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

'Riflessi'

di Francesco Santoliquido (1883 - 1971)

Oh! bei riflessi di Sole!

O bei riflessi gialli e rossi

che illuminate il giardino

come un immenso fuoco artificiale.

Inondate anche me

di vostre calde fosforescenze d’or.

?

Io scorgo in voi miriadi di stelle,

Io scorgo in voi miriadi di faville,

Lucciole e perle, rubini e smeraldi!

Ed i miei occhi stanchi

s’accecano ai vostri bagliori,

E la mia anima beve

ed il mio cor s’ubriaca

di luce e di colori!

?

Oh! bei riflessi di sole,

barbagli rossi di flamme ardenti

Splendete! Ho bisogno di voi,

Splendete! Inondate il ruscello,

la vasca del giardino,

Le foglie mattutine d’una pioggia d’or!

'Reflections'

Oh! beautiful reflections of sun!

Oh lovely reflections, yellow and red,

that illuminate the garden

like an immense artificial fire.

Flood me also

with your hot phosphorescence of gold.

?

I glimpse in you myriads of stars,

I glimpse in you myriads of sparks,

Fireflies and pearl, rubies and emeralds!

And my tired eyes

are blinded [by] your flares,

And my soul drinks

and my heart is drunk

with light and color!

?

Oh! beautiful reflections of sun,

Red flashing of burning flames,

Shine! I need you,

Shine! Flood the brook,

the basin of the garden,

The morning leaves with a deluge of gold!

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich?Hegel's, (1770 - 1831), 'Science of Logic'. 'Reflection'.

Essence is non-being and nothing more. What a thing is not constitutes it more profoundly than what it is. Reflection is the name of the negating act by which Essence shows what it is not: For illusory being that has withdrawn into itself and so is estranged from its immediacy, we have the foreign word reflection.

'Shine is the same as what reflection is; but it is reflection as immediate. For this shine which is internalized and therefore alienated from its immediacy, the German has a word from an alien language, 'Reflexion'.'

- 'The Science of Logic'

Reflection sends its affirmative being outside itself. But, per the rules of True Infinity, the expelled material is just as much retained as expelled. Reflection therefore names not only the act of withdrawal of Being from itself and but also the withdrawal of being into itself. But where is Reflection located? In common parlance, if I reflect about a thing, I turn it over in my mind and discover a deeper essence that may contradict the immediate appearance of the thing. Does Reflection therefore exist in my mind, or does it exist in the thing? Contrary to Immanuel Kant, (1724 - 1804).

'Reflection (reflexio) is not occupied about objects themselves, for the purpose of directly obtaining conceptions of them, but is that state of the mind in which we set ourselves to discover the subjective conditions under which we obtain conceptions. It is the consciousness of the relation of given representations to the different sources or faculties of cognition, by which alone their relation to each other can be rightly determined. The first question which occurs in considering our representations is to what faculty of cognition do they belong? To the understanding or to the senses? Many judgements are admitted to be true from mere habit or inclination; but, because reflection neither precedes nor follows, it is held to be a judgement that has its origin in the understanding. All judgements do not require examination, that is, investigation into the grounds of their truth. For, when they are immediately certain (for example: “Between two points there can be only one straight line”), no better or less mediate test of their truth can be found than that which they themselves contain and express. But all judgement, nay, all comparisons require reflection, that is, a distinction of the faculty of cognition to which the given conceptions belong. The act whereby I compare my representations with the faculty of cognition which originates them, and whereby I distinguish whether they are compared with each other as belonging to the pure understanding or to sensuous intuition, I term transcendental reflection. Now, the relations in which conceptions can stand to each other are those of identity and difference, agreement and opposition, of the internal and external, finally, of the determinable and the determining (matter and form). The proper determination of these relations rests on the question, to what faculty of cognition they subjectively belong, whether to sensibility or understanding? For, on the manner in which we solve this question depends the manner in which we must cogitate these relations'.

- 'The Critique of Pure Reason'

Kant wrote that in an appendix: 'Of the Equivocal Nature or Amphiboly of the Conceptions of Reflection from the Confusion of the Transcendental with the Empirical use of the Understanding'. He certainly put the fun into philosophy. Amphiboly, or amphibology, a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous. For instance.

Hegel locates Reflection in the thing. 'For Hegel reflection ... denotes an objective as well as subjective movement. Reflection is not primarily the process of thinking but the process of being itself', wrote Herbert Marcuse,?(1898 – 1979). Hegel would rewrite I reflect on a thing to read: The thing reflects its deeper truth in my mind. Speculative logic 'is the reflection of the determinations in the medium of the universal and not the subjective reflection of consciousness as such', said Jean Hyppolite,?(1907 – 1968). Michael Kosok defines Reflection as 'a generating process in which an initially unformed element becomes formed, making the reference to the element impossible without reference to the act of reflection. The activity of reflection becomes an integral aspect of the element reflected and a process of continual reflection amounts to self-reflection - the initial element embodying reflection as its form'. In other words, Reflection transforms Being, but operates from within Being. From the perspective of the thing, Reflection is always reflection of self.

Earlier the Understanding viewed the Essential as an immediate Being. Unable to sustain itself, this immediate Being showed itself to be merely the appearance of Essence. The fate of appearance is to disappear; the dissolution of the Essential was therefore no subjective exercise, but something that logically happens to an immediate Being posited as beyond thought. Reflection is movement, and so Hegel compares it to Becoming. At the base of becoming, there lies the determinateness of being, and this is relation to other. The movement of reflection, on the other hand, is the other as the negation in itself, which has a being only as self-related negation.

