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supersensible, in the sense of two sorts of reality, are no longer to be found here. The differences repelled are
not divided anew and assigned to two substances such as would support them and lend them a separate
subsistence, the result of which would be that understanding would leave the inner region, and fall back again
on its previous position. The one aspect or substance would be once more the world of perception, where the
one of those two laws would carry on its existence, and in opposition to it an inner world, just such a sensible
world as the first, but in the sphere of ideas; one that could not be indicated, seen, heard, and tasted as a
sensible world, and yet would be thought of as such a sensible world. But in point of fact, if the one element
set up is a perceived reality, and its inherent being, as its inverted form, is at the same time a sensuously
represented element, then sour, which would be the inherent nature of the sweet thing, is a real thing just as
much as the latter, viz., a sour thing; black, which would be the inherent nature of white, is the actual black;
the north pole, which is the true reality of the south pole, is the north pole present in the same magnet; the
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oxygen pole, the inherent nature of the pole of hydrogen, is the given oxygen pole of the same voltaic pile.
The actual crime, however. finds its inversion and its inherent nature qua possibility, in the intention as such,
but not in a good intention; for the truth of intention is simply the deed itself. The crime, so far as its content
goes, recoils upon itself, finds its inversion in actual punishment; this is the reconciliation of the law with the
reality set up against it in crime. Finally, the actual punishment carries its inverted reality with it in such a
way that it is a kind of realization of the law, whereby the activity, which the law exercises in the form of
punishment, is cancelled in the process, a manner of realization through which the law, from being actively
operative, becomes again quiescent and authoritative, and the conflict of individuality with it, and of it with
individuality, is extinguished.
From the idea, then, of inversion which constitutes the essential nature of one aspect of the supersensible
world, we must dissociate the sensuous idea of keeping distinctions substantively fixed in a different element
that sustains them; and this absolute notion of distinction must be set forth and apprehended purely as inner
distinction, self-repulsion of the selfsame as selfsame, and likeness of the unlike as unlike. We have to think
pure flux, opposition within opposition itself, or Contradiction. For in the distinction, which is an internal
distinction, the opposite is not only one of two factors--if so, it would not be an opposite, but a bare
existent--it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself directly and immediately present within it. No
doubt I put the opposite here and the other, of which it is the opposite, there; that is, I place the opposite on
one side, taking it by itself without the other. Just on that account, however; since I have here the opposite all
by itself, it is the opposite of its own self, that is, it has in point of fact the other immediately within itself.
Thus the supersensible world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time reached out beyond the other
world and has in itself that other; it is to itself conscious of being inverted (fer sich verkehrte), i.e. it is the
inverted form of itself; it is that world itself and its opposite in a single unity. Only thus is it distinction as
internal distinction, or distinction per se; in other words, only thus is it in the form of Infinity.
By means of infinity we see law attaining the form of inherent necessity, and so realizing its complete nature;
and all moments of the sphere of appearance are thereby taken up into the inner realm. That the simple and
ultimate nature of law is infinity means, according to the foregoing analysis, (a) that it is a self-identical
element, which, however, is inherently distinction; or that it is selfsameness which repels itself from itself,
breaks asunder into two factors. What was called simple force duplicates itself, and through its infinity is law.
It means (b) that what is thus sundered, constituting as it does the parts which are thought of as in the law,
puts itself forward as subsisting, as stable; and, if the parts are considered without the conception of internal
distinction, then space and time, or distance and velocity, which appear as moments of gravity, are just as
much indifferent and without necessary relation to one another as to gravity itself, or again as this bare
gravity is indifferent to them, or as simple electricity is indifferent to positive and negative. But (c) by this
conception of internal distinction, this unlike and indifferent factor, space and time, etc., becomes a
distinction, which is no distinction, or merely a distinction of what is selfsame, and its essence is unity. They
are reciprocally awakened into activity as positive and negative by each other, and their being lies rather in
their putting themselves as not-being, and cancelling themselves in the common unity. Both the factors
distinguished subsist; they are per se, and they are per se as opposites, that is are the opposites of themselves;
they have their antithesis within them, and are merely one single unity.
This bare and simple infinity, or the absolute notion, may be called the ultimate nature of life, the soul of the
world, the universal life-blood, which courses everywhere, and whose flow is neither disturbed nor checked
by any obstructing distinction, but is itself every distinction that arises, as well as that into which all
distinctions are dissolved; pulsating within itself, but ever motionless, shaken to its depths, but still at rest. It
is self-identical, for the distinctions are tautological; they are distinctions that are none. This self-identical
reality stands, therefore, in relation solely to itself. To itself; which means this is an other, to which the
relation points; and relation to itself is, more strictly, breaking asunder; in other words, that very self-identity
is internal distinction. These sundered factors have, hence, each a separate being of their own; each is an
opposite-of an other; and thus with each the other is therein ipso facto expressly given; or it is not the
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opposite of an other, but only the pure opposite; and thus each is, therefore, in itself the opposite of itself. Or,
again, each is not an opposite at all, but exists purely for itself, a pure self-identical reality, with no
distinction in it. This being so, we do not need to ask, still less to treat anxiety over such a question as
philosophy,--or even regard this as a question philosophy cannot answer,--"how distinction or otherness is
to come out of this pure essence, how these are to be really got out of it". For the process of disruption has
already taken place; distinction has been excluded from the self-identical entity, and put on one side so far as
it is concerned; what was to have been the self-identical is thus already one of the sundered elements, instead
of being the absolute essential reality. That the self-identical breaks asunder means, therefore, just as truly
that it supersedes itself as already sundered, that it cancels itself qua otherness. The unity which people
usually have in mind when they say distinction cannot come out of unity, is, in point of fact, itself merely one
moment of the process of disruption; it is the abstraction of simplicity, which stands in contrast with
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