On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part twenty six.

David Proud

44 min readMar 1, 2023

I loved the ground she walked upon

And the air she would softly breathe

The feather touch of her gentle lips

That only a fool would leave

But we tasted forbidden wine

Though I loved the ground she walked upon

I could never have made her mine

The swallows fly all along the canal

And I watch with a heavy heart

In dizzy spins they dive and wheel

Touch wings and then depart

As the summer fades away

Though I loved the ground she walked upon

I knew that I could not stay

The swallow is a summer’s child

And she flies before the cold

Though I loved the ground she walked upon

She was not mine to hold

But it was easy to pretend

Though I loved the ground she walked upon

A summer has to end

‘Hegel is utterly and absolutely right in saying that when viewed eternally, sub specie aeterni, in the language of abstraction, in pure thought and pure being, there is no aut-aut. Where the devil should it be, once abstraction has taken away the contradiction? Hegel and the Hegelians should rather take the trouble to explain what is meant with the humbug of introducing contradiction, movement, transition, etc. into logic. Champions of an either/or are in the wrong when they barge into the domain of pure thought and want to defend their cause there’.

…

‘On the other hand, Hegel is just as wrong when, in forgetting the abstraction, he plunges out of it and down into the realm of existence in order, with might and main, to annul the double aut. To do this in existence is impossible, for then he abrogates existence as well. If I take existence away (abstract from it), then there is no aut-aut; taking it away in existence means taking away existence, and then I do not abrogate it in existence. If it is incorrect to say that there is something true in theology which is not true in philosophy, it is quite correct to say that there is something true for one who exists which is not true in abstraction, and it is also true ethically that pure being is fantasy and that one who exists is prohibited from wanting to forget that he exists. So caution must be exercised when dealing with a Hegelian, and one must above all make sure with whom one has the honour of speaking. Is he a human being, an existing human being, is he himself sub specie aeterni, even when he sleeps, eats, blows his nose and whatever else a human being does? Is he himself the pure ‘I am I’, something that has certainly never occurred to any philosopher? And if not that, how does he — in existing — relate to it, to the middle term in which the ethical responsibility in, by, and through existing, is duly respected? Does he exist?’

…

‘And if he exists, is he then not on the way to being? And if he is on the way to being, does he not then relate to the future? Does he never relate to the future in such a way as to act? And if he never acts, will he not then forgive an ethical individuality for saying of him, in passion and with dramatic truth, that he is an ass?’

- Søren Kierkegaard, (1813–1855), ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments’

For anyone interested in an informed, intelligent and ironic critique of the Hegelian system I recommend ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript’, however, with this series my concern is merely with getting across in brief summary what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s, (1770–1831), ‘Science of Logic’ is all about without taking much time out to support what is being claimed or to critique it, perhaps later when I have finished.

Anyway, I have reached solid ground now, well, Ground. Absolute Ground. Determinate Ground. Formal Ground. Real Ground. The Complete Ground. The Hegelian notion of Ground has spawned some difficulties and confusions. ‘The category of Ground … is likely to constitute the most conspicuous example of the shortcomings for which Hegel’s critics are used to blaming his thought, excessive abstruseness, complicated artfulness … obscurity, etc. It can therefore come as no surprise that in the Encyclopedia Logic he himself decided to suppress it in toto’, postulates Giacomo Rinaldi (1954 -).

‘Ground is the unity of identity and distinction; the truth of what distinction and identity have shown themselves to be, the inward reflection which is just as much reflection-in to-another and vice versa. It is essence posited as totality. The principle of ground reads, ‘Everything has its sufficient ground’, i.e., the true essentiality of something is not the determination of it as identical with itself or as diverse, as merely positive or as merely negative, but the fact that it has its being in an other, which (as the identical-with-itself that belongs to it) is its essence. The latter also is not abstract reflection into self, but reflection in to another. Ground is the essence that is within itself, the latter is essentially ground, and it is ground only insofar as it is the ground of something, of an other’.

- ‘The Encyclopedia Logic’

Ground may be purely and simply characterised as self erasure, it is the consequence of Contradiction that falls to the ground and yet self-erasure is that which Essence transpires to be and upon such a ground or perhaps I should say foundation to avoid muddling things up Ground is ‘essence put explicitly as a totality’, explains Wendell Kisner. Ground is the ‘most characteristic shape of essence’, he adds, it is prelude to Appearance and the realm of ordinary Things, and here Essence ‘excludes its own immediacy as that which it grounds’, he adds further. It situates this immediacy out into the world of appearance and erases itself. According to naïve metaphysics and common sense things are self-evident, they just are, they are Groundless, and yet this is illusory and it emerges in virtue of the Ground of Things having self-erased. In truth all Things are grounded in self-erasure, they are finite and must cease to be, hence Ground is the vanishing mediator of Things, and rather in virtue of Ground self erasing or rather is self-erasure! Things appear to exist and Ground is where Contradiction withdraws following upon self-erasure. ‘The ground of a thing for Hegel is nothing other than the totality of its essence’, explains Herbert Marcuse, (1898–1979). Hence in retrospect Reflection was Ground to Illusory Being, Essence Ground to Measure, and Quantity Ground to Being-for-self.

Each of these concepts was a True Infinite and each displayed an expulsion of self from self and delivery of self to its Ground andGround ‘proceeds from them as that which precedes them’, explains Kisner, Ground is the province of speculative Reason, in Ground, ‘[w]e have in a sense only now come to the dialectic of Essence, after a lengthy introduction’, elucidates Charles Taylor, (1931 — ). Illusory Being represented an immediate but correlative chapter of the Understanding correlative in virtue of Essence being the negative and therefore dialectic stage of the entire Logic, and in the negative-immediate stage the Understanding recognised itself at once as Inessential and standing over against the Essential and the Essential discolosed itself to be Illusory Being that erased itself and yet that is what Essence is, the erasure of what seems to be, the movement known as Reflection. In the second chapter of Essence, Determination of Reflection had the dual structure of dialectical Reason whereby it was first an immediate and second a positedness, a Contradiction that has now fallen to the Ground. Ground therefore is the unity of Illusory Being which is immediacy and the Determinations of Reflection which is positedness and the unity of identity and difference, the truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be, the reflection-into-self, which is to the same degree a reflection-into-an- other.