'Essence is reflection, the movement of becoming and transition that remains within itself, wherein that which is distinguished is determined simply and solely as the negative in itself, as shine. – In the becoming of being, it is being which lies at the foundation of determinateness, and determinateness is reference to an other. Reflective movement is by contrast the other as negation in itself, a negation which has being only as self-referring. Or, since this self-referring is precisely this negating of negation, what we have is negation as negation, negation that has its being in its being-negated, as shine. Here, therefore, the other is not being with negation or limit, but negation with negation. But the first over against this other, the immediate or being, is only this self-equality itself of negation, the negated negation, the absolute negativity. This self-equality or immediacy, therefore, is not a first from which the beginning is made and which would pass over into its negation; nor is there an existent substrate which would go through the moves of reflection; immediacy is rather just this movement itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

This last statement must be read with care. The movement is other. To what? Other to what it negates - static Illusory Being. In Reflection we can view g as the negating movement. Reflection's immediacy is only this movement itself. Movement g negates d, e, f, all of which are inessential Illusory Being. Furthermore, g is the negating of the negation. d, e, f, can be viewed as modulating negative activity, each segment announcing that it is not its other, Essence. Reflection negates them all. In Reflection all portions of the diagram are negative. g is therefore negation of the negation in such wise that it has its being in its negatedness, as illusory being. It is by virtue of its negating d, e, f, yet d, e, f is preserved as the veritable determinateness of g. In this manner Hegel emphasizes the moment of immediacy and self-relation in Essence as the movement of nothing to nothing, and so back to itself. The other that comes to be, is not the non-being of a being, as in earlier stages, but the nothingness of a nothing.

'In essence, therefore, the becoming, the reflective movement of essence, is the movement from nothing to nothing and thereby back to itself. Transition or becoming sublates itself in its transition; the other which comes to be in this transition is not the non-being of a being but the nothingness of a nothingness, and this, to be the negation of a nothingness, constitutes being. – Being is only as the movement of nothingness to nothingness, and so it is essence; and this essence does not have this movement in itself, but the movement is rather the absolute shine itself, the pure negativity which has nothing outside it which it would negate but which rather negates only its negative, the negative which is only in this negating'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

The immediacy of Essence is the movement of Reflection g. Hence, immediacy has become a middle term. In the Doctrine of Being, immediacy was a first from which the beginning was made and which passed over into its negation. Now immediacy is the result. Accordingly, this derived immediacy is not to be viewed as an affirmatively present substrate. Affirmitivity should be taken as dogmatic, not immanently derived. The new immediacy is strictly a negative concept - a negation of the negation. (a) Positing Reflection Reflection determines itself into (a) Positing (or Absolute), (b) External, and (c) Determining. Positing Reflection emphasizes the negative immediacy of Reflection - a paradox, since negativity is always correlative. In Positing Reflection, Hegel develops the notions of positing {setzen), presupposing (vorrausetzen), and return-into-self.

Reflection announces what it is not. This negative enunciation is what Hegel calls positing. 'Speculative contradiction is the contradiction of the Absolute itself that negates itself by positing itself; but this meaning of negation, which is not only subjective but also inherent to being, is the decisive point of the Hegelian dialectic', said Hyppolite. Positing requires otherness to function. When Illusory Being said, I am not Essence, it presupposed there is such a thing as Essence. Positing Reflection must have within it an other - a that if the statement I am not thaf is to make sense. Positing therefore presupposes. In 'Determinate Being' Hegel argued that, if a point is limit, then the line arises spontaneously, since limit is a correlative term. Similarly, positing requires a posited, because it is inherently correlative. What Positing Reflection presupposes, however, is precisely the opposite of what the Inessential presupposes.

'The Leaf', 1897/98, Elizabeth Adela Forbes?(née Armstrong)

The Inessential presupposed Essence. But now Essence has been derived. It is Reflection. So Positing Reflection is Essence. It presupposes its own Determinate Being. 'It is here at the end of the section on 'seeming' ... that the profound reversal in our conception of the essence of things occurs; for it is here that we first see the essence play a positive - indeed, generative - role, rather than a purely negative one. Here in other words, we first see negativity negate itself into positivity', says Stephen Houlgate,?(1954 -). What Positing Reflection presupposes is itself already derived. Its other is subletted being - its own atemporal past. Accordingly, Positing Reflection represents 'a relation of what is prior and what is posterior', said John Frederick?Hoffmeyer.

We already know, on the law of sublation, that this sublated other was. Accordingly, Hegel states, determinate being is merely posited being or positedness; this is the proposition of essence about determinate being.

'The posited is therefore an other, but in such a manner that the self-equality of reflection is retained; for the posited is only as sublated, as reference to the turning back into itself. – In the sphere of being, existence was the being that had negation in it, and being was the immediate ground and element of this negation which was, therefore, itself immediate negation. In the sphere of essence, positedness is what corresponds to existence. Positedness is equally an existence, but its ground is being as essence or as pure negativity; it is a determinateness or a negation, not as existent but immediately as sublated. Existence is only positedness; this is the principle of the essence of existence. Positedness stands on the one side over against existence, and over against essence on the other: it is to be regarded as the means which conjoins existence with essence and essence with existence. – If it is said, a determination is only a positedness, the claim can thus have a twofold meaning, according to whether the determination is such in opposition to existence or in opposition to essence. In either meaning, existence is taken for something superior to positedness, which is attributed to external reflection, to the subjective. In fact, however, positedness is the superior, because, as posited, existence is what it is in itself – something negative, something that refers simply and solely to the turning back into itself. For this reason positedness is only a positedness with respect to essence: it is the negation of this turning back as achieved return into itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Positing Reflection is an immediacy encompassing correlativity. The presupposed other is internal to Essence. The Essence of Positing Reflection is its own equality with itself.

