I. NEGATIVITY. NOTHING—ABYSS—BEYNG
The explorations that we are attempting in the form of a discussion should not interrupt the course of your work of interpreting Hegel’s Logic. The questions that we are striving toward are also not intended to “intrude on” Hegel’s philosophy from the outside with the “impatience of incidental reflection,”1 which is thoroughly contrary to a system of thinking, particularly of the Hegelian type, and must therefore also be fruitless.
It is also true that Hegel does not simply serve us as an arbitrary opportunity and foothold for a philosophical confrontation. His philosophy stands definitively in the history of thinking—or should we say: of beyng—as the singular and not yet comprehended demand for a confrontation with it. This demand holds for any thinking that comes after it or for any thinking that simply wants to—and perhaps must—prepare again for philosophy.
Nietzsche, who freed himself very slowly and rather late from the pathetic slander and disregard for Hegel that he inherited from Schopenhauer, once said that “we Germans are Hegelians, even if there had never been a Hegel.”2
The singularity of Hegel’s philosophy consists primarily in the fact that there is no longer a higher standpoint of self-consciousness of spirit beyond it. Thus any future, still higher standpoint over against it, which would be superordinate to Hegel’s system—in the manner by which Hegel’s philosophy for its part and in accord with its point of view had to subordinate every previous philosophy—is once and for all impossible.
All the same, if the standpoint of a necessary confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy is to be on equal footing with it, and that means of course that it is in an essential respect superior to it, while at the same time not brought to and forced on it from the outside, then this standpoint of the confrontation must in fact lie concealed in Hegel’s philosophy—as its own essentially inaccessible and indifferent ground. However, that and why the standpoint of Schelling’s late philosophy may in no way be taken up as a standpoint superior to Hegel shall not be dealt with here.3
In view of the uniqueness of the standpoint of his philosophy, the confrontation with Hegel is also subject to unique conditions. It has nothing in common with any sort of “critique,” that is, an account of what is incorrect, which would be derived from applying the standards of preceding standpoints or of earlier standpoints that, in the meantime, have been revised—for instance, those of Kantianism, Medieval-Scholasticism, or Cartesianism.
The other thing that a fundamental confrontation with Hegel needs to be mindful of originates in something that Hegel claimed as the distinguishing mark of his system very early on, and again and again afterward: that the standpoint of his philosophy is actually elaborated and that the principle of his philosophy across all areas (nature, art, law, state, religion) is pursued and presented throughout. Philosophy that comes after Hegel cannot be content with merely having a “knack” for a new kind of wisdom;4 the principle must show itself in the totality of beings and must thus validate this totality as actuality. “True thoughts and scientific insight are only to be won in the labor of the concept. The concept alone can bring forth the universality of knowledge, which is neither the common indeterminacy and inadequacy of common sense, but rather well-formed and complete cognition, nor the uncommon universality of the capacity of reason, which corrupts itself through sluggishness and conceit of genius, but rather a truth ripened to its properly matured form so as to be capable of being the property of all self-conscious reason.”5
Whether in fact the elaboration of the principle of the system, as Hegel demands it, holds for all philosophy in general or only for the kind of systematic philosophy of German Idealism, and also, what this demand means in altered form for another inquiry, cannot be discussed here. But in any case, a fundamental confrontation with Hegel, one that is directed at the principle and standpoint, risks that by grasping merely the principle it grasps precisely that—or not even that—which remains empty and indeterminate and is not the intended philosophy itself.
From this we may infer that a fundamental confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy that is adequate to it as a whole can be achieved only in a way that follows every step of Hegel’s thinking in every area of his system.
But what would be achieved here other than, generally speaking, always only the presentation of the same principle, albeit in a different penetrability and illuminatory force depending on the area in question (art, religion)? This would certainly not be an insignificant achievement—and yet would never be what is decisive. On the other hand, the detached discussion of the empty principle and of the meager skeleton of the form of the system are prohibited because they do not make manifest the being-principle of the principle.
In line with these considerations, every fundamental confrontation with Hegel stands or falls depending on whether it satisfies, at the same time and in a unified manner, these two demands: first, to occupy a more originary standpoint, one that does not intrude from outside, and on the other hand, to grasp in an originary manner what is fundamental in its determinateness and power of determination, while avoiding both the depletion of the principle of the system and a merely formalistic discussion of it as it can be found in the usual—historiological—expositions, that is, in those that are not guided by an essential question.
Where then does the critical meditation have to begin in order to satisfy this twofold demand? What is that basic determination of Hegel’s philosophy that we must think through in order to be led back into a more originary standpoint from which alone we can truly catch sight of it as a basic determination? And what is this basic determination that at the same time does justice to that which the Hegelian system has worked through?
We claim: this basic determination is “negativity.” However, before we move on to a closer characterization of Hegelian negativity, some prior questions need to be sorted out.
(1) The clarification of a concern regarding the value of such a confrontation.
(2) The specification of the conceptual language that comes into play in the confrontation.
(3) The preliminary characterization of the standpoint and principle of Hegel’s philosophy.
(1) Clarification of a concern regarding the value of such a confrontation
It can be doubted whether Hegel’s philosophy still has an impact today, so that it seems that the confrontation with it, regardless of how much it is concerned with what is fundamental, remains after all only a scholarly game of the usual philosophical-historical historicism, one that is, as we say, concerned with the “history of ideas”—a making-present of Hegelian philosophy as a past one in which many curiosities may be noticed and which, if it is conducted thoroughly enough, perhaps contributes to the sharpening of the understanding. This doubt, namely whether such a historicism is and can be more than a scholarly occupation, expresses the opinion that the actual relevance of a philosophy consists in its effects or after-effects. As if Hegel’s philosophy would only actually be relevant today if there were a Hegelianism and to the extent that it existed in fact in various forms! That a philosophy produces a school and that this school in turn practices a “philology” and a learnedness about the philosophy in question, this is indeed an effect of the philosophy—and one that is for the most part an irrelevant effect; this effect, however, never contains that which the philosophy in question is historically from itself and in itself.