‘When we say that ground is the unity of identity and distinction, this unity must not be understood as abstract identity, for then we would just have another name for a thought that is once more just that identity of the understanding which we have recognised to be untrue. So, in order to counter this misunderstanding, we can also say that ground is not only the unity but equally the distinction of identity and distinction, too. Ground, which we encountered first as the sublation of contradiction, therefore makes its appearance as a new contradiction. But, as such, it is not what abides peacefully within itself, but is rather the expulsion of itself from itself. Ground is ground only insofar as it grounds; but what has come forth from the ground is the ground itself, and herein lies the formalism of ground. The ground and what is grounded are one and the same content; and the distinction between them is the mere distinction of form between simple relation to self and mediation or positedness’.

- ‘The Encyclopedia Logic’

The dual structure means that Ground still retains the dual structure of a Determination of Reflection for according to Marcuse ‘while it steps out of essence into ‘existence,’ it does not cease to have within itself the two dimensions of essence and immediate existence. The peculiar atemporality of the process unfolding in the Logic is based on this fact’. And yet Hegel declares it to be the last of them.

‘… ground is itself one of the reflected determinations of essence, but it is the last, or rather, it is determination determined as sublated determination. In foundering to the ground, the determination of reflection receives its true meaning — that it is the absolute repelling of itself within itself; or again, that the positedness that accrues to essence is such only as sublated, and conversely that only the self-sublating positedness is the positedness of essence. In determining itself as ground, essence determines itself as the not-determined, and only the sublating of its being determined is its determining. — Essence, in thus being determined as self-sublating, does not proceed from an other but is, in its negativity, identical with itself’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Ground is the name of the act of self-erasure and as such it is pure reflection the return of being into itself.

‘Essence determines itself as ground. Just as nothing is at first in simple immediate unity with being, so here too the simple identity of essence is at first in simple unity with its absolute negativity. Essence is only this negativity which is pure reflection. It is this pure reflection as the turning back of being into itself; hence it is determined, in itself or for us, as the ground into which being resolves itself. But this determinateness is not posited by the essence itself; in other words, essence is not ground precisely because it has not itself posited this determinateness that it possesses. Its reflection, however, consists in positing itself as what it is in itself, as a negative, and in determining itself. The positive and the negative constitute the essential determination in which essence is lost in its negation. These self-subsisting determinations of reflection sublate themselves, and the determination that has foundered to the ground is the true determination of essence’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

But this is so only for us and not for itself for all that Reflection does is to inform us what it is not and we infer from that what it is but it is time for Essence to posit itself in an affirmative manner. So far, essence is lost in its negation and all that we have is self-erasure and in Ground the Determination of Reflection discovers its true meaning, namely, to be within itself the absolute recoil upon itself. Essence, as ground, is determined as the non-determined and as such Ground is the restored, purified or manifested identity of essence and all of these observations are manners of expressing Ground to be purely and simply self-erasure, self-erasure is the ground of all finite things, Ground is real mediation of Essence with itself.

‘Reflection is pure mediation in general; ground, the real mediation of essence with itself. The former, the movement of nothing through nothing back to itself, is the reflective shining of one in an other; but, because in this reflection opposition does not yet have any self-subsistence, neither is the one, that which shines, something positive, nor is the other in which it reflectively shines something negative. Both are substrates, actually of the imagination; they are still not self-referring. Pure mediation is only pure reference, without anything being referred to. Determining reflection, for its part, does posit such terms as are identical with themselves; but these are at the same time only determined references. Ground, on the contrary, is mediation that is real, since it contains reflection as sublated reflection; it is essence that turns back into itself through its non-being and posits itself. According to this moment of sublated reflection, what is posited receives the determination of immediacy, of an immediate which is self-identical outside its reference or its reflective shining. This immediacy is being as restored by essence, the non-being of reflection through which essence mediates itself. Essence returns into itself as it negates; therefore, in its turning back into itself, it gives itself the determinateness that precisely for this reason is the self-identical negative, is sublated positedness, and consequently, as the self-identity of essence as ground, equally an existent’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Real is a reference to Self-subsistence, achieved in Self-Subsistence, hence Ground is real mediation in virtue of it containing reflection as sublated reflection yet somewhat paradoxically if the extremes of the Ground relation erase themselves they erase their own erasure since they are only the act of self-erasure and what follows from this is the affirmative being (seiendes) of Ground and here affirmative evidently does not mean imposed by external Reflection but rather immanently derived and accordingly, Ground is essence that through its non-being returns into and posits itself.

‘Since the advance to the ground is made starting from determination as an immediate first (is done by virtue of the nature of determination itself that founders to the ground through itself ), the ground is at first determined by that immediate first. But this determining is, on the one hand, as the sublating of the determining, the merely restored, purified or manifested identity of essence which the determination of reflection is in itself; on the other hand, this negating movement is, as determining, the first positing of that reflective determinateness that appeared as immediate determinateness, but which is posited only by the self-excluding reflection of ground and therein is posited as only something posited or sublated. — Thus essence, in determining itself as ground, proceeds only from itself. As ground, therefore, it posits itself as essence, and its determining consists in just this positing of itself as essence. This positing is the reflection of essence that sublates itself in its determining; on that side is a positing, on this side is the positing of essence, hence both in one act’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Yet Ground mediates, it in need of a Grounded, and its reality foreshadows a reference to other and at the same time it is an immediacy or to put it another way it remains a determining Reflection. For those of you familiar with Jacques Derrida, (1930–2004), and deconstruction, may detect here a possible objection to the practice of the latter (deconstruction, not demolition but the breaking down or analysing of something especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction to discover its true significance which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended). According to Rodolphe Gasché, (1938 — ), deconstruction ‘is distinguished from the speculative mode of resolving contradictions insofar as it maintains contradiction and resists its sublation into a higher unity’, and further: ‘If there were a definition of différance [i.e., that which is never present and always deferred], it would be precisely the limit, the interruption, the destruction of the Hegelian relive wherever it operates)’, he adds. (Différance, not a typo, in literary theory and linguistics the endless deferral of any ultimate meaning in a word or sentence, owing to the necessity of recourse to a potentially infinite series of other, equally uncertain words or signs).

