I'm new to Kierkegaard, and I'm currently reading an introductory book on his philosophy (The Philosophy of Kierkegaard by George Pattison).
There's a particular section about his critique of Hegel that I'm struggling to understand (and I'm not very familiar with Hegel either).

The passage I'm having trouble with is:

"Kierkegaard, however, wants to know "How does the System begin with the immediate? That is, does it begin with it immediately?" (9 95/CUP1 111-12, original emphasis), to which he gives the "unconditional" and un equivocal answer: no.
There seem to be two reasons for this emphatic reply. The first is that, as we have seen, the logical system presupposes a world of experience from which, subjectively speaking, it is abstracted. Even if one could carry this process of abstraction through to the point at which all the "mediations" of Being found in life as it is lived are suspended, logic nevertheless "does not therefore begin immediately with the immediate with which existence began" (9 95/CUP1 112). But, secondly, even this second or more primary imme diacy, the immediacy of existence itself, cannot be made into the starting point of anything "since immediacy never simply is, but is transcended as soon as it is" (9 95/CUP1 112). In the very moment in which we become aware of existing at all, our immediacy is no longer that of a merely existing entity in the world (a stone, a plant, or even an animal): we have become thinking or conscious beings, beings conscious of their existence in a reflexive way and not simply beings. The immediacy with which the system claims to "begin" is therefore a derived immediacy, an immediacy, Kierkegaard says, that has been "reached by a process of reflection" (9 95/CUP1 112, original emphasis).'"

What I don't understand is the difference between the first and second arguments.

As far as I understand, the first argument is that, in order to arrive at the idea of pure being, we have to go through a process of abstraction. But this means that pure being is already mediated, since we have to arrive at it through abstraction. So it cannot really serve as an immediate starting point.

However, I'm confused about why existence itself suddenly enters the discussion in the second argument. What exactly does Kierkegaard or the writer mean by the "immediacy of existence itself," and how is it different from the immediacy discussed in the first argument?

I have a few possible interpretations, but I'm not sure whether any of them is correct.

First interpretation:

Does Kierkegaard mean that even if we manage to arrive at pure being through abstraction, the very moment we arrive at it and begin reflecting on it, it becomes an object of thought and is therefore mediated at the end also?

In other words, it seems like a kind of loop: we try to begin with pure being in order to avoid mediation, but as soon as we take pure being as our starting point and begin thinking about it, we have already mediated it. So the supposedly immediate starting point ceases to be immediate.

Second interpretation:

Or is Kierkegaard making a more general argument about the limitations of human thought?

Perhaps he means that, regardless of whether we use abstraction to arrive at pure being, we can never genuinely begin from pure being itself in general(either by abstraction or even directly in itself ), because we are already existing, conscious subjects.

In that case, we can never completely escape our own situated existence and consciousness to reach an absolutely immediate starting point. We are, in a sense, always confined within the conditions of our own existence and consciousness. but if so, it seems that this is related also to the first argument that, like that, the abstraction at the level Hegel wants would not be possible at all.

I mean, it seems that the first and second are actually the same thing; no matter how I think about them.

Or is he making an entirely different argument?

I'm especially confused about why the author introduces the "immediacy of existence itself" after discussing abstraction and pure being. I thought the discussion was about whether abstraction could provide logic with an immediate starting point , so I'm struggling to understand how this second kind of immediacy fits into the argument.

I'd appreciate any clarification, especially an explanation of how the two arguments differ and what Kierkegaard is trying to establish with each one.