The actual relevance of Hegelian philosophy also does not lend itself to be measured by what it meant for the “life” of its time through its immediate, contemporary influence. What we encounter here is the common view that Hegel’s philosophy and German Idealism in general always remained the extravagant speculation of some fanciful minds and thus stood “outside” of so-called “life.” To that one must respond that German Idealism as a whole and Hegel’s philosophy in particular unfolds a historically effective force whose extent and limits we today cannot yet fathom because we are flooded by it from all directions without recognizing it. However, one must know that this kind of “impact” of a philosophy precisely does not consist in that its doctrines are adopted, “espoused” as they say, carried over into the so-called praxis of “life,” and are thereby confirmed and its validity is upheld. The “impact” of a philosophy has an enigmatic thing about it, that in effecting its “time,” it calls forth precisely its opposite and compels it to revolt against it. In short: Without German Idealism and without Hegel’s metaphysics in particular, the positivism of the nineteenth century and of our time could never have gained the stability and self-evidence that belongs to it.
The age in which Nietzsche was rooted and caught up is unthinkable without Hegel, not to mention Marx and Marxism, which is, after all, more than just a particular formulation of socialism. But Hegel’s metaphysics has a mere semblance of actual relevance, namely, in that today’s Hegelians band together in order to make themselves timely in the name of Hegel’s “concrete” thinking. Hegel still has an impact everywhere today, yet always in a reversal and disguise or, in turn, in the counter-movement against this reversal and disguise. Christian theology of both denominations is determined by Hegel and even more so by the religious-historical theological counter-movements and formations of the ecclesiastical consciousness that grew out of it.6
And nevertheless: Even this actual relevance of his philosophy, understood as the historical impact proper to it, does not constitute what this philosophy as philosophy is, still is, and will be. With this we in no way think of a supertemporal validity of any “correct” propositions that one wants to find in it among many incorrect, flawed, and obsolete things. We mean rather “only” this: that this philosophy is,—that here that which philosophy has to think is thought in a distinctive manner; that something happens here that does not take place outside of “time,” but indeed has its own time, to the extent that it originarily grounds the latter. We may not, neither now nor in the future, measure the historical being of a philosophy with the standards of historiology; the impact and effectivity on so-called life is no possible factor for the judgment of a philosophy, and with it also not for the estimation of the worth of a confrontation with it; because all “life” and what is so called “lives” only out of the misrecognition and turning away from philosophy,—this means only that it necessarily and in a very embarrassing way needs philosophy. But philosophy can never consider “life’s” turning away from it a deficiency but must rather know it from necessity. What and how Western philosophy is historically cannot be decided by means of historiological considerations but can be experienced only in philosophical thinking.
(2) Specification of the conceptual language that comes into play in the confrontation
Philosophy is Western philosophy;—there is no philosophy other than Western philosophy, inasmuch as the essence of what the West and Western history are is determined by that which is called philosophy. We must abstain from every scholastic conception and every historiological interpretation of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon and instead understand it as the mindfulness of the totality of beings as such, in short—but also again undetermined because ambivalent—asking the question of being.
“Being” is the basic word of philosophy. What we call in this essential, and that means at the same time the initial historical sense, “being,” Hegel calls “actuality” (compare below). Why exactly this designation occurs in Hegel is grounded in the innermost essence of the history of Western philosophy; why—this will become apparent in our discussion.
In contrast, that which Hegel designates with “being” we call “objectness,” which is a designation that indeed captures what Hegel himself also means. Why Hegel calls “objectness” “being” is, again, not arbitrary. It arises from the necessity of a philosophical standpoint that Hegel himself must traverse and posit in order to ground his philosophy.
Hegel’s concept of “actuality”
(According to the preface of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. In the Logic: “absolute idea”; in the Phenomenology of Spirit: absolute knowledge, but also “being.”)
Actuality: beingness as representedness of absolute reason. Reason as absolute knowledge—unconditionally re-presenting re-presentation and its representedness.
What is “rational” and what can be called “actual” will be decided in accordance with this alone. With this in mind, Hegel’s proposition, often quoted and just as often misinterpreted, is to be understood:
“What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.”7
This proposition is turned into its opposite if by “actual” one understands what is commonly called “actual,” that is, the presence-at-hand of a contingent “present,” and by “reason” the contingent understanding of the self-evidence of common thought.
This proposition is not a determination in the sense of an equation concerning things encountered present-at-hand and a momentarily plausible opinion of the “rational” living creature, called man,—but it is the basic proposition [Grundsatz] of the essential determination of being. Being is the representedness of unconditionally representing representation (of thinking)—the perceivedness of reason. The proposition is not a practical rule about the assessment of beings, but conveys the essential ground of the beingness of beings. The proposition can therefore also not be refuted by the fact that many “rational things” (in the usual {?} sense) do not “happen” and are not “actualized,” and thus fail to occur, and that many “actual things” are rather “irrational” (in the sense of calculating understanding). This essential proposition cannot be “refuted” whatsoever.
For Hegel, “being” is thus only a one-sided determination of that which philosophy, and also Hegelian philosophy, thinks and interrogates: being, in the sense of the question of being as the mindfulness of the totality of beings as such.
Nietzsche, by the way, also uses the basic philosophical word “being” in a restricted sense; in fact, this restriction is intimately related to Hegel’s, not because it is as a matter of fact directly borrowed from Hegel’s use of language (I suspect that Nietzsche never “read” Hegel’s Logic, let alone that he ever thought it through in its totality), but rather because both restricted usages of the word “being”—Nietzsche’s and Hegel’s—have the same historical ground, which is none other than the beginning of the history of philosophy and that means of its essence hitherto conceived of as “metaphysics.”
In the confrontation with Hegel we must therefore constantly be mindful of whether what is intended is Hegel’s concept of being or the essential concept of being. This is of wide-ranging importance in as much as Hegel brings the “nothing,” which is usually considered the negation of beings in general and in their totality, in a decisive conjunction with “being,” conceived in its restricted sense.—It requires no further emphasis that something completely different than merely “terminological” distinctions is at stake here.