'Shine is a nothingness or a lack of essence. But a nothingness or that which is void of essence does not have its being in an other in which it shines, but its being is its own equality with itself; this conversion of the negative with itself has been determined as the absolute reflection of essence. This self-referring negativity is therefore the negating of itself. It is thus just as much sublated negativity as it is negativity. Or again, it is itself the negative and the simple equality with itself or immediacy. It consists, therefore, in being itself and not being itself, and the two in one unity. – '

- 'The Science of Logic'

Self-equality implies that Positing Reflection forgets its own mediated structure, even as it finds its other before it. Because Positing Reflection is an immediacy, negativity has disappeared, for the moment. This leaves Positing Reflection in a state of contradiction. It is itself both the negative, and simple equality with itself or immediacy. It consists, therefore, in being itself and not itself and that, too, in a single unity. Essence is now to be conceived as return-to-self and as self-negation. As such, it is a self-contained totality, with no outside. If anything is negated, it is Essence's own negations within the totality. Presupposing is how Positing Reflection relates itself to itself, but to itself as negative of itself.

'It is a positing, inasmuch as it is immediacy as a turning back; that is to say, there is not an other beforehand, one either from which or to which it would turn back; it is, therefore, only as a turning back or as the negative of itself. But further, this immediacy is sublated negation and sublated return into itself. Reflection, as the sublating of the negative, is the sublating of its other, of the immediacy. Because it is thus immediacy as a turning back, the coinciding of the negative with itself, it is equally the negation of the negative as negative. And so it is presupposing. – Or immediacy is as a turning back only the negative of itself, just this, not to be immediacy; but reflection is the sublating of the negative of itself, coincidence with itself; it therefore sublates its positing, and inasmuch as it is in its positing the sublating of positing, it is presupposing. – In presupposing, reflection determines the turning back into itself as the negative of itself, as that of which essence is the sublating. It is its relating to itself, but to itself as to the negative of itself; only so is it negativity which abides with itself, self-referring negativity. Immediacy comes on the scene simply and solely as a turning back and is that negative which is the semblance of a beginning, the beginning which the return negates. The turning back of essence is therefore its self-repulsion. Or inner directed reflection is essentially the presupposing of that from which the reflection is the turning back'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Positing Absolute Reflection

In this sense, Positing Reflection resembles the Cartesian cogito ergo sum. The active I think distinguishes itself from its thoughts. Yet its thoughts are proof that it is. Hence, a passive I am is posited. Thinking is therefore an activity that presupposes a static end to its activity.

Positedness. Positing Reflection is the paradox of immediate mediation. It sends its being from itself only to find that this being returns. Positing Reflection announces, I am not being, and that is what I am. Negativity and positivity are contained within the same concept. Hegel calls this mode posited being or positedness. Positing reflection remains indeterminate because it swallows up immediacy in the movement of reflection. The determinate relation of priority and posteriority established in the act of presupposing turns out to be illusory, since that which is presupposed disappears in the reflection that posits it. Perhaps Positing Reflection's indeterminacy sounds the wrong note, since it is supposed to be a correlation of what is and is not. But the swallowing of the presupposition is exactly right. Positing Reflection privileges positivity over negativity.

'The self-reference of the negative is therefore its turning back into itself; it is immediacy as the sublating of the negative, but immediacy simply and solely as this reference or as turning back from a one, and hence as self-sublating immediacy. – This is positedness, immediacy purely as determinateness or as self-reflecting. This immediacy, which is only as the turning back of the negative into itself, is the immediacy which constitutes the determinateness of shine, and from which the previous reflective movement seemed to begin. But, far from being able to begin with this immediacy, the latter first is rather as the turning back or as the reflection itself. Reflection is therefore the movement which, since it is the turning back, only in this turning is that which starts out or returns'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Positing reflection remains indeterminate because it swallows up immediacy in the movement of reflection. The determinate relation of priority and posteriority established in the act of presupposing turns out to be illusory, since that which is presupposed disappears in the reflection that posits it. Perhaps Positing Reflection's indeterminacy sounds the wrong note, since it is supposed to be a correlation of what is and is not. But the swallowing of the presupposition is exactly right. Positing Reflection privileges positivity over negativity.

Positedness is key in Hegel's theory of Essence. It is to Essence what determinateness is to Being. It is a contradictory, unstable state that is nonetheless necessary if essence is to be known. Positedness is immediate but mediated because it is determined as negative, as immediately opposed to something, therefore to an other.

'The immediacy which reflection, as a process of sublating, presupposes for itself is simply and solely a positedness, something in itself sublated which is not diverse from reflection’s turning back into itself but is itself only this turning back. But it is at the same time determined as a negative, as immediately in opposition to something, and hence to an other. And so is reflection determined. According to this determinateness, because reflection has a presupposition and takes its start from the immediate as its other, it is external reflection'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

For this reason, a positedness is an identity that is not in and for itself.

