u/CapRound912

Miller, Phenomenology, §149

There's a level of the flux of appearance where the simple inner world or the simple understanding of consciousness produces simple universals. Simple negation, simple universals, simple determinations.

There is a deeper level of the flux of appearance that is "absolutely universal difference," where you can't break things down any further. This is the negation of negation, when negation itself is a moment of the flux of appearance.

"This difference," not the difference in the first place where consciousness unknowingly simplifies the flux of appearance, is the universal difference that posits into the inner world.

What consciousness posits is its truth, selfsameness or self-preservation.

And this truth is from an image of stability it's most familiar with—the law.

Miller, Phenomenology, §148

We are trying to understand the transition from "universal difference" to the "law of force."

Force is the unconditioned universal. It is for-self without opposition and determination, and it's not for-another. It is inconceivable. That is why it's the inner world and empty.

Force is a source of change in another, to use Aristotle's terminology.

But we fail to find it in any meaningful way. There is no inciting/incited in terms of form, and there's no universal medium/negative unity in terms of content. We'll put aside the definition of these terms for now.

Force is universal difference.

How is universal difference the law of force?

If we reverse the process, which we can do because that's why the process is complete, and ask a similar question, we may have something of an answer. It's much easier to look back than to look forward.

What is the law of the laws of force?

The law of the laws is universal difference. Language is getting ahead of itself if it posits the law of laws before laws, the one before the many.

Consciousness posits laws into the inner world to fill it up, and the source of this positing, universal difference, is the truth of these laws, the so-called law of force.

Miller, Phenomenology, Section 145

Is this the syllogism?

There is an inner world beyond appearances.

The Understanding can only apprehend appearances.

The Understanding cannot know the inner world.

This means the new object of the Understanding is not the inner of Things and not appearances, which is what a new object always is, two "nots" of an opposition.

Baillie, Phenomenology, Page 175

There is:

for another, that which doesn't act unless acted upon.

for self, such as reflected into self without alteration, but this is only one analogy.

for self that deceives itself and is actually for another.

for self that knows it's for another.

Nevertheless, we're only interested in the opposition between for self and for another because that's how you supersede them all, by negating the opposites.

It turns out that determination is opposition and opposition is for another because you lost the fight.

The two are no longer distinguishable.

But, what is neither for self nor for another is the unconditioned universal, life.

There's nothing outside it that it belongs to (the property), so it's not for another.

And it has no opposition, so it's not for self.

Baillie, Phenomenology, Page 174

The for another is distinct.

The for itself is distinct.

And the opposition is resolved in the thing but not between things.

And the distinction of the thing becomes so defined by opposition that it's defined by its other.

But it still needs to be defined by its own self.

To be defined by an other is for another. The thing vanishes.

And according to the principle of two things at the same time, consciousness vanishes as well.

But it can't vanish completely without becoming for another.

If everything falls apart and you follow your heart, the selfsame is for another.

Baillie, Phenomenology, Page 174

There is a for itself thing and a for another thing in the thing.

You might think that the for another thing is the only one affected with distinction because the for itself thing is the selfsame "one."

But the for itself thing is also affected with distinction.

They are each distinct and in conflict with each other. The heart compels what the mind forbids.

Further, in its distinction there is something essential which is not in opposition to its other distinctions.

So, the things are opposed; they both have distinction in it; and in its distinction there is an essential characteristic; but this essential characteristic is a simple determinate characteristic which is not in opposition to the rest of it to cause a disturbance within its one-sidedness.

These are the two objects in their immediacy.

The determinate characteristic means they are constituted with an essence and a bunch of other secondary qualities.

More importantly, the two things are not of equal weight. One of them dominates the other in the thing.

So, the opposition is actually not between the two objects of the thing but between the thing and another thing outside it, and this opposition is based on its essential distinction.

You are already resolved and your conflict is out there with the other resolved things.

Baillie, Phenomenology, Page 172-173

Consciousness becomes aware that the same thing happens to the thing as it does to itself. They both come together and fall apart. The thing is not a "one." It contains its opposite.

Consciousness moves beyond the perceptual procedure whereby it is the opposite of the "one," and takes the process itself as the object.

And this is what it comes up with.

