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Hegel - Absolute As The Beginning of Logic
Hegel - Absolute As The Beginning of Logic
Vol. 6 1974-5
ROLF AHLERS
In the section which prepares for the investigation of the Logic, entitled
"Wherewith must the Beginning of Science be made?," Hegel characterises
the relation of the Phenomenology to the Logic by saying that the former
work is the "science of the appearing spirit," which must be understood
as the "presupposition " of "pure science." The "unmediated conscious-
ness" is in the Phenomenology the object of its "unmediated science."*
By distinction, the Logic is "pure science," i.e., "pure science in the total
implication of its development."2 The Logic as pure science has thé
Phenomenology—the. unmediated science of unmediated consciousness—
as its own presupposition. The latter work is therefore the presupposition
of the former insofar as the result of the analysis of the appearing spirit
is the absolute knowledge. In this absolute knowledge, the result of the
Phenomenology, "spirit has gained the concept" and develops its essence
and movement "in this ether of its life, and is science."8 In this science
"the moments of its movement present themselves no longer as determined
forms of consciousness," but rather as definite concepts and as their own
"organically self-founding movement" which is possible through their
difference retreating into "their self."4
We could therefore expect the Logic to spell out with precision the
determinants of pure science. But in this we are mistaken. If the moments
of appearing spirit lead to the necessity to determine precisely the inner
movement of that science itself, we are surprised to find that the Logic
does not begin here, but rather with "undetermined immediacy." In look-
ing at the relation of Book I of the Logic, the logic of being, Sein, to
Book II, the logic of essence or reflection, we are surprised to find that
the relation of being to essence is circular insofar as only the results of
288
THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
the process of thought can spell out the legitimacy and therefore rationality
of the presuppositions. The point of the logic of being is that the very
presuppositions of logical thought lie beyond the realm of reflection, and
only after these presuppositions have been dealt with in all their "undeter-
mined immediacy," can legitimate reasons be arrived at in the logic of
reflection (Book II).
y It is Hegel's point that a beginning in logical thought cannot be made
by reflecting on that beginning. That procedure would imply placing dif-
ference into the beginning even before its identity has been permitted to
be the origin of that difference. And precisely a beginning is to be made.
Hegel's use of the words "absolute" and "absolute knowledge" arise from
the attempt not to describe how a beginning can be made, but rather to
make a beginning. The deliberations on essence in the second book differ
from the deliberations of being in Book I insofar as the former is the
reflexive aspect of pure being. The first sentence of Book II states that
the "truth of being is essence." Only in this new development within self-
sufficient being the determination of being takes place, and being is deter-
mined in its specificity.
Therefore we read in thefirstbook, in the opening sentences on being,
that "being is the undetermined immediacy."5 The concept "undetermined"
is a reflex of the determination which takes place in the logic of essence in
Book II, Here is the place where the term "undetermined immediacy" has
its material origin, and not at the beginning of the logic of being, where it
appears first.0 The spelling-out of being itself in the logic of essence is there-
fore the reflex of being, and only in this mirrored image can ont see
precisely what being is in itself. But since all reflection is to be kept away
from a determination of being, since being is to remain altogether free from
the reflexive structures of determinating reason, being is spoken of in
Book I only in the negative form of "undetermined immediacy." Being
as it is in itself can be talked of only in terms of the negated forms of
reflection (which have themselves negating quality).
The reason for this protection of pure being from the forms of re-
flection must be sought in Hegel's attempt to preserve being from misun-
derstanding. Hegel observes that the beginning of all science cannot be
found in reflecting on the way in which thought proceeds. That was rather
the method employed in the Phenomenology. The Logic is now to be the
beginning of all science by reflecting in the second part of the Logic on
the beginning of thought which has actually taken place in the first part.