'Reflection in itself and external reflection are thus the two determinations in which the moments of difference, identity and difference, are posited. They are these moments themselves as they have determined themselves at this point. – Immanent reflection is identity, but determined to be indifferent to difference, not to have difference at all but to conduct itself towards difference as identical with itself; it is diversity. It is identity that has so reflected itself into itself that it truly is the one reflection of the two moments into themselves; both are immanent reflections. Identity is this one reflection of the two, the identity which has difference within it only as an indifferent difference and is diversity in general. – External reflection, on the contrary, is their determinate difference, not as absolute immanent reflection, but as a determination towards which the implicitly present reflection is indifferent; its two moments, identity and difference themselves, are thus externally posited, are not determinations that exist in and for themselves'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

It differs, however, from determinateness, which is a unity between Being and Nothing. In a positedness, a negative faces a negative other. The two negatives differ yet constitute an immediate unity.

Return-into-self. Connected to positedness is the equally important notion of return-into-self (Rückkehr in sich), reflection-into-self (Reflexion-in-sich), or reflectedness-into-self (Reflectiert-sein in sich), as Hegel indifferently calls it. Reflection sends its being from itself by announcing what it is not. But the otherness to which its being is sent is identical and internal to the address from which being is shipped. If there is a sending, it is strictly inter-office mail. By traveling to the other, being merely delivers itself to itself. Reflective movement is thus an absolute recoil upon itself.

'It follows from these considerations that the movement of reflection is to be taken as an absolute internal counter-repelling. For the presupposition of the turning back into itself – that from which essence arises, essence being only as this coming back – is only in the turning back itself. Transcending the immediate from which reflection begins occurs rather only through this transcending; and the transcending of the immediate is the arriving at the immediate. The movement, as forward movement, turns immediately around into itself and so is only self-movement – a movement which comes from itself in so far as positing reflection is presupposing reflection, yet, as presupposing reflection, is simply positing reflection'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Every sending is a return. Yet, if so, the starting point is itself a presupposition. Positing Reflection presupposes itself as well as its other. This is precisely what Positing Reflection forgets. For this reason, Reflection is the movement that starts or returns only in so far as the negative has already returned into itself. Positing is immediacy as a returning movement.

'Medieval Woodland Scene',?1885, Elizabeth Adela Forbes?(née Armstrong)

'I am ambitious for a motley coat'.

- William Shakespeare, (1564 – 1616)?'As You Like It', Act 2, Scene 7

What does immediacy imply? In this moment, Positing Reflection sublates the negative and therefore its other. Yet its other is immediacy, that is, Being. If Positing Reflection sends forth its Being to an other, this other insists upon its moment of immediacy - an honour once accorded in the realm of Being. But because Positing Reflection is itself immediate, the immediacy of the other cannot subsist. Immediacy cancels immediacy. This leaves Positing Reflection as a movement - a cancellation of otherness I am not thatl. Positing Reflection is therefore active. This constitutes an advance for the Understanding. At first, the Understanding saw passive stasis ox Being. But slowly it grew inured to the fact that what it perceives is active. The Understanding is beginning to resemble Dialectical Reason, which is capable of seeing a contradiction between passivity and activity. Later, the Understanding will begin to resemble speculative Reason. It will propose that the Notion is itself (immediacy), its other (dialectic), and the unity between itself and other. Reason seduces the Understanding into producing an objective totality.

'Reason presents itself as the force of the negative Absolute, and hence as a negating that is absolute; and at the same time, it presents itself as the force that posits the opposed objective and subjective totality. Reason raises the intellect above itself, driving it toward a whole of the intellect’s own kind.?Reason seduces the intellect into producing an objective totality. Every being, because it is posited, is an opposite, it is conditioned and conditioning. The intellect completes these its limitations by positing the opposite limitations as conditions. These need to be completed in the same way, so the intellect’s task expands?ad infinitum. In all this, reflection appears to be merely intellect, but this guidance toward the totality of necessity is the contributions and secret efficacy of Reason. Reason makes the intellect boundless, and in this infinite wealth the intellect and its objective world meet their downfall. For every being that the intellect produces is something determinate, and the determinate has an indeterminate before it and after it. The manifoldness of being lies between two nights, without support. It rests on nothing – for the indeterminate is nothing to the intellect – and it ends in nothing. The determinate and the indeterminate, finitude and the infinite that is to be given up for lost, are not united. The intellect stubbornly allows them to subsist side by side in their opposition. And stubbornly it holds fast to being as against not-being; yet being and not-being are equally necessary to it. The intellect essentially aims at thoroughgoing determination. But what is determinate for it is at once bounded by an indeterminate. Thus its positings and determinings never accomplish the task; in the very positing and determining that have occurred there lies a non-positing and something indeterminate, and hence the task of positing and determining recurs perpetually'.

- 'The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy'

Lacanian implications. Jacques Marie émile Lacan,?(1901 – 1981). What follows is a most difficult passage: I is only when essence has sublated its equality-with-self that it is equality-with- self. It presupposes itself and the sublating of its presupposition is essence itself.

