On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part twenty two.
‘La vida es sueño’
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
‘Life is a Dream’
What is life? A madness,
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a story,
And the greatest good is little enough:
for all life is a dream,
and dreams themselves are only dreams.
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (1600–1681)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Science of Logic’. ‘Illusory Being’. The section entitled ‘Der Schein’ (Illusion, Illusory Being or Seeming or, well, Shine) is regarded as extremely obscure but this is Hegel. As for the title John Burbidge is not in favours of the term Illusory Being and in its place puts Seeming, his reason being that Illusory Being transpires to be Essence all along and therefore not merely illusory. George di Giovanni, (1935 -), whose translation I am using, renders it as Shine which is certainly non-committal about it being illusory or not. Theodor W. Adorno, (1903–1969, calls it one of the cryptic chapters. Giacomo Rinaldi, (1954 — ), suggests that Hegel omitted it from the ‘Encyclopedia Logic’ because it was unconvincing. Robert Buford Pippin, (1948 -) who continually gripes about Hegel’s style declares concerning Illusory Being that Hegel ‘is trying to say everything at once (again), and so describes its [Illusory Being’s] insufficiency in ways that cannot possibly be clear on this point and will require much explanation later’. The basic idea of it is familiar enough however as dialectical Reason takes the Understanding’s proposition about the Essential and demonstrates the opposite to be true, that the Essential is actually Unessential and yet if there is an Unessential there must be an Essential and nonetheless neither the Understanding nor dialectical Reason can fix its location so that at one moment it is here and at another moment it is there.
The issue in Illusory Being is the status of the middle term b. for the Understanding thinks b is Essential and dialectical Reason considers b tobe an immediate being and Unessential which leaves us wondering where the Essential is and neither the Understanding and dialectical Reason are about to admit that it is the Essential and from the perspective of being-in-and-for-self, each is external and distinctly not essential to Essence and therefore two nothings have between them a third nothing and Illusory Being is the negative posited as negative.
‘Being is shine. The being of shine consists solely in the sublatedness of being, in being’s nothingness; this nothingness it has in essence, and apart from its nothingness, apart from essence, it does not exist. It is the negative posited as negative’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
There can be an Essential only if there is also an Unessential and if dialectical Reason re-characterizes the Essential designating it Illusory Being and putting it forth as nothing then from the perspective of being-in-and-for-self it must in addition be saying that the Understanding must stand over against Illusory Being b and hence it must be located in a or b. In brief Illusory Being discloses what it is which is Unessential by announcing what it is not and Illusory Being depicts the familiar modulation between the extremes and each is not the Essential, each asserts the other is really the Essential one.
The parodic appellation of Essence is juggled with between the extremes across the middle term and speculative Reason designates this movement Reflection and it well knows that albeit Illusory Being has an immediate side that is independent of essence and simply an other of essence it is equally mediated and immediacy is the mark of Being which is now sublated and Illusory Being is all that still remains from the sphere of being.
‘Shine is all that remains of the sphere of being. But it still seems to have an immediate side which is independent of essence and to be, in general, an other of essence. Other entails in general the two moments of existence and non-existence. Since the unessential no longer has a being, what is left to it of otherness is only the pure moment of non-existence; shine is this immediate non-existence, a non-existence in the determinateness of being, so that it has existence only with reference to another, in its non-existence; it is the non-self-subsistent which exists only in its negation. What is left over to it is thus only the pure determinateness of immediacy; it is as reflected immediacy, that is, one which is only by virtue of the mediation of its negation and which, over against this mediation, is nothing except the empty determination of the immediacy of non-existence’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Immediacy, then, is an ideal moment, a recollection of what once was but now is not. Reflection ‘is the mediating other of immediate being’, said Deborah Chaffin, (1952 — ). ‘Hegel developed the identity of determinacy and negation to show that determinacy is relation to other. Reflection is the other of presupposed immediacy’, explains John F. Hoffmeyer. Hence Illusory Being is a reflected immediacy, a mediated immediacy and reflected means that it is an product of some other announcing what this other is not and the Unessential in effect declares that it is not Essential and to dialectical Reason Illusory Being appears immediate yet speculative Reason knows that such an appearance is one-sided. Illusory Being is mediated and unmediated and the evidence for such rests with this: Illusory Being b has a moment of independence from Essence a or c which Hegel designates an immediate presupposition.
