The judgment is the determinateness of the Notion posited in the Notion itself. The Notion's determinations, or what we have seen to be the same thing, the determinate Notions, have already been considered on their own; but this consideration was more a subjective reflection or subjective abstraction. But the Notion is itself this abstractive process, the opposing of its determinations is its own determining activity. The judgment is this positing of the determinate Notions by the Notion itself. Judging is thus another function than comprehension, or rather it is the other function of the Notion as the determining of the Notion by itself, and the further progress of the judgment into the diversity of judgments is the progressive determination of the Notion. What kinds of determinate Notions there are, and how these determinations of the Notion are arrived at, has to reveal itself in the judgment.
The judgment can therefore be called the proximate realisation of the Notion, inasmuch as reality denotes in general entry into existence as a determinate being. More precisely, the nature of this realisation has presented itself in such a manner that, on the one hand, the moments of the Notion through its reflection-into-self or its individuality are self-subsistent totalities, while on the other hand the unity of the Notion is their relation. The determinations reflected into themselves are determinate totalities, no less essentially in their indifferent and disconnected subsistence as through their reciprocal mediation with one another. The determining itself is only totality in that it contains these totalities and their connection. This totality is the judgment. It contains, therefore, first, the two self-subsistents which are called subject and predicate. What each is cannot yet really be said; they are still indeterminate, for it is only through the judgment that they are to be determined. The judgment, being the Notion as determinate, the only distinction present is the general one that the judgment contains the determinate Notion over against the still indeterminate Notion. The subject can therefore, in the first instance, be taken in relation to the predicate as the individual over against the universal, or even as the particular over against the universal, or as the individual over against the particular; so far, they confront each other only in general, as the more determinate and the more universal.
It is therefore appropriate and necessary to have these names, subject and predicate for the determinations of the judgment; as names, they are something indeterminate that still awaits its determination, and are, therefore, no more than names. It is partly for this reason that the Notion determinations themselves could not be used for the two sides of the judgment; but a stronger reason is because the nature of the Notion determination is emphatically to be, not something abstract and fixed, but to have and to posit its opposite within it; since the sides of the judgment are themselves Notions and therefore the totality of its determinations, each side must run through all these determinations and exhibit them within itself, whether in abstract or concrete form. Now in order to fix the sides of the judgment in a general way when their determination is altered, those names are most serviceable which remain the same throughout the alteration. The name however stands over against the matter in hand or the Notion; this distinction presents itself in the judgment as such; now the subject is in general the determinate, and is therefore more that which immediately is, whereas the predicate expresses the universal, the essential nature or the Notion; therefore the subject as such is, in the first instance, only a kind of name; for what it is is first enunciated by the predicate which contains being in the sense of the Notion. In the question: what is this? or: what kind of a plant is this? what is often understood by the being enquired after, is merely the name, and when this is learned one is satisfied and now knows what the thing is. This is being in the sense of the subject. But the Notion, or at least the essence and the universal in general, is first given by the predicate, and it is this that is asked for in the sense of the judgment. Consequently, God, spirit, nature, or whatever it may be, is as the subject of a judgment at first only the name; what such a subject is as regards its Notion is first enunciated in the predicate. When enquiry is made as to the kind of predicate belonging to such subject, the act of judgment necessarily implies an underlying Notion. But this Notion is first enunciated by the predicate itself. Properly speaking, therefore, it is the mere general idea that constitutes the presupposed meaning of the subject and that leads to the naming of it; and in doing this it is contingent and a historical fact, what is, or is not, to be understood by a name. So many disputes about whether a predicate does or does not belong to a certain subject are therefore nothing more than verbal disputes, because they start from the form above mentioned; what lies at the base is so far nothing more than the name.
We have now to examine, secondly, how the relation of subject and predicate in the judgment is determined and how subject and predicate themselves are at first determined through this very relation. The judgment has in general for its sides totalities which to begin with are essentially self-subsistent. The unity of the Notion is, therefore, at first only a relation of self-subsistents; not as yet the concrete and pregnant unity that has returned into itself from this reality, but only a unity outside which the self-subsistent sides persist as extremes that are not sublated in it. Now consideration of the judgment can begin from the original unity of the Notion, or from the self-subsistence of the extremes. The judgment is the self-diremption of the Notion; this unity is, therefore, the ground from which the consideration of the judgment in accordance with its true objectivity begins. It is thus the original division [Teilung] of what is originally one; thus the word Urteil refers to what judgment is in and for itself. But regarded from the side of externality, the Notion is present in the judgment as Appearance, since its moments therein attain self-subsistence, and it is on this external side that ordinary thinking tends to fasten.
From this subjective standpoint, then, subject and predicate are considered to be complete, each on its own account, apart from the other: the subject as an object that would exist even if it did not possess this predicate; the predicate as a universal determination that would exist even if it did not belong to this subject. From this standpoint, the act of judgment involves the reflection, whether this or that predicate which is in someone's head can and should be attached to the object which exists on its own account outside; the very act of judging consists in this, that only through it is a predicate combined with a subject, so that, if this combination did not take place, each on its own would still remain what it is, the latter an existent object, the former an idea in someone's head. The predicate which is attached to the subject should, however, also belong to it, that is, be in and for itself identical with it. Through this significance of attachment, the subjective meaning of judgment and the indifferent, outer subsistence of subject and predicate are sublated again: this action is good; the copula indicates that the predicate belongs to the being of the subject and is not merely externally combined with it. In the grammatical sense, that subjective relationship in which one starts from the indifferent externality of the subject and predicate has its complete validity; for it is words that are here externally combined. We may take this opportunity of remarking, too, that though a proposition has a subject and predicate in the grammatical sense, this does not make it a judgment. The latter requires that the predicate be related to the subject as one Notion determination to another, and therefore as a universal to a particular or individual. If a statement about a particular subject only enunciates something individual, then this is a mere proposition. For example, 'Aristotle died at the age of 73, in the fourth year of the 115th Olympiad,' is a mere proposition, not a judgment. It would partake of the nature of a judgment only if doubt had been thrown on one of the circumstances, the date of the death, or the age of that philosopher, and the given figures had been asserted on the strength of some reason or other. In that case, these figures would be taken as something universal, as time that still subsists apart from this particular content of the death of Aristotle, whether as time filled with some other content, or even as empty time. Similarly, the news that my friend N. has died is a proposition; and it would be a judgment only if there were a question whether he was really dead or only in a state of catalepsy.
In the usual way of defining the judgment we may indeed accept the indeterminate expression connection for the external copula, as also that the connected terms are at least supposed to be notions. But in other respects this definition is superficial in the extreme: not only, for example, that in the disjunctive judgment more than two so-called notions are connected, but rather that the definition is far better than its subject matter; for it is not notions at all that are meant, hardly determinations of the Notion, but really only determinations of representational thought; it was remarked in connection with the Notion in general and the determinate Notion, that what is usually so named by no means deserves the name of Notion; where then should Notions come from in the case of the judgment? Above all, in this definition the essential feature of the judgment, namely, the difference of its determinations, is passed over; still less does it take into account the relationship of the judgment to the Notion.
As regards the further determination of the subject and predicate, we have remarked that it is really in the judgment first that they have to receive their determination. Since the judgment is the posited determinateness of the Notion, this determinateness possesses the said differences immediately and abstractly as individuality and universality. But in so far as the judgment is in general the determinate being or otherness of the Notion which has not yet restored itself to the unity whereby it is as Notion, there emerges also-the determinateness which is notionless, the opposition of being and reflection or the in-itself. But since the Notion constitutes the essential ground of the judgment, these determinations are at least indifferent to the extent that when one belongs to the subject and the other to the predicate, the converse relationship equally holds good. The subject as the individual appears, in the first instance, as that which simply is or is for itself in accordance with the specific determinateness of the individual — as an actual object, even though it be only an object in representational thought — as for example bravery, right, agreement, etc. — on which judgment is being made. The predicate, on the other hand, as the universal, appears as this reflection on the object, or rather as the object's reflection into itself, which goes beyond that immediacy and sublates the determinatenesses in their form of mere being; that is, it is the object's in-itself. In this way, one starts from the individual as the first, the immediate, and it is raised by the judgment into universality, just as, conversely, the universal that is only in itself descends in the individual into determinate being or becomes a being that is for itself.
This signification of the judgment is to be taken as its objective meaning, and at the same time as the truth of the earlier forms of the transition. In the sphere of being, the object becomes and others itself, the finite perishes or goes under in the infinite; in the sphere of Existence, the object issues from its ground into Appearance and falls to the ground, the accident manifests the wealth of substance as well as its power; in being, there is transition into an other, in essence, reflected being in an other by which the necessary relation is revealed. This movement of transition and reflection has now passed over into the original partition of the Notion which, while bringing back the individual to the in-itself of its universality, equally determines the universal as something actual. These two acts are one and the same process in which individuality is posited in its reflection-into-self, and the universal as determinate.
