On Hegel's 'Science of Logic' : A Realm of Shadows - part twenty one.

'Echo'

by Larin-Ky?sti ?aka Kart Gustaf Larson, (1873 - 1948)

Echo nymph most beauteous,

Wanders in the evening

Through meadow and moor,

Lamenting her sorrows alone.

Her beloved never came,

Although he pledged he would

Wed the lovely sweet lady.

Earlier they would amble together

Across meadow and moor

Like turtle-doves they cooed

In the heat of a summer day

In the cool of a moonlit night.

Then her beloved left with his fine words,

He left her alone with her pining heart.

The fair lady searches the heath

For her beloved;

She calls, she listens,

She weeps and shouts

Until she has no voice left

And grows rigid and cold,

Haltingly and fearful,

Through shadowy forests.

Waking up in the morning,

An idea runs through her mind:

Deluding travellers into becoming lost

Through mummery and ridicule,

As prior her groom led her astray

Grooming with his big words,

With his blustery fabrications.

'Kaiutar'

Kaiutar, korea neito

Astui illalla ahoa,

Kaihoissansa kankahalla,

Huusi yksin huoliansa.

Tullut ei suloinen sulho,

Vaikka vannoi valallansa

Kihlaavansa kaunokaisen.

Ennen astuivat ahoa

Kankahalla kuherrellen

Kilvan kyyhkyjen kisoissa

Kes?p?iv?n paistaessa,

Illan kuun kumottaessa.

Meni sulho sanoinensa

Impi j?i syd?minens?.

Etsii impi ihanainen

Kullaistansa kankahalta,

Huhuilevi i kuuntelevi,

Kirkuvi kimahutellen

??nen pienoisen pilalle,

J?hmettyvi, j?yk?styvi,

Kaatuissansa kauhistuvi

Mustan mets?n pimeytt?.

Aamulla her?tty?ns?

Kulkee kuje mieless?ns?,

Eksytt?vi er?miehen

Matkien ja mairitellen,

Niin kuin ennen eksytteli,

Sulho suurilla sanoilla,

Tuulen turhilla taruilla.

And so onto the 'Doctrine of Essence in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich?Hegel's, (1770 - 1831), 'Science of Logic' beginning with 'Essence as Reflection Within Itself: Illusory Being'. What is the essence of a thing? To common sense, essence means some affirmative quality to be distinguished from equally affirmative inessential qualities. This view is completely rejected by Hegel, for whom essence was no affirmative, discoverable quality of a thing. For Hegel, essence is simply not appearance - not the things immediate Being. It has no more content than that. From Hegel's definition, it is evident that when Essence manifests what it is, it shows that it is not. Essence erases itself. Oddly, when Essence erases itself, it actualizes and preserves itself and becomes what it ought to be. For this reason, Herbert Marcuse, (1898 – 1979),?calls the process intro-reflection. That is, what is reflected out is also reflected within.

This comprises the entirety of Hegel's theory of Essence. The hardest part of Essence is to see how very simple it is. This is why, in Hegel's opinion, Essence is the most difficult branch of Logic.

'As it emerges from being, this identity appears at first to be burdened only with the determinations of being, and related to being as to something external. When being is taken separately from essence in this way, it is called the 'inessential'. But essence is being-within-self, it is essential only insofar as it has the negative of itself, [i. e., ] the relation-to-another, or mediation, within itself. It has the inessential, therefore, as its own shine within itself. But there is a distinguishing contained in the shining or mediation, and what is distinct does itself acquire the form of identity, in its distinction from the identity from which it emerges, and in which it is not or lies [only] as semblance. Hence, what is distinct is itself in the mode of self-relating immediacy or of being. And for this reason the sphere of Essence becomes a still imperfect connection of immediacy and mediation. Everything is posited in it in such a way that it relates itself to itself, while at the same time [the movement] has already gone beyond it. [It is posited] as a being of reflection, a being within which an other shines and which shines within an other.-Hence, the sphere of Essence is also the sphere of posited contradiction, whereas, in the sphere of Being, contradiction is only implicit'.

'Because the One Concept is what is substantial in everything, the same determinations occur in the development of Essence as in the development of being-but they occur in reflected form. Instead of being and nothing, the forms of the positive and negative present themselves; initially the positive corresponds, as identity, to the being that lacks antithesis, while the negative (shining within itself) develops as distinction. Then, becoming presents itself in the same way as the very ground of being- there, which, as reflected upon the ground, is existence, and so on.-This part of the Logic, which is the most difficult one, contains most notably the categories of metaphysics and of the sciences generally;-it contains them as products of the reflecting understanding, which both assumes the distinctions as independent and at the same time posits their relationality as well . But it only ties the two assumptions together-and it links the two of them only in contiguity or succession, by means of an 'also'; it does not bring these thoughts together; it does not unite them into the Concept'.

- 'Encyclopedia Logic.

'And his treatment of it in the Greater Logic certainly makes it so', quips Errol?Eustace?Harris,?(1908 – 2009).

