THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

given differentiated plurality. However, as Hegel’s discussion of the botanist aptly
illustrates, our cognitive acts must first differentiate an undifferentiated unity.
Thus Hegel’s discussion of attention shows that we can neither perceive nor
conceive a discrete plurality that exists for the mind prior to judgment. 210
210 This statement requires a number of careful clarifications. A discrete plurality exists prior to
the mental acts of human minds. We can conceive this possibility. However, there are two things we can’t
conceive. First, we can’t conceive a discrete plurality without any judgment or conceptual activity.
However, the conceptual activities of judgment exist in the world. They are the active forms through which
things determine themselves. So there is no discrete plurality prior to judgment, but there is discrete
plurality prior to human judgment. Second, we can’t conceive the approach of our mind to the discrete
plurality in the world accept as the approach to an undifferentiated unity. Even though there is a discrete
plurality in the world prior to human judgment, human judgment can only approach this discrete plurality
as an undifferentiated unity. There is only differentiated or discrete plurality for the mind insofar as the
mind has determined these distinctions for itself.
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