Hegels_Logic_Identity_Difference_chapter1_part2.mp3

The centrality of moving forward into a relation with an other comes to an initial completion, and is itself transformed, in moving from the logic of being to the logic of essence. The truth of the logic of being that emerges as the transition to the logic of essence is this: Being only is what it is in terms of its relation to an other, but this other only is what it is in terms of its relation to its other, which can only be being, so what is, is as a self-diffentiating relation to a posited other. In the logic of essence being no longer disappears in its other but appears in and through it, and is determined in virtue of the selfcontrasting, as a result. The logic of essence then unfolds as an effort to think the determining side of the self-differentiating contrast; if no given determinacy is postulated, if the process of strict self-determination is held to, then the nature of the contrastive differentiating that established determinacy must emerge as reciprocal in character. Neither side can be held fast as primal determining ground upon which the determinacy of its other depends and from which it is derived. Each is equally what it is as the other of its other, but this other only is what it is as the other of its other-to be itself, to be self-identical, is to be the other of the other, thus (now explicitly, or posited) to be in a mutually differentiating relation with the other is just to be oneself. Since each is otherwise indeterminate except as the other of the other, each is the "other of the other" and is self-identical just in and as this sustained differentiating; to be other is to be oneself and just thereby still to be differentiated from this other. Since being or selfhood only is as the other of the other, otherness and difference constituted both poles of identity, thus differentiating is now explicit as the truth of identity. The unity of substance ...in positing itself through the moment of absolute negativity ...becomes a manifested or posited identity, and thereby the freedom which is the identity of the Notion. The Notion, the totality resulting from the reciprocal relation, is the unity of the two substances standing in that relation; but in this unity they are now free, for they no longer possess their identity as something blind ...on the contrary the substances now have essentially the status of an illusory being, of being moments of reflection, whereby each is no less immediately united with its other or its positedness and each contains its positedness within itself, and consequently in its other is posited as simply and solely identical with itself. With the Notion, therefore, we have entered the realm of freedom. The truth of pure, self-determining thought attained and then articulated in the logic of the concept is this: Differentiating is selfdetermining, self-identification; logical identity is neither a reduction of the other to self nor a return out of the other to self but a mutually established differentiation of reflection between self and other where the self's identity is found in the other only through and as their dual differentiation. Pure identity is a doubly negative process of mutual differentiating where identity emerges in the differentiating. Previously being disappeared, then appeared in the other. Now being develops in the other as what Hegel calls posited or manifested identity. Since it is now explicit that identity is differentiation, differentiating must take place and does so as the logic of the concept unfolds. How does the logic as a whole reach its completeness as a selfdetermined totality? The view that Hegel propounds an absolute metaphysics as a totalizing logocentrism holds that the reality conceived in his Realphilosophie is a mere extension of logic, a development of the absolute idea predicated on the notion of a fundamental underlying identity of thought and the real. On this view, if the real is just the idea in otherness, then systematic thought can claim to comprehend it a priori and in a complete, all-inclusive fashion. Of course, if this interpretation is correct, then Hegel is guilty of a totalizing reduction of difference and otherness to thought; thought is everywhere and is everything, in some more or less literal sense. But this is not how the transition from logic to Realphilosophie takes place as the completion of logical self-determination at the end of the logic. Both a consideration of the logic as the completion of thought's autonomous self-determination and of the actual transition to the philosophy of nature indicate that, for Hegel, autonomous identity necessitates the establishment of difference through the acknowledgment of the other as autonomous in its own right. Realphilosophie cannot be an extension or a development of logic, simply because attaining the complete self-determination and certified autonomy of the logical necessitates the thinking of that which is not logical at all, through the conceptualizing of an ontologically distinct domain of that which is not thought or thoughtlike. For logical thought to be complete, a new, nonlogical method of conceptualizing must emerge (albeit, from out of logic's methodological recapitulation) as well as a new, non-logical domain of determinacy. If such a radical differentiation does not take place, then the logical cannot be complete, nor can it certify the autonomy required for science. If the logical extends into the other as the determining ground from which the determinacies of reality are derived merely as variations on the idea, then logic has no self-sufficient finality. Completeness requires closure, and save for the self-limitation arising from the acknowledgment of nature as an autonomous other, logic cannot be complete. Nor could the logical be autonomous if it extends in some determinative fashion as logic into its other, for then its own determinate nature would depend upon this quasi-other, and thorough self-determination would be lost. So logic's completeness and autonomy can only be demonstrated insofar as something radically different is conceptualized; only in coming to think something distinctly nonlogical can thought unequivocally claim to have completed the thinking of the logical as self-sufficient. That the move from logic to Realphilosophie is properly characterized as a further differentiating demarcation where a new autonomous domain of determinacy is acknowledged, rather