MetaBlog PhoneReader: Process of self-production

The dialectic is the process of self-production of subjectivity, of the absolute subject, and as such is its "necessary action".

According to the structure of subjectivity, the production process has three layers. First of all as consciousness, subjectivity is drawn immediately to its object. This immediate, therefore indeterminate, representation, Hegel names 'being', the universal, the abstract.

But the relation of the object to the subject is thereby overlooked. Only through this relating back of objects to the subject, will the object as object for the subject, and the subject for itself, that is, as relation to the object, be represented Nevertheless, as long as we only distinguish between object and subject, refection and being, and remain tied to these distinctions , the movement from object to subject has not yet produced subjectivity as this totality for itself. The object, being, is doubtless already with the subject as mediated by reflection, but this mediation itself is not yet itself the presentation of this innermost movement of the subject for itself. Only when the thesis of object and the antithesis of subject becomes discernible in its necessary synthesis , is the movement of the subjectivity of the object-subject-relation established in its trajectory.

This trajectory is departure from the thesis, progression through antithesis, transition as synthesis, and, as this totality , the return of this posited establishment to itself. This trajectory gather the totality of subjectivity in its developed unity. So assembled it grows, 'con-crescit', becomes concrete. Accordingly, dialectic is speculative. 'Speculari' means to discern, to set before, conceive, com-prehend [be-greifen]. Hegel states in the introduction of the 'Science of Logic' (ed. Lasson, Bd. I, S. 38) : Speculation consists "in conceiving the opposed in its unity".

Hegel's characterization of speculation becomes clearer when we take note that with speculation the synthesis results not only from conceptual unity, but , in the first place and always, from the conception of 'the opposed', as such. To this belongs the conception of opposites as appearing against and within one another, which as the reign of antithesis is in this manner presented in the "Logic of Essence" ( that is , the logic of reflection). From this self reflecting appearance, this mirroring, the 'speculari' ('speculum': the mirror) receives its sufficient determination.

So considered, speculation is the positive totality of what dialectic must signify here: not transcendental delimitation critically or polemically thought, but the mirroring and reuniting of opposites as the spirit's process of self production.