The Development of Becoming

The Unity of Being and Nothing

Pure being and pure nothing are therefore the same. The truth is neither being nor nothing, but rather that being has passed over into nothing and nothing into being - “has passed over,” not passes over. But the truth is just as much that they are not without distinction; it is rather that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct yet equally unseparated and inseparable, and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which the two are distinguished, but by a distinction which has just as immediately dissolved itself (Hegel 2010, 60-61/21.69-70).

The development of becoming picks up on the discovery made with the categories being and nothing, namely, that being and nothing have no distinguishing factor. As discussed elsewhere, there is a difference between being and nothing but it is only an immediate difference.

Hegel begins by pointing out that neither being nor nothing are stable categories that simply exist, but that they each pass over into the other. The truth of the matter is, then, that there is no such thing as pure being simpliciter that does not turn out to disappear into nothing (and vice versa). This emphasizes the inseparability of the two categories.

Hegel then points out that these categories really are distinct. Being and nothing are different conceptions, and this difference is important in understanding the movement of becoming. It is insofar as being and nothing pass over into each other—or vanish into its opposite—that a movement has begun to take shape.

It is seen here how the immediate vanishing of being and nothing play a role in forming an idea of movement which contains both the inseparability and difference of the two categories. This “movement” of becoming establishes something of a third element that groups the other two under a new identity, but as already visible from the end of the quote, this unity is highly unstable.

Additionally, the term “vanishing” first appears here and is used extensively to convey the passing of one category to the other as both immediate and absolute. There is no further or deeper sub-process or mediation to deign here. Neither is the passage partial or piecemeal; when one category vanishes into another its disappearance is instantaneous and total.

The Moments of Becoming

Inseparability

Becoming is the unseparatedness of being and nothing, not the unity that abstracts from being and nothing; as the unity of being and nothing it is rather this determinate unity, or one in which being and nothing equally are. However, inasmuch as being and nothing are each unseparated from its other, each is not. In this unity, therefore, they are, but as vanishing, only as sublated. They sink from their initially represented self-subsistence into moments which are still distinguished but at the same time sublated (Hegel 2010, 80/21.92).

Before proceeding, it is worthwhile to note that, strictly speaking, negation at this stage of the Logic has not been developed. It does not, however, drive the logic forward because it is used under a conditional that serves to illustrate a wrong case, viz. isolating being or nothing concerning their inseparability. Instead, the inseparability in question occurs exactly within a higher-level context, namely, that of becoming.

Another thing to note is that it might be confusing, or counter-intuitive that being and nothing are understood to be independent whilst in a determinate unity. This is part of the development of becoming where the issue is to understand two terms as both identical and different. An issue yet to resolved.

Unequal Passage

Grasped as thus distinguished, each is in their distinguishedness a unity with the other. Becoming thus contains being and nothing as two such unities, each of which is itself unity of being and nothing; the one is being as immediate and as reference to nothing; the other is nothing as immediate and as reference to being; in these unities the determinations are of unequal value (Hegel 2010, 80/21.93).

Hegel explores the inseparability of being and nothing further from two different vantage points. Why two? Because the main context of becoming that unifies these two categories does not establish an abstract, static unity where the two are merely side-by-side, since that does not account for their nuances. Here we see those nuances become explicit in the thought that being and nothing is not equal to nothing and being. How is this so?

Initially, back in the earlier developments of being and nothing, each simply is or turns out to be the same as the other. Now, it is understood that being vanishes into nothing. In this context of becoming, the two categories become regarded as one “passing into another”, but this still requires that one is a starting point and the other is the target. In other words, the thought demands one is immediate and the other is the reference.

While this pattern of “passing into another” is valid for both, it plays out very differently whether it is being that passes into nothing, or nothing that passes into being. This is why Hegel states that the determinations in these unities are of unequal value.

Once again, it is worth noting that Hegel has been using determinate- and determination in this section, and, like negation, these are terms not explicitly developed in the logic. Unlike negation, however, the terms at hand seem to do more work for the argument. On the one hand, determination here may not be used in a technical sense and merely makes the difference between being and nothing more poignant. On the other hand, however, the term stresses drive and resolution, and a sharp unity of fixed difference, which prefigures a later category. Its usage here is somewhat misleading, if not problematic, and Hegel could quite easily have replaced it with less technically charged words without affecting the argument.

