The Beginning is Nothing

¹⁰⁶ The said beginning is:

• not an arbitrary and merely provisional assumption
• not arbitrarily and tentatively presupposed

Instead, it is shown to have been properly made the beginning.

¹⁰⁷ Thus the ground or the reason why the beginning is made with pure being [metaphysical existence] in the pure science [of logic] is directly given in the science itself.

Pure [metaphysical] knowing withdraws into the unity of this pure being [metaphysical existence].

• If this itself is still to be distinguished as form from its unity, then being [existence] is also the content of pure [metaphysical] knowing.

In this way, this pure being [metaphysical existence], this absolute immediacy has equally the character of something absolutely mediated [relational].

But it is equally essential that this pure being must be taken only in the one-sided character in which it is pure immediacy, precisely because here, it is the beginning.

If it were determinate and not pure indeterminateness [metaphysical abstraction], then it becomes something mediated [related to something], something already carried a stage further.

• “Determinate” implies an other to a first.

Therefore, the very nature of a beginning is that it must be being [existence] and nothing else.

¹⁰⁸ The [only property of] beginning is that it is the beginning of philosophy.*

In the beginning, the subject matter is not yet to hand – philosophy is an empty word or an assumed, unjustified conception.

Pure [metaphysical] knowing yields only this negative determination, that the beginning is to be abstract.

If pure being [metaphysical existence] is taken as the content of pure [metaphysical] knowing, then pure knowing must:

• stand back from its content
• allow the content to have free play
• not determine the content further

If pure being is the unity into which knowing has collapsed at the extreme point of its union with the object, then knowing itself has vanished in that unity.

• Knowing leaves behind no difference from the unity and hence nothing by which the latter could be determined.
• Nor is there anything else present, any content which could be used to make the beginning more determinate.

¹⁰⁹ But the determination of being so far adopted for the beginning [starting point for existence] could also be omitted, so that only a pure beginning would be demanded [abstract start instead of a specific start].

In that case, we have nothing but the beginning itself.

Some are dissatisfied with:

• the beginning of being
• the resulting transition of being into nothing

And so establishing an undetermined idea of a beginning would benefit such people.

This method creates no particular object. This is because the beginning, as the beginning of thought, is:

• abstract
• general
• wholly form without any content

Thus we should have nothing beyond the general idea of a mere beginning.

We have therefore only to see what is contained in such an idea.

¹¹⁰ In this general idea of a beginning, there is nothing yet. But this nothing is not a pure nothing, but a nothing from which something comes from.

Therefore being [existence], too, is already contained in the beginning [nothing].

The beginning therefore:

• contains both, being [existence] and nothing [emptiness of existence].
• is the unity of being [existence] and nothing [emptiness of existence]
• is non-being [emptiness of existence] which is at the same time being [existence]
• is being [existence] which is at the same time non-being [empty]. ®

¹¹¹ In this beginning, being [existence] and nothing [emptiness of existence] are different.

The beginning points to something else.

• It is a non-being [empty existence] which carries a reference to being [existence] as to an other [non-empty existence].

When this other begins, it is only on the way to being [actual existence].

That which begins, as yet is not [potential existence], is only on the way to being [actual existence].

The being [existence] contained in the beginning is, therefore, a being which removed itself from non-being [empty existence] or sublates it as something opposed to it. ®

But again, that which begins already is, but equally, too, is not as yet.

The opposites, being [actual existence] and non-being [potential existence] are therefore directly united in it, or, otherwise expressed, it is their undifferentiated unity.*

¹¹² The analysis of the beginning would thus yield the notion of the unity of:

• being [existence] and nothing [empty existence]
• differentiatedness [specific existence] and non-differentiatedness [general existence]
• the identity of identity [discrete existence] and non-identity [non-discrete existence]

This beginning is the first, purest, most abstract definition of the absolute.

That abstract concept would be the first definition of this absolute.

All further determinations and developments are only more specific and richer definitions of it.

Some people are dissatisfied with being [existence] as a beginning because it passes over into nothing [non-existence].

• This gives rise to the unity of being [existence] and nothing [non-existence].

But let them see whether this [abstract] beginning is more satisfactory than the beginning with being.