Chapter 3 - Ground

Summary

Essence determines itself as ground.

Just as nothing is at first in simple immediate unity with being, so here too the simple identity of essence is at first in simple unity with its absolute negativity. Essence is only this negativity which is pure reflection. It is this pure reflection as the turning back of being into itself; hence it is determined, in itself or for us, as the ground into which being resolves itself. But this determinateness is not posited by the essence itself; in other words, essence is not ground precisely because it has not itself posited this determinateness that it possesses. Its reflection, however, consists in positing itself as what it is in itself, as a negative, and in determining itself. The positive and the negative constitute the essential determination in which essence is lost in its negation. These self-subsisting determinations of reflection sublate themselves, and the determination that has foundered to the ground is the true determination of essence.

Consequently, ground is itself one of the reflected determinations of essence, but it is the last, or rather, it is determination determined as sublated determination. In foundering to the ground, the determination of reflection receives its true meaning – that it is the absolute repelling of itself within itself; or again, that the positedness that accrues to essence is such only as sublated, and conversely that only the self-sublating positedness is the positedness of essence. In determining itself as ground, essence determines itself as the not-determined, and only the sublating of its being determined is its determining. – Essence, in thus being determined as self-sublating, does not proceed from an other but is, in its negativity, identical with itself.

Since the advance to the ground is made starting from determination as an immediate first (is done by virtue of the nature of determination itself that founders to the ground through itself ), the ground is at first determined by that immediate first. But this determining is, on the one hand, as the sublating of the determining, the merely restored, purified or manifested identity of essence which the determination of reflection is in itself; on the other hand, this negating movement is, as determining, the first positing of that reflective determinateness that appeared as immediate determinateness, but which is posited only by the self-excluding reflection of ground and therein is posited as only something posited or sublated.