doi:10.1017/hgl.2018.

20 Hegel Bulletin, page 1 of 29

© The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2018

Logic, Being and Nothing

Sebastian Rödl

Abstract

The first part of this essay develops the idea of logic as the science of thought,
articulating, and thus being, the self-consciousness of thought. It explains that logic,
so understood, is nothing other than metaphysics, the science of what is in so far as
it is. Self-consciousness, then, thought itself, is not empty, but the source of all con-
tent. The second part of the essay discusses the opening paragraphs of Hegel’s Science
of Logic; it shows how, in these paragraphs, thought is revealed to be the source of its
own content in virtue of its original negativity. Thus the second part begins to make
concrete the idea of logic provided by the first.

Introduction

Logic is the science of thought. And thought is self-conscious. Since thought

is self-conscious, its science articulates that self-consciousness; it is thought
thinking itself. Moreover, since thought is self-conscious, the science of
thought is the science of what is in so far as it is. Logic is metaphysics. This
one science may be called the pure science, for it is pure knowledge. It may
also be said to be absolute knowledge, for it lies beyond the possibility of
error. The first part of this essay expounds this idea of logic (sections I
through VII).
Logic is metaphysics; thought thinking itself is knowledge of what is as such.
So Kant was wrong when he asserted that thought did not relate to the object
directly; he was wrong when he said that thought was empty. A most abstract
exposition of thought as the source of its own content is the beginning of Hegel’s
Science of Logic. The second part of this essay discusses this beginning (sections
VIII through XII).
The topic of the first part is the science of logic, that of the second part the
Science of Logic. The idea of logic developed in the first part guides the reading of
the Logic in the second part. Conversely, the second part begins to make concrete
the idea of logic provided by the first.1

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I. Self-consciousness

We may investigate all manner of things, seeking to understand and in the best
case arrive at a science of them. One thing we may investigate, seeking to
understand and in the best case arrive at a science of it, is what constitutes
investigation and its end: thought, understanding, knowledge, insight. So there
may be a science of thought, understanding, knowledge, insight.
These are different words: thought, understanding, knowledge, insight. We
do not presume to know what each of them means and whether and how their
meanings differ. They roughly indicate an object and thus a possible science. The
science of that object will clarify those terms. It will mark any distinctions that
need be marked. For now, for ease of exposition, we let ‘thought’ stand for all
those terms.
It conforms to the meaning of the term and its traditional use to call the
science of thought ‘logic’.2 The science of logic is the science of thought.3 (Or
knowledge, understanding, insight. The terms do not matter.) As a science, logic
is understanding; it expounds an understanding of thought. That understanding
and thus that science bear a distinctive character. For thought is self-conscious.
When we speak of self-consciousness, we do not specify a consciousness by
its object, by that of which it is a consciousness: self-consciousness is not
consciousness of a self, should there be such a thing. Rather, we specify a
consciousness by the manner in which it is of its object: self-consciousness is
a consciousness that is not separate from, but internal to, that of which it is a
consciousness. So when we say that thought is self-conscious, we mean: she who
thinks something is conscious of doing that; she is conscious of thinking what,
therein, she thinks; she is conscious of thinking what she thinks in thinking it. It
is not that, in one act, she thinks something and, in another act, understands
herself to do so. Her thinking something and her thinking herself to think it are
one act of the mind.
We used various words to indicate the object of logic: thought, knowledge,
understanding, insight. Perhaps these terms, or some of them, have uses in which
they signify something that is not self-conscious. We exclude from our
consideration such uses. When the terms describe investigation and its end,
what they signify is self-conscious: she who, seeking insight, finds it and now
sees, understands that she does. Again, it does not matter what terms we use, and
we shall continue to use ‘thought’ for all of them. In any case, that of which logic
is the science is self-conscious.
In thinking something, I understand myself to think what I, thereby, think.
Thus, in thinking, I understand what it is to think. This understanding of thought
is internal to that of which it is the understanding. It is internal to thought.

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We may call it the self-understanding of thought, using the prefix ‘self-’ as in ‘self-
consciousness’: to indicate not that the object understood is a self, but that the
understanding in question is internal to that of which it is an understanding.
The science of thought says what it is to think; it expounds an
understanding of thought. This understanding is not other than what it
understands. So the science of thought is not other than that of which it is the
science. It is the self-science, we may say, using ‘self-’, again, to indicate the
internality of the science to its object.4

II. The self-science

Any thought, as such, understands itself to be that: thought. Thus any thought is
an understanding of thought; it is an understanding of what it is to think. One
may want to contrast this understanding of thought, the understanding of it that
is internal to thought, with another understanding of thought, an understanding
from the outside, as one may want to put it. However, there is no such thing.5
Let us call what it is to think the nature of thought. The concept of thought
comprehends that nature. As any thought understands itself to be a thought, the
concept of thought is inside any thought. Therefore this concept does not
comprehend a nature that is as it is independently of being known to be so. A
thought is a thought in and through its understanding of itself. Hence thought is
nothing other than what it is understood to be in the concept that is inside any
thought. The nature of thought is its own understanding.
If there is to be an understanding of thought from outside, then this
understanding must be an understanding of the understanding that is internal to
thought. For the nature of thought is that understanding. However, that internal
understanding is an understanding of itself. It is already what we pretend to add
to it. There is no space to add an understanding of thought to thought; the
understanding that thought itself is has always already taken up the space that the
added understanding would want to fill. So when we call the understanding of
thought internal, we do not distinguish it from another manner of understanding
thought. We distinguish it from the understanding of, for example, stuff: the
nature of a certain stuff is not its own understanding. We do not contrast forms
of understanding thought; we contrast thought to nature.
Logic articulates the understanding of thought that is inside thought; it
articulates the self-understanding of thought. This explains why it is and what it
means that logic is knowledge a priori. As it is not other than that of which it is
the knowledge, the knowledge of what it is to think is not received through
affection by its object. Thought supplies that knowledge from itself. The
knowledge of logic is pure.6
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Logic therefore bears the traditional marks of a priori knowledge: it is

necessary and indubitable. These marks reflect that logical knowledge lies beyond
the possibility of error. It is absolute. Logic says, says only, what anyone always
already knows, knows in any thought, knows in thinking anything at all.
Therefore there is no such thing as denying what logic says. There is no denying
what is known in any thought, no denying what is such that thinking anything at
all is knowing it. She who pretends to deny it therein pretends to think (see,
understand, know), and pretending to think is knowing what it is to think and
thus knowing what one pretends to deny. Consequently, there is no such thing as
doubting what logic says, calling it into question, arguing for or against it. Logical
knowledge does not lie in a space of competing statements and positions.
Someone who, presuming to speak to what thought is, proposes a theory, a view,
a thesis, fails to do what she presents herself as doing.

III. The subject of thought

Logic articulates the self-understanding of thought. It is thought thinking itself.

