Science of Logic

In the Concept, therefore, the realm of freedom has opened up. The Concept is that which is free, because the identity that exists in and for itself—which constitutes the necessity of substance—is at the same time sublated sublation (Aufhebung): a core Hegelian concept where something is overcome or cancelled, yet its essential elements are preserved and raised to a higher level, or exists as positedness positedness (Gesetztseyn): a state where a thing does not exist on its own but is shown to be dependent on or established by something else. This positedness, by relating to itself, is that very same identity. The darkness that substances in a causal relationship have for one another has vanished; for the original independence of their self-subsistence has passed over into positedness, and has thereby become a clarity that is transparent to itself. The original thing is this, in that it is only the cause of itself original Latin: "causa sui." Hegel is referencing Spinoza’s definition of substance, but arguing that only the Concept truly fulfills this by being self-determining., and this is substance liberated into the Concept.

From this, the following closer determination of the Concept immediately follows. Because being-in-and-for-itself is immediately a positedness, the Concept, in its simple relation to itself, is absolute determinateness; yet this determinateness, precisely by relating only to itself, is immediately a simple identity. But this relation of determinateness to itself, as its merging with itself, is just as much the negation of determinateness, and the Concept, as this equality with itself, is the Universal. But this identity possesses just as much the character of negativity; it is the negation or determinateness that relates to itself, and thus the Concept is the Individual. Each of them is the totality; each contains the determination of the other within itself. Therefore, these totalities are just as absolutely only One, as this unity is the diremption diremption: a forceful dividing or tearing apart of a unity into two distinct parts of itself into the free appearance of this duality—a duality which appears as a complete opposition in the difference between the Individual and the Universal; but this is so much an appearance that, as the one is grasped...