* Expression adopted from Fichte's " Sonnenklarer Bericht an das Publikum uber das eigentliclie Wesen der neuesten Philosopliie," VOL. I.— E 50 Phenomenology of Mind at the same time, to paint entirely in one kind of colour; for it turns with contempt from the distinctions in the schematic table, looks on them as belonging to the activity of mere reflection, and lets them drop out of sight in the blankness of the Absolute, and there reinstates pure identity, pure formless whiteness. Such uniformity of colouring in the schema with its hfeless determinations, this absolute identity, and the transition from one to the other — these are one and all alike the expression of inert Hfeless understanding, and an external process of knowledge into the bargain.
Not only can what is excellent not escape the fate of becoming thus devitalised and despirituahsed, and seeing its skin flayed and paraded about in this way by hfeless knowledge, and the conceit such knowledge engenders; but, further, such a fate lets us see the power the " excellent " exercises over the heart (GemutJi), if not over the mind (Geist). Moreover, we recognise here, too, that process towards universahty and determinateness of form which marks the complete attainment of excellence, and which alone makes it possible that this universahty can be turned to superficial uses.
Science can become an organic system only by the inherent hfe of the notion. In science the determinateness, which was taken from the schema and stuck on to existing facts in external fashion, is the self-directing inner soul of the concrete content. The movement of what is partly consists in becoming another to itself, and thus developing exphcitly into its own immanent content; partly, again, it takes this evolved content, this existence it assumes, back into itself, i.e. makes itself into a mom^ent, and reduces itself to gjmple determinateness. In the first stage of the pro- Preface 51 Preface 51 cess negativity lies in the function of distinguishing and estabhshing existence; in this latter return into self, negativity consists in the bringing about of determinate simplicity. It is in this way that the content shows its specific characteristic not to be received from something else, and stuck on externally; the content gives itself this determinate characteristic, appoints itself of its own initiative to the rank of a moment and to a place in the whole. The pigeon-holing process of understanding retains for itself the necessity and the notion controUing the content, that which constitutes the concrete element, the actuahty and hving process of the subject-matter which it labels: or rather, understanding does not retain this for itself, on the contrary, understanding fails to know it. For if it had as much insight as that, it would surely show that it had. It is not even aware of the need for such insight; if it were, it would drop its schematising process, or at least would no longer be satisfied to know by way of a mere table of contents. A table of contents is all that understanding gives, the content itself it does not furnish at all.
If the specific determination (say even one like magnetism) is one that in itself is concrete or actual, it all the same gets degraded into something hfeless and inert, since it is merely predicated of another existing entity, and not known as an immanent living principle of this existence; nor is there any comprehension of how in this entity its intrinsic and pecuHar way of expressing and producing itself takes effect. This, the very kernel of the matter, formal understanding leaves to others to add later on. Instead of making its way into the inherent content of the matter in 52 Phenomenology of Mind hand, understanding always takes a survey of the whole, assumes a position away from the particular existence about which it is speaking, i.e. it does not see it at all. True scientific knowledge, on the contrary, demands abandonment to the very hfe of the object, or, which means the same thing, claims to have before it the inner necessity controlling the object, and to express this only. Steeping itself in its object, it forgets to take that general survey, which is merely a turning of knowledge away from the content back into itself. But being sunk into the material in hand, and following the course that such material takes, true knowledge retm-ns back into itself, yet not before the content in its fullness is taken into itself, is reduced to the simplicity of being a determinate characteristic, drops to the level of being one aspect of an existing entity, and passes over into its higher truth. By this process the whole as such, taking itself in its entire sweep, emerges out of the wealth where bare reflection seemed to get lost.
In general, in virtue of the principle that, as we expressed it before, substance is implicitly and in itself subject, all content makes its reflection into itself in its own special way. The subsistence or substance of anything that exists is its self-identity; for its want of identity, or oneness with itself, would be its dissolution. But self-identity is pure abstraction; and this is just thinking. When I say Quality, I state simple determinateness; by means of its quality one existence is distinguished from another or is an " existence "; it is for itself, something on its own account, or subsists with itself because of this simple characteristic. But by doing so it is essentially Thought.
Preface 53 Here we find contained the principle that Being is Thought: here is exercised that insight which is generally at a discount in the case of the ordinary non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being. In virtue, further, of the fact that subsistence on the part of what exists is self-identity or pure abstraction, it is the abstraction of itself from itself, in other words, is itself its own want of identity with itself and dissolution — its own proper inwardness and retraction into self — its process of coming to be.
