Hegel explanation

 Using this academic paper (this is the link to the download)and I’m gonna be quoting it a bit. A lot of this is gonna be learning vocabulary, so prepare yourself for that, this is also just what I learned in like a week of studying the paper that’s said to be the “introduction of Hegel’s Absolute Idea” so please let me know if I’m outright wrong about anything 

Unconditional truth: grounds and causes all empirical thought and reality and while it grounds itself it also incorporates otherness without invalidating it

Subjectivity and objectivity: both are derived from each other so both come “first” which defines the cycle of subjectivity being deduced from objectivity, becoming objectivity and reconnecting to itself to start all over again

The Concept: Subjectivity and objectivity cycle along with both entirely make up the process that is The Concept but also as a more perfect unity that encapsulates it simultaneously. It includes everything without any “other” and is the very definition of freedom. The Absolute Idea being what The Concept is developed towards and The Concept being The Absolute ideas form while they are each other

The Concept has many principles and Logic (also described as “as such”) is one of them which I’ll put a quote from the paper here: “the logical concept informs a purely developmental process that commences with the most abstract possible definition of metaphysical truth as such. Since this definition falls short of the concept’s true form, it suffers from self–contradiction and changes into another, more concrete definition, which suffers the same fate etc. This process creates a sequence of all metaphysically relevant truth-determinations until the concept’s structure is fully explicated.” With The Concept being without other and Logic being but a principle to it all of this should be applied to The Concept simultaneously 

And another quote:“In the course of this gradual and ever more concrete explication of the concept, several categories that we know from our everyday mental life, for example, ‘quality’, ‘quantity’, ‘existence’, ‘appearance’, etc. are defined and scrutinized. But the Logic does not discuss them as thought–determinations owned or employed by finite, minded beings. Instead, the Logic’s determinations are forms of unconditioned, metaphysical truth as such. So while it is true that ‘we’ as finite, minded beings employ these categories in our thinking, this is only the case because the same truth that manifests as them, i.e. the concept, ‘causes’ and is active within our minds and the world we encounter. Their logical structure is not ‘our’ creation, they do not depend on us and our minds but our minds participate in them. We do not create conceptual truth, we exist in it.”

Self contradiction in Hegel follows something similar to Subjectivity and Objectivity since it isn’t “properly united as one” and it endlessly develops on itself until it is stopped if able to be

Dasein: a proper unity between being and nothing a way that is both at the same time, another quote: “Dasein is both being and nothing but unlike becoming that could not stabilize their relationship, Dasein assigns being and nothing a specific role: like being, Dasein is. And like nothing, Dasein is not: in being what it is, it is not what it is not. So Dasein means that whatever is, is in a way that implies that it is also not: it is determined being.”

Negative Infinity: The unstable relationship of the determinations of Something and Other (aka:what it is and what it is not) and Something only being defined to there being an Other and an Other being defined by there being Something so both are infinitely pointing at each other and defining each other(sounds familiar huh), is Being-In-Itself meaning it’s more defined by exclusion

True/Genuine Infinity: A proper stable unity of Something and Other, being simultaneously both being defined as what it is and what it is not, Being-For-Itself meaning it’s more defined by inclusion which leads into Quantity

Quantity: okay so this is how it was described in the paper “Being–for–itself is thus sublated into quantity: the many ones are the same in being one and at the same time, they are many. So in relating to each other, they relate to themselves, making their mutual repulsion an attraction. In truth, oneness is not excluding but including – it is the sum within which ones are relating to each other.” As you can tell it’s DESCRIBING A GROUP, like it’s a little more complicated than that but the gist is that a facet of Quantity is something that is many and one so it can relate to itself without contradiction or exclusion

Quantum: it’s the fixed amount of Quantity that is thinking along with the excluding determinacy that it contains. Its more concrete expression is the category of Number which is limited to an Amount which is measured by the Degree. Quantum’s lack of quality (since it is defined by what it is not) is its quality, its quality is not being itself due to how it’s defined by an exclusion

Measure: contains a quality and quantity but since it can increase and decrease both can change depending on the increase and decrease

Measurelessness: when the quantity of measure goes beyond its quality losing its measure but since it is still has a quality it is a measure leading it to go beyond its quality etc 

Essence: is a “reflexive understanding” with determinations that “shine into each other” instead of Beings determinations passing into next. 

