PATHMARKS
as itself relating to the object. However, so long as we merely differentiate object and subject, being and reflection, over against each other, and persist with this differentiation, the movement from the object to the subject does not yet set forth the whole of [259] subjectivity for subjectivity. The object, being, is indeed mediated with the subject through reflection, but the mediation itself, as the innermost movement of the subject, is not yet represented for the subject. Only when the thesis of the object and the antithesis of the subject are detected in their necessary synthesis is the movement of the subjectivity of the subject-object relation complete in its course. This course is a proceeding from the thesis, advancing to the antithesis, going over into the synthesis, and, from out of this synthesis as the whole, the return to itself of the positing posited. This course gathers the whole of subjectivity into the unfolded unity of subjectivity. In this way, subjectivity grows together, con-crescit, becomes concrete. Dialectic is speculative in this manner. For speculari means detecting, catching sight of, apprehending, com-prehending. Hegel says in the Introduction to the Science of Logic (ed. Lasson, vol. I, p. 3 8) that speculation consists "in the apprehending of opposites in their unity." Hegel's way of characterizing speculation becomes clearer if we notice that, in speculation, what is at stake is not only the apprehending of unity, the phase of synthesis, but in the first instance and always the apprehending "of opposites" as opposites. This requires apprehending the shining of opposites against one another and in one another, which is the manner in which antithesis reigns as it is presented in the "Logic of Essence" (i.e., the logic of reflection). From this self-re-flecting shining, or mirroring, speculari (speculum: mirror) receives its conclusive de termination. Considered in this way, speculation is the positive whole of that which "dialectic" is meant to signify here: not a transcendental, critically restrictive, or even polemical way of thinking, but rather the mirroring and uniting of opposites as the process of the production of spirit itself.
Hegel also calls "speculative dialectic" simply "method." By this title he means neither an instrument of representing nor merely a special way of proceeding in [260] philosophy. "Method" is the innermost movement of subjectivity, "the soul of being," the production process through which the web of the whole actuality of the absolute is woven. "Method," "the soul of being" - that sounds like fantasy. It is commonly thought that our age has left behind such errors of speculation. Yet we are living right in the midst of this supposed fantasy.
When modern physics aims at a formula for the world, then it becomes apparent that the being of beings has dissolved itself in the method of total calculability. The first writing of Descartes, through whom, according to
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