'It is only by virtue of the sublating of its equality with itself that essence is equality with itself. Essence presupposes itself, and the sublating of this presupposing is essence itself; contrariwise, this sublating of its presupposition is the presupposition itself. – Reflection thus finds an immediate before it which it transcends and from which it is the turning back. But this turning back is only the presupposing of what was antecedently found. This antecedent comes to be only by being left behind; its immediacy is sublated immediacy. – The sublated immediacy is, contrariwise, the turning back into itself, essence that arrives at itself, simple being equal to itself. This arriving at itself is thus the sublating of itself and self-repelling, presupposing reflection, and its repelling of itself from itself is the arriving at itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

What can this mean? Recall that Being strove to be self-equal (i.e., free). But self-equality destroyed itself and became Essence. Ironically, in its failure, Being actually achieves its goal of self-equality in Positing Reflection. This is the moment that Positing Reflection expresses. The point here is Lacanian. In Lacanian theory, we succeed by failing. The Lacanian subject feels alienated from his being. Out there is some missing thing (the phallus) that would make the subject feel whole. What is missing is strictly sublime - a negative. Through sublimation, this negative becomes associated with some positive thing, such as unrequited love or winning an election. These are the sublime objects of our desire. In pursuing them, we pursue self-equality. If we can just get a date or win an election, we think that we can recapture our missing being. But the endeavour must logically fail. Constitutionally, we are not self-identical (as Hegel everywhere emphasizes in the Logic.

Rather, we are, as Kant puts it, a faculty of desire.

'All practical principles which presuppose an object (matter) of the faculty of desire as the ground of determination of the will are empirical and can furnish no practical laws. By the matter of the faculty of desire I mean an object the realization of which is desired. Now, if the desire for this object precedes the practical rule and is the condition of our making it a principle, then I say (in the first place) this principle is in that case wholly empirical, for then what determines the choice is the idea of an object and that relation of this idea to the subject by which its faculty of desire is determined to its realization. Such a relation to the subject is called the pleasure in the realization of an object. This, then, must be presupposed as a condition of the possibility of determination of the will. But it is impossible to know a priori of any idea of an object whether it will be connected with pleasure or pain, or be indifferent. In such cases, therefore, the determining principle of the choice must be empirical and, therefore, also the practical material principle which presupposes it as a condition. In the second place, since susceptibility to a pleasure or pain can be known only empirically and cannot hold in the same degree for all rational beings, a principle which is based on this subjective condition may serve indeed as a maxim for the subject which possesses this susceptibility, but not as a law even to him (because it is wanting in objective necessity, which must be recognized a priori); it follows, therefore, that such a principle can never furnish a practical law.

- 'Critique of Practical Reason'

We are not what we desire, and that is what we are. Achievement of our desire would be catastrophic. We succeed by failing. The thing we desire is not really the point. It masks over a negative thing that is beyond us and constitutive of us and hence in us. This negative non-thing is Lacan's objet petit a. The a stands for autre, or other. 'Object a can be understood here as the remainder produced when that hypothetical unity [of the self] breaks down, as a last trace of that unity, a last remainder thereof. By cleaving to that rem(a)inder, the split subject, though expulsed from the Other, can sustain the illusion of wholeness; by clinging to object a, the subject is able to ignore his or her division', explains Bruce Fink.

Psychoanalysis teaches us to surrender or sublate the aspiration to selfequality. When we do, we paradoxically achieve self-equality. Desire is best fulfilled when it is renounced - when the subject says to desire, I am not that. Hegel continues: Reflection finds before it an immediate which it transcends and from which it is the return. The verb to find is important. Reflection does not say, I am just making this all up. There is no 'other' out there. Rather, Positing Reflection discovers what really is (or was). But by insisting upon its moment of immediacy, Positing Reflection equally transcends its discovery and re-appropriates the very being it had sent forth, since presupposition is also a return.

In short, return and presupposition mutually constitute each other. One cannot exist without the other. Accordingly, Hegel remarks, but this return is only the presupposing of what reflection finds before it. What is thus found only comes to be through being left behind) its immediacy is sublated immediacy. What this passage means is that presence (Positing Reflection) is constituted by an absence (Being that is both found and left behind). Again, the point has significance for psychoanalysis. Human subjects who feel empty and alienated have found that they have lost their grace {le., original sin). Once they had it but now they don't. The loss comes to be only when the subject feels that a missing piece has been left behind. This feeling of loss is what Lacanians call castration. But this is 'false autobiography' as Jeanne L. Schroeder puts it. We never had what we lost. Loss is presupposed. Psychoanalysis therefore tries to achieve a 'loss of a loss' - a realization that what is lacking in ourselves is simply presupposed. Slavoj ?i?ek, (1949 - ). Houlgate, however, interprets this passage differently. He views it as marking the point at which Essence stops being the product of Being and becomes the producer of Being. 'Positing is thus a deeply paradoxical movement: for it is not simply prior to positedness, but only comes to be prior to positedness in and through the activity of producing that positedness. It does not simply come first, but, as it were, ends up preceding what it posits . . . This reflects the paradox at the heart of essence itself: for essence is that which is primary and prior to being, but that which only turns out at the end to have come first. It is that to which posited being can only ever point back'.

External Reflection, the quintessence of dialectical Reason, emphasizes difference at the expense of identity. 'All the second members of triads ... should bear a basic similarity to external reflection', explains J. F. Hoffmeyer. It accuses Positing Reflection of having found in the stones the very sermons it placed there. It says, you claim you are by virtue of your return from sublating Being. That's just a presupposition. You've just imagined it all. You have found nothing objective. External Reflection makes 'what is prior independent of what is posterior', explains Hoffmeyer. It is 'subsequent and synthetic' and 'necessarily external to the relations it considers', explains John W.?Burbidge. It arises because positing Reflection has a presupposition and starts from the immediate as its other. External Reflection should be called 'presuppositional reflection' because it is reflection aware of its own act, explains Clark Butler.