A question arises upon what ground, or rather, I must stop doing that, upon authority may deconstruction resist the law of sublation? For in privileging contradiction from sublation does not deconstruction practice precisely the philosophy of presence with which it is in opposition? Be that as it may Hegel does not abolish Contradiction through sublation but au contraire Contradiction is preserved just as deconstruction would desire and Contradiction implies the self-erasure of structures which is precisely what will take place throughout the balance of the Logic right until the final step of Absolute Knowledge. Deconstruction wishes the negative to remain negative. ‘Differance is an absolute exterior that no longer permits itself to be internalized’, says John Llewelyn, (1928–2021) . This is also Theodor W. Adorno’s, (1903–1969), position. But this transforms the negative into a transcendent thing-in-itself with all the problems that noumena involve. ‘Now if we return to Derrida, it is quite striking to see him take over essentially … Kantian assumptions’, points out Kisner.

Hegel’s analysis of Ground proceeds along the following schemata, the Understanding proposes that Ground is Absolute. dialectical Reason sees Ground as Determinate, speculative Reason sees that Ground presupposes Condition and Condition presupposes Ground and their unity is the Unconditioned or the Fact in itself or the heart of the matter (Sache) and at this point Ground gracefully strides forth into Existence, and generally speaking Hegel compares Ground which is the unity of Positive and Negative to Becoming and because Becoming must become something so Ground becomes what it ought to be which Appearance. ‘We now see everything as emanating from its ground’, once again elucidates Taylor.

**‘Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest’, (‘Femme se promenant dans une forêt exotique’), 1905, Henri Rousseau**

Absolute Ground. Form and Essence. Because Essence is correlative the Understanding perceives things in pairs and so has picked up this attribute of dialectical Reason in accordance with which the Understanding correlates Ground with the Grounded and this initial move of the Understanding is naïve and crude resembling the Understanding’s opening move in Essence where it saw the Essential as an externality and reserved for itself the role of the Inessential. This was the Ground and Grounded naïve analytical view that Essence can Ground and Grounded be known directly and that the Understanding has no constitutive role to play in the perception and therefore it was Inessential and dialectical Reason responded that the so-called Essential was a mere semblance of Essence, an Illusory Being, and now something similar occurs whereby the Understanding comprehends Ground as that which posits the Grounded but which is itself not posited in return therefore when the Understanding first contemplates Ground it initially perceives an immediate determinate being in general which forms the starting point.

Ground and Grounded

‘The determination of reflection, inasmuch as this determination returns into ground, is a first immediate existence in general from which the beginning is made. But existence still has only the meaning of positedness and essentially presupposes a ground, in the sense that it does not really posit a ground; that the positing is a sublating of itself; that it is rather the immediate that is posited, and the ground the non-posited. As we have seen, this presupposing is the positing that rebounds on that which posits; as sublated determinate being, the ground is not an indeterminate but is rather essence determined through itself, but determined as indeterminate or as sublated positedness. It is essence that in its negativity is identical with itself’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

‘Since each Hegelian category mirrors within itself the totality of the Universe, and the most abstract and immediate thought-determinations necessarily precede the most concrete and comprehensive ones, the transition from a categorial totality into its dialectical opposite cannot but take the shape of an ‘abrupt’, seemingly ‘irrational’ overturning of the most concrete Denkbestimmung of the former into the most abstract (immediate) one of the latter’, said Robert M. Wallace..

The Grounded is thoroughly Unessential. By way of example, one might consider the many considerable blessings to have befallen the UK because of #Brexit. Control of our democracy, borders and waters, control of our own money, all that is grounded upon the UK’s departure from the European Union and the UK’s departure from the European Union is not grounded upon control of our democracy, borders and waters, control of our own money, and so on. There is #Brexit even in the absence of all that for which we should be truly thankful.

The Grounded is seen as a dead thing that does not participate in the constitution of Ground and the Understanding at first perceiving a determinate Being counts as a defect and determinate Being has already withdrawn into its Ground, itis already Grounded. In the meantime the Grounded is posited by Ground but does not posit Ground in return and for this reason ‘it is in the very nature of a ground to be in excess of what it accounts for’, explains Gasché. As an unreflective immediacy it is sublated in advance and effect the Grounded declares it is not Ground, but it omits and that is what it is and for us we are aware that presupposing is positing that recoils on that which posits.

For itself on the other hand there is no recoil and dialectical Reason assumes control and both Ground and Grounded are alike in one respect in that they both sublate themselves, both are the same thing, not Reflection-into-self. Dialectical Reason opposes Reflection-into-self to the Reflection-into-Self (Mediation of Ground) immediacy of Ground/ Grounded. ‘For the formal relation between a ground and a grounded comes forward only after reflection dissolves its own activity’, said John W. Burbidge. It reminds the Understanding that the Grounded nevertheless has Reflection, just as Ground does and it takes Ground/Grounded to be declaring it is not Reflection-into-self and Reflection-into-self thereby escapes from its Ground.

Reflection-into-self or, as Hegel sometimes designates it mediation of the ground:

‘For one thing, this mediation, compared with the preceding reflections from which it derives, is not pure reflection, which is undistinguished from essence and still does not have the negative in it, consequently also does not as yet contain the self-subsistence of the determinations. These have their subsistence, rather, in the ground understood as sublated reflection. — And it is also not the determining reflection whose determinations have essential self-subsistence, for that reflection has foundered, has sunk to the ground, and in the unity of the latter the determinations are only posited determinations. — This mediation of the ground is thus the unity of pure reflection and determining reflection; their determinations or that which is posited has self-subsistence, and conversely the self-subsistence of the determinations is a posited subsistence. Since this subsistence of the determinations is itself posited or has determinateness, the determinations are consequently distinguished from their simple identity, and they constitute the form as against essence’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Hence it is to be distinguished from what it mediates and it is essence as such as distinguished from its mediation.

