The Development of Quality

Determinateness and Being

On account of the immediacy with which being and nothing are one in existence, neither oversteps the other; to the extent that existence is existent, to that extent it is non-being; it is determined. Being is not the universal, determinateness not the particular. Determinateness has yet to detach itself from being; nor will it ever detach itself from it, since the now underlying truth is the unity of non-being with being; all further determinations will transpire on this basis. But the connection which determinateness now has with being is one of the immediate unity of the two, so that as yet no differentiation between the two is posited (Hegel 2010, 84-85/21.98).

When existence is regarded in its immediacy, the unity of being and non-being is understood in a simple oneness. However, this simple immediacy is next undermined by the fact that existence is not merely immediate but is specifically existing—phrased somewhat terse by Hegel as “the extent that existence is existent”. What should be understood is that the transition here is instant: going from the element of immediacy (being) to its vanishing (non-being). However, in contrast to pure being, existence as a concept does not cease at its non-being. In fact, if Hegel is right, that is where it begins.

Hegel warns that being is not to be understood as a universal with determinateness as a particular, which could suggest that being is a generic genus of which determinateness is a particular species. This would suggest that there could be being in some general form, which sometimes is counted as determined and sometimes not. No further speculations about the nature of undetermined being is necessary, since that was scrutinized earlier in the Logic and proved to be determinate.

Determinateness, or what a being specifically is, cannot be set apart from being. The implication discovered previously is that being and non-being are logically intertwined, yet it is when the former sublates itself that it becomes evident how being is specifically, namely, what it is not. The case in point here is simply that being is not nothing—in order to conceptualize this, nothing must be connected to being, however, not as sheer nothing but as the point where being ceases or where being is non-being. Said otherwise, nothing as the point at which being ceases (vanishes) is non-being insofar as this is understood to be connected to being as such. As noted, this conceptualization is no longer pure being but existence.

The Birth of Quality: Reality and Negation

Determinateness thus isolated by itself, as existent determinateness, is quality – something totally simple, immediate. Determinateness in general is the more universal which, further determined, can be something quantitative as well. On account of this simplicity, there is nothing further to say about quality as such (Hegel 2010, 85/21.98).

In elaborating this connection of being and non-being, it is made explicit how a new category is at play, indeed, this determinateness is determinateness itself: quality. For now, this determinateness is merely something simple and immediate. However, based on the development thus far, it is implied that it renders how an existent negotiates being and non-being depending on whether the existent is explicitly regarded in the register of being or non-being.

Existence, however, in which nothing and being are equally contained, is itself the measure of the one-sidedness of quality as an only immediate or existent determinateness. Quality is equally to be posited in the determination of nothing, and the result is that the immediate or existent determinateness is posited as distinct, reflected, and the nothing, as thus the determinate element of determinateness, will equally be something reflected, a negation. Quality, in the distinct value of existent, is reality; when affected by a negating, it is negation in general, still a quality but one that counts as a lack and is further determined as limit, restriction (Hegel 2010, 85/21.98-99).

Here Hegel points out that existence is the measure of the one-sidedness of quality. When existence is merely grasped immediately, this one-sidedness is an external reflection. However, in quality the one-sidedness is made inherent in the category itself. Following this, insofar as existence is regarded immediately, it falls under quality in its one-sidedness where determinateness is simply existent. This is positing quality in the determination of being. Equally, quality must be posited in the determination of nothing.

Positing in the determination of nothing brings immediacy to its mediation, or being to its non-being. Insofar as this is done, being is rendered a distinct moment alongside non-being. The determining of these as distinct moments forks quality into two variants: reality and negation.

It is seen how quality further determines existence by emphasizing the moment of non-being, such that determinate being is enriched with what can now be regarded as real and what is regarded as not. For example, the premonition the engineer had about the bridge’s poor durability was real. Or, it is not a bat that is stuck my windshield. These categories are heavily at work on everyday language, but what Hegel uncovers is that these two are especially connected and shows that they follow from the idea of existence itself.

Both are an existence, but in reality, as quality with the accent on being an existent, that it is determinateness and hence also negation is concealed; reality only has, therefore, the value of something positive from which negating, restriction, lack, are excluded. Negation, for its part, taken as mere lack, would be what nothing is; but it is an existence, a quality, only determined with a non-being (Hegel 2010, 85/21.99).

While the development of quality stems from the explication of the connection of being and non-being, its more determined forms reality and negation emphasize their respective ends of the connection. On the one hand, it is being with non-being, and in the other, it is non-being with being. This emphasis actually serves to conceal the other end. For example, determining something as real emphasizes its being and conceals the implied connection to non-being and negation. This matches the prior development at the start where existence is actually only regarded in its reality, that is, immediate being, with its negation concealed.

