Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 32
Hegel Tests His Own Structure
A finding that holds for organic life as a whole: Hegel applies his own criterion of stages and finds that the three life-processes are not developed to the same degree everywhere. In the plant they coincide — in shaping itself, it simultaneously multiplies the individual. “In the plant these three processes of the one life-process are of a simple nature,” and “the subjective One is submerged in quality.”[1]
This is not a deficiency in the theory but its application: the question is not merely whether the moments are present, but whether they are distinguished from one another.
V. What Remains
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Natur, on § 267: GW 24.1. ↩︎