While this formula is familiar, it may raise opposition. It may be held to be
obscure to speak of thought thinking. It is not thought that thinks, one may say,
but you and I and John. The subject of thought is a particular human being.
When we speak of thought thinking, or understanding, we indicate its self-
consciousness: that a thought comprehends itself to be a thought means that the
act of thinking and the act of understanding it are one act of the mind. This does
not introduce a subject of this understanding different from the subject of that
thinking. So it does not give rise to difficulties regarding the subject of thought.
This explanation may put the objection to rest as long as we speak of
particular acts of thought. But we said that thought understands its own nature
and that its nature is its own understanding. Here we speak not of a particular act,
but of the power of thought; we speak of reason or nous. Are we saying that
thought, the power, is the same act of the mind as an understanding of what it is
to think? What could that mean?
It means that the power of thought is an act of this power. This is contained
in the idea of knowledge that is a priori, or pure. By nominal definition, pure
knowledge is an act of knowledge that is nothing other than the power of
thought. For pure knowledge originates in thought alone. As it has no condition
not provided by the power of thought, the power is always already this act. We
added the real definition of pure knowledge: it is the self-consciousness of
thought. The power of thought is its own act—it is pure knowledge—because
thought is self-conscious. As thought is self-conscious, every thought, as such, is
an understanding of what it is to think. That understanding of the nature of
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thought is the same in every thought, and it is that by which it is a thought. So

that understanding is the nature of thought. The nature of thought is the
understanding of thought that every thought itself is. This understanding is an act
of thought that is as general as the power of thought. The power is that act.
Thought understands itself, this means, the power of thought is the same
act of the mind as the understanding of what it is to think. Again, this does not
introduce a subject of understanding different from the subject of the power to
think. So again, it does not give rise to difficulties regarding the subject of
thought. The subject of the power of thought and therefore the subject of its self-
understanding are you and I and John. When we say that thought knows things,
we say that we know them and know them a priori: we know them being able to
think at all. We do not speak of a ghostly subject called ‘reason’. We speak of a
familiar subject—you, me, John—who is able to think and therewith possesses
pure knowledge. Nothing spooky here, we think, relieved. But no.
When we think of powers in general, this is how we think: the subject is a
particular substance; the power, being the same in everything that possesses it, is
something general. When the power is exercised, the particular subject exercises
it; she exercises the power as the conditions of its exercise are met in her
circumstances. Therefore acts of the power in a subject are her acts. She, not the
power, is their subject. The power on its own does nothing. After all, it is power,
not act. This way of thinking fits when power and act stand to each other as
general and particular. However, the power of thought is not mere power; it is
itself act. Pure knowledge is the act that is nothing other than the power. This
makes it difficult to see how we can assign pure knowledge to the particular
human being as distinct from the power. Her particularity does not enter into
this act at all. Thus we are led to say that the human being is not the subject of
pure knowledge. Instead, reason is. The subject of logic is not you nor I nor any
particular human being; it is thought itself.
Thus we see why one would say that the subject of logic is thought itself,
which we must distinguish from the particular human being, from me and you
and John. But it cannot be right to say this. For it makes incomprehensible how I
can know what thought knows. However, from the fact that it makes no sense to
attribute knowledge of logic to thought itself as opposed to me, you, and John,
we cannot conclude that the subject of pure knowledge is the particular human
being after all, as opposed to thought or reason. Rather, we must reject the
opposition. We cannot conceive the human being through an opposition of
particularity and universality that fits subjects of powers that are not their own
understanding and therefore are mere powers. If human nature, the nature of the
human being, is reason, intellect, thought, then a human being has an inner
universality, which does not stand opposed to, but is the very form of her
particularity.7
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If the human being is the life that thinks, then understanding what the
human being is requires understanding what thought is, and understanding what
thought is cannot fall short of providing knowledge of what it is to be a human
being. Therefore the science of logic, it alone, provides the concept of the human
being; it is the core of the science of man, according to an old-fashioned use of
this term. That logic belongs to the science of man may seem an empiricist idea,
for it was prominently advertised by David Hume.8 But it is not that. It is
empiricist only if one’s conception of man is. And the recognition that the science
of man is, centrally, logic, must disabuse one of such a conception of man.9
We must not distinguish reason or thought as the subject of the pure
science from you and me and John. The distinction suggests itself if we assume
an empiricist conception of what it is to be you or I or John. We do well to think
that the subject of logic is you, I, John. But we must be clear that we do not
thereby know anything about thought, knowing what kind of being it is who
thinks. We do not presuppose that we can think the human being through the
category of an object of experience, individuated by its location at a time
according to a principle of spatial and temporal unity, or through the category of
a living being or an animal. We know nothing of her who thinks other than this:
she thinks. She who thinks is thought. Thought thinks. This is not to deny that
you, I, John think. It is to say that I only know what I am by knowing what
thought is. I am thought. The same for you and John.

IV. The object of thought

In thinking something, I understand myself to think what I, thereby, think. This is

to say that I understand what I think to be something thought. I think what I
think through the concept of something thought and thus through the concept of
something that is such as to be thought. There is no thinking something without
therein comprehending it to be thought and hence to be such as to be thought.
This is a mark of the act of thinking. Therefore it is a mark of what is
thought: what is thought is such that thinking it is understanding it to be thought.
One may think that the object of thought is there, to be apprehended either in
thought, in which case its apprehension is conscious of itself, or in some other
way, in which case its apprehension may fail to return to itself. Then the return to
itself characterizes only the act of thought; it does not determine the object of
thought. This fails to register that thinking something is being conscious of
thinking it. As thought is self-conscious, one need be conscious of nothing over
and above the object of one’s thought—which consciousness of it is one’s
thought—in order to be conscious of thinking this object. The object of thought,
on its own, provides for the consciousness of the thought of it. On its own
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because, again, thinking something is, itself, being conscious of thinking it. If we
take the concept of an object of thought out of the object of thought, what is left
is not the object of thought as it is in itself. What is left is nothing. There is no
consciousness of an object of thought in which it is not comprehended to be an
object of thought.10
In thinking I understand what I think to be an object of thought; I think it
through the concept of an object of thought. We may use various words to
signify this concept: reality, the world, the objective world, the facts, or, simply,
the object. The concept signified by these words is none other than the concept
of thought. What I understand, understanding something to be such as to be
thought, is nothing other than what I understand, understanding what it is to
think. There is but one concept and one understanding.
People are fond of these words: world, reality, objectivity, and, if these are to
mark a contrast and thus be located on the same plane: mind, thought,
subjectivity. Indeed, these may be the most popular words of contemporary
philosophy. They are used with confidence in their meaning. One uses them to
put forth assertions, opposing competing assertions one portrays as whacky or
irresponsible. These words are used specifically to express disapproval of
idealism: the world is not mind-dependent; or, by means of perception, we have
knowledge of objective reality, not merely of subjective representations. However,
these words are empty unless their content is expounded. Their exposition is the
articulation of the self-understanding of thought. It is the science of logic. Logic
is the science that gives the meaning of these concepts. Conversely, any
exposition of their meaning is logic.

V. Metaphysics

In thinking something, I understand myself to think what I, thereby, think.

This is to say that I understand what I think to be such as to be thought.
I think what I think through the concept of the object of thought. It follows
that logic and metaphysics are the same. Logic is the science of thought.
Metaphysics is the science that investigates what is in so far as it is.11 The
term ‘what is’, here, signifies the object of thought. We mentioned various terms
used to signify this object: world, reality, objectivity. ‘What is’ is one of these,
less commonly used today, but popular through the ages. And indeed, when
we consider how knowledge, understanding, insight express themselves in
Indo-European languages, we find the term fitting: as I know something,
understand something, have an insight, I say, ‘So it is’. It is so: as I understand
it to be, as I know it to be, as I see it to be. That ‘is’ signifies the object of
metaphysics.
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Logic is metaphysics, metaphysics is logic. So what we said about logic holds

of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the science a priori, the pure science; its
knowledge is necessary and indubitable because it lies beyond the possibility of
error. Metaphysical knowledge, being nothing other than the exposition of the
concept of what is such as to be thought is knowledge that every thought as such
is. Therefore there is no such thing as denying what metaphysics says. There is no
such thing as doubting it, calling it into question, arguing for it. The notions of
thesis, objection, justification do not apply in metaphysics. Metaphysical
knowledge is absolute.
Knowledge of thought and knowledge of what is in so far as it is are the
same. This is a consequence of the self-consciousness of thought. And since the
self-consciousness of thought is known in the self-consciousness of thought,
what we said about logic, and metaphysics, applies to the identity of logic and
metaphysics: it is not something one could assert in order to mark out a position
that would contrast with other positions, for example, the position holding that
logic and metaphysics are distinct sciences. When we say logic is metaphysics, or,
shorter, that thinking is being, we express absolute knowledge. It is not
something one could undertake to defend or refute.
The knowledge of what it is to think and the knowledge of what it is to be
such as to be thought are one knowledge. It may be called logic or metaphysics
and be represented as self-knowledge of thought or as knowledge of what is as
such.12 This identity is known in any thought and thus is something anyone
always already knows in thinking anything at all. Therefore one may call it a
truism. It is a special truism, though; the reason why it is one is the distinctive
one just given. On account of its special character it is not, as other truisms are,
common sense. What anyone always already knows is what is most difficult to
think clearly; it is that with respect to which it is easiest and most common to fall
into confusion. Any waking thought of any man, be he common or not, is
nothing other than the self-knowledge of thought which is, and understands itself
to be, knowledge of what is as such. Yet the common man is certain to find
himself in the most horrid morass when he is called upon to pronounce on the
theme of the identity of thinking and being.13

