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That which we call the actually existing world must be a world in which things interact; we can think the form of reality as this interdependence of things, which is to say that we can think it as the result of their interactions.  But to say that a thing acts must be to say that it negates itself, so that things as such must disappear.  We can think the formation of a world by the interaction of things as an affirmation of things qua constituents of that world.  For example, to say that things interact within space must be to say that things are spatial.  If we think something like physical space at the limit of that interaction, then we can also think physical force as the basis of the transformation of spatial things.  But when we think things exclusively as parts of a totality, we find that the acting thing disappears, action ceases, and reality vanishes.  The actually existing world must in all respects be a unity of multiplicity, which is to say that it must be a world of the mutual determination of singularities, and it is for this reason that I hold that the actually existing world is a world of absolute-contradictory self-identity.

The world of absolute-contradictory self-identity must be a world of passage from the made to the making.  Physicists have always maintained that such a world is formed by the interactions of immutable atoms, which is to say that it is not to be thought as a unity of multiplicity, but to think the world in this way only serves to reduce it to nothing more than repetition of one and the same world.  But neither can we think the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity as a teleological world – as the development of totality; to do so would preclude the possibility of the interaction of singularities.  Thus, the world of absolute-contradictory self- identity must be a world that is thinkable neither as a unity of multiplicity nor as a multiplicity of unity.  Because the things given in it are in all respects made, which is to say that they are dialectically given, the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity must be a world that proceeds as a passage from the made to the making through self-negation. 

We can no more think the basis of this world as totality than we can think it as a multiplicity of singularities.  A creative world that proceeds truly of its own accord as phenomenon-qua-existence must be a world of the sort described above. Because all actually existing things exist by virtue of having been determined, which is to say that they have been made, they are changing and ephemeral, so we can say that all things are being-qua-nothingness.  Thus, I have said that this is a world of absolute nothingness and that as a world of infinite movement it is a determined world without determinants.  As stated above, the world of contradictory self-identity must always be thought as a world in which the present determines the present itself, but we can think this world neither in terms of a priori causality, which is to say as a unity of multiplicities, nor as a posteriori teleology – as a multiplicity of units.  If the world is primordially unthinkable as an a priori category, then so too is it unthinkable as an a posteriori one. The present is unthinkable as a point in a linear succession of instants, and for that matter, so is time; here, neither the present nor time exists. As that which has already passed with respect to the present, the past is at the same time that which has yet to pass, and as that which has yet to come, the future is at the same time that which with respect to the present has already appeared, so that as contradictory self-identity, past and present are mutually opposed; this is the basis upon which that which we call time comes to be.  As contradictory self-identity, time flows from past to future and from the made to the making through infinite movement.

We must think the instant as a point in linear time, so that just as Plato posited the instant as something that transcends time, we see that the instant emerges a continuity of discontinuities. We can say that time emerges as the contradictory self-identity of the many and the one. Given that it infinitely entangles the instant, that which we call the concrete present must be a unity of multiplicity; it must be the space of time. Even if we were to think the temporal instant as that which is negated in that space, it would be a contradiction in terms to think the negation of multiplicity by singularity. To say that the instant is negated is to say that time disappears; it is to say that the present ceases to exist, so that if it were so that the temporal instant arises as discontinuity, then time would never emerge and what we call the instant would disappear.  Within the present, time must be entangled and coarise with the instant.  As unity of multiplicity and multiplicity of unity, time emerges from the contradictory self-identity of the present.  This is so because time must emerge from the determination of the present by the present itself.  To say that we approach eternity within the temporal instant can only mean that the more the instant, as instant, becomes the true instant, the more it becomes an instant of the present of eternity, which is the contradictory self-identity of the absolute as a multiplicity of singularities of absolute-contradictory self-identity.  To say that time emerges as the self-determination of the eternal now is simply to state the inverse of this process.

