Section II - Objectivity

Summary

In BookOne of theObjective Logic, abstract being was presented as passing over into existence, but at the same time as retreating into essence. In Book Two, essence shows itself as determining itself as ground, thereby stepping into concrete existence and realizing itself as substance, but at the same time retreating into the concept. Of the concept, we have now first shown that it determines itself as objectivity. It should be obvious that this latter transition is essentially the same as the proof from the concept, that is to say, from the concept of God to his existence, that was formerly found in Metaphysics, or the so-called ontological proof. – Equally well known is that Descartes's sublimest thought, that God is that whose concept includes his being within itself, after having degenerated into the bad form of the formal syllogism, namely into the form of the said proof, finally succumbed to the Critique of Reason and to the thought that existence cannot be extracted from the concept. Some elucidations concerning this proof have already been made earlier. In Volume I, pp. 47 ff., where being has vanished into its closest opposite, non-being, and becoming has shown itself to be the truth of both, attention was called to the confusion that arises in the case of a determinate existence when we concentrate, not on its being, but on its determinate content, and then imagine – if we compare this determinate content (e.g. one hundred dollars) with another determinate content (e.g. the context of my perception, of my financial situation) and discover that it makes indeed a difference whether the one content is added to the other or not – that we are dealing with the distinction of being and non-being, or even the distinction of being and the concept. Further, in the same Volume on pp. 64ff. and on p. 289 of Volume II, the definition of a sum-total of all reality which occurs in the ontological proof was elucidated. – But the essential subject matter of that proof, the connectedness of concept and existence, is the concern of the treatment of the concept just concluded and of the entire course that the latter traverses in determining itself to objectivity.