THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

from the elements that comprise it and the manifold life outside it, and that (2) the
individual is one with the elements that comprise it and the manifold life outside it. This
account of the individual presents the same basic “contradiction” or paradox that we have
already seen in the structure of judgment. In his discussion of judgment, Hegel says both
that the subject is the predicate and that the subject is not the predicate. While on the
one hand, the sense in which the subject is the predicate and the sense in which it is not
the predicate are different, on the other hand these two senses cannot be fully
disambiguated.
In his mature philosophy, Hegel argues that reason or speculation can resolve the
nature of this apparent contradiction, that it can grasp the essential relation between the
two moments presented in judgment or the individual. In the Systemfragment, however,
he presents religion as the sole means by which this contradiction or paradox can be
resolved. 248 In this early work, Hegel’s position thus proves to be quite similar to that of
Jacobi. Like Jacobi, he sees the individual and the organic process of life as a
paradoxical or inexplicable conjunction of two disparate elements – of unity and
plurality, of synthesis and analysis, of connection and distinction, etc. And, like Jacobi,
he sees the resolution of this problem as something that transcends the power of human
reason – i.e. the power of philosophy.
contradiction that consist in the following claims: (a) in one sense A is B; (b) in another sense, A is not B;
and (c) the sense in which A is B and the sense in which as is not B cannot be fully disambiguated.
248 In the Systemfragment, Hegel says: “Philosophy must end with [or in] religion.” He goes on to
describe the merely negative task of philosophy in the following terms: “it [philosophy] has the task of
indicating the finitude in all that is finite and through reason to demand the full explanation of the finite.”
Through this, “philosophy establishes the true infinite as outside of its domain.” Hegel continues: “the
raising of the finite to the infinite can be characterized as the raising of finite life to the infinite, as religion”
(Werke 1, pp. 422-3).
237