Negation, however, while emphasizing its respective end of non-being, implies being no less than reality, since nothing less than an existent can be negated. Conversely, an existent is determined as real with an implied reference to its non-being, thus to its negation. Put differently, one cannot determine existence as real without implying the connection to non-being; were one to regard existence immediately, then it is precisely regarded in its immediacy, not in its reality. At any rate, teh relationship between reality and negation appears symmetrical.

Quality thus establishes that existence, owing precisely to its unity of two, must come in two forms: reality is the qualitative determinateness with the accent on being in the connection whereas negation is the qualitative determinateness with the accent on non-being. The previous perfect coinciding of being and non-being in existence as it was first presented is now regarded as one of its forms, namely, in its reality.

Implications of Qualitative Difference

Hegel’s account of quality shows that a characteristic that is also contains a necessary negative component, namely, that it is not. While the logic has not yet developed any context, much less a “thing”, within which such quality could inhere, one can appreciate that any determinate being cannot be qualified as anything less than the singular difference of reality and negation; each accenting a distinctive feature of determinacy. If Hegel is right, there is no such thing as a being that only contains pure reality, for anything that is real implies negation, and negation, in turn, is no mere void or lack of reality but is itself a real difference.

Further Commentary

Burbidge

John Burbidge writes that quality is equally indeterminate as the indefinite sense of “a being” (existence), however it is not identical with it because it is, “the result of a one-sided concern with the specific determination involved in a being. As determination it negates the pure indeterminacy of being. Despite the fact that it defines the reality of a being, then, it also introduces a certain restriction—a certain negativity” (Burbidge 1981, 47).

When the understanding thinks through the terms hereby isolated, Burbidge continues, it notices that a being is both the same as, and yet different from, its quality. “While quality distinguishes a being from being it is not in fact different from that indeterminate characteristic suggested in the indefinite article” (Burbidge 1981, 47).

Burbidge’s account appears to take its cue from the external reflection where existence is understood as a form that contains various moments. This view is amenable to the idea that quality is something that inheres in a thing, or in Burbidge’s case, “a being”. But this account renders quality nearly a tautology, which unto itself is a sophisticated conceptual movement not disclosed by the logic, and it fails to appreciate the important developments of reality and negation as different from of the same qualitative difference.

Houlgate

Stephen Houlgate writes that Dasein (existence) is not to be thought of as a “subject” that “has” qualities, on the contrary, he writes, “Dasein is one with – indeed, identical to – quality itself” (Houlgate 2022, 161). Quality makes being determinate and being is determinate insofar as it is qualitative. He notes that it is tempting to think of quality as a property that belongs to something; however—and this is part of what makes speculative logic challenging—Hegel’s account conceives of quality without that notion that it belongs to “something”. Instead, quality is regarded entirely on its own as a consequence of how speculative presuppositionless logic proceeds, namely, from indeterminate being (through nothing and becoming) to determinate existence.

Houlgate poses the question why the one-sidedness of being is valid in quality but not in existence as such? The reason is that non-being is in existence merely implicitly whereas it is rendered explicitly in quality since the latter is a further form of determinacy or non-being.

The moment of non-being is thus explicitly to the fore in quality in a way it is not in Dasein by itself. Yet quality is determinacy, or non-being, “in the form of being” (als seiende) (Hegel 2010, 84/21.98). There is thus an explicit tension in it that is absent from Dasein as it is first conceived: quality is non-being, but in the form of being rather than non-being itself. As such, quality is non-being that fails to do justice to its own negative character. Accordingly, the judgement that it is “one-sided” is not merely an external reflection, but is grounded in its explicit logical structure. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not just Dasein in general, but quality itself, that contains the criterion for the one-sidedness of quality (Houlgate 2022, 162).

This observation shows that, firstly, quality fails to be fully non-being (or that non-being fails to be fully itself) since it is non-being in the form of being. Roughly speaking, it is a negative element in a positive one. Secondly, the one-sidedness stems from exactly this split within quality; its inability to cohere fully with its negative characters has left a distance or rift, so to speak, between its being and determinateness, or its presentation and its meaning. One might say that quality not only is the birth of determinateness but also of one-sidedness: the notion that something is being omitted, indeed, the negative itself within the negative.¹ Thirdly, then, it becomes clear that a tension exists in quality that was not apparent in existence as such.

Houlgate traces carefully the development of negation and reality. First, once quality is understood to be not only non-being in the form of being but being in the form of non-being, it becomes fully and explicitly negative: negation. He stresses that the category of negation arises at this point in the logical development because thought simply renders explicit what is implicit in the conception of quality itself. “The derivation of negation is thus wholly immanent in Hegel’s distinctive sense” (Houlgate 2022, 162).