But now this objective signification equally implies that the said differences, in reappearing in the determinateness of the Notion, are at the same time posited only as Appearances, that is, that they are not anything fixed, but apply just as much to the one Notion determination as to the other. The subject is, therefore, just as much to be taken as the in-itself, and the predicate, on the other hand, as determinate being. The subject without predicate is what the thing without qualities, the thing-in-itself is in the sphere of Appearance — an empty, indeterminate ground; as such, it is the Notion enclosed within itself, which only receives a differentiation and determinateness in the predicate; the predicate therefore constitutes the side of the determinate being of the subject. Through this determinate universality the subject stands in relation to an externality, is open to the influence of other things and thereby becomes actively opposed to them. What is there comes forth from its being-within-self and enters into the universal element of connection and relationship, into the negative connections and the interplay of actuality, which is a continuation of the individual into other individuals and therefore universality.
The identity just demonstrated, namely, that the determination of the subject equally applies to the predicate and vice versa, is not, however, something only for us; it is not merely in itself, but is also posited in the judgment; for the judgment is the connection of the two; the copula expresses that the subject is the predicate. The subject is the specific determinateness, and the predicate is this posited determinateness of the subject; the subject is determined only in its predicate, or, only in the predicate is it a subject; in the predicate it has returned into itself and is therein the universal. Now in so far as the subject is the self-subsistent, this identity has the relationship that the predicate does not possess a self-subsistence of its own, but has its subsistence only in the subject; it inheres in the subject. Since the predicate is thus distinct from the subject, it is only an isolated determinateness of the latter, only one of its properties; while the subject itself is the concrete, the totality of manifold determinatenesses, just as the predicate contains one; it is the universal. But on the other hand the predicate, too, is a self-subsistent universality and the subject, conversely, only a determination of it. Looked at this way, the predicate subsumes the subject; individuality and particularity are not for themselves, but have their essence and substance in the universal. The predicate expresses the subject in its Notion; the individual and the particular are contingent determinations in the subject; it is their absolute possibility. When in the case of subsumption one thinks of an external connection of subject and predicate and the subject is conceived of as a self-subsistent something, the subsumption refers to the subjective act of judgment above-mentioned in which one starts from the self-subsistence of both subject and predicate. From this standpoint subsumption is only the application of the universal to a particular or an individual, which is placed under the universal in accordance with a vague idea that it is of inferior quality.
When the identity of subject and predicate are so taken that at one time one Notion determination applies to the former and the other to the latter, and at another time the converse equally holds good, then the identity is as yet still only an implicit one; on account of the self-subsistent diversity of the two sides of the judgment, their posited unity also has these two sides, in the first instance as different. But differenceless identity really constitutes the true relation of the subject to the predicate. The Notion determination is itself essentially relation for it is a universal; therefore the same determinations possessed by the subject and predicate are also possessed by their relation itself. The relation is universal, for it is the positive identity of the two, of subject and predicate; but it is also determinate, for the determinateness of the predicate is that of the subject; further, it is also individual, for in it the self-subsistent extremes are sublated as in their negative unity. However, in the judgment this identity is not as yet posited; the copula is present as the still indeterminate relation of being as such: A is B; for in the judgment, the self-subsistence of the Notion determinatenesses or the extremes, is the reality which the Notion has within it. If the is of the copula were already posited as the above determinate and pregnant unity of subject and predicate, as their Notion, it would already be the syllogism.
To restore this identity of the Notion, or rather to posit it, is the goal of the movement of the judgment. What is already present in the judgment is, on the one hand, the self-subsistence of subject and predicate, but also their mutually opposed determinateness, and on the other hand their none the less abstract relation. What the judgment enunciates to start with is that the subject is the predicate; but since the predicate is supposed not to be what the subject is, we are faced with a contradiction which must resolve itself, pass over into a result. Or rather, since subject and predicate are in and for themselves the totality of the Notion, and the judgment is the reality of the Notion, its forward movement is only a development; there is already present in it what comes forth from it, so that proof is merely an exposition, a reflection as a positing of that which is already present in the extremes of the judgment; but even this positing itself is already present; it is the relation of the extremes.
The judgment in its immediacy is in the first instance the judgment of existence; its subject is immediately an abstract individual which simply is, and the predicate is an immediate determinateness or property of the subject, an abstract universal.
This qualitative character of subject and predicate being sublated, the determination of the one is reflected, to begin with, in the other; the judgment is now, secondly, the judgment of reflection.
But this more external conjunction passes over into the essential identity of a substantial, necessary connection; as such it is, thirdly, the judgment of necessity.
Fourthly, since in this essential identity the difference of subject and predicate has become a form, the judgment becomes subjective; it contains the opposition of the Notion and its reality and the equation of the two; it is the judgment of the Notion.
This emergence of the Notion establishes the transition of the Judgment into the syllogism.
In the subjective judgment we want to see one and the same object double, first in its individual actuality, and then in its essential identity or in its Notion: the individual raised into its universality, or, what is the same thing, the universal individualised into its actuality. In this way the judgment is truth: for it is the agreement of the Notion and reality. But this is not the nature of the judgment at first; for at first it is immediate, since as yet no reflection and movement of the determinations has appeared in it. This immediacy makes the first judgment a judgment of existence; it can also be called the qualitative judgment, but only in so far as quality does not apply only to the determinateness of being but also includes the abstract universality which, on account of its simplicity, likewise has the form of immediacy.
The judgment of existence is also the judgment of inherence; because it is in the form of immediacy, and because the subject as distinguished from the predicate is the immediate, and consequently the primary and essential feature in a judgment of this kind, the predicate has the form of a non-self-subsistent determination that has its foundation in the subject.
1. The subject and predicate as we have remarked, are in the first instance names, which only receive their actual determination through the course of the judgment. However, as sides of the judgment, which is the posited determinate Notion, they have the determination of moments of the Notion, but by virtue of their immediacy, the determination is still quite simple: for it is not enriched by mediation, and also, in accordance with the abstract opposition, it is determined as abstract individuality and universality. The predicate, to speak of this first, is the abstract universal; since this abstract is conditioned by the mediation in which the individual or particular is sublated, this mediation is so far only presupposition. In the sphere of the Notion there can be no other immediacy than one in which mediation is essentially and explicitly a moment and which has come to be only through the sublating of that mediation, that is, the immediacy of the universal. Thus even qualitative being, too, is in its Notion a universal; but as being, the immediacy is not yet so posited; it is only as universality that it is the Notion determination in which is posited the fact that negativity essentially belongs to it. This relation is given in the judgment in which it is the predicate of a subject. Similarly, the subject is an abstract individual, or the immediate that is supposed to be as such, and therefore the individual as a something in general. Thus the subject constitutes the abstract side of the judgment according to which the Notion has in it passed over into externality. As the two Notion determinations are determined, so also is their relation, the is or copula; it too can only have the significance of an immediate, abstract being. On account of the relation which as yet contains no mediation or negation, this judgment is called the positive.
2. The immediate pure enunciation of the positive judgment is, therefore, the proposition: the individual is universal.
This enunciation must not be put in the form: A is B; for A and B are entirely formless and consequently meaningless names; the judgment as such, however, and therefore even the judgment of existence, has Notion determinations for its extremes. A is B can represent any mere proposition just as well as a judgment. But in every judgment, even in those with a more richly determined form, there is asserted the proposition having this specific content: the individual is universal; inasmuch, namely, as every judgment is also in general an abstract judgment. With the negative judgment, how far it likewise comes under this expression, we shall deal presently. If no heed is given to the fact that in every judgment-at least, to begin with, every positive judgment, the assertion is made that the individual is a universal, this is partly because the determinate form whereby subject and predicate are distinguished is overlooked-the judgment being supposed to be nothing but the relation of two notions-and partly, probably, because the rest of the content of the judgment, Gaius is learned, or the rose is red, floats before the mind which is busy with the representation of Gaius, etc., and does not reflect on the form although such content at least as the logical Gaius who has usually to be dragged in as an example, is a much less interesting content and, indeed, is expressly chosen as uninteresting in order not to divert attention from the form to itself.
