Finitude

(c) Finitude

²⁴⁸ The being of something is determinate; something has a quality and in it is not only determined but limited; its quality is its limit and, burdened with this, it remains in the first place an affirmative, stable being.

But the development of this negation, so that the opposition between its determinate being and the negation as its immanent limit, is itself the being-within-self of the something, which is thus in its own self only a becoming, constitutes the finitude of something.

²⁴⁹ When we say of things that they are finite, we understand thereby that they not only have a determinateness, that their quality is not only a reality and an intrinsic determination, that finite things are not merely limited — as such they still have determinate being outside their limit — but that, on the contrary, non-being constitutes their nature and being.

Finite things are, but their relation to themselves is that they are negatively self-related and in this they are negatively self-related and in this very self-relation send themselves away beyond themselves, beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this being is their end. ®

The finite not only alters, like something in general, but it ceases to be; and its ceasing to be is not merely a possibility, so that it could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.

[a] The Immediacy of Finitude

²⁵⁰ The thought of the finitude of things brings this sadness with it because it is qualitative negation pushed to its extreme, and in the singleness of such determination there is no longer left to things an affirmative being distinct from their destiny to perish.

Because of this qualitative singleness of the negation, which has gone back to the abstract opposition of nothing and ceasing-to-be as opposed to being, finitude is the most stubborn category of the understanding; negation in general, constitution and limit, reconcile themselves with their other, with determinate being; and even nothing, taken abstractly as such, is given up as an abstraction; but finitude is the negation as fixed in itself, and it therefore stands in abrupt contrast to its affirmative.

The finite, it is true, lest itself be brought into flux, it is itself this, to be determined or destined to its end, but only to its end — or rather, it is the refusal to let itself be brought affirmatively to its affirmative, to the infinite, and to let itself be united with it; it is therefore posited as inseparable from its nothing, and is thereby cut off from all reconciliation with its other, the affirmative. The determination or destiny of finite things takes them no further than their end.

The understanding persists in this sadness of finitude by making non-being the determination of things and at the same time making it imperishable and absolute. Their transitoriness could only pass away or perish in their other, in the affirmative; their finitude would then be parted from them; but it is their unalterable quality, that is, their quality which does not pass over into its other, that is, into its affirmative; it is thus eternal

²⁵¹ This is a very important consideration; but certainly no philosophy or opinion, or understanding, will let itself be tied to the standpoint that the finite is absolute;

The very opposite is expressly present in the assertion of the finite; the finite is limited, transitory, it is only finite, not imperishable; this is directly implied in its determination and expression. But the point is, whether in thinking of the finite one holds fast to the being of finitude and lets the transitoriness continue to be, or whether the transitoriness and the ceasing-to-be cease to be.

But it is precisely in that view of the finite which makes ceasing-to-be the final determination of the finite, that this does not happen.

It is the express assertion that the finite is irreconcilable with the infinite and cannot be united with it, that the finite is utterly opposed to the infinite. Being, absolute being, is ascribed to the infinite; confronting it, the finite thus remains held fast as its negative; incapable of union with the infinite, it remains absolute on its own side; from the affirmative, from the infinite, it would receive affirmation, and would thus cease to be; but a union with the infinite is just what is declared to be impossible.

If it is not to remain fixed in its opposition to the infinite but is to cease to be, then, as we have already said, just this ceasing-to-be is its final determination, not the affirmative which would be only the ceasing to be of the ceasing-to-be. If, however, the finite is not to pass way in the affirmative, but its end is to be grasped as the nothing, then we should be back again at that first, abstract nothing which itself has long since passed away.

²⁵² With this nothing, however, which is supposed to be only nothing, and which at the same time is granted an existence in thought, imagination or speech, there occurs the same contradiction as has just been indicated in connection with the finite, but with this difference, that in the case of that first nothing it only occurs, whereas in finitude it is explicitly stated.

There it appears as subjective; here it is asserted that the finite stands perpetually opposed to the infinite, that what is in itself null is, and is as in itself null. We have to become conscious of this; and the development of the finite shows that, having this contradiction present within it, it collapses within itself, yet in doing so actually resolves the contradiction, that not only is the finite transitory and ceases to be, but that the ceasing-to-be, the nothing, is not the final determination, but itself ceases to be.