‘The determinateness of essence as ground is thus twofold: it is the determinateness of the ground and of the grounded. It is, first, essence as ground, essence determined to be essence as against positedness, as non-positedness. Second, it is that which is grounded, the immediate that, however, is not anything in and for itself: is positedness as positedness. Consequently, this positedness is equally identical with itself, but in an identity which is that of the negative with itself. The self-identical negative and the self-identical positive are now one and the same identity. For the ground is the self-identity of the positive or even also of positedness; the grounded is positedness as positedness, but this its reflection-into-itself is the identity of the ground. — This simple identity, therefore, is not itself ground, for the ground is essence posited as the non-posited as against positedness. As the unity of this determinate identity (the ground) and of the negative identity (the grounded), it is essence in general distinct from its mediation’.

-’The Science of Logic’

Significantly Reflection-into-self is on the side of Being in comparison with Ground/Grounded that is a nullity.

Reflection-into-Self (Mediation of Ground)

Reflection-into-self is now in a somewhat awkward situation of standing over against Reflection itself which is to say dialectical Reason puts forth Reflection-into-self as an immediacy which is not reflective and once again dialectical Reason displays the very defect it believes it is critiquing in that it isolates and renders immediate that which is really mediated and in virtue of its immediacy Reflection-into-self is the opposite of what it should be, it has no Self-Subsistence and this loss of Self-Subsistence is true of both extremes. Ground and Grounded have declare they are not Reflection-into-self and yet Reflection-into-self is Self-Subsistence tout court and now Reflection-into-self portraying itself as an indeterminate immediacy in similar manner sublates itself.

Both the extremes represent a beyond to Essence and speculative Reason now designates this beyond to be Form. Form sometimes called Ground Relation is not the same as the earlier versions of Reflection, these were self-subsistent, and now Ground/Grounded has proven it has no Self-Subsistence and this is its very Self-Subsistence. ‘We have lost any distinct sense of ground’, laments Burbidge. The enduring thing about Form is that it does not endure. As Hegel puts it the determinations of reflection ought to have their subsistence within themselves and be self-Form, Ground subsistent but their self-subsistence is their Relation, dissolution, they have it in an other, but this dissolution is itself this self-identity or the ground of their subsistence that they give to themselves.

‘Essence has a form and determinations of this form. Only as ground does it have a fixed immediacy or is substrate. Essence as such is one with its reflection, inseparable from its movement. It is not essence, therefore, through which this movement runs its reflective course; nor is essence that from which the movement begins, as from a starting point. It is this circumstance that above all makes the exposition of reflection especially difficult, for strictly speaking one cannot say that essence returns into itself, that essence shines in itself, for essence is neither before its movement nor in the movement: this movement has no substrate on which it runs its course. A term of reference arises in the ground only following upon the moment of sublated reflection. But essence as the referred-to term is determinate essence, and by virtue of this positedness it has form as essence. — The determinations of form, on the contrary, are now determinations in the essence; the latter lies at their foundation as an indeterminate which in its determination is indifferent to them; in it, they are reflected into themselves. The determinations of reflection should have their subsistence in them and be self-subsistent. But their self-subsistence is their dissolution, which they thus have in an other; but this dissolution is itself this self-identity or the ground of the subsistence that they give to themselves’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Hence Form both recaptures and is the Self-Subsistence that the extremes renounced and Form is posited by its self-erasing extremes and yet Form is not to be distinguished from the extremes as Reflection-into-self was, in Reflection-into-Self (Mediation of Ground)). Rather Form is the extremes d, e, f, as well as being distinguished from the Extremes g. That disappearing Form endures is important evidence that with Hegel it is appearances all the way down, nonetheless the Understanding staring back at Form (Ground Relation) proposes that the extremes constitute the form as against essence, that is the extremes have declared they have no Self-Subsistence and this is the very confession of Form and yet it is also true that Form d, f, has posited its Self-Subsistence, its Essence, as g.

Form (Ground Relation)

The Understanding therefore proposes that Form and Essence must forever appear together as correlation.

Essence has a form according to Hegel, meaning that Essence never exists on its own without Form hence the pair of Form and Essence always appears together in a Ground Relation and external Reflection Hegel laments usually does not go beyond this distinction of Essence and Form.

‘Form is therefore the completed whole of reflection; it also contains this determination of reflection, that it is sublated; just like reflection, therefore, it is one unity of its determining, and it is also referred to its sublatedness, to another that is not itself form but in which the form is. As essential self-referring negativity, in contrast with that simple negative, form is positing and determining; simple essence, on the contrary, is indeterminate and inert substrate in which the determinations of form have their subsistence or their reflection into themselves. — External reflection normally halts at this distinction of essence and form; the distinction is necessary, but the distinguishing itself of the two is their unity, just as this unity of ground is essence repelling itself from itself and making itself into positedness. Form is absolute negativity itself or the negative absolute self-identity by virtue of which essence is indeed not being but essence. This identity, taken abstractly, is essence as against form, just as negativity, taken abstractly as positedness, is the one determination of form. But this determination has shown itself to be in truth the whole self-referring negativity which within, as this identity, thus is simple essence. Consequently, form has essence in its own identity, just as essence has absolute form in its negative nature. One cannot therefore ask, how form comes to essence, for form is only the internal reflective shining of essence, its own reflection inhabiting it. Form equally is, within it, the reflection turning back into itself or the identical essence; in its determining, form makes the determination into positedness as positedness. — Form, therefore, does not determine essence, as if it were truly presupposed, separate from essence, for it would then be the unessential, constantly foundering determination of reflection; here it rather is itself the ground of its sublating or the identical reference of its determinations. That the form determines the essence means, therefore, that in its distinguishing form sublates this very distinguishing and is the self-identity that essence is as the subsistence of the determinations; form is the contradiction of being sublated in its positedness and yet having subsistence in this sublatedness; it is accordingly ground as essence which is self-identical in being determined or negated’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

The Diversity (and remember we are all on board with Diversity theses days it is an especially sacred category) attributed to Form and Essence itself implies a unity the very distinction of one against the other and this unity is itself not coincident with Form or Essence but is rather the Essence of Form and Essence from the view of external reflection. And even for external reflection Essence this unity expels itself from Form and Essence and makes itself into a positedness and as portrayed in Ground Essence as Ground had a fixed immediacy but it was Essence determined as undetermined. Essence as Ground was a substrate, substrate connoting an abstract, inactive beyond and Substrate is ‘the being that would be the inert support of … representations’, said Jean Hyppolite, (1907–1968). Substrate is developed in Continuity and Indifference (Substrate).