(3) Preliminary characterization of the standpoint and principle of Hegel’s philosophy
a) “Standpoint” designates that in which philosophy stands while what is to be thought as such becomes accessible to it, to its thinking. Hegel’s standpoint is that of absolute idealism. (“Idealism” genuinely and properly only in the modern sense: idea as perceptum of the perceptio as cogitatio—as “consciousness.”) The standpoint generally that of consciousness. Being is re-presentation and re-presentedness of re-presentation; unconditioned subjectivity.
b) “Principle” means that with which philosophy begins, namely such that the beginning is that which remains the supporting ground of the thinking of what is to be thought. Hegel’s principle says: “Substance is subject” or: being (now taken in its essential sense) is “becoming.” Hegel begins with the beginning to the extent that for him to become is precisely to begin. “Becoming”: re-presentation of itself, bringing-itself-to-appearance. In the logic, becoming brings itself into becoming as that which becomes, i.e., in its unconditioned conditions. But is this an absolute determination of the “beginning” and of beginning—or only Hegel’s, i.e., the metaphysical determination? The interpretation of the essence of “beginning”! From where? With what does Hegel’s philosophy proper—the Logic—begin? With “becoming”—it is the “ground”; indeed not with “being,” this is the point of departure! Becoming “is” insofar as it “becomes.”
c) To what extent “standpoint and principle” belong together and in what they belong together must ideally be made apparent by the meditation on particular standpoints and principles.
After this short survey of the three preliminary questions, we seek a closer characterization of that wherein our confrontation takes hold—negativity.
1. The determination of the “standpoint” and the “principle” of Hegelian philosophy; the concepts “standpoint” and “principle.” Standpoint: absolute idealism, concept of the ab-solute, unconditionedness of the ego cogito certum. Principle: Substantiality is subjectivity. “Being” as “becoming” of absolute knowledge.
2. The characterization of Hegelian “negativity” as difference of consciousness. The first question: Whether this difference is drawn from consciousness as essence, or whether the characterization as difference is used to determine consciousness (subject-object-relationship), or whether it is both of them and why?
3. The clarification of negativity in the shape of being-other: something and other. The other as the other of the other.
4. Why negativity cannot be determined from Hegel’s nothing, since it appears to be the “embodiment” of not-ness; the nothing the same as being—neither as differentiated; here still no difference, no negativity.
5. Hegel’s concept of “being” arose from the dis-mantling of absolute actuality—what is most differentiated from it. The outermost externalization! But absolute actuality as will.
6. Absolute actuality (being in the broader sense) from the re-nunciation of the systematic (system-conforming) grounding of the difference between being and beings. This renunciation (already the consummation of neglect) out of the forgetfulness of this distinction. Forgetfulness out of the most habitual habituation to the difference. The dismantling here necessary out of this renunciation; the latter lies in the essence of absolute metaphysics and metaphysics in general: it is and it is being carried out with the enactment of metaphysics.
7. This re-nunciation an essential presupposition of the possible absoluteness of unconditioned thinking.
8. How the complete dissolution of negativity into the positivity of the absolute is brought into view from here. “Negativity” is the “energy” of unconditioned thinking because it has from the very beginning already surrendered everything that is negative and not-like. The question of the origin of “negativity” is devoid of sense and ground. Negativity is what is questionless: negativity as the essence of subjectivity. Negativity as the negation of negation is grounded in the yes to unconditioned self-consciousness—of absolute certainty as “truth” (i.e., beingness of beings).
9. The questionlessness of negativity as a consequence of the questionlessness of the essence of thinking.
10. Thought as the enactment of the representing (as representing itself) determination of beings and as the pregiven horizon of the interpretation of being (perceivedness—presence—thoughtness).
11. The self-evidence of thought as the essential character of man in the sense of the thinking animal. Since Descartes the beingness of beings in itself re-presentation. Consciousness as self-consciousness.
12. The questionlessness of negativity and the question of the relation of man to being (not only to beings). The proper question of “anthropomorphism.”
13. Inquiry into being not from out of beings and in orientation toward them as beingness, but rather back into itself, into its truth. The clearing of being—indicated by a meditation on the still uncomprehended [unbegriffene] unitary essence of thought in the sense of: I represent something as something in the light of being. The clearing as a-byss—the nothing that is not null and naught but the proper heavyweight, beyng itself.
14. Being differentiated from beings. The questionworthiness of the characterization of the “relation” between being and beings as difference. The approach for the overcoming of this questionworthiness: Being in projection; but pro-jection as Da-sein.
15. Negativity is swallowed up in positivity only for metaphysical thought; the nothing is the abyssal contrast of beyng, but as this its essence. Beyng itself in its singularity; the “finitude” of beyng; what is superficial and misinterpretable about this characterization.
16. To think the nothing means: to inquire into the truth of beyng and to experience the distress [Not] of the totality of beings. To think the nothing is not nihilism. The essence of nihilism consists in forgetting the nothing in the lostness to the machination4 of beings.
17. The mastery of the machination of beings shows itself most surely in that metaphysics, as the ground of this machination, in its consummation degrades “being” to the status of an empty nullity. Hegel: the “nothing” as the mere indeterminacy and unmediatedness—thoughtlessness as such. Nietzsche: “being,” the last fumes of evaporating reality.
1. As im-permanence—denial of permanence. But thus ambivalent: (a) lack of permanence—mere flow and elapsing. (b) The continual passing-over. (c) Restlessness as permanency (!) of origins.
2. Coming-to-itself—absolute knowing as becoming (freedom!). Since becoming (the negative [Negative] of the immediate) is knowledge and actuality is thoughtness, becoming must become the object of thinking, and only in thinking-itself can it “be.” However, in order to think itself un-conditionally as a self, it must divest [entäußern] itself of itself to the utmost degree (i.e., to mere being). This self-externalization [Selbstentäußerung] only in order to gain itself properly and solely, and in order to have itself in the gaining, and to “be” in the having, i.e., to “be effective” in accordance with its essence. The first thing (“what”) that becomes is becoming itself.[1] Becoming is the undetermined immediacy of coming-to-itself.