Essence stands at the empty center of the Logic. In the first third, immediate being revealed itself to be semblance -not the truth. On its own logic, Being imploded upon itself. It showed itself to be finite. Essence is the residue left over after being erases itself. Now it is time to look beyond what merely is to see what deeper truth lurks behind. And what is the deep truth behind the world that merely appears to be present? The big secret is - there's nothing behind the veil at all! With Hegel, it is appearances all the way down. 'Reality is structure (form) all the way down', said Ermanno Bencivenga. 'The only secret... is that there is no secret', said Jean Hyppolite,?(1907-1968). 'Hegelian philosophy rejects all transcendence. It is the attempt at a rigorous philosophy that could claim to remain within the immanent, and not to leave it. There is no other world, no thing in itself, no transcendence, and yet finite human thought is not condemned to remain a prisoner of its finitude. It surmounts itself, and what it reveals or manifests is being itself'. And 'there are no 'essences' beyond or behind the appearances, at least none that can do any cognitive work. There are just the appearances', said Robert?B.?Pippin, (1948 - ).

'Four Nymphs?in a?Wood', Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pe?a,?(1807–1876)

Knowledge of Essence is knowledge of what is not. Yet what is not cannot be directly perceived. Knowledge of what is not can only be gained by watching what is disappear. Yet not everything has disappeared. Knowledge of Essence therefore cannot be induced but must be inferred by reflection on the nature of things. Knowledge of the negative is purchased at the expense of immediate intuition - the hallmark of the world of Being. From now on, knowledge is a mediated knowing.

'The truth of being is essence. Being is the immediate. Since the goal of knowledge is the truth, what being is in and for itself, knowledge does not stop at the immediate and its determinations, but penetrates beyond it on the presupposition that behind this being there still is something other than being itself, and that this background constitutes the truth of being. This cognition is a mediated knowledge, for it is not to be found with and in essence immediately, but starts off from an other, from being, and has a prior way to make, the way that leads over and beyond being or that rather penetrates into it. Only inasmuch as knowledge recollects itself into itself out of immediate being, does it find essence through this mediation. – The German language has kept 'essence' (Wesen) in the past participle (gewesen) of the verb 'to be' (sein), for essence is past – but timelessly past – being'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Since knowing has for its goal knowledge of the true it does not stop at the immediate and its determinations, but penetrates it on the supposition that at the back of this being there is something else, something other than being itself, that this background constitutes the truth of being. But what is this something else? Simply that Being must erase itself and become Essence. For this reason, Hegel describes Essence as absolute being-in-itself.

'As it has come to be here, however, essence is what it is, not through a negativity foreign to it, but through one which is its own – the infinite movement of being. It is being-in-and-for-itself – absolute in-itselfness; since it is indifferent to every determinateness of being, otherness and reference to other have been sublated. But neither is it only this in-itselfness; as merely being-in-itself, it would be only the abstraction of pure essence; but it is being-for-itself just as essentially; it is itself this negativity, the self-sublation of otherness and of determinateness'.

- The Science of Logic'

Identifying being-in-itself as 'a code term for 'essence' according to Clark Butler. Being-in-itself means implicitness. Regarding finite entities, what is implicit is that they should cease to be. The disappearance of finitude is the only true, actual thing. For this reason, Marcuse recruits Hegel for left wing causes. And 'the given facts that appear to common sense as the positive index of truth are in reality the negation of truth, so that truth can only be established by their destruction . . . To Hegel, the facts possess no authority'. Yet, with equal justice, it could be said that a philosophy in which 'all that exists dissolves into spirit . . . such a philosophy will apologetically take the side of what exists', said Theodor W. Adorno,?(1903?– 1969).

A finite thing is not what it ought to be {i.e., dead) so long as it stubbornly lives on.The in-itself, however, must become /or-itself. But since what is implicit in Being is ceasing-to-be, then Being is for itself when it is no more. It no longer has any affirmative content. In Being-for-self, all content is forfeit and expelled to the outside. At this point, Being-for-self is Quantity - Being without any content of its own. When for itself, Essence will express what it is in itself - self-erasure. When Essence cancels itself, it is actual. When Essence is actual, Being - which has canceled itself - is finally recaptured. Essence is accordingly the completed return of being into itself.

'Essence, as the complete turning back of being into itself, is thus at first the indeterminate essence; the determinacies of being are sublated in it; it holds them in itself but without their being posited in it. Absolute essence in this simple unity with itself has no existence. But it must pass over into existence, for it is being-in-and-for-itself; that is to say, it differentiates the determinations which it holds in itself, and, since it is the repelling of itself from itself or indifference towards itself, negative self-reference, it thereby posits itself over against itself and is infinite being-for-itself only in so far as in thus differentiating itself from itself it is in unity with itself. – This determining is thus of another nature than the determining in the sphere of being, and the determinations of essence have another character than the determinations of being. Essence is absolute unity of being-in-itself and being-for-itself; consequently, its determining remains inside this unity; it is neither a becoming nor a passing over, just as the determinations themselves are neither an other as other nor references to some other; they are self-subsisting but, as such, at the same time conjoined in the unity of essence. – Since essence is at first simple negativity, in order to give itself existence and then being-for-itself, it must now posit in its sphere the determinateness which it contains in principle only in itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Upon completing this return Essence passes into the realm of universality and self-presence - the realm of Notion. 'Whereas the universal enjoys its characteristic unity as a one over many, bridging any gulf between itself and the particulars in which it communes with itself, essence maintains its defining primacy over its appearance not by relating a plurality of appearances to one another, but by preceding them all as their positor', explains Richard Dien Winfield, (1950 -). Because Essence identifies what it is by announcing what it is not, I introduce here a change in the explanatory protocol. In the realm of Being, the Understanding constantly pulled the middle term over to the left side of the diagram - the side of being. Now the Understanding pulls the middle term to the right side - the side of negation. Whereas the Understanding earlier tried to discover the nature of its affirmative being, it now investigates what it was but now is not.