In its objective signification, the proposition that the individual is universal connotes, as we previously had occasion to remark, on the one hand the perishableness of individual things, and on the other hand their positive subsistence in the Notion as such. The Notion itself is imperishable, but that which comes forth from it in its partition is subject to alteration and to return into its universal nature. But conversely, the universal gives itself a determinate being. Just as essence issues into a reflected being [Schein] in its determinations, ground into the manifestation of Existence, and substance into the revelation of itself, into its accidents, so the universal resolves itself into the individual; and the judgment is this explication of the universal, the development of the negativity which it already is in itself. The latter fact is enunciated by the converse proposition, the universal is individual, which is equally enunciated in the positive judgment. The subject, which in the first instance is the immediate individual, is related in the judgment itself to its other, namely, the universal; consequently it is posited as the concrete; in the sphere of being as a something of many qualities, or as the concrete of reflection, a thing of manifold properties, an actuality of manifold possibilities, a substance of such and such accidents. Since these manifold determinations here belong to the subject, the something or the thing, etc., is reflected into itself in its qualities, properties or accidents; or it continues itself through them, maintaining itself in them and equally them in itself. The positedness or determinateness belongs to the being-in-and-for-self. The subject is, therefore, in its own self the universal. The predicate, on the other hand, as this universality which is not real or concrete but abstract, is, in contrast to the subject, the determinateness and contains only one moment of the subject's totality to the exclusion of the others. By virtue of this negativity which, as an extreme of the judgment, is at the same time self-related, the predicate is an abstract individual. For example, in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, the predicate enunciates only one of the many properties of the rose; it singles out this particular one which, in the subject, is a concrescence with the others; just as in the dissolution of the thing, the manifold properties which inhere in it, in acquiring self-subsistence as matters, become individualised. From this side, then, the proposition of the judgment runs thus: the universal is individual.
In bringing together this reciprocal determination of subject and predicate in the judgment, we get a twofold result. First that immediately the subject is, indeed, something that simply is, an individual, while the predicate is the universal. But because the judgment is the relation of the two, and the subject is determined by the predicate as a universal, the subject is the universal. Secondly, the predicate is determined in the subject; for it is not a determination in general, but of the subject; in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, this fragrance is not any indeterminate fragrance, but that of the rose; the predicate is therefore an individual. Now since subject and predicate stand in the relationship of the judgment, they have to remain mutually opposed as determinations of the Notion; just as in the reciprocity of causality, before it attains its truth, the two sides have to retain their self-subsistence and mutual opposition in face of the sameness of their determination. When, therefore, the subject is determined as a universal, we must not take the predicate also in its determination of universality-else we should not have a judgment--but only in its determination of individuality; similarly, when the subject is determined as an individual, the predicate is to be taken as a universal.
Reflection on the above mere identity yields the two identical propositions:
The individual is individual,
The universal is universal,
in which the sides of the judgment would have fallen completely asunder and only their self-relation would be expressed, while their relation to one another would be dissolved and the judgment consequently sublated. Of the two original propositions, one, the universal is individual, enunciates the judgment in respect of its content, which in the predicate is a singled out determination, while in the subject it is the totality of them; the other, the individual is universal, enunciates the form which is stated immediately by the proposition itself. In the immediate positive judgment the extremes are still simple: form and content are, therefore, still united. In other words, it does not consist of two propositions; the twofold relation which we found in it directly constitutes the one positive judgment. For its extremes appear as (a) self-subsistent, abstract sides of the judgment, and (b) each side is determined by the other, by virtue of the copula connecting them. But for that very reason, the difference of form and content is implicit in it, as we have seen; to wit, what is implied in the first proposition: the individual is universal, pertains to the form, because it expresses the immediate determinateness of the judgment. On the other hand, the relationship expressed by the other proposition: the universal is individual, that is to say, that the subject is determined as universal, but the predicate as particular or individual concerns the content; for the sides of the judgment arise only through the reflection-into-self whereby the immediate determinatenesses are sublated, with the result that the form converts itself into an identity that has withdrawn into itself and persists in opposition to the distinction of form: that is, it converts itself into content.
3. Now if the two propositions, the one of form and the other of content:
Subject - Predicate
The individual is universal
The universal is individual,
were, because they are contained in the one positive judgment, to be united, so that both subject and predicate alike were determined as unity of individuality and universality, then both subject and predicate would be the particular; and this must be recognised as implicitly their inner determination. Only, on the one hand, this combination would only have been effected by an external reflection, and, on the other hand, the resultant proposition, the particular is the particular, would no longer be a judgment, but an empty identical proposition like those already derived from the positive judgment, namely, the individual is individual, and the universal is universal. Individuality and universality cannot yet be united into particularity, because in the positive judgment they are still posited as immediate. In other words, the judgment must still be distinguished in respect of its form and content, just because subject and predicate are still distinguished as immediacy and something mediated, or because the judgment, according to its relation, is both self-subsistence of the related sides and also their reciprocal determination or mediation.
First, then, the judgment considered in respect of its form asserts that the individual is universal. But the truth is that such an immediate individual is not universal; its predicate is of wider scope and therefore does not correspond to it. The subject is an immediate being-for-self and therefore the opposite of that abstraction, of that universality posited through mediation, which was supposed to be predicated of it.
Secondly, when the judgment is considered in respect of its content, or as the proposition, the universal is individual, the subject is a universal of qualities, a concrete that is infinitely determined; and since its determinatenesses are as yet only qualities, properties or accidents, its totality is the spuriously infinite plurality of them. Such a subject therefore is, on the contrary, not a single property such as its predicate enunciates. Both propositions, therefore, must be denied and the positive judgment must be posited rather as negative.
1. We have already referred above to the prevalent idea that it depends merely on the content of the judgment whether it be true or not, since logical truth concerns only the form and demands only that the said content shall not contradict itself. The form of the judgment is taken to be nothing more than the relation of two notions. But we have seen that these two notions do not have merely the relationless character of a sum, but are related to one another as individual and universal. These determinations constitute the truly logical content, and, be it noted, constitute in this abstraction the content of the positive judgment; all other content that appears in a judgment (the sun is round, Cicero was a great orator in Rome, it is day now, etc.) does not concern the judgment as such; the judgment merely enunciates that the subject is predicate, or, more definitely, since these are only names, that the individual is universal and vice versa. By virtue of this purely logical content, the positive judgment is not true, but has its truth in the negative judgment. All that is demanded of the content is that it shall not contradict itself in the judgment; but as has been shown it does contradict itself in the above judgment. It is, however, a matter of complete indifference if the above logical content is also called form, and by content is understood merely the remaining empirical filling; in that case, the form does not imply merely an empty identity, the determinate content lying outside it. The positive judgment has, then, through its form as positive judgment no truth; whoever gives the name of truth to the correctness of an intuition or perception, or to the agreement of the picture-thought with the object, at any rate has no expression left for that which is the subject matter and aim of philosophy. We should at least have to call the latter the truth of reason; and it will surely be granted that judgments such as: Cicero was a great orator, and: it is day now, and so on, are not truths of reason. But they are not such not because they have, as it were contingently, an empirical content, but because they are merely positive judgments that can have and are supposed to have no other content than an immediate individual and an abstract determination.
The positive judgment has its proximate truth in the negative: the individual is not abstractly universal - but on the contrary, the predicate of the individual, because it is such a predicate or taking it by itself apart from its relation to the subject-because it is an abstract universal, is itself determinate; the individual is, therefore, in the first instance a particular. Further, in accordance with the other proposition contained in the positive judgment, the negative judgment asserts that the universal is not abstractly individual, but on the contrary, this predicate, just because it is a predicate, or because it stands in relation to a universal subject, is something wider than a mere individuality, and the universal is therefore likewise in the first instance a particular. Since this universal, as subject, is itself in the judgment determination of individuality, the two propositions reduce to one: the individual is a particular.
We may remark (a) that here the predicate proves to be in the determination of particularity of which we have already made mention; but here it is not posited by external reflection, but has arisen by means of the negative relation exhibited by the judgment. (b) This determination here results only for the predicate. In the immediate judgment, the judgment of existence, the subject is the underlying basis; the determination seems therefore to run its course at first in the predicate. But as a matter of fact this first negation cannot as yet be a determination, or strictly speaking a positing of the individual, for the individual is the second negation, the negative of the negative.
The individual is a particular, is the positive expression of the negative judgment. This expression is not itself a positive judgment, for the latter, by reason of its immediacy, has only abstractions for its extremes, while the particular, precisely through the positing of the relation of the judgment presents itself as the first mediated determination. But this determination is not to be taken only as moment of the extreme, but also-as it really is in the first instance-as determination of the relation; in other words, the judgment is to be regarded also as negative.
This transition is based on the relationship of the extremes and their connection generally in the judgment. The positive judgment is the relation of the immediately individual and universal, therefore the relation of things, one of which at the same time is not what the other is; the relation is, therefore, no less essentially separation or negative; that is why the positive judgment had to be posited as negative. It was, therefore, unnecessary for logicians to make such a fuss over the not of the negative judgment being attached to the copula. In the judgment, what is determination of the extreme is no less a determinate relation. The judgment's determination, or the extreme, is not the purely qualitative determination of immediate being which is supposed to confront only an other outside it. Nor is it determination of reflection, which, in accordance with its general form, has a positive and negative bearing, each being posited as exclusive, and only implicitly identical with the other. The judgment's determination, as determination of the Notion, is in its own self a universal, posited as continuing itself into its other determinations. Conversely, the relation of the judgment is the same determination as that possessed by the extremes; for it is just this universality and continuation of them into one another; in so far as these are distinguished, the relation also has negativity in it.
