(c) Being-for-self

[a] Being-for-self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the One. This unit, being without distinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself.

To be for self — to be one — is completed Quality, and as such, contains abstract Being and Being modified as non-substantial elements. As simple Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it is determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite determinateness — a somewhat in distinction from an other — but infinite, because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.

The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the ‘I’. We know ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say ‘I’, we express this reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal world, and in that way from our nature altogether, by knowing himself as ‘I’: which amounts to saying that natural things never attain free Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and only Being for another.

Again, Being-for-self may be described as ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is said that besides reality there is also an ideality. Thus the two categories are made equal and parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion of ideality just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation, when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it may even be beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name. Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter so fixed and complete as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more: it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature as absorbed in itself. Apropos of this, we should note the double meaning of the German word aufheben (to put by or set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear away, or annul: thus, we say, a law or regulation is set aside; (2) to keep, or preserve: in which sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. This double usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive and negative meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for reproaching language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise in it the speculative spirit of our language rising above the mere ‘either-or’ of understanding.

[b] The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation, and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of the One; that is, it makes Many Ones. So far as regards the immediacy of the self-existents, these Many are: and the repulsion of every One of them becomes to that extent their repulsion against each other as existing units — in other words, their reciprocal exclusion.

Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come? This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the Many as a primary datum, and treats the One as only one among the Many. But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms the presupposition of the Many: and in the thought of the One is implied that it explicitly make itself Many. The self-existing unit is not, like Being, void of all connective reference: it is a reference, as well as Being-there-and-then was, not however a reference connecting somewhat with an other, but as unity of some and the other, it is a connection with itself, and this connection, be it noted, is a negative connection. Hereby the One manifests an utter incompatibility with itself, a self-repulsion: and what makes itself explicitly be, is the Many. We may denote this side in the process of Being-for-self by the figurative term Repulsion. Repulsion is a term originally employed in the study of matter, to mean that matter, as a Many, in each of these many ones, behaves as exclusive to all the others. It would be wrong however to view the process of repulsion as if the One were the repellent and the Many the repelled. The One, as already remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so behaving, this all rounded repulsion is by one stroke converted into its opposite — Attraction.

Attraction and Repulsion § 98

[c] But the Many are one the same as another: each is One, or even one of the Many; they are consequently one and the same. Or when we study all that Repulsion involves, we see that as a negative attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as essentially a connective reference of them to each other; and as those to which the One is related in its act of repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown into relation with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self, suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, i.e. into Being as Quantity.

The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones. And it is the repulsion, which shows itself in the notion of the One, which is assumed as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead of attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence, which is expected to bring them together. So long as the One is fixed as one, it is certainly impossible to regard its congression with others as anything but external and mechanical. The Void, which is assumed as the complementary principle to the atoms, is repulsion and nothing else, presented under the image of the nothing existing between the atoms. Modern Atomism — and physics is still in principle atomistic — has surrendered the atoms so far as to pin its faith on molecules or particles. In doing so, science has come closer to sensuous conception, at the cost of losing the precision of thought. To put an attractive by the side of a repulsive force, as the moderns have done, certainly gives completeness to the contrast: and the discovery of this natural force, as it is called, has been a source of much pride. But the mutual implication of the two, which makes what is true and concrete in them, would have to be wrested from the obscurity and confusion in which they were left even in Kant’s Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science. In modern times the importance of the atomic theory is even more evident in political than in physical science. According to it, the will of individuals as such is the creative principle of the State: the attracting force is the special wants and inclinations of individuals; and the Universal, or the State itself, is the external nexus of a compact.

(1) The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described as Being-for-itself in the shape of the Many. At present, students of nature who are anxious to avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to Atomism. But it is not possible to escape metaphysics and cease to trace nature back to terms of thought, by throwing ourselves into the arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself a thought; and hence the theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a metaphysical theory.

Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true, but to his honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his own warning. The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do not think: while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The real question is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether our metaphysics are of the right kind: in other words, whether we are not, instead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these the basis of our theoretical as well as our practical work. It is on this ground that one objects to the Atomic philosophy.

The old Atomists viewed the world as a many, as their successors often do to this day. On chance they laid the task of collecting the atoms which float about in the void. But, after all, the nexus binding the many with one another is by no means a mere accident: as we have already remarked, the nexus founded on their very nature.

To Kant we owe the completed theory of matter as the unity of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct, so far as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements involved in the notion of being-for-self: and to be an element no less essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still, this dynamic construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking for granted, instead of deducing, attraction and repulsion. Had they been deduced, we should then have seen the How and Why of a unity which is merely asserted. Kant ... [insisted that] matter must be regarded as consisting solely in their unity.

