THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION IS “THE INNERMOST SOURCE OF LIVING AND SPIRITUAL SELF-MOVEMENT … THE DIALECTICAL SOUL WHICH EVERYTHING TRUE POSSESSES… [AND WHICH] HOLDS EVERYTHING WITHIN ITSELF” (1,574 words)
I’ll present here a breakdown of the main passages of the Science of Logic in which Hegel discusses the "negation of the negation," commenting briefly on Hegel’s relation to Spinoza at the end. The first passage is in his discussion of “Something” in the “Existence” [Dasein] chapter of the “Determinateness (Quality)” section of the Logic's Doctrine of Being. And the second passage is in his discussion of “method” at the very end of the Science of Logic, in the “Absolute Idea.” Section 2 of this latter discussion, beginning at GW 12:241 (the eighth paragraph of the “Absolute Idea”) and continuing through GW 12:247 (par. 15) contains an extended discussion of “the dialectical moment” in which “the initial universal determines itself as the other of itself” (12:242, par. 9). But this “other of itself” was already the topic of the initial section of “Finitude,” following the discussion of “Something,” at the beginning of the Logic (GW 21:106, Science of Logic I.1.ch.2, Existence [Dasein], par. 30), and there it was associated with the “negation of the negation,” just as it will be again in the culminating discussion of “method.”
Hegel's first example, in the Logic, of what amounts to “determining itself as the other of itself,” was Becoming, which he described as “the unseparatedness of being and nothing, not the unity which abstracts from being and nothing” (GW 21:92, “The moments of becoming”). Being and nothing, we want to say, are initially other than each other; but in Becoming they are, as Hegel says, “unseparated,” because Becoming is conceivable only as a transition from one of them to the other.
Then we have “Dasein” which “as it follows upon Becoming ... is in general being with a non-being, so that this non-being is taken up into simple unity with being” (GW 21:97; Science of Logic I.1.ch. 2, “Dasein,” par. 4). This unity, Hegel says in passing, is “determinateness.” Why do Dasein and “determinateness” necessarily involve non-being as well as being? I find the clearest answer to this question further on, when in his discussion of the “Something” Hegel tells us that Dasein “preserves itself in its non-being; not, however, as being in general but being with reference to itself against its reference to the other…. Such a being is being-in-itself.” (GW 21:107; par. 34; emphasis added) And later he tells us that “What is truly in-itself…—of this, the Logic is the exposition” (GW 12:109, par. 40). Hegel is saying that his whole investigation here and later is about how something can be “in itself” rather than merely through its relations to others, the latter relations being what he entitles “being-for-others” (par. 35). So Dasein and “determinateness” involve “non-being” insofar as they involve being in reference to others, rather than being simply “in itself.” Dasein and the Something involve “non-being” and what is “other” than themselves insofar as they are what they are through their relations to others, and not simply through themselves.
Now, Hegel introduces “negation” as another way of stating this relation to others. Hegel reformulates Dasein’s combination of being with non-being as the combination of “reality” with “negation” (GW 21:98, par. 9). “Reality” is what he’ll later call “being-in-itself,” and “negation” is the dependence on others that he’ll later call “being-for-others.” (So here, nota bene, it’s clear that what Hegel means by “negation” has nothing to do with what we call “negation,” in symbolic logic.) Dasein has “being” or “reality” insofar as it is “in itself,” and it has “non-being” insofar as it is “for others.”
So if we follow Hegel through these early developments, we see how “otherness” is an essential feature of these things (becoming, Dasein, reality) that at first glance appear simple. In each case, as Hegel puts it in the “method” discussion, the “initial universal determines itself as [in part] the other of itself” (as non-being, or as negation).