Negation always implies correlation - the negation and the thing negated. Accordingly, essentialisms are always mere pairs of correlatives.

'Essence is the Concept as posited Concept. In Essence the determinations are only relational, not yet as reflected strictly within themselves; that is why the Concept is not yet for-itself. Essence-as Being that mediates itself with itself through its own negativity-is relation to itself only by being relation to another; but this other is immediately, not as what is but as something-posited and mediated.-Being has not vanished; but, in the first place, essence as simple relation to itself is being; while on the other hand, being, according to its one-sided determination of being something immediate, is degraded to something merely negative, to a shine [or semblance] ----As a result, essence is being as shining within itself'.

- 'The Encyclopedia Logic

'Essence is the relation of two terms, each of which is not the other, but each of which is a constitutive moment of the other ... Here categories come in pairs, such that one is explicitly included in the other as excluded from it. The one does not just pass over into the other, but each is present in the other as not actually present in or part of it', explains Stephen Houlgate, (1954 -).

With essence, negation is built into the concept itself. 'Hegel's originality is to put reflection into the Absolute, and, consequently, to surmount dualism without suppressing it', explains Justus Hartnack, (1912 - 2005).

'Old German Folk Tale'?, 1896, Hermann Hendrich

'In Essence there is an inherent contradiction, a diremption into two mutually opposed and even repugnant abstractions, which are nevertheless mutually dependent', explains Harris. The Understanding now resembles dialectical Reason. It always sees a doubleness. The Inessential is paired with the Essential. The Grounded is paired with Ground, and so forth.

Recollecting Essence's history in sublated Being, dialectical Reason opposes the Understanding's negativity with a recollection of what was. In effect, Dialectical Reason says, You say you are not. But you suppress the fact that once you were. From now on, dialectical Reason appears on the left side of the diagram - on the side of being. In short, the convention is the opposite of what it has been heretofore. The Understanding proposes what is not, and dialectical Reason recollects what is. Speculative Reason continues to reconcile the two views in a new synthesis.

This review of Hegel's methodology underscores the importance of memory. 'Hegel's logic is one of recollection, of memory, its necessity is the internal consistency of what is remembered', explains Bencivenga. If Essence is simply not Being, and if Being has imploded itself in the earlier stages of the Logic, then Essence (Wesen) can only be found through the process of recollection (Erinnerung) of what was but now is not. Erinnerung can also be translated as inwardization. Hegel explains not until knowing inwardizes, recollects [erinnert] itself out of immediate being, does it through this mediation find essence.

'When this movement is represented as a pathway of knowledge, this beginning with being and the subsequent advance which sublates being and arrives at essence as a mediated term appears to be an activity of cognition external to being and indifferent to its nature. But this course is the movement of being itself. That it is being’s nature to recollect itself, and that it becomes essence by virtue of this interiorizing, this has been displayed in being itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Recollection, inwardization, and memory tie directly into the concept of ideality. What is ideality? It is nothing but recollection of Being that is already past. Recollection 'has nothing to do with the psychic phenomenon which we today mean with this term. It is a universal, ontological category', explains Marcuse. Ideality, first established with True Infinity, stood for Being that has abolished itself, thereby reducing itself to thought. In this vein, Hegel can exploit something true in German but not English. The word for essence in German is Wesen. This is related to gewesen, or was, the past participle of to be.

'Now, when we say further that all things have an essence, what we mean is that they are not truly what they immediately show themselves to be. A mere rushing about from one quality to another, and a mere advance from the qualitative to the quantitative and back again, is not the last word; on the contrary, there is something that abides in things, and this is, in the first instance, their essence. As for the further significance and use of the category of essence, we can recall first at this point how the term 'Wesen' is employed to designate the past for the German auxiliary verb 'sein' [to be]; for we designate the being that is past as 'gewesen'. This irregularity in linguistic usage rests upon a correct view of the relation of being and essence, because we can certainly consider essence to be being that has gone by, whilst still remarking that what is past is not for that reason abstractly negated, but only sublated and so at the same time conserved. If we say in German, e. g., 'Casar ist in Gallien gewesen' ['Caesar was in Gaul'] , what is negated by that is just the immediacy of what is asserted about Caesar, but not his sojourn in Gaul altogether, for indeed it is just that which forms the content of this assertion--only it is here represented as having been sublated. When a 'Wesen' is spoken of in ordinary life, it frequently only means a comprehensive whole or an essential sum; we speak in this way, for instance, of a 'Zeitungswesen' [the press], of the 'Postwesen [the postal service] , or of the 'Steuerwesen [the taxation system] , etc., which simply amounts to saying that the things that are part of these are not to be taken singly in their immediacy, but as a complex, and then further in their various relations as well. So this linguistic use involves just about the same content as essence has turned out to have for us'.

