent to each other, that unity is only their empty reference to each other, in itself void of content, and not their mediation; it is a one or a something externally holding them together’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
A thing is an external combination of Ground/Grounded. Two ideas are present in Real Ground. First, Ground is continuous with Grounded. Second, the Grounded has — and Ground does not have — an unessential form, external determinations of the content which, as such, are free from the ground. This is why we can never be sure empirically that the correct ground has been located.
Ground dwells within the Grounded, but does not posit itself therein in any difference of form. It is an indifferent substrate, which means that, among the many attributes a thing has, the true Ground does not distinguish itself from the false grounds. Ground, in determining itself as real, consequently breaks up, on account of the diversity of content which constitutes its reality, into external determinations.
‘Ground, in determining itself as real, because of the diversity of the content that constitutes its reality, thus breaks down into external determinations. The two connections of the essential reality — content, as the simple immediate identity of ground and grounded; and then the something connecting distinct contents — are two different substrates. The self-identical form of ground, according to which one and the same thing is at one time the essential and at another the posited, has vanished. The ground-connection has thus become external to itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Explanations From Ground. Formal Ground is tautology. Real Ground is not. It plucks the one real Ground from the nettle of competing grounds. This means that Real Ground brings with it the contingency and externality of the ground relation. Real Ground knows that there is a Ground — but which Ground is the authentic one? The choice among Grounds seems to be free. The assigning of Real Ground is therefore just as much a formalism as Formal Ground. Formal Ground (tautology) is thus sufficient ground; Real Ground is insufficient ground as Charles Taylor has explained.
Sophistry is now before us: What Socrates and Plato call sophistry is nothing else but argumentation from grounds. One is as valid as another; because it does not embrace the whole extent of the subject matter, each is a one-sided ground. None of them exhausts the subject matter. None is a sufficient ground. . The door is wide open to innumerable aspects lying outside the thing itself, on account of the contingency of their mode of connexion. The search for and assignment of grounds, in which argumentation mainly consists, is accordingly an endless pursuit which does not reach a final determination; for any and every thing one or more good grounds can be given, and also for its opposite; and a host of grounds can exist without anything following from them.
Hegel gives some examples. The ground of a house is its foundation. Gravity is what unites house and foundation. But where does the distinction between house and foundation come from? It is externally imposed. The distinction is a matter of complete indifference to the heavy matter itself. Matter is not the ground of the distinction between foundation and house. Gravity is really in the foundation and in the house. But that one is house and the other foundation — this is not within the matter itself. The concept of punishment has multiple grounds — deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation. These grounds are distinguishable from punishment. This concrete also contains those others which, whilst associated with the ground in punishment, do not have their ground in [punishment]. In other words, punishment is overdetermined; it has many grounds.
Why does an official hold office? He has talent, charisma, the right friends. Each can be the ground of holding office. The leftovers are merely posited — attributed externally. The various grounds are a diverse content which is joined together in a third. That is, a thinking subject unifies the attributes of the official into a coherent thing. But among the attributes is a real Ground Relation — the true Form. The nature of a given attribute — whether it is essential or merely posited — is externally decided. Each of the attributes is essential in a sense, because they help make the officer an individual different from all other individuals. But the attribute that explains why the officer holds office is likewise external.
An action has many grounds. Actions may be motivated by morality or inclination. Among the many things that determine the action is the Real Ground of it. This is an important point for lawyers. Anglo- American jurisprudence has witnessed a war between legal realism and legal positivism. Legal realists suspect that, when a judge gives the law as her reason of decision, she is in effect choosing from one of many grounds. Hegel, however, gives some comfort, though perhaps it will seem cold porridge to those who suffer from “anxiety” — fear that the symbolic order will fly apart. The point is that, of all the many grounds a judge may have, one of them is the law. Therefore, the rule of law is not only a possible but a necessary Ground for judicial decision. The true law is found when the judge suppresses her heteronomy and becomes the autonomous Kantian self through whom reason speaks. Unfortunately, no one’s motives are completely transparent to one’s own self, so we never quite know whether the judge has been autonomous or heteronomous.