Simultaneously Essence as Ground was pure movement, the movement of self-erasure, and according to Hegel Essence is inseparable from the movement of reflection itself and one cannot say that this movement runs through Essence nor can one say that Essence is the starting point of the movement, Essence is not before or in its movement, rather Essence is the movement itself and the place to which it removes its self, its Being, is Form, and somewhat Ironically Form is an advanced version of Ground. From a philosophical point of view (whatever I mean by that) one might have assumed the opposite to be the case and that Form is grounded in Essence. Essence announces it is not Essence, and this announcement is Form itself. ‘Form is self-relating negativity, and hence negates itself in its other’, said Deborah Chaffin.

Form and Essence

From which Hegel is entitled to conclude that a related determination only makes its appearance in ground conformably to the moment of sublated reflection, that is, only when Reflection erases itself does Essence appear in the guise of Form and when Essence is related Substrate as opposed to an isolated substrate it is determinate by virtue of this positedness it contains form or to express the same thing differently if we have before us the form of a thing then by definition and Essence has already erased itself in favour of form.

Yet Hegel gives a caveat whereby Essence, b in Form and Essence, still has a moment of indifference toward its own form determinations, it is a form determination in so far as it is something posited and consequently distinct from that of which it is the form.

‘Everything determinate belongs in general to form; it is a form determination inasmuch as it is something posited and hence distinguished from that of which it is the form. As quality, determinateness is one with its substrate, being; being is the immediate determinate, not yet distinct from its determinateness or, in this determinateness, still unreflected into itself, just as the determinateness is, therefore, an existent determinateness, not yet one that is posited. — Moreover, the form determinations of essence are, in their more specific determinateness, the previously considered moments of reflections: identity and difference, the latter as both diversity and opposition. But also the ground-connection belongs among these form determinations of essence, because through it, though itself the sublated determination of reflection, essence is at the same time as posited. By contrast, the identity that has the ground immanent in it does not pertain to form, because positedness, as sublated and as such (as ground and grounded), is one reflection, and this reflection constitutes essence as simple substrate which is the subsistence of form. But in ground this subsistence is posited, or this essence is itself essentially as determinate and, consequently, is in turn also the moment of the ground-connection and form. — This is the absolute reciprocal connecting reference of form and essence: essence is the simple unity of ground and grounded but, in this unity, is itself determined, or is a negative, and it distinguishes itself as substrate from form, but at the same time it thereby becomes itself ground and moment of form’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

As form determinations have renounced Reflection-into-self, Essence in its indifferent moment is where Reflection-into-self has removed itself and Essence henceforth continues to possess a self-identity that is not possessed by Form and it is the simple substrate which is the subsisting of form since Form by definition is not self-subsistent. Form posits subsistence to be in Essence. In Form, Essence is made into something posited and in Form and Essence Essence is essentially determinate and is thus once again the moment of Ground-relation and Form.

Form and Essence are correlatives in Form and Essence but each is equally the whole that includes the other as we saw in Hegel’s analysis of opposites and hence Form is the completed whole of reflection, and yet it is a sublated determination and sublation implicates relation to an other that is not Form. In its moment of relation Form a posits Essence b while Essence as Ground is the indeterminate and inactive substrate in which the form-determinations subsist. Yet even while Essence excludes form it likewise includes it and as a consequence form has essence just as essence has in its negative nature absolute form and hence the question cannot be raised as to how form is added to essence for it is only the reflection of essence into essence itself essence’s own immanent reflection.

‘Form is therefore the completed whole of reflection; it also contains this determination of reflection, that it is sublated; just like reflection, therefore, it is one unity of its determining, and it is also referred to its sublatedness, to another that is not itself form but in which the form is. As essential selfreferring negativity, in contrast with that simple negative, form is positing and determining; simple essence, on the contrary, is indeterminate and inert substrate in which the determinations of form have their subsistence or their reflection into themselves. — External reflection normally halts at this distinction of essence and form; the distinction is necessary, but the distinguishing itself of the two is their unity, just as this unity of ground is essence repelling itself from itself and making itself into positedness. Form is absolute negativity itself or the negative absolute self-identity by virtue of which essence is indeed not being but essence. This identity, taken abstractly, is essence as against form, just as negativity, taken abstractly as positedness, is the one determination of form. But this determination has shown itself to be in truth the whole self-referring negativity which within, as this identity, thus is simple essence. Consequently, form has essence in its own identity, just as essence has absolute form in its negative nature. One cannot therefore ask, how form comes to essence, for form is only the internal reflective shining of essence, its own reflection inhabiting it. Form equally is, within it, the reflection turning back into itself or the identical essence; in its determining, form makes the determination into positedness as positedness. — Form, therefore, does not determine essence, as if it were truly presupposed, separate from essence, for it would then be the unessential, constantly foundering determination of reflection; here it rather is itself the ground of its sublating or the identical reference of its determinations. That the form determines the essence means, therefore, that in its distinguishing form sublates this very distinguishing and is the self-identity that essence is as the subsistence of the determinations; form is the contradiction of being sublated in its positedness and yet having subsistence in this sublatedness; it is accordingly ground as essence which is self-identical in being determined or negated’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Form is not self-subsistent and it posits its Self-Subsistence to be in Essence and yet Form is included in and excluded from Essence and in spite of its objections to the contrary Form is Essence after all for it is in its own self equally the reflection that returns into itself or identical with essence and for this very reason it is incorrect to think that Form merely presupposes Essence as if separate from it as this would be the unessential determination of reflection that rushes forth without hesitation to destruction. Form is Essence and is opposed to Essence, it is itself the ground of its sublating or the identical connexion of its determinations, and in distinguishing itself from Essence Form sublates this very distinguishing and is the self-identity which essence is. In brief Form is the contradiction of being sublated in its positedness and of persisting in this sublatedness, Form is as much Essence as it is Form for as far as Hegel views the matter it is appearances all the way down.

