Hegels_Logic_Identity_Difference_chapter4_part1.mp3

Chapter 4

Identity and Difference, Thought and Being

In Identity and Difference, Martin Heidegger notes that “Thinking has needed more than two thousand years really to understand such a simple relation as that of mediation within identity.” Western thought, he observes, has always understood identity in terms of unity. “But that unity is by no means the stale emptiness of that which, in itself, without relation, persists in monotony.” This has not always received adequate acknowledgment in Western philosophy. But “since the era of speculative Idealism, it is no longer possible for thinking to represent the unity of identity as mere sameness, and to disregard the mediation that prevails in unity.Wherever this is done, identity is represented only in an abstract manner.” Heidegger goes on to comment that in Western philosophy “the unity of identity forms a basic characteristic of the Being of beings. Everywhere, wherever and however we are related to beings, we find identity making its claim on us.” This claim is especially pertinent to science and thinking. In its radical form, the claim that identity makes on thinking is expressed through the notion of identity itself, thus the ’ fragment of Parmenides: tò gàr autò noe˜n estín te kaì e˜nei. This fragiment says that Being and thinking are somehow the same, or that Being belongs to an identity to which thinking belongs as well. The fragment does not address the nature of this identity. Nonetheless, “Long before thinking had arrived at a principle of identity, identity itself speaks out as a pronouncement which rules as follows: thinking and Being belong together in the Same and by virtue of this Same,” where this sameness in turn is at least fixed “as the belonging together of the two.” Of the philosophers cited by Heidegger in his comments on identity, none addressed the problems of the nature of identity and of the identity or unity that prevails between thought and being more thoroughly or powerfully than Hegel. But while Hegel labored mightily to attain a concrete notion of identity, he is often accused of invalidly privileging identity over difference in his considerations of the category of identity and of the unity of thought and being. I argue that the most essential principles at work in Hegel’s considerations of these matters lead to very different consequences. I certainly believe that the reading that I offer in these pages is textually warranted. But my ultimate aim is philosophical and not exclusively interpretive. I believe that at least many of the key positions that belong to Hegel’s understandings of the nature of identity and of the identity of thought and being invite critical development rather than reversal, just because of the contributions that they make to philosophical truth about these essential issues. Thus a statement and defense of those positions serve conceptual as well as interpretive purposes.