Emergence and Cessation

Becoming is in this way doubly determined. In one determination, nothing is the immediate, that is, the determination begins with nothing and this refers to being; that is to say, it passes over into it. In the other determination, being is the immediate, that is, the determination begins with being and this passes over into nothing – coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be (Hegel 2010, 80/21.93).

The two unities of being and nothing are recast into coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be based on which direction the passage occurs. The unequal value of these passages is perhaps more clear now in the rephrasing, since it spells out that it is being, in both accounts (coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be), which either arrives or departs.

What is key is that Hegel relates this back to becoming. It is in the context of movement that the inseparability of the two categories is made explicit, and any further details discovered will reflect back on this context.

A possible complication to the logic is that the coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be—which currently is defined with the vanishing of being into nothing and nothing into being respectively—could be equally applied over the category nothing itself. That is to say, nothing could be coming-to-be where its self-subsistence as nothing concerned and creasing-to-be when it vanishes into being. This idea, while tempting at first, is not really coherent. Firstly, it presupposes the original coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be vis-à-vis being and nothing; secondly, it breaks the definition of nothing as the absolute absence of being, which is required for the original movement. Therefore, the coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be cannot apply to nothing except in a very abstract or non-substantive sense.

Mutual Paralysis

Both are the same, becoming, and even as directions that are so different they interpenetrate and paralyze each other. The one is ceasing-to-be; being passes over into nothing, but nothing is just as much the opposite of itself, the passing-over into being, coming-to-be. This coming-to-be is the other direction; nothing goes over into being, but being equally sublates itself and is rather the passing-over into nothing; it is ceasing-to-be. – They do not sublate themselves reciprocally – the one sublating the other externally – but each rather sublates itself in itself and is within it the opposite of itself (Hegel 2010, 80-1/21.93).

While two specific movements of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be point in opposite directions, they fold into same becoming and come to mirror the initial inseparability that defined being and nothing.

Importantly, the source of each specific movement is in the root category in question and there is no external action or cause that the made the category operate in the way that it did, namely, that it vanished into its other. Putting it plainly, being is ceasing-to-be as it vanishes into nothing, but likewise nothing is coming-to-be as it vanishes into being.

In addition, Hegel writes that the two specific movements interpenetrate and paralyze each other. How do they relate and why would they paralyze each other?

In the first place, the two specific movements relate because they are of the same inseparability; the same becoming defines coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. Once this is understood, the issue with their opposite movements should become clear, namely, the same becoming is a movement both of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. Recall that for pure being and nothing, their vanishing is total and absolute, and occurs immediately. Indeed, the vanishing is so immediate that Hegel indicates it by stating it is not passing but has passed. As the categories are this unstable, effectively coming-to-be is ceasing-to-be, and ceasing-to-be is coming-to-be—emergence and cessation occur simultaneously within the same context. Therefore, becoming, if Hegel is right, is a double movement of rising and falling.

Sublation of Becoming

Quiescent Result and Destruction

The equilibrium in which coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be are poised is in the first place becoming itself. But this becoming equally collects itself in quiescent unity. Being and nothing are in it only as vanishing; becoming itself, however, is only by virtue of their being distinguished. Their vanish- ing is therefore the vanishing of becoming, or the vanishing of the vanishing itself. Becoming is a ceaseless unrest that collapses into a quiescent result (Hegel 2010, 81/21.93).

Hegel goes into more detail here on how coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be paralyze not only each other but the unity that constitutes them. Importantly, he points out how becoming depends on the difference between being and nothing, but as it has been understood, this difference itself immediately dissolves since there is nothing determinate to support it. In other words, the difference itself emerges as it ceases. Given that the moments of becoming lose their difference, the dependencies of the movement are gone and with it becoming collapses into a quiescent result.