‘Woman Walking near a Ruin’, 1852, William Howis senior

Form and Matter. Dialectical Reason analyses Essence as it stands over against Form even while being Form itself and according to this moment Form and Matter essence is the indeterminate for which form is an other and in virtue of being such it is not essence which is in its own self absolute reflection. That is to say at this moment Essence does not have being-in-and-for-self but rather it has being-for-other and it is determined by Form as formless identity, it is matter and in this dialectical moment Matter (die Materie) is radically other to or diverse from Form, it is the formless indeterminate.

‘Essence becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter, therefore, is the simple identity, void of distinction, that essence is, with the determination that it is the other of form. Hence it is the proper base or substrate of form, since it constitutes the immanent reflection of the determinations of form, or the self-subsistent term, to which such determinations refer as to their positive subsistence’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Matter ‘can be thought only by abstracting from form — all form’, explains Burbidge.

Nonetheless in virtue of Form having expelled its Reflection-into-self it must follow that Matter constitutes the reflection-into-self of the form determinations.

‘If abstraction is made from every determination, from every form of a something, matter is what is left over. Matter is the absolutely abstract. (One cannot see, feel, etc. matter; what one sees or feels is a determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form.) This abstraction from which matter derives is not, however, an external removal and sublation of form; it is rather the form itself which, as we have just seen, reduces itself by virtue of itself to this simple identity’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Matter is the self-subsistent element to which form-determinations] are related and in this guise Matter is determined as a groundless subsistence apparently separate from Form and Form and matter alike are accordingly determined as being not posited by one another, as not being the ground of one another. Matter in Form and Matter therefore resembles Reflection-into-self in Reflection-into-Self (Mediation of Ground) and in both these moments self-subsistence is divorced from merely formal appearance and furthermore both Reflection-into-self and Matter are on the side of Being which recall is the left hand side of the diagrams, that which posits them is on the side of nothing hence Matter is not simple essence which is immediately itself absolute reflection but it is essence determined as the positive, that is to say essence that only is as sublated negation.

‘Further, form presupposes a matter to which it refers. But for this reason the two do not find themselves confronting each other externally and accidentally; neither matter nor form derives from itself, is a se, or, in other words, is eternal. Matter is indifferent with respect to form, but this indifference is the determinateness of self-identity to which form returns as to its substrate. Form pre-supposes matter for the very reason that it posits itself as a sublated, hence refers to this, its identity, as to something other. Contrariwise, form is presupposed by matter; for matter is not simple essence, which immediately is itself absolute reflection, but is essence determined as something positive, that is to say, which only is as sublated negation. — But, on the other hand, since form posits itself as matter only in sublating itself, hence in presupposing matter, matter is also determined as groundless subsistence. Equally so, matter is not determined as the ground of form; but rather, inasmuch as matter posits itself as the abstract identity of the sublated determination of form, it is not that identity as ground, and form is therefore groundless with respect to it. Form and matter are consequently alike determined as not to be posited each by the other, each not to be the ground of the other. Matter is rather the identity of the ground and the grounded, as the substrate that stands over against this reference of form. This determination of indifference that the two have in common is the determination of matter as such and also constitutes their reciprocal reference. The determination of form, that it is the connection of the two as distinct, equally is also the other moment of the relating of the two to each other. — Matter, determined as indifferent, is the passive as contrasted to form, which is determined as the active. This latter, as self-referring negative, is inherently contradiction, self-dissolving, self-repelling, and self-determining. It refers to matter, and it is posited to refer to this matter, which is its subsistence, as to another. Matter is posited, on the contrary, as referring only to itself and as indifferent to the other; but, implicitly, it does refer to the form, for it contains the sublated negativity and is matter only by virtue of this determination. It refers to it as an other only because form is not posited in it, because it is form only implicitly. It contains form locked up inside it, and it is an absolute receptivity for form only because it has the latter within it absolutely, because to be form is its implicit vocation. Hence matter must be informed, and form must materialize itself; it must give itself self-identity or subsistence in matter’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

The sublatedness of negation refers to the isolated immediacy of c in Form and Matter on the side of Being but this is merely an assumed stance as speculative Reason is well aware and Form being negative presupposes Matter as its indifferent other and yet the two are not externally and contingently opposite to one another.

Form and Matter

Nor are Form and Matter self-subsistent. Neither matter nor form is self-originated or in alternative terminology, eternal for an eternal thing cannot have been originated by another otherwise there would have been a time when the eternal thing did not exist. But does it hence follow that the eternal thing originated itself? Might it not be said that the eternal thing simply has no origin? Perhaps Hegel’s meaning here is that the eternal thing is grounded upon nothing else but itself and because ground is origin the eternal thing is self-originating in this sense, rather they are mutually dependent and their relation is reciprocal presupposition.

‘First, form and matter pre-suppose each other. As we have seen, this only means that the one essential unity is negative self-reference, and that it therefore splits, determined as an indifferent substrate in the essential identity, and as determining form in essential distinction or negativity. That unity of essence and form, the two opposed to each other as form and matter, is the absolute self-determining ground. Inasmuch as this unity differentiates itself, the reference connecting the two diverse terms, because of the unity that underlies them, becomes a reference of reciprocal presupposition’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Therefore Form withdraws into Matter and Matter is real basis or substrate to Form. Matter is what is left after every form determination is abstracted from a thing and the nature of Form is to sublate itself and so Form spontaneously reduces itself to Matter. According to Hegel Matter is passive and Form is active and Form dissolves itself as the non-self-subsistent and withdraws into Matter and Form is therefore the self-related negative and internal contradiction, it is self-resolving, self-repelling and self-determining. Matter in contrast is indifferent and passive and from the perspective of its moment Matter is only implicitly related to form. that is to say, Matter does not posit Form but rather Matter contains form secured and enchained within it so to speak and is absolute susceptibility to form only in virtue of it having form absolutely within itself. Matter must hence be formed, Form and Matter are different but each is entirely the whole that includes the other and Matter is the identity of ground and grounded, as a ground I’m doing it again or should I say a basis? which stands over against Form and Form is likewise ground and grounded the relation of the two as distinct sides and since Form contains matter within it, Form’s action upon matter, the formation of matter, is only the removal of the illusion of their indifference.