VI. Kantian nihilism

Logic is the science of thought. It expounds the understanding of thought that is

internal to thought. As such it articulates the knowledge of what is in so far as it
is. In Kantian terms, thought relates to the object directly: the power of thought
is knowledge of the object of thought. So it is because it is self-conscious. The
nature of thought is its own concept, and this concept is nothing other than the
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concept of what is such as to be thought. This one concept is a priori knowledge.

It depends on nothing’s being given. It depends on no facts, a fortiori not on
facts about our constitution as sensory, natural beings.14
It may seem that this knowledge must be incredibly thin, even nothing at all.
What do we know about what is, knowing nothing more than this, that it is? What
do we know about something, knowing of it only this, that it is such as to be
thought? It may seem that the concept of thought, or equivalently the concept of
what is such as to be thought, is empty; so it is, anyway, before something is thought.
Thus Aristotle says that nous is nothing at all prior to its act (De Anima: 429a22–24).
It is true that the concept of thought is empty before something is thought.
This follows from the self-consciousness of thought, which entails that the power
of thought is its own act. And precisely this suggests that there is something that
is thought in such a way that what is thought is nothing other than its being
thought and thus is nothing given to thought. So what Aristotle says is fine. It is a
different thing altogether to say what Kant says, namely, that the concept of
thought, and thus the concept of the object überhaupt, is empty before something
is given to thought, and be what is given a priori in the sense of being a character
of our faculty of sensory representation.
The assertion that thought is empty before something is given to it makes
no sense. Asserting this is saying that thought is nothing at all. And if it is
nothing, then nothing can be given to it. Even Kant does not say that thought is
nothing at all. Indeed, he gives an elaborate description of thought, describing the
forms that thought exhibits as thought. However, since this is not to be a
description of what is, since it is not to be a priori knowledge, there can be no
comprehension why thought should exhibit these forms. These forms appear as
a brute predicate of the subject, who happens to have them.15 This perfect
incomprehensibility is an immediate consequence of the notion that the self-
consciousness of thought is not knowledge. We set this aside.

VII. The internality of the work of philosophy to the self-knowledge of

thought

Whatever is thought is thought through the concept of thought, equivalently,

through the concept of what is such as to be thought. Therefore this concept is
not one concept among many. It is contained in any concept: whatever is thought
in any concept is thought, therein, through the concept of thought, equivalently,
through the concept of what is such as to be thought. We can mark this character
of the concept of thought, or the concept of what is such as to be thought, by
calling it the concept überhaupt, or, simply, the concept. Logic is the exposition of
the concept. It is the science that expresses, that puts into words, the concept.16
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Putting words to the concept may be thought to be an act of describing a

given reality: here is the concept, let me tell you what I find in it. What is in it is
one thing, my saying that it is there is another. We need only so to state it in order
to see that this is wrong. The concept of thought is the self-consciousness of
thought; it is the understanding of thought that is internal to thought. This
concept thus is nothing given at all; it is nothing other than what it is understood
to be; it is its own understanding. When this understanding takes the form of its
articulation in language, then this articulation, the work of writing and reading the
logic, is nothing other than the concept itself.
The externalization or mediation of the concept—the activity of putting it
into words, of writing and reading it—is the exposition of that which bears the
character we described above: it is the exposition of what anyone always already
knows, knows in any thought. Therefore it is not a claim, a thesis, a hypothesis;
there is no such thing as asserting it, if this is to include the rejection of the
opposite assertion, no such thing as doubting or challenging it. In so far as the
word, as the sensory reality of thought, places itself in the space of claims and
reasons, challenge and doubt, the word of the logic is one that, through itself, and
immediately, vanishes.17 What vanishes with it is the particularity of her who
speaks or writes, who is particularized by the sensory character of the word. This
is how Hegel describes the logic: as the word that vanishes through itself.
The logic thus presents the self-movement of the absolute idea
only as the original word, which is an utterance, but one which,
as being, immediately has vanished again as something
external. (SL: 736/12.237)
The science of logic expounds the concept. This is not a description of
something given, a wonderful reality called ‘the concept’. The science of logic
does not describe the self-articulation of the concept, an immaterial process
witnessed by the logician who then reports his experience. Rather, logic is the
self-articulation of the concept. This means that the reading or writing of
the science of logic is itself the self-determination of the concept; in this activity,
the opposition of the particularity and the universality of the subject of thought
vanishes. This is how logic is the comprehension of the human being, who is that
unity of universality and determinacy (cf. section III).

VIII. The beginning of Hegel’s Science of Logic

The concept, and therefore the articulation of it in language, is determinate

through itself. Nothing determines it from outside as given to it. We have already
seen that the concept is self-determining, when we saw that logic is metaphysics,
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self-knowledge of thought knowledge of what is, the world, reality. The concept is
not empty. It contains within itself that opposition: the simple unity of the universal
and the infinite differentiation of the totality. The beginning of the Science of Logic
establishes the original determinacy of the concept as it reveals the first thought-
determination to be becoming, the concrete unity of being and nothing.
It may be objected that, according to the Science of Logic, being is that first
determination. But it is not, for outside its unity with nothing, being is nothing.
Logic does not begin with being, the abstract unity, but with becoming, the
concrete unity, the unity that is opposition. The concrete unity is the element of
logic in the sense that any logical determination is a determination of that unity;
the logical development unfolds within that concrete unity.
Since henceforth this unity of being and nothing underlies as
first truth and constitutes the element of all that follows, all
further determinations beside becoming itself … are examples of
this unity. (SL: 62/21.72)
This unity [the concrete living unity] constitutes the logical
principle equally as element, so that the development of this
difference, which at once is in it, proceeds only within this
element. (SL: 39/21.45)
The second passage speaks of the difference of knowledge and what is known.
Logic, or metaphysics, the passage says, is their concrete unity from the
beginning: the difference is inside self-consciousness, or the concept, ‘at once’.
This means it is in the first logical determination: the difference of knowledge
and what is known, and their concrete unity, is, first and originally, the difference
of being and nothing, and their unity. The thought of becoming is the first form
of the unity of knowledge and what is known, of thought thinking itself and
knowledge of what is as such, of logic and metaphysics. This is to say that it is the
first form in which thought comprehends itself to be the source of its content. If
being were the beginning, then there would be no logical progression and there
would not even have been a beginning. We start with being in order to
understand that it is not the beginning; the unity of being and nothing is.

IX. Being

Being is the first expression of the concept of thought or, equivalently, the object
of thought; it is the first expression of the concept. As we noted above, thought
says it is.18 The Eleatics, Hegel says, specifically Parmenides, first enunciated the
thought being, in which thought thinks nothing but itself.