3. “Being” as immutability; ancient; Christian: Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte II, 7, 27;1 De trinitate V, 2,3,I,6f.;2 De moribus Eccles. Cath. II, 1,1.3
4. Negativity and the “nothing”1
1. The “totally abstract,” conceptless (“thought”-less, the formal) not-being (beginning of the Logic). What is totally abstract, i.e., still abstracted even from the first abstraction, the immediate, undetermined representation whose represented object still posited in its representedness and thus negated by the “un-,” is the pure “nothing.”
2. Abstract negativity: (a) first negation (conditioned), (b) “the second” negation—getting caught alternately in the subject-object-relationship. The “first one” already differentiates the subject and object from each other and is in every respect conditioned.
3. Concrete negativity—unconditioned negativity. The negation of “negation” as (a and b).
“Nothing”—as the not of beings. “Nothing”—as the not of being. Negativity must, so it seems, be encounterable in its purest and most definitive form in the “nothing”; this is indeed so, only the question remains how the “nothing” is to be comprehended here.
Hegel’s “nothing”: the first true thing, i.e., the first “being” in the broader sense, is becoming; it is the difference of being and nothing as the difference that is none. The nothing is not distinct from being and is not an other to it, but rather the same. For what reason, to what extent? Due to the interpretation of being. Since the nothing is not something differentiated, yet negation is “difference,” negativity cannot be illuminated with the help of “the nothing.” But perhaps with being? This, however, the same, therefore the other way around: i.e., from negativity being, which is the same as the nothing. And thereby perhaps the “essence” of negativity comes to light.
5. Negativity and being-other [Anderssein]
Something and other: Thus something becomes the one of the other and the other becomes the other of the one. The difference is conditioned for each side one-sidedly.
Only when the one becomes the other to the other of the other—when one becomes the other—, the differences are no longer opposed in a one-sided manner and at the same time degraded; instead they are alternately raised into the alternate belonging-together which is their “ground”; they lose the possibility of conditioning and become themselves what is conditioned.
Unconditioned negativity is that which is conditioned neither through the one nor through the other of the one, nor through the other of the other, but is rather detached from both and first binds them in their interrelation.
The three or four negations: consciousness—self—absolute knowledge.
Absolute negativity: 1. The elevation of the first and abstract negativity or its ground? 2. If ground—then from where?
Why derive absolute negativity from one and another (being-other), and not simply from “nothing,” although clearly the not-like and the negative appear as it were in persona?
6. Negativity and otherness [Andersheit]
The first negation—abstract negation. Absolute negation—the negation of negation.
Otherness—here as the essence of the other in the other itself. This is not the otherness of the other as differentiated from the one. This difference posits each away from the other. The other in the other itself is the other to the other, namely in such a way that this belongs to it as its ground but is nonetheless differentiated from it. The other of the other comports itself to itself in the difference.
Absolute otherness—the unconditioned relating-itself-to-itself.
7. Negativity—difference of consciousness—subject-object relationship and essence of truth
But the essence of truth? From where and how?
The essence of man: Why and to what extent to be asked as the basic question? From where is the essence of man to be determined? How is it to be determined? Through what is this determination itself determined (attuned!)? Why “attunement”?
Being-conscious [Bewußt-sein] (as ego cogito of the subject-object-relationship) and thinking in the sense of the ratio and the νοῦς of the animal rationale.
Hegel’s “negativity” precisely not to be understood from the nothing and its self-sameness with “being”; because no “difference” here.
The “nothing” itself—that which is thoughtless pure and simple and this only within unconditioned thinking (thus from being in its essential sense).
No difference between being and nothing—but nevertheless: being [is] “something differentiated,” [and is] the “negative” of its own negations. Of which negations?
As that which is un-determined and that which cannot be mediated, or, more precisely: in-determinateness and un-mediatedness pure and simple. The former is “beings” and only beings as such; the latter denotes the nothing—as the beingness of that which merely is.
That which is not a being is “nothing.” (But “is” every nothing only that which is not a being?) For Hegel a being is something that is in some way determined and mediated.
Being “is” also not a being and “is” never a being; it is therefore the un-determined and un-mediated. Being conceived of as beingness is indeterminacy and immediacy.
The nothing (as the not of beings) is here not differentiated from being; the latter is itself the nothing, so that there is no difference—namely, there is no difference already within the thoughtness that is to be thought as the beingness of being. But nevertheless there is a difference, one that is not arbitrary and that does not turn up “here,” in this beginning, but rather only “shows” itself in its most external form; it is veiled in the Hegelian sense and can never come forward as such, because thinking does not require it in its becoming with which it begins. Nonetheless thinking as the thinking of thoughtness indeed requires this difference, namely the difference between beings and being. Unconditioned thinking leaves this “difference” behind, or it never descends to it, and yet it is dependent on it if only in the precarious manner of a renunciation—a manner that should not escape unconditioned thinking. But it must elude the latter, because otherwise in the totality of its indeterminacy it would again have to become something conditioned [be-dingtes] in the highest and most complete sense, conditioned by the “thing” [das “Ding”], which is: the totality of beings.
This renunciation of the all-grounding difference expresses itself in Hegel’s claim that the distinction between being and nothing is none. But this grounding difference is what in Being and Time (compare lecture course summer semester 1927, conclusion) we called “ontological difference.”1 Which “negativity” is meant here? (What is the connection with the “as”: something as a being?)
Even here, and in spite of the unconditionedness of thinking and of thoughtness, being (in the broad sense) is conceived of with beings in mind, as the beingness of beings. The Logic too is still and indeed wants to be: metaphysics.
But now the same relation that has persisted since the beginning of the history of thinking as metaphysics (in Plato) and that constitutes the proper beginning (the difference between the totality of beings and being) is, as it were, reversed; but “as it were” only because a reversal can be discovered only from modern thought, insofar as beings in their totality would be taken as “object” [Objekt] in general and the “subjective” (thoughtness as being) is “as it were” swallowed up by it; whereas at the end of the history of metaphysics subjectivity as the unconditioned subject-object-relationship retains everything within itself by thinking everything in its thoughtness.