[b] Limitation and the Ought

²⁵³ This contradiction is, indeed, abstractly present simply in the circumstance that the something is finite, or that the finite is. But something or being is no longer abstractly posited but reflected into itself and developed as being-within-self which possesses a determination and a constitution, and, still more specifically, a limit which, as immanent in the something and constituting the quality of its being-within-self, is finitude. It is to be seen what moment are contained in this Notion of the finite something.

²⁵⁴ Determination and constitution showed themselves as sides for external reflection; but the former already contained otherness as belonging to the something’s in-itself;

The externality of the otherness is on the one hand in the something’s own inwardness, on the other hand it remains, as externality, distinguished from it, it is still externality as such, but present in the something.

But further, since the otherness is determined as limit, as itself negation of the negation, the otherness immanent in the something is posited as the connection of the two sides, and the unity with itself of the something which possesses both determination and constitution, is its relation turned towards its own self, the relation of its implicit determination to the limit immanent in the something, a relation in which this immanent limit is negated.

The self-identical being-within-self thus relates itself to itself as its own non-being, but as negation of the negation, as negating the non-being which at the same time retains in it determinate being, for determinate being is the quality of its being-within-self.

Something’s own limit thus posited by it as a negative which is at the same time essential, is not merely limit as such, but limitation. But what is posited as negated is not limitation alone; the negation is two-edged, since what is posited by it as negated is the limit, and this is in general what is common to both something and other, and is also a determinateness of the in-itself of the determination as such. This in-itself, therefore, as the negative relation to its limit (which is also distinguished from it), to itself as limitation, is the ought.

²⁵⁵ In order that the limit which is in something as such should be a limitation, something must at the same time in its own self transcend the limit, it must in its own self be related to the limit as to something which is not. The determinate being of something lies inertly indifferent, as it were, alongside its limit. But something only transcends its limit in so far as it is the accomplished sublation of the limit, is the in-itself as negatively related to it. And since the limit is in the determination itself as a limitation, something transcends its own self.

²⁵⁶ The ought therefore contains the determination in double form: once as the implicit determination counter to the negation, and again as a non-being which, as a limitation, is distinguished from the determination, but is at the same time itself an implicit determination.

²⁵⁷ The finite has thus determined itself as the relation of its determination to its limit; in this relation, the determination is an ought and the limit is a limitation. Both are thus moments of the finite and hence are themselves finite, both the ought and the limitation. But only the limitation is posited as finite; the ought is limited only in itself, that is, for us.

It is limited through its relation to the limit which is already immanent in the ought itself, but this its restriction is enveloped in the in-itself, for, in accordance with its determinate being, that is, its determinateness relatively to the limitation, it is posited as the in-itself.

²⁵⁸ What ought to be is, and at the same time is not. If it were, we could not say that it ought merely to be. The ought has, therefore, essentially a limitation. This limitation is not alien to it; that which only ought to be is the determination, which is now posited as it is in fact, namely, as at the same time only a determinateness.

²⁵⁹ The being-in-itself of the something in its determination reduces itself therefore to an ought-to-be through the fact that the same thing which constitutes its in-itself is in one and the same respect a non-being; and that, too, in this way, that in the being-within-self, in the negation of the negation, this in-itself as one of the negations (the one that negates) is a unity with the other, which at the same time is a qualitatively distinct limit, through which this unity is a relation to it. The limitation of the finite is not something external to it; on the contrary, its own determination is also its limitation; and this latter is both itself and also the ought-to-be; it is that which is common to both, or rather that in which both are identical.

²⁶⁰ But now further, the finite as the ought transcends its limitation; the same determinateness which is its negation is also sublated, and is thus its in-itself; its limit is also not its limit.

²⁶¹ Hence as the ought, something is raised above its limitation, but conversely, it is only as the ought that it has its limitation. The two are inseparable. Something has a limitation in so far as it has negation in its determination, and the determination is also the accomplished sublation of the limitation.