‘Shine thus contains an immediate presupposition, an independent side vis-a-vis essence. But the task, inasmuch as this shine is distinct from essence, is not to demonstrate that it sublates itself and returns into essence, for being has returned into essence in its totality; shine is the null as such. The task is to demonstrate that the determinations which distinguish it from essence are the determinations of essence itself; further, that this determinateness of essence, which shine is, is sublated in essence itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Illusory Being
The importance of this contention lies in the fact that Illusory Being b being immediate is merely to say that it is different from the Unessential now in contention for the honour of Essentiality and that Illusory Being being a presupposition follows because the Essential and Unessential exist correlatively and if the Unessential a announces what it is not then it necessarily presupposes the existence of the other thing b from which it distinguishes itself and as we will learn in ‘Positing Reflection’ presupposition of otherness is a chief analytic technique in the analysis of Essence albeit presupposition is the adversary of philosophy and must be overcome, according to Pippin, indeed Hegel does assert that the sublating of its presupposition is essence itself.
‘It is only by virtue of the sublating of its equality with itself that essence is equality with itself. Essence presupposes itself, and the sublating of this presupposing is essence itself; contrariwise, this sublating of its presupposition is the presupposition itself. — Reflection thus finds an immediate before it which it transcends and from which it is the turning back. But this turning back is only the presupposing of what was antecedently found. This antecedent comes to be only by being left behind; its immediacy is sublated immediacy. — The sublated immediacy is, contrariwise, the turning back into itself, essence that arrives at itself, simple being equal to itself. This arriving at itself is thus the sublating of itself and self-repelling, presupposing reflection, and its repelling of itself from itself is the arriving at itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
A question then arises concerning how this might be achieved.
Reflection
Hegel relieves himself of the responsibility of demonstrating that Illusory Being sublates itself and withdraws into Essence for this has already been demonstrated in the previous nine chapters and Being in its totality has already withdrawn into essence. All Hegel has to demonstrate is that first Being’s distinction from Essence is the determination of essence itself, and that second this determinateness of essence which illusory being is, is sublated in essence itself and if Essence gives rise to Illusory Being and then sublates it then Essence has being-in-and-for-self and is not merely finite Being dependent upon otherness.
The second challenge is dealt with merely by demonstrating that a new middle term arises from Illusory Being and sublation is what speculative Reason always does to dialectical Reason’s discovery. As to the first challenge a question arises as to how Hegel can demonstrate that Illusory Being’s difference from Essence is Essence’s own determination and one might suppose that the manner of answering will be of the kind of proposition that if it walks like a duck sounds like a duck and looks like a duck it is a duck but we know the problems therein with such a proposition albeit in similar manner if Hegel demonstrates that Illusory Being has all the properties of being-in-and-for-self, then contrary to what has been claimed Hegel has demonstrated that Illusory Being is Essence. ‘Supposed to be other than essence, seeming [Illusory Being] has the same defining characteristics’, said Burbidge.
‘Head of Warrior’, 1981, Salvador Dali
‘La vida es sueño’
¿Qué os espanta,
si fue mi maestro un sueño,
y estoy temiendo, en mis ansias,
que he de despertar y hallarme
otra vez en mi cerrada
prisión? Y cuando no sea,
el soñarlo sólo basta;
pues así llegué a saber
que toda la dicha humana,
en fin, pasa como sueño.
‘Life is a Dream’
What surprises you,
if a dream taught me this wisdom,
and if I still fear I may wake up
and find myself once more confined in prison?
And even if this should not happen,
merely to dream it is enough.
For this I have come to know,
that all human happiness finally ceases, like a dream.
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (1600–1681)
The trialogue proceeds thusly:
The Understanding: To find the Essential strip away all the Unessentials.
Dialectical Reason: You will never discover the Essential by stripping away all the Unessentials.
Speculative Reason: That is the essence of the matter, that you will never find the essence of the matter for essence erases itself.
The argument proceeds thusly:
First, Illusory Being was meant to be Essential but only in virtue of it being assigned this role by external Understanding.
The Understanding declared itself to be Unessential and the other is the Essential.
