The Development of Existence

The Immediacy of Existence

Existence proceeds from becoming. It is the simple oneness of being and nothing. On account of this simplicity, it has the form of an immediate. Its mediation, the becoming, lies behind it; it has sublated itself, and existence therefore appears as a first from which the forward move is made. It is at first in the one-sided determination of being; the other determination which it contains, nothing, will likewise come up in it, in contrast to the first (Hegel 2010, 83/21.97).

While the category of existence is derived from becoming—and thus has its justification therein—it is at first regarded in its immediacy. As immediate, existence is simple, and the mediation that brought it out is put behind it. In this way, existence appears as “a first”. In other words, the thought of existence does not need to appeal to becoming, or its mediation, in order to be. To illustrate: to point something out as existing minimally determines a simple oneness of being and nothing, but does not, on the face of it, point to any becoming or movement. There is just existence. One simply exists.

The Unity of Being and Non-being

The simplicity of existence is quickly complicated, as the apparent oneness of being and nothing means that more is at work in existence, since these categories cannot co-exist. As Hegel goes on to write:

As it follows upon becoming, existence is in general being with a non-being, so that this non-being is taken up into simple unity with being. Non-being thus taken up into being with the result that the concrete whole is in the form of being, of immediacy, constitutes determinateness as such (Hegel 2010, 84/21.97).

Two things are key in this passage. First, nothing is recast as non-being since the category nothing strictly cannot be set in contrast with anything, much less being, as it is purely nothing. It thus cannot conceptually co-exist with anything else. Non-being serves therefore as the part of the oneness in which being vanishes into and emerges out of nothing. As non-being, nothing is involved but only inasmuch as it is encapsulated by being.

The second matter is that the unity of being and non-being that constitutes existence is itself in the form of being. Though, as will be qualified, this “form of being” is very nuanced.

The fact that being and non-being are in the form of being ensures their unity while also containing their difference. This unity appears to be concrete since it both brings together as well as holds apart divergent elements. This is exactly what establishes determinateness for Hegel. But how does it achieve that? Is being a container of being and non-being? What exactly is implied in this immediate form of determinateness?

Determinateness as a Concrete Whole

The whole is likewise in the form or determinateness of being, since in becoming being has likewise shown itself to be only a moment – something sublated, negatively determined. It is such, however, for us, in our reflection; not yet as posited in it. What is posited, however, is the determinateness as such of existence, as is also expressed by the da (or “there”) of the Dasein (Hegel 2010, 84/21.97).

This passage is tricky since since it appears that Hegel looks ahead from the current situation. In our reflection—as concrete thinkers with more concepts available to us than the logic at hand—is it noted that the whole, or the unity, of being and non-being must equally be a determined being, no less than its constituent moments. Though this is not evident in the immanent development.

Following this passage, Hegel appears to insert a comment about the nature of positing, which serves to show that the distinction just made was for educational purposes rather than demonstrating anything about the development.

Existence corresponds to being in the preceding sphere. But being is the indeterminate; there are no determinations that therefore transpire in it. But existence is determinate being, something concrete; consequently, several determinations, several distinct relations of its moments, immediately emerge in it (Hegel 2010, 84/21.98).

Hegel ends this section by stating that existence corresponds to being but that while the latter was indeterminate, the former is, by contrast, determinate. Two more key things to note in this passage is the meaning of “determinations transpiring” in a category and the idea that several determinations and distinctions immediately emerge. From the latter, existence is regarded as something immediately complex, as was already understood from the preceding despite its simplicity. But exactly this—which relates to the former matter about “transpiring”—reveals the glimmers, as it were, of a movement amidst this static determinacy.

Is the Whole an External Reflection? (Niklas)

Hegel notes that “The whole is likewise in the form or determinateness of being [is such] for us, in our reflection (Hegel 2010, 84/21.97). Stephen Houlgate elaborates that this difference is between, on the one hand, existence as immediate and therefore containing being and non-being as its moments but where being predominates, in contrast to, on the other hand, existence as simply the unity of being and non-being where neither one has the greater emphasis. The former is that way because it appears for us in our reflection.

