Determinate negation: a few definitions

determinate negation

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DETERMINE, DETERMINATION, DETERMINATE,
DETERMINACY/DETERMINATENESS (bestimmen, Bestimmung, bestimmt, Bestimmtheit).

To determine something is to conceptualise, articulate, identify, particularise, specify it. Solomon
suggests that the term plays a similar role in Hegel to 'constitute' in Kant. Determination and
determinacy presuppose negation – i.e. (Inwood:) a thing is determinate only in so far as it
contrasts with other things or concepts which are determined in a way in which it is not. The
determinacy of a thing consists in its features, in the broadest possible sense.

NEGATIVE, NEGATION, NEGATIVITY, NEGATE (negativ, Negation, Negativität, negieren).

Hegel use of negation, like his use of truth, is usually remote from its familiar sense in application
to judgements or propositions: things and concepts are for Hegel negations of one another
(negativities). The negative is that which is different from, opposed to, other than. Negation is for
Hegel determinate, as determinate as what is negated, and the phrase 'determinate negation'
figures often. Hegel's thought characteristically observes the dialectical sequence: (1) affirmation,
(2) negation, (3) negation of negation = affirmation of something new. In application to
consciousness, per Pinkard, negativity refers to the capacity of consciousness to critically
undermine its own form of rationality; (determinate) negation is the skeptical undermining of a
form of rationality.

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....in constructing a "dialectic of enlightenment" the authors simultaneously aim to carry out a dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment not unlike Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Two Hegelian concepts anchor this project, namely, determinate negation and conceptual self-reflection. "Determinate negation" (bestimmte Negation) indicates that immanent criticism is the way to wrest truth from ideology. A dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment, then, "discloses each image as script. It teaches us to read from [the image's] features the admission of falseness which cancels its power and hands it over to truth" (DE 18). Beyond and through such determinate negation, a dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment also recalls the origin and goal of thought itself. Such recollection is the work of the concept as the self-reflection of thought (der Begriff als Selbstbesinnung des Denkens, DE 32). Conceptual self-reflection reveals that thought arises from the very corporeal needs and desires that get forgotten when thought becomes a mere instrument of human self-preservation. It also reveals that the goal of thought is not to continue the blind domination of nature and humans but to point toward reconciliation.







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