Force and the Understanding

III. Force and the Understanding (§132-165)

Hegel defines Force as that process through which many disappear into unity and back again (§136). This reflects the flux of instances and indexicals in sense-certainty, and properties and unified objects in perception. Being-for-self and being-for-another will also follow this process.

Force as a process is inevitable and unending because of the nature of our mediated relation to objects and the dependency of ourselves and of objects on otherness (§138-144). Force also applies to physical laws (§150-153).

Hegel's system of opposites leads him to posit a supersensible world of laws and a second world that is an inverted version of the first. I am largely unclear on what this does for Hegel's claims, aside from keeping some sort of consistency of structure in his metaphysics. It strikes me as a bit arbitrary, though, to stop the repetition of this structure. The structure seems as if it could be an infinite regression, or rather an infinite progression in which more and more encompassing systems and their inversions could be discussed. If Hegel has found some way to stop this ad absurdum progression, why didn't he stop it before (or after) exactly two supersensible opposite-worlds?