Hegels_Logic_Identity_Difference_chapter2_part1.mp3

Chapter 2

Double Transition, Dialectic, and Recognition

In what sort of discourse is Hegel’s thought to be discussed, evaluated, and criticized? This is not simply a question of how to translate Hegel’s obscure and complex German into English. Rather, it is a question about the discourse in which Hegel’s thought is formulated and expressed by scholars and interpreters, both critics and defenders. The question concerning the language in which speculative thought should be expressed is an issue that Hegel himself repeatedly addressed and struggled with. How should a speculative dialectical philosophy be articulated? Can it be expressed in ordinary propositional discourse without distorting it? This issue is not merely of concern to scholarly “drudges,” it is also of concern to Hegel himself; he frequently observes that the propositional form of judgment is inadequate to express speculative truth. The formulation of speculative truth in judgments leads to its distortion and misrepresentation. The truth of reason is mishandled by the understanding (Verstand). On the other hand, some believe dialectic itself is a reductive distortion of otherness and difference. Hegel’s critics believe that Hegel fails at his ambitious project of reconciling and transcending the oppositions he seeks to mediate, and that speculative dialectic is just a more subtle form of domination by a privileged, one-sided unity. These charges play out especially on the themes of other, otherness, identity, and difference. Hegel’s French students, who subsequently turned against him, charge that Hegel privileges identity over difference and reduces difference and otherness to negation, and thus to a subordinate, negative moment of identity.They point to an early Hegelian phrase, “the identity of identity and difference.” Here difference is expressed as the negative moment of dialectic (opposition to identity), which is in turn itself negated in the second affirmative moment of negation of negation. The negation of negation (difference) allegedly reinstates the original identity, thus difference is eliminated. Further, the critics observe that here difference is thought dialectically by means of identity and thus is a difference that has been tamed. The critics seek a difference that is not subordinate methodologically to dialectical opposition in which it is mastered by, reducible to, or eliminated by identity. For example, Deleuze writes concerning Hegel that “difference is crucified . . . only that which is identical . . . or opposed can be considered different: difference becomes an object of representation always in relation to a conceived identity.” In contrast, Deleuze wants a difference that is not a negation or derived from a dialectical opposition that reinstates identity but an unrecognized and unrecognizable difference, a difference affirmative in itself. Such criticisms of Hegel’s speculative dialectic are found not only in his critics but also among Hegel scholars. Some note that in Hegel’s phrase, “identity of identity and non-identity,” the term identity appears twice; consequently, identity, they maintain, is the controlling term. Difference is thus subordinate to identity. This subordination leads, they allege, to Hegel’s apparent privileging of community (state) over individuals (difference) in his social and political philosophy. Perhaps the most sustained analysis and critique of Hegel’s thought on this issue by a Hegelian scholar belongs to William Desmond who charges that Hegel’s thought is at best ambiguous and at worst reductionist. According to Desmond, Hegel’s dialectical treatment of the mediation of difference (otherness) by identity threatens to reduce mediation by other to self-mediation. In Desmond’s words, “The logic of dialectical self-mediation includes a reference to what is other, but also always ends by including that other as a subordinate moment within a more encompassing self-mediating whole.” According to Desmond, Hegel fails to safeguard or to do justice to the other and to the inherently plural, doubled character of intermediation: “The doubleness of the self and the other is not fully recognized as the basis of a togethemess that is irreducibly plural; it becomes dialectically converted into a dualism that is to be mediated and included in a higher and more embracing process of self-mediation.” In what follows I want to examine and respond to Desmond’s critique, because he formulates succinctly views of Hegel that are widespread. His probing, brilliant traversal of Hegel’s thought from a sympathetic, yet divergent perspective both throws light on the problems in Hegel, which he and others have identified, and at the same time engages the problems in formulating Hegel’s speculative philosophy noted earlier. Desmond’s corrective to Hegel’s dialectic is what he calls the “metaxological view,” which is hostile to any reduction of otherness to identity, “and to the reduction of a pluralized intermediation to a singular self-mediation.” I shall show first that Desmond’s critique of the logic depends on a reductive reading of speculative dialectic from the perspective of Verstand. It is ironic that Desmond, who charges Hegel with reductive mediation, bases this very charge on a reductive and distorted reading of Hegel’s logic. Second, I shall show that Hegel is not only aware of the distortion of speculative dialectic when it is formulated and interpreted at the level of judgments and propositions, but he also seeks to correct this distortion by insisting