THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

assumptions, a clarification that itself modifies the way that we employ these
assumptions in our articulation of the manifold. 149 This moderate (or radical)
transformation of the parts leads to a reformulation of the rules of synthesis and our
conception of the whole, which in turn leads to further transformations in the rules of
analysis and our conception of the parts.
Thus we can see that (a) the rules governing analysis, or the sense in which the
judgment contains duality, can only be defined in relation to the rules that govern
synthesis, and that (b) the rules governing synthesis, or the sense in which the judgment
presents us with a unity, can only be defined in relation to the rules that govern analysis.
In direct relation to our discussion of judgment, this means that the sense in which A and
B are connected and the sense in which A and B are distinguished cannot be fully
disambiguated. This means that we can only grasp the structure or process of judgment
in terms of the unity or the essential relation between identity and difference.
The essential relation between identity and difference poses various problems or
challenges that we must face as we try to conceive the nature judgment and the nature of
thought more generally. As we have seen, our naïve or common conception of judgment
construes thought either as (a) a process that starts with plurality and produces unity, or
more the articulation of form whereby distinctions are securely defined, and sand arrayed in their fixed
relations. Without such articulation, Science lacks universal intelligibility, and gives the appearance of
being the esoteric possession of a few individuals: an esoteric possession, since it is as yet present only in
its Notion or it its inwardness; of a few individuals, since its undiffused manifestation makes its existence
something singular. Only what is completely determined is at once exoteric, comprehensible, and capable
of being learned and appropriated by all” (p. 7). Hegel describes the initial appearance of this new
conception of the world as the “whole veiled in its simplicity,” as a whole that is “without specificity and
content.” This new conception begins as an esoteric intuition, as an inward sense that is not yet
communicable. This new conception of the world only becomes communicable through differentiation and
division. This differentiation and division provides the basis for the syntheses that yield the determinate
conception of the whole.
149 This is an important point. The process by which we become conscious of the original rules of
division changes the way that we employ them. As we become increasingly conscious of the rules we
employ in analysis, our application of these rules becomes increasingly precise, consistent, and accurate.
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