It is puzzling why Hegel should have to raise a problem of external reflection here. If the issue appears to stem from over-emphasizing being over non-being, which comes from the element of immediacy, then what other recourse is possible for the development of existence? Is there any other pure thought available of existence that does not determine that the unity of being and non-being is? If that unity is understood to be an external reflection, then the root cause—namely, the immediacy of existence—must also be problematic, but then the issue is no longer that of an external reflection.

There seems to be at least four avenues one could explore from here. Either the oneness, or unity, of being and non-being is or is not. Or the matter with the external reflection is itself an external reflection that is unwarranted. Or an external reflection really has taken place on erroneous grounds and it not yet clear as to why, or if it follows necessarily from the logic. Or, finally, the logical development here needs to be revised.

Immediacy and Determinateness (Niklas, Yirmibes)

Further to the issue of why an one-sided determination and an external reflection arises in the first Existence section. First, does oneness imply wholeness? The term whole is a category of Essence, which is later developed in the Logic, and, as the movement roughly is explicated there, the whole presupposes parts. Insofar as the whole is here evoked, it may simply imply parts, and that gets thought into the mire of one-sided determination. Put simply, to identify a concept as one-sided (a whole), one should already know more than the one-sidedness of the concept. Since what will come has not yet been made explicit (posited), one can only determine this one-sidedness as if it is for us, in our reflection. This is exactly what Hegel attempts to prevent in the development here by alerting us to the fact that there is no one-sidedness of existence; that this thinking is an external imputation upon the matter by us and that it does not follow immanently. This external reflection can possibly be traced back to the very notion of a whole.

However, why does the whole become relevant here in the first place? What could trigger the external reflection as such?

Is the problem that there is an appearance of determinateness (or a seeming of it) at the immediacy of existence? Because immediacy as such, were it pure, is incongruent or incompatible with determinateness, which cannot be merely immediate. On some level, every category in the Logic faces this problem since they are each initially immediate or have being. But here, however, the problematic is taken to its extreme since there is no determination that could be attached to the immediacy of existence. In other categories, it is more readily known that the immediacy of a concept is a mediated immediacy.

One could claim that existence, initially posited, just is the immediacy of the unity of being and non-being, and there is nothing more to the matter—no determinateness. However, Hegel’s argument in this section is that this precise immediacy necessarily produces determinateness. It produces determinateness in virtue of both being being and non-being, and, being and non-being. In the immediacy, the emphasis falls on the simple oneness of these categories. But, this immediacy of oneness vanishes in favor for a mediated togetherness. However, these two phases contradict each other, since existence apparently cannot be both one and many (at least this is not posited at this stage). It is in this transition from one to the other that external reflection may interdict and impose an unwarranted resolution to the contradiction, namely, by mapping unto the matter a syllogistic form whereby the difference is governed by an identity. This reflection loses sight of the fact that existence just is both a simple oneness and a mediated togetherness of being and non-being, whose implied contradiction is what produces its movement of one to the other through sublation. It is sublation because being, or the oneness, does not entirely vanish in the transition, but is made an equal moment together with another, namely, non-being. This subsequently turns out to qualify existence properly.

The result is that in existence, being and non-being, while concretely entangled, are discerned first in their simple oneness and then immediately in their determinate togetherness. The thought is that there is no syllogistic inference needed here, much less an external reflection, since the matter at hand immediately transitions to make explicit what is implied. Therefore, oneness here does not necessarily imply a one-sided determination (as an external reflection) nor wholeness (in the specific sense of the category of Essence), and existence appears to qualify itself as well as determinacy being that which dawns at the dusk of immediacy.

