Force and Understanding: The Truth Behind Science, Mathematics, and Metaphysics

Understanding

Introduction

Out of all the preceding shapes of consciousness, understanding is the most abstract, since we are no longer dealing with things that we can sense with our senses as did perception, nor are we dealing with pure sensation as we did with sense-certainty. Consciousness as understanding begins with its object being an unconditioned universal. For the first time, its object is not dependent on what it can sense, but rather is a product of its development. If you understood well enough the first two movements enough, then you have a sense of the kind of object the understanding has before it. It is an object which it describes in terms of pure relations and pure essences. This in effect is what all thought is. All thought, from sensing to perceiving, is a making of distinctions and begins with taking in information through the senses. But once you begin to engage in understanding, you are engaging in the sport of making relations, and evaluating the essence of things.

Consciousness stands opposed to the unconditioned universal, and relates to it by understanding it. Still, we need to develop some sort of idea of where we are going. In doing so, we can justify to ourselves why it is that consciousness does the moves that it does. Consciousness has construed an object for itself, and will assume three new sub-shapes, which is dependent on how exactly consciousness relates to, i.e. understands, the object. These new sub-shapes are weirder than the first six. In essence, each three arise in a way that is similar to how the first three arose for sense-certainty, and how the first three arose for perception. The first sub-shape is merely given to understanding, as it was for sense-certainty and perception. The understanding (standing under what is given) evaluates the object as object. It makes no attempt to intervene on the object and keeps the object away from itself. Consciousness is consciousness so long as it is distinct from its object. This evaluation will reveal that its object has tensions and contradictions. As we will see, the understanding finds that it is talking in circles, just as perception found.

The understanding will find that it cannot maintain its object, which this time is an unconditioned universal that it can verify with its senses, and it is in danger of having its object evaporate into an empty abstraction. Its object would be in danger of not being real, and therefore a waste of time. The stakes are higher than they may seem, since we must recall that the understanding considers this object to be its absolute standard of truth. So the understanding will find a new way to relate to its object by including itself in its evaluation in the object, just as in the second sub-shape of sense-certainty and perception. Like the second sub-shape of perception, it will develop and evaluate its object by taking itself into account, and it will end up developing a world that is more detailed and embellished than the first world which perception only caught a glimpse, yet could not understand. The whole movement of perception in its second sub-shape is a copy of the shape of its universe, its cosmos, a mobius strip. The understanding will develop a more detailed rendition of that same cosmos.

Consciousness will discover that there are tensions in the second sub-shape of the understanding that cannot be resolved unless it assumes yet another subshape. Like the third sub-shapes of sense-certainty and perception, the third sub-shape of the understanding is a combination of the first-two sub-shapes. This third sub-shape is a synergization of the first two, and the understanding must resort to using even more precise terminology that captures the essence of what has been going on in the first two sub-shapes. It will discover that this new sub-shape has its own tensions; due to the nature of its new terminology, it realizes that it cannot avoid these tensions unless it engages in one drastic move.

Ya, it's spectacular.

Consciousness must identify with its object. It will realize that when it thought that it was be relating to an object that was distinct from itself, what was actually happening all along was that consciousness was relating to itself. In knowing the object, consciousness will come to know more about itself. Its knowledge of otherness will reveal itself  to be self-knowledge. The path to absolute knowing reveals itself to be the path towards true self-knowledge. Knowing who you truly are. This move is the first monumental instance in the phenomenology of spirit, and marks the transition point between consciousness and self-consciousness. The phenomenology, after this chapter, is no longer an extremely dense and complicated philosophico-scientific-mathematical treatise, but a political treatise.

It is for this reason that Hegel chose to present the first three shapes of consciousness in the form of a story. In the subsequent sections, it will read as if we are in a story, or watching a movie, in which self-consciousness becomes a protagonist. The antagonist is the insecurities of self-consciousness itself. The tensions that arise in the object here translate to tensions for self-consciousness, which people commonly refer to as "insecurities". Let us not, however, get too far ahead of ourselves. We still have to go through the process that the understanding undergoes.