‘Consequently, form determines matter, and matter is determined by form. — Because form is itself absolute self-identity and hence implicitly contains matter; and equally because matter in its pure abstraction or absolute negativity possesses form within it, the activity of the form on the matter and the reception by the latter of the form determination is only the sublating of the semblance of their indifference and distinctness. Thus the determination referring each to the other is the self-mediation of each through its own non-being. But the two mediations are one movement, and the restoration of their original identity is the inner recollection of their exteriorization’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

If Form erases itself and transports itself to its other and if Form also contains Matter then Matter in addition is a self-erasure that sends its non-being into Form and here is the customary vacillation between the extremes that typifies dialectical Reason and Hegel designates these self-erasures this mediation of each with itself through its own non-being as inwardisation of outwardness. What is outward inwardises itself and Form is outward and by self-erasing it moves inward for deeper and deeper withdrawal and higher and higher intensity is the whole point of Logic which is probably why I get so turned on by it and as Hegel explains later each new stage of forthgoing, that is to say of further determination, is a withdrawal inwards and the greater extension is equally a higher intensity.

‘This expansion may be regarded as the moment of content, and in the whole as the first premise; the universal is communicated to the wealth of content, is immediately received in it. But the relation has also a second, negative or dialectical side. The enrichment proceeds in the necessity of the concept, it is contained by it, and every determination is a reflection into itself. Each new stage of exteriorization, that is, of further determination, is also a withdrawing into itself, and the greater the extension, just as dense is the intensity. The richest is therefore the most concrete and the most subjective, and that which retreats to the simplest depth is the mightiest and the most all-encompassing. The highest and most intense point is the pure personality that, solely by virtue of the absolute dialectic which is its nature, equally embraces and holds everything within itself, for it makes itself into the supremely free — the simplicity which is the first immediacy and universality’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Each side of the syllogism therefore is Form transporting itself to its other and this is the absolute ground that determines itself and since Matter transports itself into Form and vice versa Matter makes itself into something determinate and the activity of Form is therefore no less a movement belonging to Matter itself.

‘The activity of form by which matter is determined consists, therefore, in a negative relating of the form to itself. But, conversely, form thereby negatively relates itself to matter also; the movement, however, by which matter becomes determined is just as much the form’s own movement. Form is free of matter, but it sublates its self-subsistence; but this, its self-subsistence, is matter itself, for it is in this matter that it has its essential identity. It makes itself into a positedness, but this is one and the same as making matter into something determinate. — But, considered from the other side, the form’s own identity is at the same time externalized, and matter is its other; for this reason, because form sublates its own self-subsistence, matter is also not determined. But matter only subsists vis-`a-vis form; as the negative sublates itself, so does the positive also. And as the form sublates itself, the determinateness of matter that the latter has vis-`a-vis form also falls away — the determinateness, namely, of being the indeterminate subsistence’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

This moment supersedes the earlier point that Matter is passive and speculative Reason sees that dialectical Reason is once again the accuser inviting the retort tu quoque for it accuses Form of self-erasure yet Matter is just as much self-erasure. Self-erasure is the unity the Content of Form and Matter. Matter was determined by Form, but Matter is Form hence Matter determines itself and Form is simply material, subsistent form.

‘Third, through this movement of form and matter, the original unity of the two is, on the one hand, restored; on the other hand, it is henceforth a posited unity. Matter is just as much a self-determining as this determining is for it an activity of form external to it; contrariwise, form determines only itself, or has the matter that it determines within it, just much as in its determining it relates itself to another; and both, the activity of form and the movement of matter, are one and the same thing, only that the former is an activity, that is, it is the negativity as posited, while the latter is movement or becoming, the negativity as determination existing in itself. The result, therefore, is the unity of the in-itself and positedness. Matter is as such determined or necessarily has a form, and form is simply material, subsistent form’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Thus the insight of Lucio Colletti is in essence not far from the truth that Hegel’s idealism is not the anti-materialism the Marxists took it to be. ‘Hegel is as much a realist as, and effectively more so than, any other philosopher’, explains Errol E. Harris. ‘No dialectic can be materialistic, if that means, as is usually intended, that all forms of reality are reducible to finite, immobile, and dead matter. But if it means no more (nor less) than that matter is pregnant with life and mind, it must be the Hegelian and not the Marxian dialectic that operates in it’. Idealism carried to the extremes ‘converts into dialectical materialism’, elucidates Sarah Kay.

Hegel reviews the road thus ftravelled across Absolute Ground, first Form was Ground Relation, the unity between itself and its Self-Subsistence that is Reflection-into-self, second dialectically Form stood against Matter and thirdly Form was formed matter or Content. To put it another way in the development of Ground/Grounded, the Grounded (primitive Form) posited Ground and when Form stood against Matter, Form (Grounded) presupposed Matter and now Form and Matter have been exposed to be the same as each posits Content taken as self-erasure.

Form has revealed itself as powerful as Slavoj Žižek, (1949-), interprets it. What was previously the self-identical, at first ground, then simple subsistence, and finally matter, comes under the dominance of form and is once more one of its determinations.

‘Form stands at first over against essence; it is then the ground-connection in general, and its determinations are the ground and the grounded. It then stands over against matter, and so it is determining reflection, and its determinations are the determination of reflection itself and the subsistence of the latter. Finally, it stands over against content, and then its determinations are again itself and matter. What was previously the self-identical — at first the ground, then subsistence in general, and finally matter — now passes under the dominion of form and is once more one of its determinations’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Content (Inwardization of Outward Form)

**‘Woman Walking on the Banks of the Aven’, 1890, Émile Henri Bernard**

Form and Content. Ground has now become formed matter, or the form that has a subsistence but on the one hand it is the absolute unity of the ground with itself.

