Determinate negation is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s principle that negating something does not produce empty nothing but produces determinate content — the negation of a specific thing yields something specific. In the Science of Logic, this principle drives the progression from one category to the next: each concept, when pressed to its limit, produces its successor through what it excludes.
This concept is referenced by the relationality derivation at step 4 (Boundary), where the self-sustaining unit must distinguish itself from what it is not. The act of excluding what lies beyond the unit — bounding — produces determinate structure (distinction, boundary) rather than mere absence.