HEGEL’S BEING, NOTHING, AND BECOMING

And straight he stands and glad of his endurance,
simply determined; as the husbandman
who began and who knew not how
from the garden of Eden finished-full
to find a way out into
the new earth.  God was hard to persuade;
and threatened him, instead of acceding,
ever and again, that he would die.
Yet man persisted: she will bring forth.

Rainer Maria Rilke

            Hegel, as one of the leading philosophers of German Idealism, starts the Chapter 1 under Section 1 as the first section of the Doctrine of Being with the explanations of three terms, namely being, nothing, and becoming. To explicate these concepts means to separate them from other concepts, and from each other to make them clear, elaborated, and elucidated.

Hegel clearly depicts that “Being, pure being – without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly.”[1] Hegel does, at this point, seem to point out that being taken as pure and indeterminate immediacy strictly has to be nothing other than itself, and also must not be unequal to another. What it does mean is that Hegel’s pure being is in itself and cannot be other than itself due to the reference to its own being, or better, its ownness. At this point, it should clearly be put out that pure being is nothing but the indeterminateness of being in general. In this context, main problematic point for Hegel is the beginning of philosophy. We might assume that Hegel surreptitiously seeks for a solution to locate becoming in philosophy. He is exactly well-aware of that philosophy cannot be posited as a science of logic, unless it is begun from a position presuppositionless; and also, that this position cannot be presuppositionless, unless it is discovered by speculative reasoning. We, thus, need to propound pure being as the beginning point from which everything else in philosophy springs. In addition to this, speculative reasoning is also a need assumed to be necessary in regard to that we cannot have any claim on the beginning point or pure being due to the fact that we are also in becoming; thus, only speculative reasoning can be our hammer to carve the mountain of becoming to make our way to indeterminateness as a beginning point.

The reason for pureness of being has already been explained enough. Now, we can move to the explanation of the concept itself, namely that of pure being. Pure being finds its roots in nothing, that is, as Hegel puts it, “… it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.”[2] Nothing, as an addition to pure being, seems to be similar to the latter. We must be aware of that we could find a way to the existence, if and only if we have made those two concepts, namely pure being and pure nothing, reconciled and reciprocal. Unless we are aware of that that which is in the field of becoming has necessarily to be in the field of both being and nothing, and vice versa, we cannot be capable of understanding the importance of pure being and pure nothing.

As we clearly notice in the very beginning of the paragraph on becoming, Hegel puts it as follows: “Pure being and pure nothing are therefore the same. The truth is neither being nor nothing, but rather that being has passed over into nothing and nothing into being – ‘has passed over,’ not passes over.”[3] Now, we have to focus deeply on the problem of ‘passing over’ and ‘having passed over’. What it does mean is that the finitude of being can merely be unveiled through this kind of expression. In this sense, there are two important points in order to step in the infinity and finitude. One of them is that ‘passing over’ might subtly be in the pureness of being and nothing and cannot get rid of the obliqueness of this pureness. In this context, it tends to stay safe and isolated in the very root of categorical thinking, and to fall into the abyss of indifference. However, what we seek for is evidently based on the change and reciprocity. As a result, ‘passing over’ unveils itself to be a reference merely to its lack of reference regarding infinity. It is impossible to establish a relation of ‘passing over’ with finitude. In this context, finitude does become reachable only through the way of ‘having passed over’ in terms of its implication for becoming. Hegel’s second basis to use the phrase ‘having passed over’ is obviously to detect a ground for history and an end of it. In this sense, Hegel continues to attenuate the form of being, and to concretize the content of it by limiting it through ‘having passed over’.

Apparently, it seems still to be unclear why Hegel does use ‘having passed over’ rather than ‘passing over’. Therefore, Hegel give a try to use the impossibility of passing over the contradiction between isolated being and nothing in philosophy of the Eleatics. In this sense, he criticizes the Eleatics and speaks of the necessity to pass over the one-sided approach of the Eleatics. Hegel clearly depicts that “The Eleatics were the first to give voice to the simple thought of pure being – notable among them Parmenides, who declared it to be the absolute and sole truth. In his surviving fragments, he did it with the pure enthusiasm of thought which has for the first time apprehended itself in its absolute abstraction: only being is, and nothing is not absolutely.”[4] This means that the Eleatics’ thought is based on the absolute separation between pure being and pure nothing. However, in Hegelian sense, if pure being and pure nothing are absolutely taken in an absolute separation, then, it becomes impossible to explain the content of the existence, and to admit the motion.

At this point, it might be propounded that dialectics of Hegelian philosophy comes into appearance. It does not mean that there are no borders in Hegelian thought: rather than that it encompasses both the difference and identity; thus, identity in difference and vice versa. As Orman asserts, in Hegelian dialectics, the border does not only separate the thing from another, but also compound what it separated before necessarily and internally.[5] In this context, pure being and pure nothing have to be united as well as be separated.

Hegel, as one of the idealist philosophers, thus, brings forward the beginning point of dialectics. According to Stace, Hegel, in his Science of Logic, tries to explain the beginning cause of the world and to show the categories bringing forth the world. However, he does not abandon the categories as separated and isolated. Rather than this, he logically deduces each of them from others, and, at the end of the course, clarifies that those categories can be considered as a unity in which we can observe the absolute principle of the universe.[6] Thus, the Science of Logic is the main book of the Hegelian system unfolding dialectics and speculative reasoning as the method of whole philosophy.

Hegel, through this kind of unfoldment of the pure being and nothing, finds his path in Heraclitus’ thought. According to Hegel, Heraclitus asserts the true way of the abstraction made of the Eleatics. As Hegel primly puts it, “Against that simple and one-sided abstraction, the profound Heraclitus proposed the loftier, total concept of becoming and said: being is no more than nothing, or also, all flows, that is, all is becoming.”[7]

Becoming is the plain of dialectics throughout which it rides its horses. Through becoming we can experience and get to know things. Otherwise, it is exactly impossible to know anything. In this sense, becoming is the possibility of separation and unity, and thus, that of knowing.

Hegel’s concept of becoming is the essence of his philosophical system in terms of transitivity of things and knowing. In this sense, becoming can be understood as the point on which pure being and pure nothing converge. In this sense, his philosophical system involves both difference and indifference, or better, distinction and identity, both of which denotes the becoming continuing dialectics as a method of knowing.

References

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Science of Logic. Translated by George Di Giovanni. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Orman, Enver. Hegel’in Mutlak İdealizmi. Istanbul: Belge, 2015.

Stace, Walter Terence. Hegel Üzerine. Translated by Murat Belge. Ankara: Fol Kitap, 2019.

---

[1] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George Di Giovanni (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 59.

[2] Hegel, 59.

[3] Hegel, 59–60.

[4] Hegel, 60.

[5] Enver Orman, Hegel’in Mutlak İdealizmi (Istanbul: Belge, 2015), 164.

[6] Walter Terence Stace, Hegel Üzerine, trans. Murat Belge (Ankara: Fol Kitap, 2019), 112.

[7] Hegel, The Science of Logic, 60.