The above-stated transition from the form of the relation to the form of the determination has for its immediate consequence that the not of the copula must no less be attached to the predicate and the predicate determined as the not-universal. But by an equally immediate consequence the not-universal is the particular. If we stick to the negative in the completely abstract determination of immediate not-being, then the predicate is only the completely indeterminate not-universal. This determination is commonly treated in logic in connection with contradictory notions and it is inculcated as a matter of importance that in the negative of a notion one is to stick to the negative only and it is to be regarded as the merely indeterminate extent of the other of the positive notion. Thus the mere not-white would be just as much red, yellow, blue, etc., as black. But white as such is a notionless determination of intuition; the not of white is then equally notionless not-being, an abstraction that has been considered at the very beginning of the logic, where we learned that its proximate truth is becoming. To employ as examples, when treating of the terms of the judgment, such notionless contents drawn from intuition and pictorial thinking, and to take determinations of being and reflection for terms of the judgment, is the same uncritical procedure as the Kantian application of the notions of the understanding to the infinite Idea of reason or the so-called thing-in-itself; the Notion, which also includes the judgment that proceeds from it, is the veritable thing-in-itself or the rational; those other determinations, however, are proper to being or essence and have not yet been developed into forms which exhibit them as they are in their truth, in the Notion. If we stop at white and red as sensuous images, we are giving, as is commonly done, the name of Notion to what is only a determination of pictorial thinking; in that case the not-white and not-red are of course not positive predicates, just as also the not-triangular is something completely indeterminate, for a determination based on number and quantum is essentially indifferent and notionless. But this kind of sensuous content, like not-being itself, must be conceptually grasped and must lose that indifference and abstract immediacy which it has in blind, static, pictorial thinking. Already in determinate being, the meaningless nothing becomes the limit, through which something does, after all, relate to an other outside it. But in reflection, it is the negative that essentially relates to a positive and hence is determinate; a negative is already no longer that indeterminate not-being; it is posited as existing only in so far as the positive is its counterpart, the third member of the triad being their ground; the negative is thus confined within an enclosed sphere in which, what the one is not, is something determinate. But more than this, in the absolutely fluid continuity of the Notion and its determinations the not is immediately a positive, and the negation is not merely a determinateness but is taken up into the universality and posited as identical with it. The not-universal is therefore immediately the particular.
2. Since the negation affects the relation of the judgment, and we are dealing with the negative judgment still as such, it is in the first place still a judgment; consequently we have here the relationship of subject and predicate, or of individuality and universality, and their relation, the form of the judgment. The subject as the immediate which forms the basis remains unaffected by the negation; it therefore retains its determination of having a predicate, or its relation to the universality. What is negated, therefore, is not the universality as such in the predicate, but the abstraction or determinateness of the latter which appeared as content in contrast to that universality. Thus the negative judgment is not total negation; the universal sphere which contains the predicate still subsists, and therefore the relation of the subject to the predicate is essentially still positive; the still remaining determination of the predicate is just as much a relation. If, for example, it is said that the rose is not red, it is only the determinateness of the predicate that is negated and separated from the universality which likewise belongs to it; the universal sphere, colour, is preserved; in saying that the rose is not red, it is assumed that it has a colour, but a different one. In respect of this universal sphere the judgment is still positive.
The individual is a particular - this positive form of the negative judgment enunciates immediately that the particular contains universality. But in addition it also expresses that the predicate is not merely a universal but also a determinate universal. The negative form implies the same; for though for example the rose is not red, it must not merely retain the universal sphere of colour for predicate but must also have some other specific colour; thus it is only the single determinateness of red that is negated; and not only is the universal sphere left but determinateness, too, is preserved, though converted into an indeterminate or general determinateness, that is, into particularity.
3. The particularity which we have found to be the positive determination of the negative judgment is the mediating term between individuality and universality; thus the negative judgment is now, in general, the mediating term leading to the third step, to the reflection of the judgment of existence into itself. It is, in its objective significance, merely the moment of alteration of the accidents-or, in the sphere of existence, of the isolated properties of the concrete. Through this alteration the complete determinateness of the predicate, or the concrete, emerges as posited.
The individual is particular, according to the positive enunciation of the negative judgment. But the individual is also not a particular, for particularity is of wider extent than individuality; it is therefore a predicate that does not correspond to the subject, and in which, therefore, it does not yet possess its truth. The individual is only an individual, the negativity that relates not to an other whether positive or negative, but only to itself. The rose is not a thing of some colour or other, but has only the specific colour that is rose-colour. The individual is not an undetermined determinate, but the determined determinate.
Starting from this positive form of the negative judgment, this negation of it appears again as only a first negation. But it is not so. On the contrary, the negative judgment is already in and for itself the second negation or the negation of the negation, and what it is in and for itself must be posited. That is to say, it negates the determinateness of the predicate of the positive judgment, the predicate's abstract universality, or, regarded as content, the single quality which the predicate contains of the subject. But the negation of the determinateness is already the second negation, and therefore the infinite return of individuality into itself. With this, therefore, the restoration of the concrete totality has been achieved, or rather, the subject is now for the first time posited as an individual, for through negation and the sublating of the negation it is mediated with itself. The predicate, too, on its side, has herewith passed over from the first universality to absolute determinateness and has equated itself with the subject. Thus the judgment runs: the individual is individual. From the other side, inasmuch as the subject was equally to be taken as universal, and as the predicate (which in contrast to that determination of the subject is the individual) widened itself in the negative judgment into particularity, and as now, further, the negation of this determinateness is no less the purification of the universality contained in the predicate, this judgment also runs: the universal is the universal.
In these two judgments, which we had previously reached by external reflection, the predicate is already expressed in its positivity. But first, the negation of the negative judgment must itself appear in the form of a negative judgment. We saw that in it there still remained a positive relation of the subject to the predicate, and the universal sphere of the latter. From this side, therefore, the negative contained a universality more purged of limitation than the positive judgment, and for that reason must be all the more negated of the subject as an individual. In this manner, the whole extent of the predicate is negated and there is no longer any positive relation between it and the subject. This is the infinite judgment.
The negative judgment is as little a true judgment as the positive. But the infinite judgment which is supposed to be its truth is, according to its negative expression, negatively infinite, a judgment in which even the form of judgment is set aside. But this is a nonsensical judgment. It is supposed to be a judgment, and consequently to contain a relation of subject and predicate; yet at the same time such a relation is supposed not to be in it. Though the name of the infinite judgment usually appears in the ordinary logics, it is not altogether clear what its nature really is. Examples of negatively infinite judgments are easily obtained: determinations are negatively connected as subject and predicate, one of which not only does not include the determinateness of the other but does not even contain its universal sphere; thus for example spirit is not red, yellow, etc., is not acid, not alkaline, etc., the rose is not an elephant, the understanding is not a table, and the like. These judgments are correct or true, as the expression goes, but in spite of such truth they are nonsensical and absurd. Or rather, they are not judgments at all. A more realistic example of the infinite judgment is the evil action. In civil litigation, something is negated only as the property of the other party, it being conceded that it should be theirs if they had the right to it; and it is only the title of right that is in dispute; the universal sphere of right is therefore recognised and maintained in that negative judgment. But crime is the infinite judgment which negates not merely the particular right, but the universal sphere as well, negates right as right. This infinite judgment does indeed possess correctness, since it is an actual deed, but it is nonsensical because it is related purely negatively to morality which constitutes its universal sphere.
The positive moment of the infinite judgment, of the negation of the negation, is the reflection of individuality into itself, whereby it is posited for the first time as a determinate determinateness. According to that reflection, the expression of the judgment was: the individual is individual. In the judgment of existence, the subject appears as an immediate individual and consequently rather as a mere something in general. It is through the mediation of the negative and infinite judgments that it is for the first time posited as an individual.
The individual is hereby posited as continuing itself into its predicate, which is identical with it; consequently, too, the universality no longer appears as immediate but as a comprehension of distinct terms. The positively infinite judgment equally runs: the universal is universal, and as such is equally posited as the return into itself.
Now through this reflection of the terms of the judgment into themselves the judgment has sublated itself; in the negatively infinite judgment the difference is, so to speak, too great for it to remain a judgment; the subject and predicate have no positive relation whatever to each other; in the positively infinite judgment, on the contrary, only identity is present and owing to the complete lack of difference it is no longer a judgment.
More precisely, it is the judgment of existence that has sublated itself; hereby there is posited what the copula of the judgment contains, namely, that the qualitative extremes are sublated in this their identity. Since however this unity is the Notion, it is immediately sundered again into its extremes and appears as a judgment, whose terms however are no longer immediate but reflected into themselves. The judgment of existence has passed over into the judgment of reflection.