The other to Positing Reflection is its own immediate Being, which Positing Reflection itself presupposes. Dialectically, we can now see that Positing Reflection reflects its illusory being within itself and presupposes for itself only an illusory being, only positedness.

'Reflection, as absolute reflection, is essence shining within, essence that posits only shine, only positedness, for its presupposition; and as presupposing reflection, it is immediately only positing reflection. But external or real reflection presupposes itself as sublated, as the negative of itself. In this determination, it is doubled. At one time it is as what is presupposed, or the reflection into itself which is the immediate. At another time, it is as the reflection negatively referring to itself; it refers itself to itself as to that its non-being'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

External Reflection c views presupposition b as the negative of reflection a, but so that this negative as negative is sublated.

'External reflection thus presupposes a being, at first not in the sense that its immediacy is only positedness or moment, but in the sense rather that this immediacy refers to itself and the determinateness is only as moment. Reflection refers to its presupposition in such a way that the latter is its negative, but this negative is thereby sublated as negative. – Reflection, in positing, immediately sublates its positing, and so it has an immediate presupposition. It therefore finds this presupposition before it as something from which it starts, and from which it only makes its way back into itself, negating it as its negative. But that this presupposition is a negative or a positedness is not its concern; this determinateness belongs only to positing reflection, whereas in the presupposing positedness it is only as sublated. What external reflection determines and posits in the immediate are determinations which to that extent are external to it. – In the sphere of being, external reflection was the infinite; the finite stands as the first, as the real from which the beginning is made as from a foundation that abides, whereas the infinite is the reflection into itself standing over against it'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

That is to say, External Reflection accepts b as sublated Being, as derived in earlier chapters. What it denies is the return and hence the being of Reflection. Accordingly, External Reflection is the syllogism in which are the two extremes, the immediate and return-into-self; the middle term of the syllogism b is the connection of the two, the determinate immediate, so that one part of the middle term, immediacy, belongs only to one of the extremes, the other, determinateness or negation, belongs only to the other extreme.

External Reflection

'This external reflection is the syllogism in which the two extremes are the immediate and the reflection into itself; the middle term is the reference connecting the two, the determinate immediate, so that one part of this connecting reference, the immediate, falls to one extreme alone, and the other, the determinateness or the negation, only to the other extreme'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

This passage describes External Reflection. Positing Reflection a, b, is Reflection's immediate moment. External Reflection c - a return-into-self - is on the left side of the syllogism - the side which is (as opposed to the side which is not). It stands against Positing Reflection a and immediacy b. It sees the immediacy of a, b as merely the product of Positing Reflection and so decouples a from b. Hegel calls the middle term the determinate immediate. This immediacy is presupposed by External Reflection, which is a positing of the immediate.

'But if one takes a closer look at what the external reflection does, it turns out that it is, secondly, the positing of the immediate, an immediate which thus becomes the negative or the determined; but it is immediately also the sublating of this positing, for it pre-supposes the immediate; in negating, it is the negating of its negating. But thereby it immediately is equally a positing, the sublating of the immediate which is its negative; and this negative, from which it seemed to begin as from something alien, only is in this its beginning. In this way, the immediate is not only implicitly in itself (that is, for us or in external reflection) the same as what reflection is, but is posited as being the same. For the immediate is determined by reflection as the negative of the latter or as the other of it, but it is reflection itself which negates this determining. – The externality of reflection vis-a-vis the immediate is consequently sublated; its self-negating positing is its coinciding with its negative, with the immediate, and this coinciding is the immediacy of essence itself. – It thus transpires that external reflection is not external but is just as much the immanent reflection of immediacy itself; or that the result of positing reflection is essence existing in and for itself. External reflection is thus determining reflection'.

- 'The Science of Logic'.

External Reflection announces, I am not the immediate. Rather, b is immediate. The immediate consequently becomes the negative or the determinate. But external Reflection is likewise immediately also the sublating of its positing. This sublating was also a feature of positing Reflection. According to this activity, positing Reflection forgot its own positing activity. Now External Reflection does the same. External Reflection presupposes the immediate; in negating, it is the negating of its negating. 'Because external reflection starts from immediate content, it does not see that it presupposes itself, and that the content reflects itself into what grounds it', explains Jean Hyppolite, (1907 – 1968), 'external reflection does not reflect on itself; it is beyond the compared things, it is subjective'.

External Reflection is both what positing Reflection was (on the law of sublation) - that is to say, not a positing - and a consciousness of positing activity. In this way, the immediate is not only in itself- that means, for us, or in external reflection - identical with reflection, but this identicalness is posited. We have a version of dialectical Reason's standard flaw. It denounces the position of the Understanding but replicates it. As conscious of the other's immediacy, External Reflection is not truly external. It is a genuine unity with its negative. This union, like all unions, implies a moment of genuine immediacy. The realization that External Reflection is not external but is the immanent reflection of immediacy itself is the contribution of speculative Reason.

Reflection is thus determining reflection. Determining Reflection is the unity of Positing and External Reflection. From Illusory Being Dialectical Reason had elicited the confession that it was not Essential; it did not have being-in-and-forself. Speculative Reason responded, But that is what Essence is. It is the act of stating what it is not. With that observation, Illusory Being was born again as Reflection. Infuriated in defeat, Dialectical Reason accuses Positing Reflection of presupposing itself. Speculative Reason once again says, But that is all there is. Essence presupposes what it is. The job of Essence is to be. And it is by announcing what it is not. 'Determining reflection articulates that which positing reflection makes so clear, but which external reflection covers over; namely, the presupposition is reflection's own positing. On the other hand, determining reflection articulates that which external reflection brings to bear, but which is absent from positing reflection', explains Hoffmeyer.