- 'The Encyclopedia Logic'

Andrew Haas gets it wrong, I think, when he comments, 'When it appears in the text [of the Logic], essence has already been; it is past'. In fact, essence is present because being is past. Essence is 'an always present having-been' says Marcuse. For Hegel, essence is past - but timelessly past - being. Essence we may certainly regard as past Being, remembering however meanwhile that the past is not utterly denied, but only laid aside and thus at the same time preserved.

'When we speak of 'essence', we distinguish it from being, i.e., from what is immediate. In comparison with essence, we regard being as a mere semblance. But this semblance is not simply 'not'; it is not an utter nothing; rather, it is being as sublated.-The standpoint of essence is in general the standpoint of reflection. The term 'reflection' is primarily used of light, when, propagated rectilinearly, it strikes a mirrored surface and is thrown back by it. So we have here something twofold: first, something immediate, something that is, and second, the same as mediated or posited. And this is just the case when we reflect on an ob-ject or 'think it over' (as we also say very often) . For here we are not concerned with the ob-ject in its immediate form, but want to know it as mediated. And our usual view of the task or purpose of philosophy is that it consists in the cognition of the essence of things. By this we understand no more than that things are not to be left in their immediate state, but are rather to be exhibited as mediated or grounded by something else. The immediate being of things is here represented as a sort of rind or curtain behind which the essence is concealed'.

Hegel's philosophy is all about retrospectivity, which is why he famously announces:

'When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk'.

- Philosophy of Right'

Essence, Hegel says, is to the entire Logic what Quantity was to the realm of Being - the negative residue left from the self-destruction of the affirmative moment. Essence is thus the first negation of being. And so was Quantity. Nevertheless there is a key difference. Quantity was indifferent to determination by the Understanding. Any limit to be found within Quantity was imposed on it from the outside - i.e., affirmatively present in it.

'Essence is in the whole what quality was in the sphere of being: absolute indifference with respect to limit. Quantity is instead this indifference in immediate determination, limit being in it an immediate external determinateness; quantity passes over into quantum; the external limit is necessary to it and exists in it. In essence, by contrast, the determinateness does not exist; it is posited only by the essence itself, not free but only with reference to the unity of the essence. – The negativity of essence is reflection, and the determinations are reflected – posited by the essence itself in which they remain as sublated'.

- The Science of Logic'

In contrast, Essence determines itself. Quantitative Determinateness is not free. Now, Determinateness is posited by essence itself. 'The great divide between the sphere of being ... and the sphere of essence is that, in the latter, things are determinate only insofar as they are 'posited'', explains Robert M.?Wallace. Essence is what it is through a negativity, which is not alien to it but is its very own, the infinite movement of being. It is self-identity following negation according to John W.?Burbidge The very hallmark of True Infinity. Essence has much work to do before it is truly for itself. At first, Essence is indeterminate - analogous to (but more advanced than) Pure Being. The determinateness of Essence is present in principle but is not posited in it. Essence will determine itself, but in a different way, compared to self-determination in the sphere of Being. In the sphere of Being, the Finite ceased to be. It became something radically other than what it was - transition. (In the logic of being, thinking simply passed from one concept or category over to another. There is an aspect of this last quote with which I disagree. Hegel is not claiming that, in our thought, being passes from one category to another. He is claiming that being itself is in the process of this transition). In sublating itself, being continues directly into our thought. But transition is not proper to the realm of Essence, which does not permit its content to go forth into something else.

Hegel nevertheless uses the term in his Essence chapters. For example, he says that the movement of Essence is the transition from being into the Notion.

'Essence stands between being and concept; it makes up their middle, its movement constituting the transition of being into the concept. Essence is being-in-and-for-itself, but it is this in the determination of being-in-itself; for its general determination is that it emerges from being or that it is the first negation of being. Its movement consists in positing negation or determination in being, thereby giving itself existence and becoming as infinite being-for-itself what it is in itself. It thus gives itself its existence which is equal to its being-in-itself and becomes concept. For the concept is the absolute as it is absolutely, or in and for itself, in its existence. But the existence which essence gives to itself is not yet existence as it is in and for itself but as essence gives it to itself or as posited, and hence still distinct from the existence of the concept'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Rodolphe Gasché,?(1938 - ), efers to Hegelian Reflection as '(1) the dissolving force of understanding, (2) the totalizing power of the speculative process, and (3) one moment within that process'. Essence retains its content (which content is nothing else but the act of self-erasure). 'In the logic of essence being no longer disappears in its others, but appears in and through it, and is determined in virtue of the self-contrasting, as a result', said William Maker. It develops its content within a totality. The Essence lights up in itself [and] is only self-relation, not as immediate but as reflected. And that reflexive relation is self-Identity.

