Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation. John Grier Hibben 1902

Part II The Doctrine of Essence

Diess ist also überhaupt der Unterschied der Formen des Seyns und des Wesens. Im Seyn ist Alles unmittelbar, im Wesen dagegen ist Alles relativ. Der Standpunkt des Wesens ist überhaupt der Standpunkt der Reflexion. – Hegel

Chapter X: The Doctrine of Essence in Its General Features

The doctrine of essence (Die Lehre vom Wesen) forms the second part of the Logic. The transition from the concept of being to that of essence marks a decided advance in thought, and involves the introduction of several new ideas. Although these ideas have not been explicitly manifest in the category of simple being, they have been, nevertheless, implicitly present, so that their appearance at the beginning of the exposition as to the nature of essence is to be regarded as the developed expression of a potential factor already present in the preceding stage of being.

The concepts which form the constituent elements in the category of essence are as follows: –

(1) Mediation;

(2) Negation;

(3) Reflection;

(4) Permanence;

(5) Systemic integration.

We will discuss these in their order. First as to the idea of mediation, which we have already referred to in a previous chapter. We found that Hegel regards mere being as immediate (unmittelbar), – that is, as something which is unaccounted for, that which is to be accepted as a fact, but no reason assigned to it, and not referred to any other thing as its explanation, or by which it might be conceived as being brought about by any process whatsoever.

If, however, a raison d’être is given for any determinate being, this at once connects the being in question with its underlying ground, and this is in itself a process of mediation. It is that by which something comes to be what it is (vermittelt). Being cannot explain itself, and although we come to accept as a matter of course the various attributes of being, as quantity, quality, degree, measure, etc., nevertheless they are not sufficient to explain or justify themselves. Being, pure and simple, bears upon its face the stamp of derivation. It comes from something more fundamental than itself. It has had an origin, a life history, a destiny, all of which lie concealed. To disclose these sources and the processes depending upon them is the office of mediation; and when mediation has completely fulfilled its offices, the true essence of being will stand revealed. The difference between mediate and immediate knowledge may be more explicitly exhibited by noting the different adjectives which Hegel employs in describing the two concepts.

While the immediate knowledge is unrelated, mediate knowledge is related.

The immediate is simply given; the mediate is explained.

The immediate is elementary; the mediate is developed.

The immediate marks the beginning of knowledge; the mediate its development and resulting product.

In the next place, the idea of essence implies the negation of being.

Hegel, in the opening paragraph upon the doctrine of essence, defines his conception of essence as “being coming into mediation with itself through the negation of itself."[12]The technical terms which this definition contains may be elucidated by the following considerations. While the idea of being may at first seem to be quite independent and immediate, yet as we have seen in the examination of the necessary relations and connections which such an idea involves, it is found to be dependent upon something else out of which it has arisen, and by which the integrity of its composition is conserved. This is in itself a process of mediation, and this is what Hegel means by the phrase that “being comes into mediation with itself.” The category of being, therefore, regarded as self-constituted and self-sufficient falls to the ground. It cannot bear its own weight, and thus undermines itself. This is the meaning of the phrase that the idea of being contains the “negation of itself.” Nevertheless, while dying as an independent, immediate, self-contained form, it regains another life in the underlying ground to which it is necessarily referred and by which it becomes specifically determined. In its essence, being – that is, mere being, as such as Hegel puts it – is aufgehoben.

This is a very significant word in the Hegelian terminology and cannot be adequately translated by any one English word, for it conveys three distinct ideas which must be taken together in order to express its full significance. The verb aufheben possesses the threefold meaning with Hegel, – to destroy, to re-create in a new form, and at the same time to elevate. To speak of anything as aufgehoben means that it disappears in its given form, but that it reappears in a new form, and that the new form always represents a higher point of view and a substantial progress in thought. The one single English word which comes nearest to expressing this meaning is the word transmute. When Hegel affirms that in essence being is aufgehoben, he means that it has lost its independence only to find it again in a dependence which has this peculiar characteristic, that it is not subordinated to anything which is foreign to its own notion or idea, but which is at the last analysis one with the initial being itself. That which being rests upon as its basis must be a part of being itself; otherwise the relation would be external and valueless. While, therefore, the independence of being is in a sense denied, it is in another and a higher sense reaffirmed. The primary denial is a negation: the reaffirmation is brought about by the negation of the former negation.

This last is the absolute negation, as Hegel calls it, which is equivalent always to an affirmation. The independence of being which is first denied gives way to a dependence, but this in turn is denied, because when it is analyzed it is found to be in reality a dependence of being upon its own ground, which is equivalent to a self-dependence; and a self-dependence is the same as independence. Thus this second negation is a reassertion of the original independence; but, in the process of thought through which it has passed, it has acquired a richer and fuller significance; for it is an independence which has been fully justified.

The process of negation with Hegel, it must be remembered, is never extinction or annihilation: it is only a sublimation into a higher form; and the absorption of being in essence is one of the best illustrations of the process of negation, which plays such an important and conspicuous role in the Hegelian dialectic. It is in this way that negation is to be regarded as a means of more precise characterization and determination in the progressive development of thought. The nature of negation as a process may be summed up most completely in the term aufheben, – the overthrowing, and the restoring upon a higher plane, as has already been described.

