THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

consider judgment as a series of acts that attempts to analyze and synthesize the world in
such a way as to grasp the genuine objects that exist in the world. 161 In this context, we
will take it for granted that genuine objects exist in the world. 162
Sections 2.1 through 2.3 explain the problem of the unity of identity and
difference with regards to the structure of the object. These sections present general or
systematic considerations, and they do not draw directly on Hegel’s texts. Section 2.1
derives the unity and the plurality of the object from the structure of judgment, and
section 2.2 derives the unity and the plurality of the object from the assumption that
161 On Hegel’s view, genuine objects exist in the world, though they are not immediately given to
us as genuine objects. In order to cognize objects, we must analyze and synthesize what is given to us.
This does not mean, however, that the objects cognized are simply the result of our analysis and synthesis.
Instead, in cognition our mental acts recapitulate, and thereby uncover, the principles that exist in the object
itself. This point becomes clear in Hegel’s discussion of space in the “Psychology” section of the
Philosophy of Mind. Hegel says: “But when we said that what is sensed receives from the intuiting mind
the form of the spatial and temporal, this statement must not be understood to mean that space and time are
only subjective forms. This is what Kant wanted to make them. But things are in truth themselves spatial
and temporal” (Philosophy of Mind, paragraph 448Z). Our subjective mental activity structures our
experience in terms of space and time. In doing so, however, it simply recapitulates the structures of space
and time as they exist independently of these acts. In other words, the developed structure of space and
time are not simply given to the mind. Instead, the mind must actively work to recognize these structures.
This active recognition consists in the determination of the structures as they are in themselves.
162 We might simply take this as the sort of claim with which philosophy should begin. Certainly
philosophers like Leibniz and Aristotle begin with these sorts of assumptions. In the Physics, for instance,
Aristotle simply begins with the assumption that the nature of change can be conceived by thought. If we
don’t assume it can be conceived by thought, at least until some very good arguments to the contrary turn
up, there would be no reason to philosophize about physics – i.e. about the domain of change. In more
general terms, if we are going to reason about the world at all, then we have to assume that the world has a
kind of rational structure that is more or less accessible to our mind. A minimal requirement for such a
rational structure seems to be that it includes features or things that are distinct from other features or
things, and that such distinctions are based on the nature of the features or things themselves. Even
relatively skeptical philosophers must assume that some aspect of the world is open to rational inquiry,
even if they limit the part of the world we can rationally conceive to the “mind,” “language,” “our
paradigms of explanation” or even mere “appearance.” Once we realize that such things are a part of the
world, that they are beings of some kind (for even appearance, in a certain sense, is), then we must admit
that some part of the world is open to reason. Moreover, we must give some principled reason why only
these parts of the world are open to reason. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel undermines a number of
traditional reasons for being suspicious about the accessibility of the world to reason. His arguments in this
book seek to undermine certain accounts that radically divide the subject from the object. Hegel argues
that the subject is itself a part of reality, that it is a kind of object. Moreover, he attempts to undermine
various accounts that privilege our access to our own mind or subject in such a way that throws into
question our access to the object.
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