In a historical sense, being itself is in the beginning the being that is most in being [das Seiendste] according to the mode of the totality of beings—φύσις; and in the end, the totality of beings would be dissolved into pure being as the thoughtness of unconditioned thinking, and every look back to a “being” will be thought of as decline.
9. Hegel’s absolute negativity interrogated directly about its “origin”
Is this question decidable? Is it even a question? Is not Hegel’s negativity without question one of thinking and thoughtness? “Thinking” and the “not”?
Consciousness—difference—subject-object-relationship—thinking; “I think something,” and this in a transcendental sense, i.e., “as.”
Thinking as the thinking of being (the beingness of beings).
Thinking (in modern thought) is both consciousness and difference. But in what sense? What does the coinciding of consciousness and difference mean?
Thinking:
1. The thinking of being (νοεῖν)—as fore-thinking into the supplement of the beingness of beings (“as”);
2. To consider beings (διανοεῖσθαι)—that which asserts, judgment (“as”).
How are 2. and 1. related to each other? Is 1. only a generalization of 2.?
The essence of “thinking” in the first beginning.
If negativity proper—namely absolute negativity—is not merely an augmentation and an elevation of an abstract negativity into another negativity, but is rather the essential negativity as the “energy” of what is absolutely actual, then abstract negativity must conversely “arise” from unconditioned negativity. But from where does the latter arise? Admittedly, there could be no whence that would lie outside of absolute knowing; it is therefore all the more necessary that we inquire into the whence within the absolute idea. For it is still undecided what comes first within the absolute idea: “consciousness” (simply stated) as I represent something—or the “differentiation” that characterizes this relation of representation as difference.
Assuming, however, that consciousness and difference are co-originary, we must then ask in what way they are co-originary and how negation is to be grasped originarily: as the “opposite-to,” from which the “not” can be lifted off as “something formal,”—or as formal differentiation, which alone makes possible the relation of opposition.
Negativity is essentially and decisively pervasive, and it “is” unquestionably with the absolute idea itself, and yet the origin of negativity remains in the dark.
Or have consciousness and difference already become fully equated for Hegel? What would this mean?
“Consciousness”—as subject-object-relationship (difference as the self-differentiation of the subject from the object). Representation of something as something. The “as” in the sense of a difference. What kind of difference is it?
Projection upon being! Projection and differentiation.
The question concerning the origin of the formal “not” and “no” and concerning its rank surfaces everywhere. Kant?
The formal “not” and the no;the no and the negation. Which saying—judging—thinking? Does the not arise [ent-springt] from thinking? And what is the latter? Or does “thinking” grasp only the “not”?
Where is the origin of negativity? Where can it be grasped in the purest form? In the beginning? In being and nothing? But that is not a difference. Certainly not; being is here not the one that would be related to the nothing as the other, but being is the most unconditioned and the pure other of absolute actuality. Therefore being itself is the most unconditioned differentiation; not from the “nothing” but from absolute actuality.
1. It is grounded in the complete negation (that means?) of absolute negation; the contrast to all determination and mediation. So, from where this complete negation of absolute negation? What does it mean? The complete expulsion from becoming [Ent-werden] of that which can be and has been expelled from becoming unconditionally.
2. Furthermore, along with being and absolute actuality being in the wider sense (categories) is also and already differentiated from beings.1 Being arises at the same time from the complete negation of absolute negativity and the equally complete difference [Differenz] from beings in general. Whence these negations? Why for instance from absolute negativity and with absolute negativity?
Being:
1. from the dismantling (negation) of absolute negativity; the latter is suspended (the un- of all determination and mediation, i.e., of all differentiation);
2. absolute actuality, whose energy is absolute negativity, itself from the renunciation of beings; more precisely: the renunciation of the difference between being and beings.
Dis-mantling and renunciation—what are they in light of Hegel’s metaphysics? Is the reference to the latter a mere idea? Or is it the inner positing of the system (not the refutation) into and through that which itself “properly” is?
* * *
Negativity as tearing and division is “death”—the absolute lord;2 and the “life of absolute spirit” means nothing else than suffering and dealing with death. (But this “death” can never become a serious threat; no καταστροφή is possible, nor is any downfall and subversion [Sturz und Umsturz]; everything is contained and compensated. Everything is already unconditionally secured and accommodated).
Philosophy as ab-solute, as un-conditioned philosophy must enclose negativity in a peculiar manner, and that basically means not to take it seriously. The de-tachment as retention, the complete conciliation in everything. There is no nothing. And that appears to be quite all right. The nothing “is” nothing and is not.
Dis-mantling and renunciation are the “beginning” of the absolute. Is the latter itself in its own manner the master of these “negations”? And how so? Or are they that which the absolute suppresses [unterschlägt] and perhaps also can suppress for itself.
What is their essence? How do they belong together?
Dis-mantling—the utmost differentiation of absolute becoming from the expulsion from becoming [Ent-werden] and that which has been expelled from becoming.
Re-nunciation—(the transcendental and its sublation) both are already unconcerned about the essential “distinction” of “beings and being.” Is it indeed a “distinction”—or can this only count as a fore-name, as a naming that is superficial and that also covers up?
Re-nunciation—not of beings, but rather of the “difference.”
Each time the question of the thinking of being surfaces; whether taken simply for itself and from itself, it fulfills the enactment of its possibilities, of its own essence.
The other path of the meditation on “thinking.”
1. The question concerning the “origin” of “negativity” in Hegel, i.e., in Western metaphysics as such. The question concerning Hegel: either an extraneous workaround (formal logic, the characterization of absolute thinking in its threefold character through “differentiatedness”—formal) or from consciousness. But how? That means, in its totality every time from “thinking.” The vastness and emptiness of this realm of inquiry and its respective indication of the basic position. Cf. Kant on the nothing.1
2. Thinking and metaphysics. The beingness of beings and thinking. Thinking—what metaphysics makes use of as its “guiding thread”—nothing outside of it. The approach from here, no intrusion.
3. Thinking—judgment (is, being)—negation. Hegel’s concept of judgment: the division of the “concept,” i.e., of the opposites, into the opposites themselves and the combination (con-cretion [Kon-Kretion]) into their “unity”—the speculative “is”! To what extent nothing can be expected from the reference to the “judgment” for the illumination of the origin of negativity.
