Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 6)

Hello and welcome to the sixth session of contemporary readings of Hegel with Ray Bracier. I'm going to pass the mic off to him now. Okay, thanks. Right, so today we're going at the logic of essence, which is the second part of what Hegel calls the objective logic. So Hegel's greater logic, Science of Logic published in 1812, is divided into two, an objective logic and a subjective logic. And the objective

parts is subdivided into you know the doctrine of being and essence and a second you know and then the second part of the entire treatise is the so-called subjective logic or the doctrine of the concept so essence plays a key articulating role between in a way Hegel's doctrine of the logic of being and the logic of the subject of logic or the doctrine of the concept and it's and

And I guess what we have to try to do is to understand how he sees it as playing this crucial articulating role between these two, you know, the two halves. It's primarily concerned, as the excerpts in which, you know, we're focusing on today, the notion of reflection is absolutely central. to hegel's you know conception of essence but it's very very tricky to try to kind of them to get a firm sense of what's going on here so that's what we're going to try to understand exactly how the logic of reflection operates and

in what way it's supposed to mediate between the objective and the subject of logic. Now first of all, already Hegel's logic begins with the phenomenology supposed to kind of to be a preparation for the science of logic and the phenomenology culminates in you know Hegel's account of absolute knowing and in absolute knowing the distinction between thought and being or between thinking and being is supposed to have been overcome so that thinking is no longer separated from from being by some kind of barrier or or obstacle and the

Hegel's logic of being begins famously begins with you know it takes this indifference between thinking and being is its point of departure and begins with what he calls being pure being. Being is a sheer indeterminateness, an immediate indeterminateness. So here we begin with we begin without presupposing a difference between thinking and being on the objective. But then as the logic of being proceeds, being acquires determinations, being turns out to be mediated by difference.

There's the famous catalogue of objective categories, being, nothing, becoming, determinate being or existence, and so on and so forth, all through to quantity and quality. and this object, this logic of being, culminates in what Hegel calls absolute indifference. In other words, you begin with, so to speak, a point of indifference between thought and being and then you develop a series of conceptual determinations through which

the concept of indifference becomes in a way is explicitly articulated and the first quote in explaining the transition to the logic of essence section of the the doctrine of being Hegel makes this remark which is the first quote on the on the on the handout absolute indifference is the final determination of being before the latter becomes essence but it does not attain it shows that it still belongs to the sphere of being because it is still determined as as indifferent and therefore difference is external to it quantitative this externality

is its existence by which it finds itself at the same time of being determined over against it as existing in itself not as being thought as the absolute that exists for itself So we have to try to understand what's going on here. So what's at stake, I think, in the transition from being to essence is an account of the nature of determination. Okay, so what Hegel wants to show is that you begin with being as this sheer indeterminateness,

but then you show how it's, you know, nevertheless acquires determinateness through its own imminence unfolding. but what changes but there's still something about the concept of determination that is operative in the logic of being that still that lacks something he thinks okay so in other words you have a determinateness of being but this determinateness has not yet been reflected into itself okay so

we have to understand exactly what this this means well in a way one sense I guess the first and obvious sense in which to understand this is that obviously you can begin by presupposing an identity of thinking and being in a way which is dogmatic okay in a way in which you can deduce imminent objective determinations you know determinations of the in itself but in a way without giving an account of the the status of determination as such so in other words

that the very and hegelian vocabulary I think the point can be put as follows that with being is determinate in itself but its determination is not yet in and for itself into the for itself that occurs through reflection okay and which is you know essence so in the second part of the of the quote number one which is in bold Hegel writes or again it is external reflection which insists that

specific determinations whether in themselves or in the absolute are one and the same that their difference is only an indifferent one not a difference in itself no okay what do you so what is external reflection here this is a term that he's going to use consistently throughout the section what he means is by external reflection is external reflection is in a way what Kant is doing when he is identifying what reason reflects upon its own conceptual determination of phenomena so the idea is that

the conceptual determinations are in us or in thinking but not in things themselves or in substance and but of course he's already you know this sounds confusing because he claims to have overcome this kind of Kantian viewpoint by beginning his science of logic with this indifference between thinking and being. But I think the nature of the point becomes clear in the rest of the passage. What he's saying is that external reflection, you know, which insists that specific determinations

are one and the same. In other words, he's saying, here he has in mind, I mean he's going to be, he has Spinoza in mind here. And what he's trying to suggest is that if one has a notion of being or substance as differentiated one has to be you know one has to kind of give an account of the relationship between the essential the unity of substance unity of substance and its determinate differentiation and he says a problem with external reflection is that the

differentiation of substance is not generated by is not generated by substance itself and the reason it's not and the symptom of this lack of substantial determination or determination in and through substance itself is that the differences are taken to be the differences are determining but they also vanish in the unity of substance so for instance if one considers in the spin is this account you have substance you've got this you know infinite eternal substance

substance has an infinity of attributes of which we know only choose on extension and all the modes of substance are you know are expressed these these attributes but modal individuation modal individuation is you know causally determined there's a kind of a determination at the level of modality and this determination fidelity expresses differences according to attributes but the point that Hegel is trying to make

here is that both the relationship between unity the fundamental unity of substance and its attributive and modal differentiation is external okay there's no there's no account of the imminent self-determination and you know, modal determination of substance. For those of you who know Deleuze's difference in repetition will here recognize, in a way, in a way that it's, you know, Deleuze's reading of Spinoza as an attempt to respond to this Hegelian criticism about the alleged lack of reflection

substance but Spinoza but sorry but Deleuze wants to do it without kind of invoking you know Hegelian subjectivity and negativity is this is that Hegel writes here their difference is only an indifferent one not a difference in itself what is still missing here is that this reflection should sublate itself that it would cease to be the external reflection of thought of a subjective consciousness but that it would rather be the very determination of the difference of that unity a unity which would then prove itself to be the absolute negativity the unity is indifference towards itself towards its own indifference no less than towards otherness so what he's saying is that substance even if substance is attributively and modally

differentiated this auto differentiation of substance is not conceived from the vantage of substance itself in other words we don't yet have the becoming subject of substance in other words we don't have substance thinking itself and thinking its own conceptual determination. In other words, there's still an exteriority of conceptual determination to substance. And the point of essence will be the overcoming of external reflection and the absorption of conceptual determination into the very structure of substance.

But conceptual determinations now which are no longer, which are, which now have a differentiation which is self-generating. In other words, there is going to be the way in which substance differentiates itself is logical as a kind of fundamental conceptual dynamic regulating the auto differentiation of substance. But this conceptual dynamic is no longer something that is itself expressive of the intrinsic nature.

The key, the important claim here is the final sentence where he says, it would be rather the very determination of the difference of that unity, a unity which would then prove itself to be the absolute negativity, The unity is indifference towards itself and towards its own indifference, no less than towards another. In other words, the unity of substance can't simply be juxtaposed to its attributive and modal differentiation.

You cannot have an infinite unity in which all finite differences are submerged as mere evanescent appearances or illusions registered by consciousness. So in other words, the unity of substance can't just be indifferent to its own difference, it must be indifferent to its own indifference, which means it must be capable, it must somehow express itself in its own finite or ephemeral differentiation.

So this is the first, I think, clue towards understanding what the logic of reflection is supposed to be doing here in Hegel's account. Now we get to the second preliminary remark in the opening of the logic of essence, and he writes quote number two, only in as much as knowledge recollects itself out of the of immediate being does it find essence through this mediation the German language has kept essence or basin in the past participle give a son of the verb to be sign for essence is past but timelessly past being when this movement

is represented as a pathway of knowledge this beginning with being and the subsequent advance which sublates being this is a mediated term appears to be an activity of cognition external to being and indifferent to its nature but this course is the movement of being itself that it is beings nature to recollect itself and that it becomes essence by virtue of this interiorizing blade in being itself so just think it so the claim is that so far in in the logic of being there is thinking is the immersed or sunk or absorbed within being so in a

way being is articulating itself through thinking but thinking itself is not thinking's relationship to being being properly articulated or rendered explicit so our knowledge of being knowledge of being must recollect itself must recollect itself so as to understand that the determinations of being that it has elaborated are themselves grounded in something more

fundamental so when he says that essence is what being has been it's timelessly past being I think what he's saying is that the movement of determination beings you know imminent movement of determination which is elaborated in the you know the first volume of the objective logic is actually it's an accumulation of determination which shows what is always presupposed in trying to think being. So that, in other words, that there's a...

We're not moving forward. We're not simply... The accumulation of determination is not progressive, but retrogressive. So we are discovering, we're excavating the past of being, or what underwrites, or what is presupposed by every imminent ontological determination. and now when we hit this point of absolute indifference, this final determination of being, we need to articulate the difference between difference and indifference. And this is where reflection enters in.

This is where being must be reflected into itself so as to render explicit its mediation through thinking. So, you know, the claim about recollection is obviously an allusion to Plato. Knowledge is recollection. Knowledge of the forms is recollection. but this recollection is a recollection in and through thinking of what thinking has been, but also a recollection of the ground of being,

the fundamental primordial determinations which condition the determination of being. Now, and this is why, and in order to reach this stage, we have to have attained the logic of determination, which is grounded in negation for Hegel, reaches a point where negation becomes self-relating. As he said on the third quote, essence is the absolute negativity of being. It is being itself, but not being determined only as another.