'Essence shines within itself or is pure reflection. In this way it is only relation to self (though not as immediate but as reflected relation): identity with itself. Formal identity or identity-of-the-understanding is this identity, insofar as one holds onto it firmly and abstracts from distinction. Or rather, abstraction is the positing of this formal identity, the transformation of something that is inwardly concrete into this form of simplicity-whether it be the case that a part of the manifold that is present in the concrete is left out (by means of what is called analysis) and that only one of these [elements] is selected, or that, by leaving out their diversity, the manifold determinacies are drawn together into One'.

- 'The Encyclopedia Logic'

In Reflection, the negative is thus confined within an enclosed sphere in which, what the one is not, is something determinate.

'The just stated transition from the form of the connection to the form of the determination has the immediate consequence that the not of the copula must just as equally be attached to the predicate and that the latter must be determined as the not-universal. But, through a no less immediate consequence, the not-universal is the particular. – If the focus is on the negative according to the totally abstract determination of immediate non-being, then the predicate is the totally indeterminate not-universal. This is the determination which is normally treated in logic in connection with the contradictory concepts, and the further point is made – a point considered important – that in the negative of a concept one should only focus on the negative, taking it as the mere indeterminate extent of the other of the positive concept. Thus the mere not-white would be just as much red, yellow, blue, etc. as black. White, however, is an unconceptualized determination of intuition; the not of white is equally, then, unconceptualized not-being, the abstraction that came in for consideration at the very beginning of the Logic where becoming was recognized to be its closest truth. To use as an example, in the consideration of judgment determinations, an unconceptualized content of this sort, drawn from intuition and the imagination, and to take the determinations of being, and of reflection, as such judgment determinations, is the same uncritical practice as when Kant applies the concepts of the understanding to the infinite idea of reason, the so-called thing-in-itself; the concept, to which the judgment proceeding from it also belongs, is the true thing-in-itself or the rational; those other determinations belong to being and essence; they are not yet forms developed into the shape where they are in their truth, in the concept. – If we stop at white, red, as representations of the senses, then we call concept what is only a determination of pictorial representation. This is common practice. But then, surely, the not-white, the not-red, will be nothing positive, just as the not-triangular will be something totally indeterminate, for a determination based as such on number and quantum is essentially something indifferent, void of concept. Yet, like non-being itself, such a sensuous content ought to be conceptualized; ought to shed that indifference and abstract immediacy with which it is affected in the blind immobility of pictorial representation. Already in the sphere of immediate existence, the non-being which is otherwise void of thought becomes limit, and by virtue of this limit the something refers to an other despite itself. In the sphere of reflection, on the other hand, it is the negative that refers essentially to a positive, and is thereby determined; a negative is no longer that indeterminate non-being, for it is posited to be only to the extent that the positive stands over against it, and as third comes their ground; the negative is thus held circumscribed in a sphere within which the non-being of one is something determinate. – But it is all the more in the absolutely fluid continuity of the concept that the not is immediately a positive, and the negation is not just determinateness but is taken up into universality and is posited as identical with it. The non-universal is therefore directly the particular'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Its determining remains within this unity and is neither a becoming nor a transition. Its determinations are not other but overtly its own. Essentiality 'must therefore be understood as a process of letting-spring-forth ... of the manifold',explains Marcuse. In lieu of transition (or ceasing-to-be), the movement proper to Essence is Reflection. It is sometimes asserted that Hegel regretted his analysis of Reflection and so omitted it from the 'Encyclopedia Logic'. Burbidge and Giacomo Rinaldi,?(1954 - ). But I agree with Pippin, who sees the 'Encyclopedia Logic' as 'a textbook summary'. According to Errol Harris, the 'Encyclopedia Logic' 'is [not] really a divergence from that of the Greater Logic, because there Contradiction is immediately resolved as Ground'.

Hegelian Reflection is not user-friendly, so it might go easier if we start with Locke, according to whom the two sources of ideas are sensation and reflection. Sensation entails data received from outside the mind - what we see, hear, and feel.

Reflection is that notice which the mind takes of its own operations as John Locke, (1632?– 1704), said:

'By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term OPERATIONS here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought'.

- 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding'

When reflective thought senses an object, it realizes that its own self (thought) is precisely not the object sensed. The object given by sensation is, in effect, negated by thought when thought realizes that it is not the object. Reflection is therefore thought's highly negative statement, I am not that. Essence explicitly refers to its necessary correlate as contradictorily being unnecessary to it', explains Butler. Reflection - the negation of what is, essence estranged from its immediacy is the name of the process by which thought's immediate Being erases itself.