4. Being and beings as the actual—“actuality” and “idea”—actualitas.
5. Being and time.
Hegel posits the “difference” (ἀνάλυσις/σύνθεσις) as negativity; or the other way around?
But difference is the self-differentiation of the I from the object. To be more precise, this self-differentiation is only one—the most proximal, immediate—in addition to and away from . . .
The difference is the essential threefold self-differentiation of absolute knowledge, i.e., the relating-itself-to-itself as the inclusion of that which is differentiated.
This difference is absolute negativity insofar as it precisely affirms that which is differentiated as the other in its belongingness to the one and thereby makes the one itself into the other. The not of the proper, i.e., unconditionally re-presenting appropriation of what is knowable in its consummate knowability of the unconditioned knowing itself as a self.
Thus the fundamental question surfaces:
1. Is negativity in the sense of the not-like here only a formal work-around for the characterization of the essential threefold differentiatedness of absolute knowledge? If yes, from where is negativity itself taken (from the “judgment” of “thinking”; and this? (A “is” B)) and with what right is it used in this way?
2. Or is the differentiatedness of the absolute I think and of its certainty the self-evident ground of the possibility of negation? If yes, in what sense and with what right and to what extent is the “nothing” grounded thereby? (Ground: the whence of inner possibility.) What does the positing of I-certainty and of the ens verum and certum mean—beingness as representedness? Therein lies at once a further question:
3. How do the not and negativity (not-ness and the no-like)—according to 1. and to 2. respectively—relate to the nothing and how does the nothing relate to being? (“Yes” as approval and assent, as affirmation.)
For Hegel, negativity must apparently be understood in the sense of 2.
Separation is the “absolute power,”1 “the innermost source of all activity”;2 the powerful is the actual, but the actual is absolute knowing. Knowing as knowing-itself.
But here separation cannot be meant only as a difference of objects—the abstract and essenceless is of that kind—, it is rather meant as the separation as the essence of absolute consciousness. But if the latter is that which properly is a being, then separation—the not—belongs to being in the essential sense (beingness). “Not” and consciousness are co-originary.
In each case, the separation of the difference brings to appearance (of representation) the lack of that which has been differentiated; but the lacking is always only the one-sided decline from the absolute self-possession of absolute knowing. Admittedly, the latter is only what it is as knowing, i.e., as the enactment of the movement of thought [Denk-bewegung].
The negative, the lack of that which is lacking, is the moving principle, not the mere away, but the missing—the belonging-also-to-it. The negative is therefore at bottom the self of absolute self-consciousness. The negative is the “energy” of (absolute) thinking.3
Separation is the “absolute” “tearing,” but to the extent that it is endured and absolute spirit preserves itself in it (not the unmediated and non-mediating throwing-asunder). Absolute knowing is the absolute self-preservation in the tearing; this is “life.”
Negativity is therefore at the same time sublation. The absolute trembling—the absolute shaking of everything. Death the “absolute lord.”4
The tarrying of spirit with the negative (not the looking away) turns that which is null and naught into “being.”
13. The differentiation (separation)
The mere distinctness—one away from the other and only away. Differentiating as rejecting, dropping, passing-over.
The difference—where precisely the “common,” the same, is held fast; and in relation to it what is differentiated.
The implication—that which is differentiated itself only as the point of departure of the sublation into the belonging-together.
The decision.
The negative for Hegel the “difference”—I think something—the intellect’s thinking—separation—absolute power. The negative—the moving principle for the I and the object.1
The negative, i.e., consciousness as such—regardless of what the object of its knowing is: whether it is the object or consciousness itself as that which knows (subject) or the thought—the knowing that knows itself.
Everywhere the negative of the difference reigns from the ground up. Negation—negating—an-nihilating—wrecking—running aground.
Where is the origin of negativity?
How does “consciousness” acquire the determinative, all-supporting, and all-encompassing primacy?
Is negation, the differentiation, “earlier” than consciousness—or the other way around? Or both the same?
The origin [Ur-sprung] of the not—the not in the origin [Ur-sprung].
The not of beings—being (and not the nothing).
The not of being—the originary nothing.
The not “of” being—in the sense of a genitivus subjectivus. Being itself is not-like, it has in itself the nothing.
The differentiation—separation—presupposes the not and the nothing insofar as it grounds itself on the differentiability of that which can be differentiated, which, in turn, is being (regardless of its interpretation). But is it at all possible to speak in this manner about Hegel and the modern interpretation of being in general (ens = certum)? The question is not whether this differentiation is grounded on being, but how the latter itself is comprehended and projected. But if representedness belongs to the projection of being, does not the “not” enter being from representation (thinking), and thus from differentiation?
But from where and how differentiation, thinking—the essence of thinking—as enactment; as the ground of the projection. Whence projection and project-openness?
Negativity and the nothing.
The nothing and the question: Why are there beings rather than nothing? The metaphysical character of the question, grounded in the primacy of beings.
The nothing and the essence of the ground. Ground—truth—beyng.
The nothing and “nihilism.”
16. Hegel’s concept of “being” in the narrow sense (“horizon” and “guiding thread”)
Being conceived of as indeterminacy and immediacy. (That Hegel says: “Being is the indeterminate immediate,”1 shows only that he equates being and beings in general understood in the ordinary sense—in accordance with the metaphysical habituation, more specifically, however, according to the idealistic mode of thinking.)
This concept of being says: The horizon of the interpretation of being is determination and mediation, more precisely determination as mediation, i.e., thinking in the sense of unconditioned thinking. Being is the thoughtness of this thinking, where being is now taken in the broad sense; “being” in the narrow sense is the unconditioned (or is it conditioned through and through?) un-thoughtness (thoughtlessness pure and simple!), thus the complete suspension of thinking (the non-thinking). To the extent that thinking, according to the basic position, can count only as the representation of “something,” the suspension of thinking entails that there is no re-presentation; thought from the vantage point of thinking—only only from it—the pure void.
