THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

Hegel claims that the differences between various kinds of objects, both
“inorganic” and “living,” can be determined with regards to these various “modes of this
unity.” Thus the notion, as the concrete unity or as the unity of identity and difference,
presents basic structural features common to all objects, to those that are organic as well
as those that are inorganic. Different kinds of things – such as physical beings, chemical
beings, organic beings, humans as anthropological beings, humans as political beings,
etc. – present different modes of unity, and it is this difference in the mode of unity that
allows us to characterize the distinctions that constitute each kind.
In this passage, Hegel states the basic problem of the unity of identity and
difference – or the unity of unity and plurality – in terms of the problem of the
constitution of physical and/or chemical objects. He presents the basic problem in terms
of the physicist, “who is…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.” Here we have three basic moments that present themselves in our conception
of a physical and/or chemical object. First, we have a “variety” of properties or matters.
Hegel says that the properties all to often get transformed into matters. Properties have a
dependent status. Properties present a plurality of features that all “belong to” or are
“grounded in” some unified thing. When we treat properties as matters, we treat them as
independent things. Rather than treating the thing as a unity (substance) that includes
plurality (properties), we treat it as a collection that consists in a plurality of independent
things. Second, in addition to the variety of properties we have some relation between
them. This is the moment of unity, for as Hegel says, “relation ipso facto implies unity.”
95