What is added is consciousness of positing activity. For this reason, Hyppolite writes, 'Speculative thought is dogmatic like naive thought and critical like transcendental thought'. For Speculative Reason, self-presupposition is no embarrassment. Rather, it is the birth of freedom. Creatio ex nihilo is Determining Reflection's theme. For the view that Positing, External and Determining Reflection represent Greek religion, Judaism and Christianity respectively, see Zizek .Determining Reflection accepts the fact that reflective activity is always positing a presupposition. For this reason, Hegel says that positedness is a middle term mediating between Essence and Determinate Being. External Reflection announces that the determination of Positing Reflection is only a positedness.

'Determining reflection is in general the unity of positing and external reflection. ... External reflection begins from immediate being, positing reflection from nothing. In its determining, external reflection posits another in the place of the sublated being, but this other is essence; the positing does not posit its determination in the place of an other; it has no presupposition. But, precisely for this reason, it is not complete as determining reflection; the determination which it posits is consequently only a posited; this is an immediate, not however as equal to itself but as self-negating; its connection with the turning back into itself is absolute; it is only in the reflection-into-itself but is not this reflection itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

This can have two meanings. Either it is (1) a positedness opposed to a real, substantial Determinate Being, or it is (2) a positedncss of Essence. With regard to (1), External Reflection takes Determinate Being to be superior to positedness; positedness is a dream ascribed to the subjective side.

'The posited is therefore an other, but in such a manner that the self-equality of reflection is retained; for the posited is only as sublated, as reference to the turning back into itself. – In the sphere of being, existence was the being that had negation in it, and being was the immediate ground and element of this negation which was, therefore, itself immediate negation. In the sphere of essence, positedness is what corresponds to existence. Positedness is equally an existence, but its ground is being as essence or as pure negativity; it is a determinateness or a negation, not as existent but immediately as sublated. Existence is only positedness; this is the principle of the essence of existence. Positedness stands on the one side over against existence, and over against essence on the other: it is to be regarded as the means which conjoins existence with essence and essence with existence. – If it is said, a determination is only a positedness, the claim can thus have a twofold meaning, according to whether the determination is such in opposition to existence or in opposition to essence. In either meaning, existence is taken for something superior to positedness, which is attributed to external reflection, to the subjective. In fact, however, positedness is the superior, because, as posited, existence is what it is in itself – something negative, something that refers simply and solely to the turning back into itself. For this reason positedness is only a positedness with respect to essence: it is the negation of this turning back as achieved return into itself'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

'The Baleful head', 1887, Edward Burne-Jones

Reflection knows that there is no Determinate Being beyond the positing of it. Positing is now in unity with external reflection.

'Positedness is not yet a determination of reflection; it is only determinateness as negation in general. But the positing is now united with external reflection; in this unity, the latter is absolute presupposing, that is, the repelling of reflection from itself or the positing of determinateness as its own. As posited, therefore, positedness is negation; but as presupposed, it is reflected into itself. And in this way positedness is a determination of reflection'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Whereas External Reflection would not permit a return to self, Determining Reflection permits the return to occur. This means that 'the boundary between 'positing' and 'external' reflection falls, not between appearance and essence, but within essence itself', explains Sarah Kay. Hence, Determining Reflection is the positing of the determinateness as determinateness of itself(406) Primitive determinateness is immediate relation to other. Determinate Being is simply affirmative negation.

Determining Reflection

Being undergoes transition into Nothing; it cannot sustain itself and is not equal to its negation; Quality is not equal to itself. Positedness too is a relation to other, but that other is now internal to the concept - relatively other, not radically other. Determinations of Reflection are free from transition. Kant disagreed. He 'went so far as to call the determinations of reflection 'amphibolic' and he excluded them from his table of categories because they have an equivocal function in the determination of objects', explains Hans-Georg Gadamer,?(1900?– 2002). An amphiboly is the confusion of noumenon and phenomenon.

They are self-identity following negation according to Burbidge. This enables the negative to persist. Transitoriness is defeated. Like all essential" tropes, a Determination of Reflection is correlative; there are two sides - a positive and negative bearing, each being posited as exclusive, and only implicitly identical with each other.

'This transition is founded on the relation of the extremes and on their connection in the judgment as such. The positive judgment is the connection of the singular and the universal which are such immediately and each, therefore, is not at the same time what the other is. The connection is therefore just as essentially separation, or negative; for this reason the positive judgment was to be posited as negative. There was no need, therefore, for the logicians to make such a fuss about the not of the negative judgment being attached to the copula. In the judgment, the determination of the extremes is equally a determinate connection. The judgment determination, or the extreme, is not the purely qualitative one of immediate being that only stands over against an other outside it. Nor is it the determination of reflection, which, in accordance with its general form, behaves positively and negatively, posited in either case as exclusive, only implicitly identical with the other. The judgment determination, as the determination of the concept, is a universal within, posited as extending continuously in its other. Conversely, the judgment connection is the same determination as the extremes have; for it is precisely this universality and continuous extension of each into the other; in so far as these are distinguished, the connection also has negativity in it'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

First, a Determination of Reflection is positive. It is reflection-into-self and, as such, equality with itself. Reflection-into-self stands for subsistence - the accomplished sublation of positedness. This side is not reflected into its other - its non-being. By virtue of this reflection-into-self the determinations of reflection appear as free essentialities floating in the void without attracting or repelling one another. The freedom of free essentialities will turn out to be a one-sided freedom, 'characterized by subjugation and domination', explains Hoffmeyer. Freedom will be vastly enriched in future developments.