So within the objective, within the logic of being, to be something, to be a determinate something, is not to be something else. So this is why every something has its other within itself. Determination occurs through an other. but now this negation you know this negation of determinate being through another which you know guarantees its determination must now become you know a negation of the negation so it's not just

each being is not determined by being immediately negated by its own other. It must also negate this negation. So this is why, this is the formulation in quote number three, is essence is the absolute negativity of being. It is being itself, but not being determined only as another. it is being rather that has sublated itself both as immediate being and as immediate negation as a negation which is affected by another so no it's no longer so being is no longer negated by another but being is self negating and

self negating being is essence so in other words so that so long as negation was contained within being in terms of relationship between two determine between something and other, negation finds expression in alterity, in the relationship to another, even if it's the internal relationship to another. But at the end of the logic of being, being is no longer being negated. nothing you know there's nothing outside being there is no determinate other that could negate being which is why there's a whole discussion a lengthy discussion of quantity quality and

the infinites in the logic of being so there's no longer anything there's no longer a determinate something that could negate being so being is infinitized so being is infinitized and being becomes self determining as self negating so which is why both the the the emergence of the category of essence follows immediately after the emergence of the category of infinity. So being discovers its infinity

through realizing that it has, through the discovery that being is not limited by anything other than itself. And that is to say that it's, what is negatively determining it is only itself. And this is why it becomes absolute indifference. It becomes absolute indifference as the negation of finite determination. What is the negation of finite determination? It's something like Spinoza's substance, as this absolutely infinite and eternal substance. but now once being has reached this point

of self-relation it now relates to itself through negativity it has to well this self-relation is has to be or rather doesn't have to be but assumes ushers in a new register of determination there's a new kind of determination which is determination is through reflection so this is why you know he again the continuation of code number three being

or existence therefore does not persist what essence is and the immediate which still differs from essence is not just an inessential existence but an immediate which is null in and for itself it is only an unknown essence or a shine shine the German word Schein means can be translated as seeming or semblance as appearing or appearance all these it has all these connotations and in a way I guess that you know the the older translation had appearance as opposed to shine Giovanni's choices shine to emphasize the the relationship to

reflection and the the analogy with light light as being what is reflected so the point again I think the way to understand what's going on quote number three is if being is no longer limited by anything internal to it or anything that transcends it that it being is infinite the problem is still to understand how differentiation in being is what kind of relation difference has to an essentially unitary being so in other

words if difference is mere appearance or mere kind of vanishing moment what is why does being why does infinite unitary being appear to be finitely differentiated this is the this is the issue so why does the immediate which still differs which which still differs from essence you know why is the unessential connected to the essential so so in other words the problem of appearance emerges at this point where one has to explain infinite can somehow

here to be finite seem to be finitely differentiated so this is also about relationship between the finite and the infinite. In theology God is infinite and none of the categorical determinations that we need to deploy to understand finite beings apply to God. We can only understand God by analogy with the finite and through a negative analogy where we negate all the finite determinations which we apply to but the problem so in a way to overcome this theological transcendence this feel or this theological obstacle to

understanding the inf you know the imminence of the infinite within the finite we have to understand why the infinites manifests itself through finite difference and how this you know this manifestation is not simply not just indifferent it's not just indifferent to its essence or to its so it's kind of fundamental ontological structure so this is so the problem of appearance is tied to the connection between the finite and the infinite and it's also about the relationship between you know identity and difference or the

one you know oneness and multiplicity because any theory that simply negates multiplicity or finite determination in an infinite unity or an infinite indifference in a way you know you know surreptitiously you know reintroduces a limitation of the infinite because it cannot explain imminence you know of finitizing or the way why the infinite manifests itself or appears within the finite. Okay, so now we'll move on to quote number four.

So shine or semblance is all that remains of the sphere of being. Why is it all that remains? Well, because being, infinite being or being as no longer limited by any determinate something is in a way relates to itself through its imminent you know through the imminent differentiation between an infinite unity and a finite you know attributed difference but this differentiation seems is the locus of semblance

so being has now kind of, being now becomes self-relating but it's self-relating it negates its own determination this is again the first line absolute indifference is the final determination of being, so being relates to itself now it's it's differentiating depended on relation to another once it's a once it's infinitized it can no longer be differentiated by another so it becomes absolute indifference but this absolute indifference lacks

determination and it's clear that reflection is going to have to take over the labor of determination which which as absolute indifference is no longer capable of of mobilizing so number four shine is all that remains of the sphere of being what is left over to it is thus only the pure determinants of immediacy the pure determinants of immediacy understood as in you know absolute indifference or undifferentiation it is as reflected in me see 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 and I'll read that again. What is left over to it is thus only the pure determinateness of immediacy, the immediacy of absolute indifference. It is a, you know, semblance is as reflected immediacy. That is an immediacy 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.

So shine is a reflected immediacy, immediacy which is only by virtue of the mediation of its negation. Now what is this, the negation? It's being self-negation. is the residue conjured up by being's self-negation. And so being in negating itself, being is, you know, immediately mediating. and shine or semblance is the in Hegel's words the empty determination of the immediacy of

non-existence and here the word non-existence that is Dasein Dasein just means determinate being so in a way instead of you know where he has written non-existence you should you You can also read non-determinant being. So again, the sentence I think becomes more intelligible if we substitute these equivalences. So, shine 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-determinate existence.

Schein is the empty determination of the immediacy of indeterminate existence. Okay, so once again, Schein is a kind of, you know, the appearance of indeterminate existence. It's the way in which indeterminate existence appears. And this is why he then immediately connects it to what he calls the phenomenon of skepticism and the appearance of idealism. So Shiner's semblance is precisely what skepticism, you know, skepticism which, you know, questions the possibility of our cognitive access to being, will simply say that we don't know what is, we merely know what seems.

Okay? shine is seeming so shine is the phenomenon of skepticism and the appearance of idealism and it's as such Hegel writes see which is not a something nor a thing in general not an indifferent being that would exist apart from its determinateness and connection with the subject so no so is less than something it's not something or a thing precisely because it has no substance of its own it's not an indifferent being that exists apart the only determinants that it has is in its connection connection with a subject

who apprehends it but of course what Hegel is suggesting the reason why this discussion is so difficult to understand is precisely there is no subjectivity here yet so what what Hegel is trying to kind of elaborate in this you know the logic of essence or essence as a reflection to itself is an appearing without there being you know someone for whom something appears what he's saying is that being appears it being appears appearance is parts of the structure of being and in saying this he's saying that being is in a way articulated around a form of self

relation which mediates the relationship between its its substantial determinacy and its you know insubstantial indeterminacy or between no reality and appearance so the important thing is that what Hegel is doing in a way he's ontologizing semblance or appearance because the claim is that being it's being that appears and appearance is not merely appearance has is not simply illusion It's not simply the kind of the abstract negation of the truth of being.

It's actually intrinsic. You know, essence is the truth of being. So that appearance is necessary for the truth of being. Because being necessarily appears. So five. he continues so essence now 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 so again so essence is reflection the movement of becoming and transition that remains within itself so in being being becomes but being becomes something being is the

becoming of something okay because it's always because the becoming is determination and it's a determination of something whereas essence is a movement not a becoming something but of becoming nothing as he put it in the next but it's moving from nothing to nothing but again to stick with quote number five why is why is essence a movement of reflection that remains within itself because there is no determinants there is no substantial determinacy that could orient, you know, the movement of becoming.

So in other words, it's no longer, becoming is no longer articulated in terms of separate determinations, you know, a determination A and a determination B. it's simply becoming no is a transition that remains within itself and which is no which whose only distinction of his only determination is its own is is to be the negation of itself that which is distinguished is determined simply and only as the negative in itself as shine so so what he's saying is this is that

appearance is the negative in itself shine or appearance or semblance is often what is the negative in itself it's that which is self negating it's that which is not the negation of something it's not an X which is a negation of y it is an X which is the negation of X itself because X is precisely indeterminate it has no other determination that and itself negation okay and here and this is crucial because Hegel's whole account of self relating negativity begins here essence is self-relating negativity and the

idea of so what he's saying is that the negativity in being the negativity that underwrites the determinacy of being in the in the first part of the objective logic is underwritten by a more radical negativity which is merely self-relating the the negativity of essence so number six in essence therefore the becoming the reflective movement of essence is the movement from nothing to nothing and thereby back to itself or becoming sublates itself in its transition the

other which comes to be in this transition is not the non-being of a being which is what it was in the logic of being but the nothingness of a nothingness and this to be the negation of a nushing of a nothingness constitutes being. Now we're not yet, I mean, why does this the nothingness of a nothingness or the negation of a nothingness constitute being? Well because essence is the essence of being and essence is the way in which being relates to itself and ultimately

because he wants to see is supposed to be that which subsists in itself you know independently of its relation to another but no he's shown in his accounts of the logic of being he's shown that being is necessarily related to another okay every everything that is is necessarily related and determined by its relation to another but ultimately through a kind of a long process of development that he you know

he charts in the first book of the logic this movement of relation culminates in this self-relation as we saw where being is where being overcomes its own extrinsic limitation or its own kind of extrinsic determination so being becomes self-determining this is the first an initial stage of its absoluteness or its substantiality but this this initial mode of self-relation

is insufficient to constitute being. So the claim will be that being becomes essence. The becoming of being culminates in the becoming of essence because essence is what being necessarily is or essentially is and so initially so that the the the attempt to understand the so being in terms of relation to another reaches a kind of

of a deadlock where being becomes self-relating but in a way is incapable of determining itself in the self-relation insofar as this self-relation is merely the abstract negation of its own finite determination. So there's something so I mean the idea is that being being lacks something being lacks something and what it lacks ironically is the

inessential So in other words, if you try to understand being as completely objectively self-determining, as sufficient unto itself, this movement of self-determination reaches a crisis where where it's incapable of overcoming its own indifference to itself, its own indifference to its determination, as he put it in the opening quote.