Hegel’s concept of being thus has its very own pre-suppositions (namely those of the horizon of thoughtness), but these are at the same time the presuppositions of Western metaphysics; and this in turn means: that basic position in which the relation of Western man to beings maintains itself as such.
Therefore, Hegel’s concept of being must at once also become understandable and reconstructable; which, according to its unconditioned basic position, must be “determined” by the “un” in the manner of a dismantling. In the common opinion of “beings,” which has no knowledge of its horizon, it has the character of that which is simply understood and understandable (i.e., that which is projected in general), namely: of pure presence.
Therefore, what the meditation on Hegel’s “concept” or non-concept of “being” yields is not Hegel’s “standpoint” but our common Western-historical standpoint (in the bad sense of the word: a special view).
And what we call “pre-supposition” still requires an illumination of its own essence; because the designation “pre-supposition” is already somehow “proposition-like,” i.e., it arises from the stance to reduce everything to positings and propositions and thinking, especially all first and last things. But these “presuppositions” are something different, whose essence we must comprehend and determine originarily from that which is allegedly only posited here.
What is that? This can only be learnt through the meditation on the essence of thinking (cf. there) and on the manner in which thinking proclaims itself the guiding thread and guiding domain of the interpretation of being; from the meditation on being and its interpretability and the ground of the latter, i.e., the truth of being, and the meditation on the relation of the truth of beyng to being itself.
That which holds true for Hegel’s non-concept of being holds true more essentially, i.e., unconditionally, for being in the broad sense, for the absolute idea—i.e., for the having-been-sighted [Gesichtetheit] that sees and mirrors itself unconditionally; that is to say: for the presence that presences itself.
17. The “standpoint” of Hegelian philosophy is the standpoint of “absolute idealism”
Standpoint, that in which thinking stands so that what it has to think (being) becomes accessible for thinking, becomes thinkable.
Here the “standpoint” is unconditioned thinking; this, however, is that which is to be thought in its thoughtness itself.
The standpoint is the absolute itself; and this as the whole of “being” is what does not require a standpoint, and is not somehow standpointless. What does not require a standpoint, because it is through and through and everywhere the thing that is “accessible” to it. Everything has already reached it, and it actually only “lives” off the constant repetition of this sole present “past,” of this ground-less a priori.
The absolute—as absolute knowing—the absolute idea. The present that is present to itself, the presence that mirrors itself in the presencing. (Parmenides: “sphere”1); unde Trismegistus dicit: ‘Deus est sphaera intelligibilis, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia vero nusquam.’2 No “against-which”—“beings” dissolved into beingness.
“This” absolute is unconditionally “for itself.” Is it also unconditionally “in itself?” If yes—how? (Insofar as it is only “for itself”—re-nunciation.) If not—in what respect? Does not the un-conditionedness announce the most secret condition from which it cannot free itself; “being”; dismantling and re-nunciation.
The constant externalization [Entäußerung] into thoughtlessness is the condition of unconditioned becoming (expulsion from becoming [Ent-werdung] into mere being as dis-mantling).
The re-nunciation of beings, i.e., of the distinction of beings and being, is the condition of the unconditioned determination of being as absolute idea—thoughtness.
That which conditions here is the complete re-nunciation of the grounding of the difference between being and beings.
This “re-nunciation” is not expressly carried out but is made definitive only in the manner of the traditional disregard.
The pre-supposition of thought.
18. The (thoughtful) pre-suppositions of Hegelian thinking
Absolute thinking in its de-tachment—un-conditionedness.
1. Dis-mantling—of the unconditioned thoughtness, the conditionless externalization into the expulsion from becoming that makes everything that conditions disappear.
2. Renunciation—of the distinction between being and beings, its interrogation and grounding.
3. How, in contrast, is the renunciation in unconditioned thinking in Kant? To what extent is it complete and definitive? In Kant, the “ontological” difference, i.e., the distinction that is ontologically fundamental, is made explicit, but it is not grounded (transcendental imagination??). Hegel and absolute idealism only the beneficiaries; what do they leave out?
4. How the dis-mantling is the essential consequence of the renunciation. The unconditionedness of thinking points to “becoming” (as “I” think). But this in turn points to the expulsion from becoming [Ent-werden] and only thus Hegel’s negativity! Thus, a highly conditioned negativity, conditioned by a more originary one.
5. Which no and not lie in this thinking itself?
6. In what respect does it “posit” the distinction between being and beings in advance?
7. Is the characterization as “distinction” appropriate here at all? “Difference”—the carrying-apart—yet as such it preserves and unfolds the unity. Which unity? How the essence of beyng?
19. The pre-suppositions of Hegelian thinking of being in the narrow and broad sense
These “pre-suppositions” as presuppositions of thought—posited with the essence of this thinking.
To posit the thinker expressly into the pre-supposition through this confrontation. This does not mean to go back to that which the thinker would have had to consider, but the transposition into that which the thinker was not yet allowed to and capable of considering in accordance with his essence and in accordance with his basic position; and this in order to think what he thought and precisely how he thought.
“Pre” [Vor]: Nothing which could or may ever be retrieved [nach-geholt] in the sense of his thinking, but that which is not yet caught up to and which is determined far in advance.
The “limit” of thoughtful thinking is never the deficit that is left behind but is the concealed undecidedness that is enforced in advance as a necessity of new decisions. In this limit lies the greatness, the creation of what is most inaccessible and most questionworthy, even against one’s own knowledge. The “presuppositions” not that which has fallen by the wayside, but that which is thrown ahead. (“Pre-suppositions” especially not in a “psychological-biological” sense, but resolved upon in the essential abyss of the thinking of beyng). That which is historically essential in every thinking is the concealed encroachment into the pre-suppositions that is inaccessible to itself and therefore carried out mindlessly.[2] The grounding of that which is questionworthy can indeed never be the goal of a “world view” and of “faith,” but it can be that of philosophy, which alone wants being. The first beginning of Western thinking carries out the broadest and richest and most concealed pre-suppositions, and its beginning consists precisely in this, not in that it supposedly starts with the least and with what is empty.