But such a determination cannot take place by repeating what the Phenom-
enology has done. The Logic has often, indeed, almost universally, been
misunderstood as a determination of the dynamic of thought standing over
289
ROLF A1ILKKS
against that which is thought. But the positing of being over against nothing
and insisting on their identity cannot have that meaning, if Hegel's pro-
fessions are to have any meaning that those critics are on the wrong path,
who assault the dynamic of being and nothing with their reflexive forms.7
290
THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING 01' HEGEL'S LOGIC
to its goals. (Because the question whether the world was created and thus
had a beginning or has existed eternally ends in a theoretical aporia, I am
called upon practically to realize that reasonableness which is theoretically
unasccrtainablc.) That means that for Kant the logically unresolved con-
tradiction becomes the beginning of moral reason.
But Hegel picks up that Widerstreit and asks himself, how it can be
the beginning of logic. To answer that question, a different approach than
Kant's was necessary. And this approach is to begin with the "indefinite
immediacy," "which is no something nor a thing (at all) nor any indifferent
being which is outside of its determinateness and relation to the subject,"
as Hegel says in the first chapter of the logic of essence.12 The transition
from Kant's scepticism to Hegel's idealism13 is not possible by assuming
knowledge to be recognition of a thing in itself, as Kant did, a thing which
is outside of the knowing subject. Rather, the path to a more logical
idealism is to resolve that logically unresolved dualism (pointed out first
by Jacobi) and to let being and the negating reflection on being evolve
out of one indefinite immediacy. But that becoming cannot take place by
reflecting on it. By doing that one falls back into Kant's problem. Being
and reflection on it must rather arise out of the undifferentiated origin of
the two. That is also the reason why the logic of reflection follows upon the
logic of being. Reflection can only follow out of being if being is to be
capable of specification and determination. The simple, unreflected14 presen-
tation of that secret in the Logic becomes the driving motor of Hegel's
science of the absolute itself.
Hegel, influenced by the Kant-critique of Jacobi and Fichte and Schel-
ling, therefore immerses himself anew into the secrets of being. Spinoza and
Parmenides are important figures in this task. He realizes that neithei
Parmenides' nor Spinoza's being could be as an absolute principle at the
same time a beginning. A becoming, a development is possible only if being
and nothing are understood as identical. Hegel made this problematically
clear in the four notes16 to thefirstsection of the logic of being, particularly
in note four. There can be no beginning, either if one thinks being—here
there is no becoming, because being is already—or if one thinks non-being
—here there is nothing and therefore there can be no becoming. Therefore,
Hegel argues, nothing of substance is brought against becoming or cessation,
nor against the unity of being and nothing. And because no argument of
substance is produced, the thesis of the unity of being and nothing and be-
coming remains intact for Hegel as the basis and absolute principle of
the Logic.
It is significant to observe how Hegel strives to protect this thesis
in spite of its indisputability from the destructive assaults of reflection.
291
ROLF AHLERS
292
THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
How consistently Hegel followed the inner necessity of the issue, once
grasped at Frankfurt in the circle of his friends, is evident in the "definition
of the absolute" with the help of a formula which he stated in the
Dißerenzschrijt of 1801, but which has a history even longer than that
first publication.
