3. Hence the independent being can be only a self-determined. If self-determined, it can exist through itself.
Note.
Spinoza does not arrive at the third position, but, after considering the second, arrives at the first one, and concludes, since determination through another makes a somewhat finite, that the independent being must be undetermined. He does not happen to discover that there is another kind of determination, to-wit, self-determination, which can consist with independence. The method that he uses makes it entirely an accidental matter with him that he discovers what speculative results he does—the dialectic method would lead inevitably to self-determination, as we shall see later. It is Hegel’s aperçu that we have in the third position; with Spinoza the independent being remained an undetermined substance, but with Hegel it became a self-determining subject. All that Spinoza gets out of his substance he must get in an arbitrary manner; it does not follow from its definition that it shall have modes and attributes, but the contrary. This aperçu—that the independent being, i. e. every really existing, separate entity, is self-determined—is the central point of speculative philosophy. What self-determination involves, we shall see next.
III.
1. Self-determination implies that the constitution or nature be self-originated. There is nothing about a self-determined that is created by anything without.
2. Thus self-determined being exists dually—it is (a) as determining and (b) as determined. (a) As determining, it is the active, which contains merely the possibility of determinations; (b) as determined, it is the passive result—the matter upon which the subject acts.
3. But since both are the same being, each side returns into itself:—(a) as determining or active, it acts only upon its own determining, and (b) as passive or determined, it is, as result of the former, the self-same active itself. Hence its movement is a movement of self-recognition—a positing of distinction which is cancelled in the same act. (In self-recognition something is made an object, and identified with the subject in the same act.) Moreover, the determiner, on account of its pure generality, (i. e. its having no concrete determinations as yet,) can only be ideal—can only exist as the Ego exists in thought; not as a thing, but as a generic entity. The passive side can exist only as the self exists in consciousness—as that which is in opposition and yet in identity at the same time. No finite existence could endure this contradiction, for all such must possess a nature or constitution which is self-determined; if not, each finite could negate all its properties and qualities, and yet remain itself—just as the person does when he makes abstraction of all, in thinking of the Ego or pure self.
Thus we find again our former conclusion.—All finite or dependent things must originate in and depend upon independent or absolute being, which must be an Ego. The Ego has the form of Infinitude (see chapter II—the infinite is its own other).
Resumé. The first chapter states the premises which Kant lays down in his Transcendental Æsthetic, (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft) and draws the true logical conclusions which are positive and not negative, as he makes them. The second chapter gives the Spinozan distinction of the Infinite of the Imagination and Infinite of Reason. The third chapter gives the logical results which Kant should have drawn from his Transcendental Logic. The fourth chapter gives Spinoza’s fundamental position logically completed, and is the great fundamental position of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel, with reference to the Absolute.