THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

inarticulate norms or categories. At the instinctual and not yet fully conscious level, the
mind is “enmeshed in the bonds of its categories.”
Second, Hegel describes the presentation of these various instinctual categories to
the mind as the chaos of “infinitely varied material,” as the conflict of “variable and
mutually confusing” instinctual impulses. The mind must become explicitly aware of the
implicit norms in its various instinctual acts, urges, desires, and emotions, for only
through such awareness does the mind become capable of ordering and harmonizing its
practical life. In Quote 3, Hegel describes this process of articulation, harmonization, and
increasing stability in the following terms: “Here and there in this mesh there are firm
knots which give stability and direction to the life and consciousness of spirit; these knots
and nods owe their fixity and power to the simple fact that having been brought before
consciousness, they are independent, self-existent Notions of its own essential nature.”
The conscious articulation of certain implicit rules and norms lends stability to our
mental life. It allows us to recognize which urges and instincts can be harmonized, and
which stand in inevitable conflict. It allows us to make decisions between different ways
of harmonizing this plurality. It allows us to achieve a greater degree of unity in our
practical life, a degree of unity that facilitates diversity through its harmony.
In the theoretical side of mental existence, consciousness facilitates a similar
process. At more immediate or less explicit levels of experience, the world presents us
with a vast array of sensations, all of which already contain some minimal level of
conceptual structure. As we consciously articulate the structures and relations involved
in these sensations, our experience becomes more orderly and unified. Ultimately, this
ordering and unifying of the world makes us aware of more, not less, detail and diversity.
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