In the logic of being, where Hegel deals with the question how science
can make a beginning, he says "The analysis of the beginning gives us
therewith the concept of the unity of being and nothing—or, in reflected
form, the unity of being differentiated and being not differentiated—or the
identity of identity and non-identity. This concept could be taken as the
first, purest, i.e. most abstract definition of the absolute."20 Hegel picks up
here the formula which he had stated in his first publication on the Differ-
ence Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of 1801: "But the absolute
itself is therefore the identity of the identity and the non-identity; juxtaposi-
293
ROLF AIILERS
tion and unity arc simultaneously in it."30 But this formula of 1801, almost
identical with the one in the Logic of 1812, stems from the germinal
philosophical insights wliicli Hegel had had at Frankfurt in 1800, where
he wrote the famous Systemfragment, llcre Hegel uses the term "Leben"
instead of "Seyn" in the Logic, and states of life that it is the "unification
of the unification and non-unification."31 It is in the context of this earliest
of Hegel's conception of the system quite clear that a beginning and the
impetus of the whole thought can be guaranteed only if that "which was
called the relation between the synthesis and antithesis is not something
posited, nothing rational (nichts Verständiges), nothing reflected, but that
rather its character for reflection can alone be that it |ias its being outside
of reflection."32 Reflection must be kept apart from this "living whole,"
which here is still called "life." Only by keeping reflection apart from the
whole of life, is it possible to have a genuine beginning of thought out of,
this whole. For, to continue quoting this fragment of asysteni, 6t 1800,
"death, juxtaposition, reason is posited simultaneously in the living whole;
it is posited as a living multiplicity which is vital and is capable as some-
thing living to posit itself as a whole."38
But a beginning of thought in the sense of a systematic and scientific
progress of reason implies the quality of being "guided" and having a
"Ruhepunkt,"u a point of rest. Thought "being eternally driven along"
between the contradictions of reason is a dynamic which one of the friends
at Frankfurt, Zvvilling, envisioned. That is, Zwilling did conceiye the con-
tradictions of {hought to arise out of the whole, but he was incapable of
getting out of the eternal progress of these contradictions; therefore his
conception was lacking internal "guidance." The other friend, Isaak von
Sinclair, who was so important a mediator between Hölderlin and Hegel,35
had been capable of achieving the unity of difference and non-difference
only by means of comparisons. Therefore also he was incapable of achiev-
ing the needed guiding stability in the system.30
From this insightflowsright from the start the demand that philosophy
must end with religion.37 The reason why Hegel claims this termination of
philosophy in religion, which still maintains itself in the Phenomenology
in chapter VII on Religion, is identical with the thesis in the Logic that
being and nothing are identical, that their identity alone can make a
beginning which guarantees the scientific progress of the system, and that
this progress is possible only on condition of keeping reflection distant
from this identity, i.e., understanding both being and nothing in all their
indefinite immediacy. Reflection, the activity of philosophical reason, has
the task to "point out finality in all that is final," but especially "to recog-
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THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING Ol l U ' G E l / s LOGIC
nizc the errors through its own infinity," which it can accomplish only by
"positing the truly infinite outside of its own circumference,"118
The thesis'of the logic of being, to start reflection in the absolute, is
therefore identical with the claim of the fragment of the systematic con-
ception of 1800. For the absolute is this prereflected "unity of being and
non-being," which has its reflected counterpait in the unity of the "identity
of the identity and difference."39 But the Logic as a whole, composed of
the logic of being in Book I, progressing to the logic of essence in Book II
to the logic of the concept in Book III has the task to conceptualize
precisely at the end of the process the science of logical discourse. For the
sake of that precise determination, a beginning has to be made in the
unconceptualized and undefined absolute. The progress of that precise
determination in the Logic, ending in the logic of the concept with the
absolute idea,40 is conceived already in the systematic fragment of 1800.
This progress is to be definite and precise. It is not to be a "progress into
the infinite"41 but rather "guided." The eternal progress of Zwilling and
Sinclair which comes to no definite conclusion is avoided by beginning in
the Logic with the absolute as the prereflected unity of being and nothing.
