Archana2345

" Our cravings for knowledge increases with our incapacity for blind belief. There comes a boiling point in the scale of all intellectual development, at which all faith, all revelation, and all authority evaporate, and Man claims the right to judge for himself; the right, not only to be taught but to be convinced. His infancy's leading-strings have fallen off, and subsequently, he demands to move to walk alone. Yet can no more be extinguished his cravings for Metaphysics than any physical want. It is then that the desire for philosophy becomes serious and that humankind invokes the spirits of all the genuine thinkers who have risen from its ranks. Then, too, empty wordiness and the fruitless efforts of weakened intellects no longer suffice; the want of a severe philosophy is felt, having other aims in view than expenses and salaries, and caring little therefore whether it meets the consent of cabinet-ministers, or councilors, whether it serves the purposes of this or that religious party, or not; a philosophy which, on the contrary, clearly shows that it has a very different mission in the view from that of obtaining a livelihood for the poor in spirit."

- German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Spinoza formulated the profoundly important principle that *all determination is negation*. To determine the thing is to cut it off from some sphere of being and so to limit it. To define is to set boundaries. To say that a thing is green limits it by cutting it from the sphere of pink, blue, or other-coloured things. To say that it is good cuts it off from the sphere of evil. This limitation is the same as negation. To *affirm* that a thing is within certain limits is to *deny* that it is outside those limits. To say that it is green is to say that it is not pink. Affirmation involves negation. Whatever is said of a thing denies something else of it. All determination is negation.

This principle is fundamental for Hegel also, but with him it takes rather the converse form that *all negation is determination*. Formal logicians will remind us that we cannot simply convert Spinoza's proposition. But it is sufficient to point out in reply that not only does affirmation involve negation; negation likewise involves affirmation. To say that a thing belongs to one class is to affirm that it belongs to some other class,—though we may not know what that class is. Positive and negative are correlatives which mutually involve each other. To posit is to negate: this is Spinoza's principle. To negate is to posit: this is Hegel's.

When, therefore, we meet Hegel talking about "the significant power of the negative," we have to consider that for him, negation is the very process of creation. For the *positive* nature of an object consists in its determinations. The nature of a stone is to be white, heavy, hard, etc. And since all determinations are negations, it follows that the positive nature of a thing consists in its negations. Negation, therefore, is of the very essence of a positive being. And for the world to come into being what is above all necessary is the force of negation, "the extraordinary power of the negative." The genus only becomes the species through the differentia, and the differentia is precisely that which carves out a particular class from the general class by excluding, i.e., negating, the other species. And the species again only becomes the individual in the same way, by negating other individuals. These thoughts are no causal reflections of Hegel. They underlie his entire system. We must get to understand that these three ideas, determination, limitation, and negation, all involve each other.

-- The Philosophy of Hegel