than as a reductive inclusion where thought usurps the autonomy of the real by claiming to be its source, can be seen if we look at some of the features of the actual move from logic to nature. In the final chapter of the Science of Logic, Hegel discusses "the Absolute Idea" that "does not have the shape of a content, but exists wholly as form," whose "universal aspect" is "the method." "The method is the pure Notion that relates itself only to itself... But now it is also ...the Notion that comprehends itself... in it the science of logic has grasped its own Notion." Hegel makes clear, however, that logic's consummating self-comprehension is at once the beginning of something distinctly new and nonlogical, that it is a radical differentiation, for "this Idea is still logical, it is enclosed within pure thought, and is the science only of the divine Notion... Because the pure Idea of cognition is so far confined within subjectivity, it is the urge to sublate this, and pure truth as the last result becomes the beginning of another sphere and science." This emergent differentiation between logic and nature is such that both are free, and free of one another, for logic's self-sublation takes place as an "absolute liberation," the idea "freely releases itself," and the "form of its determinateness is also utterly free-the externality of space and time existing absolutely on its own account without the moment of subjectivity," that is, no longer as logic at all. So the relation of logic and nature is not of determining ground to subordinate other but of mutual, utter, and absolute independence. Of course, the thinking of this absolute independence (of what is thought about in logic, on the one hand, and in Realphilosophie, on the other) is required by the completion of logic, so it too is a mediated independence. (As we have seen, what Hegel criticizes and rejects throughout is "abstract" or atomistic identity where self-identity and independence are held as existing prior to and apart from difference and mediation.) But, while philosophical thinking continues, what is thought about in Realphilosophie (what it says about the real) is not thought of as having the character of the logical; for Hegel, natural things are not thoughts or thoughtlike. In addition, the method of this thinking is also different from logic's in that now empirically given observations are required rather than banned, as they were in logic. The character of this autonomous domain as distinctly and irreducibly nonlogical is also evident when we consider the first determinacy of nature: externality or space as self-subsistent otherness. Here we find a domain whose determinacy consists in being "other than," as being "apart from" or "outside of," a new notion of otherness that is nowhere to be found in the logic itself.Yet the logic's discovery, that (logically speaking) self-subsistent self-identity must involve irreducible difference, persists but it is markedly different from what it was as a purely logical relation: Space is just that which may be thought as self-identical and self-subsistent, because each space of space is identical through its capacity of sustaining difference as sheer outsideness. Every space of space is outside of-different from-every other, and just as such, all space is this sheer outsideness and is everywhere the same. As such, space is a domain that can sustain determinacies as given independently of one another. Thus with the move to the philosophy of nature, given determinacy as the antithesis of the logical (as the arena of pure, self-determining determinacy) is introduced, and we come thereby to think nature, as the domain of the given, as nothing like the logical. Of course this is a thinking of nature, but one predicated not on any purported sameness or similarity between thought and nature but rather just on the notion of their absolute difference. We can do this-think nature such that our thinking does not taint this other than thought by assuming that its determinate character is in some fashion like thought (just a quasi-other)-simply because we have now first fully conceptualized the domain of selfdetermining thought. Pure thought as logic has thereby been captured and closed in its completeness, so to speak, and we may come to conceive of something as utterly free of thought's determination, for we know just what the latter is and also what autonomy consists in. We have fully comprehended what the autonomy of thought means, and with that, we have come to know why and how we now need to think what is autonomous from thought itself. Still, as a thinking about nature, is it not guilty of refusing to recognize an otherness that simply cannot be thought at all, and is not this an important complaint of Hegel's critics? In fact, Hegel does not refuse to recognize nonthinkable otherness and allows that there are aspects of the real that cannot be brought to thought, things that, like Herr Krug's pen, cannot be deduced. Furthermore, philosophical attacks on Hegel that argue, and not merely assert, such otherness must of course do what they claim cannot be done, conceptualize what it is about this other that ostensibly escapes the grasp of thought. Take, for example, Kierkegaard's discussion of existence. In so doing the purportedly unthinkable X has been brought to thought. In principle, Hegel has no problem with this, as he does it himself (e.g., in the discussion of the necessity of contingency), and he also recognizes nonsystematic modes of thought as capable of grasping what philosophy cannot, as being valid in their own right, and as in some important respects essential for systematic thought. All of these are also ways in which Hegel specifically acknowledges the limits of systematic philosophy.What is wrong from the perspective of Hegel's system is the tendency to absolutize the other as a purportedly given, all-determining unmediated immediacy that thought must surrender to as its master. This fails to overcome absolute metaphysics, for it simply inverts it. The larger problem for Hegel's critics is that they ignore Hegel's method for the autonomous acknowledgment of difference and otherness, and thus their attempts to articulate, describe, and glorify radical otherness or difference must be tacitly, if inadvertently, idealistic and unwittingly guilty of the charge of authoritarian reductionism that they erroneously lay at his feet.

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