Why Hegel's Concept is Not the Essence of Things

• Author: Stephen Houlgate
• Position: Professor, University of Warwick
• Pages: 31-43

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I The Project of the Logic

Hegel's Logic is both a logic and an ontology. It uncovers the fundamental categories of thought and the inherent structure of being itself. In the course of the Logic, being proves to be not just pure being, but also becoming, quantity, substance, and, eventually, concept (Begriff). Being-as-concept in turn proves to be objectivity and being-as-Idea. The Idea then finally discloses itself to be nature. What there proves to be, therefore, is not just pure being or pure substance, or even pure concept, but space, time and matter.

Note that, on my interpretation, nothing actually exists prior to nature: there is no being or quantity or substance before there is space and time. As Hegel puts it, "[n]ature is the first in point of time . . . ."¹ The Science of Logic demonstrates, however, that nature is made necessary by the inherent logic of being. In that sense, the logic of being can be said to "ground" nature. Yet logic is neither the transcendent ground, nor creator of nature (in the manner, say, of Leibniz's God), since it does not actually precede nature itself. Rather, logic is immanent in the very nature it grounds. In Spinoza's terminology, logic is "the immanent, not the transitive, cause" of nature.²

Hegel's ontological logic thus explains why being is, in truth, nothing less than nature. In the course of this logic, there are numerous significant transitions but the one that concerns me here is the transition from substance to concept. This move, in my view, is a watershed in the Logic because it is the move in which the true nature of being is first disclosed. In this move, being shows itself not just to be an immediately given quality or quantity, nor just to be that which is produced or "posited" by essence or substance, nor, indeed, just to be that essence orPage 32 substance itself, but to be wholly self-determining and self-developing being. Being-as-concept will, of course, determine itself further to be syllogism, objectivity, Idea, and nature. Yet it will never cease being self-determining. In this sense, rational, conceptual self-determination, not mere immediacy or positedness or positing, constitutes the true character of being, and thus of nature and spirit.

In Hegel's view, since the self-determining concept emerges logically from immediate being and essence, it must include both within itself. They are contained in the concept, however, "no longer as being and essence".³ What this means, as I understand it, is this: the concept has the simple self-relation that characterises immediate being, and it also incorporates the sheer negativity or reflexion that characterises essence. However, the concept is not itself mere being or essence, nor do its moments stand in a purely immediate or purely reflexive relation to one another. The concept, therefore, is a new structure that emerges logically from being and essence (preserving aspects of both) but is reducible to neither.⁴

As the concept determines itself further to be more than mere concept, the various determinations of immediate being and essence are, in fact, restored in all their earlier glory. In mechanism, for example, the concept invests itself with the immediacy and indifference of simple being and turns into the realm of independent mechanical objects;⁵ and in chemism the objectified concept exhibits the inherent relationality of essence.⁶ When the concept-or the Idea-finally discloses itself to be nature, quantity, measure and a whole host of determinations of essence are also restored. Being is never again pure being or pure essence but is always, minimally, concept or Idea. Nonetheless, nature proves to be both self-determining (for example, insofar as it establishes its ownPage 33 laws), and quantitative, qualitative, and reflexive (insofar as it is mechanical, physical and chemical matter).

The fact that the concept gives itself the form of immediate being or essence should not, however, obscure the equally important fact that the logical structure of the concept is different from and irreducible to that of simple being or essence. The concept is self-determining, self-developing being. As such, it is not mere immediate being. More importantly for my purposes, it is not the mere essence of things either. Yet there is a problem, because in the Logic Hegel describes the concept in explicitly essentialist terms as the ultimate "foundation" (Grundlage) and as the "substance of its determinations."⁷ In view of these potentially misleading remarks, it is crucial that we try to clarify more fully the precise difference between concept and essence.

II The Nature of Essence

Essence, Hegel writes, is the "first negation of being."⁸ It is that being in relation to which immediate being is reduced to mere illusion (Schein). Yet essence is not just the simple negation of being: it is also the negativity or reflexion that actually creates the illusion of immediacy. Indeed, essence does not just create the illusion of being, in Hegel's view; it actually generates being itself. Essence is the pure negativity that has nothing outside itself that it negates. As such, however, it brings being into being. It is, as Hegel puts it, the "movement of nothing to nothing" by virtue of which there is and must be being.⁹ The being that is generated through essential negativity is real, not illusory: it is the world we see around us. Its simple immediacy is, however, an illusion, since it is, in fact, mediated by the negativity of essence. Essence understood in this way is the movement of producing or positing being: what Hegel calls "positing reflexion" (setzende Reflexion). The being that is posited thereby is called-unsurprisingly-"posited being" or "positedness" (Gesetztsein).¹⁰

This relation between positing and positedness is definitive of all the categories of essence. Note that positing is different from positedness. At the same time, however, positing is nothing but the positing of positedness; it is positing, therefore, only in bringing posited being intoPage 34 being. In this sense, positing and positedness are not simply different but form an indissoluble unity. Yet the difference between them is not altogether eliminated, since positedness necessarily points back to a positing that is logically prior to it, and to which it is indebted.

Positing is thus a deeply paradoxical movement, because 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 strange movement is seen at various points throughout the logic of essence. Ground, for example, only comes to be a prior ground as the grounded moment emerges. Similarly, force only proves to be the force that it is in its expression; possibility only proves to be real possibility when actualised; and, of course, a cause only comes to be a cause in actually producing its effect. In the sphere of essence, therefore, there is no purely linear development. Instead, the active moment of positing only comes to precede (or to have preceded) the moment of positedness when that positedness is actually being posited. 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.

This leads to another distinctive feature of essence. Essence is the relation of two terms, each of which is not the other but each of which is a constitutive moment of the other. The positing moment is not the posited moment, yet positing is nothing but the positing of positedness, and positedness is equally the result of a prior positing. The categories of being-in particular those of quality-pass over into one another but remain immediately distinct.¹¹ Something proves to be other than something else, but being something and being other remain two quite distinct and separate determinations. In the sphere of essence, the relation between categories is subtly different. Here, categories come in pairs, such that one is explicitly included in the other as excluded from it. The one does not just pass over into the other but each is present in the other as not actually present in or part of it. Identity, for example, includes difference as the non-identity to which it is absolutely opposed. Similarly, the cause includes its effect as that which is quite different from the cause.Page 35

This feature of being included in the other as excluded is what Hegel has in mind when he speaks in the Encyclopaedia Logic of determinations of reflexion "shining" or "seeming" to be within what is opposed to them-that is, when he refers to their "Scheinen in dem Entgegengesetzten" or "Scheinen in Anderes"¹² Each determination is different from and opposed to the other. Yet, each is also (as Derrida might put it) "haunted" by the other within itself, since it is mediated by and dependent on that opposed and excluded other. Each is internally connected to the other it opposes because it owes its own character to the mediation of that other.

In every pair of essential or reflexive categories there is a positing moment and a posited moment. Yet each of these moments is mediated by the other. The positing moment (for example, the ground or force) is thus itself dependent upon the posited moment (the effect or expression). For Hegel, this is the paradox at the heart of essence: all essential positing is actually made possible by the very positedness to which it gives rise.

What I have provided here is a very crude and simplified...