Editing Higher Tiers Explanation (section)

== High 1-T and High 1-T+ ==

=== High 1-T ===
This movement of indeterminacy is known as "Spirit," representing pure being. It's a relatively unconditioned process, as its essence, nature, and existence are rooted in its true ground, the Absolute. However, it is also conditioned, as it reflects and sublates itself. Spirit, as essence, is an undifferentiated unity of being and non-being, yet it reflects on its own identity, which gives it determinateness and makes it dependent on both itself and the Absolute.

Ground is the immediate, while the grounded is the mediated. Ground, as positing reflection, makes itself into a posited state and presupposes reflection. In doing so, it refers back to itself as something sublated—an immediate through which it is mediated. This mediation, moving from the immediate to the ground, is not an external reflection, but the ground’s own self-reflecting action. In this process, the ground connects through self-identity while also externalizing itself. The immediate ground refers to its essential presupposition, which is condition, meaning that real ground is essentially conditioned by the otherness within itself.

Continuing this idea, while the movement is not conditioned due to its immediate nature rooted in unreflected ground, the moment when a ground is realized as unconditioned creates a ground-connection. This leads to a self-referential reflection, which in turn creates a condition—essentially, itself. This results in an infinite series of conditioned grounds.

In the process of condition, essence releases the unity of its internal reflection, but it does so as an immediacy, which now takes on the character of a conditioning presupposition. This presupposition forms only one aspect of the whole. Therefore, the conditions are the complete content of the fact, as they are the unconditioned in the form of formless being. The ground, returning into itself, establishes this sphere as the first immediacy, referring to it as the unconditioned. This immediacy, as sublated reflection, becomes reflection within the realm of being, forming itself into a whole. Form, as determinateness of being, proliferates, appearing as a distinct manifold separate from the determinations of reflection, with content indifferent to it.

Thus, the two aspects of the whole—condition and ground—are both indifferent and unconditioned in relation to each other.

This infinite series of conditioned grounds grows progressively deeper with each step because reaching the unconditioned requires an infinite progression through increasingly less conditioned stages. However, this progression only leads to the totality of all grounds, which, as a whole, is still just a sum rather than an unreflected unity. This is akin to the reflection principle: The universe V is absolutely infinite, transcending all infinities, and while each stage (including large cardinals) brings one closer, the sum of all infinities remains ultimately knowable, not ineffable. Thus, the totality of all conditions is both an end and a beginning but not a true unity. This parallels the distinction between the First Act and Pure Act, where the former has potentiality and the latter does not.

Conditioned existence occurs in time, and to achieve a philosophy of the unconditioned, one must move beyond time-based existence. There are two possible approaches: either one attempts to conceive of a first moment of time beyond which there is existence without duration or succession, or one views time as an unlimited duration containing an infinite series of successive antecedents and consequents. In the latter, each part is conditioned, yet together they form an unconditioned whole.

However, this concept of an infinite regress of time or a series of dependent existences in time brings inherent contradictions. The idea of an unconditioned whole, made up of infinite parts, contradicts itself, as these parts can never be completed. Even if one abandons the notion of the Whole and the Unconditioned and focuses instead on an infinite succession of conditioned existences, conditioned by nothing beyond themselves, the concept falls apart. This is because to conceive such a succession, one must add moment to moment endlessly, requiring an eternity for its realization.