When I say that within the present the past is both that which has already passed and that which has yet to pass and that the future is both that which has yet to come and that which has already appeared, I do not invoke an abstract logic whereby past and future simply link or become one.  Rather, what I mean is that past and future become one through mutual negation. The place where past and future are one as mutual negation is the present; as the contradictory self-identity of the present, past and future are mutually opposed.  And because this is the intended meaning of the notion of contradictory self-identity, past and future are all the more non-linked moments, so that past always flows into future. Moreover, as the contradictory self-identity of multiplicity-qua-singularity and of singularity-qua-multiplicity—that is, as temporal space—the present assumes a singular form, so that we must think time as sublated.  We can say that as the self-determination of the eternal now, we touch upon eternity, which transcends time.  But because eternity is a determined thing that would be negated as contradictory self-identity, time flows from present to present.  To say that the one is a unity of multiplicity is what is to say that time is spatial, and to say that time flows from the many to the one is what is to say that time is mechanical; it is the flow of time from past to future.  Conversely, to say that the many is a multiplicity of unity is to think the world in terms of causation; it is to think it in terms of temporality.  But to think the world as a passage from the one to the many is to think it as development, that is, to think it teleologically; it is to think the world as a passage from future to past.  As the contradictory self-identity of the many and the one, a world that passes from the made to the making must be a world that passes from present to present.  Reality has form, and the things found in reality are thoroughly determined, which is to say that as actually existing things that are determined through contradictory self-identity, they work to the self-contradiction of reality itself.  It is implausible to think either the one or the many as the source of this work; determination itself must involve self-contradiction.

It thus follows that a world which passes from the made to the making as absolute-contradictory self-identity must be a world of poiēsis.  At the mention of production, people immediately assume that human beings are the exclusive subjective makers of things, but however artificially we construe the notion of production, the fact remains both that things emerge objectively and that this emergence must itself be objective.  It is because we have hands that we are able to make things – tools which themselves must be the result of several tens of millions of years of biological evolution from made things into making things.  Aristotle spoke metaphorically whe he said, “ή φύσισ ποιεί” – that “nature makes” – suggesting that nature is itself industrious and creative, which is not to say that human productivity is natural for, simply put, hands don’t make things.  But if this is so then we must ask what in the world making means, and we have only to consider, say, the carpenter at work in the construction of a house, always and everywhere bound by qualitative material limits yet managing to modify their relations and forms – a definite possibility in Liebniz’s world of “composites.”  The actually existing world must be a world whose form is determined as a unity of multiplicity.  To think this world exclusively as a passage from the many to the one precludes the possibility of anything like what we call “production.”  On the other hand, thinking the world as a passage from the one to the many strictly binds us to world of teleology, that is, a world of sheer natural function, or a life-world.  And even though such a world is unthinkable in terms of either the many or the one, we can however think it as a world of the absolute-contradictory self-identity that is the mutual negation of the many and the one in which singularities are at once formal and make things themselves, so that this making everywhere becomes the formative activity of historical nature as a passage from the made to the making.  

With the irretrievability of time, the present, as the space of time, flows from present to present, and just as we conceive the emergence of time as following from the self-determination of the present, we mean by the notion of the passage of the world from the made to the making as contradictory self-identity to emphasize that objects are things that have been made – things that have been produced. Conversely, to say that objects are produced is to say that the world passes from the produced to the producing. To say that we are industrious is to say that the world is historical, and to say that the world is historical is say that we are industrious.So that just as in the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity we can conceive of approaching, in the present of time, something that transcends time, then as the passage from the produced to the producing, the world of productive being is always a world in which we find form in reality. It is to say that in the interval created in the passage of time from past to future, it is a world of disembodied consciousness. A world that passes from the produced to the producing has an aspect of consciousness, and onto this consciousness sense is said to be projected. We produce actively-intuitively, which is to say that production must be conscious. Within the realm of the consciousness of the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity, the productive self is considered rational; it is considered free. That which we call the individual sense of consciousness emerges from production.

Unlikely though it may seem that the world is grounded in either singularity nor multiplicity, positing the mutual negation of multiplicity and singularity as the basis of its passage from the produced to the producing might lead the majority to reject this model of the actually existing world. Most people think the world to be grounded in multiplicities; in terms of atomic theory, they see it as causal necessity, which is to say that they think it as a world of substance. In a sense, the world of contradictory self-identity must thoroughly be a conceivable world, but it must be a world that is thinkable only from the standpoint of the contradictory self-identity of reality. What we call reality is not merely given, for that which is merely given is that which has been thought. Entangled in the world, we set to work on it from the standpoint of reality, and that which we call working is more than a simple matter of resolving to do this or that; rather, working is a matter of making things. We make things. Being made by us, objects alienate us and themselves make us in turn. But over and above this, even our own industriousness derives from the world of things. What I have referred to as “the standpoint of active-intuition” can be thought as reality. Thus, we usually think physical space as reality. The place in which the producing and the produced contradictorily become self-identical, and where the present determines the present itself, can be thought as reality. Even that which we call scientific knowledge must emerge from this standpoint of reality. In the same sense in which we gain an external sense of our bodies through movement ([Ludwig] Noiré), that which we call the self comes to be known through the poiēsis that takes place in the historical-social world. The historical-social world must be a world that passes from the produced to the producing. In the absence of the social, there can be no passage from the produced to the producing; without the social, there wouldn’t even be poiēsis.  It must be the case that even the standpoint of what we call thinking is constrained by the historical-social standpoint.

Theories about the point of emergence for philosophy are abundant. Generally speaking, in present-day Japan, such theoretical standpoints as epistemology and phenomenology are in vogue. Considered from these standpoints, my concept of “place” must seem dogmatic. Yet, even these standpoints must be historically-socially limited.  Today, we must return to origins and attempt to analyze the historical-social world into logic-ontology.  We must rethink Greek philosophy from this standpoint and re-examine the epistemological standpoint of the subject-object opposition. What we call knowing is a possible outcome within the historical-social world. I am not advocating a return to an outdated metaphysics.  I believe that, after Kant, Lotze returned to ontology and solved the problem of the epistemological process. However, Lotze’s ontology was not of the historical-social type I propose. In the self-motivation of the world as the absolute-contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, subject and environment are always mutually opposed; it is a world thought to proceed by shaping itself self-contradictorily, which is to say that it is a living world.  But, even if we should say that the subject gives form to the world and that the world gives form to the subject, this, however, is nothing like what we describe as the process of form shaping matter. Singularities must be things that everywhere determine themselves; they must be active.  To act must in every case be for a singularity to negate another and thereby do away with it; it is for a singularity to try and make of itself the world. Yet, acting must conversely be the process by which the self negates itself; it is the process by which the self becomes an element of the world.  Whether we construe the world mechanistically as a multiplicity of singularities or teleologically as a unity of multiplicity, as long as we take it as the actually existing world, it must be contradictory-self-identical in just this sense.  However, it goes without saying that whether we construe the world as mechanistic or teleological, singularities are never things that determine themselves; in fact, they don’t even act.  In fact, the world of the mutual determination of singularities must be a world similar to Leibniz’s world of monads. While expressing the world, the monad is also a single standpoint within a world-view; it is manifestation qua expression (exprimer = représenter).  Moreover, like the monad, the true singularity is non-percipient.  The singularity must be that which gives form to itself; it must be expressively active.

Let us think the basis of the singularity as neither singularity nor multiplicity.  As absolute- contradictory self-identity, the singularity that is situated in the world of passage from the produced to the producing must be that which gives form to itself expressively-actively.  As a singularity of the world of the contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, when the singularity reflects the world, the self-determination of the singularity is desirous.  But this desirous self-determination is neither mechanistic nor teleological.  It is to act in consequence of its reflection of the world within itself.  This is what we call conscious action.  Even the instinctive mode of animal existence must essentially be something that has this quality.  Thus, human action must primarily arise actively-intuitively; it arises from the act of perceiving things.  Active-intuition is self-contradictorily contained in the object as a mode of existence.  When we say that, as the contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, it passes from the produced to the producing, the world is active-intuitive; the object is always desired. What I mean by the notion of physical form has nothing to do with the form of an inert thing. Rather, as the contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, physical form is a mode of the self- configuration of the world in its passage from the produced to the producing. Even the Platonic Forms must be things of this sort.

In the absence of the self-contradictory perception of things, there can be no desire; in the absence of form, there can be no laboring. Though we speak of perception within the world of animal life, perception happens only dimly there; we might say that, as it is in dreams, animalistic perception amounts to nothing more than seeing the image of the thing perceived. This is because, for animals, movement is instinctive. Essentially, though we say that, for animals, perception is expressively active, the fact is that it is impossible for them to make things objectively. Moreover, animals have no objective world; naturally, animals do not work actively-intuitively. For animals, there is as yet no poiēsis. In their world, the produced does not alienate itself from the producer, and the produced does not produce the producing; thus, the animal world does not undergo the passage from the produced to the producing. The animal is nothing more than an organic-physical configuration. Thus, for the self to reflect the world monadically is, conversely, for human being, as a standpoint within a world perspective, to labor having perceived things in the objective world actively-intuitively; in other words, it is to labor in consequence of human being having perceived itself objectively. It is for the produced to produce the producing; it is the passage from the produced to the producing. Thus, human beings are poiētic, and this allows us to say that we are historical-material. Yet, because our laboring occurs from the standpoint of manifestation qua expression, we can say that human poiētic nature is a logical fact.

As stated above, singularities are always creative as such. In the movement by which it configures the world, the singularity functions as a creative element of the creative world, which, in its turn, creates the singularity itself. A world that passes from the produced to the producing as contradictory self-identity must be thought as a world that passes from form to form. Just as I stated earlier that reality determines reality itself, it must be a world that can be thought in terms of the self- determination of form itself. A world of the absolute-contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity must, from this standpoint, always configure itself; it must be a world of self-configuring action. In this sense, a form that configures itself is something historical; in the context of the historical world, it has a subjective role. By form, I do not mean a thing detached from reality, that is, a thing that can be thought as mere abstraction, which is to say, as inactive form. Even though I say that the world passes from form to form, I do no mean that it passes by way of simple non-distribution. What I have in mind is form that has its existence as the contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity. We might even say that biological phenomena are utterly reducible to chemical-physical phenomena. But, if, on this basis, we define biological phenomena simply as the accidental unity of matter, then, in order to confirm this quality of unity within phenomena, we must think them as being formally active. The forms possessed by organisms must be functional; in organisms, form and function are inseparable. What we call form is not only that which we see with our eyes; rather, it is something like both the instinct and the formative activity of organisms. Even something like what we call cultural society must have form. By form, I mean paradigm. We work according to kinds of form. But, in this case, it must be that we work by having seen actively-intuitively, and that we see by having worked. This must be the essence of the passage from the produced to the producing.

As stated above, the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity, whose infinite movement is the passage from the produced to the producing, must thoroughly be a world of formative activity in its passage from form to form, which is to say that it must be a subjective world. An unlimited environment stands opposed to this formative activity. And while we can say that the subject forms the environment and that the environment forms the subject, [it happens that,] in the world of absolute- contradictory self-identity, what we call the environment is not simply a material thing; rather, it must be that which negates appearances. As opposed to the passage from singularity to multiplicity, it must be the passage from multiplicity to singularity. Through self-negation, the subject forms the environment and the environment forms the subject. This is not to say that appearance is matter and matter appearance, nor is it to say that things like appearance and matter differ in degree of form. To posit a passage from multiplicity to singularity is to think the world causally and deterministically; it is to construe the world as a priori; it is to think it mechanistically. Against this, it seems that to think the world as a passage from singularity to multiplicity would be to think it teleologically. Yet, to posit the world simply as a teleological thing is, as in the case of animal life, to remain constrained by temporality; it is to remain confined within determinism. In fact, the passage from singularity to multiplicity must be thought as a spatial occurrence; it must be thought as something like Bergson’s notion of pure duration. We might say that to posit a thing as creative is to say that it always proceeds according to a vantage point situated in the future, which is to say that it does not originate in the past, [but] it happens that, through the self-negation of pure duration, the actually existing world exists self-contradictorily at a spatial point. In the world of pure duration, in which it is impossible to return even to the preceding moment, there cannot even be that which we call the present. Against this, the actually existing world exists at a temporal point. In other words, it exists self-contradictorily at a point from which it is self-motivated. Thus, in the present of the world that passes from present to present as absolute-contradictory self-identity, subject and environment always oppose each other, so that the subject forms the environment and the environment forms the subject through self-negation. And, because of this, the present of the actually existing world, being both the contradictory self- identity of subject and environment and the contradictory self-identity of singularity and multiplicity, passes from that which has been determined, which is to say that it passes from the produced to the producing. This is to say that the present of the actually existing world passes from past to future. That which has been produced is something that already exists in the environment; it is the past. Moreover, (in nothingness qua being, where the past is simultaneously that which is and that which has passed), the present of the actually existing world is that which forms the subject through self-negation.

If we were to posit the world as proceeding from either multiplicity or singularity, then this would preclude the possibility of a passage from the produced to the producing. Regardless of whether we posit the world as mechanistic or teleological, such a passage remains impossible; indeed, there would be no space into which we might introduce anything like production. And, yet, as the self- negating identification of multiplicity with singularity, and also as the self-negating identification of singularity with multiplicity, in the world of the absolute-contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, the self-negating formation of the environment by the subject is, conversely, the formation of a new subject by the environment. The receding into the past of the temporal present is the birth of the future. There is nothing in the historical world that can be said to be simply given. Those things that are given in the world are produced things; through self-negation, they are things that produce producing things. That which is produced is that which has passed; it is that which has entered into nothingness. But the entrance of time into the past is the unveiling of the future; it is the emergence of a new subject. In this sense, it is the passage from the produced to the producing. To say that, in the historical world, subject and environment always oppose each other through mutual negation is to say that they oppose each other in a manner similar to that in which, in the temporal present, past and future oppose each other through mutual negation. Thus, in a manner similar to that of the passage of the present from past to future as contradictory self-identity, subject and environment pass from the produced to the producing. But, at the same time that this passage is something like the monadic reflection of the world by the singularity, conversely, it is also something like a single standpoint within a worldview. This is to say that passage is the essence world of the self-identity that is the absolute- contradiction of multiplicity and singularity. Having been produced, producing things emerge in this world, so that the world goes on producing anew.

Thus, as the absolute-contradictory self-identity of multiplicity and singularity, a world that is self-motivated by self-contradiction is always self-contradictory in the present; the present is the place of contradiction. When considered from the standpoint of abstract reasoning, it seems unlikely that contradictory things ever unite; because they cannot unite, we say that they contradict each other. However, except that contradictory things come into contact with each other, contradiction cannot be said to exist. Opposition is, at the same time, unification; it is in that moment that dialectical reasoning exists. As the epitome of contradiction, we can think something like the opposition of time and the moment. But, just as we can think the moment as something external to time, along with the negation of opposition by this relation, we probably should also think it as a point in dialectical space that contravenes opposition. If we construe time as an abstract concept, then we might think it a simple linear progression of infinite movement from past to future. However, in the historical world, what we actually think as time probably should be treated as a mode of production. Time must be the passage from the produced to the producing; time is the passage from past to future. What we call the form of the temporal present is the mode of production of the historical world. As a token of the counter-productivity of the mode of production of the historical world, what we think as reproductive time is something like what we commonly think as the time of linear progression. In reproductive time, what we call the present is devoid of content and has no form; it can be thought as a point within the ungraspable instant. Past and future can be thought to unite at a point within the ungraspable instant, so that that which we are able to conceive as physical time may be precisely the present. Within what we think as the physical world, there is no production; the physical world is nothing but the repetition of one and the same world—it is merely a spatial world of multiplicities. But, when we turn to the organic world, we see that the mode of production already has content, and this allows us to say that time has form. In purposeful action, the passage from past to future is reversed, so that what we see is a passage proceeding on the basis of a future-oriented viewpoint; what we call the passage from past to future is not simply a linear progression but a circular one. This is to say that a mode of production has a specific content; it is to say that, as the present of the contradictory self-identity of past and future, it has form. By form, here, we mean a kind of organicism. This form is the mode of production of the historical world; it is what we call the subjective. In the organic world, past and future already oppose each other in the topological present, such that we can conceive the subject as forming the environment and the environment as forming the subject.  Thus, within this dialectic, a multiplicity of singularities is not simply rendered a multiplicity of singularities, but forms itself. Even so, the organic world is not yet a world of absolute-contradictory self-identity.  

In fact, in the contradictorily self-identical historical-social world, past and future always self- contradictorily and simultaneously exist in the present, such that we can say that the world is self-contradictorily a single present. Where the purposeful action of organisms is concerned, even though we say that past and future unite in the present, it remains that such unity is processual; it is not what we call the true present. Consequently, within this union, there is no true production; there is no creation. Within organic life, there is no way of separating the produced from the producing; simply put, the reason for this is that only human life is the life of subjectivity. While, in the context of the historical-social world, past and future and the produced and producing are always mutually opposed, each of these oppositions produces the producing. Rather than simply slipping into the past, produced things, in their turn, produce producing things; at this juncture, there is true production. To say that the world is a single present is to say that the world is a singular mode of production through which new things come into being; it is to say that the world is a vehicle that gives birth to new worlds. The singular mode of production of the world is the mode of production of historical creation, only this is not to say that things emerge causally from the environment; but neither does it fundamentally mean that the latent subjectively becomes manifest. As Bergson says, creation is not simply a sophisticated progression in which there is no possibility of returning, even for a moment, to the past. Rather, creation must be the fact of the contradictorily self-identical emergence of things from the contradictory opposition of infinite past and future. In the place where the linear becomes the circular, there is production; here, there is true production.

In the historical world, the past isn’t simply that which has passed. As Plato had it, it is a world in which non-being is being. In the historical present, past and future always contradictorily oppose each other, and from this contradictory opposition, new worlds are born. I call this the dialectic of historical life. If we construe the past as that which is determined, and if, as thesis, it is given, then, against this, innumerable negations and futures are given form. Yet, the past is that which is determined contradictorily-self-identically; that which determines the past contradictorily-self-identically determines the true future; in other words, antithesis is given form. As contradictory self- identity, the world is creative, and, insofar as it is a living world, the formation of this sort of antithesis is inevitable. Thus, the deeper and more extensive this contradictory opposition becomes, that is, the more truly contradictorily antagonistic it becomes, the more likely it becomes that new worlds will be created contradictorily-self-identically; this is synthesis. Within the present, the more the infinite past and future contradictorily oppose each other, the more likely it becomes that there is expansive creation. To say that new worlds are created is not simply to say that the past and the world are negated, or that they disappear; as posited within the dialectic, it is to say that they are sublated. Within the historical world, infinite pasts have been sublated into the present. Even in becoming human, we retain our animality.

For us to posit that past and future self-contradictorily oppose each other in the present must imply that the present has form. Form is the mode of production of the historical world. Stated from the standpoint of the individual, this is to say that we see things actively-intuitively; it is to say that we are able to make the passage from the produced to the producing. Conversely, as the place of poiēsis, that is, as the place of active-intuition, human being constitutes the historical present. The forms of living things are functional. To say that living things act functionally is to say that they have form. From this it follows that, as a mode of production, the contradictorily self-identical historical present possesses a specific form. Yet, as stated above, within the organic mode of production, the contradictory opposition of past and future does not yet truly exist; the true historical present does not yet exist. Here, there is no such thing as the determination of the present by the present itself as contradictory self-identity; nor is there any such thing as the determination of form by form itself. Therefore, organic action is not active-intuitive. Stated in Hegelian terms, this is still the condition of immediacy. This is to say that, as a single present, and within the historical-social mode of production, in which infinite pasts and futures are mutually opposed as contradictory self-identity, and being that which is always on the move, the present has its own form. Thus, we can say that the present determines the present itself, and that form determines form itself. If we think that which we call the present as something purely abstract, then the claim that the present passes from one present to the next may seem either audacious or unfounded. And yet, it obtains within the dialectic that opposition serves as synthesis and synthesis as opposition, so that, in the absence of opposition, there is no synthesis and, likewise, without synthesis, there is no opposition. As two distinct processes, synthesis and opposition must everywhere become one. Thus, within a practical dialectic, synthesis is in no way a requirement of so-called reason; rather, it must be an inherent form of the real world, which is to say that it must be what we call the mode of production of the actually existing world. We can characterize this as an ideal mode in the context of the present world of absolute-contradictory self-identity, which everywhere unites infinite pasts and futures through mutual antagonism. Hegel’s notion of the idea must be something of this sort. Synthesis does not negate opposition; as contradictory self-identity, it proceeds self-contradictorily.

