The Development of Nothing

Quote

Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within. – In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being. – Nothing is therefore the same determinations or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is (Hegel 2010, 59/21.68-9).

Examination

_Nothing, pure nothingness_

Similar to being, the account of nothing begins with a fragment. The first word states the category in question which is then followed up by a qualifier that this category is to be understood in its purity.

it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of
determination and content; lack of all distinction within.

Combined with the initial fragment, nothing is not to be understood as the absence or lack of something specific, as, for example, “there is nothing in my bank account”. Rather, nothing is complete emptiness, complete absence of any specificity, matter or existence. Indeed, one can say it is the absence of being. Internally, there is nothing to pick out since no distinction can be made.

Attempting to grasp it by other means, such as void, will be inadequate since void has a richer and more determinate meaning, such as “this cheque is void”. Void specifically points to a determinate existent which is void. This is developed later in Hegel’s Logic.

Equally, thinking of nothing in terms of negation or negativity is also inadequate, since both terms deal with determinacy and negativity in particular is a term that is profound, nuanced and richly textured.

The idea of nothing cannot but be considered through itself—in “simple equality with itself”—that is, without reference to anything else.

- In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it
makes a difference whether something or _nothing_ is being intuited or thought.
To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished
and so nothing _is_ (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather
it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being.

Following an en dash along with a change in tone, Hegel goes on to elaborate and reflect through a brief inline comment about the development so far.

If one thinks about nothing in terms of intuiting or thinking, that is, as an idea that is being considered by a mind, then immediately a difference emerges between the idea and its thinking. In thinking or intuiting nothing, thought or intuition simply are empty, or it is empty thinking or empty intuiting. However, there is nonetheless a difference here since empty thinking (or empty intuiting) is still thinking, and that in itself is not empty, or at least the emptiness here in question would not be pure and total but one contextualized to a form.

Hegel goes to add a link between the empty thinking (or empty intuiting) that follows the consideration of nothing to be like the empty thinking (or empty intuiting) that follows pure being. This may suggest a way in which the transition from one to the other is made, namely, by a syllogism between being and nothing with “empty thinking” as the middle term. But this goes outside the categories in question and imposes an external assumption of mind. Moreover, it would mean that the transition of being into nothing is not native to being but is some effect of the idea and mind in a particular disposition coming together. The discipline of presuppositionless thinking is long broken and the many assumptions here accrue only more philosophical debt.

Instead, it is better to understand Hegel’s passage here to be an aid to the reader that merely reflects on the logic rather than developing it further. This being that the two categories appear to be equally devoid of any meaning, or map on to similar, if not same, manner of thinking. However, the claim that being is nothing is not on account of empty thinking or any other mental operation no, but purely through its concept.

- Nothing is therefore the same determination
or absence of determination, and thus altogether 
the same as what pure _being_ is.

The final sentence begins with an en dash that may indicate the termination of the inlined comment and a return to the logical development. Further to this is the fact that the passage here has no superfluous material.

It is this on account of the same determination or total lack of determination, which renders nothing to be the same as being.

Note that Hegel at this point does not strictly state that pure nothing is pure being, but only that nothing is the same as being. This may imply that nothing is being or that one has transitioned into the other, as Hegel goes on to indicate in the next category, but the text does not state this identification or transition explicitly.

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge’s more psychological reading of the development of the Logic offers helpful guidance in understanding the otherwise very minimal and obscure notion of nothing. He begins by stressing that the understanding or cognition that thinks this category has only pure being to compare nothing with and that it struggles to find any distinguishing identifier: each category is likewise “simply equal with itself”, “complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content” and “internally undifferentiated or pure”. Yet, some difference must remain, according to Burbidge:

The only difference that could possible remain is that being represents that feature which every thing has, and which enables it to be thought at all, whereas nothing is no thing (Burbidge 1981, 39).

Burbidge states next that in the very moment no thing is thought it makes sense to say that one intuits nothing. He then claims that by virtue of the deployment of this category in our thought and applied to our intuitions, it necessarily “is”, in the same sense a unicorn “is” (Burbidge 1981, 39).

However, when attempting to clarify the matter, the understanding is unable to find any new definitions beyond those found in being and thought moves once again to thinking being.