The Complete Ground. Complete Ground is Speculative Reason’s reinterpretation of Real Ground, where Content (Ground in general) was only substrate — alienated from the Grounded. Ground as Content was posited as essential, but only by some external sophist intellect. Real Ground was therefore the theatre of scepticism and even cynicism. In Real Ground, Content is merely posited by the reliance on external attribution. But Content is self-erasure. The sophist is defeated in advance. Since scepticism must be self-sceptical (if it is Complete Ground to be true to its principle), Real Ground can’t be sure that a or c is the Real Ground. Speculative Reason now summarizes the situation. Each side is unified by its self-erasing activity. The true content of the extremes, then, is negative. Complete Ground is nothing but the inability of Ground to identify itself as Ground. Complete Ground simply declares it is not sure it is Ground. Complete Ground is sometimes interpreted as signifying the proposition that, unless all the grounds are present, then the thing is not really explained according to Taylor. While not inconsistent with Hegel’s ultimate view this fails to capture the exact function of Complete Ground. According to this function, Complete Ground stands for the proposition that there are grounds, but, from the many contingencies which surround a thing, we are not sure which are mere contingencies and which are grounds. ‘Self-determination must be understood as a creative process, not as a Stoic acceptance of past necessity. This is the interpretation substantiated by Hegel’s texts on the philosophy of ground’, explains Butler,
Hegel summarizes the progress across Ground as follows. First, a thing has a Ground. It also has a second determination, one which is posited by the Ground.That is, it contains its other inside itself, but it is also determined by that other. Dialectical Reason notices that the thing now has two contents. Twoness requires a moment of indifference. At this moment, Ground is not in its own self ground. Ground is supposed to be a correlate, yet if it is immediate, its status as Ground is sublated. Nor, for the same reason, can we say that the other content is the Grounded. In its immediacy, each moment shows that it has its Ground in its other.
‘Thus the ground-connection has more precisely determined itself as follows. First, something has a ground; it contains the content determination which is the ground and, in addition, a second determination as posited by the ground. But, because of the indifference of content, the one determination is not ground in itself, nor is the other in itself one that is grounded by the first; this connection of ground and grounded is rather sublated in the immediacy of their content, is posited, and as such has its ground in another such connection. Since this second connection is distinguished only according to form, it has the same content as the first; it still has the same two determinations of content but is now their immediate linking together. This linking, however, is of a general nature, and the content, therefore, is diversified into determinations that are indifferent to each other. The linking is not, therefore, their true absolute connection that would make one determination the element of self-identity in the positedness, and the other determination the positedness of this same self-identity; on the contrary, the two are supported by a something and this something is what connects them, but in a connection which is not reflected, is rather only immediate and, therefore, only a relative ground as against the linking in the other something. The two somethings are therefore the two distinct connections of content that have transpired. They stand in the identical ground-connection of form; they are one and the same whole content, namely the two content determinations and their connection; they are distinct only by the kind of this connection, which in the one is an immediate and in the other a posited connection; through this, they are distinguished one from another as ground and grounded only according to form. — Second, this ground-connection is not only formal, but also real. Formal ground passes over into real ground, as has been shown; the moments of the form reflect themselves into themselves; they are a self-subsistent content, and the ground-connection contains also one content with the character of ground and another with that of grounded. The content constitutes at first the immediate identity of both sides of the formal ground; so the two sides have one and the same content. But the content also has the form in it, and so it is a twofold content that behaves as ground and grounded. One of the two content determinations of the two somethings is therefore determined, not merely as being common to them according to external comparison, but as their identical substrate and the foundation of their connection. As against the other determination of the content, this determination is essential and is the ground of the other which is posited, that is, posited in the something, the connection of which is the grounded. In the first something, which is the ground-connection, this second determination of the content is also immediately and in itself linked with the first. But the other something only contains the one determination in itself as that in which it is immediately identical with the first something, but the other as the one which is posited in it. The former content determination is its ground by virtue of its being originally linked in the first something with the other content determination’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
So Ground and Grounded have two relations. (1) They are not related (remembering that no relation is, after all, a kind of relation). The moments are supported by a something which constitutes their merely immediate, not reflected, relation. In other words, Ground requires an outside will to accomplish its relation to Grounded. This dependence on outside will Hegel calls relative Ground. Real Ground ‘requires a middle term [i.e., external will] to introduce what is novel’, explains Burbidge
In the sceptical moment of Real Ground, a thing is only a relative ground in relation to the togetherness in the other something. Yet (2) the very idea of Relative Ground implies the necessity of an Absolute Ground. This leads to the other relation between Ground and Grounded. Since Ground is correlated with Grounded, they are immediately related. The point is that there are two contents at stake — the sceptical and the true points of view inherent in Real Ground. One relation needs outside will to hold it together. The other is indifferent to this outside will, because it can hold itself together. The two things are separate, but they are simultaneously the same thing. Both things stand in the identical ground-relation of form. They are the one and the same whole content. They are distinguished only in this way. One relation is immediate. The other relation is posited — that is to say, made up.