In the judgment that has now arisen, the subject is an individual as such; and similarly the universal is no longer an abstract universality or a single property, but is posited as a universal that has gathered itself together into a unity through the relation of distinct terms; or, regarding it from the point of view of the content of various determinations in general, as the taking together of various properties and existences. If examples are to be given of predicates of judgments of reflection, they must be of another kind than for judgments of existence. It is in the judgment of reflection that we first have, strictly speaking, a determinate content, that is, a content as such; for the content is the form determination which is reflected into identity as distinct from the form in so far as this is a distinct determinateness — as it still is in the judgment. In the judgment of existence the content is merely an immediate, or abstract, indeterminate content. The following may therefore serve as examples of judgments of reflection: man is mortal, things are perishable, this thing is useful, harmful; hardness, elasticity of bodies, happiness, etc. are predicates of this peculiar kind. They express an essential determination, but one which is in a relationship or is a unifying universality. This universality, which will further determine itself in the movement of the judgment of reflection, is still distinct from the universality of the Notion as such; true, it is no longer the abstract universality of the qualitative judgment, but it still possesses a relation to the immediate from which it proceeds and has the latter as the basis of its negativity. The Notion determines the existent, in the first instance, to determinations of relation, to self-continuities in the diverse multiplicity of concrete existence-yet in such a manner that the genuine universal, though it is the inner essence of that multiplicity, is still in the sphere of Appearance, and this relative nature-or even the mark-of this multiplicity is still not the moment of being-in-and-for-self of the latter.
It may suggest itself to define the judgment of reflection as a judgment of quantity, just as the judgment of existence was also defined as qualitative judgment. But just as immediacy in the latter was not merely an immediacy which simply is, but one which was essentially also mediated and abstract, so here, too, that sublated immediacy is not merely sublated quality, and therefore not merely quantity; on the contrary, just as quality is the most external immediacy, so is quantity, in the same way, the most external determination belonging to mediation.
Further, as regards the determination as it appears in its movement in the judgment of reflection, it should be remarked that in the judgment of existence the movement of the determination showed itself in the predicate, because this judgment was in the determination of immediacy and the subject consequently appeared as the basis. For a similar reason, in the judgment of reflection, the onward movement of determining runs its course in the subject, because this judgment has for its determination the reflected in-itself. Here therefore the essential element is the universal or the predicate; hence it constitutes the basis by which, and in accordance with which, the subject is to be measured and determined. However, the predicate also receives a further determination through the further development of the form of the subject; but this occurs indirectly, whereas the development of the subject is, for the reason stated, a direct advance.
As regards the objective signification of the judgment, the individual, through its universality, enters into existence, but in an essential determination of relationship, in an essentiality which maintains itself throughout the multiplicity of the world of Appearance; the subject is supposed to be determinate in and for itself; this determinateness it possesses in its predicate. The individual, on the other hand, is reflected into this its predicate which is its universal essence; the subject is in so far a concrete existence in the world of Appearance. The predicate in this judgment no longer inheres in the subject; it is rather the implicit being under which this individual is subsumed as an accidental. If the judgments of existence may also be defined as judgments of inherence, judgments of reflection are, on the contrary, judgments of subsumption.
Now the immediate judgment of reflection is again, the individual is universal — but with subject and predicate in the stated signification; it can therefore be more precisely expressed as this is an essential universal.
But a 'this' is not an essential universal. This judgment which, as regards its general form, is simply positive, must be taken negatively. But since the judgment of reflection is not merely a positive one, the negation does not directly affect the predicate, which does not inhere but is the in itself. It is the subject rather that is alterable and awaits determination. Here, therefore, the negative judgment must be understood as asserting not a 'this' is a universal of reflection — an in-itself of this kind has a more universal existence than merely in a 'this'. Accordingly, the singular judgment has its proximate truth in the particular judgment.
The non-individuality of the subject, which must be posited instead of its individuality in the first judgment of reflection, is particularity. But individuality is determined in the judgment of reflection as essential individuality; particularity cannot therefore be a simple, abstract determination, in which the individual would be sublated and the concrete existent destroyed, but must be merely an extension of the individual in external reflection. The subject is, therefore, these or a particular number of individuals.
This judgment, that some individuals are a universal of reflection, appears at first as a positive judgment, but it is negative as well; for some contains universality. In this respect it may be regarded as comprehensive; but in so far as it is particularity, it is no less inadequate to that universality. The negative determination which the subject has received through the transition of the singular judgment is, as we have shown above, also a determination of the relation, of the copula. The judgment: some men are happy, involves the immediate consequence that some men are not happy. If some things are useful, then for this very reason some things are not useful. The positive and negative judgments no longer fall apart, but the particular judgment immediately contains both at the same time, just because it is a judgment of reflection. But the particular judgment is, for this reason, indeterminate.
If, in the example of such a judgment, we examine further the subject, some men, animals, etc., we find that it contains besides the particular form-determination some, the content-determination man, etc. The subject of the singular judgment could be expressed by this man, a single individual, which really pertains to an external pointing; it might therefore be better expressed, say, by Gaius. But the subject of the particular judgment can no longer be, some Gaii; for Gaius is supposed to be an individual as such. To the some is therefore added a more universal content, say, men, animals, etc. This is not merely an empirical content, but one determined by the form of the judgment; that is to say, it is a universal, because some contains universality and this must at the same time be separated from the individuals, since reflected individuality forms the basis. More precisely, this universality is also the universal nature or genus man, animal — that universality which is the result of the judgment of reflection, anticipated; just as the positive judgment, in having the individual for subject, anticipated the determination which is the result of the judgment of existence. Thus the subject that contains the individuals, their relation to particularity and the universal nature, is already posited as the totality of the determinations of the Notion. But this is really an external reflection. What is, in the first instance, already posited in the subject by its form, in respect of the mutual relation of these determinations, is the extension of the 'this' to particularity; but this generalisation is not adequate to the 'this'; 'this' is something completely determined, but 'some' is indeterminate. The extension must be appropriate to the 'this' and therefore, in conformity with it, be completely determined; such an extension is totality, or, in the first instance, universality.
This universality has the 'this' as its basis, for the individual here is the individual reflected into itself; its further determinations, therefore, run their course in it externally; and just as particularity for this reason determined itself as some, so the universality which the subject has attained is allness, and the particular judgment has passed over into the universal.
Universality, as it appears in the subject of the universal judgment, is the external universality of reflection, allness; 'all' means all individuals, and in it the individual remains unchanged. This universality is, therefore, only a taking together of independently existing individuals; it is the community of a property which only belongs to them in comparison. It is this community that is usually the first thing that occurs to subjective, unphilosophical thinking when universality is mentioned. It is given as the obvious reason why a determination is to be regarded as universal that it belongs to a number of things. It is mainly this concept of universality, too, that analysis has in mind when, for example, it takes the development of a function in a polynomial to be more universal than its development in a binomial, because the polynomial presents more individual terms than the binomial. The demand that the function should be presented in its universality requires, strictly speaking, a pantonomial, the exhausted infinity; but here the limitation of this demand becomes apparent, and the representation of the infinite number of terms has to content itself with its ought, and therefore also with a polynomial. But in fact the binomial is already the pantonomial in those cases where the method or rule affects only the dependence of one term on another, and the dependence of several terms on their predecessors does not particularise itself, but one and the same function remains the base. The method or rule is to be regarded as the genuine universal; in the progress of the development or in the development of a polynomial the rule is merely repeated; so that it gains nothing in universality through the increased number of the terms. We have already in an earlier chapter spoken of the spurious infinity and its illusory nature; the universality of the Notion is the reached beyond; the spurious infinity remains afflicted with the beyond as an unattainable goal, for it remains the mere progress to infinity. When universality is pictured merely as allness, a universality which is supposed to be exhausted in the individuals as individuals, then this is a relapse into that spurious infinity; or else mere plurality is taken for allness. Plurality, however, no matter how great, remains unalterably mere plurality, and is not allness. But there is, here, a vague awareness of the true universality of the Notion; it is the Notion that forces its way beyond the stubborn individuality to which unphilosophical thinking clings and beyond the externality of its reflection, substituting allness as totality, or rather that being which is categorically in and for itself.
This is apparent, too, in allness which is in general the empirical universality. Inasmuch as the individual as an immediate is presupposed and therefore already given and externally adopted, the reflection which gathers it into allness is equally external. But because the individual as 'this', is absolutely indifferent to this reflection, the universality and an individual of this kind cannot combine to form a unity. For this reason, this empirical allness remains a task, something which ought to be done and which cannot therefore be represented as being. Now an empirically universal proposition — for nevertheless such are advanced — rests on the tacit agreement that if only no contrary instance can be adduced, the plurality of cases shall count as allness; or, that subjective allness, namely, those cases which have come to our knowledge, may be taken for an objective allness.