Owing to the nature which being thus has, and so far as what is has this nature from the point of view of knowledge, this thinking is not an activity which treats the content as something alien and external; it is not reflection into self away from the content. Science is not that kind of Idealism which stepped into the place of the Dogmatism of mere assertion and took the shape of a Dogmatism of mere assurance, the Dogmatism of mere self - certainty. Rather, since knowledge sees the content go back into its own proper inner nature, the activity of knowledge is absorbed in that content — for it (the activity) is the immanent self of the content — and is also at the same time returned into itself, for this activity is pure self-identity in otherness. In this way the knowing activity is the artful device which, pretending to refrain from activity, looks on and watches how specific determinateness, with its concrete fife, just where it pretends to be working out its own self-preservation and its own private interest, is, in point of fact, doing the very opposite, is doing what brings about its own dissolution and makes itself a moment in the whole.
While, in the foregoing, the significance of Under- 54 Phenomenology of Mind standing was stated from the point of view of the selfconsciousness of substance; by what has been here stated we can see clearly its significance from the point of view of substance qua being. Existence is Quality, self-identical determinateness, or determinate simpHcity, determinate thought: this is existence as regards Understanding. On this account it is fow, as Anaxagoras first took reahty to be. Those who succeeded him grasped the nature of existence in a more determinate way as elSoi or ISea, i.e. as determinate or specific universahty, kind or genus. The term genus or kind seems indeed too ordinary and inadequate to express ideas like beauty, holiness, eternal, which are now the vogue. As a matter of fact, however, idea {l&ia) means neither more nor less than kind, genus. But we often find in these days that a term which exactly designates a conception is despised and rejected, and another preferred to it which hides and obscures the conception, and thus sounds more edifying, even though this is merely due to its being expressed in a foreign language.
Precisely for the reason that existence is designated a genus or kind, it is a naked simple thought; vovi;, simple abstraction, is substance. It is on account of its simphcity, its self-identity, that it appears steady, fixed, and permanent. But this self-identity is Ukewise negativity; hence that fixed and stable existence carries the process of its own dissolution within itself. The determinateness appears at first to be so solely through its relation to something else; and its process seems imposed and forced upon it externally. But its having its own otherness within itself, and the fact of its being a self-initiated process — these are implied in the very simplicity of thought itself. For Preface 55 this is self-moving thought, thought that distinguishes, is inherent inwardness, the pure notion. Thus, then, it is the very nature of understanding to be a process, and being a process it is Rationahty.
In the nature of existence as thus described — to be its own notion and being in one — consists logical necessity in general. This alone is what is rational, the rhythm of the organic whole: it is as much knowledge of content as that content is notion and essential nature. In other words, this alone is the sphere and element of speculative thought. The concrete shape of the content is resolved by its own inherent process into a simple determinate quahty. Thereby it is raised to logical form, and its being and essence coincide; its concrete existence is merely this process that takes place, and is eo ipso logical existence. It is therefore needless to apply a formal scheme to the concrete content in an external fashion; the content is in its very nature a transition into a formal shape, which, however, ceases to be formahsm of an external kind, because the form is the indwelling process of the concrete content itself.
This nature of scientific method, which consists partly in being inseparable from the content, and partly in determining the rhythm of its movement by its own agency, finds, as we mentioned before, its peculiar systematic expression in speculative philosophy. What is here stated describes in effect the essential principle; but cannot stand for more at this stage than an assertion or assurance by way of anticipation. The truth it contains is not to be found in this exposition, which is in part historical in character. And just for that reason, too, it is not in the least 66 Phenomenology of Mind refuted if anyone assures us on the contrary that this is not so, that the process instead is here so and so, if ideas we are all used to, being truths accepted or settled and famihar to everyone, are brought to mind and recoimted, or, again, if something new is served up and guaranteed as coming from the inner sanctuaries of inspired intuition.
Such a view is bomid to meet with opposition. The first instinctive reaction on the part of knowing, when offered somethmg that was unfamihar, is usually to resist it. It seeks by that means to save freedom and native insight, to secure its own inherent authority against ahen avithority — for that is the way anything apprehended for the first time appears. This attitude is adopted, too, in order to do away with the semblance of a kind of disgrace which would he in the fact that something has had to be learnt. In like manner, again, when the unfamihar or unknown is received with applause, the reaction is in the same way an exaltation of freedom and native authority. It consists in something analogous to ultra-revolutionary declamation and action.
