Thought and Reality in Hegel's System

Thought and Reality in Hegel’s System/37may to all intents and purposes be affirmation, if only two alternativesare possible, for example, the denial of the one is the affirmation of theother. 95 It is indeed true that negation may carry with it very little positivesignificance: the judgment, ‘This is not black,’ tells us practicallynothing so far as the actual color of the object under consideration isconcerned. But if the judgment is really a significant one, if it has anymeaning at all, it partially at least introduces a determination into theuniverse of discourse by telling us, for example, that the subject of thejudgment is a colored object, and in so far it gives us positive knowledgeof the object of interest. 96 And this negation approximates to direct affirmationas the differences within the system in which it falls are moresharply defined — it is to be noted that this very definition may be theresult of negation; negative instances are always more than negative.Ultimately, from the denial of blackness there might arise positive knowledgeconcerning the actual color of the object of judgment.Now in view of the above considerations we can more clearly seewhat Hegel means by the constant assertion that the negative is the verysoul and vitality of thought. Thought is at once analytic and synthetic; itdoes not first negate and then synthesize, but it synthesizes in its negation.It denies abstract unrelatedness, and affirms and defines complexinterrelatedness among phenomena. It rejects the unrelated particularand the blank universal as alike indefinable and meaningless; it assertsthe necessity of identity in difference, of unity within multiplicity. Thoughtas a process of mediation is thus of a two-fold nature: it is the denial ofa world of unrelated elements, and the affirmation of the world as concretetotality. Such is the double function of negation: it denies the abstractand affirms the concrete. Because thought is negative, it drives usfrom the standpoint of immediate sense experience and forces us to seekthe eternal and true elsewhere; because thought is positive in its negation,it perforce “produces the universal and seizes the particular init.” 97 Thus, by its very nature, thought is a process of mediation whichgives as a result, not mere abstract generalization, but real determination— the concrete individual.I know of no better summary of Hegel’s view concerning the negativein thought than the one which he himself has given in the preface tothe first edition of the larger Logic: “Reason is negative and dialectical,in that it dissolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing;it is positive in that it produces the universal and preserves (begreift) theparticular in it. As the understanding used to be taken as something