In the fragment of 1800 this "elevation" appears as the elevation to religion:
"The elevation of the finite to the infinite characterizes itself thereby as the
elevation of the finite life to the infinite as religion, that it does not posit the
being of the infinite through reflection, as an objective or subjective (being),
adding thereby to the limited the limiting, recognizing this again as a
posited, itself as a limited, progressing from here to the renewed search for
the limiting, and making the demand to continue this process into infinity."42
Such a progress from the limited to the limiting and so forth is incapable
of determining the precision of logically proceeding thought. It is, as Hegel
indicated in the fragment of 1800 "driven along without a point of lest,"
and therefore without "guidance," For the sake of that guidance the system
has to start with a "being outside of reflection,"43 which circumstance
takes form in the Logic's beginning with "being," characterized as "without
all further determination." Being is the start of the Logic in its "undeter-
mined immediacy."44 Being as undetermined and therefore empty is iden-
tical with nothing, which is therefore also "this identical determination or
rather indétermination and therefore the same which the pure being is."4r'
It has often been remarked that both in the early manuscripts and in
the Phenomenology religion is the end-point of the process developed.40
The fragment of 1800 makes the demand that "philosophy must end with
religion."47 But if the elevation of the fragmented life to the whole life is
the elevation out of which a scientifically proceeding reflection can alone
?95
ROLF AHLERS
296
THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
of the logic of essence is a reflection not from the outside of being on being,
but rather the reflection of being upon itself. The merely external reflection,
as it appeared in Spinoza,53 is the end of the logic of being, not yet having
"reached" essence. Substance had in Spinoza been understood as being
that pure negativity which "absorbs" everything into itself. In Spinoza,
difference is introduced altogether from the outside. The attributes in
Spinoza's understanding of substance have no more significance than that
they express this substance altogether. But the difference is external and
therefore merely quantitative, not qualitative. But if being is to be under-
stood as the posited immediacy of essence, which itself is the "definite nega-
tion" of being, then this difference must not be merely external. It must be a
difference which appears within being itself. In Spinoza's understanding
of substance, "difference is not immanent to her (substance); as quantita-
tive it is rather the opposite of immanence, and the quantitative indifference
is the externality of unity. Herewith also difference is not understood quali-
tatively, and substance is not determined as that which differentiates itself,
not as subject."54
In this last formulation the famous sentence of the Preface of the
Phenomenology is repeated, that truth is to be grasped and expressed not
as substance, but rather just as much as subject.55 The Logic is now the
process by means of which truth comes to its own self-understanding. And
the secret of the relation of being to essence must be sought in the lack
of any presupposition setting this process in motion. Truth comes to self-
understanding altogether out of itself.
Only if in this manner the logic of reflection and finally the deter-
minations of the concept arise as internal reflections out of indeterminate
and immediate being will the well guided science of the absolute, which
is Hegel's Logic, and in a broader sense Hegel's whole thought, be able to
unfold. We hope to have made with these remarks a small ccmtribution to
a better understanding of Hegel's logic of the absolute.
Russell Sage College
NOTES
1 Logik I, p. 53, ed. Lasson, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, Phil. Bibl. number 56,
1969. The second volume is Phil. Bibl. number 57.
2 Logik I, p. 53.
3 Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1952, 6th ed., Phil. Bibl.
number 114, p. 562.
* Ibid., p. 562.
297
ROLF AHLERS
5
Logik I, p. 66.
* See Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, Suhrkump Verlag, Frankfurt, 1971, p. 85.
7
Logik I, p. 80.
a Ibid., pp, 69, 68.
0
lbid.r p. 396.
10
Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, ed. Raymund Schmidt, Phil. Bibl. number 37a,
Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, 1956, pp. 454ff.
11
See Peter Cornchl, Die Zukunft der Versöhnung, Vandenhock & Ruprecht, Göttin-
gen, 1971, see esp. p. 64: "Die Restriktion der theoretischen steht bei Kant im Dienste
des Primats der praktischen Vernunft. Der 'letzte Zweck,' die 'Endabsicht' cier
Vernunft liegt nicht im Horizont des Wissens, sondern des Willens."* See also p. 75:
"Kant kommt alles darauf an nachzuweisen, dass die Einschränkung' unse^r theore-
tischen Vernunft gerade unserer praktisch-sittlichen Bestimmung angemessen ist und
dass also die 'unerforschlichen Weisheit, durch die wir existieren, nicht minder
verehrungswürdig ist in dem, was sie uns versagte, als in dem, was sie uns zuteil
werden Hess.' (K.d.Pr.Vernunft, p. 266. 9th ed., Hamburg, 1959, Phil. Bibl. number
38, ed. by Vorländer, Felix Meiner Verlag.) Denn die Möglichkeit theoretischer
Einsicht in die letzten Dinge hiitlc in praktischer Hinsicht fatale Folgen."