‘Informed matter or form that possesses subsistence is now, not only this absolute unity of ground with itself, but also unity as posited. The movement just considered is the one in which the absolute ground has exhibited its moments at once as self-sublating and consequently as posited. Or the restored unity, in withdrawing into itself, has repelled itself from itself and has determined itself; for its unity has been established through negation and is, therefore, also negative unity. It is, therefore, the unity of form and matter, as the substrate of both, but a substrate which is determinate: it is formed matter, but matter at the same time indifferent to form and matter, indifferent to them because sublated and unessential. This is content’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

This could be seen as g in Content (Inwardization of Outward Form). But on the other hand it is posited which alludes to its otherness and therefore, d, e, f posit their Ground in g by self-sublating and in this explicit double guise it is Content. The Content of Form is the inwardisation of the outward and we may ask what Content is thereby. Nothing but self-erasure. As Hegel will explain later, Form, that is self-erasure, is the soul of all objectivity and all otherwise determined content has its truth in the form alone.

‘Method may appear at first to be just the manner in which cognition proceeds, and this is in fact its nature. But as method this manner of proceeding is not only a modality of being determined in and for itself; it is a modality of cognition, and as such is posited as determined by the concept and as form, since form is the soul of all objectivity and all otherwise determined content has its truth in form alone. If the content is again assumed as given to the method and of a nature of its own, then method, so understood, is just like the logical realm in general a merely external form. But against this assumption appeal can be made, not only to the fundamental concept of what constitutes logic, but to the entire logical course in which all the shapes of a given content and of objects came up for consideration. This course has shown the transitoriness and the untruth of all such shapes; also that no given object is capable of being the foundation to which the absolute form would relate as only an external and accidental determination; that, on the contrary, it is the absolute form that has proved itself to be the absolute foundation and the ultimate truth. For this course the method has resulted as the absolutely self-knowing concept, as the concept that has the absolute, both as subjective and objective, as its subject matter, and consequently as the pure correspondence of the concept and its reality, a concrete existence that is the concept itself’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

The Understanding proposes that given Form there must be self-erasure or Content and if the Understanding emphasizes the unity between Form and Content dialectical Reason brings to our attention the difference and hence there is a doubling of form. At one point it is reflected into itself and then is identical with the content and at another point it is not reflected into itself and then is the external existence that does not at all affect the content.

Form and Content

‘The mutual externality of the world of appearance is totality and it is entirely contained within its relation- ta-self. Hence, the relation of appearance to itself is completely determinate, it has the form within itself, and, because it has it in this identity, [it has the form] as its essential subsistence. Hence too, the form is content; and in its developed determinacy it is the law of appearance. The negative of appearance, that which is dependent and alterable, belongs to the form as not reflected within-itself: this is the indifferent, external form. Regarding the antithesis of form and content it is essential to remember that the content is not formless, but that it has the form within itself just as much as the form is something external to it. We have here the doubling of the form: on the one hand, as inwardly reflected, it is the content; on the other hand, as not reflected inwardly, it is the external existence, that is indifferent to the content. What is here present in-itself is the absolute relationship of content and form, i. e., the reciprocal overturning of one into the other, so that ‘content’ is nothing but the overturning of form into content, and ‘form’ nothing but overturning of content into form. This overturning is one of the most important determinations. But it is not posited until we reach absolute relationship’.

- ‘The Encyclopedia Logic’

The above passage does present something of a problem in locating Form and Content in the realm of Appearance two chapters hence and the significance of this relocation will be discussed in chapter fourteen. According to Errol Harris: ‘Hitherto essence has been expressed as the showing of an essential being in an external display or reflection. In matter and form, matter was the subsistent element and form its outward, contingent, inessential, showing forth’. In point of fact Essence has never overtly shown itself but rather the inessential constantly discloses what it is not and Self-erasure transpires to be how Essence appears. In these moments Essence is presupposed and as it happens and according to Harris ‘essence is now embodied in material form’. And yet this does not mean that content is some positive thing coincident with Form thereby suggesting that the content of falling bodies is the form of accelerating at 16 feet per second, for Content is not something affirmative akin to the law of falling bodies but simply the act of form’s self-erasure. In point of fact the law of falling bodies will later be cited as inessential material.

Form v Content

Speculative Reason perceives that Form is as much Content as Content is Form and any distinction between them is imposed externally. Form and Content therefore erase themselves and withdraw into their speculative result which is determinate Ground and determinate Ground stands for the inability of Essence to manifest whether it is Form or Content yet nonetheless Ground has a Content and the content of the ground is the ground that has returned into its unity with itself.

‘The content of the ground is therefore the ground that has returned into its unity with itself; the ground is at first the essence that in its positedness is identical with itself; as diverse from and indifferent to its positedness, the ground is indeterminate matter; but as content it is at the same time informed identity, and this form becomes for this reason a ground-connection, since the determinations of its oppositions are posited in the content also as negated. — Content is further determined within, not like matter as an indifferent in general, but like informed matter, so that the determinations of form have a material, indifferent subsistence. On the one hand, content is the essential self-identity of the ground in its positedness; on the other hand, it is posited identity as against the groundconnection; this positedness, which is in this identity as determination of form, stands over against the free positedness, that is to say, over against the form as the whole connection of ground and grounded. This form is the total positedness returning into itself; the other form, therefore, is only the positedness as immediate, the determinateness as such’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

Determinate Ground. In other words determinate Ground is self-erasure itself and its content is its form. Determinate Ground has a content which cannot be distinguished from Form without the assistance of external reflection. Determinate Ground thus has a double structure whereby first it is immediate g. As such it is Form, standing indifferently over against Content, its determinateness of being is external to the content.

‘The ground has thus made itself into a determinate ground in general, and the determinateness is itself twofold: of form first, and of content second. The former is its determinateness of being external to the content as such, the content that remains indifferent to this external reference. The latter is the determinateness of the content that the ground has’.

- ‘The Science of Logic’

At this moment, if Form goes together with Content it is in virtue of an external reflection declaring that this must be. Second, determinate Ground is a positedness, d, e, f, and at this moment Form is connected to Content without the assistance of external reflection.