The Difference Between Being and Nothing

Following the early logical development of Hegel’s Science of Logic, pure being and pure nothing are understood to be the same. Each proves to be other yet, equally, both are the same such that they cannot be properly distinguished. However, Hegel insists that they are “absolutely distinct” (Hegel 2010, 60/21.70). What is the sense of this distinction?

Typically, one would determine a distinction by developing some quality, property or some other form of being through which the two are differentiated. However, at the earliest stages of the Logic, determinacy itself has not been developed, such that determinacy cannot justifiably be employed to distinguish the two categories.

If being and nothing had any determinateness differentiating them, then, as we said, they would be determinate being and determinate nothing, not the pure being and the pure nothing which they still are at this point (Hegel 2010, 68/21.79).

One cannot then make use of some distinguishing factor for an idea that is omnipresent; there is no conceptual space, as it were, where one might draw a border without evoking that space again.

Moreover, determining something that would distinguish being from nothing also annuls the purity of these terms. If some determinacy were to obtain for either, then they are no longer understood in their purity and the initial meaning of these categories would be lost as well as invalidating their early development. What difference could possibly remain then?

The Immediate Difference Between Pure Being and Pure Nothing

John McTaggart notes that there is more to being and nothing than their identity. He puts it that each term “originally meant” different things, namely, by being it was intended to a “pure positive—reality without unreality”, and by nothing, conversely, was intended a “pure negative—unreality without reality”. Whilst the two terms have been discoverd to be equivalent, a contradiction has nonetheless arisen. The original meaning has not been discarded: “For it is that same characteristic which determines their equivalence” (McTaggart 1910, 16-17).

Stephen Houlgate points out that the difference between being and nothing lies in intention [Im Meinen]: “There is no clear, determinate difference between the two, but they are nonetheless meant to be different” (Houlgate 2022, 144). He adds that this is not a difference we, as human beings, draw, but belongs to being and nothing themselves. They are themselves absolutely distinct.

Pure being does not have any contrast with nothing built into it, but it is pure and simple being without further determination. As such, it is the utter opposite of nothing: it is pure being with no trace of the negative whatsoever. Similarly, nothing has no contrast with being built into it – and so is not to be understood as “non-being” – but it is sheer and utter nothing. As such, however, it is the complete absence of being (Houlgate 2022, 144).

Notice how each category immediately means something unique to itself yet is then regarded upon reflection in relation to its opposite. But this relation hardly merits the name of a relation since neither category has built into it any form of contrast, whether explicitly or implicitly. Each category simply is.

This simplicity coupled with immediacy sets the difference between pure being and nothing. “Being and nothing are immediately different because each is purely and immediately itself and thereby completely excludes the other … each in being itself in fact shuts out the other” (Houlgate 2022, 144). This signals that there is in pure being nothing but pure being, or, put differently, there is in the thought of pure being no conceptual space for anything else—not even nothing.

Likewise, as Houlgate goes on to point out, this difference is unsustainable and disappears the moment it is thought. It is merely an immediate difference and so nothing persists beyond this immediacy. Indeed, being and nothing vanish into each other such that the immediate difference between them is undermined: each is just as indeterminate as the other, and this indeterminacy applies back to the difference as well. “This vanishing in turn renders explicit the fact that the immediate difference between being and nothing is an utterly indeterminate one” (Houlgate 2022, 145).

The immediate difference between being and nothing turns out to be a self-sublating or self-undermining one. being and nothing are immediately different, but this difference fails to persist beyond the vanishing of being and nothing. Each category differs, therefore, “in such a way that neither is definitely – and so stably – itself but each vanishes into its opposite” (Houlgate 2022, 145).

This has a further implication regarding the nature of purely immediate difference, namely, that what is so purely immediately different is so only in a contradictory and utterly unstable manner. Hegel’s dialectic reveals that while being is distinct from nothing, it is also utterly indistinguishable from it.