But which relation predominates? Speculative Reason admits that it cannot tell. Undecidability is the shared content of the two things. Hegel states that the relationships — sceptical and apodictic (that is, certain and true) are distinguished only in respect of form. This can be taken in a double way. The difference between sceptic and apodictic theories of Ground is formal only — not essential. And second, since the very job of Form is to erase itself in favour of Essence, the two somethings likewise erase themselves and withdraw into the Complete Ground.
Hegel further suggests that the two somethings can fairly be characterized as Ground and Grounded in and of themselves. Of course, Speculative Reason cannot tell which is which, but Hegel suggests that the real (apodictic) thing is Ground. One of the two determinations of the two somethings is therefore determined as being, not merely common to them as in an external comparison, but as being their identical substrate and the foundation of their relation. This is the essential determination. An essential relation inherently refers to a non-essential relation. The essential relation is therefore Ground, and the unessential relation is Grounded. The essential and inessential relations are therefore essentially related to each other. Inessentiality is thus mediated by essentiality.
Complete Ground
Hegel explains that in one something, the determination B is implicitly connected with determination A; therefore, in the second something to which only the one determination A immediately belongs, B is also linked with A. In the second something, not only is this second determination B-A a mediated one, but the fact that its immediate determination is ground is also mediated, namely, by the original connexion with B in this first something. This connexion is thus the ground of ground, and the whole ground-relation is, in the second something, a posited or grounded.
‘The ground-connection of the content determinations in the second something is thus mediated through the connection present in the first something. The inference is this: since determination B is implicitly linked with determination A in a something, in a second something to which only the one determination A immediately belongs, also B is linked with it. In the second something, not only is this second determination mediated; also mediated is that its immediate ground is mediated, namely by virtue of its original connection with B in the first something. This connection is thus the ground of the ground A, and the whole ground-connection is present in the second something as posited or grounded’.
- ‘The Science of Logic
In the above syllogism, the first something contains B — the apodictic relation of Ground and Grounded. The second something contains A, the sceptical relation. If B (Essence) exists, then A (the inessential) exists (because essence is always other to not-essence). B and A are therefore linked in the second, sceptical thing. A asserts that only external will connects the two somethings — external will thought to be the Ground of things. But connection with A is the true Ground.
External will is therefore merely the Grounded. The second something is posited and therefore sublated by the first something. Real Ground, the self-external reflection of ground, is defeated, and, in Complete Ground, self-identity is restored. On the law of sublation, this self-identity includes externality or Real Ground. Hence, Complete Ground is both self-sublating as well as self-positing. The ground relation mediates itself with itself through its negation!’ (469) Complete Ground is the very act of repelling self from self and so is in fact mediated by its other which is also itself. This next stage Hegel calls conditioning mediation:
‘Thus the ground-connection is in its totality essentially presupposing reflection; formal ground presupposes the immediate content determination, and this content presupposes form as real ground. Ground is therefore form as an immediate linkage but in such a manner that it repels itself from itself and rather presupposes immediacy, referring itself therein as to another. This immediate is the content determination, the simple ground; but as such, that is, as ground, it is equally repelled from itself and refers itself to itself equally as to an other. — Thus the total ground-connection has taken on the determination of conditioning mediation’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Another gift to my Muse, and very best friend, from me.
‘Long Live Love’
Venus must have heard my plea
She has sent someone along for me
I have waited a long, long time
For somebody to call mine
And at last he’s come along
Baby, oh nothing can go wrong
We meet every night at eight
And I don’t get home ‘till late
I say to myself each day
Baby, oh long, long live love
True love must be the greatest thing
I know now I sing I sing
Of the moon and stars above
How I long to be in love
We meet every night at eight
And I don’t get home ‘till late
I say to myself each day
Baby, oh long, long live love
Now of one thing I’m more than sure
Since love’s come I don’t want more
Than to kiss him every night
Makes everything alright
We meet every night at eight
And I don’t get home ‘till late
I say to myself each day
Baby, oh long, long live love
Uuumm
We meet every night at eight
And I don’t get home ‘till late
I say to myself each day
Baby, oh long, long live love
Long, long live love
Coming up next:
The Thing (Sache, nothing to do with the Fantastic Four, if I was writing about any of the members if I may use that word in this context of that lot it would be Susan Storm the Invisible Woman or as I like to think of her the Fantastic Two).
To be continued…