Dialectical Reason then pointed out that the so called Essential had no being-in-and-for-self hence it was Illusory Being which is to say a nothing.
In this dialectical observation Illusory Being is taken to be an immediacy and furthermore an immediacy that is not and yet this is precisely what Essence is that is to say not being and therefore Illusory Being which declares that it is not Being discloses itself to be Essence all along and Illusory Being declares what it is not and this is the mark of Essence for in Illusory Being the negativity of essence is present.
‘What constitutes the shine is the immediacy of non-being; this nonbeing, however, is nothing else than the negativity of essence within essence itself. In essence, being is non-being. Its inherent nothingness is the negative nature of essence itself. But the immediacy or indifference which this nonbeing contains is essences’s own absolute in-itself. The negativity of essence is its self-equality or its simple immediacy and indifference. Being has preserved itself in essence inasmuch as this latter, in its infinite negativity, has this equality with itself; it is through this that essence is itself being. The immediacy that the determinateness has in shine against essence is thus none other than essence’s own immediacy, though not the immediacy of an existent but rather the absolutely mediated or reflective immediacy which is shine — being, not as being, but only as the determinateness of being as against mediation; being as moment’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
From this it follows that the disputed immediacy of Illusory Being is essence’s own absolute being-in-itself. As Burbidge puts it, Essence is ‘that which seems to be a seeming’. Since seeming is not being, seeming to be a seeming is a re-established kind of negative being. In effect, b shows itself to be Reflection g. Immediacy a moment of Illusory Being is by definition equality with self and it is through this that essence itself is being or in other words the being of Essence is precisely its independence that is to say immediacy from being. Essence is nothing but the declaration that it is not Being and hence non-being is Essence’s mode of being and yet this immediacy is not simply affirmative for at this stage affirmativity is retrogressive rather immediacy is purely mediated or reflected immediacy and the immediate being of Illusory Being is merely a moment and its other moment is mediation.
There are in fact two moments in Illusory Being. There is first the nothingness which yet is which is to say mediation and second the being which is only a moment which is to say immediacy and Reflection then has the structure of Becoming, a unity of nothing and being and this structure means that Reflection is on the move which is to say it is the movement of becoming.
‘Essence is reflection, the movement of becoming and transition that remains within itself, wherein that which is distinguished is determined simply and solely as the negative in itself, as shine. — In the becoming of being, it is being which lies at the foundation of determinateness, and determinateness is reference to an other. Reflective movement is by contrast the other as negation in itself, a negation which has being only as self-referring. Or, since this self-referring is precisely this negating of negation, what we have is negation as negation, negation that has its being in its being-negated, as shine. Here, therefore, the other is not being with negation or limit, but negation with negation. But the first over against this other, the immediate or being, is only this self-equality itself of negation, the negated negation, the absolute negativity. This self-equality or immediacy, therefore, is not a first from which the beginning is made and which would pass over into its negation; nor is there an existent substrate which would go through the moves of reflection; immediacy is rather just this movement itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Immediacy that is to say difference from Essence is a moment of Illusory Being, which is now equally a moment of Essence and this immediacy Hegel says is essence’s own absolute being-in-itself.
‘These two moments — nothingness but as subsisting, and being but as moment; or again, negativity existing in itself and reflected immediacy — these two moments that are the moments of shine, are thus the moments of essence itself; it is not that there is a shine of being in essence, or a shine of essence in being: the shine in the essence is not the shine of an other but is rather shine as such, the shine of essence itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
And what this implicates is that Being-in-itself is mere implicitness and Hegel is thereby contending that immediacy is not yet posited by Essence but must eventually be posited if Essence is to before-itself and Essence must recapture its lost immediacy albeitparadoxically immediacy is Essence’s legacy from Being under the law of sublation yet so far the sublated immediacy is merely in-itself. Thus, Hegel contends, Being has preserved itself in essence in so far as Essence in its infinite negativity has this equality with itself and it is through this that essence itself is being. In brief, immediacy is recollected from the logical history of Essence, but is not present now. Immediacy, then, is Essence’s own immediacy, and, when Dialectical Reason distinguishes Illusory Being as an immediate nothingness, it recollects the history of Illusory Being as sublated immediacy. ‘Vis-ä-vis [immediate being], essence always has been; at the same time it is always present in being. Concretely this means that being-there is at one and the same time a presupposition . . . and a consequence of essence’, said Herbert Marcuse, (1898–1979). What is presupposed in essence is that being was.