However, as Houlgate points out, the immediate difference between being and nothing is not simply eliminated but is restored in its very disappearance. The logic for this idea is the following:

1. As being and nothing prove to be (and vanish into) each other, such that the difference between them disappears, they prove to be the same indeterminacy. This can be seen as the moment of uniformity.
2. Yet, being and nothing prove to be the same by vanishing into each other, in and so doing remain other than one another. The vanishing of each occurs precisely through remaining immediately different from the other: “each vanished by proving to be the other in which it is completely absent” (Houlgate 2022, 145). This, by contrast, can be viewed as the moment of distinction.
3. These two moments occur at once, for each category in question proves to be the other in being immediately different to the other that it vanishes into as well as being the same as the other. The difficulty in grasping this lies in trying to separate the two moments from each other and understand them sequentially, but Houlgate’s point is that these must occur in the same movement.
4. Thus, in annihilating itself, the immediate difference between being and nothing has restored itself.
5. Finally, the immediate difference between being and nothing is thus doubly contradictory. Firstly, it is a difference that is not a difference, and, secondly, it is one that, in disappearing, restores itself.¹

Houlgate uses the term “preserve” alongside “restore” in his exposition of this argument. However, the term “preserve” suggests that the singularly same immediate difference between being and nothing is carried through its disappearance. But there is no distinguishing factor either for or against this; the difference is exactly immediate and so nothing determinate can be made out about it that would definitively show that it is one or the other, namely, that it is this immediate difference between being and nothing or the same type of immediate difference between being and nothing (as being the instance of a class). For all intents and purposes, this matter may be inconsequential but it is not unambiguous.

The Dynamism of Being

If the result that being and nothing are the same seems inherently startling or paradoxical, there is not much to be done about it. We should be amazed rather at this amazement that appears so refreshing in philosophy… (Hegel 2010, 61/21.71).

The opening of the Science of Logic quickly violates the principle of non-contradiction or the law of identity. The form of thinking involved in Hegel’s logic disrupts that kind which clings on to clear and definite distinctions between being and nothing, such as that found in Parmenides which resists the thought that they could ever be the same (Houlgate 2022, 146). The idea that a thing could only ever be the thing that it is, or whose being is identical to itself, is disproven at the very outset of the Logic, for at the very least being (and nothing) is unable to simply be – it vanishes into nothing.

As Houlgate describes it, there is nothing mysterious or irrational about the dialectical change taking place in being and nothing into each other. “That dialectical conversion is logically necessary: being and nothing pass into one another for the reasons we have seen, and the immediate difference between them thereby proves to be, of necessity, an indeterminate, unstable difference” (Houlgate 2022, 146). Hegel therefore does not mean to flout the traditional principles of reasoning or to undermine rational argument, he is simply revealing the “dynamism in being that he takes to become evident when one focuses on being in its purity and immediacy without uncritically assumed preconceptions” (Houlgate 2022, 146). When being is considered without presuppositions, the argument of the Logic is unassailable: pure being is utterly incapable to simply be.

Parallel Categories, Divergent Conceptions (Niklas)

When considering the respective transitions of being and nothing, note that the text concerning the development of these categories is slightly divergent.. The development of being ends with it turning out to be nothing, whereas the development of nothing ends with it turning out to be the same as being.

The former case uses is whereas the latter case uses same. The first signifies a more immediate transition whereas the latter seems to convey the sense of some essence, an “area” where being and nothing are conjoined. If the two categories were to be differentiated in terms of immediacy and mediation, nothing appears to fall on the side of mediation. If this notion of sameness indeed belongs to nothing inasmuch as it is the thought that reveals the sameness of the two, then it could be thought of as the “gathering” or aggregating category whilst being signals “dispersal” or diremption.

This has the implication that not only does being and nothing immediately mean something different, but that there is a different conceptual movement at work in each of them. One breaks off into new ground whereas the other coalesces a return to what was.

Alternatively, this element of sameness is conjoined with the intention of the immediate difference between being and nothing, and that that intention is the presence of becoming (Hegel 2010, 68/21.79), such that this is not a peculiar property of being or nothing but is the alpha of the emergent category.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2024)

Notes