Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic

by William Wallace

All science tends to carry us over the hard lines of separation which practical interests treat as if ultimate disruptions. The sciences of Nature, for instance, in their completed circle must carry us from the inorganic to the organic: must in some way make a path from the lifeless to the alive. The science of thought has a corresponding task. It has to show that the incommensurability between thought and being, or between the idea and actuality, disappears on closer examination. When we trace the development of thought sufficiently far, we see that Being is an imperfect or inadequate thought,—certainly not adequate to the Idea, but not for that reason generically differing from it. The fixity of Being as more than, and superior to, mere Thought is a habit of mind, due to the same worldly-minded immobility as leads us all to believe (and, within the limited practical range, to believe rightly) that the earth is solidly at rest, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of the Copernicans. But Thought has not deposited all its burden, or uttered all its meaning in Being. Being is the veriest abstraction,—the very rudiment of thought—meagre as meagre can be. It is on one side the bare position or affirmation of thought: on the other hand it is the very negation of thought,—if thought be only possible under difference. For a mere 'Is' is a mere indescribable without-difference. There is no such thing as mere Being: or mere Being is mere nothing: mere Being is not.

The first category of Ontology is that of Being. It is the merest simplicity and meagreness, with nothing definite in it at all: and for that very reason constantly liable to be confused with categories of more concrete burden. It denotes all things, and connotes next to nothing. It does not however mean something which has being; it does not mean definite being: still less does it mean permanent and substantial being. Ordinary language certainly uses being in all these senses. But if we are to be logical, we must not mix up categories with one another: we must take terms at their precise value. Mere Being then is the mere 'Is,' which can give no explanation or analysis of itself: which indescribable in itself: which is an 'Is' and nothing more. The simplest answer to those who invest Being with so much signification, is to ask them to consider the logical copula. 'Every school-boy knows' that the 'Is' of the copula disappears in several languages: that it is far from indispensable in Latin: that in Greek e. g. the demonstrative article serves the same purpose. In Hebrew too the pronouns officiate for the so-called substantive verb: and the same verb probably does not exist in the Polynesian family of languages, where its place is supplied by what we call the demonstrative pronoun.[3] In the copula, which according to M. Laromiguiere, as quoted by Mr. Mill, expresses only 'un rapport spécial entre le sujet et l'attribut,' we encounter the mere undeveloped and unexplained unifying of thought, the very abstraction of relativity[4].

In the beginning, then, there is nothing and yet that nothing is. Such is the fundamental antithesis of thought: or the discrepancy which makes itself felt between each several term of thought and the whole Idea of which they are the expression. Being is the term emphasised as absolute by understanding: then the dialectical power, or the consciousness of the whole, steps in to counteract the one-sided element. In other words, thought, the total thought, asks what is Being, mere and simple; and answers mere nothing.[5] The one aspect of the point is as justifiable as the other. In other words the two aspects are indissoluble: they are in one. The term 'Unity,' applied to the relation of Being and Not, may perhaps mislead: and it is therefore better to say that the two points of view are (as Mr. Spencer puts it) at once 'antithetical and inseparable,' An unrelated being, an 'absolute' (i. e. separate and transcendent) reality is an Unknowable, i. e. an ineffable, an unspeakable of which we can legitimately predicate a not- , leaving imagination to fill up the blank after the hyphen. A mere Not, with no substratum which it negatives, is mere Being: and a mere Being, which has no substratum, is a mere Not. The movement upward and the movement downward are here illustrated: and it is evident that they are the same movement[6],—the same unrest, only differentiated as up and down by some termini not yet explicitly brought into view. Each—Is and Not—as it seeks to differentiate itself, to make itself clear, passes into the other. In fact, the very vocation, calling, or notion of Being and Nothing, is not Being and Nothing, but the tendency of each to pass into the other. Their truth, in short, is not in themselves, but in their process,—and that process by which the one passes into the other is 'To become.' Try to get at mere Being and you are left with Nought: of mere Nought you can only say it is. The two abstractions have no truth except in the passage into one another: and this passage or transition is 'To become.' Take reality apart from what it leads on to, and from what it has come from, apart from its end or purpose and from its cause, take it as mere being: then this being in its supposed singleness and self-subsistence is really annihilated: stat magni nominis umbra: but it is the name of nothing. True being is always on the way to or from being: to stop is fatal.