so this is why being therefore must be must relate to itself through the inessential through the inessential so essence is self-relation but this self-relation now is you know contains two aspects one which is essential and the other one which is inessential however Hegel is the point is that the relationship between the inessential and the essential is it is internal to the movement

of reflection it's internal to essence essence itself has an essential moment and an inessential moment it's not as he put it's not being that's appears or manifest itself in semblance nor is semblance the appearing of of being but semblance is a kind of self you know an appearance to itself a self appearance where one pole is the essential the remain you know what remains of being as you know as

essential independent and autonomous and the other pole is that which is you know the vanishing of this independence and this independent substantial determination so this is why you know I'm skipped over lots of movements but this is why in code number six this is why he says the reflective movement of essence of the moon from nothing to nothing and thereby back to supply is the movement from nothing to nothing but it's the movement from indeterminateness to indeterminateness it's it's the every because it's a movement where

because there's no relation to another that could yield a determinate something the the determinants can only ever relates to the movement of determination and the movement of determination yields a determinants which is immediately negated or undercuts by the movement itself so what okay then what does this mean it means that the the semblance or the shining the shine that appears is not the appearing of anything of

of anything substantial beyond it or beneath it. It's just this pure appearing of appearing. And of course, there's a very interesting paradox here because usually in the Cartesian tradition, famously, if there's a distinction between being and seeming, Being can seem, but seeming cannot seem. The seems operator is not, you know, can't simply be reiterated. In other words, if there's an appearance, if something appears, it can't appear to appear. Or if something seems, it can't seem to seem. Seems operator is not recursive.

But this is exactly what Hegel is challenging. challenging he's saying that's reflection essence as reflection is nothing but this move this this movement of an infinite vanishing where the only determination is the negations the immediate negation of determination so you have a you know where you effectively you have a seeming to see a seeming which is immediately cancelled before it can seem to be it can be determined as seeming to be this or that so this is why it's it's completely it yields nothing it's a movement from nothing to nothing so nevertheless within

this the the movement of reflection he's going to distinguish these three instances positing reflection external reflection and determining reflection so I'll start with the first positing reflection it falls from these considerations that the movement of reflection is to be taken as an absolute internal counter repelling I think this I think the way to think of this is if again if one thinks of the the image of if what is reflected is light he's

saying that the movement of reflection is like having two mirrors okay which are face to face where each is mirroring the other and simply reflecting whatever you know there's light bouncing off the surface of each mirror but each each mirror is merely reflecting whatever is reflected in the other mirror so this is I think what he means by saying the movement of reflection is to be taken as an absolute internal counter repellent except the analogy breaks down because here there's nothing you know obviously the mirrors are in an external in a world you know and it's possible to imagine them you know reflecting you know that

you know there's something that you know whatever light is being reflected in the mirror surfaces is also bouncing off objects other than the mirror whereas it the whole points of this image and he goes to say there's nothing but this kind of dual mirroring there's only the mirrors there's only the movement of reflection without any substantial thing that is being reflected this is why you know it's reflection reflected back into itself and and this is infinity this is a first game at it and you know conception of infinity it's a conception of infinity it's an it's a kind of an impoverished conception of infinity which will nevertheless yield a kind of an auto differentiation or auto

determination so the movement of reflection is an absolute internal counter repelling for the presupposition of the turning back into itself that from which essence arises essence being only as this coming back only in the turning back itself the immediate from which reflection begins occurs rather only through the this transcending and the transcending of the immediate is the arriving at the immediate the movement as forward movement turns immediately around into it into itself and so is only self movement a movement which comes from itself and so far as positing reflection is presupposing reflection

yet as presupposing reflection is simply positing reflection okay so what is he saying here this is the famous you know the relationship between positing and presupposing reflection okay what is a positing reflection a positing reflection is where you posit the reflected thing okay you say you posit an object say and then you reflect on its determinations or its characteristics So in other words, you posit the object, and then you abstractly recapitulate the movement of positing through which that object is determined as the thing that it is. That's positing reflection.

Determining. What is presupposing reflection? presupposing reflection is where you presuppose an independently and the reflection in a way proceeds from this from the presupposition objects okay so in one the movement of reflection generates posits the objects whose determinations are tracked in the the recapitulation of reflection and the other the object is is is given is assumed to simply to be there to be kind

of self-standing and the the reflection is a reflection back no no no back into the mind from the determinations which the object have is presupposed as having and what Hegel you know the movement of counter repelling is from positing and you know from positing to presupposing and back again so what he's saying is that every positing reflection has to presuppose that which it has posited so other words he says both the the presupposition of a thing whose

reflective determinations are you know traced back to consciousness or subjectivity and the depositing of a thing where the did you know the determining characterizations are simply are yielded through the positing the thing only has whatever characteristics it's it's made to have or are given to it are two facets or two moments of the same movement dynamic interplay of reflection

oh this is why so and the key sentence here is the third sentence in court number seven transcending the immediate from which reflection begins occurs rather only through this transcending and the transcending of the immediate is they arriving at the immediate so so reflection is the transcending of the immediate so and it's it's it's a transcending of the immediate whether it's positive or presupposing because if there's a presupposing reflection one presupposes something as given one you know seeks out the reflective

determinations one traces back the reflected determinations that are possessed in thought back to the characteristics of the of the object or the thing in positing reflection one simply shows that all the characteristics that the object or the thing has have been generated by in and through the act of positing in both cases whether the immediate is posited or presupposed the movements of reflection is is operative and what you know the point

being is that these you cannot separate positing from presupposition or vice versa in order to presuppose something you have to posit it and in order to you can and in order to posit it you also have to presuppose it because the positing of you know the particular something has to in a way has to bounce back into thoughts from this positive something so this is why so anyway this is his his analysis of the two trajectories of reflection which are you

know I guess reciprocally presupposing you know positing reflection presupposing reflection and this is in the sense in which reflection is a self movement a movement which comes from itself you know insofar as polluting reflection is presupposing reflection so that the posited is always the what is what is presupposed is always the residue of a positing and what is posited is you know also the residue of a presupposition so they're both articulated together then we come to external reflect external reflection though is where the reflection is external or

extrinsic to the reflected thing the presupposes a being external reflection presupposes an independently subsisting thing but I'll read them number eight external reflection thus presupposes a being at first not in the sense that its immediacy is only positiveness or moment but in the sense rather that this immediacy refers to itself and the determinateness is only as moment reflection refers to its presupposition in such a way that the latter is its negative but this negative is thereby sublated as negative.

So, reflection refers to its presupposition in such a way that the latter is its negative, but its negative is thereby sublated as negative. Well, in external reflection, there's a presupposition, but the presupposition is independent of the reflection. the presupposition is no longer generated by the reflection itself but it's supposed to be you know so you have the what is presupposed is the negative of the act of presupposition so there's but there's two negations

so there's the In presupposing reflection, the presupposed is the negative of the presupposition. It's a negation of the act of presupposition, which is why it's conditioned by it. Whereas in external reflection, this first negation, the negation of the presupposed and presupposing reflection is also negated. So with the result that the presupposed is an independently idiot thing, an independently subsisting thing.