Sub-shape 1: Force, Energy, Strength, Power

Perception ended with describing the thing and many properties in terms of self-relatedness and relatedness-to-others, being-for-self and being-for-another. It was able to use these terms because of its previous experience of the whole of its two sub-shapes. It could not fully grasp what it had gone through and caught a glimpse of as a whole, only instances of it, yet as a whole perception had an instinctive (not intellectual) grasp of it. The nature of the terms being-for-self and being-for-another are more general than oneness and diversity, which was supposed to describe the character of the exclusive oneness of a thing and the diversity of the many properties of a thing. The terms were adequate for describing the thing, but they implicitly also pointed to something that was beyond the thing and its many properties. Not being able to grasp the whole movement of its first to sub-shapes perceptually (you cannot literally see the whole movement like you can see things), perception could only describe the thing and its many properties with these new terms. Insodoing, and in response to the contradictions and tensions involved in the perceiving of a thing and its many properties, it deduced that two separate things exist which had two distinct essences.

One thing was essentially being-for-self, while the other was essentially being-for-another. After thinking deeper into what that actually means, perception realized that a thing was being-for-self essentially, yet it could not avoid relating to another due to its being a distinct thing. So it was being-for-another as well, albeit, unessentially. The other thing was essentially being-for-another, but again it was realized that unessentially, it was being-for-self. Be that as it may, when perception takes notice of the unessential aspect of being-for-self or being-for-another, it becomes essential; and what was previously essential becomes for perception unessential. A sort of inversion, an exchange of essentiality occurs between the two things. Perception abandons the thought that these two things are distinct, since really it is dealing with the oneness and diversity of thinghood using more precise terminology. Regardless, this is the nature of what has come to be the unconditioned universal for the understanding.

For every action there's an opposite and equal reaction, Newton's 3rd law of motion. Also karma.

The understanding will refer to the unconditioned universal as "force". However, take note that Hegel used to the German word "Kraft", which has been translated by English speakers as "force". Kraft is a preposition that is used when something is attributed to something else. The being-for-self of a thing is attributed to its being-for-another. The self-relatedness of a thing is attributed to its relating-to-otherness; in other words, the distinctiveness of a thing is attributed to a thing by dint of, or on the strength of, another thing. A thing is distinctive only because there are other things. Kraft also refers to strength, power, or energy; it is also used in physics to refer to Newtonian forces. Hegel chose his word carefully, for all these terms refer to things that involve the type of thing that is going on in the unconditioned universal of the understanding. One needs energy for strength and in order to exert force on things. Power is defined as the capacity to exert force, and the strong are powerful. Further the strong and powerful are distinctive individuals. The way that we use those words involve a sort of movement that has hitherto been described.

The force of the understanding has a dual-shape. Consciousness will describe things in terms of forces, yet its manner of using force is distinct from how modern day physicists describe force. A modern day physicist would say that a thing is affected by forces. The understanding says that things are forces. It is not only referring to things, but relations and essences also; these entities are sort of beyond sensuous things, and are more appropriately characterized as intelligible things. The exclusive oneness of a thing is no longer adequate in defining what a thing is, and it is no longer a bare self-relating, being-for-self. The unity of a thing is now force proper, or genuine force. The diversity of the many properties of a thing is no longer an adequate term, nor is the bare relating-to-otherness, being-for-another. The diversity of a thing's properties is now the expression of force.

The object of the understanding has this dual character of being expressed as the expression of force, and withdrawn into itself as force proper. These two aspects are distinct and independent, and consciousness must hold them apart as distinct essences in order for force to be force at all. If they are not distinct, force as it has been construed exists only in thought, within the activity of the understanding itself; it is not situated in real space and time. The understanding has to be sure that force as it just has been construed is not mere wordplay.