Essence 'does nothing but signify the process by which the concept of being cancels its own immediacy in thought. It is the negative movement of dissolution, says Burbidge. Butler puts it this way: Being was an act. Act proves potency. Essence is the recollection of the act and the identification of potency. 'Being which is actually for itself proves its potentiality to be for itself: it is in itself actually for itself'. Reflection is therefore not an artefact but a process - a disappearance. 'As such a self-supersession, essence is very much a. process rather than an immediately given identity', explains Robert?Wallace. These remarks should clarify why Reflection is the negativity of essence' The trick in Hegel's Reflection is that the object that which Reflection negates I am not that is Reflection's own selfhood. Reflection's attribute is that it is not its own self It is self-negating, self-erasing, a statement of what was (recollection) together with what is not (the thought of what was). 'The distinction between the essential and the inessential is, at the level of essence, only a reminiscence of immediacy', says Hyppolite. A reflective concept is one that is self-repelling I am not that. In this capacity of making express what it is not, Essence shows what it is at one with itself in this its own difference from itself. Reflection is a movement that consists in positing within itself the negation [of itself] thereby giving itself determinate being. When Essence has given itself Determinate Being the that it is truly for itself. It is Actual. Ironically, its Actuality is its self-erasure. It really is - not that. Essence's selfhood - its Determinate Being - is merely posited. If Essence is not that, then there must be a that against which Essence can stand. Essence's determinations are given by essence to itself and consequently still distinct from the Determinate Being of the Notion. Essence is a still imperfect combination of immediacy and mediation.

'As it emerges from being, this identity appears at first to be burdened only with the determinations of being, and related to being as to something external. When being is taken separately from essence in this way, it is called the 'inessential' ." But essence is being-within-self,b it is essential only insofar as it has the negative of itself, [i. e., ] the relation-to-another, or mediation, within itself. It has the inessential, therefore, as its own shine within itself. But there is a distinguishing contained in the shining or mediation, and what is distinct does itself acquire the form of identity, in its distinction from the identity from which it emerges, and in which it is not or lies [only] as semblance. Hence, what is distinct is itself in the mode of self-relating immediacy or of being. And for this reason the sphere of Essence becomes a still imperfect connection of immediacy and mediation. Everything is posited in it in such a way that it relates itself to itself, while at the same time [the movement] has already gone beyond it. [It is posited] as a being of reflection, a being within which an other shines and which shines within an other.-Hence, the sphere of Essence is also the sphere of posited contradiction, whereas, in the sphere of Being, contradiction is only implicit'.

- 'The Encyclopedia Logic'

'Nymphs surprised by Satyrs',1650, Frans Wouters?

It sees itself as a unity of (a) itself and (b) a presupposed other. 'Each determination is different from and opposed to the other. Yet each is also (as Derrida might put it) 'haunted' by the other within itself',' explains Houlgate. Together, this unity is a positedness. Ultimately, Essence's successor, the Notion, overcomes mere positedness. It will see itself as a unity of (a) itself, (b) its other, and (c) the unity of itself and other. Hyppolite calls this triad 'the rational minimum'. To reach it, Hegel 'makes logic go through a torsion in order to make it capable of expressing this duality in unity and this unity in duality'.

When Notion arrives, Reflection and positedness will be passé explains Houlgate. They will give way to development.

'The progression of the Concept is no longer either passing-over or shining into another, but development; for the [moments] that are distinguished are immediately posited at the same time as identical with one another and with the whole, and [each] determinacy is as a free being of the whole Concept'.

-'The Encyclopedia Logic'

More precisely, positedness will be contained within Notion. Hegel does not hesitate to use the word, however, throughout the Subjective Logic.

If (1) transition is proper to Being, and if (2) positedness is proper to Essence, (3) development is proper to Notion (or subjectivity). Essence starts with Reflection, where essence shines or shows within itself.

'First, essence shines within itself or is reflection; second, it appears; third, it

reveals itself. In the course of its movement, it posits itself in the following

determinations:

I. As simple essence existing in itself, remaining in itself in its determinations;

II. As emerging into existence, or according to its concrete existence and

appearance;

III. As essence which is one with its appearance, as actuality'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Appearance and Actuality (manifestation of what is) follow. At the macro-conceptual level, Reflection is the position of comparative immediacy - the position of the Understanding. Appearance is dialectic; Essence stands over against Appearance. Actuality is speculative - the unity of Reflection and Appearance. Reflection itself is subdivided. First is Illusory Being (Schein), sometimes translated as semblance or seeming. Second are the Determinations of Reflection, covering the important concepts of Identity, Difference and Contradiction. The final part considers Ground and its relation to what is Grounded. From Ground emerges the Thing and advanced being - what Hegel calls Existence.

The Essential and Unessential

A. The Essential and the Unessential. The Essential and Unessential Essence is the recollection and negation of what was - Being. Essence is not Being and has no further content than that. This is not what common sense thinks. For common sense, Essence is the indeterminate, simple unity from which what is determinate has been eliminated in an external manner.