But as merely ail ideal (i.e., recollected) moment, the immediacy is not simply affirmative but is “purely mediated or reflected. The import of this exercise is that Illusory Being and Essence enjoy a unity. This implies that Essence is determinate within itself.
‘Shine is essence itself in the determinateness of being. Essence has a shine because it is determined within itself and is therefore distinguished from its absolute unity. But this determinateness is as determinateness just as absolutely sublated in it. For essence is what stands on its own: it exists as self-mediating through a negation which it itself is. It is, therefore, the identical unit of absolute negativity and immediacy. — The negativity is negativity in itself; it is its reference to itself and thus immediacy in itself. But it is negative reference to itself, a self-repelling negating; thus the immediacy existing in itself is the negative or the determinate over against the negativity. But this determinateness is itself absolute negativity and this determining, which as determining immediately sublates itself, is a turning back into itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Determinateness signifies a duality. The determinateness of Essence is also distinguished from its absolute unity. In short, we can know Essence (determinateness) through, and distinguish Essence (as immediacy) from, its appearances (though not in an immediate way). Because Illusory Being is self-related and other-related, it is the negative that has a being, but in an other, in its negation.
‘Shine is the negative which has a being, but in another, in its negation; it is a non-self-subsisting-being which is sublated within and null. And so it is the negative which returns into itself, the non-subsistent as such, internally non-subsistent. This reference of the negative or the non-subsistent to itself is the immediacy of this non-subsistent; it is an other than it; it is its determinateness over against it, or the negation over against the negative. But this negation which stands over against the negative is negativity as referring solely to itself, the absolute sublation of the determinateness itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Illusory Being is a True Infinite that sends its being elsewhere and retains its being. But Hegel adds a twist. Illusory Being’s being is negative, and its other is likewise a negative — as a or c (as compared to [b) in Illusory Being suggest. This habit of sending its antibeing elsewhere means that Illusory Being is a non-self subsistent being” (which, as a True Infinite, nevertheless subsists), self-sublated, and null. As such, Illusory Being is the negative returned into itself. Or, since a or c is just as much a participant in Illusory Being, the send-off of Being from b is only a return to a or c. And because the relation to other is self-relation, we can confirm that Illusory Being is an immediacy — the purely self-coincident negative.
‘The determinateness that shine is in essence is, therefore, infinite determinateness; it is only the negative which coincides with itself and hence a determinateness that, as determinateness, is self-subsistence and not determined. — Contrariwise, the self-subsistence, as self-referring immediacy, equally is just determinateness and moment, negativity solely referring to itself. — This negativity which is identical with immediacy, and thus the immediacy which is identical with negativity, is essence. Shine is, therefore, essence itself, but essence in a determinateness, in such a way, however, that the determinateness is only a moment, and the essence is the shining of itself within itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Its self-subsistent indeterminateness means that Illusory Being is essence itself. b thereby becomes g in Reflection. Essence is accordingly the negativity that is identical with immediacy and immediacy that is identical with negativity. Notice the contradiction in this last definition of Essence. Negativity has always been correlated to the thing negated. Negation in its truth is a relation or relationship) for it is the negative, but the negative of the positive, and includes the positive within itself. It is therefore the other, but not the other of something to which it is indifferent — in that case it would not be an other, nor a relationship — rather it is the other in its own self, the other of an other, it includes Us own other within it and is consequently a contradiction.