Now a closer examination of the universal judgment now before us, reveals that the subject, which, as previously remarked, contains the true universality as presupposed, now also contains it as posited in it. All men expresses first, the genus man, secondly this genus as sundered into individuals, but so that the individuals are at the same time extended to the universality of the genus; conversely, the universality through this connection with individuality is just as completely determined as the individuality; thus the posited universality has been equated with the presupposed.
Strictly speaking, however, we should not anticipate what is presupposed, but should consider the result in the form determination on its own. Individuality, through this extension of itself to allness, is posited as negativity, which is identical self-relation. It has not therefore remained that first individuality, that for example of Gaius, but is the determination that is identical with universality, or is the absolutely determined being of the universal. That first individuality of the individual judgment was not the immediate one of the positive judgment, but came into being through the dialectical movement of the judgment of existence as such; it was already determined as the negative identity of the terms of that judgment. This is the true presupposition in the judgment of reflection; in contrast to the positing which runs its course in that judgment, that first determinateness of individuality was the latter's in-itself; thus, what individuality is in itself, is now, through the movement of the judgment of reflection, posited, namely, individuality as identical self-relation of the determinate. Therefore this reflection, which extends individuality to allness, is not external to it; on the contrary, this reflection merely makes explicit what it already is in itself. Hence the result is in truth objective universality. The subject has thus stripped off the form determination of the judgment of reflection which passed from this through some to allness; instead of all men we have now to say man.
The universality which has hereby come into being is the genus — the universality which is in its own self a concrete. The genus does not inhere in the subject; it is not a single property, or a property at all, of the subject; it contains all the single determinatenesses dissolved in its substantial solidity. In virtue of the fact that it is posited as this negative identity with itself, it is essentially a subject, but it is no longer subsumed in its predicate. In consequence, the nature of the judgment of reflection is altogether changed.
That judgment was essentially a judgment of subsumption. The predicate was determined, in contrast to its subject, as the implicit universal; according to its content, it could be taken as an essential determination of relation, or also as a mark — a determination which makes the subject merely an essential Appearance. But when the predicate is determined to objective universality, it ceases to be subsumed under such a determination of relation, or comprehensive reflection; on the contrary, such a predicate in contrast to this universality is a particular. The relationship of subject and predicate has therefore become inverted and hence the judgment has, first of all, sublated itself.
This sublation of the judgment coincides with the advance in the determination of the copula, which we have still to consider; the sublation of the terms of the judgment is the same thing as their transition into the copula. In other words, the subject, in raising itself to universality has, in this determination become equated with the predicate, which as reflected universality also contains particularity within itself; subject and predicate are therefore identical, that is they have coalesced into the copula. This identity is the genus or absolute nature of a thing. In so far, therefore, as this identity again sunders itself into a judgment it is the inner nature through which subject and predicate are related to one another — a relation of necessity in which these terms of the judgment are only unessential differences. What belongs to all the individuals of a genus belongs to the genus by its nature, is an immediate consequence and the expression of what we have seen, that the subject, for example all men, strips off its form determination, and man is to take its place. This intrinsic and explicit connection constitutes the basis of a new judgment, the judgment of necessity.
The determination to which universality has advanced is, as we have seen, the universality which is in and for itself or objective, to which in the sphere of essence substantiality corresponds. It is distinguished from the latter in that it belongs to the Notion and is therefore not merely the inner but also the posited necessity of its determinations; or, in other words, the difference is immanent in it, whereas substance has its difference only in its accidents, but not as principle within itself.
Now in the judgment, this objective universality is posited; first, therefore, with this its essential determinateness as immanent in it, secondly, with its determinateness distinguished from it as particularity, of which this universality constitutes the substantial basis. In this way it is determined as genus and species.
The genus essentially sunders itself, or repels itself into species; it is genus only in so far as it comprehends species under itself; the species is species only in so far as on the one hand it exists in the individuals, and on the other hand is in the genus a higher universality. Now the categorical judgment has such a universality for its predicate, a predicate in which the subject possesses its immanent nature. But the categorical judgment is itself the first or immediate judgment of necessity; accordingly the determinateness of the subject whereby it is a particular or individual over against the genus or species, so far belongs to the immediacy of external existence. But objective universality, too, has here as yet only its immediate particularisation; hence it is on the one hand itself a determinate universality in contrast to which there are higher genera; on the other hand, it is not exactly the proximate genus, that is, its determinateness is not exactly the principle of the specific particularity of the subject. But what is necessary in it is the substantial identity of the subject and predicate, contrasted with which that property of the subject which distinguishes it from the predicate is only an unessential positedness, or even merely a name; the subject is reflected in its predicate into its being-in-and-for-self. A predicate of this kind should not be classed with the predicates of the preceding judgments; to throw, for example, the judgments
The rose is red,
The rose is a plant, or
This ring is yellow,
It is gold,
into the one class, and to regard such an external property as the colour of a flower as a predicate on the same level as its vegetable nature, is to overlook a difference which must strike the meanest intelligence. The categorical judgment must therefore be definitely distinguished from the positive and negative judgments; in the latter, what is predicated of the subject is a single contingent content; in the former, the content is the totality of the form reflected into itself. Here therefore the copula has the meaning of necessity, whereas in the others it merely signifies abstract, immediate being.
The determinateness of the subject, which makes it a particular in contrast to the predicate, is in the first instance something contingent; subject and predicate are not necessarily related by the form or determinateness; the necessity is, therefore, still an inner necessity. But the subject is subject only as a particular, and in so far as it possesses objective universality it must possess it essentially in accordance with that primarily immediate determinateness. The objective universal in determining itself, that is in positing itself in the judgment, is essentially in an identical relation with this expelled determinateness as such, that is, it is essential that the determinateness is not posited as a mere contingency. It is only through this necessity of its immediate being that the categorical judgment conforms to its objective universality and in this way it has passed over into the hypothetical judgment.
If A is, then B is; or, the being of A is not its own being, but the being of another, of B. What is posited in this judgment is the necessary connection of immediate determinatenesses, a connection which is not yet posited in the categorical judgment. There are here two immediate Existences or external contingencies, of which in the categorical judgment there is at first only one, the subject; but since one is external to the other, this other is also external to the first. In accordance with this immediacy, the content of the two sides is still mutually indifferent; hence this judgment is in the first instance a proposition of empty form. Now in the first place the immediacy is indeed as such a self-subsistent, concrete being; but secondly, the relation of this being is the essential point; therefore this being is just as much a mere possibility; the hypothetical judgment involves, not that A is or that B is, but only that if one is, then the other is; only the connection of the extremes is posited as being, not the extremes themselves. On the contrary, in this necessity each extreme is posited as equally the being of an other. The principle of identity affirms that A is only A, not B; and that B is only B, not A; in the hypothetical judgment, on the contrary, the being of finite things is posited by the Notion in accordance with their formal truth, namely that the finite is its own being, but equally is not its own being, but that of an other. In the sphere of being, the finite alters and becomes an other; in the sphere of essence it is Appearance, and being is posited as consisting in the reflection of an other in it, and necessity is the inner relation, not yet posited as such. But the Notion is the positing of this identity so that what is, is not an abstract self-identity but a concrete identity and is immediately in its own self the being of an other.
By employing reflective relationships, the hypothetical judgment can be more precisely characterised as a relationship of ground and consequent, condition and conditioned, causality, etc. Just as in the categorical judgment substantiality appeared in the form of its Notion, so, too, does the nexus of causality in the hypothetical judgment. This and the other relationships all come under the hypothetical judgment; but here they are no longer relationships of self-subsistent sides, but these sides are essentially only moments of one and the same identity. However, in the hypothetical judgment they are not yet opposed as Notion determinations, as individual or particular to universal, but at first only as moments in general. Thus the hypothetical judgment has rather the shape of a proposition; just as the particular judgment has an indeterminate content, so the hypothetical is indeterminate in form, since its content is not determined as a relationship of subject to predicate. Yet since the being is the being of an other, for that very reason it is in itself a unity of itself and its other, and consequently universality; at the same time it is, strictly speaking, only a particular, for it is a determinate and in its determinateness is not purely self-related. But it is not the simple, abstract particularity that is posited; on the contrary, through the immediacy which the determinatenesses possess, the moments of the particularity are distinguished; at the same time, through the unity of the moments which constitutes their relation, the particularity is also their totality. What therefore is truly posited in this judgment is universality as the concrete identity of the Notion, whose determinations have no subsistence of their own but are only particularities posited in that identity. As such, it is the disjunctive judgment.
