--- title: Development description: Learn about the development of pure being from Hegel's Science of Logic. isArticle: true authors: Filip Niklas (2024) editors: contributors: --- # MDX Test Sample: Broken Up For the Purposes of Testing Prepyrus [Link to actual article](https://github.com/systemphil/sphil/blob/main/src/pages/hegel/reference/being/development.mdx) ### Quote > _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. If any > determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited > by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby > fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. > – There is _nothing_ to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of > intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is > anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. > Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact _nothing_, and neither more nor > less than nothing (Hegel 2010, 59/21.68-9). ### Examination ```md 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. ``` Lastly, Hegel equates the activity of intuiting pure being with the matter itself. In intuiting that pure being is nothing—or there is nothing to be intuited in pure being—the intuiting activity is itself neither more or less than the matter it intuits, namely, pure emptiness. [^1]: [Spinoza on Intuition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-epistemology-mind/#KindCognIIIIntu) ```md Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact _nothing_, and neither more nor less than nothing ``` Burbidge stresses the intellectual dimension of thought and the operations that the understanding undergoes in preparing for pure thinking. Pure thought is defined as the sphere of intellectual relations purged of spatio-temporal, subjective and cultural contingencies (Burbidge 1981, 37). As a _science_, the logic articulates the relations between these intellectual relations: "in rendering a concept precise, thought moves to a related category; this movement in turn is named, and itself becomes a new concept" (Burbidge 1981, 37). In other words, pure thought is the purified intellectual dimension that considers intellectual relations _as_ intellectual relations and discovers what particular inter-intellectual relations obtain or simply pure concepts. Moreover, further to this, if the science of logic is to become _a system_, it must consider its starting point carefully, since a paradoxical problem presents itself at the outset. Logic cannot itself begin as the product of a process, since that inevitably entails that that process is then the actual starting point. "This poses a paradoxical problem," Burbidge notes, "The promotive concept is to be immediate and not the determinate result of inferential transitions. Yet is it is the name of an intellectual relation, presupposing terms to be related" (Burbidge 1981, 37). Any intellectual relation condition by distinctive moments of personal or social history must be left aside in the abstract discipline of thought. "Yet once the relativizing conditions have been dissolved away in pure self-knowledge, we are left with simple intellectual relations that are not in themselves determinate" (Burbidge 1981, 38). This simple intellectual relating bereft of all reference terms is prior to even the reference immediacy, as that is a reflective thought that introduces a contrast with mediation. Instead, it simply _is_. > In other words the verb 'to be' fills the requirement quite precisely: as a > verb it expresses a relating; it can be used with any subject whatsoever; and > it is incomplete and points toward the need for further > determination—although not itself determined it is open to > determinations ... _Being_ is thus the most primitive category of the logical > science. It lacks any determinations by which thought can distinguish one > thing or idea from another. But at the same time it articulates a > comprehensive relation that is immediately common to all things or ideas > (Burbidge 1981, 38). ### Houlgate Stephen Houlgate emphasizes that the start of Hegel's _Logic_ is both a logic and a metaphysics at once. He further points out that the thought of `being` under consideration is not the being _of something_ or the being expressed in the _copula_ of a judgment (e.g. the squirrel _is_ fluffy), "Being is to be understood simply as pure indeterminate being" (Houlgate 2022, 135). > This is precisely what makes being “changeless”: for, as not-nothing, being > neither arises from, nor passes into, nothing. In Parmenides' words, “it > exists without beginning or ceasing”, but, “remaining the same and in the same > place, it lies on its own and thus fixed it will remain”. Parmenides goes on > to claim that “strong necessity holds it [being] within the bonds of a limit” > – a limit that preserves being as being and keeps it apart from nothing > (Houlgate 2022, 136). Moreover, Houlgate points out that `being` is not to be understood in terms of the negation of immediacy ("im-mediacy") or the negation of determinacy ("in-determinate"). This line of thinking would also render `being` something determinate and fail to hold fast to its purity. Instead, `being` must be understood _in_ its immediacy and indeterminate, rather than _as_ immediate and indeterminate. "At the start of logic being must be thought in its utter indeterminacy and immediacy – and so without being explicitly contrasted with determinacy or mediation – as pure and simple being" (Houlgate 2022, 136). This thinking in terms of _in_ rather than _as_ further helps understand how Hegel's initial fragment concerning `without further determination` is not a defining of `being` _as_ the-being-without-determination, but that of holding `being` _free_ of determination, and to think it in its purity and simplicity (Houlgate 2022, 136). It seen how a non-trivial amount of effort is needed to keep at bay the mind's reflective reflexes, which employ difference, equality, likeness and so forth in understanding a matter. This language of difference with its reflective categories cannot be entirely avoided, but they need not determine the matter, that is, understand `being` in terms of contrasts and mediation. Using negation on these reflective categories, or just careful language, one is able to keep at bay their determination of the matter at hand and allow it to be understood freely on its own terms, which in the case of `being` means its simplicity and purity (Houlgate 2022, 137). > To think of being in this way, we must first abstract from all we ordinarily > take being to be; but we must then abstract from, and set aside, the very fact > that pure being is the result of abstraction. Only thus will the process of > abstraction lead to the thought of being as pure and immediate, rather than as > mediated result (or “essence”)(Houlgate 2022, 138). ### McTaggart John McTaggart looks at Hegel's opening category not so much an affirmation of being as an affirmation of nothing else. He further considers that being has no nature, since any nature would indicate some kind of determinacy vis-à-vis another being whose nature is different; however, with pure being this cannot be case. "Any determination would give it some particular nature, as against some other particular nature—would make it _X_ rather than _not-X_. It has therefore no determination whatever" (see McTaggart 1910, 15). Test (James 2024). ## Bibliography
- Burbidge, J.W. 1981. _On Hegel's Logic: Fragments of a Commentary_. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press. - Hegel, G.W.F. 2010. _Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic_. Translated by George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Houlgate, S. 2022. _Hegel on Being_. London: Bloomsbury Academic. - James, Daniel and Franz Knappik. "Introduction to Part 2 of the Themed Issue, ‘Racism and Colonialism in Hegel’s Philosophy’: Common Objections and Questions for Future Research". _Hegel Bulletin_ 45, no. 2 (2024): 181–184. Translated by Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood. https://doi.org/10.1017/hgl.2024.38. - McTaggart, J.M.E. 1910. _A Commentary on Hegel's Logic_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
**Authors** Filip Niklas (2024) **Notes**