The thing is:

for itself - It doesn't work for something else.

for itself as it is for another - It wears the scars of its interactions.

for another - It's a prisoner.

You are a prisoner who is constituted by his prison, and you need to wake up.

Consciousness now sees two aspects of the "also," for itself and for another.

And it uses the "in-so-far as" technique on them to maintain them both.

But consciousness is still dominated by the "one," and can go no further than to perceive two things.

It posits the contradiction into two objects.

And by holding on to the "one," it holds on to the diversity of the thing which doesn't belong to it or to consciousness.

Consciousness doesn't escape.

Baillie, Phenomenology, Page 171

Things are opposing. We stumble over them; they get in our way; they are obstacles to our intentions.

At first, properties belong to them; they are in and for the thing.

But when we finally get a hold of them, we tear them apart.

And now the thing is a medium.

But consciousness is equally aware that it reflects itself into itself.

And this is, at the same time, the thing reflected into itself.

The principle of non-contradiction is false.

So, consciousness, as a matter of its own preservation, must take responsibility for the oneness of the thing.

Now, consciousness includes and excludes. We say of a thing all of the many properties it has, and we say of a thing what it is to the exclusion of another.

Consciousness supersedes inclusion and exclusion with the “in-so-far,” otherwise, the thing collapses into the property.

In so far as the thing is white, it’s a white thing; in so far as it’s cubicle, it’s a cubical thing.

Properties get elevated to a thing (free matter).

The thing we stumble over becomes something analogous to a container.

We are trying to preserve the thing because the thing is our self-preservation.

Baillie, Phenomenology, page 170-171

The medium has determinations.

The determinations always reduce to a basic opposition—Being and Nothing.

Being and Nothing recoil from collapsing into each other.

We get opposition, negation, and exclusion, but this doesn't repeat.

It doesn't repeat because unlike determinations, ones can't be excluded.

And they are alike in this way.

They are only different in the properties they have.

And these properties are in and for the one; it's something completely positive.

What's proper to the one comes from an exceptional encounter or it's in the thing itself.

Therefore, it has several properties.

Now, the thing stands on its own as a true being, and its properties belong to it on its own account.

This is something completely positive.

The downfall begins and a new community (medium) is born.

Negation speaks: "Determinations are several and distinct from one another."

And since we're in "thinghood" on account of the encounters with the ones, the determinations are considered ones too.

So, the thing is viewed as a medium.

Truth is now how the thing is taken as a medium.

Baillie, Phenomenology, page 169-170

So, we've been thrown back into the community of universals.

In it contains opposition, negation, and exclusion. Eat or be eaten.

The negation of negation is a reduction to sensuous universals, in which intention is true.

But the process doesn't simply repeat in the same way.

Two circuits are never the same and the self makes a third in between, the two moments at the same time.

Two and many amount to the same thing and posit the self and the true, out of the selfsame, the fear of annihilation.

We become aware that the object reflects into this self, and the object is the true because the self is experienced in its non-existence, as an unnecessary factor in perception.

The self feels inadequate. It has a negative quality.

So, to find the true, we have to dissect ourselves.

We have eyes to see...

But all this is kept together at the same time by our self-reflection, by our image in the mirror.

Or to put it differently, the multiple organs posit the general organ, self-reflection. Positing is the activity of negation (the universal).

And self-reflection maintains the "one," which is ultimately our self-preservation.

Baillie, Phenomenology, page 159

"Even animals are not shut off from this wisdom, but show they are deeply initiated into it. For they do not stand stock still before things of sense as if these were things per se, with being in themselves: they despair of this reality altogether, and in complete assurance of the nothingness of things they fall-to without more ado and eat them up."

Even the animals have a sense of Being and Nothing. And we can take it a step further. When an animal is in the grasp of its mortal enemy, the eaten-fruit is reflected into it.

This is not an explanation. "Reflected" is equally an analogy. "Eaten-fruit" and "reflected" are the analogies of the self-same, or more appropriately, of self-preservation.

Baillie, Phenomenology, pages 168-169

We're following the moments of actual perception, after going through the process ourselves, to expand on the contradictions in it.

Consciousness reduced to "my meaning" is overpowered and thrown into the circuit again. It gets immersed in the community, and so on.