In the categorical judgment, the Notion is objective universality and an external individuality. In the hypothetical judgment, the Notion in its negative identity emerges in this externality. Through this identity, its moments receive the same determinateness, now posited in the disjunctive judgment, that they possess immediately in the hypothetical judgment. Hence the disjunctive judgment is objective universality posited at the same time in union with the form. It therefore contains first concrete universality or the genus in simple form as the subject, and secondly the same universality but as totality of its distinct determinations. A is either B or C. This is the necessity of the Notion, in which first the identity of the two extremes is one and the same extent, content and universality; secondly they are distinguished according to the form of the Notion-determinations, but in such a manner that, by reason of that identity, this distinction is a mere form. Thirdly, the identical objective universality appears for that reason as the determination that is reflected into itself in contrast to the unessential form, that is, as the content, but a content which possesses within itself the determinateness of form, once as the simple determinateness of the genus, and again, this same determinateness developed into its difference-in which way it is the particularity of the species and their totality, the universality of the genus. The particularity in its development constitutes the predicate, for it is the more universal in so far as it embraces the entire universal sphere of the subject, and this too in its detailed particularisation.
A closer examination of this particularisation shows first of all that the genus constitutes the substantial universality of the species; the subject is therefore both B and C; this both-and denotes the positive identity of the particular with the universal; this objective universal completely maintains itself in its particularity. Secondly, the species mutually exclude one another; A is either B or C; for they are the specific difference of the universal sphere. This either-or is their negative relation. Yet in this they are just as identical as in their positive relation; the genus is their unity as determinate particulars. If the genus were an abstract universality as in the judgments of existence, the species would also have to be taken as only diverse and mutually indifferent; but it is not that external universality which results merely from comparison and omission but is the immanent and concrete universality of the species. An empirical disjunctive judgment lacks necessity; A is either B or C or D, etc., because the species B, C and D, etc., have already been given; strictly speaking, this cannot give us an either-or, for species of this kind constitute, as it were, a merely subjective completeness; true, one species excludes the other; but either-or excludes every further species and shuts off within itself a total sphere. This totality has its necessity in the negative unity of the objective universal, which dissolves individuality within itself and possesses it as a simple principle of difference immanent in it by which the species are determined and related. Empirical species, on the contrary, have their differences in some contingency or other which is an external principle and therefore not their principle, and consequently also not the immanent determinateness of the genus; for this reason they are also not related to one another according to their determinateness. But it is through the relation of their determinateness that the species constitute the universality of the predicate. It is here really that the so-called contrary and contradictory notions should first find their place; for in the disjunctive judgment is posited the essential difference of the Notion; but in it they at the same time also possess their truth, namely, that the contrary and contradictory themselves are each distinguished as contrary and contradictory. Species are contrary in so far as they are merely diverse, that is to say in so far as they possess through the genus as their objective nature an existence that is in and for itself; they are contradictory in so far as they exclude one another. But each of these determinations by itself is one-sided and lacks truth; in the either-or of the disjunctive judgment their unity is posited as their truth, in accordance with which the species' self-subsistent existence as concrete universality is itself also the principle of the negative unity whereby they mutually exclude one another.
By the just demonstrated identity of subject and predicate in accordance with the negative unity, the genus in the disjunctive judgment is determined as the proximate genus. This expression indicates in the first place, a mere quantitative difference of more or less-determinations possessed by a universal in relation to a particularity coming under it. From this point of view, it remains contingent what is properly the proximate genus. In so far, however, as the genus is taken as a universal formed merely by the omission of determinations, it cannot really form a disjunctive judgment; for it is contingent whether it has retained the determinateness which constitutes the principle of the either-or; the genus would not be exhibited at all in the species according to its determinateness, and the species could only possess a contingent completeness. In the categorical judgment, the genus is at first only in this abstract form over against the subject, and therefore not necessarily the proximate genus to it and is so far external. But when the genus is a concrete, essentially determinate universality, then it is, as a simple determinateness, the unity of the moments of the Notion, which in this simplicity are only sublated, but have their real difference in the species. Accordingly, a genus is the proximate genus of a species in so far as the latter has its specific difference in the essential determinateness of the genus, and the species as a whole are differentiated by a principle that lies in the nature of the genus.
The aspect just considered constitutes the identity of subject and predicate from the aspect of their determinedness in general, an aspect which has been posited by the hypothetical judgment, whose necessity is an identity of immediate and diverse things and therefore essentially a negative unity. It is this negative unity in general that separates subject and predicate, but now it is itself posited as differentiated-in the subject as a simple determinateness, in the predicate as totality. This separation of subject and predicate is the difference of the Notion; and thus the totality of the species in the predicate cannot be any other difference. The reciprocal determination of the disjunctive terms is therefore given by this. It reduces to the difference of the Notion, for it is this alone that disjoins itself and in its determination reveals its negative unity. However, the species is considered here only in respect of its simple Notion determinateness, not in respect of the shape in which it has come forth from the Idea into a further self-subsistent reality; this latter is indeed dropped in the simple principle of the genus; but the essential distinction must be a moment of the Notion. In the judgment here considered, it is really the Notion's own progressive determination that now posits its disjunction; the same thing that we found, when considering the Notion, to be its essential and explicit determination, its differentiation into determinate Notions. Now because the Notion is the universal, both the positive and the negative totality of the particulars, it is itself for that very reason also immediately one of its disjunctive members; the other, however, is this universality resolved into its particularity, or the determinateness of the Notion as determinateness, that determinateness in which the universality exhibits itself as totality. If the disjunction of a genus into species has not yet attained this form, this is a proof that it has not risen to the determinateness of the Notion and has not proceeded from the Notion. Colour is either violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange or red; even the empirical confusion and impurity of such a disjunction is at once apparent; just from this aspect alone it must be termed barbarous. When colour has been grasped as the concrete unity of light and dark, then this genus contains within it the determinateness which constitutes the principle of its particularisation into species. But of these species, one must be the utterly simple colour which contains the opposition in equipoise and confined and negated in the colour's intensity; over against this there must be presented the opposition of the relationship between light and dark, to which must be added, since a natural phenomenon is involved, the indifferent neutrality of the opposition. When mixtures such as violet and orange, and differences of degree, such as blue and light blue, are taken for species, this can only result from a completely thoughtless procedure that shows too little reflection even for empiricism. But this is not the place to discuss what further distinct and more precisely determined forms disjunction may have, according as they occur in the element of Nature or of spirit.
In the first instance, the disjunctive judgment has the members of the disjunction in its predicate; but it is itself no less disjoined; its subject and predicate are the members of the disjunction. They are the moments of the Notion, posited in their determinateness but at the same time as identical; identical (a) in the objective universality which, in the subject is the simple genus, and in the predicate is the universal sphere and the totality of the moments of the Notion, and (b) in the negative unity, in the developed connection of necessity, in accordance with which the simple determinateness in the subject is sundered into the difference of the species, and in this very difference is their essential relation and self-identity.
This unity, the copula of this judgment into which the extremes have coalesced through their identity, is therefore the Notion itself, and the Notion, too, as posited; the mere judgment of necessity has thereby risen into the judgment of the Notion.
The ability to form judgments of existence such as 'the rose is red', 'snow is white', and so forth, will hardly count as evidence of great powers of judgment. The judgments of reflection are rather propositions; in the judgment of necessity the object appears, it is true, in its objective universality, but it is only in the judgment now to be considered that its relation to the Notion is found. In this judgment the Notion is laid down as the basis, and since it is in relation to the object, it is an ought-to-be to which the reality may or may not be adequate. Therefore it is only a judgment of this kind that contains a true appreciation; the predicates good, bad, true, beautiful, correct, etc. express that the thing is measured against its universal Notion as the simply presupposed ought-to-be and is, or is not, in agreement with it.
The judgment of the Notion has been called the judgment of modality and it has been regarded as containing that form of the relationship between subject and predicate which is found in an external understanding, and to be concerned with the value of the copula only in relation to thinking. According to this view, the problematical judgment is one where the affirmation or denial is taken as optional or possible; the assertoric, where it is taken as true, that is as actual; and the apodeictic, where it is taken as necessary. It is easy to see why it is so natural in the case of this judgment to step out of the sphere of judgment itself and to regard its determination as something merely subjective. For here it is the Notion, or the subjective, that reappears in the judgment and stands in relationship to an external actuality. But this subjectivity is not to be confused with external reflection, which of course is also something subjective, but in a different sense from the Notion itself; on the contrary, the Notion that re-emerges from the disjunctive judgment is the opposite of a mere contingent mode. The earlier judgments are in this sense merely subjective, for they are based on an abstraction and one-sidedness in which the Notion is lost. The judgment of the Notion, on the contrary, is objective and the truth as against those earlier judgments, just because it has for its basis the Notion, not the Notion in external reflection or in relation to a subjective, that is contingent, thinking, but the Notion in its determinateness as Notion.