Put differently, becoming depends on the vanishing of being and nothing, but this vanishing is itself unsustainable and thus vanishes, hence Hegel’s phrase “the vanishing of the vanishing”.

This can also be expressed thus: becoming is the vanishing of being into nothing, and of nothing into being, and the vanishing of being and nothing in general; but at the same time it rests on their being distinct. It therefore contradicts itself in itself, because what it unites within itself is self-opposed; but such a union destroys itself (Hegel 2010, 81/21.93-4).

Hegel repeats the point, but sharpens the idea of an internal opposition within becoming itself. Its movement brings together contradictory impulses and is torn asunder by the unrelenting indeterminacy of pure being and nothing.

Becoming is the attempt, one might say, to bring some coherence to the conflicting motions of the early categories by carefully noting what must be the case: being and nothing are different, they are the same and they vanish into one another. The tools by which becoming puts these divergent and incompatible ideas, such as moments, movement, coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, are innovative and creative, but equally cannot contain the fury of negativity latent within them. Becoming itself thus emerges and perishes.

Not Nothing

This result is a vanishedness, but it is not nothing; as such, it would be only a relapse into one of the already sublated determinations and not the result of nothing and of being. It is the unity of being and nothing that has become quiescent simplicity. But this quiescent simplicity is being, yet no longer for itself but as determination of the whole (Hegel 2010, 81/21.94).

The vanishing of the vanishing would return one to the category nothing, but Hegel claims that this is not so. The first reason is that this would only put the logic back a few steps and those steps would lead precisely back to the present circumstance. Now, it may be that the logic merely loops around endlessly between nothing and becoming from this point on, but even this loop would be a new result, and one that displays characteristics of stability not seen before. The second reason is that this relapse does not take into account the complete outcome of being and nothing, viz. how they are inseparable.

It is exactly this inseparability that is left after the rise and fall of becoming: the vanishing of being and nothing cannot be coherently determined since it itself vanishes, but it remains a fact that these two pure categories are deeply entangled and the motion of their vanishing is matched only by the inertia of their belonging.

Being and nothing are thus understood to be simply together, but this togetherness itself falls under the header of being since this unity is. As seen above with the specific movements, it is being that comes-to-be and ceases-to-be. Now a new being must be defined, since the being of being and nothing is no longer pure.

Stepping Out

Becoming, as transition into the unity of being and nothing, a unity which is as existent or has the shape of the one-sided immediate unity of these moments, is existence (Hegel 2010, 81/21.94).

The being of being and nothing is existence (determinate being). It designates a new immediacy but minimally determinate since it presents at once a combination of different moments. The moments of becoming, by contrast, had to be mediated through the context of inseparability. And it can be seen here how existence is the real becoming of becoming, as the movement of the latter turned out to be the process that engendered the being that was moved. Thus, becoming cannot logically be at rest with itself. Like its preceding categories, it cannot remain pure and vanishes into what determined itself.

If Hegel is right, pure becoming is an incoherent and incomplete idea, or there is no such thing, ontologically, as simple becoming. And while existence may turn out to be many things, both in the Logic and elsewhere in philosophy and beyond, it cannot be anything less than that which is both being and nothing.

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge’s analysis of becoming begins from the thought that being and nothing cannot be held in isolation, as discrete abstractions. Failing to hold these absolutely different, they are brought to relation and this forces the understanding to examine this reference: “The only way the difference can be maintained is through reference to the process of thought itself. For it alone indicates that they are not simply identical” (Burbidge 1981, 40).

The difference and sameness of being and nothing constitute two aspects that are brought together in a synthetic relationship of unity and difference. What is important here is that the independence of both categories is in favor of being retained as moments. Burbidge names the movement of being to nothing genesis, and the converse movement perishing (Burbidge 1981, 41). And as each movement completes, it is itself transformed to its opposite: perishing dissolves into a new process of genesis and genesis into perishing. They are both, however, moments of the overall category becoming, and so form a double process.

Burbidge writes that becoming depends on being and nothing to be perfectly different and that it ceases if they are understood to be the same. However, becoming depends on being and nothing being both perfectly different and exactly the same. The contradiction of becoming is rather that its very process turns them from their absolute vanishing—which is derived from their immediate difference and sameness—into related moments.

