“Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which follow, as well as those of logic in general, may be looked upon as definitions of the Absolute, or metaphysical definitions of God” (Hegel 1975, §85). There is a theological dimension to Hegel’s philosophy, as Marx observes. In short, for Marx, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social existence that determines their consciousness” (Marx 1987, 263). We must invert this whole picture, Marx insists, “the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought” (Marx 2010, 19). The life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” (Marx 2010, 19) In Marx’s words, what Hegel’s philosophy amounts to is the view that, The idea that something with real determinate being can be conjured out of mere thought is part of the mystical shell of Hegel’s philosophy. that logical abstractions can thicken so to speak into real existence” (Seth 1887, 125). As Seth says, “Hegel’s language would justify us in believing that categories take flesh and blood and walk into the air. It is as though something definite is being produced out of the blue. Hegel’s claim to derive Determinate Being from empty abstract Being has the air of hocus-pocus about it. The Nothing involved in actual becoming is no longer the pure abstract Nothing with which Hegel’s Logic begins, but a form of Nothingness which is already bound up with Being, 3 and so actual becoming is not creation purely ex nihilo. For something actual, he says, “In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in the beginning” (Hegel 1975, §88). At times, Hegel himself appears to recognise this. Becoming needs not be creation ex nihilo. “The maxim, ‘From nothing comes nothing, from something something,’ really abolishes Becoming: for what it comes from and what it becomes are one and the same” (Hegel 1975, §88). Hegel ( 1969, 84) rejects this principle on the grounds that it abolishes becoming and amounts to the view that Matter is eternal. Nothing comes from nothing ( ex nihil nihilo fit). The development should simply stop there. If pure abstract Being is, indeed, identical with pure empty Nothing, as Hegel insists, then no progression beyond that point is possible. Hegel maintains that the development from Being to Nothing and then to Becoming is a logical progression. “Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first concept 2 : whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions” (Hegel 1975, §88 addition). This is the character of Determinate Being ( Dasein). Unlike the concept of abstract Being, the category of Becoming contains difference within it. By a dialectical process of “negation of the negation,” Hegel claims, we move forward to Becoming, a synthesis of Being and Nothing. The negation of this Nothing, a logical progression from it, is supposed not simply to return us to bare abstract Being.
This, he maintains, is pure immediacy, an empty abstraction equivalent to pure Nothing. Systematic philosophy, Hegel insists, must start with bare abstract Being. Hegel sets out the general principles of his dialectic in his Logic, 1 and particularly in its celebrated opening sections on Being, Nothing and Becoming. (Marx 2010, 19)What is the rational kernel of Hegel’s dialectic? How can it be extracted from the mystical shell in which it is embedded in Hegel’s philosophy? It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite.
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