Hence the important thing for the student of science is to make himself undergo the strenuous toil of conceptual I'eflection, of thinking in the form of the notion. This demands concentrated attention on the notion as such, on simple and ultimate determinations like being-initself, being-for-itself, self-identity, and so on; for these are elemental, pure, self-determined functions of a kind we might call souls, were it not that their conceptual nature denotes something higher than that term contains. The interruption by conceptual thought of the habit of always thinking in figurative ideas Preface 57 Preface 57 {Vorstellungen) is as annoying and troublesome to this way of thinking as to that process of formal intelligence which in its reasoning rambles about with no real thoughts to reason with. The former, the habit, may be called materialised thinking, a fortuitous mental state, one that is absorbed in what is material, and hence finds it very distasteful at once to hft its self clear of this matter and be confined to itself alone. The latter, the process of raisonnement, is, on the other hand, detachment from all content, and conceited superiority to it. What is wanted here is the effort and struggle to give up this kind of freedom, and instead of being a merely arbitrary principle directing the content anyhow, this freedom should sink into and pervade the content, should get it directed and controlled by its own proper nature, i.e. by the self as its own self, and should see this process taking place. We must abstain from interrupting the immanent rhythm of the movement of conceptual thought; we must refrain from arbitrarily interfering with it, and introducing ideas and reflections that have been obtained elsewhere. Restraint of this sort is itself an essential condition of attending to and getting at the real nature of the notion.
There are the two aspects in the case of that ratiocinative procedure which mark its contrast from conceptual thinking and call for further notice. Raisonnement, in the first place, adopts a negative attitude towards the content apprehended; knows how to refute it and reduce it to nothingness. To see what the content is not is merely a negative process; it is a dead halt, which does not of itself go beyond itself, and proceed to a new content; it has to get hold of 58 Phenomenology of Mind something else from somewhere or other in order to have once more a content. It is reflection upon and into the empty ego, the vanity of its own knowledge. Conceit of this kind brings out not only that this content is vain and empty, but also that to see this is itself fatuity too: for it is negation with no perception of the positive element within it. In that this reflection does not even have its own negativity as its content, it is not inside actual fact at all, but for ever away outside it. On that account it imagines that by asserting mere emptiness it is going much farther than insight that embraces and reveals a wealth of content. On the other hand, in the case of conceptual thinking, as was above indicated, the negative aspect falls within the content itself, and is the positive substance of that content, as well by being its inherent character and moving principle as by being the entirety of what these are. Looked at as a result, it is determinate specific negation, the negative which is the outcome of this process, and consequently is a positive content as well.
In view of the fact that ratiocinative thinking has a content, whether of images or thoughts or a mixture of both, there is another side to its process which makes conceptual comprehension difficult for it. The pecuHar nature of this aspect is closely connected with the essential meaning of the idea (ISea) above described, in fact, expresses the idea in the way this appears as the process of thinking apprehension. For just as ratiocinative thinking in its negative reference, which we have been describing, is nothing but the self into which the content returns; in the same way, on the other hand, in its positive cognitive process the self Preface 69 is an ideally presented subject to wliicli the content is related as an accident and predicate. This subject constitutes the basis to which the content is attached and on which the process moves to and fro. Conceptual thinking goes on in quite a different way.
Since the concept or notion is the very self of the object, manifesting itself as the development of the object, it is not a quiescent subject, passively supporting accidents: it is a self-determining active concept which takes up its determinations and makes them its own. In the course of this process that inert passive subject really disappears; it enters into the different constituents and pervades the content; instead of remaining in inert antithesis to determinateness of content, it constitutes, in fact, that very specificity, i.e. the content as differentiated along with the process of bringing this about. Thus the sohd basis, which ratiocination found in an inert subject, is shaken to its foundations, and the only object is this very movement of the subject. The subject supplying the concrete filling to its own content ceases to be something transcending this content, and cannot have further predicates or accidents. Conversely, again, the scattered diversity of the content is brought under the control of the self, and so bound together; the content is not a universal that can be detached from the subject, and adapted to several indifferently. Consequently the content is in truth no longer predicate of the subject; it is the very substance, is the inmost reality, and the very principle of what is being considered. Ideational thinking {vmstellen), since its nature consists in dealing with accidents or predicates, and in exercising the right to transcend them because they are nothing more 60 Phenomenology of Mind than predicates and accidents — this way of thinking is checked in its course, since that which has in the proposition the form of a predicate is itself the substance of the statement. It is met by a counter-thrust, as we may say. Starting from the subject, as if this were a permanent base on which to proceed, it discovers, by the predicate being in reahty the substance, that the subject has passed into the predicate, and has thereby ceased to be subject: and since in this way what seems to be predicate has become the entire mass of the content, whole and complete, thinking cannot wander and ramble about at will, but is restrained and controlled by this weight of content.