'Because of this reflection into themselves, the determinations of reflection appear as free essentialities, sublated in the void without reciprocal attraction or repulsion. In them the determinateness has become entranced and infinitely fixed by virtue of the reference to itself. It is the determinate which has subjugated its transitoriness and its mere positedness to itself, that is to say, has deflected its reflection-into-other into reflection-into-itself. These determinations hereby constitute the determinate shine as it is in essence, the essential shine. Determining reflection is for this reason reflection that has exited from itself; the equality of essence with itself is lost in the negation, and negation predominates'.

- 'The Science of Logic'

Second, the determination is positedness, negation as such. The negative side acknowledges otherness. As a positedness, a Determination of Reflection is a non-being over against an other, namely, over against absolute return-into-self, or over against essence.

'Now keeping in mind that the determination of reflection is both immanently reflected reference and positedness as well, its nature immediately becomes more transparent. For, as positedness, the determination is negation as such, a non-being as against another, namely, as against the absolute immanent reflection or as against essence. But as self-reference, it is reflected within itself. – This, the reflection of the determination, and that positedness are distinct; its positedness is rather the sublatedness of the determination whereas its immanent reflectedness is its subsisting. In so far as now the positedness is at the same time immanent reflection, the determinateness of the reflection is the reference in it to its otherness. – It is not a determinateness that exists quiescent, one which would be referred to an other in such a way that the referred term and its reference would be different, each something existing in itself, each a something that excludes its other and its reference to this other from itself. Rather, the determination of reflection is within it the determinate side and the reference of this determinate side as determinate, that is, the reference to its negation. – Quality, through its reference, passes over into another; its alteration begins in its reference. The determination of reflection, on the contrary, has taken its otherness back into itself. It is positedness – negation which has however deflected the reference to another into itself, and negation which, equal to itself, is the unity of itself and its other, and only through this is an essentiality. It is, therefore, positedness, negation, but as reflection into itself it is at the same time the sublatedness of this positedness, infinite reference to itself'.

- The Science of Logic'

Positedness stands for sublatability and instability; it is an immediacy that is in in-itself sublated, that is not distinct from the return-into-self and is itself only this movement of return. But, because it is only sublated in itself, it is not yet expressly sublated. Hence, we have before us the correlation of positedness and sublation of positedness. Hegel had earlier pointed out that Essence is to the whole of Logic what Quantity was to the doctrine of Being.79 How did Quantity get its start? By presupposing an other to which its expelled content was assigned. Into this other Quantity continuously flowed. Now Reflection does something similar. It presupposes a return from an other which, in its now more advanced state, is internal to the concept - not external, as Quantity's other was. The other to Reflection (purely the act of announcing what it is not) is Illusory Being. Essence is discovering that its very existence is correlative. 'Essence is not a simple concept that can be isolated in the way [Determinate Being] can be isolated. Essence signifies a much more complex process of thought: in . . . negating what is immediate given, it remains identical with itself', explains Burbidge. It needs appearance in order to show what it is, the act of announcing that it is not.

'The Fairies'

by?William Allingham, (1824 – 1889)

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore

Some make their home,

They live on crispy pancakes

Of yellow tide-foam;

Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain-lake,

With frogs for their watchdogs,

All night awake.

High on the hill-top

The old King sits;

He is now so old and grey

He’s nigh lost his wits.

With a bridge of white mist

Columbkill he crosses,

On his stately journeys

From Slieveleague to Rosses;

Or going up with the music

On cold starry nights,

To sup with the Queen

Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget

For seven years long;

When she came down again

Her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back,

Between the night and morrow,

They thought that she was fast asleep,

But she was dead with sorrow.

They have kept her ever since

Deep within the lake,

On a bed of fig-leaves,

Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hillside,

Through the mosses bare,

They have planted thorn trees

For my pleasure, here and there.

Is any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall find their sharpest thorns

In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather!

'Will-o'-the-Wisp', c. 1900, Elizabeth Adela Forbes?(née Armstrong)

Dedicated to the lady I adore.

The cord with the pearl upon pearl

Strung around your neck,

How happily it sways

Upon your beautiful breast!

Endowed with soul and meaning,

Intoxicated with joy.

?

What must we first feel,

We in whom hearts beat,

Such warm, human hearts -

Whenever it is allowed us

To snuggle comfortably

Next to such a breast?

Die Schnur, die Perl' an Perle

Um deinen Hals gereihte,

Wie wiegt sie sich so fr?hlich

Auf deiner sch?nen Brust!

Mit Seel' und Sinn begabet,

Mit Seligkeit berauschet

Sie, diese G?tterlust.

?

Was müssen wir erst fühlen,

In welchen Herzen schlagen,

So hei?e Menschenherzen,

Wofern es uns gestattet,

Uns traulich anzuschmiegen

An eine solche Brust?

- Georg Friedrich Daumer,?(1800 - 1875), after Anonymous, Sanskrit

'The string of pearls', 1908, William Paxton

Coming up next:

Determinations of Reflection.

To be continued ...