The Development of Determination

Qualified Through Another

The category determination (Bestimmung) follows the development of something and other, and emerges as a new form of specifying how one form of being is expressed through another.

The quality which in the simple something is an in-itself essentially in unity with the something’s other moment, its being-in-it, can be named its determination, provided that this word is distinguished, in a more precise signification, from determinateness in general (Hegel 2010, 95/21.110).

Determination should be distinguished from determinateness in the sense that the former signifies how a quality belongs to a particular something inasmuch as it itself related to others, whereas the latter signifies a quality in general. In other words, the difference is between what is at home with itself through another in contrast to just what is. Moreover, determination also carries with it the connotations “vocation” or “destiny”, suggesting a momentum at work in how something expresses itself or comes to be defined in relation to others or in its circumstances. Hegel continues:

Determination is affirmative determinateness; it is the in-itself by which a something abides in its existence while involved with an other that would determine it, by which it preserves itself in its self-equality, holding on to it in its being-for-other. Something fulfills its determination to the extent that the further determinateness, which variously accrues to it in the measure of its being-in-itself as it relates to an other, becomes its filling. Determination implies that what something is in itself is also present in it (Hegel 2010, 95-6/21.110-1).

Something’s determination is the quality that is embedded in it which allows it to be outwardly expressed yet also inwardly defined, since the determination is precisely that through which something preserves itself.

The terms “fulfills” and “filling” appear to express the logic in terms of a container that has a certain capacity. While this may foreshadow later notions, it is important to note that there is no leeway in terms of whether determination maps on adequately or inadequately, in merely in some volume, to the thing in question. Inasmuch as determination is established, its quality at hand determines what the thing is.

Hegel uses the example of “the determination of the human being”, and writes that its determination—its vocation—is rational thought. The human being is distinguished from other animals by being a thinking being. However, it is especially important to note that thinking is also in the human being: “…thinking is in his existence and his existence is in his thinking, thinking is concrete, must be taken as having content and filling; it is rational thought and as such the determination of the human being” (Hegel 2010, 96/21.111). This signals what is peculiar about determination, namely, that not only does the thing in question have a certain quality embedded on it, but this thing in question lives, as it were, through this quality; something about this quality enables the thing to be the thing it is, just as thinking enables the human being to be human.

To use another example, one could say that “self-movement is the determination of animals”, by which one understands that moving oneself is a fundamental quality of being animal and that the animal exists through this quality.

Now, Hegel adds an important detail with regards to his example of the determination of the human being:

But even this determination is again only in itself, as an ought, that is to say, it is, together with the filling embodied in its in-itself, in the form of an in-itself in general as against the existence which is not embodied in it but still lies outside confronting it, immediate sensibility and nature (Hegel 2010, 96/21.111).

Determination thus not only establishes what a certain being is, but sets up an opposition between that being vis-á-vis other being (or the lack thereof). With thought as the determination of the human being, the human being becomes pinned against all other being that confronts this determination, such as immediate sensibility and nature. Likewise, with animals, self-movement distinguishes the animal from all other things that are stationary or merely by virtue of other things (such as natural forces or laws). In both cases, the human being or the animal abide in their being insofar as they are distinguished from other things. Indeed, thought or self-movement are ways in which these relate to other things and are present with themselves in this relation. It seen how being-for-other and being-in-itself can form aspects of determination, but that the latter is exactly irreducible to either; it is both at once.

Constituting Constitution

While determination defines the gateway whereby something is present with itself in its relation to other things, there is a purely external side to this relation that does not belong to the being-in-itself of the something at hand.

The filling of the being-in-itself with determinateness is also distinct from the determinateness which is only being-for-other and remains outside the determination. For in the sphere of the qualitative, the distinguished terms are left, in their sublated being, also with an immediate, qualitative being contrasting them (Hegel 2010, 96/21.111).

