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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2021
As it issues frombeing, essence seems to stand over against it; this immediate being is, first, the unessential.
But, second, it ismore than just the unessential; it is being void of essence; it is shine.
Third, this shine is not something external, something other than essence, but is essence's own shining. This shining of essence within it is reflection.
THE ESSENTIAL AND THE UNESSENTIAL
Essence is sublated being. It is simple equality with itself but is such as the negation of the sphere of being in general. And so it has immediacy over against it, as something from which it has come to be but which has preserved and maintained itself in this sublating. Essence itself is in this determination an existent immediate essence, and with reference to it being is only something negative, nothing in and for itself: essence, therefore, is a determined negation. Being and essence relate to each other in this fashion as again others in general which are mutually indifferent, for each has a being, an immediacy, and according to this being they stand in equal value.
But as contrasted with essence, being is at the same time the unessential; as against essence, it has the determination of something sublated. And in so far as it thus relates to essence as an other only in general, essence itself is not essence proper but is just another existence, the essential.
The distinction of essential and unessential has made essence relapse into the sphere of existence, for as essence is at first, it is determined with respect to being as an existent and therefore as an other. The sphere of existence is thus laid out as foundation, and that in this sphere being is being-in-and-for-itself is a further determination external to existence, just as, contrariwise, essence is indeed being-in-and-for-itself, but only over against an other, in a determinate respect. – Consequently, inasmuch as essential and unessential aspects are distinguished in an existence from each other, this distinguishing is an external positing, a taking apart that leaves the existence itself untouched; it is a separation which falls on the side of a third and leaves undetermined what belongs to the essential and what belongs to the unessential.
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