Identity and Difference

Rafael Winkler, Rafael Winkler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351624442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

This collection reflects recent discussions on the relation between identity and difference in metaphysics, and in moral and political theory in both the analytic and continental traditions. The contributions to the volume tackle such issues as the role and place of the concept of identity in Hegel's Science of Logic; the question of personal identity in Parfit, Riceour and Schechtman; the problem of inclusion and exclusion in Heidegger's reading of the history of philosophy; Heidegger's conception of the relation between philosophy and politics, the question of alterity in Levinas; and Foucault's conception of the relation between sexual instinct, economic interest, and desire. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology.

Hegelian Identity

Ioannis Trisokkas

I. Introduction

Hegelian Metaphysics aims at generating the fundamental structures of thought and being. These are not two different projects; the fundamental structures of thought are the fundamental structures of being (SL63/WdL.I.61; Houlgate, 2005, pp. 43–46; 2006, pp. 115–23). This thesis is the conclusion of Hegelian Phenomenology (PS479–493/PhdG575–591), which immediately precedes Hegelian Metaphysics in the system. To simplify things I will be referring to the fundamental structures purely in the ontological mode.¹

A “fundamental structure” is necessary and, therefore, a priori.² The generation of the structures results from their immanent deduction from the concept of pure, indeterminate being (SL67–78/WdL.I.65–79). They do not exhaust the richness of being, but they exhaust the a priori basis of this richness; any phenomenon whatsoever is ultimately based upon some or all of those structures.³

The paper endeavours to present and examine one such fundamental structure, the structure of identity. Hegel analyses identity in the Metaphysics of Essence, the second part of Hegelian Metaphysics (SL389–571/WdL.II.13–240), the first being the Metaphysics of Determinate Being (SL79–385/WdL.I.82–457) and the third the Metaphysics of Concept (SL577–844/WdL.II.243–573). It is analysed as a feature or, in Hegelese, “determination” of reflection (Reflexion). The term “reflection” denotes the complex dynamics of the super-structure of essence (Wesen).

The determinations of reflection are identity, difference, diversity, opposition and contradiction. They all refer to essence (or, if you prefer, to essence-as-reflection), but, bar contradiction, each makes an initial appearance⁴ in which it explicates essence only partially and, therefore, defectively. The reference of each determination is its implicit content. It contrasts with its explicit content, which is the way it presents (darstellen) its implicit content at each moment of presentation. Contradiction is the sole determination of reflection whose initial appearance explicitly captures the whole of essence-as-reflection, hence Hegel’s statement that contradiction is the truth of all other determinations of reflection.⁵

Two things should be immediately noted. First, contradiction is the truth of all other determinations of reflection, not by being totally independent of each other determination, but by having an explicit content that incorporates⁶ the explicit contents of all other determinations. Second, the relation between the determinations of reflection is not an externally imposed relation between the diverse elements of a pre-existing list. It is, rather, a relation between different manifestations (or explications) of the same element, namely essence, manifestations that emerge through the immanent development of this element. Because the first manifestation of essence has the structure of identity, (a) all other determinations should be understood as developments of identity, and (b) contradiction, in particular, must be conceived as the completion of the development of identity.

The Metaphysics of Essence is significantly linked to the preceding Metaphysics of Determinate Being. The term “determinate being” signifies the qualitative and quantitative manifoldness of being.⁷ The question raised and answered in the Metaphysics of Determinate Being is the following: “what fundamental structures are involved in being’s exhibiting qualitative–quantitative manifoldness?” With the coming of the Metaphysics of Essence a new question and hence a new project emerges in Hegelian Metaphysics. What is now asked is this: “what fundamental structures are involved in qualitative–quantitative manifoldness being united in one thing?”⁸

Take the example of a tree exhibiting a qualitative–quantitative manifoldness. The Metaphysics of Determinate Being examined the fundamental structures involved in there being a manifoldness of qualities and quantities, such as various shades of green and other colours, a variety of shapes and sizes, degrees of hardness and solidity, measures of height and width, chemical substances and so on. However, because the unity of the thing is absent from sheer determinate being, the tree’s qualitative–quantitative manifoldness exceeds the tree’s limits and manifests itself as part of universal systems of qualities and quantities, such as the system of colours, the periodic table of the elements, the system of numbers and arithmetic relations, the system of temperature degrees, and so on. Thus, strictly speaking, the subject matter of the Metaphysics of Determinate Being is not the qualitative–quantitative manifoldness of a thing, but these infinitely expanding systems. The Metaphysics of Essence, by contrast, examines the fundamental structures involved in these qualities and quantities being the qualities and quantities of, for example, this one tree.

All structures involved in the unification of a manifoldness are placed under the label “essence”. Essence, then, is a super-structure whose main function is to turn a manifoldness into the manifoldness of one thing. As identity is a manifestation of essence, it has the same main function. This is important to know because it shows that Hegel’s project differs from a project that thematizes identity from the angle of “the problem of individuation”. The latter seeks to specify the conditions for distinguishing one thing from another. By contrast, Hegel’s “problem of identity” stays solely within the being of one thing.

