A. The Mechanical Object: Section 2

The thread of the logical development of the mechanical object is picked up in Section 2. To briefly recapitulate, the mechanical object is the immediate identity of the determinations of the Concept; that is to say, what it is for the mechanical object to be the mechanical object is for the determinations of universality, particularity, and individuality to be immediately identical to each other. There is no dialectical movement between them, such that one develops into the other, or such that their relation prompts a dialectical development, because there is no difference to be found within or between them. Such is the mechanical object that it is the unity of identical moments that bear no difference to each other. The preceding account is to be found in the first paragraph of A. The Mechanical Object. However, despite the indeterminacy of the mechanical object, again, owing to the lack of difference within or between the determinations of the Concept, there is the vaguest notion of determinateness. Determinateness remains as a “manifoldness” (Hegel 1991, 712); in other words, there is determinateness simply because there are the three determinations of the Concept that are immediately identical to each other. This is a formal, meagre, superficial determinateness. It is the kind of difference that exists between three rocks lying on the ground. They are different from each other insofar as one is “over there” and another is “over there”, but that is all there difference amounts to, there is nothing more refined to say about their difference. In fact, it is such a meagre and superficial difference that one could very well ignore it and continue thinking that they are simply identical, interchangeable, moments.

The first paragraph of Section 2 elaborates on the precise nature of the determinateness of the mechanical object. Hegel tackles the tension that has been present ever since we made explicit the essential determinateness of the mechanical object that is equally indeterminate. What does it mean for the mechanical object to be both essentially determinate and indeterminate? Hegel’s answer is that the mechanical object is indifferent [Gleichgültig] to its determinateness. As we said earlier, the mechanical object is able to be essentially determinate whilst being indeterminate because its moments of determinateness are immediately identical to each other. What does this tell us about these moments? It tells us that they are indifferent to each other - it is indifference that explains how a moment can be both a determinateness and indeterminate in that determinateness. As Hegel writes, the mechanical object is “indifferent to the determinations as individual, as determined in and for themselves, just as the latter are themselves indifferent to one another” (Hegel 1991, 713). As such, since each determination is indifferent to every other determination, no determination can be comprehended from any other determination. The idea being that if a does not actively relate to b (does not posit b) then it would not make sense to try to understand b by understanding a. To use an empirical example, if you have two rocks, Ra and Rb, it would not make sense to seek to understand Rb by trying to understand Ra since what it is for Ra to be is for it to be indifferent to Rb: Ra is perfectly able to be itself without any explicit reference to Rb and any reference that there is to Rb is merely a formal one, i.e. merely in virtue of the fact that both rocks happen to be in the same place. This is what Hegel means when he concludes the first paragraph of Section 2 with a clarification of how the mechanical object can have both determinateness and be indeterminate:

The determinatenesses, therefore, that it contains, do indeed belong to it, but the form that constitutes their difference and combines them into a unity is an external, indifferent one; whether it be a mixture, or again an order, a certain arrangement of parts and sides, all these are combinations that are indifferent to what is so related (Hegel 1991, 713).

The determinateness of the mechanical object, then, is not constituted by something “inner”. In other words, the mechanical object does not posit the other mechanical object as being in a relation to it. It’s as if their relation is given by virtue of their of their shared essential determinateness but has nothing to do with what they are in particular. The mere fact that they are mechanical objects is sufficient for them to be in a unity, and it is because there unity is grounded in the fact that they are mechanical objects that it is based on externality and indifference. One way to think about this is as Hegel’s account of the idea of external reality as given. If reality is merely given to us, there is no internal order or reason to the arrangement of objects, and so the relation of objects to each other is an indifferent and merely external one. I think this is what Hegel is getting at when we look at the next paragraph:

Thus the object, like any determinate being in general, has the determinateness of its totality outside it in other objects, and these in turn have theirs outside them, and so on to infinity. The return into-self of this progression to infinity must indeed likewise be assumed and represented as a totality, a world; but that world is nothing but the universality that is confined within itself by indeterminate individuality, that is, a universe (Hegel 1991, 713).