Before, the thing and its many properties was indifferent to the wordplay of perception in its activity of perceiving it. Now the understanding has come across the necessity of force; this is to say that the understanding needs force to be situated in time and space completely free from the activity of understanding. Real force must correspond to how it has been construed, since the understanding has a sense of its only dealing with pure relations and essences, which are only intelligible things, not sensible things. Intelligible things, for the understanding, are real; so intelligible force must correspond to real force. In order to prove to itself that they are real, they must be found outside of thought in real space and time. Only by doing so can it be sure that it is describing the real as it truly is. It wants to be sure that it has knowledge, true understanding. Thus, force is taken to be something more than mere wordplay, as the unconditioned universal was taken to be, and rather objective knowledge. The concept of force is supposed to allow the understanding to give an objective account of the inner (unperceived) being of things.

The understanding will think about what force actually is in order to see if it could possibly be real. It can only be real if it has no tensions, and on its own makes its own reality necessary. We know so far that force proper is distinct and independent from force expressed. Yet we know more than this, since force proper refers to oneness and being-for-self. In order for one thing to be determinate, it must express itself as many properties; and in order for being-for-self to be distinctive, it must relate to others, so being-for-itself contains being-for-another within itself. Thus, force proper must express itself as force expressed. Force proper vanishes as the essential moment and is replaced by force expressed as the essential. Force proper has gone from being a real moment to being something that vanishes, an empty afterthought.

On the other hand, we know that the many properties of a thing can only be properties insofar as they belong to the unity of one thing. We also know that being-for-another is being-for-another, so it contains self-relation, being-for-self, as the unessential moment. Thus, the expression of force must withdraw into the unity and self-relatedness of force proper. The expression of force vanishes as the essential moment and is replaced by force proper as the essential. The expression of force has gone from being a real moment to being something that vanishes; another empty afterthought. Yet it also has actuality. It cannot be both an empty thought and an actually existing thing, because a thought that is about an actually existing thing is not empty. There is tension and contradiction in this notion of force.

The understanding resorts to positing the existence of at least two forces, just like it posited the existence of at least two things in perception. One force is force proper, and the other is force expressed. They stand opposed as distinct and independent forces. The moments of force, its expression and withdrawal into itself, are still opposed as distinct and independent forces; yet they no longer inhere in a single force, but two forces. Recall that the being-for-another of the second thing caused the being-for-self of the first thing to contain within itself being-for-another, since the first must relate to the second in order to be self-relating at all, distinctive. Thus, force expressed causes or solicits force proper to express itself. Force proper contains the expression of force latently within it, so it is able to bring about its expression. Force proper is solicited to express itself. It is now force expressed. This is the effect.

Karma

Simultaneously, force expressed stands opposed to and independent from force proper. Recall that being-for-another, in relating to being-for-self, must preserve its distinctiveness from being-for-self. So being-for-another is self-relating, and so contains being-for-self. Thus, force proper causes force expressed to withdraw into itself. Since force expressed contains within itself the potential to withdraw into itself, it does so. Force expressed is solicited to withdraw into itself. It is now force proper. This is the effect.

We have deduced the phenomenon of cause and effect. Understanding has grasped their notion. This will be important for the subsequent shapes. Besides that, notice what has occurred. In the first instance, force proper was solicited to express itself. Force expressed was in that instance the soliciting force. Yet, in the second instance, force expressed was solicited to withdraw into itself. Force proper was in that instance the soliciting force. But those could have been the same instant. There is nothing to say that they had to be different. Thus, force proper is solicited in the first instance, and soliciting in the second instance. Similarly, force expressed is soliciting in the second instance, and solicited in the first. Both force proper and force expressed turn out to be both soliciting force and solicited force. They are the cause of each other, as well as their effect.

Both these two forces have the exact same character, they can either express themselves or withdraw into themselves. Hegel refers to character as the content of force. These two forces have identical ways of acting. They are both causes or soliciting forces. These two forces also have identical ways of being acted upon. They are both effects or solicited forces. Hegel refers to these ways of acting and being acted upon as the form of force. These two forces stand in an opposed, distinct, and reciprocal relationship. The one force stands as withdrawn into itself, the other as expressed. One force solicits the other to turn into its opposite, and the other does the same. One force having been solicited, stands opposed to the other, it too having been solicited; the solicited force solicits the other and the movement begins anew. This dance, or this play of forces, is ongoing. It goes on and on till infinity without rest. We have deduced all three of Newton's laws of motion.