German physicists for some time accepted this pure dynamic. But in spite of this, the majority of these physicists in modern times have found it more convenient to return to the Atomic point of view, and in spite of the warnings of Kästner, one of their number, have begun to regard Matter as consisting of infinitesimally small particles, termed ‘atoms which atoms have then to be brought into relation with one another by the play of forces attaching to them-attractive, repulsive, or whatever they may be. This too is metaphysics; and metaphysics which, for its utter unintelligence, there would be sufficient reason to guard against.

Quantity and Quality

(2) The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in the paragraph before us, is not found in our ordinary way of thinking, which deems each of these categories to exist independently beside the other. We are in the habit of saying that things are not merely qualitatively, but also quantitatively defined; but whence these categories originate, and how they are related to each other, are questions not further examined. The fact is, quantity just means quality superseded and absorbed: and it is by the dialectic of quality here examined that this supersession is effected. ©

First of all, we had Being: as the truth of Being, came Becoming: which formed the passage into Being Determinate: and the truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, finally, in the two sides of the process, Repulsion and Attraction, was clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the totality of its stages.

Still this superseded and absorbed quality is neither an abstract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless being: it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character. This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our ordinary conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an eye to their quality — which we take to be the character identical with the being of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a kind that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered, and the thing becomes greater or less.

Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as immediate — a quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is attached.

Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus the completion of Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly abstract and characterless; but it is the very essence of Being to characterise itself, and its complete characterisation is reached in Measure. Measure, like the other stages of Being, may serve as a definition of the Absolute; God, it has been said, is the Measure of all things. It is this idea which forms the ground-note of many of the ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of God tends in the main to show that he has appointed to everything its bound: to the sea and the solid land, to the rivers and mountains; and also to the various kinds of plants and animals. To the religious sense of the Greeks the divinity of measure, especially in respect of social ethics, was represented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general theory that all human beings, riches, honour, and power, as well as joy and pain, have their definite measure, the transgression of which brings ruin and destruction. In the world of objects too, we have measure. We see, in the first place, existences in Nature, of which measure forms the essential structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar system, which may be described as the realm of free measures. As we next proceed to the study of inorganic nature, measure retires, as it were, into the background; at least we often find the quantitative and qualitative characteristics showing indifference to each other. Thus the quality of a rock or a river is not tied to a definite magnitude.

But even these objects when closely inspected are found to be not quite measureless: the water of a river, and the single constituents of a rock, when chemically analysed, are seen to be qualities conditioned by the quantitative ratios between the matters they contain. In organic nature, however, measure again rises into immediate perception. The various kinds of plants and animals, in the whole as well as in their parts, have a certain measure: though it is worth noticing that the more imperfect forms, those which are least removed from inorganic nature, are partly distinguished from the higher forms by the greater indefiniteness of their measure. Thus among fossils we find some ammonites discernible only by the microscope and others as large as a cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure appears in several plants, which stand on a low level of organic development — for instance ferns.

In so far as in Measure quality and quantity are only in immediate unity, to that extent their difference presents itself in a manner equally immediate. Two cases are then possible. Either the specific quantum or measure is a bare quantum, and the definite being (there-and-then) is capable of an increase or a diminution, without Measure (which to that extent is a Rule) being thereby set completely aside. Or the alteration of the quantum is also an alteration of the quality.