I. Hegel recognizes very explicitly in the Phenomenology of Spirit that “Unity, difference, and relation are categories each of which is nothing in and for itself, but only in relation to its opposite, and they cannot therefore be separated from one another.” This recognition operates from the very beginning and throughout all of Hegel’s phenomenological considerations. Still, one finds Hegel’s most radical treatment of the notions of identity and difference in book of the Science of Logic. This is the first text to which my argument must turn. The logical analysis of identity, belonging as it does to the “Doctrine of Essence,” begins with the recognition that identity “is not that equality-with-self that being or even nothing is but equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity, not a restoration of itself from another, but this pure origination from within itself, essential identity.” Understood in these terms, identity is not the result of a relative and an external negation in which one thing is distinguished from another, identified through its being separated from the other, but in all other respects taken as an immediate determinacy. “On the contrary, being and every determinateness of being has sublated itself not relatively, but in its own self; and this simple negativity of being in its own self is identity itself.” For this reason, identity is now self-related; it is “identity-with-self.” The very fact that one conceives identity in terms of self-relation implies difference, as well as the act of distinguishing through which one acknowledges difference.The “identity-with–self” through which one first conceives logical identity is “simple,” insofar as it is a self-relation that entails, initially at least, difference that vanishes immediately upon its arising, and thus a distinguishing that distinguishes nothing and collapses immediately within itself. Because this distinguishing immediately collapses, it is a positing (Setzen) of what is other than identity, namely, the difference in terms that self-relation implies, in its nonbeing. But it is just distinguishing, in the immediacy of its collapse, which brings self-relation about. If so, then “distinguishing is present as self-related negativity”; the thought of identity requires the positing of the other of identity, difference and distinguishing, in its nonbeing, and the simultaneous preservation of that other. “In other words,” Hegel says, “identity is the reflection-into-self that is identity only as internal repulsion, and is this repulsion as reflection-into-self, repulsion that immediately takes itself back into itself. Thus it is identity as difference that is identical with itself.” But of course difference is and can be identical to itself just insofar as it opposes itself to identity and presents itself as nonidentity. This means that one needs to understand identity both as self-related difference, “difference that is identical with itself,” and as a determination that stands over against difference and that is, along with difference, one determination of itself. The preceding remarks summarize the core of the first part of Hegel’s treatment of the logical category of identity. This treatment allows Hegel to say that identity, which first presents itself as the same as essence and as the entirety of reflection, shows itself upon fuller consideration to be a determination of essence and a moment of reflection, and that the law of identity and even more so the law of contradiction are synthetic rather than analytic in nature. It is as if it were the case that Hegel, having stripped his thought of all problematic Kantian dualisms, is now well on the way toward establishing his version of the claim that Kant makes at the beginning of the B Deduction, that synthesis, which seems opposed to analysis, is nonetheless that which analysis always and necessarily presupposes. But Hegel’s own treatment, as the preceding remarks indicate, requires a further consideration of the category of difference itself. Hegel begins this treatment by saying that difference is “the essential moment of identity itself which, as negativity of itself, determines itself and is distinguished from difference.” Difference is the essential moment of identity. Identity determines itself as the negativity of itself through being the other of its essential moment. This is how identity distinguishes itself from difference. We need carefully to examine the reasoning that leads to these claims. One must understand the sense of difference that emerges in the consideration of identity, Hegel says, as being simple and absolute. It is “not the other . . . of an other, existing outside it but simple determinateness in itself.” According to George Di Giovanni, Hegel wants us to bracket fixed terms “and direct attention to the transition from one to the other. We must conceptualize a point which is neither A nor Not-A, that is, not a point at all but a transition between the two. And it is such an “in between” situation that we must abstract and consider as an object in itself, as “einfacher Begriff,” to use Hegel’s phrase. Its essence consists in being other than any limit one might want to impose upon it.” This is the sense of difference that emerges as the opposite of identity in the Doctrine of Essence. But must not the attempt to conceive of that which is simply without limit and indefinite fail? Once again, Di Giovanni comments that “The language which Hegel uses to express ‘otherness as such’ seems indeed already to betray this failure. However hard he might try to express the mere lack of all determinations, it is nonetheless always a well-defined object (viz., one which he declares to be neither A nor B, but a situation in between) which he describes.” Hegel acknowledges this in saying that “Difference in itself is self-related difference.” But that is just the point. Hegel’s aim is to conceive of difference and identity without having “to conceive identity first as a mere self-reference devoid of content, and then to add to it a multiplicity of determinations which leave the identity untouched.” He fulfills this aim by showing that difference, understood as an essential determination distinct from identity, nonetheless entails self-relation. If simple or absolute difference is self-related, then “as such, it is the negativity of itself, the difference not of an other, but of itself from itself; it is not itself but its other. But that which is different from difference is identity. Difference is therefore itself and identity. Both together constitute difference; it is the whole and its moment.” Since absolute or simple difference is a whole that includes itself and identity as well as a moment of the same whole, one might say that simple difference obtains only in relation with identity. But, in the context of the analysis of difference at least, “the truth is rather that, as difference, it contains equally identity and this relation itself.” In other words, in showing that the consideration of difference reintroduces the category of identity, Hegel shows that identity is “not merely added to other and difference, but derived from them.” Insofar as identity is derived from difference, it has difference as its essential moment. Since identity presents itself as self-related difference, that is, as a category that has difference as its essential moment and that nonetheless stands in contrast with simple difference, identity determines itself as the other of its essential moment and as the negativity of itself. And identity distinguishes itself from difference just by being a moment of a whole that difference itself defines. These comments register what is to be said about the connection between the categories of identity and difference from the standpoint of an analysis of difference. A fuller consideration of that connection would repeat the analysis of identity and bring the two analyses together. Hegel suggests this when he observes that “Difference is the whole and its own moment, just as identity equally is the whole and its moment.” Since each is the whole as well as a moment of the whole, each is the essential moment of the other. Still, this is shown only when the analysis of difference succeeds the analysis of identity. One gains the essential elements of a concrete understanding of identity and difference by noting that difference “is not transition into an other, not relation to an other outside it; it has its other, identity, within itself, just as identity, having entered into the determination of difference, has not lost itself in it as its other, but preserves itself, is its reflection-into-self and its moment.” I do not intend to carry my discussion forward into the analyses of diversity, opposition, and contradiction. Those analyses are fascinating in their complexity, philosophical substance, and logical significance. Nonetheless, the analyses that I have discussed so far are sufficient for my purposes, insofar as they lay down the essential and radical principles from which all consideration and employment of the categories of identity and difference should follow. Each of these categories is or defines an intelligible whole that includes its other as a moment, and itself as well. On this basis, an adequate consideration or employment of the category of identity proceeds from the concept of self-related difference, just as an adequate consideration or employment of the category of difference proceeds from the concept of differentiated self-relation. In fact, the situation is more complicated in the latter case, and therefore in the former as well. This is because “differentiation,” and the sense of self-relation associated therewith, needs to be understood in light of the analyses of diversity, opposition, and contradiction, and then in light of the further logical categories that develop those essential determinations. But the analyses I have discussed at least show that the categories in question need to be understood in terms of the derivation of each from the other, which means, in part but significantly, in terms of the derivation of identity from difference. The understanding of identity through the notions of unity and mediation that operates and develops, according to Heidegger, throughout the history of philosophy, attains its first fully adequate and warranted expression in the thought of Hegel. This is a stunning moment of progress in the history of philosophy. That philosophers have, for the most part, ignored or misunderstood and opposed Hegel’s understanding of identity indicates the extent to which philosophy falls short of the achievements of its own historical past. There is still a need to grasp that understanding in its complexity. This means surpassing the interpretive position according to which Hegel’s considerations of identity and difference, while claiming adequately to conceptualize each, finally privilege the former so as to annul the latter. Even Jacques Taminiaux maintains that “from the moment that Hegel takes up the philosophical project, the proper subject matter of this thought lies in the theme of difference, but that the way in which he relates to it entails the elimination of difference,” because with regard to the Absolute, “differences and the whole interplay of references connected with it are condemned to elimination.” There well may be even key occasions on which Hegel privileges identity over difference in an objectionable manner. But the most radical principles that belong to his thinking, and that determine the canons for dealing with the notions of identity and difference, are themselves objections to those occasions.The position that identity is itself a moment of difference does not present the whole of Hegel’s thinking about identity, but it does reside inalterably at the very basis of that thinking. From this position, an argument that interrelates identity and difference in a way that eliminates difference cannot follow.

