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"On How Hegel’s Science of Logic is and is not Presuppositionless"

In the early pages of the Science of Logic, Hegel remarks that his science “must not presuppose” anything”; it “must not be mediated by anything nor have a ground”.  This is why the concept with which the Logic begins is “pure being”, a concept Hegel defines as “indeterminate immediacy”.  In this paper, I consider two recent interpretations of these remarks.  According to one, the concept of pure being with which the Logic begins is in fact presuppositionless; according to the other, “pure being” expresses at most the effort to begin without presuppositions, an effort Hegel believes is in vain.  On the view I defend here, there is something right about each of these readings.