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THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

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identity and difference. In other words, the problematic relationship between identity<br />

and difference presents the problem of philosophy. 212<br />

In the first four chapters of this dissertation, I have not provided much direct<br />

textual evidence to demonstrate the centrality of the phrase, “the unity of identity and<br />

difference,” within Hegel’s philosophy. I have provided a fair amount of indirect<br />

evidence. I have, for instance, cited the precedent of the British Hegelians, who placed<br />

variations of this phrase at the center of their philosophical systems. F.H. Bradley and<br />

A.E. Taylor developed interpretations and sympathetic reconstructions of Hegel’s<br />

philosophy that demonstrate how a number of Hegelian themes can very usefully be<br />

organized in terms of the problem of the unity of identity and difference, or in terms of<br />

what they describe as the problem of “identity in difference.”<br />

Chapter Two constructs a basic framework for interpreting Hegel’s philosophy in<br />

terms of the unity of identity and difference, and Chapters Three and Four show how this<br />

framework and this phrase help us to make sense of Hegel’s discussion of judgment. The<br />

plausibility of this overall interpretation provides further indirect evidence for the<br />

centrality of the problematic of the unity of identity and difference in Hegel’s philosophy.<br />

The preceding chapters also provide some direct evidence for the importance of<br />

this problem. In Chapter Two, for instance, I examined what I take to be a central claim<br />

in Hegel’s philosophy – namely, the claim that “the truth is complete only in the unity of<br />

identity and difference.” Additionally, the examination of the “contradiction” in the<br />

212 The centrality of the problem of the unity of identity and difference can be seen in Hegel’s<br />

claim, in the Differenzschrift, that the basic opposition between identity and difference underlies (or<br />

expresses itself) in the oppositions between “spirit and matter, soul and body, faith and reason, freedom and<br />

necessity, etc.” as well as “reason and sensibility, intelligence and nature” (Werke 2, p. 21). Hegel makes a<br />

similar claim in Glauben und Wissen, where he says that this opposition presents itself in oppositions<br />

between “spirit and world, soul and body, I and nature, etc.” (Werke 2, p. 302). It is worth noting the “etc.”<br />

that Hegel adds at the end of each list of oppositional terms.<br />

218

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