All things have or are determinate being, a manifoldness of qualities and quantities. However, it is equally true that all things have or are an essence, the unity of the manifoldness. We have seen that the Metaphysics of Essence seeks to specify the fundamental structures involved in there being such a unity.⁹ A more particular task, which becomes evident only in retrospection, is to show that the essences of things are “inherently contradictory” (SL439/WdL.II.74). The argument proceeds from a “dialectical” analysis (hereafter “dialectic”) of the first manifestation of essence (to wit, the first determination of reflection), whose initial explicit content, as noted, is not representative of the whole of essence-as-reflection. This first manifestation is the structure of identity. Hegel aspires to show that the manifestation of essence as identity undermines¹⁰ its own self by showing itself to be in itself non-identity or difference, and hence a contradiction (SL442/WdL.II.78). There is an argument, therefore, in the Metaphysics of Essence which aims at showing that in truth the essence of things is not their identity, but rather their inherent contradiction; or, strictly speaking, that while the essence of things is their identity, the latter is in truth contradiction.

It is important to emphasize that the dialectic of identity represents both the self-undermining of identity and the return of identity into itself. This has to do with the fact that identity has an implicit and an explicit content. What is undermined is the initial explicit content of identity. When the identity finally reveals itself as contradiction, its implicit content is fully disclosed, with the result that identity returns into itself, to wit, into what it truly is.

It should also be emphasized that the conclusion that identity is in truth contradiction is by no means equivalent to the claim that essence is only contradiction. The Metaphysics of Identity is only a part of the wider Metaphysics of Essence, which, when developed, shows that essence is not only contradiction (hence Hegel’s statement that in essence contradiction is “resolved” (SL433/WdL.II.67)), but also ground, appearance, force, and actuality. However, the present essay’s interest lies solely in the structure of essence-as-reflection. Insofar as essence is reflection, its manifestation as identity (the first determination of reflection) is in truth contradiction.

It follows from the fact that there is an active disclosure of the truth of identity that the dialectic of identity consists of at least two stages. A first stage, “abstract identity” (SL411/WdL.II.39), explicates identity as a structure devoid of contradiction. A final stage, “essential identity” (SL411/WdL.II.39), explicates identity as a structure that is inherently contradictory. The Metaphysics of Identity can, then, be seen as a critique – a “negation”, if you like – of abstract identity, the view that identity is free or separated from contradiction. Hegel thinks that this view is “ordinary”, and places it in the arsenal of “ordinary thinking”.

Ordinary thinking takes identity to be not only independent of contradiction but also ontologically prior to it (SL439/WdL.II.75). While without identity there can be no contradiction, the opposite does not hold. It is a corollary of this view that a thing’s identity can be thematized without the involvement of contradiction. In fact, ordinary thinking takes an even more extreme position; it believes that contradiction is a “mistake”, and that the analysis of things will at the end remove its appearance. It opines that “there is nothing that is contradictory” (SL439/WdL.II.75), and that “the contradictory cannot be imagined or thought” (SL439–440/WdL.II.75), or better, that all imagined contradictions will prove, through analysis, to be unreal.

Hegel’s understanding of contradiction is twofold. On the one hand, it is that fundamental structure whereby both a quality or quantity (F) and its contradictory (~F) are predicated of something (A). It has the following form: A is both F and not F. On the other hand, contradiction is that fundamental structure whereby the being or the “self” of a thing (A) is both affirmed (A) and denied (~A). It has the following form: A is both A and not A; or maybe better: A is not A. It is this second sense of “contradiction” that is involved in Hegelian Metaphysics of Identity.

Ordinary thinking claims, correctly, that the possibility of contradiction rests upon one’s assuming that the contradictory terms hold “in one and the same respect” (SL440/WdL.II.76). However, it claims also that all contradictions are resolved as soon as one specifies the “different respects” being at play in one’s contradictory judgement. All contradictions are “blunt differences of diverse items” (SL442/WdL.II.78). Hegel will try to show that the “speculative” Metaphysics of Identity proves this second claim wrong. As we shall see, the identity of things is composed of contradictory “moments” relating to one another “in one and the same respect”. As Hegel puts it,

speculative thinking consists solely in the fact that thought holds fast contradiction, and [ … ] does not allow itself to be dominated by [ … ] ordinary thinking, where its determinations are resolved [ … ] only into other determinations or into nothing. (SL440–441/WdL.II.76)

This paper aims at presenting and examining Hegel’s argument for the self-undermining of identity and its self-transformation into contradiction. The argument is the “proof” that the essence of things is an identity which is in itself contradiction. What the argument needs to show is that identity is in itself non-identity or difference. I will, first, describe the general character of the super-structure of essence (section II) and the various dimensions of its peculiar movement, reflection (section III). Second, I will examine the process whereby identity undermines and transforms itself into difference (section IV). Finally, I will briefly discuss a Hegelian argument from experience, being offered as “proof” that the fundamental structure of identity is mirrored in experience (section V).

II. Essence

In Hegelian Metaphysics essence is a fundamental super-structure that sublates the super-structure of determinate being.¹¹ The term “sublation” (Aufhebung) denotes a function in virtue of which a structure both supersedes (or “puts an end to”) and incorporates (or “preserves”) another structure (SL107/WdL.I.113–114). In order to understand essence we must pay attention to both of these aspects of sublation.

Essence supersedes determinate being in that in its domain being is no longer simply a qualitative–quantitative manifoldness; determinate being as sheer manifoldness has no presence in essential reality. It incorporates determinate being in that it does not lead qualitative–quantitative manifoldness to extinction; the latter maintains its presence and peculiar logic, but now it does so as part or “moment” of another element, namely essence. The purpose of the dialectic of essence is to explicate essence as a structure governed by sublation. Given the presence of determinate being in both aspects of sublation, it is imperative that we begin with a formal characterization of the structure of determinate being.

Determinate being is characterized by plurality; it is the field of...