Now our quarry, the “negation of the negation,” is introduced in the section on "Something," which Hegel describes as the result of “sublating the distinction” between reality and negation (GW 21:102-103; pars. 20 and 21). The distinction between reality and negation must be, not retracted (par. 21), but gone beyond (“sublation” preserves while going beyond). Hegel describes this as a “negation of negation” (par. 22) because it “negates” the initial “negation” that was part of the duo of reality and negation. It “negates” this initial negation by presenting “something” as the “simplicity of Dasein ... simple existent self-reference” (pars. 21 and 22), rather than as depending on its relations to others to make it what it is. This “simple existent self-reference” embodies reality and negation, and thus relations to others, but at the same time it goes beyond them or sublates them, and thus on its new level, there is no reference to others. (Except of course in the later development of finitude, the infinite, quantity, and so forth, which will have to be sublated in their turn. But for now, there is no reference to others.)
So the “negation of the negation” that just generated the Something is important because it’s the only way to arrive at “being-in-itself”—at the kind of being that doesn’t depend upon its relation to others to make it what it is. As Hegel says, we can’t just “retract” the duality of reality and negation, because that duality followed necessarily from the entire discussion of being, nothing, becoming, and Dasein. So we have to go beyond that duality—we have to sublate it—and this is what the “negation of the negation” is meant to do. It will set up a reality that contrasts with the duality of reality and (primary) “negation.” Hegel describes this contrast as (again) a “negation,” because it defines what it produces by a reference to something that’s other than it (namely, the primary negation). But because this definition proceeds by way of “sublation,” preserving the initial duality within itself rather than simply retracting it, Hegel calls it a second negation, a negation of the negation, rather than merely another negation alongside the primary one.
Now in his discussion of “method,” Hegel describes the negation of the negation primarily as a way of dealing with the “contradiction” that emerges when, as I quoted above, “the initial universal determines itself from within itself as the other of itself” (12:242, par. 9 of “The Absolute Idea”). This is, of course, the famous principle of Hegelian “dialectics,” that (as he puts it here) “To hold fast to the positive in its negative, to the content of the presupposition in its result, this is the most important factor in rational cognition” (GW 12:245, par. 12). To do this, we must deal with and go beyond the contradiction, the conflict-full dualism, that we’re confronted with, rather than dismissing it as merely “null” (nichtig; GW 12:243, par. 10). That is, we must preserve what is true in the contradiction, the “positive in its negative,” rather than trying to erase the blackboard and start over from scratch.
That Dasein can be itself only by being the other of itself, is the “negation” or “contradiction” that the Something went beyond by negating or sublating it, and here Hegel announces that “the negativity [that is, the negation of the negation] just considered constitutes the turning point of the movement of the concept. It is the simple point of the negative self-reference, the innermost source of all activity, of living and spiritual self-movement; it is the dialectical soul which everything true possesses and through which alone it is true…. [It is] the innermost, objective moment of the life of spirit by virtue of which there is a subject, person, free being." (GW12:246; 14th and 15th paragraphs) …“The richest is therefore the most concrete and the most subjective, and that which retreats to the simplest depth is the mightiest and most all-encompassing. The highest and most intense point is the pure personality that, solely by virtue of the absolute dialectic which is its nature, equally embraces and holds everything within itself, for it makes itself into the supremely free….” (GW 12:251, par. 24) This pure personality “holds everything within itself” because it is a product of sublation or negation of negation, which preserves what it goes beyond. It is supremely free (and by the same token the “richest” and the “mightiest”) precisely because it holds everything within itself, and thus has nothing outside it to impose any external determination upon it.
It is not, however, a Spinozist “pantheistic” deus sive natura (“God or nature”), because it has “personality” and freedom which go beyond or sublate impersonal, unfree nature. This going beyond or sublation is made possible by Hegel’s identification of “otherness” or “contradiction” in being and nature. In this way Hegel preserves a true transcendence (a true going beyond), which Spinoza appears to lack. As Hegel says in his Doctrine of Essence, “Spinoza stops short at negation as determinateness or quality; he does not advance to the cognition of it as absolute, that is, self-negating negation; therefore his substance does not contain the absolute form, and the cognition of it is not a cognition from within” (GW 11:376; C. The Mode of the Absolute, Remark). (On “absolute form,” see GW 12:238, “Absolute Idea” par. 3.)
