THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

corresponds to the way the object is in itself. Any answer we give to this question
presents problems. Assume, for instance, that the object in itself is one, and that we
sometimes conceive it as one and sometimes as many. This leads to a host of problems.
First, if the object is one and we can conceive it as one, what is the purpose of conceiving
it as many? Doesn’t this way of conceiving it simply represent an error? Moreover, if
the object in itself is one, then only one of the two features of the judgment (the identity
expressed by the copula) actually reflects the structure of the object. This, however,
contradicts our original assumption that judgment, in all three of its moments, reflects the
structure of the object. More importantly, if the object in itself is merely one, then there
can only be one genuine object, since as we saw above, objects that are merely simple
cannot be differentiated from one another, and thus they are not different.
Assume, alternatively, that the object in itself is many, and that we consider it as
one and as many. Here again a number of problems arise. First, on this option, our
conception of the object as one appears as a mistake or falsification. Again, this
contradicts our assumption that all three moments of the structure of judgment reflect the
structure of the object. More importantly, this conception of the object also contradicts
the assumption that genuine objects exist in the world, for it claims that the “object,” in
itself is really many, and that whatever unity it has simply comes from our cognitive
activity.
Thus if we try to make sense of the relation between the various senses of the
object and the object itself in terms of the relation between the ways that we cognize the
object and the way that the object is in itself, various problems arise. If we cannot
cognize the object as it is itself, then we cannot explain the relationship between the
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