The Development of Being

Quote

Being, pure being – without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. – There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing (Hegel 2010, 59/21.68-9).

Examination

_Being, pure being_ - without further determination.

Hegel’s Science of Logic begins with a fragment: “Being, pure being –”. being is a notoriously difficult category to grasp, and a great part of its difficulty lies in its simplicity. After the first word comes a qualification that this category must be grasped in its purity. Any further specification, or determination, loses sight of exactly this purity. While such an attempt to determine being may appear to illuminate some content, it does not illuminate anything about being as such, and will therefore have lost sight exactly the being it meant to say something meaningful about.

In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal
with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly.

The terms equality and inequality here are used to establish difference vis-à-vis being and something else. However, no difference can be established since being is positively not something different from an other. Considered otherwise, there is nothing with respect to being that can be differentiated from it. The thought of being in this sense extends in all directions. One might say that everything is being and being is everything, but this view presupposes something that is non-being against which being is differentiated; but this is inadequate, for, as Hegel emphasizes, there is no difference inwardly or outwardly. Viewed internally according to its conception then there is simply being.

If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were
posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would
thereby fail to hold fast to its purity.

Mention of attempting to generate difference with being, inwardly or outwardly, has already been made. Hegel additionally adds the term content here which suggests that the form-content distinction cannot be employed to determine being. Being is not some form that stands over against some non-being content, or, vice-versa, that being is some content that fills out some non-being form.

It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness.

Paradoxically, the first positive thing said about being other than repeating it or its purity, is that it is indeterminate and empty. This is perhaps already transitioning the logic beyond being, since the focus shifts towards indeterminateness and emptiness.

– There is _nothing_ to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of
intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself.

The en dash (–) is often used by Hegel to inline a quick comment. It serves to swiftly elaborate on a logical passage and provide additional guidance. Importantly, in these mini-commentaries, Hegel steps out of the logical development to reflect upon it.Immediately after the en dash Hegel begins to speak about intuiting and “speaking of” and that does not seem appropriate for a purely logical development. If it is correct that the en dash signals the start of a brief commentary here, then it makes sense why Hegel begins to employ intuition and vague language like “speaking of”, since he is now reflecting upon the matter at hand as it has been developed thus far and attempts to help his readers to understand an otherwise extremely abstract idea.

If the en dash does not signal the start of a comment and the logical development still continues, then that invites interpretation as to the precise status of intuition this early in the logic of pure thinking. Discussions on this issue will be provided elsewhere. For the remainder of this development, the en dash is understood to be the start of a comment.

Intuition is a concept with its own rich history. Spinoza considers it the superior form of knowledge as it basically does everything that intellectual cognition is capable of except it does it immediately.¹ With intuitive knowledge of a matter, one does not pause to think and piece together various bits in order to arrive at a conception; one simply grasps the conception immediately. For example, one does not need to wait for the pincer maneuver to complete in order to see that one’s force is becoming surrounded and cut off from supplies, but instantly recognize the doomed outcome the moment the pincer has been allowed to take shape.

What does intuition signify for Hegel here? Against Spinoza, whose intuitive knowledge seems to always be a determinate conception, intuition does not have any determinate content here. Indeed, intuition appears to actively fail to grasp any determinate matter whatsoever. However, this does not negate that intuition is adequately performing its cognitive function, for as Hegel points out, there really is nothing to be intuited or grasped in pure being.

Lastly, Hegel equates the activity of intuiting pure being with the matter itself. In intuiting that pure being is nothing—or there is nothing to be intuited in pure being—the intuiting activity is itself neither more or less than the matter it intuits, namely, pure emptiness.

Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this
empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact _nothing_, and
neither more nor less than nothing

Hegel continues his comment by reinforcing that no determinate content is to be found in pure being. He once more equates the form of its thinking with the matter. At this zero level of presuppositionless thinking, no difference can be established between pure being and its thinking, as that would presuppose a form-content difference internal to the conception of pure being itself. But pure being cannot be that which is separable from the pure thought of it—pure being does not exist externally to its thought, and certainly not as an entity in the world apart from thought. Indeed, in strictest terms, pure being does not exist, as existence etymologically signals that something stands out, which nominally means that some contrast or determinacy obtains. But no such contrast or determinacy is the case with pure being, and least of all a contrast between pure being and its thinking.