‘The second determination, the negative or mediated determination, is moreover at the same time the one that mediates. At first it may be taken as a simple determination, but its truth is that it is a reference or relation; for it is the negative, but the negative of the positive, and it includes this positive within itself. It is the other, therefore, not of a one to which it is indifferent; in that case it would not be an other, nor a reference or relation. It is rather the other in itself, the other of an other; hence it includes its own other within itself and is consequently the contradiction, the posited dialectic, of itself. — Because the first or the immediate is the concept in itself or implicitly, and therefore is the negative also only implicitly, the dialectical moment in it consists in the positing of the difference that is implicitly contained in it. The second is on the contrary itself the determinate, the difference or relation; hence the dialectical moment consists in its case in the positing of the unity contained within it. — For this reason, if the negative, the determinate, relation, judgment, and all the determinations falling under this second moment, do not appear by themselves already as contradiction, as dialectical, this is solely a defect on the part of thinking that fails to bring its thoughts together. For the material, the opposed determinations in one connection, are already posited, already present for thought. But formal thinking makes identity its law, lets the contradictory content that it has before it fall into the sphere of representation, in space and time, where the contradictory is held in external moments, next to and following each other, parading before consciousness without reciprocal contact. The firm principle that formal thinking lays down for itself here is that contradiction cannot be thought. But in fact the thought of contradiction is the essential moment of the concept. Formal thought does in fact think it, only it at once looks away from it and stating its principle it only passes over from it into abstract negation’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
It is always a mediation. But now Essence is both negative-mediated and immediate. This coheres with the claim that Essence is to the whole of Logic what Quantity was to Being. As such, Essence is negative to and correlated with Being. But Essence is, and as such it must be an immediacy. Both immediacy and mediation are valid moments of Essence.
Hegel concludes his description of Illusory Being by comparing the dynamic of Essence to that of Being. Pure Being was an immediacy. It turned into Pure Nothing, likewise an immediacy. Their truth was Becoming. In Essence, the Essential first opposed the Unessential. Two immediacies faced each other. Accordingly, the Essential revealed itself to be Unessential (i.e., Illusory Being). Illusory Being b drove from itself its negative being — a or c. This self-repulsion is the essence of Essence. And the name of this self-repulsion is Reflection.
Illusory Being is therefore a movement that determines its own immediacy as negativity and its negativity as immediacy. This, Hegel says, is the reflection of itself within itself.
‘In the sphere of being, non-being arises over against being, each equally an immediate, and the truth of both is becoming. In the sphere of essence, we have the contrast first of essence and the non-essential, then of essence and shine, the non-essential and the shine being both the leftover of being. But these two, and no less the distinction of essence from them, consist solely in this: that essence is taken at first as an immediate, not as it is in itself, namely as an immediacy which is immediacy as pure mediacy or absolute negativity. This first immediacy is thus only the determinateness of immediacy. The sublating of this determinateness of essence consists, therefore, in nothing further than showing that the unessential is only shine, and that essence rather contains this shine within itself. For essence is an infinite self-contained movement which determines its immediacy as negativity and its negativity as immediacy, and is thus the shining of itself within itself. In this, in its self-movement, essence is reflection’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Reflection is the self-movement of Essence. If Essence is taken as the entirety of Reflection, then reflective movement contains itself within itself. Later, Hegel will summarize the above by saying: Essence at first reflects an illusory being within itself, within its simple identity; as such it is abstract reflection, the pure movement from nothing through nothing back to itself.
‘Essence reflectively shines at first just within, in its simple identity; as such, it is abstract reflection, the pure movement of nothing through nothing back to itself. Essence appears, and so it now is real shine, since the moments of the shine have concrete existence. Appearance, as we have seen, is the thing as the negative mediation of itself with itself; the differences which it contains are self-subsisting matters which are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence, yet of obtaining their subsistence only in an alien self-subsistence, hence in the negation of their own, but then again, just because of that, also in the negation of that alien self-subsistence or in the negation of their own negation. Reflective shine is this same mediation, but its fleeting moments obtain in appearance the shape of immediate self-subsistence. On the other hand, the immediate self-subsistence which pertains to concrete existence is reduced to a moment. Appearance is therefore the unity of reflective shine and concrete existence’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Reflection in brief is a negation of a negation. ‘The ‘two nothings’ are the abstract aspects distinguished by reflection, each of which by itself is the negation of immediate being, and as such is a mere shadow. Yet each is correlative to (and ‘shows’ in) the other, and each reflecting into each to reveal an inner essence issuing in outer disclosure or self-expression’, explains Errol Eustace Harris, (1908–2009).