Newton's 1st law of motion and his 2nd law appear here.

In this movement each force becomes the other. They exchange essences, qualities, quantities, etc. This, for example, is what occurs when two bodies of the same mass collide and move in opposite directions after having collided. They exchange velocities; the velocity of the first becomes the velocity of the second, and the velocity of the second becomes the velocity of the first. If those two bodies have the same mass, they also exchange their kinetic energies, as well as their momentum. Digression aside, in terms of content, we see that these two forces are not distinct per se. In terms of form, we see that these two forces are not distinct per se either. Intellectually, there is no difference between the two. But in reality, that difference is real. Force does correspond to something in real space and time.

But force can only correspond to something in real space and time only if it is situated there as a pair of forces. It is for this reason that there must always exist positive and negative electric charges, protons and electrons, north and south magnetic poles, matter and antimatter, etc., in real space and time. The forces of the understanding, however, transmit themselves into each other, as we have seen. The key point to take home here is that each force only exists because of the other, and not of its own account. Forces exist in real space and time. But their only reason for being is to vanish and to bring about new forces. Forces cause other forces to come into being, and while the new remain the old vanish. The new forces cause newer forces to come into being, and themselves vanish. This process is repeated ad infinitum.

Yet since real existing force must essentially vanish, in vanishing, force loses its reality. Here the understanding has grasped the notion of force in such a way that it corresponds to force in actuality, but it cannot maintain force as its object. Its object is the Absolute True. It cannot vanish, nor lose its reality like force does. Having found out what force is in truth, the understanding has failed to discover the True as such. The relation between the understanding and force has fundamentally changed. This means that the understanding has assumed a new sub-shape.

Subshape 2: The Inner Realm, the Supersensible Beyond, and Law

Henceforth, the understanding will recognize force only as a vanishing process. In real space and time, there must exist at least two forces. There cannot exist only one. But if there is not just one, there must exist many forces. Indeed, this is exactly the case. Not only do there exist only two forces in real space and time, but a multiplicity of forces. Indeed, if they could be counted, one would find that there is an even number of them, since they can only appear in pairs. Everything comes in pairs which are reciprocally related. These forces interact with each other and exist because of each other. In addition to space, we have deduced the fundamental forces of nature which make the existence of matter logically necessary, not an accident, as many of our modern day scientists and lovers of science claim it to be. The interaction of the forces has the same nature as developed and discussed by the understanding's conception of force.

These play of forces in their entirety constitute the totality of real space and time, which the understanding refers to as the world of appearance, which has the shape which perception discovered in its second sub-shape. The understanding is situated in the world of appearance and has undergone the entirety of its development therein. The unconditioned universal, which was purified into the understanding's notion forces, was derived from the sensuous universals thanks to perceptions' capacity to sense in the world of appearance. For the first time, the understanding is able to see through the play of forces into the real true inner of things. Perception cannot perceive the true inner of things because these things are only intelligible essences, not sensuous universals. Only the understanding has the tools to understand what lies behind the show of appearances.

When scientists, mathematicians, or philosophers claim to do this, they are not daydreaming.

On one side stands the understanding, and on the opposite side, stands the true inner being of things. These two sides are opposed to one another. The understanding itself is not the true inner being of things, nor is the true inner being of things the understanding. The understanding is able to grasp the true inner being of things by seeing through the play of forces, the world of appearances. This means that with its notion of force, which corresponds perfectly to real forces in the world of appearances, the understanding is able to get at the true inner being of things. The understanding considers the world of appearances to be a world where things continually vanish, and it is a place where it deceives its senses. This is precisely the attitude that ancient philosophers had. The true inner being of things, the true world, is beyond the appearances. And since this beyond is not accessible to the senses of the understanding, neither to its perceiving or its sensing, it is a supersensible beyond.