So, and this is why external reflection finds this presupposition before it as something from which it starts, and from which it only makes its way back into itself, negating it as its negative. it negates the presupposed thing as you know the negative of its own act of presupposition but that this presupposition is a negative or a positiveness is not its concern permanentness belongs only to positing reflection whereas in pre in the presupposing positiveness it is only as sublated what external reflection determines and posits

in the immediate are determinations which to that extent are external to it in the sphere of being external reflection was the infinite the finite stands as the first as the real from which the beginning is made as from a foundation that abides whereas the infinite is a reflection into itself standing over against it. So in the logic of being, the infinite is the starting point. no that's

I've misformulated that in the logic of being the finite is the starting point which is then the first or the real which is then negated okay in the infinite but the infinite is the the product of the external reflection so the claim is that there is the finite and the finite has a determinacy and the infinite is the negation of the determinacy of the finite okay so this is and what what's at stake in the logic of reflection is to show her is to get the

finite back from the infinite we've got you know in the logic of being we've gone from the finite to the infinite the finite is what is presupposed no abstractly posited okay and then we the movement of external reflection yields a negation of the finite and of the determinations of the finite but then the problem is to reconnect the infinite and the finite because the logic of determination is completely transcended in the finite insofar as in the infinite insofar as the infinite is merely the external reflection of the finite so no

the problem with logic of essence is to is to overcome the externality of reflection and to reflect you know to show how being is is reflected into itself through essence to become and this movement of the reflection is an infinite movement it's an infinite movement but that this infinite movement must somehow yield be the self-determination of the infinite and the finite will be the result of this self-determination so so now it's no

longer the infinite is no longer the the reflection into itself standing over against but rather the the finite must be the results of the infinite's reflection into itself and this is why then that the the transition to what Hegel calls determining reflection is necessary positing reflection external reflection and know the whole account of shine or semblance culminates with the reflection so this is code number nine Hegel writes existence is only

positive goodness principle of the essence of existence well what does this mean existence means determinate being da side so what he's saying is determinate being is only positiveness it's it's positive reflection this is the principle of the essence of existence of the essence of determinate being so the determinations of being are positive determinations but they cannot be the results of external reflection so this is determining reflection must overcome the externality in a way the externality of the the finite reflection within the infinite to you know

reflect the finite into itself and generate the infinite because it really that's what's in a way reflection is merely the reflection into self it's the infinite reflection into self of the finite so that the finite can be can determine itself as infinite so we can continue quote number nine on determining reflection so existence is only positiveness this is a principle of the essence of existence positiveness stands on the one side over against existence and over against essence on the other

over against determinate being on the one hand and over against essence on the other. It is to be regarded as the means which conjoins existence with essence. Essence with existence. If it is said a determination is only a positiveness, a positive determination which is extrinsic to the thing, the claim can thus have a twofold meaning, according to whether the determination in opposition to existence or in opposition to essence in either meaning existence is taking is taken for something superior to positiveness

which is attributed to external reflection to the subjective However, positiveness is the superior because as posited, existence is what it is in itself, something negative, something that refers simply and solely to the turning back into itself. For this reason, positiveness is only a positiveness with respect to essence. it is the negation of this turning back as achieved return into itself okay so now okay so what so we want to hegel is trying to explain how conceptual

determination can be intrinsic to being and moreover to determinate being, to existence. So, again, and this, you know, the way to understand, you know, what the stakes of this are, is if, you know, we have to understand how once we've understood that The... If we understand being as intrinsically determinate and differentiated,

this, in a conception of being as absolute indifference, as absolute indifference, you know, which is in which all determinations disappear. So being becomes, again, so being becomes self-relating as the mere, you know, the abstract self-negation of determination. So the only determination that being has is its indifference to determination. that's the most impoverished conception of the infinite so and if that's the conception of being being as transcendence

as being as a transcendence of determination then every determination is external every determination is a posited external reflection in other words anything we say about what being is in itself is simply subjective subjective projection so if so no what Hegel is suggesting is that the positive nests that it's part of no it is essential to determinate being or existence to be posited positiveness is

essential to existence something can only exist insofar as it is posited and in fact and this is what existence is in itself determinate being in itself is positiveness what is this positiveness it's it's not the positiveness by an an extrinsic consciousness or a subject it's a positive in this which is intrinsic to the movement of reflection so this is why you know as he put it this positive this is something negative something that refers simply and solely to the turning back into itself so So insofar as all existence is merely positiveness, its essence is not to be what it is and to be what it is not.

It's to be... Its essence is self-relating negativity. Self-relating negativity, which is the reflection into self of essence. So this is why he concludes that passage with the sentence, the sentence for this reason positiveness is only a positiveness with respect to essence it is the negation of this turning back has achieved return into itself um positiveness is only a positive respect to essence in other words it is in a way that is um self-positing

it's not that positing it's not consciousness or subjectivity that posits a determination It's that essence, its essence as the self-relation, the negative self-relation of being is nothing but self-positedness. but this positiveness means the you know the vanishing is the the vanishing of determination the determinate vanishing of determination this is what it's a negation of this turning back as achieved returning to the turning back of reflection reflections bouncing back into itself so finally

he goes on the determination of reflection is distinct from the determinants of being of quality the latter is immediate reference to another in general pause what no whereas positiveness also is reference to other but to eminently reflected being so posiness is is about you know self-othering so the reference to another but not to being but to itself as another which is and that's what imminently reflected being eminently reflected being is being that is essentially self-relating as self othering so that and this is no this is the this is his introduction of what

he calls the essentialities of reflection, or the determinations of reflection. What he wants to say is that these are entity, difference, opposition, and contradiction. He wants to show that the essential determinations of being culminate in contradiction, which will be the ground of being and the ultimate you know the ground of determination and these determinations are absolutely constitutive they're essential they're constitutive for anything that is or anything that is characterized

in terms of being so we'll just conclude by finishing this quote so negation as quality is existent negation institutes its ground and elements the determination of reflection on the contrary has for this ground and imminent reflectedness positiveness gets fixed in determination precisely because reflection of equality in its negatedness positiveness gets fixed in determination be precisely because reflection is self equality in its

negatedness why because why because reflection is simply the movement from nothing to nothing perfect self equality but it's a different kind of it's a quality which is no longer a quality of being a quality of determinate being so because reflection is self equality and its negatedness so the latter i.e. reflection is therefore itself reflection into itself determination persists here not by virtue of being but because of itself equality and thing which sustains quality is unequal to the negation,

quality is consequently unequal within itself, and hence a transient moment which disappears in the other. The determination of reflection is, on the contrary, as negation. Negation which has negatedness for its ground and is therefore not unequal to itself within itself, essential rather than transient determinateness. What gives subsistence to it is the self-equality of reflection, which has the negative only as negative, as something sublated or positive. so determination of reflection is no you know the sublation of the you know the

determinants of being the determinants of being culminated in an abstract self-relation, being as, in a way, being as as the locus of an infinity of qualitative differentiations. But this qualitative infinity is precisely what liquidates determination.

So, the key sentence is this, since the being which sustains quality is unequal to the negation, quality is consequently unequal within itself, and hence a transient moment which disappears. So in the realm of being, the being which sustains quality is unequal to the negation. So being is determined by negation and being is qualitatively determined by negation. But because being is always unequal to negation, because being is not just negation or the negative,

the qualities that being has quality is unequal within itself quality, it's part, in order for quality to be differentiated and determinate each quality must be unequal within itself and because it's unequal within itself it has no you know it must be transient it vanishes it's a transient moment which disappears into every quality is evanescent and disappears in the other quality which negates it now in

the realm of essence it's no essence is simply the movement from nothingness to nothingness essence is self-relating negativity and it's now the determination as the negation of determinateness you know and this is it's this movement from nothing to nothing which yields which is reflection and reflection now is is what yields

the positiveness of determination but now the ground essence in itself is equal to is equal to the negation it's equal to the negation it harbors and therefore it becomes it and therefore it's cures or sustains the the transience or the disappearance of every determination it's no in a way the you know it's the it's you know the

vanishing the vanishing of constancy as a constant vanishing as a constant vanishing which is no the provides a kind of a solid ground or a basis for the vanishing of finite determinations because so because in the determination of reflection negation has negatedness for its own ground because it's nothing but self-relating negativity. It's therefore, so the determinations of reflections are therefore not unequal to itself within itself.

They're equal. The negation of determination is equal to the determination of negation. And this then essentializes transiency. okay this essentializes essentializes transience or finite determination so and this is why Hegel writes in the concluding sentence here what gives subsistence to it to the to the negation what gives subsistence to it is the self equality of reflection which has the negative only as negative as

something sublated or posited okay right I think I'm gonna stop here and we should have a discussion there because I've yes okay so I think what I'll do and I'll go through, try and answer. So, let me see. So Hunter's first question is, I take Hegel to be equating shine with something like Cartesian doubt,

but ontologized well part of his discussion in a way the it's the concept of appearances at stake the concept of shine is semblance or seeming or appearance the claim is that this is what it is for this is what it is for something to be an appearance but yes he the appearance is neontologized because it's no longer it's an objective phenomenon and no longer a subjective phenomenon and with us his most radical movement is to characterize appearance

is you know is essential to being being you know necessarily appears so So appearance is not just a kind of something is a subject involving. And here I mean subject in a non-Hegelian sense, making it a straightforward sense. And I'll say, and I'll say, and I'll say, oh no, I think I'm, I think I'm. I'm trying again. OK. But it seems kind of like the moment of shine, it's a moment of appearance, but also appearance with negativity,

like sort of a positing of the mere appearance of something that was previously taken to be. And so that's what made me think of it in terms of doubt or a sort of transcendentalizing of a kind of function of doubt. Yes, and he explicitly, there's a, he explicitly refers on page, there's a clear reference to the I think it's on the handout yes to the what he calls the

yes the phenomenon of skepticism and also the appearance of idealism on page 342 shine is the whole that remains of the sphere of being so the key thing I think is to say it's being appears to itself being appears to itself there is appearance within being independently of you know the consciousness or phonological subjectivity and he's saying that this is why this is once we understand this this is why again the whole problem of skepticism is badly posed because they appearances without really understanding what they mean the