I’ll present here a breakdown of the main passages of the Science of Logic in which Hegel discusses the "negation of the negation," commenting briefly on Hegel’s relation to Spinoza at the end. The first passage is in his discussion of “Something” in the “Existence” [Dasein] chapter of the “Determinateness (Quality)” section of the Logic's Doctrine of Being. And the second passage is in his discussion of “method” at the very end of the Science of Logic, in the “Absolute Idea.” Section 2 of this latter discussion, beginning at GW 12:241 (the eighth paragraph of the “Absolute Idea”) and continuing through GW 12:247 (par. 15) contains an extended discussion of “the dialectical moment” in which “the initial universal determines itself as the other of itself” (12:242, par. 9). But this “other of itself” was already the topic of the initial section of “Finitude,” following the discussion of “Something,” at the beginning of the Logic (GW 21:106, Science of Logic I.1.ch.2, Existence [Dasein], par. 30), and there it was associated with the “negation of the negation,” just as it will be again in the culminating discussion of “method.”
Hegel's first example, in the Logic, of what amounts to “determining itself as the other of itself,” was Becoming, which he described as “the unseparatedness of being and nothing, not the unity which abstracts from being and nothing” (GW 21:92, “The moments of becoming”). Being and nothing, we want to say, are initially other than each other; but in Becoming they are, as Hegel says, “unseparated,” because Becoming is conceivable only as a transition from one of them to the other.
Then we have “Dasein” which “as it follows upon Becoming ... is in general being with a non-being, so that this non-being is taken up into simple unity with being” (GW 21:97; Science of Logic I.1.ch. 2, “Dasein,” par. 4). This unity, Hegel says in passing, is “determinateness.” Why do Dasein and “determinateness” necessarily involve non-being as well as being? I find the clearest answer to this question further on, when in his discussion of the “Something” Hegel tells us that Dasein “preserves itself in its non-being; not, however, as being in general but being with reference to itself against its reference to the other…. Such a being is being-in-itself.” (GW 21:107; par. 34; emphasis added) And later he tells us that “What is truly in-itself…—of this, the Logic is the exposition” (GW 12:109, par. 40). Hegel is saying that his whole investigation here and later is about how something can be “in itself” rather than merely through its relations to others, the latter relations being what he entitles “being-for-others” (par. 35). So Dasein and “determinateness” involve “non-being” insofar as they involve being in reference to others, rather than being simply “in itself.” Dasein and the Something involve “non-being” and what is “other” than themselves insofar as they are what they are through their relations to others, and not simply through themselves.
Now, Hegel introduces “negation” as another way of stating this relation to others. Hegel reformulates Dasein’s combination of being with non-being as the combination of “reality” with “negation” (GW 21:98, par. 9). “Reality” is what he’ll later call “being-in-itself,” and “negation” is the dependence on others that he’ll later call “being-for-others.” (So here, nota bene, it’s clear that what Hegel means by “negation” has nothing to do with what we call “negation,” in symbolic logic.) Dasein has “being” or “reality” insofar as it is “in itself,” and it has “non-being” insofar as it is “for others.”
So if we follow Hegel through these early developments, we see how “otherness” is an essential feature of these things (becoming, Dasein, reality) that at first glance appear simple. In each case, as Hegel puts it in the “method” discussion, the “initial universal determines itself as [in part] the other of itself” (as non-being, or as negation).