The supersensible beyond is accessible to the understanding only as an intelligible world. A world that can be known, yet never experienced. This world is still for the understanding empty. Namely, it has no content. The inner world is the object, the true, the absolute standard of the understanding, and the understanding compares itself against it. It finds that this world is as empty as the activity of understanding itself, yet it does not grasp that this is no coincidence. The understanding still has the notion of force which it developed from thinking through the world of appearances. Having thought through it, the understanding came to see through it.

Since force is intelligible, and not sensible, the understanding considers its notion of force to reside in the supersensible beyond. It is almost as if forces solicited consciousness to develop a notion of force. Force has both content and form. Its content refers to force proper and force expressed, which appear as two distinct forces in the world of appearances. Force proper becomes force expressed, and force expressed becomes force proper. This is so because of the form of force, soliciting force and solicited force, cause and effect. Force proper is solicited to express itself by force expressed, and force expressed is solicited to withdraw into itself by force proper, as we have already seen in more detail. The distinction between the two aspects of the content of force need only be maintained in the world of appearances, for the sake of their reality. In thought, force proper becomes force expressed, and vice versa, as immediately as every Now becomes not-Now. There is a kind of difference between the two aspects of the content of force. Similarly, there is also a difference between the two aspects of the form of force, soliciting force and solicited force. Soliciting force solicits the solicited force to solicit soliciting force. But the solicited force solicited soliciting force to solicit solicited force. Every cause is an effect, and every effect is a cause. There is a kind of difference between the two aspects of the form of force.

These two kinds of difference, one in content the other in form, are the same kind of difference. They are difference per se, or universal difference. This universal difference is the simple element that truly abides in the play of forces, regardless of the dizzying movement, the appearing and vanishing, that each of the two forces undergo. The presence of difference in the play of forces is the law of force. The law of force dictates: there exists difference in the play of forces. In the world of appearances, since it is composed of forces, there is always difference, flux, change. This law is always valid. It is inert and stable, never vanishing, becoming valid in one instance and invalid in another. This law too resides in the supersensible beyond.

The supersensible beyond is the eternal and abiding inert realm of laws. The true inner being of things can be accounted for by law of force. The world of appearances is a world in continuous flux undergoing continuous change, this appearing in appearances and then vanishing. Beyond the world of appearance stands the supersensible inert realm of laws that account for the changes in the world of appearance.

The law of force fills the supersensible beyond and makes it non-empty; law is the content of the other world beyond. This law is the new object of the understanding, its standard of truth. Thus, the understanding will model itself against law, and make itself lawful. However, a problem arises for the understanding. While the law serves as the content for the supersensible beyond, and the law is able to accurately account for the true aspects behind what occurs in the world of appearances, the law itself has no content. There is nothing in the sensible world of appearances that corresponds to law, as there was for force. Difference by itself, which is the only relation that law captures, does not point to any particular phenomenon. Also the world of appearances is in continuous flux. The configuration of force and how they appear is always changing; the situation changes. There are a multitude of situations. There cannot only be one law to account for all these.

This defect in law is present in the supersensible beyond itself. Law as law has to be distinctive. A singular law is a self-relation, being-for-self. That self-relation must give way to related-to-otherness, being-for-another. But for anything to be related to another, there must be another. Thus, there must exist indefinitely many inert, stable laws, in the supersensible beyond. This is the kind of phenomenon is occurring in the Platonic realism of Plato's Theory of the Forms, the development of mathematical models, many of which are claimed to be real, and refer to real things. Some mathematicians have even claimed to be Platonic. This phenomenon is most well-known as the collection of the laws of physics, which are supposed to give precise, quantitative, accounts of physical processes; physicists, however, do not claim that these laws "exist" in the same way as gravity does.

Humanity's technological achievements can attribute its success to the this inert realm of laws, the supersensible beyond, being something objective. The understanding itself stands opposed to the inert realm of laws, as we have already stated. This plurality of laws, however, is a defect. The supersensible beyond is supposed to be the singular and unified account for the true inner (unperceivable) being of things. The plurality of laws does violence to the unity of the supersensible beyond.

