Division
1.
Existence as such
2.
Something and other, finitude
3.
Qualitative infinity
Existence
as Such
A.
Existence in general
- Existence is Dasiein, being (sein) in a certain place (da)
- However, Dasein is not to be equated with a spatial phenomenon
- Being which has nothing as both its presupposition and as its consequence, this is Dasein as simple determinateness
- Dasein is first being as it is related negatively to other determinatenesses within itself
- This is quality
B.
Quality
- Quality is determinateness as immediate, non-posited, and simple; this is reality
- When the determinateness of nothing is there (with being) as equally simple, quality becomes negation
- Each side is determinate on account of its internal relation to the other
Clarifications
- The meaning of “reality” here is akin that as in: “the idea sounds good, but not very real” etc.
- God as the “sum total of all realities” - which means the lack of negation – is merely a simple being on account of said lack
- There cannot be a sum total of all realities and an equal totality of negations – rather, “reality only exists in so far as it still has over against it something which it has not sublated” (86)
- Thus, the definition of God as a totality fails to attribute reality to Him
- Spinoza's “omnis determinatio est negatio” is of great importance in this connection
- For Spinoza, it was necessary to conceive of only one substance, since everything else derives its reality as a negation of the other, e.g. thought and being
- This kind of unity leads to the Spinozian concept of infinity (more to come)
- Since thought, being, etc. are not reality on their own account or as in-and-for-itself, Spinoza conceived them as attributes
- Attributes are real only as sublated (by the movement of becoming)
- Quality turns into property when it is conceived as an isolated determinateness (external to being) which is immanent to a being (thus connected)
- Properties are independent of the beings to which they connect, but they are still rigid and unalterable
- By comparison, determinatenesses like shape, size, etc. are not properties, but something higher, since they can assume differences within themselves (different shapes, different sizes, etc.) - more to come on this too.
- Jacob Boheme: (In)qualierung is an apt expression of the existence of qualities, since each exists only in its qual (=torment) or internal conflict of reality and negation
C.
Something
- Distinction between qualities through their reality / negation has thus emerged within existence
- Thus, when we return to existence out of this initial distinction, it now is “being + qualities” - it contains qualitative being
- In this return into itself, existence is “being-in-itself” or a something
- This is the first “negation of negation” - it allows for the existence of a something, which is neither simple reality nor its simple negation, but as the suspension of this simple negative act by a second negation of the first negation
- The negative negates the thing itself; thus, the thing “vanishes out of sight” on its own account due to its own negativity, and it reappears in the same way, through its internal movement
- Thought becomes a thinking being, Life becomes a living thing, through this negation of its own negativity (this is the key insight of the “Existence as Such” section)
- This accounts for the emergence of the subject (the subject has not yet emerged fully at this point, but the seed is planted, so to speak)
- The first, simple negation is general and indiscriminate; the second is individual, it aims at a determinate negation, which is for Hegel an “absolute negation”
- “Something is an existent as the negation of negation, for such a negation is the restoration of the simple reference to itself [note: not “return to simple being”] - but the something is thereby equally the mediation of itself with itself” (89)
- Here, something returns into being, but this time the movement is not between pure being and pure nothing, but rather an existent and its specific negation; the latter negation, by virtue of its specific reference to an existent, is the other
- The movement of becoming between a something and an other is alteration – concrete becoming
- At first, alteration only takes place abstractly between two beings-in-themselves