whole distinction of the whole concept of a phenomenon and the kind of in in Pyronism no if not something which shows itself well this initially this how are we to understand what it means for something to show itself if on the one hand we don't have access to nominations of the thing that is allegedly showing or manifesting itself in this way which is exactly what the skeptic can't say the skeptic for a skeleton is an appearing or it's an appearing or because you can't there's no kind of reliable

inference from the characteristics of the appearance to those of the thing that appears but then the problem is if all of those characteristics are subjective, generally generated, or in Hegel's vocabulary they're just external reflections. This is the... something has to be presupposed in order for there to be a determination a

determination of the appearance as something or or even as being the appearance of something and this is the skeptic has difficulty explaining is that because every all the qualities or properties of the appearance qua appearance to be decoupled from any being from any substance but yet some of them seem to be for instance qualitative characterizations you know qualities or sensations it's some of them are you know difficultly reducible to

merely subjective constructions so what Hegel is yes he's transforming the problem of the relationship between reality and appearance now we're showing that's I mean overturning it so that you know appearing is is what constitutes okay is what constitutes reality see appearing constitutes the reality back the reality from the appearance or construed as some kind of you know indeterminate thing in itself but once you understand this I mean it's

completely undercuts skepticism because to understand how being appears you know being appears to itself and how the this is essential this is to understand how there is no all the ways in which things can appear are still have a of a reality to them have a truth to them because essence is the truth of being so in a way what he's doing he's essentializing appearance appearance is an index of

truth and a properly understood in fact is what is most real or most true so in this regard he's going against Cartesian skepticism which wants to kind of you know where you have a distinction well he's undercutting the whole distinction primary and secondary qualities. You can't simply, you can't introduce a break between the intrinsic objective properties of things in themselves and the extrinsic subjective qualities because the way in which, you know, the

relationship between the extrinsic and the extrinsic is itself intrinsic or essential. I guess I was probably asking the question to go back to the question of Hegel's epistemology that we discussed maybe in like the second or third session or something like that and it seems like the picture I'm beginning to paint of it is that so so if you know he's you know rejecting empiricism and dogmatism both sort of provisionally and then going through this whole phenomenology but there's this idea that there will ultimately be a payoff and we'll sort of understand why we

can absolutely know the absolute concept and that and that and that part of this transcendentalizing of doubt is like that's like if appearing is intrinsic to being then it's like the absolute concept becomes the activity of philosophizing itself or that that that it's um that we don't end up with like a concrete concept of the absolute but it's like this this continued sort of dialectical thinking is I mean I guess I'm not totally sure I understand what I'm saying but but like I'm curious about it seems like we should be getting close to the the like an answer to the question of epistemology here I'm

curious what you're gonna say about that yes how much epistemology is there in Hegel's logic well there's a lot in the you know it's supposedly his treatise on ontology and metaphysics but in a way I guess I mean look this is a complicated issue I mean I think he's certain epistemological questions or certain epistemological premises are based on disavowed metaphysical assumptions I

think that's part what Hegel does in all his work but in the phenomenology there is clearly an epistemological program you know later in his introduction about the problem of the criterion which we discussed and I think look he's not denying this whole discussion of appearance is not simply to dissolve the distinction between reality and appearance and to say is equally no everything is equally real no absolutely not he's saying of course you

can distinguish between you know seeming and being in an empirical register so when you make no the understanding necessarily distinguishes between they are and how things merely seem to be but he's saying but the more profound rational point what's you know speculative grasp is how even error illusion misperception and misunderstanding are you know co constitutive of reality, truth, you know, and proper understanding. So I guess the

most, I mean, in the way in which, in terms of the logic of essence, I mean the logic of essence holds at this, you know, really, you know, prohibitive, you know, level of abstraction because it's trying to articulate to them the subjective it's trying to explain the relationship between structure of you know the in itself and the structure of conceptual rationality as such and it's really it's

quite I mean it's I mean I guess the key epistemological claim is that this is why being is inherently thinkable intelligible because it's because there's a link essence the movement of reflection understood you know at the level of essence and the movement of spirits as described in the phenomenology so in other words both essence is self-relating negativity but

so is spirits and he doesn't he's not fusing them together but he's showing how um a way this you know this conception of essence you know provides resources for an analysis of conceptualization so that so that conceptualization so that conceptualization can grasp contradiction because this is essence is contradiction this whole analysis me in the claim that contradiction is the ground of being essence is contract addiction and

contradiction is that is and what is speculative thinking it's thinking in and through contradiction okay it's thinking you know speculative rationality grasps each thing in its essential contradiction or its constitutive contradiction though it's it grasps the real the essential unfolding of everything it's not being what it is and it's being what it is not I guess yes there is a profound epistemological claim at the core of Hegel's logic because and you know Hegel is the philosopher for whom I mean I think it's often claimed in the

continental tradition people are very quick to say that Hegel dissolves all the problems of epistemology he's just kind of these are all Kantian hang-ups which he kind of simply dissolves by fear but actually no he works through the whole of the introduction to the phenomenology is an attempt to carefully you know to to work through the radical implications of tomology and he thinks that once he's done that he's in a position to show her epistemology and ontology are indissociable to understand what is noble in a sense that you know what was unthinkable contradiction was taken to be the unthinkable in the

metaphysical tradition but also transcended the the bones of non contradiction was also considered to be unknowable a God for instance God is unknowable insofar as what is contradictory for us is not for him so therefore we're prevented from knowing him because of our confinement within the bones of by identifying I mean the crux of Hegel's identification of being and knowing is his dissolution of claims that you know if being is essentially contradictory then

to grasp real contradictions is to grasp the structure of being structure of what is this constant dynamic movement where things are constantly doing and undoing themselves so I mean this is not I mean look there are very good books just on hagen the epistemology Ken Westphal has an excellent book on hagel's epistemology based on I think on the phenomenology I'm not most of these accounts always focus on the phenomenology because I

think but clearly there are the epistemological work that's going on in the phenomenology is preparing you know the way for the for the logic and so So I think that they're articulated in the logic, even though, I guess he says, he doesn't return to the issues with which he dealt in the introduction. But again, the subversion of skepticism, for instance, he says that

The problem with skepticism is that it suspends its subversion of knowing on an appeal to a concept of appearance which it cannot find its own terms. And then he says, here I'm telling you what an appearance is. This is how to understand what it means for something to appear. And it's an ontological concept. concept. Thanks. Okay, now there's another question here, interesting, curious that non-existence is non-determined, utterly determined, am I remembering correctly

that death in the phonology was determinants? I put another quote that That sort of relates at the bottom here from the absolute freedom and terror section in phenomenology. And the quote is, the sole work, and maybe this question becomes irrelevant now. But the quote is, the sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death. A death to which has no inner significance or filling. for what is negated is the empty point of the absolute free self. Yes, okay. Now, so Hegel, so there's a lot, okay.

In the phenomenology, there's a lot of remarks about the connection between death and self-consciousness, death and subjectivity. now this particular quote this is the sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death significance or filling for what is negated is empty point of absolutely free self so in a way here this you know the at this abstract conception of freedom you know which is upheld by the the Jacobins is coextensive with a kind of because all particularity has to be

has to be negated and the assertion of any particular individual will is simply an obstacle to the realization of so it's an obstacle to the you know the effectuation of universal freedom so this is why the implementation of universal freedom is you know mass death these kind of executions but in terms of determination it's precisely because universal freedom you know is remains too abstract it's not a concrete universal it doesn't have it's not properly determined in relationship to you know social or kind of a community

tools that it generates death understood as a kind of as an abstract negativity so in other words this is you know there's a hegel is famous for this version of the work of death he ties the labor of the negative and the work of death and he and when in the master slave section he talks about if recovers from his fear of death he discovers what he calls you know his universal formative He understands the affinity between work and death.