Mention has already been made between determination and determinateness, whereby the former designates the quality into which something expands as its own—or where something is present with itself through another—and the latter designates a determinateness or specificity more generally. Hegel now focuses on exactly this difference and points out that there is an independent quality that contrasts that of the determination.

That which the something has in it thus separates itself and is from this side the external existence of the something and also its existence, but not as belonging to its being-in-itself. – Determinateness is thus constitution (Hegel 2010, 96/21.111).

Constitution defines what does not belong to the thing in question, but instead emphasizes the externality of the relationship a thing has with others, namely, that the external is connected to the thing itself. In a way, constitution revives the former being-for-other and being-in-itself dyad but sharpens the difference by establishing that the relation to others involves an externality that falls outside of something’s determination.

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge writes that something is determined by being “other-directed”, such that it also becomes determinate. But each of these processes of being determined and being determinate collapse to one: “Each process mediates the other. For when something is determinate, it has been determined. Equally, when something is determined, it becomes determinate. In both the determining activity of thought renders the concept determinate. This single determining process can be called determination” (Burbidge 1981, 49).

More specifically, Burbidge notes the passage that occurs in thought when thinking about something and other, and that distinguishing this passage is effectively what determination renders explicit: “In the move from something to other this act of determining was only implicitly present. Now the distinction has become explicit, independent category” (Burbidge 1981, 49). He goes on to add that it is not a foreign imputation upon the thing just because an outside relation is involved:

A determination is not an alien feature applied to something simply because it is in relation; it is what something is in itself. In becoming determinate, something fulfills its determination. What is implicit becomes explicit; what is inherent becomes the way it is determined (Burbidge 1981, 50).

However, he notes that this category remains logically incomplete as its relation to its substantive being is merely assumed, not made explicit. This occurs next when the determination of something is further distinguished from others that are extrinsic and contingent. These latter are not constituted by the thing in itself but through its contact with others. To refine it further, what is not inherent in the determination of something reflects an into an implicit being of contingent and changeable relations termed constitution. “In so far as something changes while remaining the same the change takes place in this relatively superficial area of its constitution” (Burbidge 1981, 50).

Houlgate

Stephen Houlgate reads determination as the intrinsic being of something in its relation with, and present in, the thing’s relation to others. “It is this intrinsic being conceives as touch other things. Indeed, it is the intrinsic being or character of a thing which it preserves and ‘asserts’ (geltend macht) in its relation to others” (Houlgate 2022, 193). Furthermore, this being-in-itself is not what merely remains as true in something's entanglement with an other, but what that something fulfills by adhering to and affirming its own identity in dealings with others, “thereby determining by itself how it relates to them” (Houlgate 2022, 193).

The two moments of something—being-for-other and being-in-itself—are united in the thing’s determination. Despite this, the moments remain different, as each is the non-being of the other, given a “lingering immediacy that keeps each qualitative category distinct in some sense from the other to which it is bound” (Houlgate 2022, 193). For this reason, a thing’s being-in-itself is not simply coextensive with its being-for-other; “what a thing is in itself does, indeed, manifest itself in its relations to others, but it turns out that what the thing is for others is not itself exhausted by what the thing is in itself” (Houlgate 2022, 194). Therefore, the thing’s being-for-other must take two different forms.

The first of the two forms that a thing’s being-for-other must take is the one determined by the thing’s intrinsic being: “it is the other-relatedness in which something asserts what it is in itself against its other” (Houlgate 2022, 194). This is the thing’s determination.

The second form of a thing’s being-for-other is what is not determined by the thing’s intrinsic being. This is called constitution. “This is a form of the thing’s own other-relatedness – a way in which it relates to an other – and so belongs to the thing; yet it ‘does not belong to its being-in-itself’ and so is not governed by the thing itself” (Houlgate 2022, 194). The constitution is the form of a thing’s relation to others that is part of a thing but is not determined by or “controlled” by the thing’s intrinsic “nature” or being-in-itself.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2025)