“In the same way Being has not originated, because it must then have come either from the existent or from the non-existent. From the existent it did not arise, for then it would be already; just as little from the non-existent, because this cannot beget anything.”[112] The sceptics followed this up further. The object to be contemplated hence ever becomes posited under determinations with ‘either’ ‘or,’ which then contradict one another. But that is not the true dialectic, because the object resolves itself into those determinations only; when nothing follows respecting the nature of the object itself, then, as is already proved, the object must be necessarily in one determination, and not in and for itself.
ββ. In a similar way Gorgias shows “of what exists, that it must either be one or many; but neither is possible. For as one, it would have a certain magnitude, or continuity, or number, or body, but all this is not one, but different, divisible. Every sensuous one is, in fact, necessarily another, a manifold. If it is not one, it cannot be many, for the many is many ones.”[113]
γ. “Similarly both, Being and non-being, cannot exist at the same time. If one exists as much as the other, they are the same, and therefore neither of them is, for the non-being does not exist, and hence neither does the Being, since it is identical with it. Nor can they, on the other hand, both exist, for if they are identical, I cannot express them both,”[114] and thus both do not exist, for if I express both, I differentiate. This dialectic, which Aristotle (De Xenoph. &c., c. 5) likewise designates as peculiar to Gorgias, has its truth. In speaking of Being and non-being, we always say the opposite to what we wish. Being and non-being are the same, just as they are not the same; if they are the same, I speak of the two as different: if different, I express the same predicate of them, diversity. This dialectic is not to be despised by us, as if it dealt with empty abstractions, for these categories are, on the one hand, in their purity the most universal, and if, on the other hand, they are not the ultimate, yet it is always Being or non-being that are in question; they are not, however, definitely fixed and divided off, but are self-abrogating. Gorgias is conscious that they are vanishing moments, while the ordinary unconscious conception also has present to it this truth, but knows nothing about it.
b. The relation of the conceiver to conception, the difference between conception and Being, is a subject which is in our mouths to-day. “But if there is an ‘is,’ it is unknowable and unthinkable, for what is presented is not the existent” but only a presentation. “If what is presented is white, it is the case that white is presented; if what is presented is not the really existent, it is the case that what is, is not presented. For if what is presented is the real existent, everything that is presented also exists, but no one says that if a flying man, or waggon riding on the sea were presented to us, it would exist. Further, if what is presented is the existent, the non-existent is not presented, for opposites are in opposition. But this non-existent is everywhere presented as it is in Scylla and the Chimæra.[115] Gorgias on the one hand pronounces a just polemic against absolute realism, which, because it represents, thinks to possess the very thing itself, when it only has a relative, but he falls, on the other hand, into the false idealism of modern times, according to which thought is always subjective only, and thus not the existent, since through thought an existent is transformed into what is thought.”
c. We finally have the basis of the dialectic of Gorgias in respect of the third point, that knowledge cannot be imparted, in this: “If the existent were presented, it could still not be expressed and imparted. Things are visible, audible, &c., or are experienced. The visible is grasped through sight, the audible through hearing, and not the contrary way; thus, the one cannot be indicated by the other. Speech, by which the existent has to be expressed, is not the existent; what is imparted is thus not the existent, but only words.[116] In this manner Gorgias’ dialectic is the laying hold of this difference exactly as again occurred in Kant; if I maintain this difference, certainly that which is, cannot be known.”
This dialectic is undoubtedly impregnable to those who maintain sensuous Being to be real. But its truth is only this movement to posit itself negatively as existent, and the unity is the reflection that the existent, comprehended also as non-existent, becomes, in this comprehension of it, universal. That this existent cannot be imparted, must likewise be held most strongly, for this individual cannot be expressed. Philosophic truth is thus not only expressed as if there were another truth in sensuous consciousness; but Being is present in that philosophic truth expresses it. The Sophists thus also made dialectic, universal Philosophy, their object, and they were profound thinkers.
[B.—Socrates.]
Consciousness had reached this point in Greece, when in Athens the great form of Socrates, in whom the subjectivity of thought was brought to consciousness in a more definite and more thorough manner, now appeared. But Socrates did not grow like a mushroom out of the earth, for he stands in continuity with his time, and thus is not only a most important figure in the history of Philosophy—perhaps the most interesting in the philosophy of antiquity—but is also a world-famed personage. For a mental turning-point exhibited itself in him in the form of philosophic thought. If we shortly recall the periods already passed over, we find that the ancient Ionic philosophers certainly thought, but without reflecting on the thought or defining its product as thought. The Atomists made objective existence into thoughts, but these were to them only abstractions, pure entities. Anaxagoras, on the other hand, raised thought as such, into a principle which thereby presented itself as the all-powerful Notion, as the negative power over all that is definite and existent. Protagoras finally expresses thought as real existence, but it is in this its movement, which is the all-resolving consciousness, the unrest of the Notion. This unrest is in itself at the same time something restful or secure. But the fixed point of motion as such, is the ‘I,’ for it has the moments of movement outside of it; as the self-retaining, which only abrogates what is different, the ‘I’ is negative unity, but just in that very way individual, and not yet the universal reflected within itself. Now we here find the ambiguity of dialectic and sophistry, which rests in the fact that if the objective disappears, the signification of the fixed subjective is either that of the individual opposed to the objective, and thereby the contingent and lawless will, or that of the objective and universal in itself. Socrates expresses real existence as the universal ‘I,’ as the consciousness which rests in itself; but that is the good as such, which is free from existent reality, free from individual sensuous consciousness of feeling and desire, free finally from the theoretically speculative thought about nature, which, if indeed thought, has still the form of Being and in which I am not certain of my existence.
Socrates herein adopted firstly the doctrine of Anaxagoras that thought, the understanding, is the ruling and self-determining universal, though this principle did not, as with the Sophists, attain the form of formal culture or of abstract philosophizing. Thus, if with Socrates, as with Protagoras, the self-conscious thought that abrogates all that is determined, was real existence, with Socrates this was the case in such a way that he at the same time grasped in thought rest and security. This substance existing in and for itself, the self-retaining, has become determined as end, and further as the true and the good.
To this determination of the universal, we have, in the second place, to add that this good, which has by me to be esteemed as substantial end, must be known by me; with this the infinite subjectivity, the freedom of self-consciousness in Socrates breaks out. This freedom which is contained therein, the fact that consciousness is clearly present in all that it thinks, and must necessarily be at home with itself, is in our time constantly and plainly demanded; the substantial, although eternal and in and for itself, must as truly be produced through me; but this my part in it is only the formal activity. Thus Socrates’ principle is that man has to find from himself both the end of his actions and the end of the world, and must attain to truth through himself. True thought thinks in such a way that its import is as truly objective as subjective. But objectivity has been the significance of substantial universality, and not of external objectivity; thus truth is now posited as a product mediated through thought, while untrained morality, as Sophocles makes Antigone say (vers. 454-457), is “the eternal law of the Gods”: