THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

construe the “-” either as “and” or as “=.” If reflection construes the relation in terms of
aggregation, then change becomes: “P and S1” to “P and S2.” This interpretation of
change reduces it to the categories of persistence, annihilation, and creation. P persists;
S1 is annihilated; and S2 is created. Here there is no genuine change because there is no
essential or grounding relation between identity (P) and difference (S1 and S2).
However, if reflection tries to grasp the relation between P and S1 or S2 in terms
of identity, then changes presents an outright contradiction. It consists in “P = S1” to “P
= S2.” If “S1 = S2,” then we have persistence without change, creation, or annihilation.
If “S1 ≠ S2,” then we must affirm the contradiction: “S1 = S2” and “S1 ≠ S2.” This fact
has led some philosophers, including F.H. Bradley to deny the reality of change. 158 The
resolution of this paradox requires a conception of the unity that is distinct from
aggregation and identity. Hegel’s philosophy explores various modes of unity in an
attempt to resolve this paradox. There is a direct relation between the paradox of change
and the structure of the object. The relation between P and S1 or S2 is the relationship
between the substance, as a unity that persists in its self-identity, and the properties that
158 See Footnote Five in Chapter Three. For reasons quite similar to those of Bradley, John
McTaggart also denies the existence of time (and therefore change), and he ascribes this position to Hegel.
He claims, “Hegel regarded the order of the time-series as a reflection, though a distorted reflection, of
something in the real nature of the timeless reality” (The Nature of Existence, Vol. 2. P. 31.). And: “reality
is not, in its truest nature, a process but a stable and timeless state” (Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 7).
Both Bradley and McTaggart argue: (1) time involves contradictions; (2) reality is not contradictory; (3)
therefore time is not real. Contrary to claim 2, Hegel asserts again and again that contradiction provides the
basis of all reality. Thus Hegel says: “contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so
far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity” (Science of Logic, p.
439). Hegel goes on to identify the urge or activity of contradiction with the basic teleological structure of
all genuine entities: “Similarly, internal self-movement proper, instinctive urge in general, (the appetite or
nisus of the monad, the entelechy of absolutely simple essence), is nothing else but the fact that something
is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself” (Science of Logic, p.
440). Rather than being an aspect of thought or mere appearance, contradiction is the principle of reality
itself. Bradley and McTaggart fail to draw this conclusion because they fail to distinguish between the
contradiction as conceived by the understanding and the contradiction as conceived by reason. They are
right to claim that contradictions, as conceived by the understanding, do not exist in reality. However, they
failed to recognize or develop the categories of reason or speculation, categories that express the
specifically dynamic nature of reality itself.
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