THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

there must be some sense in which it is the same object that is both one and many. Hegel
develops his account of the notion as a solution to this problem. In his account of the
notion, Hegel shows how the object exists as the essential unity of its unity and plurality.
As we will see, Hegel’s account of the notion closely follows the account of thought
presented in Sections 5.4 and 5.5 of Chapter Three. Like thought, the object itself
consists in a kind of circular or hermeneutic action, and like thought, the object consists
in action that is self-determined.
Hegel presents his resolution to this problem in the following passage, where he
describes the structure of the notion. He says:
Further, the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the
same, is in truth actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is
the mediation of its self-othering with itself. This Substance is, as Subject, pure,
simple negativity, and is for this very reason the bifurcation of the simple; it is the
doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent
diversity and of its anti-thesis [the immediate simplicity]. Only this self-restoring
sameness, or this reflection in otherness within itself – not an original or
immediate unity as such – is the True. It is the process of its own becoming, the
circle that presupposes its end as its goal, having its end also as its beginning; and
only by being worked out to its end, is it actual. 176
The relation between this passage and our current problem may not be immediately
obvious. Before examining the specific terms of this passage in an attempt to unpack its
meaning and demonstrate its relation to our present concerns, there are two relatively
obvious points we should note. First, this passage describes the structure of the “living
Substance…which is in truth Subject,” or the “Substance…as Subject.” It presents an
account of substance in terms of categories normally associated with human subjectivity.
In Chapter One we saw that Hegel also uses the term “notion” to designate this
176 Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 10.
175