Hegel conceptualises this infinite regression of successive external determinateness’s as the “world”, in its universal form, and as the “universe”, in its individual form. We will break down this distinction in a moment, but let’s focus on the infinite regression. Why does the mechanical object have its determinateness outside of itself? Simply, because it is indifferent to any determinateness, and so determines neither itself not any other mechanical object. There is a mechanical object that is external to the first mechanical object and the fact that there are mechanical objects that are external to other together, what we identified earlier as their formal unity, means that their determinateness lies external to them. But since no mechanical object is capable of positing the determinateness, the external determinateness keeps getting passed around the mechanical objects, without any change in determinateness. This infinite regression, however, is not a line, but a circle because there is a return into-self, because there are not infinite mechanical objects. There are only three mechanical objects, the universal, the particular, and the individual. But because their external determinateness is never posited by any single mechanical object it is infinitely being passed through them.

Let us now consider the above point concerning the world and the universe. What Hegel means is understandable enough, but what is less clear is whether he intends it to form a part of the logical development. First, let’s consider what is meant by it. On the face of it, Hegel is telling us that return-into-self of the infinite progression that we discussed above is the universal moment of the ‘world’. When we think about the world, within a mechanistic worldview, we think of it is as this totality of infinitely regressive external determinacies. In an apocryphal story, after giving a lecture on astronomy, a member of the audience is supposed to have told Bertrand Russel that his assessment of things is wrong and that the Earth is actually supported on the back of a turtle. Russel, being an absolute Wit, asked the member of the audience “and what is the turtle standing on?”, to which the member of the audience retorted, with perhaps even greater wit, “you’re a very clever young man, but it’s turtles all the way down!”. Why is it a universal? I think, because, the determinacies are all identical to each other and do not determine each other. There is an element of unchanging identity within the world - it’s just one turtle after another, without any turtle determining any other turtle.

So much for the world as a universal. Let us now consider Hegel’s further point. Having stated that the world is a moment of universality, he goes on to write that the universality of the world is merely confined within itself by the indeterminate individuality of the universe. To grasp the move that Hegel makes here, from universal world to individual universe, we need to remind ourselves of a feature of Mechanism. The mechanical object is the “universality that pervades the particularity and in it is immediate individuality” (Hegel 1991, 710); in other words, the universal world is immediately the individual universe, because we are within the sphere of Mechanism where universality is immediately individuality. When we conceptualise the universe, for Hegel, we are folding into itself the world as universal and grasping the infinite regress of the return-into-self as a single, indeterminate moment. We are making explicit the fact that since the external determinacies are all identical to each other and since they do not determine each other, that they may as well be grasped as one self-relating, indeterminate, external, determinateness. In other words, a single universe.

This section concludes with a meditation on the indeterminacy of determinism. I have alluded to this criticism of determinism in the above explanation for why Hegel conceives of the world as the universal and the universe as the individual. In essence, Hegel’s point is that if one is to take on the thesis of determinism: that a is caused by b, and that b is caused by c, and so on to infinity (or to a supposed beginning), and that this mode of explanation is sufficient to explain why a, b, and c, are as they are. But, if one is to take on this explanation, then one must make explicit the indeterminacy of such external determinateness:

For this reason determinism itself is also indeterminate in the sense that it involves the progression to infinity; it can halt and be satisfied at any point at will, because the object it has reached in its progress, being a formal totality, is shut up within itself and indifferent to its being determined by another (Hegel 1991, 713).

It is interesting that Hegel connects the indeterminacy of determinism to the infinite regression of determinism because the infinite regress plays no role in explaining the indeterminism of the mechanical object. If we cast our mind back, the indeterminacy of the mechanical object is due to the immediate identity of the mechanical object and that there is no difference within it. It is this lack of difference that leads to infinite regress that is described in the paragraph that treats of the world and the universe. The indeterminacy that was explained by the immediate identity of the mechanical object is the indeterminacy that explains why there is external and indifferent determination. As such, it is because of the indeterminacy of the mechanical object that the external determinateness of the objects is an infinite progression, and it explains why determinism doesn’t offer a determinate explanation of things. Because what it offers by way of explanation is merely the same explanation for every single moment, which is what prompts Hegel to call it an “empty word” (Hegel 1991, 714).

Crucially, the above is not a disproof of determinism or a criticism of it. It is Hegel’s account of determinism. Determinism is part of the unfolding of the determinations of thought and being. Hegel is telling us that there is such a thing as determinism and it works like this. Implicitly, however, there is a criticism of determinism since determinism is supposed to be a foundational theory - it is a theory that explains everything. However, for Hegel, the deterministic logic is a mere moment in the first section of Mechanism, and the mechanical object is shown to continue developing beyond determinism. Thus, whilst determinism is a determination of thought and being, it is not the absolute determination that explains everything.

Bibliography

Authors
Ahilleas Rokni (2024)

Contributors
Filip Niklas (2024)