Being is the indeterminate immediate; it is free of determinateness with respect to essence, just as it is still free of any determinateness that it can receive within itself. This reflectionless being is being as it immediately is only within.

Since it is immediate, it is being without quality; but the character of indeterminateness attaches to it in itself only in opposition to what is determinate or qualitative. Determinate being thus comes to stand over and against being in general; with that, however, the very indeterminateness of being constitutes its quality. It will therefore be shown that the first being is in itself determinate, and therefore, secondly, that it passes over into existence, is existence; that this latter, however, as finite being, sublates itself and passes over into the infinite reference of being to itself; it passes over, thirdly, into being-for-itself.