Second, once it is then understood that quality differentiates itself from simple, immediate quality—which is determinacy in the form of being (akin to existence)—in the negative element of negation. This simple and immediate quality takes on an affirmative quality in contrast to the negative quality. This one-sided affirmative quality is named reality.

Reality and negation are not merely different moments of quality. The moments of quality are logically non-being and being, which both reality and negation are. However, what sets them apart is the different stress or accent (Akzent). They are both quality but with the emphasis put more on either immediate being or mediated non-being.

For many philosophers, writes Houlgate, all qualities are real while negation is the absence of a quality. In Hegel, however, negation is likewise a quality: negation is the quality of not being so and so. “Determinate being contains non-being and is thus identical with quality; quality in turn, as non-being in the form of being, cannot just be affirmative but must also be negative; it must, therefore, take the twin forms of reality and negation” (Houlgate 2022, 163). Negation therefore is just as much part of existence (determinate being) as reality, since it is seen that existence is not simply being but also non-being.

But does this account of quality and negation not lead to the idea that everything has an infinite number of quality, each of which is not being another thing? Houlgate answers that this cannot be the case because there are, at this stage of the logic, no “things” in relation to other “things”, much less an infinity of them. “All Hegel has demonstrated so far is the general proposition that quality is both negative and affirmative, and that, accordingly, negation belongs to determinate being as much as reality does” (Houlgate 2022, 163). Houlgate’s conclusion is that all that is the case right now is existence and its twin forms of reality and negation; it has not been shown how existents would relate vis-à-vis one another, much less the idea of an existent as something self-contained.

As Nietzsche said of Wagner, Houlgate writes, “Hegel is a great ‘miniaturist’” (Houlgate 2022, 165). He is interested in the fine—and significant—details. Therefore, it is important to clearly distinguish the terms Hegel uses and their difference.

• Determinacy (Bestimmtheit) is simple non-being (Nichtsein).
• Quality (being more than determinacy), is determinacy in the form of being.
• Negation (Negation) is then negative quality, or non-being in the form of being; it is quality with the accent on the “non-”.
• Negative (Verneinung) is “non-” itself or the negative element.

Negation and the negative are different terms, Houlgate points out, since the latter is merely a moment of the former. The negative, Houlgate writes, “is not non-being itself, but the ‘non-’ in non-being” (Houlgate 2022, 165). In contrast to nothing, Houlgate continues, the negative is not the not by itself but specifically the “not-” or “non-” that is a moment of non-being (Houlgate 2022, 165).

Next, Houlgate accounts for Hegel’s particular interest in different kinds of difference.

The difference between negation and reality is determinate because, in their stability, one of them – negation – is explicitly negative and so is explicitly not the other; this negative quality thus sets itself over against the other – affirmative – quality and thereby differentiates the latter from itself (Houlgate 2022, 166).

In contrast to being and nothing, where the difference is immediate, unstable and vanishing, the difference of negation and reality is more stable and determined; each category can co-exist side by side. Unlike the difference between existence and quality, however, the difference between realityand negation is one where one element is explicitly not the other. This, Houlgate points out, means that reality and negation are not only two forms of determinate being (quality), but that their difference between them is itself determinate. “The reason why is that each is a form of quality, but it cannot be quality all by itself … Accordingly, reality as determinate must contain negation” (Houlgate 2022, 166).

Finally, while reality and negation do not vanish into one another and retain a stable and determinate difference, each category—while equally being a form of quality—nonetheless conceals the other in its being. “Reality and negation are thus not just contrasting categories, but each conceals the other in itself” (Houlgate 2022, 167). Accordingly, Houlgate claims, the relation between these should be represented as follows:

reality (negation) / negation (reality)

Reality and negation are two sides of one single difference, each which, as quality contains but conceals the other.

McTaggart

John McTaggart warns not to be misled of the ordinary notion of a quality that inheres in a thing. There are no things and their characteristics to determine at this stage in the logic. “The Qualities of which Hegel speaks here are simply the immediate differentiations of Being Determinate. They do not inhere in anything more substantial than themselves” (McTaggart 1910, 22).

However, McTaggart then proceeds to consider qualities as an aggregate, but that may be too advanced at this stage of the logic as well. It is not until the section on mechanism that the idea of an aggregate and its requisite mechanical indifference is made explicit. He further considers such plurality to be the transition into something, which by the same token is incorrect. First, there is not a plurality of qualities being considered (one may freely consider quality in a plural sense but this does nothing to advance the logic), and, second, it is the sublation of reality and negation that engenders the category something.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2024)

Notes