Violence. Artist's rendition.

What we really have is tension in the supersensible beyond. The understanding attempts to alleviate this tension by combining a multiplicity of laws into a singular law. For example, Newton combined the law of gravity with laws of motion into the Universal Law of Gravitation. Coulomb combined the law of electric charges (opposite charges attract, like charges repel) with the laws of motion into Coulomb's Law. Both the Universal Law of Gravitation and Coulomb's Law involve the inverse square law, which was not present in the law of gravity or in the law of motion, or in the law of electric charges. When combining laws together into a singular law, we lose the character of both component laws, and gain something new in the new law.

All of physics is an unconscious exercise of relieving the tension in the supersensible beyond. It is not only a bare exercise in collecting data. The same goes for chemistry, biology, and all the other natural sciences, so far as they are capable. Einstein himself endeavored to find the universal "Theory of everything". As we have seen in the paragraph above, such an endeavor is doomed failure. The theory would explain everything, but end up explaining nothing. Specifically, it would say that there is difference in the play of forces, the world of appearances, or something of that kind. But this is the same bare notion of law we started: there exists difference in the play of forces. The understanding, having unified all the laws into a singular simple law, finds that same singular simple law it started with.

This theory of everything is not arrived at from dissolving the differences in the play of forces, but in dissolving the differences in laws turns out to be only a notion of law, which is something distinct from true laws. At the very least, the notion of law shows that there is an inherent unity present between the multiplicity of laws in the supersensible beyond. The notion of law succeeds in showing the necessity of law. But look again at what has just occurred. A singular law become many, and the many reverted back to singularity. This is the exact same type of movement that was present in force. Now it is found in the supersensible beyond. Since there are a multiplicity of laws, there must be at least two, so just like the duality of force made it real, the duality of law makes it real. Laws show up in pairs, speaking of opposites, related as positive and negative.

That movement of law is not self-propelled, however. It requires the activity of the understanding to help it along. Nevertheless, the same kind of thing happens in both law and force. Therefore, there must be something that connects laws and forces. The content of law, therefore, must be force. The understanding must now make this connect and find that "thing" that makes the connection between laws and forces. In the process of development, the understanding has derived law from force. Now, it must derive force from law, and close the circle. If it is able to successfully do so, it will be successful in proving once and for all that law is the Absolute true.

Not as smrt as it is given credit for.

A difficulty arises. Laws as law contain no traces of their development. The law that accounts for velocity, for example. It involves a change in displacement, i.e. a change in space, as well as a change in time. This particular law divides itself into notions of space and time. But there is nothing about these notions that suggests that space and time are related. The only thing that relates these notions is the law itself. Further, there is nothing to suggest that space and time are opposed as opposites, like positive and negative. If it could do this, we could then say that these opposites must give way to their being related, being-for-another. But their being-for-another necessitates their being-for-self; they have a common origin as a One. The law of velocity cannot by itself express the origin of the notions of space and time as a singular unity. Thus the law of velocity cannot express the necessity of combining notions of space and time in this way. We cannot look at the letter v by itself, and say, "v means dx/dt." We need to observe real forces to make that connection. Force as a phenomenon is indifferent from law. Force cannot be logically derived in thought from law in the same way that law could be logically derived from force.

When the understanding tries to explain something about the world of appearance, a play of forces via explanation, all it ends up doing is engaging in rhetorical tautology. In engaging in explanation, the understanding only makes itself appear to get to the truth of things, but all  it is really doing is engaging in wordplay, almost admiring itself and its intelligence. If one were to ask it, "What is velocity?" The understanding would respond, "the speed of something in a given direction." And we would ask, "And what is speed?" It would respond, "Speed is the rate at which an object changes its position in space over a change in time." We would say, "So velocity is the rate at which an object changes its position in space over a change in time in a given direction." It would respond, "Yes." And we would ask, "What is the rate at which an object changes its position in space over a change in time in a given direction?" The understanding would respond, "Velocity." We are led in a circle. Velocity is velocity. This is the nature of explanation. While it purports to explain something, and reveal the truth of things, all it really does is provide a clarification of the terms it is using. Explanation by itself gives rise to nothing new in real space and time. It is merely a movement within the understanding itself.

