Il

Illusory Being [or Semblance]

Illusory Being is a category of Hegel’s philosophy denoting the sceptical moment when an object is first perceived. The Dialectic of Reflection is the dialectic of the essential and unessential. Illusory Being is the negative moment in this dialectic – the unessential. Against the position of scepticism, Hegel says that it must be recognised that the unessential is Being’s unessential, that is, the thing is expressed in the unessential as well as in the essential, only the unessential is not yet recognised for what it is.

Further Reading: Hegel’s Science of Logic.