Log in

View Full Version : what is substance - Hegel on substance



peaccenicked
7th February 2002, 15:55
"1. Substance, as absolute power or self-related negativity, differentiates itself into a relationship in which what were at first only simple moments are substances and original presuppositions. Their specific relationship is that of a passive substance, of the original immediacy of the simple inwardness or in-itself which, powerless to posit itself, is only an original positedness and of an active substance, the self-related negativity which as such has posited itself in the form of an other and relates itself to this other. This other is simply the passive substance which the active substance through its own originative power has presupposed for itself as condition. This presupposing is to be understood in the sense that the movement of substance itself is, in the first instance, under the form of one of the moments of its Notion, the in-itself, and the determinateness of one of the substances standing in relationship is also the determinateness of this relationship itself."

El Che
8th February 2002, 05:25
Sorry peacenicked but I didnt catch that...

If u ask me though there is Substance, but it just is. Its material, atoms, energy. There is no essence. There is no platonic "perfect idea" of which the objective object is a mear reflection or reproduction.

peaccenicked
8th February 2002, 17:53
There is no perfect idea but the problem is not that altough is pertinent to the problem of Notion.
The essence here is not discernible in static terms but in
movement.
Let us not tie ourselves to formal logic. Here substance is posited as passive. Hegels can only see movement he cannot posit this immediately, he sees it as an aspect of active substance. a substance moves through its forms of development. its moment or phases. To come to
a notion of substance pressupposes these moments in their relationship to one another.