II. Considerations of identity, difference, and the connections between those categories are, by themselves, of fundamental philosophical importance. This importance becomes even more evident when other basic philosophical issues are considered in relation to these categories. As already noted, that happens in a significant way when identity is treated as a determination of beings that makes a claim on thinking, a claim that in its most emphatic form asserts the identity or unity of thought and being. Clearly Hegel asserts such a claim. He does so in the discussion of the reconciliation of consciousness with self-consciousness in the chapter on “Absolute Knowing” in the Phenomenology and in the discussion of the Idea in the last division of the Science of Logic. In the latter text he explicitly refers to the Idea as “the unity of the Concept and Reality” (die einheit des Begriffs und der Realität). Hegel’s assertion of the claim about the unity or identity of thought and being is not uncontroversial. Taminiaux once again holds that because of the way in which Hegel asserts this claim, the difference between thought and being “is absorbed into a conciliation in which it is eliminated and swallowed up in the indivisible unity of self-consciousness.” And on William Desmond’s reading of Hegel, “The self-surpassing power of thought is not seen as, in part, shaped by a gift from beingother. It is purely within the power of thought’s own resources to determine itself as transparently and comprehensively as possible . . . to the point of complete self-determination, wherein all transcendence has been made entirely immanent.” The implications of these criticisms certainly deserve examination, but so does the question of their accuracy. Hegel seems to give his critics fuel for their fires, as when he says, for example, that external material reality, in relation to the Idea, “is not an abstract being subsisting on its own account over against the Concept; on the contrary, it exists only as a becoming through the negativity of indifferent being, as a simple determinateness of the Concept.” But I have suggested, however briefly, that the fundamental principles that determine what, for Hegel, is normative in considerations of identity and difference should never allow for an argument that annuls difference by absorbing it into self-related identity. This suggests the usefulness of another look at the final chapters of the Logic and the Phenomenology, for the sake of examining just what Hegel claims there about the identity of thought and being. Hegel’s Logic presents a systematic exposition of the categories through which one conceives the pure determinations of self-determining thought and of the actuality grasped in self-determining thought. As this science develops, one comes to see that limitations belong to the categories that conceptualize structures of thought in the “Doctrine of Being” and the “Doctrine of Essence,” in large part because of “lack of self-consciousness reflected in those structures about the autonomy, the independent spontaneity of thought required for the possibility of their own project,” and that the completion of this science requires an account of “the way in which the various moments of being and essence are to be seen as moments in that autonomous process.” This account reaches completion in the discussion of the “Absolute Idea.” This Idea, in turn, is not precisely another logical category. It is more precisely the self-apprehending (sich zu vernehmen) outcome that self-determining thought reaches at the conclusion of a systematically complete account of its own pure, categorical determinations. For this reason, the exposition of the Absolute Idea deals not with specific categories but with the intrinsic dynamic or the “method” of self-determining thought.

Disclaimer: This article was obtained from Internet and intended for private and personal use only to study Hegel's philosophy. The original auhers and publishers own its copyright, and if this post invokes any copyright infringement, I will take the article off Inernet immediately.