'If, therefore, the absolute was at first determined as being, now it is determined as essence. Cognition cannot in general stop at the manifold of existence; but neither can it stop at being, pure being; immediately one is forced to the reflection that this pure being, this negation of everything finite, presupposes a recollection and a movement which has distilled immediate existence into pure being. Being thus comes to be determined as essence, as a being in which everything determined and finite is negated. So it is simple unity, void of determination, from which the determinate has been removed in an external manner; to this unity the determinate was itself something external and, after this removal, it still remains opposite to it; for it has not been sublated in itself but relatively, only with reference to this unity. –We already noted above that if pure essence is defined as the sum total of all realities, these realities are equally subject to the nature of determinateness and abstractive reflection and their sum total is reduced to empty simplicity. Thus defined, essence is only a product, an artifact. External reflection, which is abstraction, only lifts the determinacies of being out of what is left over as essence and only deposits them, as it were, somewhere else, letting them exist as before. In this way, however, essence is neither in itself nor for itself; it is by virtue of another, through external abstractive reflection; and it is for another, namely for abstraction and in general for the existent which still remains opposite to it. In its determination, therefore, it is a dead and empty absence of determinateness'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

According to this false procedure, Essence is found by subjectively wishing away appearances in an exercise of abstraction. The target here is abstract essence, not essence as such Butler points out. This is a point Adorno manages to miss. The leftovers are affirmative essence. In this process, appearance is simply located in one place and Essence in another; Essence is just as much an immediate being (and hence an appearance) as appearance was. Subjective abstraction leaves the determinatenesses of being with the affirmative character they had before. So considered, Essence is only a product, an artefact. It is neither in itself'nor for itself Its character is to lack all determinate character, to be inherently lifeless and empty. If essence is defined as the sum total of all realities, then this sum total reduces to empty oneness. Here Hegel perhaps refers to his argument that the Kantian thing-in-itself is unitary. Stripped of all appearance, it is impossible to distinguish between multiple things-in-themselves.

This false view informs the Understanding's first proposition about Essence: the Essential v the Unessential. In this determination, essence itself is simply affirmative immediate essence, and being is only a negative in relation to essence, not in and for itself.

'Essence is sublated being. It is simple equality with itself but is such as the negation of the sphere of being in general. And so it has immediacy over against it, as something from which it has come to be but which has preserved and maintained itself in this sublating. Essence itself is in this determination an existent immediate essence, and with reference to it being is only something negative, nothing in and for itself: essence, therefore, is a determined negation. Being and essence relate to each other in this fashion as again others in general which are mutually indifferent, for each has a being, an immediacy, and according to this being they stand in equal value'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

That is to say, Essence here is identified contingently.The Essential is what the Unessential is not.

The Understanding misidentifies Essence as yet another affirmative Being, which is precisely not Essence. Elsewhere, Hegel memorably denounces the common sense position:

'These empty abstractions of a 'singleness' and a 'universality' opposed to it, and of an 'essence' that is linked with something unessential-a 'non-essential' aspect which is necessary all the same-these are powers whose interplay is the perceptual understanding, often called 'sound common sense'. This 'sound common sense' which takes itself to be a solid, realistic consciousness is, in the perceptual process, only the play of these abstractions; generally, it is always at its poorest where it fancies itself to be the richest. Bandied about by these vacuous 'essences', thrown into the arms first- of one and then of the other, and striving by its sophistry to hold fast and affirm alternately first one of the 'essences' and then the directly opposite one, it sets itself against the truth and holds the opinion that philosophy is concerned only with mental entities. As a matter of fact, philosophy does have to do with them too, recognizing them as the pure essences, the absolute elements and powers; but in doing so, recognizes them in their specific determinateness as well, and is therefore master over them, whereas perceptual understanding [or 'sound common sense'] takes them for the truth and is led on by them from one error to another. It does not itself become conscious that it is simple essentialities of this kind that hold sway over it, but fancies that it has always to do with wholly substantial material and content; just as sense certainty is unaware that the empty abstraction of pure being is its essence. But it is, in fact, these essentialities within which perceptual understanding runs to and fro through every kind of material and content; they are the cohesive power and mastery over that content and they alone are what the sensuous is as essence for consciousness, they are what determines the relations of the sensuous to it, and it is in them that the process of perception and of its truth runs its course. This,course, a perpetual alternation of determining what is true, and then setting aside this determining, constitutes, strictly speaking, the steady everyday life and activity of perceptual consciousness, a consciousness which fancies itself to be moving in the realm of truth. It advances uninterruptedly to the outcome in which all these essential essentialities or determinations are equally set aside; but in each single moment it is conscious only of this one determinateness as the truth, and then in turn of the opposite one. It docs indeed suspect their unessentiality, and to save them from the danger threatening them it resorts to the sophistry of asserting to be true what it has itself just declared to be untrue. What the nature of these untrue essences is really trying to get [perceptual] understanding to do is to bring together, and thereby supersede, the thoughts of those non-entities, the thoughts of that universality and singular being, of 'Also' and 'One', of the essentiality that is necessarily linked to the unessential moment, and of an unessential moment that yet is necessary. But the Understanding struggles to avoid doing this by resorting to 'in so far as' and to the various 'aspects', or by making itself responsible for one thought in order to keep the other one isolated as the true one. But the very nature of these abstractions brings them together of their own accord. It is 'sound common sense' that is the prey of these abstractions, which spin it round and round in their whirling circle. When common sense tries to make them true by at one time making itself responsible for their untruth, while at another time it calls their deceptiveness a semblance of the unreliability of Things, and separates what is essential from what is necessary to them yet supposedly unessential, holding the former to be their truth as against the latter-when it does this, it does not secure them their truth, but convicts itself of untruth'.