Hegel moves to affirm the emptiness of thinking and establishes that the form is no less than the content (if such distinctions are to be employed), and that as the form is empty and the form is indistinguishable from its content, the content is empty also. Now, this reading employs a syllogistic pattern that distinguishes two elements and establishes a truth based on their union, which appears to be a third element, and one might be tempted to think that that is how Hegel reasons himself to the outcome of the development of being. But the problem here is that these distinctions of form and content, pure being and its thinking, strictly do not exist; that is, they cannot be independently established and so cannot be used in syllogistic reasoning to arrive at the truth. The form-content distinction, along with the matter and its thought, are downstream from the issue and do not serve provide any new information that has not already been given in the conception of pure being. Indeed, the more apt procedure is the one Hegel has already provided, namely, the use of intuition. Intuition is a helpful contrast to syllogistic inference in that where the latter may appear more truthful due to its impressive complexity, it is in fact less since the matter itself cannot be parsed in mediated terms without tampering with its purity. Therefore, intuition with its affinity for immediate cognition, is a more truthful aid in discerning the conception of pure being.

And so the net result of pure being is that it is simply nothing. No cause or pattern of inference can be employed to establish this result without tautologically repeating it.

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge provides a more psychological reading of being, which focuses on what and how categories and conceptions are present to the attention of thought. However, his account has merit because of the solid groundwork he lays when dealing with the many nuances of Hegel’s project, opening a compelling way into its immanent development.

Burbidge stresses the intellectual dimension of thought and the operations that the understanding undergoes in preparing for pure thinking. Pure thought is defined as the sphere of intellectual relations purged of spatio-temporal, subjective and cultural contingencies (Burbidge 1981, 37). As a science, the logic articulates the relations between these intellectual relations: “in rendering a concept precise, thought moves to a related category; this movement in turn is named, and itself becomes a new concept” (Burbidge 1981, 37). In other words, pure thought is the purified intellectual dimension that considers intellectual relations as intellectual relations and discovers what particular inter-intellectual relations obtain or simply pure concepts.

Moreover, further to this, if the science of logic is to become a system, it must consider its starting point carefully, since a paradoxical problem presents itself at the outset. Logic cannot itself begin as the product of a process, since that inevitably entails that that process is then the actual starting point. “This poses a paradoxical problem,” Burbidge notes, “The promotive concept is to be immediate and not the determinate result of inferential transitions. Yet is it is the name of an intellectual relation, presupposing terms to be related” (Burbidge 1981, 37).

Any intellectual relation condition by distinctive moments of personal or social history must be left aside in the abstract discipline of thought. “Yet once the relativizing conditions have been dissolved away in pure self-knowledge, we are left with simple intellectual relations that are not in themselves determinate” (Burbidge 1981, 38). This simple intellectual relating bereft of all reference terms is prior to even the reference immediacy, as that is a reflective thought that introduces a contrast with mediation. Instead, it simply is.

In other words the verb ‘to be’ fills the requirement quite precisely: as a verb it expresses a relating; it can be used with any subject whatsoever; and it is incomplete and points toward the need for further determination—although not itself determined it is open to determinations … Being is thus the most primitive category of the logical science. It lacks any determinations by which thought can distinguish one thing or idea from another. But at the same time it articulates a comprehensive relation that is immediately common to all things or ideas (Burbidge 1981, 38).

Pure thought, according to Burbidge, is driven to render its concepts precise in order to understand what is involved in a concept and thereby becoming aware of the network of relations it involves. However, with the most primitive concept, it faces a difficulty: how can being be defined? A definition requires a specific contrast with something else, but how can being be contrasted anything else? This contrast would involve the negation of being, but all things are, and so there is nothing against which being could be contrasted against since that would mean that contrasting element is the negation of being. Thus, being is only equivalent to itself.

Being is equivalent only to itself. This positive assertion, though, does not distinguish it from anything to which it is unequal, for all specific determinations have been excluded. When it considers this, its most primitive category, then, thought finds nothing there to think. It is pure thinking without any content. But nothing certainly is not the same thing as being. In thinking the concept being, then, a new concept, nothing, has emerged. There has been no explicit inference here. The second thought simply and immediately comes to mind (Burbidge 1981, 39).

A major part of Burbidge’s account relies on the operations of the understanding and reason (or the intellect), and, while helpful in unpacking the intricacies the logical development, it assumes too much to be fully presuppositionless, since terms like understanding, reason, intellect, cognition, reflection, require their own development and justification. But, what is particularly problematic in Burbidge’s account is that it appears that the real reason why the categories develop is because the understanding fails to define them instead of the categories themselves taking the fall, as it were. While it is implied in Burbidge that the categories are the primary movers of logic, the explicit focus shifts to the understanding and psychological operations of the mind, which leaves a possibility that the categories may perhaps be otherwise if the understanding were different.

