The Logic of Hegel

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

130.] The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction. On the side of its negative unity it is Form in which Matter is determined and deposed to the rank of properties (§ 125). At the same time it consists of Matters, which in the reflection-of-the-thing-into-itself are as much independent as they are at the same time negatived. Thus the thing is the essential existence, in such a way as to be an existence that suspends or absorbs itself in itself. In other words, the thing is an Appearance or Phenomenon.

The negation of the several matters, which is insisted on in the thing no less than their independent existence, occurs in Physics as porosity. Each of the several matters (colouring matter, odorific matter, and if we believe some people, even sound-matter,—not excluding caloric, electric matter, &c.) is also negated: and in this negation of theirs, or as interpenetrating their pores, we find the numerous other independent matters, which, being similarly porous, make room in turn for the existence of the rest. Pores are not empirical facts; they are figments of the understanding, which uses them to represent the element of negation in independent matters. The further working-out of the contradictions is concealed by the nebulous imbroglio in which all matters are independent and all no less negated in each other.—If the faculties or activities are similarly hypostatised in the mind, their living unity similarly turns to the imbroglio of an action of the one on the others.

These pores (meaning thereby not the pores in an organic body, such as the pores of wood or of the skin, but those in the so-called 'matters,' such as colouring matter, caloric, or metals, crystals, &c.) cannot be verified by observation. In the same way matter itself,—furthermore form which is separated from matter,—whether that be the thing as consisting of matters, or the view that the thing itself subsists and only has proper ties,—is all a product of the reflective understanding which, while it observes and professes to record only what it observes, is rather creating a metaphysic, bristling with contradictions of which it is unconscious.

B.—APPEARANCE.

131.] The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection in it is the suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which, whilst as reflection-on-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form, reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To show or shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished from being,—by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when it is developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly is not something beyond or behind appearance, but just because it is the essence which exists—the existence is Appearance (Forth-shining).

Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But appearance (forth-shining) is not to be confused with a mere show (shining). Show is the proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The immediate, instead of being, as we suppose, something independent, resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a ground forward into existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself, but on something else, is just appearance. In our imagination we ordinarily combine with the term appearance or phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own, but are esteemed only as passing stages. But in this conception it is no less implied that essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather it is, we may say, the Infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue into immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appearance which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and has its being not in itself but in something else. God who is the essence, when He lends existence to the passing stages of His own show in Himself, may be described as the goodness that creates a world: but He is also the power above it, and the righteousness, which manifests the merely phenomenal character of the content of this existing world, whenever it tries to exist in independence.

Appearance is in every way a very important grade of the logical idea. It may be said to be the distinction of philosophy from ordinary consciousness that it sees the merely phenomenal character of what the latter supposes to have a self-subsistent being. The significance of appearance however must be properly grasped, or mistakes will arise. To say that anything is a mere appearance may be misinterpreted to mean that, as compared with what is merely phenomenal, there is greater truth in the immediate, in that which is. Now in strict fact, the case is precisely the reverse. Appearance is higher than mere Being,—a richer category because it holds in combination the two elements of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-another: whereas Being (or immediacy) still mere relationlessness and apparently rests upon itself alone. Still, to say that anything is only an appearance suggests a real flaw, which consists in this, that Appearance is still divided against itself and without intrinsic stability. Beyond and above mere appearance comes in the first place Actuality, the third grade of Essence, of which we shall afterwards speak.

In the history of Modern Philosophy, Kant has the merit of first rehabilitating this distinction between the common and the philosophic modes of thought. He stopped half-way however, when he attached to Appearance a subjective meaning only, and put the abstract essence immovable outside it as the thing-in-itself beyond the reach of our cognition. For it is the very nature of the world of immediate objects to be appearance only. Knowing it to be so, we know at the same time the essence, which, far from staying behind or beyond the appearance, rather manifests its own essentiality by deposing the world to a mere appearance. One can hardly quarrel with the plain man who, in his desire for totality, cannot acquiesce in the doctrine of subjective idealism, that we are solely concerned with phenomena. The plain man, however, in his desire to save the objectivity of knowledge, may very naturally return to abstract immediacy, and maintain that immediacy to be true and actual. In a little work published under the title, A Report, clear as day, to the larger Public touching the proper nature of the Latest Philosophy: an Attempt to force the reader to understand,' Fichte examined the opposition between subjective idealism and immediate consciousness in a popular form, under the shape of a dialogue between the author and the reader, and tried hard to prove that the subjective idealist's point of view was right. In this dialogue the reader complains to the author that he has completely failed to place himself in the idealist's position, and is inconsolable at the thought that things around him are no real things but mere appearances. The affliction of the reader can scarcely be blamed when he is expected to consider himself hemmed in by an impervious circle of purely subjective conceptions. Apart from this subjective view of Appearance, however, we have all reason to rejoice that the things which environ us are appearances and not steadfast and independent existences; since in that case we should soon perish of hunger, both bodily and mental.

(a) The World of Appearance.