Now our quarry, the “negation of the negation,” is introduced in the section on "Something," which Hegel describes as the result of “sublating the distinction” between reality and negation (GW 21:102-103; pars. 20 and 21). The distinction between reality and negation must be, not retracted (par. 21), but gone beyond (“sublation” preserves while going beyond). Hegel describes this as a “negation of negation” (par. 22) because it “negates” the initial “negation” that was part of the duo of reality and negation. It “negates” this initial negation by presenting “something” as the “simplicity of Dasein ... simple existent self-reference” (pars. 21 and 22), rather than as depending on its relations to others to make it what it is. This “simple existent self-reference” embodies reality and negation, and thus relations to others, but at the same time it goes beyond them or sublates them, and thus on its new level, there is no reference to others. (Except of course in the later development of finitude, the infinite, quantity, and so forth, which will have to be sublated in their turn. But for now, there is no reference to others.)
So the “negation of the negation” that just generated the Something is important because it’s the only way to arrive at “being-in-itself”—at the kind of being that doesn’t depend upon its relation to others to make it what it is. As Hegel says, we can’t just “retract” the duality of reality and negation, because that duality followed necessarily from the entire discussion of being, nothing, becoming, and Dasein. So we have to go beyond that duality—we have to sublate it—and this is what the “negation of the negation” is meant to do. It will set up a reality that contrasts with the duality of reality and (primary) “negation.” Hegel describes this contrast as (again) a “negation,” because it defines what it produces by a reference to something that’s other than it (namely, the primary negation). But because this definition proceeds by way of “sublation,” preserving the initial duality within itself rather than simply retracting it, Hegel calls it a second negation, a negation of the negation, rather than merely another negation alongside the primary one.
Now in his discussion of “method,” Hegel describes the negation of the negation primarily as a way of dealing with the “contradiction” that emerges when, as I quoted above, “the initial universal determines itself from within itself as the other of itself” (12:242, par. 9 of “The Absolute Idea”). This is, of course, the famous principle of Hegelian “dialectics,” that (as he puts it here) “To hold fast to the positive in its negative, to the content of the presupposition in its result, this is the most important factor in rational cognition” (GW 12:245, par. 12). To do this, we must deal with and go beyond the contradiction, the conflict-full dualism, that we’re confronted with, rather than dismissing it as merely “null” (nichtig; GW 12:243, par. 10). That is, we must preserve what is true in the contradiction, the “positive in its negative,” rather than trying to erase the blackboard and start over from scratch.
That Dasein can be itself only by being the other of itself, is the “negation” or “contradiction” that the Something went beyond by negating or sublating it, and here Hegel announces that “the negativity [that is, the negation of the negation] just considered constitutes the turning point of the movement of the concept. It is the simple point of the negative self-reference, the innermost source of all activity, of living and spiritual self-movement; it is the dialectical soul which everything true possesses and through which alone it is true…. [It is] the innermost, objective moment of the life of spirit by virtue of which there is a subject, person, free being." (GW12:246; 14th and 15th paragraphs) …“The richest is therefore the most concrete and the most subjective, and that which retreats to the simplest depth is the mightiest and most all-encompassing. The highest and most intense point is the pure personality that, solely by virtue of the absolute dialectic which is its nature, equally embraces and holds everything within itself, for it makes itself into the supremely free….” (GW 12:251, par. 24) This pure personality “holds everything within itself” because it is a product of sublation or negation of negation, which preserves what it goes beyond. It is supremely free (and by the same token the “richest” and the “mightiest”) precisely because it holds everything within itself, and thus has nothing outside it to impose any external determination upon it.
It is not, however, a Spinozist “pantheistic” deus sive natura (“God or nature”), because it has “personality” and freedom which go beyond or sublate impersonal, unfree nature. This going beyond or sublation is made possible by Hegel’s identification of “otherness” or “contradiction” in being and nature. In this way Hegel preserves a true transcendence (a true going beyond), which Spinoza appears to lack. As Hegel says in his Doctrine of Essence, “Spinoza stops short at negation as determinateness or quality; he does not advance to the cognition of it as absolute, that is, self-negating negation; therefore his substance does not contain the absolute form, and the cognition of it is not a cognition from within” (GW 11:376; C. The Mode of the Absolute, Remark). (On “absolute form,” see GW 12:238, “Absolute Idea” par. 3.)
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