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The Eleatics and above all Parmenides were the first to give
voice to the simple thought of pure being as the absolute and
the sole truth […] with the pure enthusiasm of thought that
for the first time embraces itself in its absolute abstraction.
(SL: 60/21.70)
Thinking pure being, thought embraces itself in its absolute abstraction.
Parmenides enunciated this thought with excitement, Hegel says, the excitement
of thought thinking itself. The Eleatic abstraction may strike one as strange. But
to the analytic philosopher it is familiar. For there is a more recent expression of
it, which is equally abstract, namely Frege’s judgement-stroke. While it would be
helpful and possibly more exciting to read Parmenides’ poem in order to gain
insight into Hegel’s meaning, the analytic philosopher may turn to Frege.19
Hegel scholars may raise an objection. It cannot be right, they may say, to
bring in the judgement stroke in order to read the section entitled ‘Being’ because
that section does not treat of judgement. There is a later section in the Science of
Logic on judgement. We must respect the order of the Logic and not import later
notions into the interpretation of earlier ones. This objection is hung up on
words. The object of logic is thought. Or judgement, knowledge, insight, etc. The
science of logic will use these words to mark distinctions as it sees fit. Its table of
contents reveals that the Science of Logic does use ‘judgement’ to signify a logical
determination. While Frege speaks of judgement, it does not follow that what he
says belongs with the section of the Science of Logic entitled ‘judgement’. It may be
that Frege’s grasp of the self-consciousness of thought, as it is expressed in his
logical notation, does not go beyond the articulation of it that Hegel gives in the
chapter entitled ‘Being’. Indeed, that is the case.
In Frege’s Begriffsschrift, the sign of an assertion has two parts, a part that
signifies what is asserted and a part that signifies the assertion of it. The latter is
the judgement-stroke, placed leftmost, the former is everything to the right of it.
As the judgement-stroke is outside the part of the sign that signifies the content
of the judgement, it in no way determines what is judged, except in this way: it
signifies that it is being judged. The meaning of the judgement stroke is the
concept of judgement; equivalently, it is the concept of the object of judgement.
Frege’s sign of assertion is of interest to us in so far as the Begriffsschrift is
to make visible in the form of the sign the form of the consciousness expressed
by means of it. When Frege writes an assertion in the manner described, he does
not mean to impose an articulation on it from the outside. He means to reveal a
structure in the understanding of her who makes the assertion, the understanding
with which she asserts what she, thereby, asserts. That the judgement-stroke
signifies the self-consciousness of judgement can be seen in this way. The
Begriffsschrift is a universal notation for all sciences. As the judgement-stroke is

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part of the expression of any judgement, it does not signify a concept that
belongs to any particular science. The use of the concept signified by the
judgement-stroke is internal to the use of any concept. It is not a concept, but the
concept. If we were to express it in ordinary words, then ‘it is: …’ or ‘being: …’
would do fine.
The judgement-stroke embraces thought in its absolute abstraction. As it
lies outside the sign of what is judged, the concept of judgement is sealed off
from any determinacy of what is judged. Manifold, difference, opposition reside
in the content. The force, the concept of assertion, or the concept, is untinged by
manifold, difference, opposition. It is empty and pure.
One may think the judgement-stroke expresses affirmation: saying yes to
what is placed to the right of it. But assertion as expressed by the judgement-
stroke does not stand opposed to denial or saying no. Hence, not only is there no
difference within assertion; assertion is not different from anything outside it. We
can say of the concept expressed by the judgement-stroke:
It is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to
something other; it has no difference within it nor toward
something outer. (SL: 59/21.68)
Frege explains why assertion does not stand opposed to denial in this way:
denying that such-and-such is the case is asserting that it is not the case
(Frege 1918–19: 153ff.). If we want to, we can say that asserting that snow
is not white is denying something. And we can say that asserting that snow is
white is affirming something. We can speak in this way. But when we do, we must
beware that the difference of affirmation and denial is a difference in content.
The force, assertion, is neither denial nor affirmation. It is indifferent to this
difference.
The assertion that things are so differs from the assertion that things are not
so in content, not in force; it is and it is not are different contents that are such as
to be taken up in the single force of assertion. If we represent the force of
judgement by it is the case, we can put the point by saying that there is no such
thing as asserting what is not the case. When I assert that snow is not white, then
I assert what is the case, namely, that snow is not white. John McDowell makes
this point in the following passage:
When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case. […]
Of course thought can be distanced from the world by being
false, but there is no distance from the world implicit in the
very idea of thought. […] All the point comes to is that one
can think, for instance, that spring has begun, and that very same
thing, that spring has begun, can be the case. (McDowell 1996: 27)

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The only way in which thought can be distanced from what is the case is by being
false. True thought, as such, is of what is the case. True thought is of what is.
McDowell chooses that spring has begun as an example of something that may be
the case. That spring has not begun would do equally well: judging truly that spring
has not begun is a case of judging what is the case. What is the case, in this case,
is: that spring has not begun. In this way, force, or assertion, is unaffected by and
unmixed with the difference of is from is not. The act of assertion, and that is, the
understanding of it, is the same in these different contents. We may put this by
saying that assertion is the abstract unity of these contents. It is a unity because it
is the same in each: each is such as to be judged. It is abstract because it abstracts
from their difference.
The concept of judgement abstracts from the opposition of is and is not. It
follows that judging that things are so is not itself the recognition that it is wrong
to judge that they are not so. And vice versa. If it were that, then the opposition
of is and is not would be comprehended within the concept of judgement. Not
would not be a part of a content, but would reside within the act of judging and
be represented by the judgement-stroke.
Frege’s distinction of force from content excludes that the opposition of is
and is not, being and nothing, be internal to what it is to judge. This is not to say
that, on Frege’s conception, there is no opposition of the judgement that snow is
white to the judgement that snow is not white. It is to say that this opposition is
provided by the content judged, as opposed to by the act, and that is, the concept
of the act, of judging it.
We may understand Frege to hold that a content that is such as to be
asserted determines the conditions under which one would be right to assert it.
And we may postulate that, in this respect, p and not-p are related as follows:
having asserted p, one cannot rightly assert not-p. Someone who judges p,
understanding what it is that he judges, understands this. The content not-p
contains a rule prescribing that, having asserted p, I must not assert not-p, and
vice versa. This is like a rule of chess: having moved my king, I cannot castle. The
latter rule is part of what it is to castle; it may be called a constitutive rule of
castling. In the same way, it is a constitutive rule of judging not-p that, judging p, I
am not free to judge not-p. This is a rule of the game of asserting p and not-p. That
game may contain further contents together with the rules that constitute them.
If we call the game as a whole ‘rationality’, we can say that one cannot assert p
and not-p on pain of irrationality. Like one cannot move the king and then castle
on pain of unchessnality.
Robert Brandom claims that more fundamental than negation of a content
is the incompatibility of contents.20 Contents are incompatible just in case their
assertion is subject to a rule of this form: judging p, I cannot judge q. The
negation of p, not-p, then is defined as the content entailed by everything
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materially incompatible with p. This is not a different conception of negation

