In presenting the section on “Ground,” I shall develop the three following points. First, I will show how on the ruins of dogmatic metaphysics after Kantian critical philosophy, Hegel rebuilds a metaphysics of being as being thought, whose corner-stone is his explanation of “ground.” Second, I will show how, with the different figures of “ground,” a totality of thought-determinations is progressively constituted. This constitution, like any process of reflection in the Doctrine of Essence, goes through a moment of dogmatic metaphysics, a moment of empiricism and critical (transcendental) philosophy, and a moment of dialectical logic. These different moments introduce a surprising degree of flexibility into the constitution of the totality. They lead us to examine the relation between ground and concept in Hegel's system. Third and finally, I propose to show how Hegel's rejection of the Kantian problem of the thing in itself is confirmed by a new definition of the “unconditioned.”

Hegel's ground and Kant's transcendental unity of apperception

It is with “ground” that Hegel leads us from his criticism of the illusory independence of the determinations of being to the exposition of the productivity proper to essence. The border between these two aspects of essence as “reflection in itself” is of course porous. Hegel's examination of identity, difference, and contradiction already showed that it is through reflection that the determinations of being are presented.