- 'The Phenomenology of Spirit'

Therefore, the Unessential is both (1) the Essential's external appearance, which has by now abolished itself and is only remembered, and (2) the Understanding itself. Both of these are the same thing. Recall that Being is the realm of immediacy and hence of the Understanding. In Determinate Being Being's own voice asserted its immediacy and its freedom from otherness. In effect, the Understanding is Determinate Being. Thus, when Being finally repealed itself at the end of Measure, the Understanding likewise repealed itself (and preserved itself). Now it returns as an abolished, humbled entity, which asserts its own inessentiality,compared to the Essential. Charles Taylor, (1931 - ), concurs that Essence makes implicit reference to a subject of knowledge, which becomes express in the Subjective Logic, many chapters hence. To put this in other terms, the Inessential is the position of the person who sees the essence of a thing and assumes it is really out there. Such a person takes her own thought to be inessential to the existence of the Essential. This is the position of analysis (as opposed to synthesis) - two positions considered in chapter twenty six. Because the Unessential is simply not the Essential, the Unessential is drawn on the right side of The Essential and Unessential the side of nothingness. From its perspective, the Understanding beholds the Essential, which is comparatively on the left - the side of Being. We have before us essentialism, which takes what is subjective to be objective.

Retrogression. In The Essential and Unessential, the immediacy of the Inessential, on the right, and of the Essential, on the left, has caused essence to relapse into the sphere of determinate being.

'The distinction of essential and unessential has made essence relapse into the sphere of existence, for as essence is at first, it is determined with respect to being as an existent and therefore as an other. The sphere of existence is thus laid out as foundation, and that in this sphere being is being-in-and-for-itself is a further determination external to existence, just as, contrariwise, essence is indeed being-in-and-for-itself, but only over against an other, in a determinate respect. – Consequently, inasmuch as essential and unessential aspects are distinguished in an existence from each other, this distinguishing is an external positing, a taking apart that leaves the existence itself untouched; it is a separation which falls on the side of a third and leaves undetermined what belongs to the essential and what belongs to the unessential. It is dependent on some external standpoint or consideration and the same content can therefore sometimes be considered as essential, sometimes as unessential'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Essence is merely assigned the attribute of being-in-and-for-self as a further determination external to determinate being itself. Such a division does not settle what is essential and what is unessential. It originates in some external standpoint. The Essential exhibits only being-for-other, not being-in-and-for-self. The Understanding has slipped from Essence back to the sublated realm of Being. We have seen like slippage before. In the beginning, the Understanding retrogressed in its interpretation of Absolute Knowledge. Absolute Knowledge was the unity of immediacy and all mediations. The Understanding dismantled this unity and one-sidedly interpreted Absolute Knowledge as Pure Being. This was how the Logic got started - by the Understanding's retrogressive move. In truth, every move of the Understanding has been a retrogressive step backwards.

The Understanding always fails to see speculatively, compared to the step that preceded it. Yet this retrogression is absolutely necessary if dialectical Reason is to perform its function of opposing the history of the process against the Understanding's misinterpretation, and if Speculative Reason is to deliver a higher speculative truth that combines the Understanding's proposition with the dialectical recollections. Insofar as the Understanding is concerned, immediate Being (which is the Understanding) has abolished itself, but it has preserved itself as well, under the law of sublation. It is therefore present as an absence as Stanley Rosen, (1929 – 2014), explains.

It in effect says, I am not. The Essential is. The Understanding does nothing other than to assert its own immediacy and that of the Essential. This move is retrogressive, but there is no other choice. The Understanding must reduce Essence to its own level. In The Essential and Unessential Essence is supposed to be for itself. But, according to the Understanding, essence is only the first negation. Negation, however, violates the premise that Essence is being-in-and-for-self. Negation implies something to negate - the Inessential. Hence, the Essential has no genuine independence from otherness. It is the opposite of what it is supposed to be. The Essential is therefore in and for itself a nullity; it is only a non-essence, illusory being (shine as it is literally translated in the translation I am using).

'On closer consideration, essence becomes something only essential as contrasted with an unessential because essence is only taken, is as sublated being or existence. In this fashion, essence is only the first negation, or the negation, which is determinateness, through which being becomes only existence, or existence only an other. But essence is the absolute negativity of being; it is being itself, but not being determined only as an other: it is being rather that has sublated itself both as immediate being and as immediate negation, as the negation which is affected by an otherness. Being or existence, therefore, does not persist except as what essence is, and the immediate which still differs from essence is not just an unessential existence but an immediate which is null in and for itself; it only is a non-essence, shine'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

'Nymphs in a Romantic?Garden', 1921,?Salvador Dali

Coming up next:

Illusory Being.

Dedicated to the One. Echo of my heart and mind. Thank you for sticking with me despite my penchant for big words and bluster.

To be continued .....