from Frege’s. On the contrary. It brings out the nature of this conception:
it presents it is and it is not as different contents of judgement. Brandom
diverges from Frege in that he postulates that for every content p there
is a manifold of contents related to it by a rule of the relevant form. But it is a
matter of indifference how many contents are related to a given content in this
manner.
Judging that p is judging it is, namely, so that p. Judging that not-p, too, is
judging it is, namely, so that not-p. The opposition of is and is not is not internal to
judgement; judgement is indifferent to it. Judging is not as such opposing judging.
It is true: judging that snow is white, I understand that I must not judge that
snow is not white. But I understand this not knowing what it is to judge, but
knowing what it is to judge that snow is white. Therefore we cannot say that she
who judges p therein understands that she must not judge not-p. Her
understanding does not exhibit the generality expressed by the variable p. This
variable represents what is judged as such; it signifies the concept of judgement.
Her understanding of the opposition of being and nothing, of it is and it is not,
does not rise to this generality.
This is evident when negation is defined in terms of a prior notion of
incompatibility. Someone’s understanding that something is incompatible with
something else is not provided by the concept of judgement, but constitutes her
understanding of what she understands to be incompatible. The same holds for
the incompatibility of the Fregean contents p and not-p. So while there is
opposition of the judgement snow is white to the judgement snow is not white, this
opposition is provided by what is judged: snow is white. It is not provided by
judgement. The opposition of being and nothing lies outside what it is to judge.
These ideas are equivalent: asserting that things are not so is asserting it is,
namely, so that things are not so; true thought is of what is and in no way of what
is not; judging not-p is judging something other than p; the principle by which it is
opposes it is not is a rule of the relevant game. These are ways of saying that
judgement is empty and pure, identical with itself, without difference either
within or from something outside it. They are ways of saying ‘being is, not-being
not’ (Parmenides, DK B 6, 1–2).
Yet Frege is not Parmenides, one will say. After all, while the act of assertion
is empty and pure, there is a manifold of contents, signified by the manifold signs
to the right of the judgement-stroke. This is right; Frege and Parmenides differ in
this way. And this difference indicates a lack of rigour in Frege. As Frege
attempts to comprehend judgement, the determinacy of the contents that are
such as to be judged, their difference from each other, is not included within the
concept of judgement. It cannot be comprehended through the concept of
judgement. This concept contains no difference, neither within it nor from
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 Logic, Being and Nothing

something outside it. So the determinacy of its content would have to be given to
judgement. But difference cannot be given to judgement. Parmenides knew this.
Frege did not. He did not realize that his manifold content is an illusion.
The opposition of is and is not lies outside the self-consciousness of
judgement. It follows that there is no difference in judgement, not for judgement.
In order for there to be difference, the difference must matter; it must matter to
judgement. So it does as different judgements are related in such a way that
judging one thing is excluding judging another. It may be thought that this is
provided by the incompatibility of judgements. However, incompatibility is a
relation of judgement to judgement that is not comprehended through the
concept of judgement. It is a relation in which judgements stand in virtue of
having the contents that they do. In order for there to be incompatibility,
judgements must be many according to their content. Incompatibility does not
explain this; it presupposes it.
One may stipulate that judgements have contents that stand in relations
of incompatibility. This is to assume a set of rules that define a game of
judgement. The rules are not provided by the concept of judgement. They
are not known in the self-consciousness of judgement. It comes to the same to
assume, as Frege does, that there are those things that he calls thoughts, things
to be judged that are true or false. The opposition of truth and falsity provides
for determinacy, for it underwrites incompatibility. P and not-p are incompatible,
for not-p is defined as what is true just in case p is false. Since one ought to
judge, and judge only, what is true (the prime rule of any game of judgement),
one must not judge both p and not-p. The opposition of truth and falsity,
and with it the idea of judgement as determinate, is not comprehended in the
concept of judgement. Judgement is not known to be determinate in self-
consciousness.
The self-consciousness of judgement, or the concept of judgement, or the
concept of what is such as to be judged, does not represent an opposition in
judgement and therefore no difference of judgements. The object of judgement,
as it is understood in judgement, is it is, or being. Now we stipulate that the object
of judgement is many. We stipulate this in order to ensure that there is opposition
in judgement. This stipulation is incomprehensible. The understanding of
judgement that the judgement-stroke expresses repels what we vainly attempt
to stipulate.
This is the lack of consequence in Frege: on the one hand, he asserts that
what is judged is what is, and in no way what is not. On the other hand, he
postulates that there are many judgements, judgements opposing each other like
light and night, etc. Parmenides is right to indict this as the error of those who do
not attain to judgement, to the absolute abstraction in which judgement embraces
itself (Parmenides, DK Fr. 8, 53–59).
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X. Nothing

Fregean assertion is indifferent to the opposition of is and is not; it is the abstract

unity of affirmation and denial. Thus the concept of assertion is empty and pure
and the concept of its object is being, without difference, neither internal nor
external. This may seem to show that the opposition of is and is not must be
brought inside assertion and its self-consciousness: assertion is opposition;
assertion opposes assertion.
It may seem that this means that we need to represent the assertoric force to
be divided into affirmation and denial, saying yes and saying no. Then the
judgement-stroke has two forms, one signifying affirmation, it is, the other
rejection, it is not. However, the judgement it is so is just as much a denial of the
judgement it is not so as the latter is a denial of the former. Asserting something is
saying no to the opposing no.21 So when we see that judgement cannot be above
the opposition of is and is not, we do not conclude that it has two opposed forms,
is and is not. Rather, we conclude that it is rejection, denial, no. Judgement is not
the infinite power to embrace being, but the universal power to negate, to
annihilate, to crush. The power of judgement to negate is universal because
its idea of itself as denial is a priori, or pure. Judgement comprehends itself
to be denial as it embraces itself in its absolute abstraction. Since this self-
understanding does not depend on anything’s being given, it is absolute.
Therefore the word that expresses the concept of the object of judgement, as it
is understood in the self-consciousness of judgement, is ‘nothing’. While ‘not’
(nicht) awaits the specification of something that is negated, ‘nothing’ (nichts)
captures the universality of denial that judgement understands itself to be.
The understanding of judgement as denial re-conceives the force of
judgement; it leaves the externality of the content judged to the force of judging it
intact. If we were to represent the act of denial by a sign, then that sign would be
placed outside the sign signifying the content denied. Therefore, the universal no,
or nothing, that judgement understands itself to be is empty and pure. The self-
consciousness of judgement, its concept of itself, and that is, its concept of its
object, is free of any determination or content. Nothing, judgement’s thought
of itself, is ‘complete emptiness, complete determination- and contentlessness’
(SL: 59/21.69).
However, it is the content denied, and it alone, that provides for the
opposition that denial is. A no says no to something, it is itself the thought of its
distinction from that which it denies. As a content is given, the power of negation
can apply itself to it. Again, this content may be a thought that is true or false or
a set of normative rules by which judgements oppose each other. But the
self-consciousness of judgement, its concept of itself, and that is, of its object,

