THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

closely connected with the view taken of philosophy generally and with all
imputations against it, we may still add the remark that though philosophy
certainly has to do with unity in general, it is not, however, with abstract unity,
mere identity, and the empty absolute, but with concrete unity (the notion), and
that in its whole course it has to do with nothing else; that each step in its
advance is a peculiar term or phase of this concrete unity, and that the deepest and
last expression of unity is the unity of absolute mind itself. Would-be judges and
critics of philosophy might be recommended to familiarize themselves with these
phases of unity and to take the trouble to get acquainted with them, at least to
know so much that of these terms there are a great many, and that amongst them
there is great variety. But they show so little acquaintance with them—and still
less take trouble about it—that when they hear of unity—and relation ipso facto
implies unity—they rather stick fast at quite abstract indeterminate unity, and lose
sight of the chief point of interest—the special mode in which the unity is
qualified. Hence all they can say about philosophy is that dry identity is its
principle and result, and that it is the system of identity. Sticking fast to the
undigested thought of identity, they have laid hands on, not the concrete unity, the
notion and content of philosophy, but rather its reverse. In the philosophical field
they proceed, as in the physical field the physicists; who also is well aware that he
has before him a variety of sensuous properties and matters—or usually matters
alone (for the properties get transformed into matters also for the physicist)—and
that these matters (elements) also stand in relation to one another. But the
question is, Of what kind is this relation? Every peculiarity and the whole
difference of natural things, inorganic and living, depends solely on the
different modes of this unity. But instead of ascertaining these different modes,
the ordinary physicist (chemist included) takes up only one, the most external and
the worst, viz. composition, applies only it in the whole range of natural
structures, which he thus renders for ever inexplicable [emphasis added]. 101
This brief summary or “general exoteric discussion,” presented at the “close of
philosophy,” confirms the basic lines of interpretation laid down in this chapter. On the
one hand, this paragraph presents an exoteric or even external account of philosophy, one
that can never be substituted, at least on Hegel’s view, for the process of philosophical
thinking itself. On the other hand, this summary has a kind of privileged status, since it
occurs at the close of philosophy, at the point where the nature of philosophy first
becomes fully explicit.
101 Philosophy of Mind, paragraph 573.
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