In explaining, the understanding clings to the inert and stable character of law. Seeing this problem from another angle, we must ask how it is that laws are supposed to account for forces that operate in the world of appearance. Laws are in themselves inert, stable, and unchanging. The world of appearances is in itself flux, continuous change, alteration. Law is only related to force by the activity of the understanding, not by anything inherent in the notion of law. Force is a self-propelling wheel, law is not. Force has shown itself to be independent of the activity the understanding, law has not. How can it be that is inherently inert, stable, and unchanging accounts for something that is in flux, unstable, and changing? This is another tension and contradiction that is present in law that cannot allow it to be the Absolute true of the understanding. The tensions and contradictions that plagued the thing is present in law.

Through the nature of explanation itself, however, the understanding has a way to relieve the tension presented in the above paragraph. A law is expressed by the understanding as an explanation. Law is the expression of distinction, which is inherent in the play of forces. Regarding this distinction itself, it is really no distinction. In other words, the law does not become divided when it explains distinction. It remains united as a single inert law.  A law expresses distinction and diversity , but just as soon as it is expressed, it withdraws into itself, and remains self-same. Just as soon as it becomes self-same, the law expresses distinction; it only need be uttered. It is as if laws sit there in the supersensible beyond, just waiting to be uttered. This is the same kind of movement that we see in force. The law operates like this. The understanding, just as it did to discover the law (of force), now has discovered the law of law, i.e. the law of distinction.

The law of distinction declares: like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like. It is here that the understanding, in having found this law, no longer has the law as its object, but a law of law. Therefore, in virtue of having a new object, yet still being distinct from it, consciousness as understanding assumes a new subshape.

Subshape 3: The Second Supersensible Beyond, the Inverted World, and Infinity

Law as it first appeared, due to it being inert and stable, dwelled in the supersensible beyond. It captured the true inner being of the appearances. Now, a new law has been developed, a law of laws. This law of laws is the law of the supersensible, and dwells in a realm beyond the supersensible beyond.

The law has gone Super Saiyan 2.

This new law is distinct from the original. The original law declared: there exists difference in the play of forces. The new law declares: like become unlike, and unlike becomes like. They are both laws, but they are different. One was derived only by elaborating on what it means for something to be a law. So the second law was logically deduced from the first. In the very constitution of law, we say that law too obeys the second law, like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like. Even the second law obeys the second law. The second law is law, yet it expresses difference, thus it obeys the first law. The second law began with obeying the second law, but now it obeys the first law, and in doing so it obeys itself: like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like. Law commands as well as obeys.

This second law has shown that law contains within its own essence flux, change, and alteration. This is so because we derived the second law from the first. But law was supposed to be something that is stable, inert, and without alteration. The second law is an inversion of the first, and could be said the the inverted law. The beyond which is beyond the supersensible beyond is itself supersensible. We cannot sense this beyond the beyond. Therefore, it is a second supersensible beyond, and it is distinct from the first. It stands opposed to the first as distinct and independent. The understanding has seen through the play of forces to discover the first supersensible beyond, and it seen through the play of laws to discover the second supersensible beyond, which stands opposed to the activity of the understanding. Since this second supersensible beyond contains within itself the inverted law, it is the inverted world.

The Inverted Earth.

The inverted world contains the principle of change and alteration that was missing in the first supersensible beyond. The self-same repels itself from itself, and what is repelled is essentially self-attractive. The inverted law is the content of the inverted world, and in order for the inverted law to be distinct, there must be a multiplicity of inverted laws. And this is okay, since the self-same inverted law has repelled itself from itself, and produced other inverted laws. Since those inverted laws have arisen from self-repulsion, they are essentially self-attractive, and obey a single inverted law. No violence is done to the single inverted law if they are many. Likewise, the inverted law in one fell swoop relieves the tension inherent in the law of force, force, and thinghood. All these have been revealed to obey the inverted law.