The result of the mediation of becoming is brought about by thought moving to a new perspective that grasps that being and nothing are not simply opposites but are “subcontraries of a more inclusive category”, which, by virtue of being an intellectual concept, Burbidge asserts “must be” (Burbidge 1981, 41). The collapse of becoming into this unity Burbidge names “a being” [Dasein], as he goes on to write: “The indefinite article suggests that it is not absolutely indeterminate but is in some way limited by a nothing out of which it comes and to which it may return” (Burbidge 1981, 42).

Burbidge’s decision to name Dasein “a being” is puzzling and his reasoning for it is less clear. The term relies on implicit assumptions rather than designating a well defined meaning; “a being” may well suggest that it is not absolutely indeterminate, but it also suggests that it is one being among many, which is something Dasein, or Existence, definitely is not. Unfortunately, the term Burbidge chose pollutes the thought of the logic rather than clarifying it.

Houlgate

With the category becoming Hegel has reached the standpoint of Heraclitus, where everything flows and all is becoming (Houlgate 2022, 147). Stephen Houlgate contends that at this point in the Logic, Hegel fully affirms a Heraclitean vision of a ceaselessly changing reality; Hegel “is affirming a Heraclitean vision of sheer becoming” (Houlgate 2022, 147). Importantly, though, Houlgate points out that Hegel shows us this Heraclitean vision by the standpoint of Parmenides, namely, the standpoint of pure being (although Parmenides himself would never leave his standpoint).

The becoming Hegel examines, however, is not a becoming understood to occur in time. Rather, it is only the transition of pure being and nothing into one another. As human thinkers, we need time to think this transition; but pure being does not prove to be nothing in virtue of time passing, but in virtue of what turns out to be logically the case conceptually.

…the process, described in logic, in which being proves to be becoming (and then further forms of being) is not temporal … It is the logical process in which being discloses what it is in truth. Hegel’s claim is thus not that in time there is first being, then nothing and then becoming, but that logically being itself proves to be becoming (as it will later prove to be substance, the Idea and space-time)(Houlgate 2022, 148).

In Houlgate’s reading, the categories being and nothing undergo a twofold transformation, namely, turning into processes of which they are themselves moments. Nothing does not simply vanish into being, but proves to be that vanishing, the very transition into its opposite. In that sense, it proves to be the process of coming-to-be.

In this process of nothing, nothing itself is immediate and passes over into being, such that the process itself contains nothing and being as its two moments. The same holds for the process of being. “As becoming, therefore, being and nothing are the process of vanishing itself; but, as moments of becoming, they are each that which vanishes into the other” (Houlgate 2022, 149). In Houlgate’s understanding, then, being and nothing are each seen both as the process of vanishing (or becoming) and as moments of the vanishing, respectively.

In Houlgate’s estimate, becoming inaugurates a more stable thought, albeit one of restless instability. His point, however, is that the thought of becoming does not immediately vanish into another category, as with being and nothing. This requires a more active participation by thought in order to uncover what is immanent in the category. However, Houlgate warns that this does not make the logic something “artificially engineered by us”, but made necessary by what is inherent in becoming itself (Houlgate 2022, 150). Indeed, as revealed in the examination of the development, becoming does not immediately turn into something else but spawns a process of becoming.

The exact nature of the vanishing of being and nothing, which is key to understanding becoming, is in recognizing that being and nothing, Houlgate writes, “cannot merely vanish into one another – for in that way, they do not actually vanish – but must vanish into their both having vanished” (Houlgate 2022, 151). The result of this vanishing of the vanishing can itself neither be pure being nor pure nothing—since that exactly returns the vanishing—but one where a unity or inseparability of being and nothing where their purity and pure immediate difference have been annihilated.

The movement of becoming requires this very purity and difference, however, and without it, becoming itself is brought to a halt. But it is becoming itself which brings about this halting. In a manner of speaking, it is a process that is generated by a source but within that generation the source altered and the process itself ceases, leaving the altered source. As Houlgate concludes, “We move forward from becoming to determinate being, therefore, not because we prefer stability over instability, but because we take seriously the loss of purity that is only inadequately embodied in becoming” (Houlgate 2022, 152).

