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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for awarding me a generous Senior Research Fellowship during which the present paper was written. I am also grateful to Dr Angelika Kreß of the University of Tübingen for devoting two sessions of her seminar on Hegel's Science of Logic to the discussion of the paper. Her comments, as well as the comments of the audience, have been proven invaluable. Finally, I thank the editor of the present volume, Professor Rafael Winkler, and the anonymous reviewers of JBSP for their feedback and support during the review process.
Notes
1 Burbidge chooses the opposite road; he “ignore[s] Hegel's suggestion that the [Science of Logic] is a metaphysics” and “consider[s] its argument to reflect simply the operations of pure thought” (Burbidge, 1981, p. 4).
2 As we shall see, this does not mean that fundamental structures cannot be found in experience; it only means that they are independent of experience, i.e. they can exist without it.
3 Note that this is a far cry from Russell's claim that for Hegel all the properties of a thing could be inferred by logic (see Russell, 1961, p. 715).
4 By the term “initial appearance” what is meant here is the first thematization of each determination of reflection (bar contradiction) in the Metaphysics of Essence. Note that the “initial appearance” of a determination of reflection has ontological status, to wit, it denotes a structure, albeit an inferior (“abstract”) one, of being-as-essence.
5 SL439/WdL.I.74: “[Contradiction is] the determination into which they [i.e. the other determinations of reflection, namely, identity, difference and opposition,] pass as their truth[;] in contrast to the others [contradiction] expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of things.”
6 As we shall see, incorporation is one of the two aspects of the function of sublation, the other being supersession.
7 The sentence is somewhat ambiguous. What I want to say is that the term “determinate being” signifies both a qualitative–quantitative plurality and the individual members of this plurality (to wit, specific qualities and quantities). That manifoldness is the defining feature of determinate being is unambiguously stated by Hegel on SL389/WdL.II.13 (translation modified): “Cognition cannot at all stay only with the manifold determinate being [ … ].”
8 Thus, what I am claiming is that the Metaphysics of Determinate Being, which precedes the Metaphysics of Essence, does not contain the notion of a unity of a manifoldness. Thus, for me, it would be a mistake to claim that the unity developed in the Metaphysics of Essence is a “higher” form of a unity of a manifoldness which we already find in the Metaphysics of Determinate Being. The notion of unity, in the sense of a unity of a manifoldness, appears for the first time in the Metaphysics of Essence. For reasons of space I will not here pursue a scholarly defence of this claim. Nevertheless, in the course of the article I show that the logic behind the distinction between determinate being, on the one hand, and essence, on the other, excludes the possibility of there being a notion of a unity of a manifoldness in the Metaphysics of Determinate Being. For the fundamental structure of determinate being requires the self's return-to-itself-from-an-other, a notion that cancels out the very possibility of a primordial unity of a manifoldness; see especially the last paragraph of SL411 (or the paragraph beginning with “Diese Identität mit sich [ … ]” on WdL.II.39).
9 There are philosophers who interpret the Hegelian Metaphysics of Essence, and especially that part of it which is the Metaphysics of Reflection in a methodological vein. Schmidt, for example, believes that this is the place where Hegel “explicates his understanding of the proper method of a scientific logic” (Schmidt, 2002, p. 99). Another example is Henrich (1978), who understands the Metaphysics of Reflection as an explication of Hegel's conception of the method of analysis (Henrich, 1978, p. 227). I find these “methodological” interpretations highly implausible, for they disrupt the thematic continuity between the Metaphysics of Determinate Being and the Metaphysics of Essence. It follows from them that whereas the Metaphysics of Determinate Being dealt with the ontology of qualities and quantities, suddenly Hegel now turns his attention to methodological matters. The interpretation offered in the present essay does not generate thematic discontinuity between the two domains of Hegelian Metaphysics.
10 Fink-Eitel (1978, p. 104) speaks of the “destruction” (Zerfall) of identity through reflection (the movement of essence).
11 Hence Hegel's claim that “essence is the truth of [determinate] being” (SL389/WdL.II.13). He refers to essence as a structure of sublation on SL390/WdL.II.14–15.
12 There is at least one other author who understands the introduction of “Schein” as one having the purpose of resolving a problem; see Schmidt (2002, p. 102): “Das Verhältnis des Sich-Gegenüberstehens opaker Daseine löst sich nur auf, wenn sich eines der vermeintlich selbständigen Relate dieses Verhältnisses als Schein erweist.”
13 Thus, by the term “Schein” I understand structures that belong to the Metaphysics of Determinate Being; they are namely characterized fundamentally by self-subsistence, other-relatedness, externality, and exclusion – considered, however, in the perspective of essence. “Being considered in the perspective of essence” means being considered as part of a unity. Schein, therefore, is determinate being that is sublated in essence. Its appearance as determinate being in essence is an illusion. For a similar interpretation, see Schmidt (2002, pp. 102–05).
14 Cf. Schmidt (2002, p. 102): “Der Schein muß vielmehr selbst dem Wesen zugehörig sein. Der Schein des Seins ist nur eine Illusion, auf die das Wesen stößt, es muß dessen eigene Erscheinung sein.”
15 Cf. SL389/WdL.II.13 (translation mine): “[ … ] Essence is past, but not temporally past, being.”
16 Cf. SL411/WdL.II.38: “Essence is the simple immediacy as sublated immediacy.”
17 This proposition makes it clear that the Hegelian concept of reflection does not cancel the concept of external reflection out. External reflection is as important a constituent of reflection as absolute, positing, pre-positing, and determining reflection. The Hegelian concept of reflection sublates rather than annihilates external reflection.
18 Burbidge (1981, p. 73) writes that “a determination of reflection shows itself to be essential because it persists.” For us, this is a mistake. A determination of reflection shows itself to be essential, not because it persists, but because it unifies other-relatedness (“determinateness”) and self-relatedness (“reflection”). This general feature holds, at least implicitly, for all determinations of reflection, including difference and opposition.
19 Schubert (1985, p. 57) calls this metaphysical phenomenon “the internalization of otherness”, and Schmidt (2002, pp. 111, 113) speaks of the other as “an internal moment.”
20 See especially SL412/WdL.II.39 (emphasis mine): “[Essential identity] is not that equality-with-self that being or even nothing is, but the equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity (Einheit), not a restoration of itself from an other (aus einem Anderen), but this pure origination from and within itself [ … ].”
21 On SL389/WdL.II.14 Hegel describes the structure of essence that corresponds to identity-as-the-indeterminate-self; as “a simple unity devoid of determinations” that “stands against” “the determinate”.
22 Identity, as a manifestation of essence, requires both the return-to-self-from-an-other and the return-to-self-from-itself. However, the “other” here is the “self” (and vice versa). This is why identity is in truth contradiction. It is the (first) negation of an other and the (second) negation of that (first) negation – a (second) negation that initiates the return-to-self-from-an-other. However, because the other here is the self, the (first) negation of the other is the (first) negation of the self, and the (second) negation of the (first) negation is the return-to-self-from-itself.
23 This is not always appreciated in Hegel scholarship. It is a repeated theme in Theunissen (1978), for example, that in the Metaphysics of Essence otherness has vanished. This is not true: otherness has, rather, been transformed therein into sublated otherness, a “moment” of the self.
24 The same mistake is made by Burbidge (1981, p. 72), who writes that “identity [ … ] is an equivalence to itself that is maintained through a process of change.” Nowhere is Hegel making this claim. Burbidge should have said that “identity is an equivalence to itself that unifies a manifoldness”.