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does not provide for the determinacy of these contents. Judgement, in its thought
of its object, repels the notion that it should possess determinacy. As we embrace
the denial in its absolute abstraction, prior to all determinacy and content, the
opposition that it purports to be collapses. Indeed, there is no way to distinguish
pure denial from pure assertion. We say the object of judgement is nothing, but
this is nothing other than the thought that it is being. ‘Nothing thus is the same
determination or rather determinationlessness, and thus altogether the same as
what pure being is’ (SL: 59/21.69).
Assertion and denial are indistinguishable. Both what is asserted and what is
denied is empty and without any determination. Therefore, their opposition is
nothing. The one grand denial is not different from the one grand assertion. We
might say that the contents denied are the converse of the contents asserted and
therefore they are different. But the difference of contents is incomprehensible to
judgement as it thinks itself in its absolute abstraction.
One may want to say, so much the worse for absolute abstraction. Sensory
consciousness provides the determinate contents; their being given does not pass
through the self-consciousness of judgement. Judgement is the performance of
certain operations on these contents. This—empiricism—is to do away with
judgement altogether. For it is to renounce the self-comprehension of judgement,
which is nothing other than judgement. As judgement is self-conscious, there can
be determinacy of judgement only if the determinacy is comprehended as such in
judging. The self-consciousness of judgement, its concept of its object, must
provide for this determinacy.
A more sophisticated rejection of the absolute abstraction—a more
sophisticated rejection of judgement—is the suggestion that in the words
in which the absolute abstraction expresses itself language has gone on
holiday. This idea emerged from a reading of Wittgenstein, from whom this
phrase is taken (cf. PI: § 38) and is associated with the notion that Wittgenstein
has succeeded to transcend metaphysics, or philosophy, that his is a form of
after-philosophy. The sophisticated rejection rejects as empty the universality of
thought thinking itself. It is true, it explains, the opposition of judgement is not
comprehended within the concept of what it is to judge. But this is so only
because this concept is empty. When we try to put words to this concept,
language is celebrating, it is holding a feast.22 When we see that there is nothing
to be thought at this level of generality, we regain our certainty in our particular
concrete judgements and their oppositions. In each case, a judgement, for
example, snow is white, opposes another judgement, for example, snow is not
white; alternatively, it opposes many other judgements, for example, snow is
green, or blue, or red. She who judges understands herself to oppose contrary
judgements in understanding what it is that she judges, as the case may be,
snow is white.
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This reasoning rises to the very generality it denounces, saying ‘in each case’.
If it did not say this, it would provide no satisfaction. Recognizing this, one may
raise the sophistication and devise rhetorical strategies of self-effacement: the
speech is to dissolve the illusion of its own meaningfulness. This is a futile effort
to avoid philosophy, and that is, thought. It cannot but lead to despair, because in
every effort to silence philosophy, philosophy will be found to have spoken up all
the louder, just like, as Luther describes, every effort to shed sin will be found to
be an ever more wicked work of sin. In fact, it is right to associate philosophy
with the day of rest, the Sunday, the feast. It requires a cultural-psychological
explanation why one might think that the observation that philosophy is language
celebrating, language celebrating itself, would indicate that something is amiss
with philosophy.
Instead of renouncing judgement, we may undertake to think it. We may
undertake to comprehend judgement itself to be the thought of its determinacy.
So it is, if what is judged, as such, contains the opposition of judgement. The
opposition of is and is not neither determines the content judged nor the force of
judging it. It dissolves this distinction. A proper Begriffsschrift makes the sign of
this opposition neither a part of the sign of the content, nor does it make it a
feature of the sign of force. Rather, it writes the opposition of is and is not into
any sentence letter; it inscribes it within p, which for this reason no longer
requires a sign of force outside it.

XI. Internal reflection of the unity of being and nothing

The force of judgement, isolated from its content, is empty. In consequence, this
content is empty; the appearance of a manifold of contents is an illusion.
Difference of contents cannot be brought to judgement from outside it. Unless
judgement itself is difference, difference does not enter it. When an appeal is
made to something outside judgement to provide for difference, as for example
in Kant, it cannot be taken to be intended to provide an explanation of the
manifold we know there is in judgement. It must be taken to assert the perfect
incomprehensibility of it. This is how Kant understands his invocation of
sensibility, as is indicated by the fact that he takes it to imply that we know only
appearances.
Opposition in judgement, when it is separated from what is judged,
collapses: being is nothing, nothing is being. Unless what is judged provides for
opposition, the opposition of force is empty. Yet opposition in judgement cannot
come from contents given to judgement. Within the separation of force and
content, the result of the collapse of the opposition of being and nothing is the
return of the empty assertion: being, is. Logic ends here.
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 Logic, Being and Nothing

This is an external reflection: it treats that which is thought in the absolute

abstraction as though it were something given. It notes that what is so given,
whether it be represented as being or as nothing, is the same. In this external
reflection, we fail to notice that our reflection itself, in its entirety, lies within the
self-consciousness of judgement. It is the self-consciousness of judgement.
Hence the self-consciousness of judgement, its concept of itself and its object, is
neither being nor nothing; it is the transition of being into nothing and nothing
into being.
What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but rather that
being—not passes over, but—has passed over into nothing
and nothing into being. (SL: 59–60/21.69)
This is an internal reflection. It reveals the result of the collapse of being into
nothing and nothing into being to be the concrete unity of being and nothing:
becoming. Thought is this concrete unity, and therewith it is, through itself,
determinate and its own content.
Becoming … is the unseparatedness of being and nothing; not
the unity that abstracts from being and nothing, but as the
unity of being and nothing it is rather this determinate unity, or the
one in which being as well as nothing is. (SL: 80/21.92)
The unity of being and nothing in becoming is not the abstract unity of
is and is not. It is concrete: it does not abstract from the difference of is
and is not, but is their very opposition. Therewith it is determinate.
Indeed, becoming, the concrete unity of being and nothing, is determinacy
itself.
The judgement-stroke of Frege’s Begriffsschrift signifies the self-
consciousness of thought; it signifies the thought in which thought embraces
itself in its absolute abstraction. But Frege is not conscious that this is what it
does. Therefore, we need to go through the thought that reveals that being is
nothing and vice versa in a manner that presents it as self-consciousness. In this
way, we turn what, in our discussion of Frege, appeared as an external reflection
into an internal reflection.
The Science of Logic expounds the concept of thought, equivalently, the
concept of what is such as to be thought. That concept is not a concept, but the
concept, the concept überhaupt. It is not a universal, but the universal. In the first
thought of it, the universal is universal immediately, that is, not by passing
through difference. Thus it is abstract: its thought of itself as everything is not
articulated. Indeed, for this reason it should not be represented as the thought of
everything, for this implies a recognition of difference. Its true expression is not
‘everything’, but ‘being’.
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A universal is what is the same in many. Being in this one and that one and
that one, it is the same, or identical, in every one. It therein negates the difference
of this one and that one and that one, and in so far as it negates their difference,
it is itself a consciousness of their difference.23 The first universal, however,
universality thinking itself for the first time, does not contain a consciousness of
given difference. It is nothing but identity with itself: ‘it is equal only to itself ’ (SL:
59/21.68), ‘it is simple equality with itself ’ (SL: 59/21.69) As it contains no
difference, it is abstract. And since it is abstract, it is empty. Thought thinking
itself as being thinks nothing.
Thinking being is thinking nothing. This is no objection to pure thought.
For, thinking nothing is not not thinking. This marks the difference of
thought from sensory consciousness. Thinking nothing is not not thinking
because the distinction of nothing from something is inside the thought of
nothing: thinking nothing is the distinguishing of itself from thinking something.
Thinking nothing is thinking, it is the thinking that excludes from itself any
determination and therein embraces itself in its absolute abstraction. What it thus
thinks is—being.
Insofar as intuition or thought can be mentioned here, it is
taken to make a difference whether something or nothing is
intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing therefore has a
meaning; both are being distinguished and thus nothing is
(exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty
intuiting and thinking itself and the same empty intuiting and
thinking as pure being. (SL: 59/21.69)
Being is nothing because the universal, as abstract, excludes all determination. It
may seem that we thus represent the first universal as a result, the result of an
abstraction and thus not as first. This is the empiricist objection we discussed
above. It asserts that thought thinking itself abstracts from something that is
prior to thought and its self-understanding. But no abstraction from objects of
experience can yield the universality of being. The thought of being is abstract not
in the manner of abstracting from given differences. The first universal is the
thought not of everything, but of being; it excludes not all difference, but
difference. It does not rest on anything given. The thought of being, the
exclusion of difference that that thought is, understands itself to be original. It is
original as it is self-consciousness. In this way, we reject the empiricist objection
and say: pure thought is nothing, which is to say, it is being.
Nothing … is the empty intuiting and thinking itself and the
same empty intuiting and thinking as pure being. (SL: 59/
21.69)

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 Logic, Being and Nothing

Nothing is being because it is thought itself. We discussed Aristotle’s dictum that

thought is nothing before it thinks. Aristotle presents this as a corollary of the
universality of the object of thought: thought has no given nature, for, if it did,
then this nature would delimit the object of thought. It would delimit what is
such as to be thought. Thought is nothing because it is everything. Better, its
being nothing is its being everything. Hegel repeats this reasoning of Aristotle’s.
Thought is universal, which means that it has no given nature, and thus is
universal. In particular the universality of thought is not a given character of
thought. The object of thought is universal in and through the thought of its
being universal, and this is the thought of thought’s being nothing.
Being is the thought in which thought embraces itself in its absolute
abstraction. The absolute abstraction of thought is its self-consciousness.
In thinking itself, thought recognizes itself to be undetermined by anything.
This emptiness of thought, its nothingness, is its own deed: we comprehend,
in thought, the absolute abstractness of thought, which we, thereby, realize
in this very thought. Annihilating any determination, we recognize thought
to be the annihilation of any determination. The nothingness of thought
is not noticed from the outside, in an external reflection, which could be taken to
give a ground to dismiss thought. That is the path of empiricism. Rather, the
absence of determination is the self-determination of thought. Therefore it
does not depend on given determinations. On the contrary, it opens up the
whole: being.