Work, you know, and that both are capable of dissolving what seem to be, you know, static determinations. But the universal formative, in order to, you know, work is, you know, putting death to work, putting death to work so as to determine determination, so to transform things, dissolve kind of fixed determinations, and generate new ones. So in a way, there's the proper kind of, the proper mobilization of death is through, you know,

conceptual labor, because I think there's also a link between work and conceptualization. Conceptualization, you know, which involves abstraction and separating, you know, universal attributes from particular qualities. That is part of the work of death, and that is how consciousness can transform itself and its world. and this is what I think is missing in the kind of the the the ideal of the universal freedom universal freedom is as a kind of is result in an indiscriminate

and gratuitous you know exercising of death you know just there's no death isn't constrained and it's not sublimated it's not sublimated and harness to the power of the concept it's merely you know it becomes this absolutely purely abstract negativity so I think yes that death is not always death is something that has to be determined the negativity of death you know put to work and conceptualize and harness to the power of the concept in

in order to yield concrete determination. Now, and... Yes, so going back to the question that this quote was... Yes, so this is about determinateness and indeterminateness. So, in the logic, I don't think he... I can't remember. I think he rarely, if ever, kind of mentions death. But indeterminateness... so being begins by being sheer indeterminacy without any determination other than its absolute immediacy and then but then it culminates in this kind of you know in a way in a determinate indeterminateness in the terminus as the

kind of as the abstract negation of every finite determination so and the problem there is that this is you know look you can connect death and the infinites okay just as death is the abstract suspension of all of the concrete determinations of conscious life so the infinite is simply the kind of you know the abstract suspension or liquidation of all um finite determinations Hegel's point is that this is, you know, what Hegel thinks is interesting about death is, you know, it's only interesting if it's rendered determinate in and through thinking.

thinking understanding thinking you know harnessing its own power of abstraction and putting abstraction to work night so the an abstract or indeterminate conception of the infinite or the infinite understood as the abstract negation of the finite thoughts it's not that it's not interesting it's that it's it's itself a finite conception of the infinite the whole point is that if you simply understand the liquidation of determination you're still understanding it finitely and in order to achieve a

properly you know an infinite understanding of the infinite you have to understand you have to be able to you know to understand the the self determination and the different you know they also differentiation of the infinite that's where you need a new kind of a new register of determination from that's where in a way that's where you go from determination you know through it through another you know the determination of existence by another to way to kind of to self-determination self-determination extrinsic negation to

the negation of the nick of a negation okay where you know something is determined as something by something that Elsa is not and there's a kind of between the two somethings to one where you understand that there's a determination which is you know which is simply the the redoubling of negation the negation of negation the determination of determination the determination of determination so that things according to a you can understand how things are self differentiating or self you know have

difference within themselves and this means ultimately for him contradiction and not just opposition or an abstract negation okay response I don't know if I mean don't know if that clarifies things much but uh I did thank you I think Hunter's question is next beneath that um and actually if if people who haven't asked questions yet would like to um yeah I mean I have a bunch of questions in the sidebar so if anyone

else wants to ask something first, that's fine with me. If not, we'll just carry on. Okay, so Hunter's question is, I'm not sure I understand why being must relate to itself through the inessential. Why it could not simply relate to itself perfectly with no remainder? and and and i sort of get that it's because it's indeterminate so if it's relating to an indeterminacy there's there's a failure to to relate because it's there's nothing to relate to um but i don't know i still feel like i'm missing something yes no and this is well

I admit this is you know I don't think I probably didn't explain this very well this is a very different yeah this is you know the transition from being to essence is seriously tricky and to have a really definitive or convincing account of it it seems it's okay again then a court number one was trying to kind of explain you know or at least what Hegel thinks is you know why this transition is yours is

logically kind of compelling. Being's self-relation takes a form of shine or of semblance. and then within semblance he's within semblance then he says we can distinguish between the essential and the inessential this is a distinction

that is internal to shine it's not a distinction between shine and being a shine you know being has no kind of consummated itself as shine but shine you know has a pole which is essential and a pole which is inessential so first of all the first question is why how does being consummate itself as shiny or as seeming and okay well this because

is it because if you keep thinking that's just what you discover well the problem is that's not he can't answer that way that's not that can't be the case because so far in the logic of being we're just dealing with except of thinking yes there is no concept of thinking yes and these are just supposed to be patients that emerge in this you know analysis of

being are supposed to be purely fundamental ontological determinations and he thinks okay the claims wrote is that you know self but initially this thinking is completely is is completely submerged in being and it has to be kind of rested out of it and that's exactly what is supposed to happen with essence is so being is supposed to be determined minutes in the you know the logic of being and then through the transition into essence you can understand how it can become determining in and for itself

already that's so already with the essentialities of reflection your identity difference opposition contradiction showing that these you know what we're taking to be fundamental these fundamental conceptual categories are also ontological categories. Hegel's whole point is to begin with a point of indifference between thinking and being show how nevertheless being is imminently self differentiating you know out of this indifference it acquires no determinations and differentiations but then it reaches a kind of a crisis with it reaches this crisis of determination

it can only determine itself as that's as you know as as infinite but but in determining itself as infinite it seems to kind of to negate all the determinations of exist that you know the determinations of quality and quantity that it had acquired so far you know so you know the logic of being you begin with just you know being pure being no then it turns being a nothing or you know flip back and forth into each other then you've got becoming then you've got in your existence and then you've

got all these other kind of categories quantity quality and then infinity the infinite emerges at the end but the infinite is a determination of being which is also the abstract negation of all the other determinations saying that if you if we're attempting to think being on its own terms imminently without any kind of subjective presuppositions we culminate in this in thinking of being as this sheer you know actual infinity which is which in which all the determinations of quality and quantity are simply dissolved so we have to think being its absoluteness can only be

absolute indifference this is why absolute indifference is the final determination of being so so far this is us this is us trying to think being in itself okay this is us thinking being in itself thinking being in itself and this is Hegel's gambit, obliges you to think it's in and for itself. In other words, to think reflection to being. In other words, to think of thinking as intrinsic to being. And with thinking, we get the beginning of conceptual determination. Why? Because essence is the beginning of the concept why because the concept is self-relating negativity self-relating

negativity emerges with essence so in a way what Hegel is saying is that harbors within itself its own the germ of the concept of the germ of you know conceptual determination and in fact beings if we to think being in itself thinking it in and for itself which means thinking conceptual determination as imminent to and constitutive of and so then in this regard this is how essence the logic of essence is supposed to kind of complements the logic of being but we

haven't yet emerged that you know this is still the object of logic not the subject of logic we haven't got a doctrine the logic of the concept so I guess I mean you know the saying is that as soon as we begin as soon as we begin to think about anything we have to think about our own thinking of it and it's not just we can't just think of this thinking as you know an extrinsic you know superimposition of determinations we have to understand her you know that the matter itself you know these ag is elps you know the thing itself shapes are

thinking about it why he thinks that to think being is ultimately to think for being thinks itself and then ultimately to understand her you know beings thinking of itself finds its fool you know expression in you know the doctrine of the concept which is the richest you know and they you know is like know the the logic of judgment which is the richest and most you know the most conceptually rich dimension of of thinking about you know of thinking what

is so the so that's the basic kind of overview of what of what he thinks he's doing so the key question is that is you know in order for this you know to work you know I know you know you have to be the claims that if you think being rigorous if you think being in itself lay this culminates and thinking being in itself as infinite and if you think it as infinite and then the key kind of dialectical move is to say yeah but if you think the infinity of beings in itself as indeterminacy this indeterminacy is a subjective

present projection you're not thinking in it in itself okay this will be an external reflection and this is why you have to think being as indifferent to its own indifference not just in different to its own friends but indifferent to its own indifference which is to say as you know as as recapitulating and manifesting its own differentiation within itself. And so the key claim is that what other philosophers had as an absolute limit of thinking, we can think being itself but only,

you know, but we can't think the infinite in itself because the infinite in itself is unthinkable. Well, so Hegel's gambit is that, well, to say You know, to call the infinite unthinkable as simply kind of, you know, as the liquidation of determination is to give it a subjective determination which is illegitimate. It's to refuse to think it in itself. This refusal isn't justified by anything in the thing itself.

He thinks that this is, in fact, this is a kind of an ultimate resort of, you know, it's what he calls a kind of a timidity kind of, you're superimposing a subjective limitation onto being in itself. and he thinks that that is and he says once you understand that you can overcome it and then understand how being is relates to itself through a kind of a movement of imminence the nation and this is where the whole this is where essence comes in this is where essence comes in it's the fulcrum of the

logic. Now the claim of... so in terms of your concrete question which is again why does the absolute indifference... what is it about this absolute indifference that necessitates... Like specific finite determinations. Why does it generate those? Yes, why does it generate specific finite determinations? They're not going to be finite.

finite, because those determinations will themselves be infinite, and hence essence. Essence is already the movement of infinity, the movement of infinity in itself, and to understand this movement of infinity is to understand how the determinations are the determinations of infinity. They're not finite determinations. In other words, he thinks it's a mistake of the reflection to think that these determinations, for instance, the determinations in the first book of the objective logic are merely finite determinations. You don't say, no, they're not finite.