Ground: The unity of distinctions creating Negative Infinity, everything is because of something other which it is essentially identical with itself while still being distinct from what it grounds

Existence: best explained by the paper: “the sum of existing entities that are reflected into themselves and each other and that create an ‘infinite connectedness of grounds with what is grounded’”

The Thing: the unity of Ground and Existence, it is determinate and concrete,with its determinations being its properties, properties are “independent” due to applying to some things and not others

Matters: the material reason why something is there, Matters exist because of matter with matter having form, the form of matter is how the properties relate to each other by means of the Thing

Appearance: another quote “There is no form without matter and vice versa and both lay claim to being all there is. The thing is the contradiction between their claims to totality. On the one hand, the form defines matter and matter is just the properties of form. At the same time, the thing consists in independent matters that are negated in terms of the form they take.” This contradiction of what is totality is Appearance, implying that something is there to appear but claiming that there is only that which appears, having matter yet only being form, being essential yet inessential 

The world of appearance: matter is just a moment of form and the ground of appearance is form but ground exists as the negation of existence so ground is also just appearance ad Infinitum, everything is just appearance 

Content: is the unity of inner and outer, form, and law but form can exist external to law, form is the cause of content

Actuality: it is what it is, it’s existence is its essence and vice versa, its ground, essence, and existence have no differences. It is Possibility

Possibility: is actuality without existence, “un-essential essence”, actuality that does not exists that relies on actuality for definition

Contingency: the negation of possibility within actuality, it just exists without reason, actuality without essence so a “un-essential existence”

Presupposition: a contingent possibility that something other contingently is: it is Condition, what must be, can be

Real Possibilities: The circle of conditions possibilities, the whole of actuality’s externalities and their mutual mediation existing independently of the Matter at Stake aka:Sache, they also form a complete circle of passive conditions that are the material for the Sache and constitute its entire content

Activity: the movement of Sache manifesting into an outer/external existence from possibility through conditions and it proves itself as Sache and emerges

Unconditioned Necessity: independent from anything external, quote “conditions, activity and Sache are truly one, the Sache is its own conditions and its own activity realizes itself. As such, necessity is both mediated and non–mediated: it is because of its circumstances and it is simply because it is.”

Substantiality: a form of necessity, since condition, action, and sache are all the same with unconditioned necessity, Sache ends up giving itself which means it gives its own necessity and existence from within which gives rise to substance and accidents 

Substance and Accidents: Substance is because of its inner necessity as actuality but the result is accidental, quote “This makes substance the totality of all accidents that has absolute power over them: substance is the richness of all content but this content is only manifest in the form of arbitrary accidents.” This relationship is causality

However, while the effect differs

from the cause because the effect is posited, its positedness is also the actualizing and

thus positing activity of the cause. This renders the effect active and the cause

presupposed: the original cause is also effect since the original effect presupposes it.

This is the bulshit I had to go through, THIS MOTHER FUCKER was saying how cause and effect were the same but that wouldn’t apply here but as something so obtuse that it’s hard to tell that it is saying that to begin with and to determine that it’s saying it doesn’t apply, THE QUOTE:“So the original effect is also a causal, second substance – it causes the original substance and is caused by that original substance. Being both active and passive, the second substance is like the original substance and both engage in reciprocal action. (Hegel 1991: 230) Since both substances are cause, original, active and effect, derived, passive etc. and each presupposes the other and acts onto the other, both are original and posited by the respective other at the same time. This, however, makes them indistinguishable. So in truth, there is only one cause and the change from one cause to another truly is the one cause that posits itself. So when this one cause acts onto itself, it sublates its own status as substance”

THE CONCEPT (but again since we have more context): The conception of truth proper, unconditioned,independent, self positing truth that brings forth EVERYTHING THERE IS AND IS THOUGHT, all the determinations that have been described before are deficient forms for the concept, they are merely the self articulation of the concept, its unity always have already happened. With no other or external to The Concept, its own negation is already within The Concept and unified with itself completely independently, the very definition of freedom

Much like Sache moving into existence, subjectivity identifies with objectivity creating the “otherness” within The Concept, realizing the purpose: “making real” of the object, subjectivity’s inwardness into concrete actuality, quote: “Now, the concept’s outward existence is totally informed by the concept, the concept is the might that sustains and structures objective reality”

Nature and the idea of nature: the Concept/absolute idea as it turns against itself as it is external to itself (it as its own external), is what space and time is

Space makes things external to others, since something in space is external to whatever else is in space in virtue of being in space. While time separates things in a self referential way with the past, present, and future. The unity between them is that defines matter, quote: “it is thus wrong to say ‘the cube is in space and time’. Instead, ‘space and time manifest as cube’.”

This is where what is relevant in my opinion is ended, I hope that was comprehendible.