This unity or inseparability of opposite elements in a truth or real notion is the stumbling-block to the incipient Hegelian. The respectable citizens of Germany were amazed, says Heine, at the shamelessness of J. G. Fichte, when he proclaimed that the Ego produced the world, as if that had cast doubts on their reality; and the ladies were curious to know whether Madame Fichte was included in the general denial of substantial existence[7]. If easy-going critics treated Fichte in this way, they had even better source for amusement in Hegel. That Being and Nothing is the same was a perpetual fund for jokes, too tempting to be missed. Now, in the baldness, and occasionally paradoxical style, of Hegel's statements, there is some excuse for such exaggerations. Being and Nothing are not merely the same: they are also different: they at least tend to pass into each other. In the technical language of logicians, the question is not what being denotes, but what it connotes. The word 'is' had, it may be, originally a 'demonstrative' meaning, a 'pronominal' force, which in course of time passed from a local or sensuous meaning to express a thought. No doubt 'is' and 'is not' are wide enough apart in our application of them as copula of a proposition: but if we subtract the two terms and leave only the copula standing, the difference of the two becomes inexpressible and unanalysable. In both there is the same statement of immediacy or face-to-faceness: that two things are brought to confront each other,—united, as it were, without producing any real or specific sort of union. If Thought be unifying, Being is the minimum of unification: if Thought be relating, Being is the most abstract of relations. So abstract, indeed, that its relativity is completely lost sight of: so utterly one, that it vanishes in a point. And just because it is (as it seems) out of relations, it must be nothing. No doubt, between the two terms Being and not-Being a difference is meant; when they are employed, a difference is thrown into them; and then they are not the same: but if we keep out of sight what is meant, and stick to the ultimate point which is said, we shall find that mere being and mere nothing are alike inapprehensible by themselves, and that to institute a difference we must go out of and beyond them. Perhaps some approach to the right point of comprehension may be made, if we note that when two people quarrel and can give no reason or further development to their opposite assertions, the one person's 'is' is exactly equal (apart from subsequent explanations) to the other's 'is not.' The mere 'Is' and 'Is not' have precisely the same amount of content: a mere affirmation or assertion, which is mere nothing,—because connecting, where there is nothing to connect.

The truth of 'is' then turns out 'become': nothing is: all things are coming to be and passing out of being. This illustrates the meaning of the word 'truth' in Hegel. It is partly synonymous with 'concrete,' partly with the 'notion.' With concrete: because to get at the truth, we must take into account a new element, kept out of sight in the mere affirmation of being. With notion: because if we wish to comprehend being, we must grasp it as 'becoming.' For truth lies in transcending the first or merely given. We have to go forward, and to go backward, as it were: forward from being, backward to being: we look before and after. The attempt to isolate the mere point of being is impossible in thought: it would only lead to the 'representation' of being,—i. e. the notion of being would be arrested in its development, and identified probably with a sensible thing, i. e. with something, and some concrete thing said to be.