The identity between quantity and quality, which is found in Measure, is at first only implicit, and not yet explicitly realised. In other words, these two categories, which unite in Measure, each claim an independent authority. On the one hand, the quantitative features of existence may be altered, without affecting its quality. On the other hand, this increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has its limit, by exceeding which the quality suffers change. Thus the temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no consequence in respect of its liquidity: still with the increase of diminution of the temperature of the liquid water, there comes a point where this state of cohesion suffers a qualitative change, and the water is converted into steam or ice. A quantitative change takes place, apparently without any further significance: but there is something lurking behind, and a seemingly innocent change of quantity acts as a kind of snare, to catch hold of the quality. The antinomy of Measure which this implies was exemplified under more than one garb among the Greeks. It was asked, for example, whether a single grain makes a heap of wheat, or whether it makes a bald-tail to tear out a single hair from the horse’s tail. At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of quantity as an indifferent and external character of being, we are disposed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet, as we must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution has its limit: a point is finally reached, where a single additional grain makes a heap of wheat; and the bald-tail is produced, if we continue plucking out single hairs. These examples find a parallel in the story of the peasant who, as his ass trudged cheerfully along, went on adding ounce after ounce to its load, till at length it sunk under the unendurable burden. It would be a mistake to treat these examples as pedantic futility; they really turn on thoughts, an acquaintance with which is of great importance in practical life, especially in ethics. Thus in the matter of expenditure, there is a certain latitude within which a more or less does not matter; but when the Measure, imposed by the individual circumstances of the special case, is exceeded on the one side or the other, the qualitative nature of Measure (as in the above examples of the different temperature of water) makes itself felt, and a course, which a moment before was held good economy, turns into avarice or prodigality. The same principles may be applied in politics, when the constitution of a state has to be looked at as independent of, no less than as dependent on, the extent of its territory, the number of its inhabitants, and other quantitative points of the same kind. If we look, e.g. at a state with a territory of ten thousand square miles and a population of four millions we should, without hesitation, admit that a few square miles of land or a few thousand inhabitants more or less could exercise no essential influence on the character of its constitution. But on the other hand, we must not forget that by the continual increase or diminishing of a state, we finally get to a point where, apart from all other circumstances, this quantitative alteration alone necessarily draws with it an alteration in the quality of the constitution. The constitution of a little Swiss canton does not suit a great kingdom; and, similarly, the constitution of the Roman republic was unsuitable when transferred to the small imperial towns of Germany. ©

In this case, when a measure through its quantitative nature has gone in excess of its qualitative character, we meet what is at first an absence of measure, the Measureless. But seeing that the second quantitative ratio, which in comparison with the first is measureless, is none the less qualitative, the measureless is also a measure. These two transitions, from quality to quantum, and from the latter back again to quality, may be represented under the image of an infinite progression — as the self-abrogation and restoration of measure in the measureless.

Quantity, as we have seen, is not only capable of alteration, i.e. of increase or diminution: it is naturally and necessarily a tendency to exceed itself. This tendency is maintained even in measure. But if the quantity present in measure exceeds a certain limit, the quality corresponding to it is also put in abeyance. This however is not a negation of quality altogether, but only of this definite quality, the place of which is at once occupied by another. This process of measure, which appears alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a sudden revulsion of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the figure of a nodal (knotted) line. Such lines we find in Nature under a variety of forms. We have already referred to the qualitatively different states of aggregation water exhibits under increase or diminution of temperature. The same phenomenon is presented by the different degrees in the oxidation of metals. Even the difference of musical notes may be regarded as an example of what takes place in the process of measure the revulsion from what is at first merely quantitative into qualitative alteration.

What really takes place here is that the immediacy, which still attaches to measure as such, is set aside. In measure, at first, quality and quantity itself are immediate, and measure is only their ‘relative’ identity. But measure shows itself absorbed and superseded in the measureless: yet the measureless, although it be the negation of measure, is itself a unity of quantity and quality. Thus in the measureless the measure is still seen to meet only with itself.

Instead of the more abstract factors, Being and Nothing, some and other, etc., the Infinite, which is affirmation as a negation of negation, now finds its factors in quality and quantity. These (a) have in the first place passed over quality into quantity (§ 98), and quantity into quality (§ 105), and thus are both shown up as negations. (b) But in their unity, that is, in measure, they are originally distinct, and the one is only through the instrumentality of the other. And (g) after the immediacy of this unity has turned out to be self-annulling, the unity is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, simple relation-to-self, which contains in it being and all its forms absorbed. Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself is a mediation with self and a reference to self — which consequently is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference to self, or immediacy — is Essence.

The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong infinite of an endless progression, in the shape of an ever-recurrent recoil from quality to quantity and from quantity to quality, is also a true infinity of coincidence with self in other. In measure, quality and quantity originally confront each other, like some and other. But quality is implicitly quantity and conversely quantity is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed, with its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence. Measure is implicitly Essence; and its process consists in realising what it is implicitly. The ordinary consciousness conceives things as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. These immediate characteristics, however, soon show themselves to be not fixed but transient; and Essence is the result of their dialectic.

In the sphere of Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers to another merely. In Being, the form of reference is purely due to our reflection on what takes place: but it is the special and proper characteristic of Essence. In the sphere of Being, when somewhat becomes another, the somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence: here there is no real other, but only diversity, reference of the one to its other. The transition of Essence is therefore at the same time no transition: for in the passage of different into different, the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their relation. When we speak of Being and Nought, Being is independent, so is Nought. The case is otherwise with the Positive and the Negative. No doubt these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But the Positive by itself has no sense; it is wholly in reference to the negative. And it is the same with the negative.

In the sphere of Being the reference of one term to another is only implicit; in Essence on the contrary it is explicit. And this in general is the distinction between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being everything is immediate, in Essence everything is relative.