THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

more developed forms of the original term “identity,” while the terms “particular,”
“finite,” and “determinate” present more developed forms of the term “difference.” Thus
Hegel’s characterization of the structure of the will presents a highly articulated form of
the enfolded telos that defines his philosophy and the structure of all genuine objects.
As the enfolded telos of Hegel’s philosophy and all genuine objects, the phrase
“the unity of identity and difference,” presents a problem or paradox. Hegel’s philosophy
consists in a series of increasingly successful attempts to resolve this paradox. Each
attempt leads to a more complex reformulation of the problem. Similarly, the objects in
the world itself present increasingly successful attempts to resolve this paradox. In
Chapters Three and Four I provided two examples of this paradox – namely, (1) the
nature of genuine change, and (2) the structure of judgment. In order to conceive the
nature of genuine change and the structure of judgment, we must grasp the unity that
grounds or essentially relates the moments of identity and difference that characterize
these phenomena. Both of these phenomena point towards the structure of the object as
itself a kind of unity that includes identity and difference.
My interpretation assumes that the phrase, “the unity of identity and difference,”
plays an absolutely central role in Hegel’s philosophy. It also assumes that this phrase
describes a wide range of apparently unrelated philosophical problems. To state these
assumptions in the strongest possible form, one that goes beyond the claims made in the
preceding chapters, we might say that, on Hegel’s view, all philosophical problems
present various manifestations of one central problem – the problem of the unity of
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