Usually the subject is first set down as the fixed and objective self; from this fixed position the necessary process passes on to the multiphcity of determinations or predicates. Here the knowing ego takes the place of that subject and is the function of knitting or combining the predicates one with another, and is the subject holding them fast. But since the former subject enters into the determinate constituents themselves, and is their very life, the subject in the second case — viz. the knowing subject — finds that the former, — which it is supposed to be done with and which it wants to transcend, in order to return into itself, — is still there in the predicate: and instead of being able to be the determining agency in the process of resolving the predicate — reflectively deciding whether this or that predicate should be attached to the former subject — it has really to deal with the self of the content, is not allowed to be something on its own account {fur sich), but has to exist along with this content.
What has been said can be expressed in a formal Preface 61 manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment; and the identical proposition, which the former becomes [by uniting subject and predicate], imphes the rejection and repudiation of the above relation between subject and predicate. This conflict between the form of a proposition in general and the unity of the notion which destroys that form, is similar to what we find between metre and accent in the case of rhythm. Rhythm is the result of what hovers between and unites both. So in the case of the speculative or philosophical judgment; the identity of subject and predicate is not intended to destroy their distinction, as expressed in propositional form; their unity is to appear as a harmony of the elements. The form of the judgment is the way the specific sense appears, or is made manifest, it is the accent which differentiates the content of its meaning: that the predicate expresses the substance, and the subject itself falls within the universal, is the unity wherein that accent dies aAvay.
To explain what has been said by examples let us take the proposition God is Being. The predicate is " being ": it has siibstantive significance, and thus absorbs the meaning of the subject within it. Being is meant to be here not predicate but the essential nature. Thereby, God seems to cease to be what he was when the proposition was put forward, viz. a fixed subject. Thinking [i.e. ordinary reflection], instead of getting any farther with the transition from subject to predicate, in reality finds its activity checked through the loss of the subject, and it is thrown back 62 Phenomenology of Mine on the thought of the subject because it misses this subject. Or again, since the predicate has itself been pronounced to be a subject, to be the being, to be the essential reality, which exhausts the nature of the subject, thinking finds the subject directly present in the predicate too: and now, instead of having, in the predicate, gone into itself, and preserved the freedom characteristic of ratiocination, it is absorbed in the content all the while, or, at any rate, is required to be so.
Similarly, when it is said: " the real is the universal," the real, qua subject, passes away in its predicate. The universal is not only meant to have the significance of a predicate, as if the proposition stated that the real is universal: the universal is meant to express the essential nature of the real. Thinking therefore loses that fixed objective basis which it had in the subject, just as much as in the predicate it is thrown back on the subject, and therein returns not into itself but into the subject underlying the content.
This unaccustomed restraint imposed upon thought is for the most part the cause of the complaints made regarding the unintelhgibihty of philosophical writings, when otherwise the individual has in him the requisite mental cultivation for understanding them. In w^hat has been said we see the reason for the definite objection often made against them, that a good deal has to be read repeatedly before it can be understood — an accusation which is meant to imply something objectionable in the extreme, and one which if granted to be sound admits of no further reply. It is obvious from the above what is the state of the case here. The philosophical proposition, being a proposition, calls up the Preface 63 Preface 63 accepted view of the usual relation of subject and predicate, and suggests the idea of the customary procedure which takes place in knowledge. Its philosophical content destroys this way of proceeding and the ordinary view taken of this process. The common view discovers that the statement is intended in another sense than it is thinking of, and this correction of its opinion compels knowledge to recur to the proposition and take it now in some other sense.
