THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

of strict identity is ill suited for this purpose. On his view, all alleged judgments that
express the relation of strict identity lack meaning. Judgments such as, “A = A,” “The
plant is a plant,” and “God is God,” are meaningless. 128 Hegel says that such judgments
contradict themselves. The contradiction here stems from the difference between the
particular judgment and the norm that constitutes the general form of judgment, a norm
that requires the judgment to be both meaningful and true.
Since Hegel ascribes a range of meanings to the copula, and since he insists that
the copula of a genuine judgment never expresses the relation of strict identity, his
account of the contradiction in the structure of judgment clearly does not stem from the
failure to distinguish the “is” of predication from the “is” of identity. Contrary to
Russell’s suggestion, Hegel does not assume that the judgment, “Socrates is mortal,”
implies the strict identity of “Socrates” and “mortal.” Thus the contradiction in the
structure of judgment should not be represented in terms of the claims “S = P” and “S ≠
P,” at least insofar as we take the sign “=” as an expression of strict identity. Hegel
argues that the structure of judgment presents a contradiction, since the subject of the
judgment both is and is not the predicate. The exact meaning of this “contradiction”
128 Of course one might argue that certain identity judgments are both meaningful and true.
Identity judgments such as “The morning star is the evening star,” “Socrates is the philosopher who drank
the hemlock,” and “Oxygen is H20,” for instance, all convey meaning. I believe Hegel would admit the
meaningfulness of such judgments, while denying that the copula in such judgments expresses the relation
of strict identity. Such judgments claim that two different ways of designating some object designate the
same object. So there is an element of difference here – namely the difference between two ways of
designating something. Moreover, these two ways of designating something refer to two different ways
that the thing may appear, or to two different properties of the thing. So such judgments still express the
complex and apparently paradoxical structure of the object as a genuine unity that can appear in multiple
ways, or as the genuine unity that has multiple properties. In the case of the first judgment, we must still
ask ourselves: “what makes the planet that appears before dawn the same as the planet that appears after
dusk?” Here the problem of change becomes evident. The judgment, “Oxygen is H20” presents even more
complex relational features. The judgment claims that certain phenomenal and functional properties (the
feel of wetness, the capacity to quench thirst) are related to certain complex physical descriptions (of two
hydrogen molecules attached to an oxygen molecule).
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