The Logic of Hegel

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

(γ) The Ground.

121.] The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be,—the reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-an-other, and vice versâ. It is essence put explicitly as a totality.

The maxim of the Ground runs thus: Everything has its Sufficient Ground: that is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the predication of it as identical with itself, or as different (various), or merely positive, or merely negative, but as having its Being in an other, which, being its self-same, is its essence. And to this extent the essence is not abstract reflection into self, but into an other. The Ground is the essence in its own inwardness; the essence is intrinsically a ground; and it is a ground only when it is a ground of somewhat, of an other.

We must be careful, when we say that the ground is the unity of identity and difference, not to understand by this unity an abstract identity. Otherwise we only change the name, while we still think the identity (of understanding) already seen to be false. To avoid this misconception we may say that the ground, besides being the unity, is also the difference of identity and difference. In that case in the ground, which promised at first to supersede contradiction, a new contradiction seems to arise. It is however a contradiction which, so far from persisting quietly in itself, is rather the expulsion of it from itself. The ground is a ground only to the extent that it affords ground: but the result which thus issued from the ground is only itself. In this lies its formalism. The ground and what is grounded are one and the same content: the difference between the two is the mere difference of form which separates simple self-relation, on the one hand, from mediation or derivativeness on the other. Inquiry into the grounds of things goes with the point of view which, as already noted (note to § 112), is adopted by Reflection. We wish, as it were, to see the matter double, first in its immediacy, and secondly in its ground, where it is no longer immediate. This is the plain meaning of the law of sufficient ground, as it is called; it asserts that things should essentially be viewed as mediated. The manner in which Formal Logic establishes this law of thought, sets a bad example to other sciences. Formal Logic asks these sciences not to accept their subject-matter as it is immediately given; and yet herself lays down a law of thought without deducing it,—in other words, without exhibiting its mediation. With the same justice as the logician maintains our faculty of thought to be so constituted that we must ask for the ground of everything, might the physicist, when asked why a man who falls into water is drowned, reply that man happens to be so organised that he cannot live under water; or the jurist, when asked why a criminal is punished, reply that civil society happens to be so constituted that crimes cannot be left unpunished.

Yet even if logic be excused the duty of giving a ground for the law of the sufficient ground, it might at least explain what is to be understood by a ground. The common explanation, which describes the ground as what has a consequence, seems at the first glance more lucid and intelligible than the preceding definition in logical terms. If you ask however what the consequence is, you are told that it is what has a ground; and it becomes obvious that the explanation is intelligible only because it assumes what in our case has been reached as the termination of an antecedent movement of thought. And this is the true business of logic: to show that those thoughts, which as usually employed merely float before consciousness neither understood nor demonstrated, are really grades in the self-determination of thought. It is by this means that they are understood and demonstrated.

In common life, and it is the same in the finite sciences, this reflective form is often employed as a key to the secret of the real condition of the objects under investigation. So long as we deal with what may be termed the household needs of knowledge, nothing can be urged against this method of study. But it can never afford definitive satisfaction, either in theory or practice. And the reason why it fails is that the ground is yet without a definite content of its own; I so that to regard anything as resting upon a ground merely gives the formal difference of mediation in place of immediacy. We see an electrical phenomenon, for example, and we ask for its ground (or reason): we are told that electricity is the ground of this phenomenon. What is this but the same content as we had immediately before us, only translated into the form of inwardness?