In which we demonstrate that they're not finite is precisely by taking the next step and understand how they're necessitated by beings, you know, reflection into itself, which is the true, you know, which is essence as the essence of the infinite. Because I think, you know, what does he say about infinite for Hegel? It's self-relating negativity. that is it's the infinite the abstract negation of finite determination it's the concrete negation

of finite determination as self-relating negativity which shows that all these determinations are actually manifestations of the infinite so the logic this is why I think yeah there's an equivocation here and what I said previously because in a way he's going to insist that all the all the categories deployed both in the objective and the subjective logic are absolutely are the categories of infinity these are the categories of the absolutes you know the absolute notion so he wants to say and this is why he thinks you know this is what absolute knowing is this is why we've attained knowledge of the absolute in absolute terms and to do this so yes the the

confusion what I said previously was misleading because his categorical determinations you know as far as he's concerned are infinite not finite however the way to understand this is to understand how the you know the infinite you know properly understood is self-relating negativity and then once we understand this then when in terms of like let's say the phenomenology in terms of the experience of consciousness it can to be mere you know vanishing moments of consciousness or self-conscious or vanishing moments of human cultural or historical

self-understanding are actually you know manifestations of unfolds within the infinite because the infinite is also appearance so that what is so that what is incomplete or limited or partial theory is still you know an index of the of the infinite is still the word expression because that's there's a whole you know specifying exactly what expression means becomes very complicated but if the the infinite is simply the self overcoming

of the finite then you know there's you don't juxtapose the finite to the infinite you don't juxtapose finding determination to actions of the infinite itself you show her these the movement through which the finite you know the movement that animates the transients or the kind of the instability of the finite is itself the infinite movement and then and then the finite becomes constitutive of the infinite so that's what we're taken to be merely you know

finite determinations are determinations of the infinite okay I mean my mind is starting to hurt a little bit. Thank you for the answer. I don't know if this is... I mean, I think, I get, like, I guess, I get that for him it happens in these three moments of essence, right? Of pausing determination, central determination, reflection, and terminal reflection, but, like, my my final question on the sidebar is kind of you could extend this question in terms of that one I asked about

a comparison between Hegel's positing presuppositions and Zizek's version of that so he uses Hegel in his philosophy of subjectively embodied truth procedure and it makes a lot more sense to me to think of this idea in terms of an event. Like it's easier for me to understand if there's some kind of aleatoric event and then there's sort of something to posit even though it's not a determinant yet. So like whatever it is, the idea of communism or an artistic truth procedure.

and um but but it's like it's it's hard for me to grasp in Hegel he seems to be saying that this always has to be every determination is internal to a to the dialectic like like like there's no there's no outside and and I just don't get how you know I get that he sort of tells a story about it and and I get that he describes how it happens but I still don't see how it could I guess with without without an outside yes okay well okay well in terms of Jesus you know so yes usually the whole kind of positing the presuppositions in Jesus okay so he says this is going to think of the inauguration of you know the

declaration of an event and the but a mental truth procedure you because it's the whole thing is retro retrospective and that you precisely because an event is not some kind of it's it it's not a positive phenomenon okay it's not some kind of positive here I'm using bad use kind of vocabulary it's not something of the order of being it's a kind of it's a malfunction what you put in a malfunctioning in the kind of appearances and in terms of this you know

malfunction or dysfunction you have to kind of that refuses to be understood or refuses to be conceptually integrated just to make sense within the you know in terms of the ordinary way in which one understands the world and then you have to make a decision you have to make a decision whether or not this rupture in the way of the world or the state of things has happened. And if you do decide that something exceptional took place, that this break or rupture took place, get determinants. You don't have the, you're not in a position to say what has taken place. The whole truth procedure is about developing, you know,

developing the conceptual resources you need to be able to characterize the nature of the break with the status quo. So it's only retrospectively that you can actually explain how the event transformed the situation. And in fact, your own activity is part of the transformation of the situation because in deciding that something you know exceptional anomalous happened and then trying to know to draw the consequences of this decision that something exceptional happen you generate the resources only for

understanding it but you generate resources that transform that actually effectuate transformation so and then so you know a revolution you know it's it's after the facts you know the declaration that's a revolutionary ruptured has occurred entails you know doing things that will actually realize you know the revolution and the revolution is only real at the level of its unfolding consequences no so no so this is one way of understanding positing the presupposition and the words you the you know the events is the presupposition

for your you know your revolutionary activity but in fact this if you yourself have posited this presupposition retrospectively why because in and of itself it's not something it's not something that's who's occurring can be positively characterized of you know obliging you to decide one way or the other if it were it wouldn't be an event okay if something you know if it this is why an event is not just something that forces you you know to take sides for

and against it it's it's deciding whether or not something has taken place and the but the content of the event is precisely what can only be retrospectively generated once you've decided that an event took place in other words you say something took place I know not what but just by saying something took place I know not what you're compelled to generate the resources that will allow you to say what it was that happened that's and that transformed the situation so that's positing the presuppositions I mean I think it's a good way of understanding this, but it's not quite... well, it seems that it's not quite what's going on in Hegel.

Because for Hegel, this is... in a way, because he doesn't have this whole kind of... distinction between the order of being and you know between ontological order on the one hand and you know and well regulated and the anomalous that which is kind of you know that which is exceptional and anomalous and what you know Hegel's account is that even at the level of ontology what is is both

posited and presupposed any any determination about anything at all you know the most banal kind of determination at all is also the results of a positing presupposition so okay so one consequence of this is that in this way this is how hail can seem as a terrible kind of normalizer as a kind of very for For Hegel, there are no exceptions. There can't be any kind of transformative exceptions. Actually, this is one powerful objection. Once you decide that essence is contradiction, well, contradiction neutralizes the possibility of an exception.

Because if everything is contradictory, then how would you distinguish between consistency and inconsistency yeah that's exactly what my question is that that's that's like or that's that's the essence of what I'm struggling with okay and so that's you know that's a very good you know that's an object that's in a way that's bad use objection to Hegel I guess me asus objection to Hegel but I think what I was trying to address when we were discussing absolute knowing is that what's really interesting about because philosophy for Hegel is always belated,

it's always a kind of an attempt to take stock of its own time in thought, you know, but it's belated, it's after the fact, but it seems that already for When you philosophize for Hegel, you have to engage, there's a speculative wager about what has taken place. And this is where I think the whole relationship to the French Revolution is really, really important. He, you know, in a way, the French Revolution is a kind of an evental condition for Hegel's philosophy, but except for him, it's no longer, and except it is the condition of this event look occurrence this break is you

know paradigmatic for all philosophy I think it's to understand you know how it's the break you know the break of modernity you know the break with the break inaugurated by modernity as a complete you know you know an ology a new way of measuring time and of understanding you know of understanding what has happened and in this regard I think that what I'm suggesting is that to be a hegelian is to understand you know philosophy as eventually conditioned but but without the dualism of being an event in other words is to say that being is event the

being is it is an event but the way in which you decide that an event has taken place for Hegel involves all the resources of speculative understanding. That means, I think, that you don't need to appeal to what I think is an undialectical between, you know, between chance and necessity or between that which is the events as this kind of absolute as this anomalous rupture and you know the situation so in other words that you

the claim would be that Hegel allows you to understand history as eventual, and, yes, history as eventual, and history as necessitating, you know, transformations. Now, the problem, I mean, is that Hegel, a lot of what Hegel says is, seems to kind of run explicitly against this. And, you know, Hegel is constantly kind of criticized for being, you know, for encouraging

people to simply accept the way of things and, you know, to kind of resign themselves to a kind of fatalism where whatever happened turns out to be necessary. But there's also something in him, I think, that resists this reading, and this is what he says about the need to effectuate the concept for Hegel there is no ideal that cannot be effectuated or realized and any given that you know you're compelled to in any kind of

comprehension of the world you're going to be compelled to um to identify you know to say what is wrong with it and I think he's quite explicit about that you're going to have to kind of identify what is unjust or unsatisfactory then that compels you to go about transforming the situation and then with the more you understand what is deficient, the more you're compelled to rectify the situation. So I think this is actually where Hegel is closest to Marx.

Because Hegel's resistance or his hostility to beautiful soulism, which is judging the world in terms of unrealized and unrealizable ideals compels him to say we must make the real rational. We must make the real rational. And then I think the disagreement is over what that means, whether it just means rationalizing it at the level of understanding or rationalizing it at the level of practice. But for Hegel, what Hegel means by real is effectivity or actuality. And it's clear that for him, rationality can only be truly effective

if it is socially and historically realized. It cannot just, you know, it's not merely a kind of, it's not about contemplation. So in other words, it seems to me that what Hegel says about the real and the rational, compatible with the quietest reading, which says, you know, you understand the rationality of the real simply through philosophical, through contemplation. I think there's a critique of contemplation in Hegel's account. In this regard, I think he is, you know, closer, you know, to people like Bad U and Zizek. than uh a much closer even than they i think um often um you know say but this is a very deep

you know this is obviously a very um yeah profound issue um so so it's like there's there's an empirical historical context that's the touchstone for justifying why there's determination at all. There simply is, and we know it. That kind of makes sense. Because it does seem like the absolute concept has a praxis dimension to it. So when you arrive at the absolute concept, there is praxis, so it makes sense to start from praxis too, in a way. Yes, and if you remember, Hegel, if one takes seriously,