A note on Appearance, Illusion and Shining (which hopefully will shine a bit more light on what I and Hegel have been on about):
In the German language there are two words for appearance, Schein, with the verb scheinen, and Erscheinung, with the verb erscheinen and Scheinen has two distinct senses, to shine or to glow, and to appear or to seem. Correspondingly, Schein means shine, glow, or appearance, semblance, illusion. Erscheinen and Erscheinung also mean to appear and appearance or phenomenon and yet unlike Schein and scheinen either may be used of the appearance, that is publication, of a book, or of putting in an appearance, where there is no suggestion that things are other than they appear. In eighteenth-century philosophy, Schein tended to be equated either with Täuschung, deception, illusion, or with Erscheinung, but Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804), drew a distinction between them. Erscheinung is a perceptible phenomenon, that which we perceive an object to be in accordance with our forms of sensibility and understanding as opposed to the noumenon the supra-sensible reality or the object as it is in itself. Unlike Johann Gottlieb Fichte, (1762–1814), who maintained phenomena to be products of the activity of the ‘I’, Kant contended that an appearance implies something that appears and that is not itself an appearance. Schein by contrast is an illusion resulting in a false judgment either about phenomena or about supra-sensible matters and it also has a use in aesthetics. Kant in a ‘Critique of Judgement’, (see my articles On Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgement’: A Glimpse of Eternity’, parts one to five), distinguished painting as the art of sensuous Schein from sculpture and architecture as the arts of sensuous truth since painting gives only the illusion of three-dimensionality. But Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, (1788–1805), considered Schein in the sense of aesthetic semblance and not of deception as a characteristic of all art in contrast to reality and also of any object in so far as it is viewed aesthetically.
Hegel rejected Kant’s distinction between Schein and Erscheinung just as he rejected the unknowable thing-in-itself and the from Hegel’s point of view subjective idealism of Kant and Fichte upon which Kant’s distinction rests. Phenomena as Kant conceived them are in Hegel’s view Schein rather than Erscheinung but the terms are for Hegel distinct and Schein is correlative to Wesen or essence and essence shows or appears which is to say scheint but itself remains hidden behind a veil of Schein and in that case Sein or Being that is what we are immediately acquainted with is Schein both in the sense that it is dependent upon something else, an essence, and in the sense that it does not fully manifest that essence. Sein and Schein are phonetically similar but etymologically quite distant. And yet Schein and scheinen retain for Hegel the sense of shine or glow and they are closely associated with the similarly ambiguous reflection. Therefore Hegel speaks of the essence as shining within or into itself as if essence itself and its distinctness from Schein is constituted by a process similar to that by which it shows itself externally and it is only by projecting an appearance that is to say shining outwardly for example the bubbles on a boiling liquid and then withdrawing that appearance which is to say shining inwardly that an essence constitutes itself as an essence. In addition Hegel utilises this notion of a double Schein in connection with other pairs of correlative terms, for instance, in so far as the universal shines into itself, it is strictly universal or generic for instance colour in relation to purple and so on while in so far as it shines outwardly it becomes specific or particular in contrast to the other into which it shines for instance colour in relation to shape or sound and here Schein is interchangeable with Reflection. Hegel, like Schiller, believes that art involves Schein and he distinguishes Schein from Täuschung and associates it with the phonetically similar and etymologically related schön that is to say beautiful.
In Hegel’s usage Erscheinung and erscheinen differ from Schein and scheinen in several respects, first Erscheinung is also the appearance of an essence but the essence fully discloses itself in Erscheinung and keeps nothing hidden for the original force of the prefix er- was from within which led to the idea of transition or resultant state and therefore to that of obtaining or attaining to. And second an Erscheinung is like Schein transient and dependent yet what it depends upon and succumbs to is not immediately at the very least an essence but another Erscheinung and therefore Erscheinung in contrast to Schein is a diverse interdependent and fluctuating Whole or World. And third Erscheinung contrasts primarily not with essence but with Concept or Actuality as what fully embodies the concept and is contingent and fleeting rather than necessary rational and stable, for instance empirical psychology considers only the Erscheinung of Mind, and metaphysical psychology considers only its concept while the correct approach in Hegel’s view is to see how the concept of the mind realizes itself in Erscheinung and, whereas a crime is merely Schein since it is in conflict with Right and right restores itself by negating which is to say punishing this Schein a particular contract is Erscheinung since while not in conflict with Right it is only a contingent manifestation of it.
