BEING-THERE AND LOGIC OF THE WORLD

Hegel thinks with an altogether unique incisiveness the correlation between, on one hand, the local externalization of being (being-there) and, on the other, the logic of determination, understood as the coherent figure of the situation of being. This is one of the first dialectical moments of the Science of Logic, one of those moments that fix the very style of thinking.

First of all, what is being-there? It is being as determined by its coupling

with what it is not. Just as for us a multiple-being separates itself from its pure being once it is assigned to a world, for Hegel being-there ‘is not simple being, but being-there’. A gap is then established between pure being (‘simple being’) and being-there; this gap stems from the fact that being is determined by that which, within it, is not it, and therefore by non-being: ‘According to its becoming, being-there is in general being with non-being, but in such a way that this non-being is assumed in its simple unity with being; being-there is determinate being in general’.

We can pursue this parallel further. For us, once it is posited—not only in the mathematical rigidity of its multiple-being, but also in and through its worldly localization—a being is given simultaneously as that which is other than itself and as that which is other than others.

Whence the necessity of a logic that integrates these differentiations and lends them consistency. For Hegel too the immanent emergence of determination—that is of a negation specific to a being-there—means that being-there becomes being-other. On this point, Hegel’s text is truly remarkable:

Non-there is not pure nothing; for it is a nothing as nothing of being-there. And this negation grasps being-there itself; but in the latter it is unified with being. Consequently, non-being-there is itself a being; it is not-being-there as a being. But a not-being-there as a being is itself being-there. At the same time, however, this second being-there is not being-there in the same way as before; for it is just as much not-being-there; being-there as not-being-not-being-there; being there as the nothing of itself, so that this nothing of itself is equally being-there.—Or being-there is essentially being-other.

Of course, the assertion that being-there is ‘essentially being-other’

requires a logical arrangement that will lead—via the exemplary dialectic between being-for-another-thing and being-in-itself—towards the concept of reality. Reality is in effect the moment of the unity of being-in-itself and of being-other, or the moment in which determinate being has in itself the ontological support of every difference from the other, what Hegel calls being-for-another-thing. For us too, a ‘real’ being is the one which, appearing locally (in a world), is at the same time its own multiple-identity—as thought by rational ontology—and the various degrees of its difference from the other beings in the same world. So we agree with Hegel that the moment of the reality of a being is that in which being, locally effectuated as being-there, is identity with itself and with others, as well as

difference from itself and from others. Hegel proposes a superb formula, which declares that ‘Being-there as reality is the differentiation of itself into being-in-itself and being-for-another-thing’.

The title of Hegel’s book alone suffices to prove that what ultimately regulates all this is a logic—the logic of the actuality of being. We can add to it the affirmation according to which, on the basis of this being-there,

‘determinacy will no longer detach itself from being’, for (this is the decisive point) ‘the true that now finds itself as the ground is this unity of non-being with being’. For our part, what is effectively exposed to thought in the (transcendental) logic of the appearing of beings is the rule-governed play of multiple-being ‘in itself’ with its variable differentiation. Logic, qua consistency of appearing, organizes the aleatory unity, under the law of the world, between the mathematics of the multiple and the local evaluation of the multiple’s relations both to itself and to others.

If the agreement between our thinking and Hegel’s is so manifest here, it is obviously because for him being-there remains a category that is still far from being saturated, standing at a considerable remove from the internalization of the Whole. As so often, we will admire in Hegel the power of local dialectics, the precision of the logical fragments in which he articulates some fundamental concepts (in this instance, being-there and being-for-another).

We could also have anchored our comparison in the dialectic of the phenomenon, rather than in that of being-there. Unlike us, Hegel does not identify being-there (the initial determination of being) with appearing (which for him is a determination of essence). Nonetheless, the logical constraint that leads from being-there to reality is practically the same as the one that leads from appearing to ‘the essential relation’. Just as we posit that the logical legislation of appearing is the constitution of the singularity of a world, Hegel posits:

1.that essence appears, and becomes real appearance;

2.that law is essentially appearing.

This idea is a profound one, and we take inspiration from it. We must understand that appearing, albeit contingent with regard to the multiple-composition of beings, is absolutely real; and that the essence of this real is purely logical.

However, unlike Hegel, we do not posit the existence of ‘kingdom of laws’, and even less that ‘the world that is in and for itself is the totality of existence; there is nothing else outside of it’. For us, it is of the essence of

the world not to be the totality of existence, and to endure the existence of an infinity of other worlds outside of itself.

3. HEGEL CANNOT ALLOW A MINIMAL DETERMINATION