The ground however is not merely simple self-identity, but also different: hence various grounds may be alleged for the same sum of fact. This variety of grounds, again, following the logic of difference, culminates in opposition of grounds pro and contra. In any action, such as a theft, there is a sum of fact in which several aspects may be distinguished. The theft has violated the rights of property: it has given the means of satisfying his wants to the needy thief: possibly too the man, from whom the theft was made, misused his property. The violation of property is unquestionably the decisive point of view before which the others must give way: but the bare law of the ground cannot settle that question. Usually indeed the law is interpreted to speak of a sufficient ground, not of any ground whatever: and it might be supposed therefore, in the action referred to, that, although other points of view besides the violation of property might be held as grounds, yet they would not be sufficient grounds. But here comes a dilemma. If we use the phrase 'sufficient ground,' the epithet is either otiose, or of such a kind as to carry us past the mere category of ground. The predicate is otiose and tautological, if it only states the capability of giving a ground or reason: for the ground is a ground, only in so far as it has this capability. If a soldier runs away from battle to save his life, his conduct is certainly a violation of duty: but it cannot be held that the ground which led him so to act was insufficient, otherwise he would have remained at his post. Besides, there is this also to be said. On one hand any ground suffices: on the other no ground suffices as mere ground; because, as already said, it is yet void of a content objectively and intrinsically determined, and is therefore not self-acting and productive. A content thus objectively and intrinsically determined, and hence self-acting, will hereafter come before us as the notion: and it is the notion which Leibnitz had in his eye when he spoke of sufficient ground, and urged the study of things under its point of view. His remarks were originally directed against that merely mechanical method of conceiving things so much in vogue even now; a method which he justly pronounces insufficient. We may see an instance of this mechanical theory of investigation, when the organic process of the circulation of the blood is traced back merely to the contraction of the heart; or when certain theories of criminal law explain the purpose of punishment to lie in deterring people from crime, in rendering the criminal harmless, or in other extraneous grounds of the same kind. It is unfair to Leibnitz to suppose that he was content with anything so poor as this formal law of the ground. The method of investigation which he inaugurated is the very reverse of a formalism which acquiesces in mere grounds, where a full and concrete knowledge is sought. Considerations to this effect led Leibnitz to contrast causae efficientes and causae finales, and to insist in the place of final causes as the conception to which the efficient were to lead up. If we adopt this distinction, light, heat, and moisture would be the causae efficientes, not the causa finalis of the growth of plants: the causa finalis is the notion of the plant itself.

To get no further than mere grounds, especially on questions of law and morality, is the position and principle of the Sophists. Sophistry, as we ordinarily conceive it, is a method of investigation which aims at distorting what is just and true, and exhibiting things in a false light. Such however is not the proper or primary tendency of Sophistry: the standpoint of which is no other than that of 'Raisonnement.' The Sophists came on the scene at a time when the Greeks had begun to grow dissatisfied with mere authority and tradition and felt the need of intellectual justification for what they were to accept as obligatory. That desideratum the Sophists supplied by teaching their countrymen to seek for the various points of view under which things may be considered: which points of view are the same as grounds. But the ground, as we have seen, has no essential and objective principles of its own, and it is as easy to discover grounds for what is wrong and immoral as for what is moral and right. Upon the observer therefore it depends to decide what points are to have most weight. The decision in such circumstances is prompted by his individual views and sentiments. Thus the objective foundation of what ought to have been of absolute and essential obligation, accepted by all, was undermined: and Sophistry by this destructive action deservedly brought upon itself the bad name previously mentioned. Socrates, as we all know, met the Sophists at every point, not by a bare re-assertion of authority and tradition against their argumentations, but by showing dialectically how untenable the mere grounds were, and by vindicating the obligation of justice and goodness,—by reinstating the universal or notion of the will. In the present day such a method of argumentation is not quite out of fashion. Nor is that the case only in the discussion of secular matters. It occurs even in sermons, such as those where every possible ground of gratitude to God is propounded. To such pleading Socrates and Plato would not have scrupled to apply the name of Sophistry. For Sophistry has nothing to do with what is taught:—that may very possibly be true. Sophistry lies in the formal circumstance of teaching it by grounds which are as available for attack as for defence. In a time so rich in reflection and so devoted to raisonnement as our own, he must be a poor creature who cannot advance a good ground for everything, even for what is worst and most depraved. Everything in the world that has become corrupt has had good ground for its corruption. An appeal to grounds at first makes the hearer think of beating a retreat: but when experience has taught him the real state of these matters, he closes his ears against them, and refuses to be imposed upon any more.

122.] As it first comes, the chief feature of Essence is show in itself and intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle of intermediation, its unity with itself is explicitly put as the self-annulling of difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once more then we come back to immediacy or Being,—but Being in so far as it is intermediated by annulling the intermediation. And that Being is Existence.