THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

This account of the structure of the object allows us to make further comparisons
between the nature of the substance as subject and the nature of thought as a hermeneutic
process. Here the first moment in the development of the object consists in the
determination of itself and its other in light of its telos. This has a clear analog in the
activity of thought. Thought begins with an act of analysis that divides the whole. A
similar act of division or analysis occurs when the self – or rather the object in its
selfhood – divides itself from its other in light of the telos. 183 In the same way that the
whole that precedes the act of analysis is implicit and merely potential, so also the telos
that determines the first distinction between the object and its other is also implicit and
merely potential. This has a number of implications. First, the telos only becomes actual
and explicit in the process of its actualization. Second, in the same way that the first act
of division may be wrong, given the fact that thought begins with a vague and implicit
sense of the whole, so also the first act of division between the self and its other may be
wrong. It may also involve distortions.
Before further considering the similarities between the object and thought, I must
first introduce one more element of complexity into our account of the object. In Chapter
One, I claimed that Hegel’s conception of the notion presents the object in terms
normally associated with consciousness or subjectivity. Our account of the object in this
chapter makes it clear that one such set of categories – namely those associated with self-
determined purposive action – play a central role in the constitution of the object.
However, in the same way that Leibniz ascribes a form of appetition and a form of
representation to all monads, so Hegel ascribes self-determined activity and
183 Here I use the term “self” to describe a structure that is most explicit in fully self-conscious human
selves, although it also exists in less developed and self-aware forms in all objects.
185