Surprisingly, then, the problem with Heraclitean becoming from Hegel’s point of view, according to Houlgate, is not that it denies the purity of Parmenidean being but that it actually clings to it all too firmly. Becoming feeds off the purity of being—and in some respects, mimics it—since it requires the loss and re-emergence of it; in becoming, pure being is contained intact. Both philosophers fail to see that, logically, pure being must transform itself to determinate existence, where no purity is the case at all (Houlgate 2022, 152).

McTaggart

John McTaggart aptly puts it that being and nothing only exist in becoming as disappearing moments, but that these very moments must be separate, for, “if they are not separate, how can they pass into one another” (McTaggart 1910, 17).

McTaggart thinks that becoming was inadequately named by Hegel, since he contends that this term is too concrete and that it brings with it too many unwanted connotations. He suggests that the synthesis (his term) of being and nothing should have been named “transition to being determinate” [Übergang in das Dasein] (McTaggart 1910, 20), pointing to the precedent Hegel set in the case of the last category of measure, called “transition to essence”. What are McTaggart’s reasons for this claim? Why is “becoming” inadequate?

In order to better understand McTaggart’s standpoint, it must first be understood that he maintains that being is dependent on nothing in order that it should be being and vice versa.

In other words, a category of Being without Nothing, or of Nothing without Being, is inadequate and leads to contradictions which prove its falsity. The only truth of the two is a category which expresses the relation of the two (McTaggart 1910, 17).

There is no contradiction in the union of being and nothing, at least not in the manner seen in the development of becoming concerning their exact identity and pure difference.

Now, the issues McTaggart sees in the term “becoming”, are specifically:

1. The term “becoming” evokes the idea of a process of change. A change of something to something else.
2. Change, in turn, involves the existence of some permanent element in what changes. An element that does not change. Put differently, change requires some stable form to contrast the contends that were changed.
3. It is impossible in the categories of being and nothing, since there is no room for distinction between a changing and an unchanging layer of reality as the categories are simply undifferentiated.
4. Therefore, if something should be capable of change, it must be analyzable into two elements, one which does not change. “This is impossible under the categories of Quality”, McTaggart claims (McTaggart 1910, 17).

McTaggart considers the scenario that becoming may not be a fully developed sense of change, but change in a more rudimentary form. Rather than change of A into B, it is the disappearance of A and the appearance of B. But McTaggart thinks that even in the latter case, when carefully analyzed, would “involve the presence of some element which persisted unchanged in connection first with A and then B”, and that would just be change proper (McTaggart 1910, 19).

Furthermore, McTaggart contends that the essence of the new category (existence) is in the necessary implication of being and nothing and “not in any change taking place between them” (McTaggart 1910, 19).

Reviewing McTaggart’s commentary on becoming, it appears to deal more with possible semantic implications rather than with the technicalities of the argument, which problematizes his reading. Here are a few points to consider.

1. Firstly, nowhere does Hegel employ “change” to describe the movement of becoming; rather, he carefully combines ideas of “vanishing”. So while McTaggart is right that change requires some permanent element, and therefore does not map on to the logic of becoming, it was never asked for by the argument of the Logic. Instead, it is better to think of becoming not as any species of change but simply as becoming, a unique logical movement.
2. Secondly, McTaggart’s understanding that existence is merely the necessary implication of being and nothing, omits the important point that these can no longer be thought in their purity (see Houlgate’s commentary on this).
3. Thirdly, misnaming becoming with preference for the much more generic “transition to determinate being”, while not relevant to the logic, would miss out on the historical debt being paid to Heraclitus and could therefore make the category less accessible.

Against McTaggart, then, the question of change is taken up later in the Logic, when the categories of determination, constitution and limit become explicit. In becoming, by contrast, the issue is rather about explicating vanishing and pure, radical movement, which may later factor into the idea of change but in no way, logically, presuppose it.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2024)

Editors
Ahilleas Rokni (2024)