However, the repetition makes the selfsame stronger because it's the dissolution of the object but not the annihilation of the self.

Consciousness no longer sees the circuit of repetition. It now sees the circuit of negation; it sees itself in all of it.

And consciousness becomes aware that everything gets reflected into this self.

But it's not the same positing of the self as in sense-certainty. This self is mistaken. This is the mistaken self.

But it takes ownership and responsibility to "correct this untruth."

And if it can arrive at the truth, consciousness can halt the circuit.

Baille, Phenomenology, pages 167-168

The self-identical is two moments at the same time. Whatever happens to the subject also happens to the object, and vice versa.

We are presented with the self-identical.

But we see the property in it.

By virtue of its universality, it's a community. In other words, by virtue of belonging to multiple things, properties form a community of their own, for the most part.

It's revealed that a determination is an opposition and an exclusion, the ravages of negation.

The negation of nature is also the determination of nature, so the community is a community in conflict.

This causes even the self-identical to fall apart and to come face to face with its own annihilation.

And then you're reduced to sensuous universals.

At which point, the truth is whatever you intend to do.

Baille, Phenomenology, pages 166-167

The medium is the negation of the positive, determinate negation, negation on the side of the positive.

The "One" is the negation of negation. The negation of being and non-being, the negation of the two extremes. One is Existence.

The reverse is also true. The negation of negation posits negation, and negation posits determination.

How does a Thing arise from the medium and its opposite, the self-identical?

Determinations are now posited as self-identical and belonging to the One.

How does a property belong?

By taking and grasping, and as long as you stick to that, you get the truth of the object.

However, in the course of experience you encounter deception.

What's the solution to deception?

The principle of existence—self-sameness.

And now Consciousness is including-excluding.

Baille, Phenomenology, pages 164-165

A property is a determinate negation in the medium of "self-identical universality."

What is the "self-identical universality"?

It is the result of the process of sense-certainty, the universal "I" that retreated from being swallowed up by the light ("I am—seeing, looking").

Determinate negation is the positive side of negation. Negation allows us to distinguish one property from another.

The negation of all, including the medium itself, is the negation of negation, the self-identical, the "One."

The thing now sees other things, two things at the same time.

Baille, Phenomenology, pages 180-183

The emptying of the determinations of for-another and for-self is the dissipation of all content, a clearing of obtrusive being.

In other words, the Understanding is free to think and is not affected by conditioned existence.

Although the Understanding has "arrived at thoughts" in the "dialectic process of sense-experience," however, it is still captivated by the object.

These thought-objects reside in the unconditioned universal and it remains for us to consider how they transition into one another.

Thoughts are equal and independent; they permeate each other without touching each other, as if they were flashing before our eyes.

Thoughts come out of other thoughts; they are porous.

And thoughts are negated and superseded.

There is another movement, one which appears to rule them all.

Consciousness recoils from its annihilation from both extremes of the simple unity of the unconditioned universal and the diversity of its expression, an iteration of the Being and Nothing dynamic.

This is Force.

It appears in an inverted way as the expression of Force.

Miller, Phenomenology, §143

What is the Understanding?

The Understanding is co-founded with the unconditioned universal at the stage of the two moments at the same time.

In other words, the Understanding is unconditioned existence, when we are free to think and are no longer inflicted by obtrusive being.

The Understanding is captivated by the object because it recoils from bare existence, an inert form of unconditioned existence.

The extreme of the Understanding is a vanishing because the Understanding doesn't question the One and the universal, the essential and nonessential; it doesn't keep them separated in thoughtful questioning.

It is lost in the endless negation of Things, where it ceaselessly goes from the one to the other without rest.

What is the inner world?

The in-itself is without a self, and the for-itself is with a self in the picture.

In Perception, the for-itself was a lack, a deceived self in regard to the self-same.

In the development of force, the for-itself rises to the level of an in-itself. We are freed from our self-degradation.

But unlike the Understanding, the for-itself cannot ceaselessly self-negate. It recoils from its self-annihilation and posits the "inner world." It substitutes self-negation for external negation toward a substitute self-object.

Being recoils from Nothing and posits Existence.