on what he calls “double transition.” Double transition is for Hegel a transcategorical principle, applicable throughout the whole scientific logical method. Double transition prevents any reduction of mediation by other to singular self-mediation; it safeguards difference against subordination to identity, and it clarifies the nature of the speculative holism that Hegel intends. In short, Desmond’s critique of Hegel is part of Hegel’s own selfcritique. Hegel is not a “Hegelian” in the sense rightly deplored by Desmond and others, namely, one whose method intends or requires the reduction of the other to the same or a reduction of plural intermediation to self-mediation. This will become clear both from an examination of the logic and from the concept of recognition as a “syllogism” developed both in the Phenomemology and in the mature system (Encyclopedia). I shall not develop a global interpretation of the logic but instead examine some categories and relevant texts that clarify Hegel’s position. Hegel’s Critics: Dialectic as Reductive of Otherness and Difference In spite of his reservations, Desmond concedes that speculative dialectic is an important third alternative to the univocal sense of being as sameness, and the equivocal sense of being as irreducibly plural. The former favors abstract identity and universals, while the latter regards the irreducible plurality of being as precluding any mediation. The rejection of mediation leaves a plurality of beings indistinguishable from dispersal and fragmentation, an option toward which deconstruction is inclined. However, the possibility of mediating differences is opened up by dialectic. Desmond agrees with Hegel against deconstruction and pluralism that mediation is necessary. What is at issue is the nature of this mediation, this togetherness that defines the community of self and other in their identity and difference. Desmond acknowledges the need for mediation but criticizes what he believes is Hegel’s “tendency to interpret all mediation primarily in terms of self-mediation. The togetherness of self and the other and their intermediation is, in the end, seen in the light of a certain privileging of self-mediation. . . . The doubleness of self and other is not fully recognized as the basis of a togetherness that is irreducibly plural; it becomes dialectically converted into a dualism that is to be mediated and included in a higher and more embracing process of self-mediation. The dialectic converts the mediation of self and other into two sides of a more embracing and singular process of total self-mediation.” Desmond is not hostile to universals and to mediation as are many of Hegel’s critics. But he protests what he believes happens in Hegel’s dialectic, namely, “the reduction of a pluralized intermediation to a singular self-mediation.” Desmond believes that, in dialectic, “mediation by other turns out, in the end, to be a mediation of the self [by itself] in the form of its own otherness, and hence not a mediation of an irreducible other at all.” If in Hegel’s thought all mediation by other turns out to be self-mediation, then such thinking seems to privilege its own internal self-coherence and may renege on “potentially dissident forms of otherness that resist complete conceptualization.” Hence the French critics of Hegel are right. Granted the apparent failure of Hegel’s dialectic, Desmond argues for a fourth alternative that “articulates the space of a middle that is open to a double mediation, a double that is no dualistic opposition. The middle is plurally mediated; it can be mediated from the side of the dialectical self, but also it can be mediated from the side of an otherness that is not to be reduced to a moment of self-mediation.” Can Hegel really count to two, or count to a real two? This seems a ridiculous question since Hegel is notorious for his stress on the number three, and all its trinitarian implications. I ask the question in all seriousness. I also ask for a mindfulness larger than univocal literalness. If what I said about the double mediation of the metaxological in contrast to the singular process of dialectical self-mediation has been understood, then we can say this: Hegel counts to three, but in dialectically counting to three, he is finally counting to one; the third turns out to be the first; for the second, in dialectically turning into the third, also turns out to be the first; three turns out to be one, two turns out to be one, hence Hegel does not finally count beyond one at all. Thus Desmond’s Hegel is a dialectical monist who regards otherness and difference “as a self-division, hence a halving of the original unity.” Hegel treats otherness simply as a self-diremption or negation of a primordial unity or identity, and, by a second negation of negation, he reinstates the original unity or identity. This reinstatement of unity means that Hegel does not count beyond one at all. Desmond seeks to correct what he considers the monistic tendencies of speculative dialectic. He maintains that reality is irreducibly plural and pleads for a genuinely plural, two-sided “between” and the continuation of the double as “ineradicable.” Only if the “between” is preserved by double mediation can there be an adequate account of relation and nonreductive togetherness. The problem he finds with Hegel, the “essential core of the Hegelian position,” is that “the double mediation collapses into this total and single self-mediation.” “Hegel’s absolute is erotic, and in the end every other is the other in which the self-constitution of Hegel’s absolute, its self-recognition and selfappropriation, is effected. That is, there is no absolute other in the end.” Desmond, like many others, dissents from such monism: “I think this is wrong. The double mediation is irreducible.” It is difficult not to agree with Desmond, chiefly because Hegel makes the same point concerning the necessity of double mediation in his Logic as I shall now show. Preliminary Reflections: Plurality and Measure I first discuss Desmond’s quasimathematical test to decide whether Hegel is adequately pluralistic. Double mediation implies and presupposes irreducible plurality. But what is plurality and how are we to conceive it? Desmond tackles this question with a quasimathematical test, namely, counting. He asks, can Hegel count to two? Although the question has an obvious clarity about it, it is misleading. It is worth reminding ourselves of Hegel’s views on counting and quantification. Quantity is a logical category that must be accorded its due. But Hegel observes that it is easy to overestimate its importance, exaggerate the scope of its validity, and perhaps even take it as the absolute category. This is what happens when “only those sciences whose object can be submitted to a mathematical calculus are recognized as exact sciences. . . . There would indeed be something badly amiss . . . if we had to renounce the possibility of exact cognition of objects such as freedom, law, ethical life, and even God himself, because they cannot be measured and computed or expressed in a mathematical formula.” When this view is pushed to the metaphysical level, it becomes atomism, which, as Hegel notes, surfaces not only in materialistic views of nature but also in politics, for example, the social contract theory of the state. Hegel insists that speculative truth cannot be properly expressed in quantitative, numerical language. Such language implies that irreducible plurality means a numerical aggregate. Number is an abstract unit that is externally related to and equal to other abstract units. In the Logic Hegel inveighs against mathematization and formal views of syllogism; he complains that “numbers are a conceptless material and operations of arithmetic are an external combining or separating of them.” He contends that with regard to spirit and ethical life, “It is futile to seek to fix [these] by spatial figures or algebraic signs.” According to Hegel, the formal syllogism collapses into tautology because of the formal equality and interchangeability of its terms, that is, its three terms all reduce to one. Thus Hegel anticipates Desmond’s critique but criticizes its formalist implications and presuppositions. Desmond’s counting test for plurality brings with it presuppositions concerning abstract identity and sheer external relations. Abstract identity implies that all relations are external, even so-called “internal” relations. Hence, relations have no implications for their terms, which remain indifferent and formally equivalent, that is, interchangeable. However, as far as Hegel is concerned, such formal, merely external relations are not genuine relations at all. Further, a purely formal system of thought could not generate contradictions in Hegel’s sense, because as he points out in his critique of Kant’s formalism, “A contradiction must be a contradiction with something.” Desmond’s charge-that Hegel cannot count to two or three-assumes that Hegel’s logic and dialectic are formal. This is doubtful in view of the fact that Hegel brings the emptiness charge against formal logic and propounds dialectical logic as a nonformal alternative. Moreover, Hegel counters Desmond’s counting test to determine whether plurality is real and/or genuine. He observes, “If one insists on counting . . . instead of a triplicity the abstract form may be taken as a quadruplicity; in this way the negative or difference is counted as a duality.” Here, pace Desmond, Hegel is insisting that difference is not eliminated in singular self-mediation; rather, difference counts as duality and as a presupposition and requirement of double mediation. Whatever the plurality of spirit may be, it cannot be conceived adequately in the abstract and external form of counting, for here the categories of abstract identity, abstract difference, and external relation hold sway. The counting test is not sufficient to determine the unity, the plurality, or the vitality of spirit. But Desmond’s advocacy of the counting test suggests that the perspective, the categories, and the language he uses to formulate his critique of Hegel reflect the standpoint of the understanding, Verstand. To be sure, this is not false per se but nevertheless part of the problem, the restriction, that Hegel is concerned to overcome. The counting test implies a metaphysical atomism and abstract individualism that underlie the social contract theory of the state. Hegel rejects these presuppositions. Second, Hegel’s analysis of the category of being-for-self (Fürsichsein) is relevant to the issue of plurality. Hegel can claim to be a pluralist. The starting point is that being-for-self is conceived as a negative unity that excludes all otherness from itself. However, as Hegel observes, this negative and exclusive being-for-self subverts itself: “Self-subsistence pushed to the point of the one as a being-for-self is abstract, formal, and destroys itself.” The purely negative being-for-self undergoes a dialectical reversal. The negative One reverts into positive plural ones: by excluding everything from itself, the One shows that it stands in relation to