XI - Essence

Summary

FROM REFLECTION TO GROUND

Essence is the domain in which we see things not just by themselves, ‘immediately’, but as founded on an underlying basis. This is the realm of mediacy, for the notion of essence is inescapably mediate in Hegel's sense, that is, we can only get to it via another: we come to Essence by reflecting on Being, seeing that it does not suffice to itself, and hence referring back beyond it to what underlies it. Essence thus always refers us to a starting point, to Being which is negated (as self-subsistent). This, says Hegel, is what is expressed in the rather odd etymology of the German word for Essence, ‘wesen’, which is reminiscent of the past participle of the verb ‘to be’, ‘gewesen’: ‘Essence is Being which has passed away, but passed away non-temporally’ (Das Wesen ist das vergangene, aber zeitlos vergangene Sein, WL, 11, 3).

It is this movement back which also gives foundation in part to the image of reflection which plays such a large part in this book. But Hegel first wants to make clear the nature of the Essence he will discuss. It cannot be understood simply by the one-way movement mentioned in the above paragraph, where we start from Being and realizing its inadequacy move to the underlying substrate. This is a movement of ‘reflection’ in one sense, the external reflection of the subject of knowledge who postulates some inner reality to make sense of what he sees.