XII. Becoming

Hegel emphasizes that being does not transition into nothing. Being has
transitioned into nothing, and nothing into being. In fact, being is its having
transitioned into nothing, and nothing is its having transitioned into being. To
think thought itself, recognizing it to be being, is to think nothing. And to exclude
any determination from thought, recognizing it to be nothing, is to think being.
Thinking being is thinking nothing. As we recognize this we think the first
determination of the concept. Becoming is ‘the first truth’ (SL: 60/21.72).24
There is no truth in being nor in nothing; being and nothing are the most perfect
untruth. ‘Thus those determinations are no longer present therein in the perfect
untruth in which they are as being and nothing’ (SL: 61/21.71) Hence, the logic
does not begin with being. It begins with becoming. The logic is not the
development of being. It is the development of becoming. Becoming is
the element of all determinations of the concept. The thought of becoming is the
recognition that the universality of thought is the same as its determinacy.
The Science of Logic unfolds this thought.
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 Sebastian Rödl

It is helpful to approach the thought of becoming by thinking of

ordinary becoming: something’s becoming so. For the consideration of ordinary
becoming may suggest an objection. It may seem that ordinary becoming is not a
unity of being and nothing, but holds them apart, locating them at different
times: something that has become so first was not so and now is so. Becoming
separates, and does not unite, being not so and being so. However, this is not
right. It is true that the terms of something’s becoming so, its being not so and its
being so, are not a unity of being and not being. But becoming, while it has terms,
is not its terms. Thought of something’s becoming so, that is, thought expressed
by the progressive aspect, ‘it is becoming so’, cannot be reduced to thought of
something’s first being not so and then being so, thought expressed without a
contrast of aspect: ‘x was not so’, ‘x is so’. Thought of ordinary becoming is
described very precisely as holding together, in one thought, something’s being
not so and its being so.25
Ordinary becoming has a terminus; something’s becoming so terminates
in its being so. Moreover, what becomes so is of a certain kind and
remains of that kind throughout. In these two ways, ordinary becoming
involves being that is distinct from and untouched by becoming. But we can
universalize the thought of becoming and extend it to these two moments
of being that characterize ordinary becoming. Then there is no determination
in which becoming comes to a close and there is no substance that remains
through a change of its determinations. This is the becoming of which
Hegel speaks.
Ordinary becoming occurs in time. By contrast, the becoming that is the
first truth, the first logical determination, has no temporal meaning. We
understand this when we see that this becoming is universal becoming.
Universalizing ordinary becoming, we extinguish its temporality. For its
temporality resides in its being a change of state of an underlying substance.
This structure we delete as we universalize. It is no surprise that universalizing is
logicizing. Logic is the science of the universal, or the concept.
One may argue that the thought of universal becoming destructs itself. If all
is becoming, then there is not even becoming. For becoming requires the
opposition of being and nothing. Becoming is a unity of being and nothing that
does not abstract from their difference. This abstraction was the first
determination, the abstract universal. Rather, it is the thought of their unity
that is precisely the thought of their opposition. However, this very opposition
disappears in universal becoming. Thus the thought of becoming turns out to
think nothing.
Becoming is … not the unity that abstracts from being and
nothing. (SL: 80/21.92)

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 Logic, Being and Nothing

Being and nothing are in it [in becoming] only as vanishing;

however, becoming as such is only through their difference.
Therefore their vanishing is the vanishing of becoming or
vanishing of the vanishing itself. (SL: 81/21.93)
However, while it is true that the thought of universal becoming collapses, it does
not collapse into nothing. Precisely because the thought of becoming does not
abstract from the difference of being and nothing, and thus is not the thought of
being, the recognition of its collapse is not the thought of nothing. As everything
flows, all being is lost, always already pushed out. We cannot hold on to anything,
for as we try to do so, it has always already disappeared into nothing. But
universal becoming is not only being passing away; it is also being arising; not
only does being disappear into nothing, ‘ceasing to be’; nothing gives way to
being, ‘coming to be’. In fact, becoming is the unity of these, the unity of
Entstehen und Vergehen. Heraclitus’ flux does not simply stand opposed to
Parmenidean being. It registers the negativity that being, and that is, the thought
of it, is. Therefore the thought of becoming does not resolve into nothing.
Rather, it is the recognition that being as such is negation: it is determinate
being, being that is not what it is not, being that excludes, negates, what it is not.
This is the first true universal.
The result is the having vanished, but not as nothing; then it
would be merely a relapse into one of the already sublated
determinations, not the result of nothing and being. (SL: 81/
21.94)
We found that negation is not part of the content of judgement as distinct
from the force. Nor is it an opposition of forces outside the content.
One may wonder where negation may be, if it is neither in the content nor in the
force. The answer is: nowhere. It is not possible to comprehend negation while
holding to the distinction of force and content. That distinction holds us
fettered in the most perfect untruth, the untruth of being and nothing. Rejecting
the distinction, we comprehend the unity of being and nothing; we think
becoming. Thinking the unity of being and nothing, we think what is asserted
to be itself the opposition of is and is not. This content is Dasein, determinate
being: thinking it, we think it to exclude what it is not. One step further
we may introduce incompatibility, comprehending what is thought to be such
that thinking something is understanding it to exclude something other. In the
Science of Logic, this appears as Daseiendes (what is in the manner of determinate
being).
Negation is inside what is thought in so far as it is such as to be thought.
What is thought as such contains the thought of an opposition in judgement, of is

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 Sebastian Rödl

and is not, being and nothing. A perfect Begriffsschrift would make the sign of
this opposition the graphic matter of all sentence letters. Nor would the
Begriffsschrift stop there. For now it is known, in the universal, that it is its own
negation. The science of logic will make this inner negativity of the concept
explicit and reveal the concept to be a contradiction. The science of logic
embraces this contradiction and thus progresses in its articulation of the concept.
Ultimately, the entire science of logic will be inscribed in each sentence letter.
Indeed, we can consider it as being already inscribed in every sentence of every
language.

Sebastian Rödl
Universität Leipzig, Germany
[email protected]

Notes

1
Abbreviations used:
CPR = Kant, I. (1781/1787), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, as repr. in Kants gesammelte Schriften, vols.
3 and 4 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1911).
DK = Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1974), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin:
Weidmann).
PI = Wittgenstein, L. (1984), Philosophische Untersuchungen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Translation:
Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).
SL = Hegel, G. W. F. (1832/1816), Wissenschaft der Logik. Page references are to the translation
by G. di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)/Hegel, Gesammelte Werke,
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1984 [vol. 21: Die Lehre vom Sein]; 1981 [vol. 12: Die Lehre vom Begriff]).
2
It also conforms to Hegel’s usage. In ‘General Concept of Logic’ he treats it as a matter of
course that the object of logic is thought: ‘Likewise, its object, thinking or more specifically
conceptual thinking, is essentially treated within it.’ (SL: 23/21.27) Later the content of the
science of logic is said to be the necessary forms and determinations of thought. ‘The
necessary forms and proper determinations of thinking are the content’ [in it, i.e. in the logic].
(SL: 29/21.34). All translations are my own. The reader is advised to consult Hegel’s
German text.
3
The science of logic is the science that logic is. However, we shall see that it is the self-science,
and therefore it is equally, and as such, the science whose object is logic.
4
Hegel says the science of logic is knowledge of itself: ‘It is only its whole treatment that brings
forth this knowledge of itself as what is ultimate in it and as its perfection.’ (SL: 23/21.27)
5
The alleged understanding from outside has been given various names. For example, it has
been called an understanding from the perspective, or the standpoint, of the third person in

