Three Paragraph Summary of Hegel's Theory of Essence

Being is essence. Being as such was immediacy, simple presence, unity. Essence is rather mediation and duality. But it is not a mediation between essence and something else outside essence, since then essence would relapse into entitude, becoming an entity among others. No, the whole of being is essence, and essence is the truth of being. Immediacy and presence show up in essence in the form of seeming. This expression indicates that it is only a transitory affair, the truth of which is to be sought in the essence behind the seeming. The operation in essence which produces the seeming, is called ‘reflection’, for which the basic metaphor is light insofar as it bounces back and forth and reveals things. The difference between being and essence (or seeming and essence) can be captured by considering the difference in English grammar between ‘being’ and ‘doing’: e.g., I am running vs. I do run. The former says that the running is present, i.e. immediately being. The latter says that running is in my essence, even if I am not running presently. So what essence does is lift the content out of immediacy and preserve it in an eternal way, so that it can be put back into immediacy, into the world of being. That is our concept of essence. Another example of essence is memory: it lifts the content out of immediacy and preserves it in the soul. An example from organic realm would be floral mimesis (plants assuming the appearance of their environment). An example from epistemology is induction: the conversion of some statements of fact (‘opium is making me sleepy’) into a generalization (‘opium has the dormitive virtue’). We first begin by considering (1.) the forms of pure reflection. These are: positing reflection, external reflection, and determining reflection. This is a very obscure section in Hegel. So we move on to (2.) the reflection-determinations. These are what is usually called the laws of thought: identity (A = A), difference (A ≠ -A), and contradiction (A = -A). These laws are the dialectic of essence, its inner principles of movement. The fourth ‘law’ (which could also be considered the third law) is (3.) the principle of sufficient ground (cf. Leibniz). This states that everything that is, has a ground or reason. This means: every being can be led back to another being which is the grounding being. Lightning is the ground of the fire which destroys a town; low wages are the ground of the strike. Essence in itself, essence per se, has the character of law in general. The law stands over the entitent world as determining ground: what goes on in the manifest world is inwardly determined by the laws and principles, i.e. by the essence of the world. Essence is in this respect God, but the transcendent God only. The God of paganism, not yet Jesus Christ, who became man, i.e. entered into entitude by becoming man. In the next section we will consider the relation of essence and the manifest world, which can be called ‘existence’.

Appearance considers essence as the latter comes into relation with concrete being, the world of natural existence. First we thus have to consider (1.) concrete being, existence. Existence is minimally essentialized being, being which has the structure of reflection. This is a thing with properties. As its etymology suggests, a ‘thing’ is an assembly of beings (qualities), gathered together into one being which owns them. The difference between being and existence is the difference between being and having (Aristotle’s ‘echein’). In the sphere of being, if something lost its quality it ceased to be entirely. But a thing maintains its identity when its properties change. Next we have (2.) the order of general laws set over against the order of things. Order of explication vs. order of being (ordo cognoscendi and ordo essendi). Laws are universals, general principles (e.g. the laws of Newtonian mechanics, F = ma) that govern the order of things, which constitutes the appearance of the laws (e.g. the solar system). Existence is minimally essentialized being; the laws of nature are minimally reified essence. ‘F = ma’ is a law because it has universal applicability which ranges over diverse appearances, whereas ‘1 oxygen + 2 hydrogen = water’, while definitely holding in general, is immediately united to its being and does not stand over it as a ground. (This is the precise middle point of the whole Logic, where being is explained by thinking, reflection, but thinking is not yet entered into being and become self-thinking being, the concept.) The laws of nature require proof, and this proof is to be found only in observation. The two orders are thus intrinsically identical, and we have (3.) the essential relation. These are the three different ways in which the essence relates to its appearances. These are: a) whole and its parts, b) force and its expression (e.g. magnetic force, gravity, etc.), and c) the relation of inner and outer. Essence is inner, existence is outer. The identity of inner and outer is the revelation of essence: there is nothing left over in the essence which is not manifest. This is actuality, being which is intrinsically operative.

Actuality is the identity-in-difference of essence and appearance. If essence is the seed, and appearance is the tree, then actuality is the fruit, the seed rejoining itself in its existence (Aquinas’s ‘ipsum esse subsistens’). This is the concept, but here considered from the side of essence only, and thus as a form of reflection. We thus start with (1.) the empty absolute. The absolute is what is ordinarily called ‘God’, but here as empty abstractum (Spinoza’s absolute substance). The absolute consists of attributes, each of which is the whole absolute (res extensa and res cogitans in Descartes). The absolute is their operation: going out of itself and returning back into itself (Aquinas’s ‘exitus et reditus’; everything comes from God and returns to God; also, Proclus’s triad of abiding-proceeding-reverting). This is (2.) actuality as such. The forms of actuality are the modalities, which exhibit the following progression: a) contingency and formal possibility (the possible worlds of analytic philosophy), b) real possibility and actuality (Aristotle’s ‘dynamis’ and ‘energeia’ – e.g. the seed is potentially the tree), and c) absolute necessity (’it is because it is’, cf. Exodus 3:14). Now we are on the threshold of the concept. Necessitation is (3.) absolute correlation, which has three forms: a) substance and accident, b) cause and effect (or creator and creation), and c) reciprocal action. Substance is Aristotle’s ‘ousia’, being which is not predicated of another. Causality is the action of one substance on another (Aristotle’s ‘poiein’ and ‘paschein’) - necessitation from beyond. The definition of God as merely causal substance corresponds to the unrevealed, irrational God of judaism (sphere of being is to paganism as sphere of essence is to judaism). When causality is bent back into a circle so that necessitation becomes self-necessitation and substance becomes causa sui, this is the higher conception of God: the creative power that acts by being acted on, creates by being created, and consequently whose creativity is self-revelation and infinite communion with itself. This is freedom, the concept.