The essential and the unessential

The essential and the unessential

1. Essence itself is in this determination an existent immediate essence, and with reference to it being is only something NEGATIVE, nothing in and for itself: essence, therefore, is a determined negation.

2. Shine is essence itself in the determinateness of being. Essence has a shine because it is determined within itself and is therefore distinguished from its absolute unity.

. . .

3. For essence is an infinite self-contained moment which determines its immediacy as negativity and its negativity as immediacy, and thus the shining of itself within itself. In this, in its self-movement, essence is reflection.  . . . .

4. Positing reflection : Shine is a nothingness or a lack of essence. . . . this immediacy is the self-equality of the negative, and hence self-negating equality, immediacy which is in itself the negative, the negative of itself: its being is to be what it is not.