12 Logik II, 9.
« Ibid., 9f.
" See Henrich, Hegel im Kontext ( = H i K ) , p. 85ff.
15
Problematically, because the footnotes reflect on that secret of the beginning of
the logic, rather than being that beginning. Because Hegel realized this problem,
he relegated these rejections to mere "notes."
iß Logik I, 66.
17 ibid., p. 91.
« Ibid., p. 60.
19
Kojéve, Hegel, Versuch einer Vergegenwärtigung seines Denkens, Kohlhammcr
Verlag, Stuttgart, 1958, p. 86. See also p. 109: "Wenn man wie Hegel behauptet, dass
alles Verstehen dialektisch und die natürliche Welt verstehbar ist, dann behauptet man
damit . . . dass diese Welt das Werk eines Demiurgen, eines nach dem «Bilde de»
arbeitenden Menschen aufgefassten Schöpfergottes ist. Und das sagt Hegel tatsächlich
in der Logik, wenn er ausführt, dass seine Logik (d.h. seine Ontologie) 'das Denken
Gottes vor der Schöpfung der Welt1 ist. Daraus würde folgen, dass Hegel die Welt
versteht, weil die Welt auf Grund des Begriffes erschaffen ist, den Hegel hat.' Und
damit sind wir mitten im Paradox: Der Hegeische Anthropo-theismus hört auf, ein
Bild zu sein; Hegel ist tatsächlich Gott der Schöpfer und ewiger Gott. Nun kann aber
kein Mensch von sich behaupten (es sei denn im Wahnsinn), er habe die Welt
geschaffen. Wenn also das sich in der Logik offenbarende Denken, das die Welt
erschaffende ist, so ist es sicherlich nicht das Hegels, sondern das eines Schöpfers, der
weder Hegel noch der Mensch im allgemeinen ist: das Denken Gottes. Die Logik ist
daher, auch trotz ihres Titels, nicht einfach Logik, sondern—wie Spinozas Ethik~
Theo-logie, also Logik, Denken oder Rede Gottes." Theunissen is closer to a more
appropriate interpretation. The remark about Hegel becoming God when thinking the
Logic is a "silly remark," Hegels Lehre vom Absoluten Geist als Theologisch-Politischer
Traktat, DeGruytcr, Berlin, 1970, p, 6.
20 Logik I, p. 53.
2i Henrich, HiK, 89.
22 Logik I, 53.
298
THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
299
ROLF AHLERS
44 Logik I, p. 66.
45 Ibid., p. 67.
46 See, for example, Theunissen, HL, 75.
47 FS, Su I, 422f.
48 HiK, in the essay Hegel und Hölderlin, pp. 9ff.
49 Logik H, p. 7.
60 See preliminary remarks concerning this situation above, pp. 289 and 291.
öl Logik II, p. 8.
52 See also Henrich to this point in HiK, 107: "Sein kann als Resultat des Wesens;
als durch es gesetzt, also als 'Gesetztsein' gelten, das garçz ohne Umstand aus deitf
Gedanken der doppelten Negation gewonnen ist. Gesetztsein heisst abefr aufgehobenes'
Sein,—Sein, welches das Wesen zu seinem Grund hat, und zwar so, das| Wêsén '
!
seinerseits im Setzen von Unmittelbarkeit besteht." •» - 'x * •?
ö3 Logik I, pp. 3?6, 397.
54 Logik I, p. 396.
55 Phänomenologie, ed. Hoffmeister, ibid., p. 19.
300