If being, however, is truly apprehended as a passage from the unknown to the known, or as emergence from bare vacuity, then it implies a definiteness, which we missed before. Somewhat has become: or the indeterminate being has been invested with definiteness and distinct character. Mere being (mere Is) is nothing: to be something is must be not something else. The second step in the process to self-realisation therefore is reached: Being has become Somewhat; which is more, because it professes less. The fluid unity or movement from 'is' to 'is not,' and vice versa, has crystallised: and 'There is' is the still imperfectly unified result precipitated. By this term we imply the finitude of being,—imply that a portion has been cut off from the vague, and contrasted with something else. In the ordinary application of the word, Being is especially employed to denote this stage of definite being[8]. Thus we speak of bringing something into being: by which we mean, not mere being, but a definite being, or, in short, reality. Reality is determinateness, as opposite to mere vagueness. To be real, it is necessary to be somewhat,—to limit and define. Whatever is anything or is real, is eo facto finite. Even an infinite therefore to be real must submit to self-limitation. This is the necessity of finitude: in order to be anything more and higher, there must come, first of all, a determinate being and reality. But reality, as we have seen, implies negation: it implies limiting, distinction, and dependence. Everything finite, every 'somewhat,' has somewhat else to counteract, narrow, and thwart it. To be somewhat (esse aliquid) is an object of ambition, as Juvenal implies: but it is only an unsatisfactory goal after all. For somewhat always implies something else, by which it is limited: whereas mere being, just because it is nothing, is free from the check of an other.

This, then, is the price to be paid for rising into reality, and coming to be somewhat: there is always somewhat else to be minded. The very point which makes a 'somewhat,' as above a mere 'nothing,' is its determinateness: and determinateness, as at first determinateness from outside, a given and passive determinateness, is also a negation and limit. Now the limit of a thing is that point where it begins to be somewhat else: where it passes out of itself and yields to another. Accordingly in the very act of being determined, somewhat is passing over into another: it is altering, and becoming somewhat else. Thus a some-thing' implies for its being the being of somewhat else: its being is as it were only to be beside something else,—it is finite, and alterable, a this with a that always in the neighbourhood. Such is the character of determinate being. It leads to an endless series from some to an other, and so on ad infinitum: everything as a somewhat, as a determinate being, in reality, presupposes a something else, and that again has some third thing; and so the chain is extended with its everlasting And, And, And, (as in the children's way of telling a story). Somewhat-ness is always vexed by the fact that it is not somewhat else: and for that very reason, ceasing to be the primary object, it becomes somewhat else itself; and the other term becomes the somewhat. And so the same story is repeated in endless progression, till one gets wearied with the repetition of finitude which is held out as infinite.

Thus in determinate being as in mere being we see the apparent fixity resolved into a double movement—the alteration from some to somewhat else, and vice versa. But a movement like this implies after all that there is a something which alters: which is alterable, but which alters into somewhat. This somewhat which alters into somewhat, and thus retains itself, is a being which has risen above alteration, which is independent of it because including it: which is for itself, and not for somewhat else. Thus in order to advance a step further from determinate and alterable being, we have only to keep a firm grasp on both sides of the process, and not suffer the one to slip away from the other. We must not merely say, but energise the unity of the two 'antithetical yet inseparable' elements we are naturally disposed to take and leave only as One and an Other. Something becomes something else: in short, the one side passes on to the other side of the antithesis, and the limitation is absorbed. The new result is something in something else: the limit is taken up within: and this being which results is its own limit, i. e. no restrictive limit at all, but self-imposed characteristic and definiteness. It is Being-for-self:—the third step in the process of thought under the general category of Being. The range of Being which began in a vague nebula, and passed into a series of points, is now reduced to a single point, self-complete and whole.

This Being-for-self is a kind of true infinite, which results by absorption of the finite. The false infinite, which has already come before us, is the endless range of finitude, passing from one finite to another, from somewhat to somewhat else, until satiety sets in with weariness. The true infinite is satisfaction,—the inclusion of the other being into self, so that it is no longer a limit, but a constituent part in the being. Such inclusion in the unity of an idea, of elements which are realistically separate, is termed 'ideality.' The antithesis is reduced to become an organic and dependent part. It still exists, but as no longer outside and independent. Thus in determinate being the determinateness is found in somewhat else: in being-for-self the determinateness is self-realisation. Being-for-self may be shortly expressed by 'one' or 'each': as determinate being a, or an, or by 'some': and Being simple has no nominal equivalent. As 'some' is always fractional or partial, 'each' is always a whole or unit. Mere Being has not the consistency of any noun or pronoun: it is the bare (impersonal) verb.