Some Excerpts from Hegel’s ‘Differenzschrift’

(The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, 1801)

Pagination and translations from the J.P. Surber edition (but translations modified)

NB ‘diremption’ means ‘forcible separation’. It is standardly used to translate the German word Entzweiung, which means ‘breaking in two’.

On Fichte, speculation, reason, understanding:

The pure thinking of itself, the identity of subject and object in the form of I = I, is the principle of Fichte’s system; and if one holds immediately to this principle, just as in Kantian philosophy one holds to the transcendental principle on which the deduction of the categories is based, then one has the boldly-expressed, genuine principle of speculation. However, as soon as speculation steps out of the Concept, which it establishes by itself, and forms itself into a system, it loses itself and its principle and does not return to it; it gives up Reason in favour of the understanding and passes over into the chain of the finitudes of consciousness, out of which it cannot again reconstruct itself into identity and the true infinite. The principle itself, the transcendental intuition, achieves in this way the false opposition of being something opposed to the manifold deduced from it. The Absolute of the system proves to be conceived by philosophical reflection only in the form of its appearance, and this determinateness, which is not given to it by reflection, i.e. this finitude and opposition, is not removed. The principle, the Subject-Object, proves to be a subjective Subject-Object. (pp. 2-3)

On Schelling (with whom Hegel at this time identifies):

Schelling’s system [...] is distinguished from Fichte’s and, in the Philosophy of Nature, opposes the subjective Subject-Object, presenting both [Subject and Object] as united in something higher than the Subject. (p. 3)

On philosophy and the Absolute:

If the Absolute, like its appearance which is Reason, is eternally one and the same, as indeed it is, then every reason that has turned upon itself and known itself has produced a true philosophy and has accomplished the task which, like its solution, is the same for all times. Because in philosophy, Reason, which knows itself, has to do only with itself, its entire product, like its activity, also lies in itself; and, with respect to the inner essence of philosophy, there is neither predecessor nor successor. (pp. 7-8)

Reason, which finds consciousness preoccupied with particulars, becomes preoccupied with philosophical speculation only when it raises itself to itself and only to itself, and entrusts itself to the Absolute, which becomes at the same time its object. It risks nothing on this in the form of the finitudes of consciousness, and, in order to overcome these and construct the Absolute in consciousness, it raises itself to speculation and has grasped, in the groundlessness of the limitations and peculiarities, its own foundation in itself. (p. 9)

On reason, understanding and the Absolute:

If we observe more closely the particular form which a philosophy possesses, we see it, on the one hand, as having sprung from the living originality of the spirit which has, through itself, produced and self-actively formed in it a fragmented harmony, and, on the other hand, as having sprung from the particular form assumed by the diremption out of which the system arises. Diremption is the source of the need for philosophy, and, as the culture of the age, it has the unfreely given aspect of a shape. In culture, that which is the appearance of the Absolute has isolated itself from the Absolute and has fixed itself as something independent. At the same time, however, the appearance cannot disavow its origin and must proceed to constitute the multiplicity of its limitations as a whole. The power of this limitation, the understanding, attaches to its edifice, which it erects between man and the Absolute, everything that is of value and holy to man, fastens it with all the forces of nature and of its talents, and extends it into infinity. Herein can be found the entire totality of limitations, but not the Absolute itself; lost in the parts, it drives the understanding on to its infinite development of multiplicity. In striving to expand itself to the Absolute, however, the understanding produces only itself and makes itself ridiculous. Reason attains the Absolute only because it steps out of this manifold partial existence. The more solid and splendid is the edifice of the understanding, the more restless becomes the exertion of the life, which is ensnared in it as a part, to extract itself from it into freedom. In that it moves into the distance as Reason, the totality of the limitations is, as the same time, destroyed, brought into relation with the Absolute in this destruction, and thereby conceived and posited as mere appearance; the diremption between the Absolute and the totality of the limitations has disappeared. (pp. 10-11)

The one is the Absolute itself; it is the goal which is sought; it is already present, for how could it be sought otherwise? Reason produces it only in that it frees consciousness of its limitations. (p. 14)

The Absolute should be constructed for consciousness; that is the task of philosophy. (p. 15)

On the oppositions of the understanding:

The understanding imitates Reason in its absolute positing and gives itself the illusory appearance of Reason through this form, even though that which is posited is in itself opposed and thus finite. It does this with even greater illusion if it transforms and fixes Reason’s negative activity into a product. The infinite, inasmuch as it is opposed to the finite, is a that-which-is-rational of this kind posited by the understanding. It expresses for itself only the negating of the finite as rational. In that the understanding fixes it [i.e. the infinite - AC], it posits it as absolutely opposed to the finite; and reflection, which had elevated itself to Reason in that it sublated the finite, has again degraded itself to the understanding in fixing the activity of Reason in opposition. Moreover, it now makes the pretension of being rational even in this relapse.

It is such oppositions, which are meant to count as products of Reason and as the Absolute, which the culture of the various periods has displayed in various forms and within which the understanding has toiled. The oppositions, which previously in the form of spirit and matter, soul and life, faith and understanding, freedom and necessity etc.. were important and still are in various ways within limited spheres, and they assumed for themselves the entire gravity of human interests, have passed over, in the course of culture, into the form of the oppositions of Reason and sensibility, intelligence and nature, and, for the universal Concept, of absolute subjectivity and absolute objectivity.

It is the sole interest of reason to supersede such solidified oppositions. The meaning of this interest is not to be viewed as if it were to posit itself in general over against opposition and limitation, since a necessary diremption is a factor of life, which eternally constructs itself through opposition, and since the totality in its greatest vitality is only possible through restoration out of the most extreme division. But Reason sets itself over against the absolute fixation of the diremption by the understanding, and all the more so, if those things which are absolutely opposed have themselves sprung from Reason.

If the power of unification disappears from the life of men, and if the [above] oppositions have lost their living relationship and reciprocity and have become independent, the need for philosophy arises; thus far, it is a contingency. But in the given diremption, it is the necessary attempt to sublate the opposition of solidified subjectivity and objectivity, and to conceive the having-become of the intellectual and real world as a becoming, and their being as products as a producing. In the infinite activity of becoming and producing, Reason has united that which was separated, and has subordinated the absolute diremption to a relative one which is determined by primordial identity. When, where, and in what form such self-reproductions of Reason appear as philosophies is contingent. This contingency must be conceived on the basis of the fact that the Absolute posits itself as an objective totality. Insofar as the objectivity of the Absolute is seen as a progress in time, the contingency is a contingency in time; however insofar as it appears as side by side in space, the diremption is climatic. In the form of fixed reflection, as a world of thinking- and thought-essence in opposition to a world of actuality, this diremption appears in the north west [i.e. in Northern Europe - AC]. (pp. 11-12)

From the standpoint of diremption, the absolute synthesis is a beyond, the indeterminate and formless opposed to its determinateness. The Absolute is the night, and light is younger than the night, and the distinction between the two, like the emergence of the light out of the night, is an absolute difference. Nothingness is the first, out of which all being, all manifoldness of the finite, has arisen. But the task of philosophy consists in uniting these presuppositions, in the positing of being in non-being, as becoming; of diremption in the Absolute, as its appearance; of the finite in the infinite, as life. (p. 14)

AC 6.1.04

(Source: G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between the Fichtean and Schellingian Systems of Philosophy, translated by J. P. Surber, Ridgeview Publishers, 1978)