what it excludes, that is, the many. The consideration that establishes the exclusive unity of the monad also establishes the positive plurality of the many, that is, it is dialectical. The reverse is equally true: The plural many also are one. Does this reversal mean that Desmond is correct when he charges that Hegel reduces plurality to unity? Yes and no. Hegel elaborates: It is an ancient proposition that the one is many and especially that the many are one. We may repeat here the observation that the truth of the one and the many expressed in propositions appears in an inappropriate form, that this truth is to be grasped and expressed only as a becoming, as a process, a repulsion and attraction, not as being, which in a proposition has the character of a stable unity . . . each is one, each is one of the many, is by excluding the others-so that they are absolutely the same . . . This is the fact and all that has to be done is to grasp this simple fact. The only reason why the understanding stubbornly refuses to do so is that it has also in mind, and indeed rightly so, the difference; but the existence of this difference is just as little excluded because of the said fact [of identity] as the said fact [of identity] is excluded by the difference. One could, as it were, comfort the understanding for the naive manner in which it grasps the difference, by assuring it that the difference will also come in again.” Hegel notes the limitations of the propositional form, namely, that it portrays being as something static and fails to capture becoming and process. The understanding’s basic categories are abstract identity (unity) and an equally abstract difference, or plurality.The understanding (Verstand) thinks plurality and difference naively as something exclusive of and apart from abstract unity. But dialectical reason breaks down and overcomes such abstractions by showing that the opposed terms are related. Separation implies and presupposes relation. Opposition and contradiction do not annul relation but rather are forms of relation as Hegel explains: “In accordance with its concept the One forms the presupposition of the many and it lies in the thought of the One to posit itself as what is many. In other words, the One which is for-itself is . . . not something that lacks relation-instead it is relation.” But it is equally true that relation implies and presupposes separation, otherwise the difference of the relata would collapse. Relation and separation are reciprocal, thus relation is constituted by the double transition of each term into its opposite. The double transition breaks down the assumption that the one excludes the many, and vice versa, and rather transforms them into a process of mutual-reciprocal relation, that is, repulsion and attraction. The double transition shows that being-forself (Fürsichsein) and plurality cease to be mutually exclusive and thus cease to be opposed. Instead, they become mutually coconstitutive of relation.

Hegel’s Corrective:The Double Transition

The preceding discussion has brought to light an important feature and principle of Hegel’s method that, once appreciated, can be discerned throughout his logic on all levels of the logical categories. This principle Hegel calls “double transition,” der gedöpptelte Übergang. It is a principle that Hegel enunciated in the latest editions of both his Logic and Encyclopedia, which suggests that he had gradually become aware of a potential misunderstanding that may arise when the logic is read and discussed at the level of the understanding (Verstand ), ordinary language, and propositional judgments. Double transition is explicitly formulated in the second 1830 edition of the Science of Logic, buried in a not widely read discussion of quantity and quality. The passage is as follows: The positing of the totality requires the double transition, not only of one determinateness into its other, but equally the transition of this other, its return, into the first. The first transition yields the identity of both, but at first only in itself or in principle; quality is contained in quantity, but this is still a one-sided determinateness. That the converse is equally true, namely, that quantity is contained in quality and is equally only a sublated determinateness, this results from the second transition-the return into the first determinateness. This observation on the necessity of the double transition is of great importance throughout the whole compass of scientific method. The first transition of one term into its other is not yet their full identity but only the implicit, an sich, identity of the two. This identity is not yet the full concrete, mutually mediated, and jointly constituted identity; rather, it is abstract, one-sided, and reductive. It results from the disappearance of one term into the other, or the subordination of one term to the other. In contrast, the concrete, actual identity is the accomplishment of the full double transition. Both terms transition into their opposite. Hence, instead of a simple subordination of one term to another, double transition means a mutual, joint, and reciprocal mediation in which both terms are sublated and together constitute a new whole. Anything short of full double transition short-circuits the process of mediation and reduces it from double to single mediation. Single mediation is an incomplete, partial, one-sided mediation and results in a forcible, reductive identity whereby one term is reduced to or subordinate to the other.

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