Textual Note

The German Dasein, which Hegel uses for the category in question, has been translated into existence by George Di Giovanni. It has also been translated into determinate being or a being. While these other translations are not incorrect, there are some additional benefits with using existence. It is both more precise and is linguistically more natural. As Di Giovanni writes, “All Dasein is ‘determinate being,’ but not all ‘determinate being’ is merely Dasein. Moreover, using ‘determinate being’ makes the task of translating such derivatives as seiend, Seiendes, and Daseiendes, practically impossible or at least very cumbersome” (Hegel 2010, lxviii).

Hegel also notes that the spatial connotation in the German Dasein does not belong to the conceptual use made in the Logic, since space is not made explicit until the Philosophy of Nature. Rather, as Houlgate notes, the prefix “da” means “nothing more than the element of definiteness or determinacy that distinguishes Dasein from pure, indeterminate Sein” (Houlgate 2022, 157).

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge’s translation of Dasein is a being, reasoning that a being is not the same as being since the former delimits the sense of the gerund, such that the former is “in some way more specific” (Burbidge 1981, 46). The task for the understanding is to distinguish the lack of determination in pure being from the determination in a being.

The determination is not different from its being, Burbidge writes, as “the determination is rather the determinate way in which its being is present” (Burbidge 1981, 46). The determination also does not distinguish one being from another, since this would involve complexity that is not there in this indefinite sense of a being.

Houlgate

Stephen Houlgate provides his reasoning as to why, in existence, being is united with non-being:

In Dasein being is united with a nothing that is also different from it. Insofar as nothing is different from being, however, it is itself inseparable from being. It is thus no longer just nothing, but nothing or the “not” (Nicht) that is explicitly connected to, and one with, being. The explicit unity of the not and being is expressed in the thought of not-being or non- being. Earlier in the Logic Hegel insists that nothing should initially be thought as pure nothing, or the mere not, by itself, and so as “devoid of relation” to being. Now, however, the not is inseparable from being: it is the not, or “non”, as a form of being. The negative moment with which being is united in Dasein is thus no longer nothing, but non-being (Houlgate 2022, 158).

Houlgate stresses the simplicity of existence: without the moment of non-being, being reverts to pure, indeterminate being (Sein), but with that moment, however, being is converted to determinate being or existence (Dasein). The moment of non-being constitutes determinacy as such. “Being is determinate, therefore, only because it is this-not-that” (Houlgate 2022, 158).

Why does existence emphasize the moment of being, or that being is what comes initially to the fore here? Houlgate answers that once becoming settles into existence, the former has vanished and the latter has emerged as the only remaining. There is no relation from one to the other. Houlgate writes, “it stands there alone as an ‘immediate’, as simply itself. By virtue of that immediacy, however, it is ‘in the one-sided determination of being’: it simply is what it is” (Houlgate 2022, 158). However, this one-sidedness is something we, as observers of the logical development, see. It is not something inherent in the immediacy of existence as such, “because we do not see as much non-being in it as being” (Houlgate 2022, 158).

While the inseparability of being with a negative seems uncontested, there could be issues with defining this negative element too precisely. Houlgate frequently uses “not” in his account, which signifies negation. The category of negation is not derived at this stage in the Logic. In fact, negation becomes explicit in the section that follows this one, namely, the section on Quality. The “not” therefore should only be cautiously read in a pedagogical sense rather than in a technical sense.

McTaggart

John McTaggart translates Dasein as being determinate. He views the opening section on Dasein, or existence, more as a heading of what is to come, noting that genuine difference and contrast as now possible. Furthermore, he notes the implications of this: “For whatever is anything must also not be something, and cannot be what it is not. It must therefore not be something else than what it is. And thus the reality of anything implies the reality of something else” (McTaggart 1910, 21). While this more precise differentiation is made explicit by quality, it is interesting to see intimations of categories involving one another in the nature of determinateness, even in its immediacy.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2025)

Editors
Mert Can Yirmibes (2025)