Houlgate

Stephen Houlgate emphasizes that the start of Hegel’s Logic is both a logic and a metaphysics at once. He further points out that the thought of being under consideration is not the being of something or the being expressed in the copula of a judgment (e.g. the squirrel is fluffy), “Being is to be understood simply as pure indeterminate being” (Houlgate 2022, 135).

He further reinforces Hegel’s conception of being as utterly indeterminate by contrasting it to Parmenides’ conception of being, who understands being in contrast to nothing, as that which is not nothing. This view by Parmenides holds a difference between the two such that being and nothing are kept apart and ossified, neither changing into the other (or indeed any other change for that matter). As Houlgate writes,

This is precisely what makes being “changeless”: for, as not-nothing, being neither arises from, nor passes into, nothing. In Parmenides’ words, “it exists without beginning or ceasing”, but, “remaining the same and in the same place, it lies on its own and thus fixed it will remain”. Parmenides goes on to claim that “strong necessity holds it [being] within the bonds of a limit” – a limit that preserves being as being and keeps it apart from nothing (Houlgate 2022, 136).

Hegel, in contrast to Parmenides, does not distinguish being from nothing, or essence, things, entities, worlds or anything else for that matter. Any such distinction would render being determinate, and being would not be understood in its utter indeterminacy.

Moreover, Houlgate points out that being is not to be understood in terms of the negation of immediacy (“im-mediacy”) or the negation of determinacy (“in-determinate”). This line of thinking would also render being something determinate and fail to hold fast to its purity. Instead, being must be understood in its immediacy and indeterminate, rather than as immediate and indeterminate. “At the start of logic being must be thought in its utter indeterminacy and immediacy – and so without being explicitly contrasted with determinacy or mediation – as pure and simple being” (Houlgate 2022, 136).

This thinking in terms of in rather than as further helps understand how Hegel’s initial fragment concerning without further determination is not a defining of being as the-being-without-determination, but that of holding being free of determination, and to think it in its purity and simplicity (Houlgate 2022, 136).

It seen how a non-trivial amount of effort is needed to keep at bay the mind’s reflective reflexes, which employ difference, equality, likeness and so forth in understanding a matter. This language of difference with its reflective categories cannot be entirely avoided, but they need not determine the matter, that is, understand being in terms of contrasts and mediation. Using negation on these reflective categories, or just careful language, one is able to keep at bay their determination of the matter at hand and allow it to be understood freely on its own terms, which in the case of being means its simplicity and purity (Houlgate 2022, 137).

A key part of of that simplicity and purity, Houlgate further notes, is that being is not understood in terms of its mediation or as a result of a prior process. One could point to the fact that Hegel’s conception of being is the result of presuppositionless thinking and that therefore it must presuppose it, thus showing that being is implicitly dependent on an external process which serves to define it and that thinking of it purely according to its own conception is impossible. But Houlgate argues that this omits precisely that being as an abstraction must itself also be abstracted, and that this is indeed done in its concept:

To think of being in this way, we must first abstract from all we ordinarily take being to be; but we must then abstract from, and set aside, the very fact that pure being is the result of abstraction. Only thus will the process of abstraction lead to the thought of being as pure and immediate, rather than as mediated result (or “essence”)(Houlgate 2022, 138).

In other words, to adequately think pure being is to already have abstracted the fact that it is the result of an abstraction—the result of a methodical and careful process of presuppositionless thinking. There is nothing in pure being—internal to its conception—that suggests or leads one to think that it is the result of a process. Indeed, were that the case, pure being could not itself be nothing. To arrive at the thought of pure being, as it were, is to arrive at the infinite shores of beginning that have no end in sight.

McTaggart

John McTaggart looks at Hegel’s opening category not so much an affirmation of being as an affirmation of nothing else. He further considers that being has no nature, since any nature would indicate some kind of determinacy vis-à-vis another being whose nature is different; however, with pure being this cannot be case. “Any determination would give it some particular nature, as against some other particular nature—would make it X rather than not-X. It has therefore no determination whatever” (McTaggart 1910, 15).

He then considers being in light of predication and reasons that the development is spurred its outcome. “But to be completely free of any determination is just what we mean by Nothing. Accordingly, when we predicate Being as an adequate expression of existence, we find that in doing so we are also predicating Nothing as an adequate expression of existence” (McTaggart 1910, 15). Following McTaggart, then, it seems that nothing necessarily follows being inasmuch as one attempts to predicate an adequate expression of existence.

However, McTaggart’s account involves too much for presuppositionless thinking, or the means by which he attempts to give expression to the matter are not properly self-sublated and are therefore left as unanswered questions or unwarranted claims. How is the structure of predication justified? Why must “adequate expression of existence” be a factor in understanding the purity of being? What qualifies as an “adequate” expression as such, much less of existence?

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2024)

Notes