There is a difficulty which might well be avoided. It consists in mixing up the methods of procedure followed by speculation and ratiocination, when what is said of the subject has at one time the significance of its conceptual principle, and at another time the meaning of its predicate or accidental quality. The one mode of thinking invalidates the other; and only that philosophical exposition can manage to become plastic in character which resolutely sets aside and has nothing to do with the ordinary way of relating the parts of a proposition.
As a matter of fact, non-speculative thinking has its rights too, which are justifiable, but are disregarded in the speculative way of stating a proposition. Abolishing the form of the proposition must not take place merely in an immediate manner, merely through the bare content of the proposition. On the contrary, we must give explicit expression to this cancelling process; it must be not only that internal restraining and confining of thought within its own substance; this turning of the conception back into itself has to be expressly brought out and stated. This process, which constitutes what formerly had to be accomphshed by proof, is the internal dialectical movement of the 64 Phenomenology of Mind proposition itself. This alone is the concrete speculative element, and only the exphcit expression of this is a speculative systematic exposition. Qua proposition, the speculative aspect is merely the internal restriction of, thought within its own substance where the return of the essential principle into itself is not yet brought out. Hence we often find philosophical expositions referring us to the inner intuition, and thus dispensing with the systematic statement of the dialectical movement of the proposition, which is what we wanted all the while. The proposition ought to express ivhat the truth is: in its essential nature the truth is subject: being so, it is merely the dialectical movement, this self-producing course of activity, maintaining its advance by returning back into itself. In the case of knowledge in other spheres this aspect of the articulated internal nature of the content is constituted by proof. When dialectic, however, has been separated from proof, the idea of philosophical demonstration as a matter of fact vanishes altogether.
On this point it may be mentioned that the dialectical process Ukewise consists of parts or elements which are propositions. The difficulty indicated seems therefore to recur continually, and seems to be a difficulty inherent in the nature of the case. This is like what happens in the ordinary process of proving anything; the grounds it makes iise of themselves need to be based on other grounds again, and so on ad infinitum. This manner of furnishing grounds and conditions, however, concerns that type of proof from which the dialectical movement is distinct and hence belongs to the process of external knowledge. As to what this movement is, its element is the bare concept; this furnishes Preface 65 a content which is through and through subject impUciter and per se. There is to be found, therefore, no sort of content standing in a relation, as it were, to an underlying subject, and getting its significance by being attached to this as a predicate. The proposition as it appears is a mere empty form.
Apart from the sensuously apprehended or ideally presented {vorgestellten) self, it is in the main the mere name qua name which denotes the subject pure and simple, the empty unit without any conceptual character. For this reason it would e.g. be expedient to avoid the name " God." because this word is not in its primary use a conception as well, but the special name of an underlying subject, its fixed resting-place; while, on the other hand, being or the one, singleness, subject, etc., themselves directly indicate conceptions. Furthermore, if speculative truths are stated about that subject [God], even then their content is devoid of the immanent notion, because that content is merely present in the form of a passive subject, and owing to this the speculative truths easily take on the character of mere edification. From this side, too, the obstacle, arising from the habit of putting the speculative predicate in the form of a proposition, instead of taking it as an inherent essential conception, is capable of being made greater or less by the mere way philosophical truths are put forward. Philosophical exposition, faithfully following its insight into the nature of speculative truth, must retain the dialectical form, and exclude everything which is not grasped conceptually and is a conception.
As in the case of the procedure of ratiocination, the study of philosophy finds obstruction, too, in the un- VOL. I.— F 66 Phenomenology of Mind reasoning conceit that builds itself on well-established truths, which the possessor considers he has no need to return upon and reconsider, but rather takes to be fundamental, and thinks he can propound as well as decide and pass sentence by means thereof. In this regard, it is especially needful to make once again a serious business of philosophy. In all spheres of science, art, skill, and handicraft it is never doubted that, in order to master them, a considerable amount of trouble must be spent in learning and in being trained. A.S regards philosophy, on the contrary, there seems still an assumption prevalent that, though every one with eyes and fingers is not on that account in a position to make shoes if he only gets leather and a last, yet everybody understands how to philosophise straight away, and pass judgment on philosophy, simply because he possesses the criterion for doing so in his natural reason — as if he did not in the same way possess the standard for shoemaking too in his own foot. It seems as if the possession of philosophy lay just in the want of knowledge and study, as if philosophy left off where the latter began. It is commonly held to be a formal kind of knowledge devoid of all substantial content.