A. The Mechanical Object: Section 3

In Section 3 of A. The Mechanical Object, Hegel builds on the analysis of the infinite regress of determinism, because, as Hegel will go on to show, determinism leads to a contradiction that must be resolved. It is this contradiction that will lead us to the next chapter of Mechanism.

We have already said that there is no moment of self-determination within the mechanical objects. Instead, the determinateness that lies between them is entirely external and, owing to their indifference, entirely indeterminate. As such, the determinateness that lies between each mechanical object is identical to every other. To clarify, the determinateness is identical because there is no specific determination given to the determinateness by a particular mechanical object. If every mechanical object is entirely indifferent to every other mechanical object, then the determinateness that lies between them is simply that: the external determinateness between two indifferent and indeterminate mechanical objects. That determinateness is identical for each mechanical object. So whether you have a rock slamming into a rock, or a rock falling into the water, there is no determinate difference. In both cases, we are basically talking about an external determinateness between two indifferent and indeterminate mechanical objects. This is what is going on in the first half of Section 3:

Now as the determinateness of an object lies in an other, no determinate difference is to be found between them; the determinateness is merely doubled, once in one object and again in the other, something utterly identical, so that the explanation or comprehension is tautological. This tautology is an external futile see-saw; since the determinateness obtains from the objects which are indifferent to it no peculiar distinctiveness and is therefore only identical, there is before us only one determinateness; and its being doubled expresses just this externality and nullity of a difference (Hegel 1991, 714).

For Hegel, the chain of external, indifferent, determinateness between mechanical objects is a mere tautology, which means that there is really only one determinateness throughout the chain of external determinateness. This is, more or less, a repetition of the point made in Section 2 when we were discussing Hegel’s account of determinism.

Now, the identity of the determinateness (and as my example above should have made clear) effectively means that we treat each mechanical object as no different to any other mechanical object. If the particular mechanical object does not contribute any of its own particular determinateness in its relation to other objects, and if it is only the external determinateness of objects that exists between objects, then there is no meaningful distinction between the interaction of different mechanical objects. This, whilst being true for the mechanical objects, nevertheless, leads to a contradiction because the mechanical objects are not merely identical. They are each a totality that is indifferent to every other mechanical object and so not simply the same as every other mechanical object. Thus, despite having an identical determinateness they remain different mechanical objects. Herein lies the contradiction of the mechanical object. This is what Hegel has to say on this:

Here, then, we have the manifest contradiction between the complete mutual indifference of the objects and the identity of their determinateness, or the contradiction of their complete externality in the identity of their determinateness (Hegel 1991, 713).

To return to my example of the rock that splashes into the water. From a mechanistic perspective, it makes not a bit of difference whether it is a rock or a boulder that splashed into the water because the determinateness of the mechanical objects is identical. This identity of determinateness has the effect of treating the mechanical objects as interchangeable because, with regard to their external determinateness, there is no distinction between one or the other. However, this is to ignore another equally crucial determination of the mechanical objects: their indifference. How can two objects be treated as identical whilst being indifferent to each other? Hegel’s response is that that is exactly where the logic of Mechanism leads us - towards the contradiction that the determinateness of a mechanical object is both identical to every other mechanical object whilst the object itself being indifferent to that very identical determinateness. This contradiction, then, is comprehended and grasped as the negative unity of the mechanical objects:

This contradiction is, therefore, the negative unity of a number of objects which, in that unity, simply repel one another: this is the mechanical process (Hegel 1991, 713).

The conclusion of the A. The Mechanical Object, then, is that these mechanical objects that were initially taken as immediately identical, indeterminate, and indifferent, are in fact in a contradiction with each other. This contradiction is a negative unity whereby what it is for a mechanical object to be itself is for its determinateness to be identical to the determinateness of other mechanical objects (the unity of the negative unity), whilst for it to be indifferent to other mechanical objects (the negative in negative unity). This new unity takes us into the next chapter of Mechanism, B. The Mechanical Process.

Bibliography

Authors
Ahilleas Rokni (2024)

Contributors
Filip Niklas (2024)