The more one reads Hegel, the more one sees how serious he is about not accepting oppositions, any oppositions, any kind of unarticulated distinctions, whether it's between theory and practice, the ideal and the real or anything else. That's the logic of his own account, of his own account of what it is to comprehend. And comprehension involves revolution, I think. It involves transformation. There are no such thing, because concepts for Hegel are in the world. They're not just in our heads. The claim is that the way in which society is organized,

the way in which everything we say and do is mediated. I mean, Hegel's claims that all of human existence is conceptually mediated. There is nothing that is not conceptual about human existence. There is no aspect or facet of human existence that is untouched by the concept. And once we understand the structure and the grip of the concept, we can work on the concept. and in so doing is also working on its kind of concrete social historical you know incarnation and this means that i think the imperative to transform things in hegel is never about you know

it's not i mean look you know to kind of i think that hegel provides you resources for rationalizing the imperative to revolution you know which I think are you know you know undercuts by by by kind of purely evental accounts where the event is precisely the this non rationalizable kind of anomaly you you have to decide or gamble about an event you can't give a reason or not for for your commitment to an event and certainly not in the Badiou accounts and in Zizek with the whole you know the thing about the act in Zizek

it's an act but it's precisely an act you know which has a kind of is subtracted from the remit of conceptual rationality. So it's a radical revolutionary act but it challenges rationalization. But that's also I think it's kind of its weakness can be compelling, you know, it can be rendered universally compelling or at least anyway that's a complicated issue because they would have rejoinders to this. But that's the hunch. So I just want to say that we're at 30 minutes past the normal runtime,

so I want to be respectful of your time, Ray, if you have to go. But I'm fine to go a little bit longer if we would like to. Thanks for the answers to all the questions. that's yeah that's the thing that that Hegel they were saying that Hegel could provide a actually a stronger basis for revolutionary politics than Badoon Zizek because of this reference to the absolute. Yes also in terms of you know the term exteriority often comes up in discussions of Hegel this is you know there's so you know there's something claustrophobic about you know especially about his logic because people often you know there's nothing that isn't you know

kind of the process through this kind of formidable dialectical machinery you know the suspicion is always that well this is a kind of you know this is a closed system this is a kind of a closed you know self you know self-sealing conceptual construction but I think that's again I think that's that's a misunderstanding I think it's a misunderstanding because what I said about understanding the absolute in terms of a structure of occurrence for Hegel there's always going to be you know look what he gives you in his logic is this catalogue of fundamental conceptual categories conditions of intelligibility

you know also kind of the you know determinant of the structure of being but I mean I don't see why they rule out you know it's not people always say oh well but then you can't that makes it there's an assumption about what Hegel's categories leave out and for and you know popular to say all of differences he doesn't recognize difference but actually if you read his account of contradiction I mean his you know he's a much more radical thinker of I mean contradiction is about as radical a kind of a difference as you can conceive of yeah I definitely noticed that I mean

he yeah I mean he talks about difference in itself all the time and it's in this chapter yes yes and they lose his critique of him and different repetition is like it's very it seems dishonest kind of yeah well he had no I think it's it's not a satisfactory critique it's not the claim is a contradiction you know and he you know the claim is that contradiction is just a difference in the concept but not yet concept of difference but I think that that is not a convincing rejoinder given that Hegel you know for hey you know contradiction emerges at the level of essence not the level of doctrine of the concept so and Hegel has accounts you know has an account of her secretes its own

conceptualization precisely through its own you know essential determinations But yes, in terms of known, you know, Hegel's a thinker of antagonism. To say that being is essentially contradictory is to say that everything is riven by antagonisms. And that is a radical claim because it means that there is no equilibrium, no harmony, no status. To say that everything is essentially contradictory means that everything is unstable. always you know you know it's always both you know kind of being integrated and disintegrated at the same time and I think that is in this regard Hegel is a

powerful thinking of becoming is not just this kind of anodyne word you know for Hegel all becoming is you know underwritten by contradiction you realize that becoming you know some kind of static resolution or harm not he's the great you know he's a great modern philosopher because he destroys the the premise of organic equilibrium you know and I think well he's often kind of you know again a metaphysical reading insist that it's all about reconciliation but But no, the reconciliation is an explosive contradiction that generates a transformation

in time and historical consciousness, which forces you to think something different. So, yeah, in all these regards, I think that Hegel is an undervalued resource for thinking, you know what is you know the most you know disturbing you know aspects of reality or what you know the current state of things okay let's see there's a couple more questions so well what motivates the dialectic I guess that

would have it to don't look this was kind of just a sidebar conversation about the question, I think. Yeah. Okay. So what is the next question? Let's see. I'm... I had a couple questions in the sidebar, but I'm not exactly sure how to tie them back in now. It's more just like a trying to grapple with the entirety. Um... Maybe I will say my last question here. I just said if Kant expanded the cogito for transcendental idealism, it seems that, and

perhaps this is the metaphysical reading, it seems that Hegel expands transcendental idealism to anthropomorphizing the totality of the world. I guess I'm sort of curious about the completion of the system too. The resolution of the dialectic. Because it does seem like in the phenomenology of spirit, it's headed that way, towards resolution. So I'd like to either hear your thoughts about it today or perhaps start next week off with talking about the resolution of the system. Okay, that's...

Well, this is maybe the most... and hegel is there seems to be look there's two things going on in his rhetoric about resolution one the overcoming of finitude so he thinks that for instance the you know accepting the incommensurability of the finite and the infinite as to take the most kind of you know emblematic kind of you know example from the history of philosophy he thinks that that's a conservative move because

it's it's a way of maintaining a certain status quo so in other words if you if you resign yourself to accepting certain kind of differences you know as compatible you are simply you know you're refusing to kind of to push forward into kind of you know to break through to something to more profound understanding so one of the senses of resolution for instance when he talks about understanding overcoming the you know the opposition between the finite

and infinite understanding the infinite as the self overcoming of the finite you you resolve the opposition between the finite and infinite and understand that the infinite is nothing but the self relating of the finite or rather that the you know the finite is nothing but the you know the the self negating of the infinite so that's so on one hand resolution is overcoming opposition but only overcoming them there lying contradiction so what what's under a hegel's kind of case for resolution it's the primacy of contradiction you go

beyond the oppositions of the understanding and you reach the level of reason you understand everything as essentially contradictory but contradiction you know so the claim is is an understanding of the world as essentially contradict something that is resolves all antagonisms or resolves all kind of tensions or disagreements well I mean saying that kind of these that antagonism is ineliminable and irresolvable but you know the and

because the resolution it's the irresolvability you know essential antagonism that is I think that Hegel you know called resolution is a resolution at the level of philosophical reason or rationality where you understand the reason fiction but under grasping the reason this means grasping the intelligibility of contradiction understanding in what way it still leaves I think like what you do once you have understood a contradiction and this relates I

think to the relationship between theory and practice because theoretical conceptual contradictions are resolved in practice I think that's a Marxist an old Marxist saying is that theoretical contradictions can only be resolved in practice. Practice transforms the situation in the world or the reality in a way which renders you know which you know we can have liquidates the basis work in terms of which the previous contradiction you know made sense so I think resolving you

know the imperative to resolve you know to first to you know to grasp contradiction then to resolve contradiction involves transformation for Hegel and the transformation must be radical because in order to kind of to dissolve in which a contradiction is embedded you have to kind of transform the framework and that's what ends they in the Marxist sense and this but but then I think is that there will be no situation which you will never abolish contradiction you know you will never abolish contradiction the resolution of

of contradiction is only temporary and you know local um and is the condition for generating a new contradiction which is both enabling and disabling every contradiction is some is you know something that is makes certain things possible and other of things impossible that because contradictions are dynamic none of them are eternal there are no eternal contradictions that's why there are no eternal resolutions either so I mean I think yeah there's more to say about

this but that's my you know my suggestion I think for understanding what Hegel says about resolution. Yeah, in a strange way, and I don't want this to take us too much longer, but contradiction perhaps is even more daunting than being cut off from a thing in itself. Yes. I mean, in itself is contradiction for Hegel. exactly it so we're not cut off we know the in itself it just but it's it's contradictory and that's why we ourselves our consciousness is

contradictory everything every aspect of our existence is driven by contradictions and I guess where you know so that you know the metaphysical reading says yes but ultimately all these contradictions are neutralized in the absolute if essence is if if essence of self relating negativity is precisely what generates contradiction it's hard to see how that could or that could ever be the case I think it's also right to time if we if you think about what Hegel says about time as a negative in itself so not as a time as a negativity for itself in a way to think

contradict you know to to think contradiction is also to think is to have one's thinking condition by time in a way and to understand that time has no eligible structure yielded by time is a structure of contradiction where every contradiction entails radical discontinuities three the you know the resolution of a contradiction yields a completely new contradiction whose terms are incommensurable with the previous so this yields an understanding of time

as discontinuous because it involves constant you know constant kind of transformation I'm going to have to I'm going to have to go so we'll have a session next week and do we have two more sessions two more correct two more sessions next week is the seventh session and the following week is the eighth session which is the final session okay very good um yeah thanks for a great class very difficult i agree oh no well this this is the i mean i realize this you know and uh is it kind of all this stuff is excruciating this is the hardest

the Essence stuff is just about the hardest stuff in Hegel and there is no way I mean it is just excruciating. maybe the hardest thing ever read from anybody. no I mean it is almost like worse than the late Lacan. yes no no there's 800 pages of it like you know so it's but yeah the logic of Essence is just torture there's just no getting away from it so and it takes you have to you know so yeah don't you know it's just objectively horrible so don't be you know you know that's there's you know and anyone who doesn't you know isn't

kind of upset by it you know would not be perceiving its true kind of horribleness this so okay and I'll send an email just to about the reading for next week because I need to exactly what we're gonna be doing I'll send that later tonight okay sounds good and I'll post that in the classroom after you send it okay great okay all right thanks Ray thanks thanks thanks thank you