Formal necessity, as the necessity of contingency, is then the necessity that possibilities be actualised, but not the necessity that any particular possibilities rather than others be actualised. The second stage of the modal dialectic begins from the manifold content that is generated according to this necessity. Hegel's attention again turns first to the meaning of possibility. Given the existence of such a manifold content, possibility can no longer be simply the non-contradiction of something with itself. If something is really possible, as Hegel writes, it ‘must also not be self-contradictory with respect to its developed and distinct [unterschieden] circumstances and everything with which it stands connected’ (SL 548/LW 182, trans. modified). Its real possibility is then no longer in itself, as was the case with formal possibility, but is rather constituted by ‘the existing [daseiende] multiplicity of circumstances [Umstände] which are connected with it' (SL 547/LW 182).
Like the ground and the grounded in the sphere of real ground, possibility and actuality have now fallen apart from one another. Possibility is now the possibility of something else being made actual. This is true of every possibility that has been actualised, insofar as it is now a moment within a state of affairs which makes other terms possible; but it is also true of the totality of the determinations making up this state of affairs, insofar as they are in themselves the real possibility of generating a new totality of circumstances. As Hegel writes, ‘real possibility constitutes the totality of conditions, a
13 Stephen Houlgate, ‘Necessity and Contingency in Hegel’s Science of Logic’, The Owl of Minerva, 27
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dispersed actuality which is not reflected into itself but is determined as being the in-itself of an other’ (SL 547/LW 182, trans. modified). Indeed, here we see how in real possibility the sphere of actuality comes to take on its generative aspect; Hans-Peter Falk thus suggests that ‘real possibility’ could equally be termed ‘potentiality’14
We can now turn to the manner in which Hegel conceives this separation of real possibility from actuality to undo itself. As we have seen, whether something is really possible depends on the state of affairs constituted by the given multiplicity of other determinations which make up the surrounding ‘context.’ These conditions are described by Hegel as ‘diverse determinations, and […] a manifold content in general’ (SL 546/LW 181) and, as we saw above, an ‘existing [daseiende]multiplicity’(SL 547/LW 182). Now to the extent that these conditions remain diverse, then precisely what they make possible remains external to them: in other words, what will be actualised remains contingent. Nevertheless, at this point Hegel refers back to the argument from the dialectic of identity and difference that diversity sublates itself into opposition, though without demonstrating its validity in the context of modality. ‘Manifold existence, Hegel writes, ‘is in its own self, this, to sublate itself and fall to the ground’ (SL 548/LW 183). Yet Hegel appears to explain what is meant here also by repeating, almost word for word, the claim made at the end of the dialectic of ground: ‘When all the conditions of a Sache are completely present [vollständig vorhanden sind], it enters into actuality‘ (SL 548/LW 183). Hegel’s claim can therefore be taken to be that the more something comes to be really
possible rather than possible in only an empty, formal sense, the more it comes to be actual, and thus proves to be necessary. As John Burbidge interprets Hegel’s point, 'On the one hand, a set of conditions are not the real possibility of a thing unless all the
14 Hans-Peter Falk, Das Wissen in Hegels ‘Wissenschaft der Logik’ (Freiburg: K. Alber Verlag, 1983), p.
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conditions are present. On the other hand, when all the conditions are present, the thing is no longer simply possible, but actual.’15 Just as in the case of formal necessity, it is then through the sublation of the difference between possibility and actuality that real necessity arises. Simply put, if whatever is really possible is actual, then what is really possible is necessary: it could not be otherwise. ‘Under these conditions and circumstances,’ Hegel writes, ‘nothing else can follow’ (SL 549/LW 184, trans. modified). For Hegel, this again does not mean there is now only actuality, but rather that there is no longer a separation between what is possible and what is actual, no longer a leap from the one to the other, for each is in itself the other. The transition from possibility to actuality is thus 'not a transition, but a going-together-with-itself' which in its self-sublation brings forth 'the same moments which were already there' (SL 548/LW 183). Likewise, in sublating itself, the immediate existence of actuality makes itself into the 'in itself [i.e. the possibility] which it already is' (SL 549/LW 184). As di Giovanni writes, then, ‘the one significant reality is the emergence of an event as process.’16 Di Giovanni is right to refer to a process here, and thus to a certain development, but we also need to note that this development is at the same time always already cancelled as such, for it always already will have occurred. Here we can see, then, just how much the remainder, or the delay between positing and presupposing, has been reduced at this point in the logic of essence.
Though this transition appears to be straightforward, we might raise the same objection to it as we did to the transition to the Sache in the sphere of ground, namely that Hegel
15
John W. Burbidge, ‘The Necessity of Contingency’, in Art and Logic in Hegel’s Philosophy, ed. by Warren E. Steinkraus and Kenneth L. Schmitz (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980), p. 208. 16 Di Giovanni, p. 190.
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cannot show in an immanent manner that a remainder of exteriority should not persist between possibility that actuality, and therefore that a degree of contingency or indeterminacy as to what may be actualised does not remain. Now in raising this objection, it is important to make clear what does the real work in Hegel’s argument. Although aspects of Hegel’s presentation suggest otherwise, the transition to necessity is not brought about through the ‘external completeness’ of the conditions. Real necessity is the notion that something in particular, i.e. something determinate, is contained within and must follow from a given state of affairs. This form of necessity cannot then be reached simply through the external coming together of a number of conditions. For if these conditions remained merely diverse over against one another, then as was the case in ground, they would not be in themselves the conditions of one particular thing rather than another. There would then need to be another condition which makes these conditions the condition of possibility of something in particular, rather than of anything else, and so on ad infinitum.
In truth, the transition to real necessity takes place, then, not when a new condition comes to be added to the existing set of conditions, but rather when the conditions that are already there prove not to be simply diverse but rather to relate to one another in such a way that they form one coherent whole. Only in this way do they contain in themselves, and thus by themselves make necessary, something in particular. As we saw di Giovanni note, the actualisation then becomes a wholly immanent process of development, a movement, we might say, of the self to itself, rather than a leap from one moment to the next. And as Hegel himself states of actuality: ‘when its immediate existence, the circle of conditions, sublates itself, it makes itself into that in-itself which it already is’ (SL 549/LW 184).
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Once again, however, this complete coherence of the conditions cannot be immanently justified, but is made seemingly plausible through Hegel’s presentation of this transition as a moment within an all-or-nothing dialectical movement, as well as his appeal to a ‘self-evident’ notion of external completeness (i.e. ‘when all the conditions are completely present…’) which does not do the real work of his argument. If a remainder were then to persist here between the conditions, their complete unity would not be attained and precisely what they give rise to would remain indeterminate. In chapter 6, I shall pursue this point through Derrida’s critique of the notion of necessity in Hegel’s ‘system’ more generally.