We can say that, as the contradictory self-identity of past and future, and always harboring contradiction within itself, the historical present contains something that exceeds its capacity; it always contains something of the transcendent. The transcendent is always immanent. While the present possesses form and contains past and future, this containment by the present has the effect of negating the present itself, so that past and future must exceed its limits. Thus, whereas within this sort of world the individual expresses it in a manner like that of the monad, and just as we say that expression is but a glimpse within a perspective on that world, this world must be one that actively-expressively forms itself. A world in which the present includes things that transcend it must be a world that expressively forms itself. Being situated in a world in which past and present unite through mutual negation, we can say that this must be a world which, while expressively-actively apperceiving things, expressively- actively passes from seeing to doing. Being neither mechanical nor teleological, this passage is rather logical. Things that act according to contradictory self-identity, namely, material things, are logically real things. In a world in which time is understood as something purely linear, and in which what we call the present thereby does not exist, neither is there that which we call work. My meaning of the contradictory self-identity that is the synthesis of past and future within the present and the passage of the produced to the producing might be understood by allusion to our sense of self- consciousness. The ground of self-consciousness is that place which advances as contradictory self- identity and within which past and future unite in the field of consciousness of the present. That which we call the conscious unity of the self cannot obtain within a simple linear progression of time. To say that consciousness is singularity qua consciousness while its development is multiple must be to indicate the contradictory self-identity inherent in the meaning of my preceding statements. It could be that even those who deem it impossible to conceive something like contradictory self-identity are actually thinking contradictorily self-identically, and yet, such people make no attempt to explain the objective world on the basis of the experience of conscious unity. Conversely, this is to say that, as an individual of the world of the absolute-contradictory self-identity of singularity and multiplicity, the self is basically on the level of the monad.

In light of our foregoing statements, what we mean when we say that, within the historical world, subject and environment oppose each other and that the subject proceeds by forming the environment and the environment by forming the subject is that, as past and future oppose each other within the present, subject and environment pass from the made to the making as contradictory self- identity. In the context of the historical world, subject and environment are not merely given things. That which is given is that which has been made. Even that which we call the environment must in all respects be a thing of historical development. Thus, to say that subject forms environment within the historical world is not to suggest that form shapes substance. Even what we call the material world is something that forms itself on the basis of contradictory self-identity. Within the world of the historical present that is absolute-contradictory self-identity, various self-determining forms, which is to say, various modes of production, emerge. We can think these modes of production as the source of history, that is, as the source of the diversity of societies. What we call society must be a mode. Thus, in essence, society must contain the ideal, wherein lies its distinction from life-source. As long as it is ideally organic, that is, as long as it is poiētic in a deeply significant sense, it is a living society. By the notion of the ideally productive, I do not mean to say that a thing breaks away from the historical-material base and simply becomes culture. Rather, what I mean by this is that, in the extent to which the formative subject separates from the environment and perishes, the idea becomes the ideal; the subject forms the environment. Yet, even as the environment is produced by the subject, it is not merely a possession of the subject who made it, but something that opposes and negates the subject. Human life perishes under the malicious influences of the things we make. In order to live, the subject must everywhere proceed by reproducing life; as the elementary form of the historical world of absolute-contradictory self-identity, the subject must become universally productive; it must become the ideal constitutive force of the historical world. That which has been produced must have a universal character, which is to say that it must forge ahead by producing a universal environment. Only this sort of subject fully lives. To say that, as the kernel of history, the subject becomes universally productive is not to say that the subject vanishes, nor is it to say that it loses its subjective distinction and becomes purely universal. We can say that, within the mode of production of the world of absolute-contradictory self-identity, which we claim contains infinite pasts and futures in the present, and alongside their synthesis within a single universal environment, each of a multitude of subjects is poiētically ideal and touches upon eternity. If it isn’t the case that every subjective and particular thing is negated and becomes an abstract, universal world, then neither is it the case that every subject is teleologically synthesized as subject. Though we can conceive of the subjective existence of an element that doesn’t necessarily conform to a culture, we can say that a subject which does not in some or another sense become ideally productive probably cannot survive within world history. The idea must be the principle of subjective life. Being a produced thing that always-already serves as environment while lacking the power to make making things, that which we call the idea is culture alienated from the subject. To view the world simply as a made thing is to assume the vulgar viewpoint of culture.

*Additionally archived at Binghamton University Libraries, The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB): https://orb.binghamton.edu/comparative_literature_fac/10/. Revision © 2026 Christopher Southward; All Rights Reserved. 

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