25
 Logic, Being and Nothing

contrast to an understanding from the first person perspective, or standpoint, or an

understanding from the standpoint of an observer as distinct from a participant, or a scientific
understanding as opposed to a hermeneutic understanding.
6
Hegel calls the science of logic ‘the pure science’. Cf., for example, SL: 28–30/21.33–34.
(Inexplicably Di Giovanni chooses not to translate the definite article, and writes ‘pure science
…’. This obscures that Hegel speaks of a definite science, namely, logic.)
7
There may be more, but I am aware of only two texts in the more recent Anglophone
literature that express an awareness that the universality of thought must be internal to the
human being, which for this reason is not a particular in the manner of a nonrational animal or
indeed any natural substance: Anscombe (1985) and Müller (2016: section 4).
8
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Introduction.
9
Hegel explains that the logical is the distinctive nature of the human being: ‘The logical … is
his [the human being’s] proper nature.’ (SL: 12/21.10)
—When I say that logic alone provides the concept of the human being, I contrast logic, the
self-science, with natural sciences that may lay claim to providing that concept, for example,
anthropology, psychology, cognitive science. There may be a conception of these sciences
according to which they are not other than logic. I do not mean to rule out such a conception.
Relatedly, I do not mean to rule out (what perhaps is Hegel’s idea) that thinking through the
idea of logic—which thinking through is nothing other than the science of logic—reveals logic
to be nothing other than Realphilosophie.
10
Cf. Rödl 2018: ch. 3.5.
11
I call ‘metaphysics’ the science that Aristotle introduces in Metaphysics Gamma 1.
12
This is how Hegel describes the science of logic. It is the pure science, or thought in so far as
it is equally what is as such; this is to say, it is the pure self-consciousness. ‘The pure science
[…] contains the thought insofar as it is equally the thing in itself [die Sache an sich selbst], or the thing in
itself insofar as it is equally the pure thought. As science, the truth is the pure self-developing self-
consciousness and has the shape of the self, that is to say, what is in and for itself is the known
concept, while the concept as such is what is in and for itself. This objective thinking is the content of the
pure science.’ (SL: 29/21.33) Summarizing what he said about the concept of logic in the
introduction, he writes: ‘Accordingly, logic was determined to be the science of pure thought,
whose principle is the pure knowledge; it is not the abstract unity, but the concrete living unity
because the opposition of consciousness of a being that is subjectively for itself and a second
being that is objective is overcome and being is known as pure concept in itself and the pure
concept as true being.’ (SL: 38–39/21.45)
13
Hegel thinks he can explain this: common sense is the understanding trained to put faith in
abstractions, or rather to put superstitious faith in abstractions: ‘… in the so-called common
sense—which is not exactly sound understanding but also the understanding trained up to
abstractions and the belief, or rather the superstitious belief, in abstractions.’ (SL: 61/21.71)
14
This is not to assert that there are such facts. On the contrary. Recall the remarks above on
logic and human nature.

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 Sebastian Rödl

15
In this respect, they turn out to be no different from the forms of sensibility, as Kant notes
(CPR: B145–46).
16
Thus we understand Hegel’s use of ‘der Begriff ’, ‘the concept’. (There is no call to introduce,
in the English translation, a capitalization to which nothing in the German text corresponds.
The definite article is enough.) The concept is the self-consciousness of thought, or self-
consciousness. So the science of logic is, as Hegel puts it, ‘the pure self-developing self-
consciousness’ (SL: 29/21.33).
17
This speaks to the question how the knowledge that anyone always already possesses in
thinking anything at all relates to the knowledge the philosopher achieves as she lays out the
science of logic. The question brings forth manifold terms intended to describe the knowledge
before the philosopher has touched it: it is tacit, implicit, pre-conceptual, etc. It is misguided to
attempt to explain these terms. For the opposition they are to signify is not. Self-consciousness
is its own articulation, which is its own vanishing. This is how the philosopher knows nothing,
and how philosophy leaves everything as it is.—A further development of this thought would
show how to understand the various terms denoting progression within Hegel’s Science of Logic
(and his system as a whole): the movement of the concept, its results, what it brings forth, etc.
All these terms must be understood in a way that reveals philosophy to be beyond the
opposition of completeness and incompleteness.
18
Houlgate argues that logic, seeking to say what thought is, cannot presuppose that thought is
this or that or that. Suspending, in the manner of Descartes’s method of doubt, any idea we
may have of what thought is, we are left with nothing but the notion that, be thought what it
may, it certainly is (2006: 31–32). Asserting that thinking is, we presume to understand what it
is for something to be and claim that there is something that conforms to that understanding,
namely, thinking: thinking is, we say. We register this fact, which, as so registered, is a given
fact. However, logic does not consider any given facts, among which we may presume to find
the fact that thought is. The sole object of the logic is the concept, which is nothing given at all.
Houlgate appears to misinterpret the correct notion that the object of logic is thought. He
appears to think that this means that a logical determination determines thought. If the first
determination is being, then the first theorem of logic will predicate being of thought and
assert that thought is. However, thought is self-conscious, and therefore thought of thought is
thought of the object of thought, or, simply, the object. Hence logic does not begin with
‘thinking is’, but with ‘it is’ or ‘is’ or ‘being’.
19
We discuss the conception of judgement that is contained in Frege’s Begriffsschrift. We do
not attend to what Frege says about judgement. This would require a long discussion, for what
Frege says is a mess. In ‘Frege on Judgement and the Judging Agent’ (Schaar 2018), Maria van
der Schaar lays out the mess transparently. She takes herself to have cleaned up the mess by
distinguishing a first-person from a third-person perspective and distinct concepts of
judgements belonging to each of these, one logical, the other empirical, the one the object of
logic, the other of philosophy of mind (!). We discussed this in section II.
20
See, for example, and with reference to Hegel, Brandom 2002.

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 Logic, Being and Nothing

21
Cf. Tugendhat (1976: 242): ‘It is always already part of the assertion of the speaker that it
negates the possible negations of the listener.’ And (ibid.: 243): ‘This contrary assertion of the
listener is related in exactly the same manner to the assertion of the speaker as vice versa. […]
we can only say that the second is the negation of the first, and then the first is equally the
negation of the second.’ These quotes provide only a very partial representation of Tugendhat’s
treatment of negation and its relation to assertion. While he works within Frege’s distinction of
force and content, he is on the verge of destroying it. Cf. the very end of the cited work:
518–19.
22
The English translation of ‘die Sprache feiert’, ‘language goes on holiday’, is not ideal. To
hold a feast is not to go away to a place less real than the world of work. It is to gather to mark
a centre and source of life and truth.
23
The ‘generality constraint’, put forth, for example, by Gareth Evans (1982: 100ff.), makes the
consciousness of a manifold of particulars internal to a concept. This constraint puts into
words the self-consciousness of the empirical concept. Evans presents it as something we
know about thought, indeed as one of the few things we know about thought. He does not
inquire how we know this, and how it could be known, what kind of knowledge it is and how
such knowledge is possible.
24
The concept is the absolute truth, for it is the concept of thought, and the concept of what is
as such, and the knowledge of their being one. ‘Its content [the content of the pure science]
rather is solely the absolute truth. … The logic must be understood to be the kingdom of pure
thought. This kingdom is the truth as it is unveiled in and for itself.’ (SL: 29/21.34)
25
See Rödl 2012: ch. 5.

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