THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

Third, we have the moment that unites the unity of the relation and the plurality of the
various properties. Hegel expresses this moment with the word “also.”
These three moments describe moments, not things. If we treat the moments as
things, the problem becomes insoluble. So we shouldn’t construe the problem as a matter
of grounding the properties in a substance, where the properties and the substance are
treated as distinct things that most somehow be brought into relation. Instead, we should
consider the three moments as moments, as ways that the thing appears or exists, or, in
subjective or epistemological terms, as ways we can consider the object. We can
consider the object as many (various properties). We can consider it as a single thing
(relation). Finally, in the third moment, we must grasp the sense in which it is the same
thing that is both one (relation) and many (various properties). This is the problem of the
unity of identity and difference, the basic problem of philosophy. It is also the basic
problem all things must overcome in order to constitute themselves as things.
In this passage Hegel also presents what he sees as the fundamental impediment
to philosophy, as the prejudice or presupposition that prevents us from grasping the unity
of identity and difference. This presupposition construes all identity as tautological
relation of a thing to itself, and it construes all unity as either (a) a characteristic that a
thing has as itself – in it self-identical relation to itself, or (b) as the mere togetherness of
external aggregation, conjunction, or composition. So for every thing, it is true that A =
A, and for all other things, for all not-As, A ≠ not-A. A is identical with itself and
different from all other things. This is the “mere identity” that excludes difference. With
this conception of identity, Hegel argues, only two conceptions of unity are possible.
First, we can conceive unity as a defining characteristic of the thing considered merely as
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