THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

is red.” In this judgment, the subject refers to a particular object with a set of properties
or features, with a certain smell, a certain shape of petals, etc. The predicate refers to one
specific property, the property of being red. The moment of difference is clear in this
judgment. There is an obvious difference between the property of being red and the rose,
which is also possesses a certain shape, smell, etc. However, insofar as this judgment
truthfully ascribes the property of redness to the rose, there must also be a sense in which
the judgment expresses the unity, connection, or identity of these properties. This
judgment holds that a certain smell, a certain shape of petals, and the color red all belong
to or are united in the same object – the rose. The plurality of properties exists in the
self-same or identical object. Hegel expresses this, perhaps somewhat misleadingly,
when he declares that the “subject is the predicate.” Here the copula expresses identity,
unity, or connection. It expresses the sense in which the subject and predicate belong
together, the sense in which they refer to features of the same object.
At this point, two things remain unclear. First, while the truth of the judgment
clearly presupposes some connection between the subject and the predicate terms, it isn’t
clear why Hegel sees this connection as an instance of identity. In the standard
philosophical usage of these terms, there is a significant difference between the term
“connection” and the term “identity.” In fact, as we shall see in Section 3.2, one might
argue that the alleged perplexities Hegel raises with regard to the structure of judgment
judgment. Moreover, Hegel might argue that the meaningfulness of negative judgments depends upon the
possibility of connection. Consider the following judgments: (1) “the rose is not blue;” (2) “the rose is not
melodic;” (3) “the rose is not four;” and (4) “the rose is not sweetly.” The meaningfulness of the first
judgment rests upon the fact that we can conceive a connection between the rose and the color blue. The
second judgment is less meaningful, though we can still make some sense of it, since the term “melodic”
can be connected with some kinds of objects. So in terms of very general categories, we can still make
sense of what the connection might be. The final two judgments are relatively nonsensical, since we can’t
make sense of the connection they deny. So in a number of senses, negative judgments are dependent upon
positive judgments.
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