The pre-supposition, the fore-projection of that which one day is to be caught up to, is: the groundlessness of the uninterrogated truth of beyng.
But the catching up to this pre-supposition, the elaborating positing of the same, is not the consummation of the beginning but again a beginning and thus more pre-supposing than the first: beyng itself as a-byss; beings and their explicability from now on no longer the refuge, shelter, and support.
Attempt of a confrontation with Hegel, with Western metaphysics. Confrontation—Hegel—Western metaphysics—and positing ourselves into what is distinct and singular in each. More could be said about this (cf. “Meditation on oneself”1), but before that—carry some of it out.
Focus (according to determinate demands): negativity.
The last time clarified through the distinction of something and other; freely taken out and dealt with. This is possible because Hegel himself knows and often says that the letter of his text is not the absolute itself. Negativity and being-other; cf. there.2
Negativity: the differentiatedness that differentiates itself—differentiation that is differentiated within itself—“consciousness.”
“Negation” [Negation] always in this sense, not as “negating” [Verneinung] but [as] “synthesis”—elevation, but [as] determining [Be-stimmen].
21. The historical confrontation and the regress to “presuppositions”
“Pre-supposition”—spoken from where? “Premises,” what is sent before—for calculating thinking. First propositions that can but do not have to be basic propositions; but even then “propositions”? In what sense always a supplement?
The ahead[3]—how and whither and when? In what regard “simple” thinking, indeed every comportment is ahead of itself to the extent that it makes use of the open and openness. But what is this?
Anti-cipation [Voraus-nahme] and pre-possession—and the “as.” Anti-cipation and pre-possession—as standing in the open. The openness of the there (there-ness). Pre-supposing as unrecognized essential moment of Da-sein.
But Da-sein not as something present-at-hand, merely ὑποϰείμενον, that would become present-at-hand simply through a regressive inquiry, but instead: leaping attainment [Er-springung] that transforms human being [Menschwesen], and this one only in and from the inquiry of what is most questionworthy.
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig, 1923). Preface to the second edition, 21. [Science of Logic, 21.]
2. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft. Book V, 357. Großoktavausgabe, vol. 5, 230. [English: The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 218; translation modified.]
3. Cf. seminar WS 1937–38, Die Grundstellungen der abendländischen Metaphysik. {The notes of the seminar will be published in the volumes of the seminars of the fourth division of the Gesamtausgabe.} [The notes of the seminars were published as Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des abendländischen Denkens and constitute part one of the volume Seminare (Übungen) 1937–38 und 1941–42 (GA88).]
4. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Leipzig, 1937). Preface, 43. [Phenomenology, §51.]
5. Ibid., 57. Cf. Hegel’s letter to von Raumer 1816: “Über den Vortrag der Philosophie auf Universitäten.” WW XVII, 351f. [Phenomenology, §70. An English translation of the letter to von Raumer appears in Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 337–341.]
6. “Bankrupt”—“dialectical theology.” Catholic theology: crossroad; studies of my time in Freiburg.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Preface. WW VIII, xix (ed. Hoffmeister, 14). [English: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 20.]
1. Cf. additions and supplements to What Is Metaphysics? {Will be published in one volume of the fourth division of the Gesamtausgabe: Hinweise zu veröffentlichten Schriften.}
2. Cf. Contributions. {Heidegger, Martin. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) 1936–38, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt a.M.: Klosterman, 1989).} [English: Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).]
3. Cf. “Beyng” {GA III}, cf. philosophy as confrontation [Auseinander-setzung] {GA III}, cf. lecture course on Hegel {GA 32}, and seminars on the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Logic, and the philosophy of right {GA IV}.—Cf. revised interpretation of Schelling’s treatise on freedom, 1941. {Hand-written supplement from the review in 1941.—Cf. GA 49, 105ff.}
4. (En-framing! [Ge-stell!]) {later marginal note in the transcript by F. H.}
1. Saint Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte. Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, vol. 34, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1861). Book II, Chapter VII, 27. [English: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 6: Saint Augustin: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995).]
2. Saint Augustine, De trinitate. Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, vol. 42, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1861). Book I, Chapter VIf. and Book V, Chapter II, 3. [English: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 3: Saint Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995).]
3. Saint Augustine, De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum. Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, vol. 32, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1861). Book II, Chapter I, 1. [English: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 4: Saint Augustin: The Writings against the Manichaens, and against the Donatists, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995).]
1. Cf. Hegel’s concept of being {See below section 8, and sections 15, 16, and 18.}
1. Note from the German editor: The term “ontological difference” is not found in the first two divisions of Being and Time, which were the only divisions that had been published under the title Being and Time. In fact, the term is mentioned for the first time in the Marburg lecture course of the summer semester of 1927, titled Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (GA 24, p.322ff.) [English: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 227ff.] In a note (p.1 [1]), Heidegger refers to this lecture course as the “new elaboration” of division 3 of part 1 of Being and Time.
1. Compare Hegel’s concept of being {See above, section 8, p.15ff.}
2. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Leipzig, 1937), 148. [Phenomenology, §194.]
1. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. A290ff., B346ff. (“Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe”). [English: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 382ff. (“Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection”).]
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. G. Lasson (Leipzig, 1923). Part II, Book III, 214. [Science of Logic, 509.]
2. Cf. ibid. Part II, Book II, 33. [Science of Logic, 745.]
3. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes. Preface, 29. [Phenomenology, §32.]
4. Cf. ibid., 148. [Phenomenology, §194.]
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister (1927). Preface 25ff., 29f. [Phenomenology, §§26ff., 32f.]
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. G. Lasson (Leipzig, 1923). Book I, 66, cf. also 54. [Science of Logic, 58; cf. also 50.]
1. Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Fragment B8, Verse 43ff. Vol. I, 238. [English: Cf. G. S. Kirk, et al., The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 252.]
2. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate. Opera Omnia, vol. 9 (Parma, 1859). Question II, Article III, 11. [English: The Disputed Questions, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), 68. “Hence, Trismegistus says: ‘God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.’“]
1. Note from the German editor: Not found in the papers on “Negativity.”
2. Cf. above section 5, p.14.