But if the inverted law to be a law, it must have content. It must relate to some kind of phenomenon. This content is the inverted force and the inverted thing, which exist in an inverted reality of inverted space and inverted time. Inverted reality is still reality. In this inverted reality, sweet is sour, and hot is cold. Crimes are rewarded, and good deeds are punished. Ignorance is knowledge, and knowledge is ignorance. The inverted law is able to account for the alteration, flux, and continuous change of the first world of appearances without introducing any tension between the nature of what the law expresses and the law itself. The inverted law is also able to account for the inert stability of the first supersensible beyond.

The inverted law is different from law. But the inverted law is still law, so the inverted law is law. The inverted world is a supersensible beyond beyond the supersensible beyond. But the inverted world is nevertheless a supersensible beyond. By having experienced the inverted world, the understanding has discovered the true inner being of difference. It is self-sustaining, and there is no need to produce any more worlds to account for this inner being of difference. Difference justifies itself. The understanding has discovered difference as an infinity.

The inverted law, as well as the first law, are in their true essence an expression of infinity. Infinity is the source of all being, and the essence of life, i.e. the Dharma, the Good, etc. It is self-same, yet expresses difference. It is eternally in motion, yet at rest. Its omnipresence is never disturbed nor interrupted by any difference, for it is difference, and in being difference it is a unity. It is just as much unity as it is difference. It is pure being-for-self that contains within itself being-for-another, so in-as-much as it is being-for-self it is being-for-another; and just as much as it is being-for-another, it is being-for-self. The movement of force is an expression of infinity. The movement of force is modelled on infinity. The movement of law is modelled on infinity as well. Infinity serves as the ground that connects law with law, law with force, force with thinghood, thinghood with sense, to infinity. This is a different kind of infinity than the type that is described by mathematicians. This infinity is not simply, that which is not finite, but rather contains the finite within it. Further the finite in its own right contains infinity within it. Infinity is self-sustaining, and it abides eternally through self-reproduction.

The inverted law is a more faithful expression of the inner truth behind difference, infinity. In accounting for the inner truth of appearances, we say that it is change. As Heraclitus declared, all is flux, nothing stays still. Only infinity stands still, but insofar as it stands still, it is in flux. The understanding has placed the inverted world as an extreme beyond itself. By extension, infinity, stands opposed to the understanding as an object. The understanding is an object distinct and independent from infinity. The understanding is a self-relation that relates to infinity. But insofar as it relates, it contains being-for-another within itself. The understanding begins to recognize that it too obeys the inverted law: like becomes unlike, unlike becomes like. Self-same repels itself from itself, and that which self-repelled is essentially self-attractive. When consciousness thinks of itself, it discovers, it repels itself from itself, and makes itself into its own object. But in doing so, it remains a unity, for insofar as it is an object-for-itself, it remains for itself.

The understanding proclaims to itself, "I make myself an other for myself; I differentiate myself from myself. But insofar as I differentiate myself from myself, I am myself." Further, the relation between the understanding itself and infinity as purely unadulterated distinct entities cannot be maintained without introducing contradiction and tension.

This was bound to happen.

The understanding realizes that it contains within itself the inner difference that was present in infinity as object. Infinity, it realizes, is not only object. It is subject. Not only does infinity stand above the world of appearances, but also below. The understanding stands below the world of appearances as well. The understanding is not only an expression of infinity, but infinity is an expression of the understanding. More generally, consciousness is not only an expression of infinity, but infinity is an expression of consciousness. The distinction between consciousness and infinity cannot be maintained. Consciousness is infinity, and infinity is consciousness. Infinity is both subject and substance, and further, it is the source and unifying ground of subject and substance.

Having discovered this, consciousness no longer has infinity, expressed in its purity by the inverted law, opposed to it as its object. It recognizes that infinity is consciousness itself, and is hence self-recognizing. Thus consciousness, as understanding, an intelligence, has attained a new shape. It is no longer merely an intelligence. It is self-consciousness.