---
title: First Paragraph
description:
  Learn about the first paragraph of the Mechanical Object from Hegel's
  Science of Logic
isArticle: true
authors: Ahilleas Rokni (2024)
editors:
contributors: Filip Niklas (2024)
---

# 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/mechanical-object/first-paragraph.mdx)

## The Mechanical Object, First Paragraph

Before even thinking about the `mechanical object`, let us just think about the
conceptual structure that presents itself at the beginning of Mechanism. The
first determination is described in the following terms:

> The object is, as we have seen, the syllogism, whose mediation has been
> sublated and has therefore become an immediate identity (Hegel 1991, 711).

Let's unpack this initial thought, without trying to unpack the reference to the
`syllogism`.

First, the mediation of the syllogism, whatever that means in concrete terms,
has been sublated . Strictly speaking, Hegel writes that it has been “balanced
out” or “equilibrated” [*ausgeglichen*]. It is because the mediation of the
`syllogism` has been equilibrated that it was sublated. As such, the mediation
of the `syllogism` is not nullified but has been set aside by a more developed
kind of relation - the relation of the `mechanical object` that is now an
immediate identity [*unmittelbare Identität*]. The moments of the `mechanical object`
are immediately identical to each other, and not mediated.

What exactly are these moments of the `mechanical object` that have become an
immediate identity? Hegel clarifies this in the following sentence:

> It is therefore in and for itself a universal - universality not in the sense
> of a community of properties, but a universality that pervades the
> particularity and in it is immediate individuality (Hegel 1991, 711).

The moments of the `mechanical object` are the determinations of the `Concept` :
`universal`, `particular`, and `individual`. It is these moments that are
immediately identical to each other. In the `mechanical object`, the `universal`
is immediately the `particular` and the `individual`. In other words, the
`universal` is not a universal that has the basic essence of a thing and that
finds its essence instantiated in particular and individual objects. It is not,
for example, like the universal concept of a chair that states that a chair must
be "so and so" and that serves as the essence of armchairs and swivel chairs,
alike. It is not, as Hegel writes, a universal “in the sense of a community of
properties” (Hegel 1991, 711).