II. Inorganic Physics
#204.
Matter in itself holds itself apart from itself through the moment of its negativity, diversity, or abstract separation into parts; it has repulsion. Its being apart from itself is just as essential, however, because these differences are one and the same: the negative unity of this existence apart from itself as being for itself, and thus continuous. Matter therefore has attraction. The unity of these moments is gravity.
Kant has, among other things, through the attempt at a "construction" of matter in his metaphysical elements of the natural sciences, the merit of having started towards a concept of matter, after it had been attributed merely to the deadness of the understanding and its determinations had been conceived as the relations of attributes. With this attempt Kant revived the concept of the philosophy of nature, which is nothing other than the comprehension of nature or, what is the same, the knowledge of the concept in nature. But in so doing he assumed that the reflective categories of attraction and repulsion were ready-made, and further, he presupposed that the category of the reflection itself, out of which matter should emerge, is ready-made. This confusion is a necessary consequence of Kant's procedure, because the former abstract moments can not be conceptualized without their identity; moreover, because the observation of these opposing determinations suspends itself immediately in their identity, there is the danger that they will appear, like attraction, as a mere continuity. I have demonstrated in detail the confusion which dominates Kant's exposition in my system of Logic, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 119ff.
#205.
Matter, as having gravity, is only: (1) matter existing in itself, or general. But this concept must: (2) specify itself; thus it is elementary matter, and the object of elementary physics. (3) Particular matter taken together is individualized matter, and the object of physics as the actual world of the body.
print version
return to list
previous document