It is not entirely clear how nothing is supposed “to be” (or be a case that “is”) according to Burbidge without an external reference to thought or intuitions, which are each far more concrete concepts than the simple categories. The attached footnote points to a passage in The Phenomenology from the Miller translation: ”…Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being” (Burbidge 1981, 243).¹ However, this only reinforces the presupposition as the reason why nothing turns into being is because of an external factor, namely, spirit, rather than something native to the category in question.

Houlgate

Stephen Houlgate offers a detailed examination of the development of nothing. In contrast to Parmenides, whose idea of nothing is that of a contrast to being², Houlgate points out that for Hegel, nothing is not to be regarded as a negative or absence of something but “a negative from which being is altogether absent … the sheer and utter nothing, in which there is no trace of being whatsoever” (Houlgate 2022, 132).

Having established the absolute nothingness of nothing, Houlgate next points out that, by virtue of its purity as absolute nothingness, “nothing has an immediacy to it: it is simply and immediately nothing, and nothing else besides” (Houlgate 2022, 132). Thus, this precise immediacy proves nothing to be:

utterly indeterminate being: for simple immediacy, at this stage in speculative logic, is all that being is understood to be (Houlgate 2022, 132).

This sense of immediacy is further stressed through the self-equality of nothing. This simple quality with itself at once means that nothing is immediately itself. Houlgate additionally refers to §88 of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic, where, Hegel writes: “And similarly, but conversely, nothing, as this immediate [term] that is equal to itself, is the same as being” (Hegel 1991, 141/§88). And so Houlgate concludes that, “just as pure being, by virtue of its indeterminacy, vanishes into nothing, so pure nothing, by virtue of its immediacy, vanishes into being” (Houlgate 2022, 143).

Houlgate additionally notes that while Hegel may seem to suggest that pure nothing turns to being because, as Hegel’s text shows, “nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking”, he reminds us that speculative logic does not provide an account of what happens to being and nothing when they are thought by us human beings. The unfolding of these categories, their “fate” as it were, certainly requires human thought, but it is not human thought that determines what these categories are.

The development Hegel traces … is not a product of our thinking; rather, it is made necessary, logically, by being and nothing themselves and is simply made explicit and articulated by thought. In speculative logic, our thought does not determine the development that the categories of being and [nothing]³ undergo, but it is itself determined by the immanent logical development of those categories (Houlgate 2022, 143).

Houlgate thus states that it cannot be due to any operation of the mind, the understanding, intuition or some other cognitive faculty that determines the nature of the categories of being and nothing, but only these categories themselves in the instance they are thought purely through themselves.

Incidentally, this immediacy of nothing serves to show that nothing is being, yet self-equality is a feature of being just as much as it is of nothing. How is it sufficient for nothing to be being in virtue of self-equality, when that is not the case for being to be nothing? Both categories are each self-equal and indeterminate, yet for only one of them does one of these features play a significant role: in the case of nothing it is, as we have seen, immediacy, and for, being it is indeterminacy. This is a question to further investigate when the immediate difference between being and nothing is put to focus.

McTaggart

John McTaggart notes the misunderstanding of equating being and nothing with concrete things, namely, that “on the mistaken view that the Logic asserts the identity of a concrete object which has not that quality—of a white table with a black table” (McTaggart 1910, 15). And that therefore the presence of some quality, such as whiteness, is not equivalent to its absence. But precisely this point is helpful in understanding the relationship of being and nothing. The category nothing is not equivalent to being, at least on the face of it (McTaggart 1910, 15).

McTaggart illustrates this point further by noting that when an idea dialectically moves to its antithesis, it “is never the mere logical contradictory of the first, but is some new idea which stands to the first in the relation of a contrary” (McTaggart 1910, 16). This leads to the key point that the denial of one is not the affirmation of the other.

Negating being does not affirm nothing, but, rather, affirms non-being; but that development cannot occur at this stage in the Logic since it requires an entity whose being can be differentiated with regards to its non-being. Pure being cannot be differentiated vis-à-vis its non-being, much less being a being apart from being as such. This reinforces the understanding that nothing is not to be regarded as the denial of being, but the “assertion of the absence of all determination” (McTaggart 1910, 16).

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2024)

Notes