The Becoming of Essence

A. ABSOLUTE INDIFFERENCE

⁷⁸⁵ Being [Existence] is the abstract equivalence.

It [existence] is to be thought of by itself as being [existence], the expression indifference has been employed — in which there is supposed to be as yet no determinateness of any kind.

Pure [metaphysical] quantity is indifference as open to all determinations provided that:

• these are external to it and
• quantity has no immanent connection with them

The negation of every determinateness of being [existence], i.e., of quality, quantity, and their at first immediate unity, measure, is a process of self-mediation resulting in a simple unity.

• This leads to the indifference which can be called absolute.

Any determinateness it still possesses is only a state, i.e. something qualitative and external which has the indifference for a substrate.

⁷⁸⁶ But what has thus been determined as qualitative and external is only a vanishing determinateness.

Quality as thus external to being [existence] is the opposite of itself.

• As such, it is only the sublation of itself.

In this way, the determinateness is still only posited in the substrate as an empty differentiation.

But it is just this empty differentiation which is indifference itself as a result.

Indifference is thus concrete, a mediation-with-self through the negation of every determination of being [existence].

This mediation contains negation and relation.

“State” is its immanent, self-related differentiation.

Its externality and its vanishing make the unity of being [existence] into indifference.

They are therefore within this indifference, which therewith ceases to be only a substrate and in its own sey only abstract.

B. Indifference As Inverse Ratio Of Its Factors

⁷⁸⁷ How is this determination of indifference posited within the indifference itself?

How is the indifference posited as being [existence] for itself?

⁷⁸⁸

1. The reduction of measure-relations is initially ranked as self-subsistent measures.

This establishes their common substrate.

This is their continuation into one another.

Hence, the reduction is the indivisible self-subsistent measure which is wholly present in its differentiations.

This difference has the determinations of quality and quantity which the measure contains.

Everything turns solely on how these determinations are posited in the measure.

This, however, is determined by the fact that

But the substrate is:

• a result
• only in principle a mediation

But because this mediation is not yet posited as such in the measure itself, this measure is:

• initially a substrate
• an indifference, with respect to determinateness

⁷⁸⁹ Consequently, at first this measure is essentially the merely quantitative external difference which is present in it.

There are 2 distinct quanta of one and the same substrate which in this way would be their sum.

• Therefore, it would itself be determined as quantum.

But the indifference is this fixed measure.

It is the implicit, absolute limit.

This is related only to those differences where it would not be in its own self a quantum or opposed in any way, either as a sum or even as an exponent, to other quanta whether sums or indifferences.

It is only the abstract determinateness which falls into the indifference.

The 2 quanta, in order that they may be posited in it as moments, are:

• variable
• indifferent
• greater or smaller relatively to one another

But they are bound by the fixed limit of their sum.

This makes them related to each other not externally but negatively.

This now is the qualitative determination of their relationship.

They are consequently inversely proportional.

This relation is distinguished from the earlier formal inverted relation or inverse ratio by the fact that here the whole is a real substrate and each of the two sides is posited as having to be itself in principle this whole.

⁷⁹⁰ According to the stated qualitative determinateness, the difference is present as 2 qualities.

One quality is sublated by the other.

Both are held in a unity which they together constitute. And so neither is separable from the other.

The substrate itself, as an indifference, is likewise in itself the unity of both qualities.

Therefore, each side of the relation also:

• contains both sides within itself
• is distinguished from the other side only by a more of the one quality and a less of the other, and vice versa.

The one quality is through its quantum only preponderant in the one side, and so, too, the other quality in the other side.

⁷⁹¹ Consequently, each side is in its own self an inverted relation.

As formal, this relation recurs in the 2 distinct sides.

These sides thus continue themselves into each other also in respect of their qualitative determinations.

Each quality is self-related in the other and is present in each of the two sides, only in a different quantum.

Their quantitative difference is that indifference in accordance with which they continue themselves into each other and this continuation as the self-sameness of the qualities is in each of the 2 unities.

The sides, however, each as the whole of the 2 determinations and hence containing the indifference itself, are thus at the same time posited as self-subsistent relatively to each other.