The category of reflection presents a point of view from which the doctrine of essence may be best understood and appreciated. This has been referred to in a previous chapter, but is so important an idea in the general scheme of Hegel that an additional reference may not be out of place at this stage of the exposition. Being is regarded by Hegel as a category which is not self-illuminating. It receives its light from something else which is its ground. The idea of expressing this thought by the term reflection was suggested to Hegel through an analogy with the well-known physical phenomenon of reflection. As a substantial form before a glass is seen through reflection as an image of itself, so being may be regarded as the reflection of that which is its ground. The image in the glass has an immediate reality in a certain sense, but as regards its self-determination it is illusory. Its reality is due to its reflection of the object to which it stands related, and to which it must be referred in order to explain and to justify its own being. Thus the ground of being, and the being as manifested, are related to each other as substance and show, – the underlying essence and the reflected appearance. There are two phrases which are used frequently by Hegel in this connection, and their meaning should be precisely determined. They are the phrases Reflexion-in-sich and Reflexion-in-Anderea. The significance of these phrases will always be brought out clearly in their Hegelian usage, if we translate the former as that which shines in its own light, the latter as that which shines in the light of another.

We may say, therefore, that the various attributes of being do not shine in their own light, but in the light of some other, which forms their necessary complement, and constitutes their essence or substantial ground.

Essence is, moreover, to be distinguished from mere being, in that it is the permanent basis (das Bleibende), which underlies that which is only the transient manifestation. The several changes which the dialectic movement has been seen to produce among the attributes of being allow no resting-place for our thought. We pass from quality to quantity, and from quantity back again to a quality which possesses at this stage of development the additional characteristic of being quantitatively determined; and thence on to a quantitative determination which has no qualitative significance whatsoever, and through it all the idea of being is not able to show any basis of a permanent nature which it can call its own. Nevertheless, the nature of thought is such that we are constrained to demand some permanent underlying ground to which these various changes may be referred. It is in the idea of essence, the necessary complement of being, that we find the solid foundation which underlies and supports all the changing manifestations of being. While everything may be regarded, according to Heraclitus, as ceaselessly changing, yet nevertheless something remains. That which remains, regarded as a constant, is in itself the explanation of all change, and through which all variation may be reduced to law and uniformity. The significance of the variable lies in the fact that it may be referred to some underlying constant. Where there is no constant, variables possess no significance.

The idea of permanency which thus characterizes essence is regarded by Hegel as having an etymological warrant. Being is the German Seyn, and essence, or its German equivalent Wesen, is the same as past being, that is vergangenes Seyn, as seen in the past participle gewesen. This signifies that whatever has being, is thus declared to be by virtue of that which has been before, and which is therefore related to it as its Wesen, or ground.

The priority which seems to be expressed in the Wesen is, however, not asserted as a priority in time necessarily; it is merely a logical priority. The past, that which has been before, and which is to be regarded as the ground or essence of that which is, of being, is not past in the sense of having been set aside, or of disappearing; it is rather to be regarded as conserved, and living again in the present being. The past as the logical prius of being is therefore merely aufgehoben, as Hegel would express it, – past and yet perduring.

Hegel’s derivation of the word Wesen, and by this means establishing its significance, furnishes a characteristic illustration of his general habit of thought, and his conviction that the most valuable thoughts of mankind are often found crystallized in language. As to the suggestiveness of language in this particular, Hegel says: “Language has compressed within it what man has made his own; and what he has fashioned and expressed in speech contains, either embedded or elaborated, a category: so natural does logic come to him, or rather it is his own very nature."[13] Essence is to be regarded, moreover, as a constituted system of relations.

It is a complex consisting of a manifold of various elements which are throughout interrelated, and coordinated. This conception of essence also appears in the German, as seen in such words as das Zeitungswesen, the newspaper system; das Postwesen, the postal system; das Steuerwesen, the revenue system. We have a similar usage in our phrase, the railway system. In such a connection the word Wesen, or essence, emphasizes the truth that everything which is, which has being, must be referred to its appropriate place in the particular system to which it belongs and in which is to be found its true ground and proper explanation, and that, moreover, there is no kind of being in the universe which is unrelated to others, or which can remain apart and by itself.

This idea of the ground of being conceived as a system of coordinated and necessarily related elements is in complete accord with the modern theory of logic, which lays special emphasis upon the order and uniformity which characterizes the world of knowledge and the systematic relation which every element must sustain to every other and to the whole[4]These, then, are the chief factors, or, as Hegel would call them, moments which constitute the concept of essence, – the ideas of mediation, negation, reflection, permanency, and systemic integration.

It is in keeping with Hegel’s general point of view that he should define the Absolute as essence. Although we speak of finite essences such as man, nevertheless the term itself in the Hegelian system implies that we have passed beyond finitude, and that there is at the last analysis one supreme essence which is the true infinite and which embraces all other so-called essences within itself. Therefore, according to this conception, all else outside of the Absolute, outside of God, would possess no essentiality. God is not to be regarded merely as a being among many others, or as an essence, even the highest. He is pre-eminently the being and the essence underlying all others. Hegel draws special attention, however, to the truth that the nature of God is by no means exhausted in the ascription to Him of essence. If God is regarded as essence only, His universal and irresistible power is thereby assured, but His other attributes are overlooked. He is merely the Lord, God Almighty, and his more personal relations to the world in general, and to man in particular, are not recognized in such a definition. This may be said to be the com- mon defect in the Mohammedan and Jewish religions alike, in which the creator is removed by an impassable gulf from the creature[5] In the subsequent development of the dialectic movement it will be seen that the category of essence will, by its limitations, necessitate the complementary and final category of the notion, or universal reason.

The conception of God, therefore, as essence merely, must also be completed by the addition of those attributes which are involved in the category of the notion.

In the discussion of the category of essence Hegel divides the subject into three parts which will be treated in the three following chapters.

They are: –

1. Essence as ground of existence (Das Wesen als Grund der Ezistenz).

2. Appearance (Die Ersckeinung).

3. Actuality (Die Wirklichkeit).