‘Contract establishes general right, whose inner or relative universality is merely a generality based on the caprice of the particular will. In this external manifestation of right, right and its essential embodiment in the particular will are directly or accidentally in accord. In wrong this external manifestation becomes an empty appearance. This seeming reality consists in the opposition of abstract right to the particular will, involving a particular right. But this seeming reality is in truth a mere nullity, since right by negating this negation of itself restores itself. By turning back to itself out of its negation right becomes actual and valid, whereas at first it was only a contingent possibility. Addition. — When intrinsic right or the general will is determined in its nature by the particular will, it is in relation with a non-essential. This is the relation of essence or reality to outward manifestation. Though the manifestation is in one aspect adequate to the essence, it is in another aspect inadequate; as a manifestation is contingency, essence is in relation with the unessential. Now in wrong this manifestation has the form of a seeming reality, which is to be interpreted as an outward reality inadequate to the essence. It deprives essence of reality, and sets up the empty abstraction as real. It is consequently untrue. It vanishes when it tries to exist alone. By its departure the essence is in possession of itself as its reality, and becomes master over mere semblance. It has thus negated the negation of itself, and become strengthened in the process. Wrong is this mere seeming reality, and, when wrong vanishes, right receives an added fixity and value. What we call essence or reality is the intrinsically universal will, as against which the particular will reveals itself as untrue, and does away with itself. The general will had in the first instance only an immediate being; but now it is something actual, because it has returned out of its negation. Actuality is active and finds itself in its opposite, while the implicit is to its negation passive’.
- ‘Elements in the Philosophy of Right’
Erscheinung and Schein is prone to alter its application depending upon what Hegel considers in a given context as the concept or rational structure that it contrasts with and in both the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ and the Logic the world of Erscheinung engenders another world, a world that is essential or in itself and is the reverse (Verkehrung) of the world of appearance and the interplay of appearance is governed by laws or Gesetze that Hegel associates with the notion that any appearance is gesetzt, posited or produced by another appearance and the laws explain changes in the realm of appearance but since these changes are reversals what is hot becomes cold and so on the laws must specify that what in the world of appearance is, say, hot, is essentially or in itself cold, and so on which suggests the notion of a world that is the reverse of the world of appearance in which everything that has in our world a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the opposite quality.
The significance of this inverted world is not evident and we may want to ask if Hegel is claiming that two such worlds would be indistinguishable and some of his examples for instance the opposite poles of magnets, and positive and negative electricity, imply that they would be indistinguishable, while others for instance black and white do not. And we may ask if we are to regard the human subject as inhabiting each of these worlds and as undergoing a corresponding reversal or rather as transcending both worlds and holding them together in thought which would imply that he at least is not mere Erscheinung. And yet some things are apparent enough, to begin with the notion has a variety of sources and meanings for Hegel, he was like Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, (1775–1854), intrigued by the polarity of magnets and electricity but it also has ethical and religious significance, in for instance the reversal of good and evil. And further similar reversals occur throughout his works, for instance the alienated social world after the fall of Rome generates a similarly inverted world of faith.
And even further despite his interest in the inverted world and his belief that our world is a world of appearance Hegel rejects both the belief in and the longing for a world beyond (Jenseits) that were common among his contemporaries, Kant, Schelling, and so on and the essence or logical structure which Hegel happily calls GOD of the world of appearance is fully manifest in its interplay and reversals albeit there are those like Judith Nisse Shklar, (1928–1992), link the inverted world with the world of Plato’s, (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC), Forms and yet Plato’s Forms are an idealization and not an inversion of the phenomenal world. (See my article Intermission: On the Threshold of the System).
‘La vida es sueño’
Mas, sea verdad o sueño,
obrar bien es lo que importa.
Si fuere verdad, por serlo;
si no, por ganar amigos
para cuando despertemos
‘Life is a Dream’
But whether it be dream or truth,
to do well is what matters.
If it be truth, for truth’s sake.
If not, then to gain friends
for the time when we awaken.
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (1600–1681)
I dedicate as always my work to my adorable Muse for whom my life is a beautiful dream alright and may I never wake up.
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
Go to sleep, everything is alright
I close my eyes then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you
In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you’re mine all of the time
We’re together in dreams, in dreams
But just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
I can’t help it
I can’t help it
If I cry
I remember that you said goodbye
It’s too bad that all these things
Can only happen in my dreams
Only in dreams
In beautiful dreams
Coming up next:
Reflection.
To be continued …