In the disjunctive judgment the Notion was posited as identity of the universal nature with its particularisation; consequently the relation of the judgment was cancelled. This concretion of universality and particularisation is, at first, a simple result; it has now to develop itself further into totality, since the moments which it contains are at first swallowed up in it and as yet do not confront one another in determinate self-subsistence. The defect of the result may also be more definitely expressed by saying that in the disjunctive judgment, although objective universality has completed itself in its particularisation, yet the negative unity of the latter merely returns into the former and has not yet determined itself to the third moment, that of individuality. Yet in so far as the result itself is negative unity, it is indeed already this individuality; but as such it is only this one determinateness, which has now to posit its negativity, sunder itself into the extremes and in this way finally develop into the syllogism.
The proximate diremption of this unity is the judgment in which it is posited first as subject, as an immediate individual, and then as predicate, as the determinate relation of its moments.
The judgment of the Notion is at first immediate; as such it is the assertoric judgment. The subject is a concrete individual in general, and the predicate expresses this same as the relation of its actuality, determinateness, or constitution to its Notion. (This house is bad, this action is good.) More precisely, therefore, it involves (a) that the subject ought to be something; its universal nature has posited itself as the self-subsistent Notion; and (b) particularity which, not only on account of its immediacy but also on account of its express differentiation from its self-subsistent universal nature, appears as an external existence with such and such a constitution; this, on its side, because of the Notion's self-subsistence, is also indifferent to the universal and may or may not conform to it. This constitution is the individuality, which lies beyond the necessary determination of the universal in the disjunctive judgment, a determination which only appears as the particularisation of the species and as the negative principle of the genus. Thus the concrete universality which has emerged from the disjunctive judgment is sundered in the assertoric judgment into the form of extremes, to which the Notion itself as the posited unity that relates them is still lacking.
For this reason the judgment is so far merely assertoric; the verification is a subjective assurance. The fact that something is good or bad, correct, suitable or not, is connected with an external third factor. But the fact that the connection is externally posited means that it is, at first, only implicit or internal. When therefore something is good or bad, etc. no one will suppose that it is, say, good only in subjective consciousness but perhaps bad in itself, or that good and bad, correct, suitable, etc., are not predicates of the objects themselves. The merely subjective element in the assertion of this judgment consists therefore in the fact that the implicit connection of subject and predicate is not yet posited, or, what is the same thing, that it is only external; the copula is still an immediate, abstract being.
Accordingly, the assurance of the assertoric judgment is confronted with equal right by its contradictory. When one is assured that 'this action is good', then the opposite assurance that 'this action is bad', is equally justified. Or, considering the judgment in itself, because the subject of the judgment is an immediate individual, in this abstraction it does not as yet possess posited within it the determinateness that should contain its relation to the universal Notion; thus the subject is still something contingent which may or may not conform to the Notion. The judgment is therefore essentially problematic.
The problematic judgment is the assertoric in so far as the latter must be taken both positively and negatively. From this qualitative side, the particular judgment is likewise a problematic one, for it is equally valid positively and negatively; similarly, in the hypothetical judgment, the being of the subject and predicate is problematic; also, it is posited by the particular and hypothetical judgments that the individual and the categorical judgments are as yet merely subjective. But in the problematic judgment as such this positing is more immanent than in the judgments just mentioned, because in it the content of the predicate is the relation of the subject to the Notion, and here, therefore, the determination of the immediate as something contingent is itself given.
At first, it appears only problematic whether the predicate is to be coupled with a certain subject or not, and so far the indeterminateness falls in the copula. From this, no determination can emerge for the predicate, for this is already the objective, concrete universality. The problematic element, therefore, concerns the immediacy of the subject which is hereby determined as a contingency. But further, we must not for that reason abstract from the individuality of the subject; if this latter were purged of its individuality altogether, it would be merely a universal; the predicate contains just this, that the Notion of the subject is to be posited in relation to its individuality. We cannot say: the house or a house is good, but: according to its constitution. The problematic element in the subject itself constitutes its moment of contingency, the subjectivity of the thing over against its objective nature or its Notion, its merely contingent mode or its constitution.
Hence the subject itself is differentiated into its universality or objective nature, what it ought to be, and the particular constitution of its existence. Thus it contains the ground of its being or not being what it ought to be. In this way, it is equated with the predicate. The negativity of the problematic element, in so far as it is directed against the immediacy of the subject, accordingly means only this original partition of the subject which is already in itself the unity of the universal and particular, into these its moments-a partition which is the judgment itself.
It may further be remarked that each of the two sides of the subject, its Notion and its constitution, could be called its subjectivity. The Notion is the universal essence of a thing or a fact [Sache] withdrawn into itself, its negative unity with itself; this constitutes its subjectivity. But a thing is also essentially contingent and has an external constitution; this may equally be called the mere subjectivity of the thing in contrast to the other side, its objectivity. The thing itself is just this, that its Notion, as the negative of itself, negates its universality and projects itself into the externality of individuality. The subject of the judgment is here posited as this duality; those opposite significations of subjectivity are, in accordance with their truth, brought into a unity. The signification of the subjective element has itself become problematic by reason of its having lost the immediate determinateness which it possessed in the immediate judgment, and its determinate opposition to the predicate. This opposite signification of subjective which occurs even in the ratiocination of ordinary reflection might of itself at least draw attention to the fact that subjectivity in one of these significations alone, has no truth. The twofold signification is the manifestation of this truth that each by itself is one-sided.
When the problematic element is thus posited as the problematic element of the thing, as the thing with its constitution, then the judgment itself is no longer problematic, but apodeictic.
The subject of the apodeictic judgment (the house constituted so and so is good, the action constituted so and so is right) has within it, first, the universal, what it ought to be, and secondly, its constitution; this latter contains the ground why a predicate of the Notion judgement applies or does not apply to the whole subject, that is, whether the subject corresponds to its Notion or not.
This judgment, then, is truly objective; or it is the truth of the judgment in general. Subject and predicate correspond to each other and have the same content, and this content is itself the posited concrete universality; it contains, namely, the two moments, the objective universal or the genus, and the individualised universal. Here, therefore, we have the universal which is itself and continues itself through its opposite and is a universal only as unity with this opposite. A universal of this kind, such as the predicate good, suitable, correct, etc., is based on an ought-to-be and at the same time contains the correspondence of existence to that ought-to-be; it is not this ought-to-be or the genus by itself, but this correspondence that is the universality which constitutes the predicate of the apodeictic judgment.
The subject likewise contains these two moments in immediate unity as the fact. But it is the truth of the fact that it is internally split into what it ought-to-be and what it is; this is the absolute judgment on all actuality. It is because this original partition, which is the omnipotence of the Notion, is just as much a return into its unity and an absolute relation of the ought-to-be and being to each other that makes what is actual into a fact; its inner relation, this concrete identity, constitutes the soul of the fact.
The transition from the immediate simplicity of the fact to the correspondence which is the determinate relation of its ought-to-be and its being — or the copula — is now seen, on closer examination, to lie in the particular determinateness of the fact. The genus is the universal in and for itself, which as such appears as the unrelated; while the determinateness is that which in that universal is reflected into itself, yet at the same time is reflected into an other. The judgment therefore has its ground in the constitution of the subject and thereby is apodeictic. Hence we now have before us the determinate and fulfilled copula, which formerly consisted in the abstract 'is', but has now further developed itself into ground in general. It appears at first as an immediate determinateness in the subject, but it is no less the relation to the predicate which has no other content than this very correspondence, or the relation of the subject to the universality.
Thus the form of the judgment has perished; first because subject and predicate are in themselves the same content; secondly because the subject through its determinateness points beyond itself and relates itself to the predicate; but also, thirdly, this relating has passed over into the predicate, alone constitutes its content, and is thus the posited relation, or the judgment itself. Thus the concrete identity of the Notion which was the result of the disjunctive judgment and which constitutes the inner basis of the Notion judgment — which identity was at first posited only in the predicate — is now restored in the whole.
If we examine the positive element of this result which effects the transition of the judgment into another form, we find, as we have seen, that subject and predicate in the apodeictic judgment are each the whole Notion. The unity of the Notion as the determinateness constituting the copula that relates them, is at the same time distinct from them. At first, it stands only on the other side of the subject as the latter's immediate constitution. But since it is essentially that which relates subject and predicate, it is not merely such immediate constitution but the universal that permeates both subject and predicate. While subject and predicate have the same content, the form relation, on the other hand, is posited through this determinateness, determinateness as a universal or particularity. Thus it contains within itself the two form determinations of the extremes and is the determinate relation of subject and predicate; it is the fulfilled copula of the judgment, the copula pregnant with content, the unity of the Notion that has re-emerged from the judgment in which it was lost in the extremes. Through this impregnation of the copula the judgment has become the syllogism.