“ When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest indeterminateness ”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Science of Logic (1816). copy citation
Author | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
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Source | Science of Logic |
Topic | beginning thought |
Date | 1816 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by William Wallace |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55108/55108-h/55108-h.htm |
Context
“Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection, we get a more immediate or unreflected statement of the same thing, when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the principium of being in all existence.
(1) When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest indeterminateness: for we cannot determine unless there is both one and another; and in the beginning there is yet no other. The indeterminate, as we here have it, is the blank we begin with, not a featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all character, but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite character and is the very first of all.”
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