THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

7) Essay on Natural Right: The Unity of Identity and Difference and the Structure
of Practical Philosophy
In his essay on natural right, entitled Über die wissenschaftlichen
Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen Philosophie und seine
Verhältnis zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften, Hegel often phrases the central
problem of practical philosophy in terms of the unity of identity and difference, or in
terms of the unity of the one and the many. In this essay, Hegel also uses the relationship
between unity and plurality to contrast empiricism with Kant’s philosophical system. In
schematic terms, empiricism begins with plurality and moves towards unity, while Kant’s
system, at least in its practical dimensions, begin with unity move towards plurality. 272
272 Kant presents a complex case for this Hegelian schema. Hegel generally holds that, in
theoretical philosophy, Kant follows the Empiricists in moving from plurality to unity. Experience, for
Kant, derives from the way that the synthetic operations of the understanding create unity out of the
plurality given in intuition. For this reason, Hegel groups Kant’s philosophy with Hume’s empiricism in
the Encyclopedia Logic. He says: “The Critical theory starts originally from the distinction of elements
presented in the analysis of experience, viz. the matter of sense, and its universal relations” (Encyclopedia
Logic, paragraph 40). In other words, experience derives from two sources, from the manifold provided by
intuition and the unity provided by the concepts of the understanding. Here Hegel refers to the unity of
concepts as “universal relations.” Elsewhere in this same discussion, he characterizes them in terms of
“universality” or “necessity.” Hegel continues his introduction of the Critical philosophy as follows:
“Taking into account Hume’s criticism on this distinction as given in the preceding section, viz. that
sensation does not explicitly apprehend more than an individual or more than a mere event, it [Kant’s
philosophy] insists a the same time on the fact that universality and necessity are seen to perform a function
equally essential in constituting what is called experience” (Encyclopedia Logic, paragraph 40). So Kant
accepts that we are immediately presented with a plurality of different singulars, but he holds that the mind
provides the universality or necessity that unites this plurality. Hegel sees this as a more or less Humean
project. Thus he continues: “Even Hume’s skepticism does not deny that the characteristics of universality
and necessity are found in cognition. And even in Kant this fact remains a presupposition after all; it may
be said, to use the ordinary phraseology of the sciences, that Kant did no more than offer another
explanation of the fact” (Encyclopaedia Logic, paragraph 40). Hume explains the apparent connection,
unity, universality, or necessity in our experience in terms of the principles of association. Kant explains
connection, unity, universality, or necessity in terms of the categories. Both recognize unity as something
that the mind adds to the plurality immediately given to it. Although Kant provides a different explanation
of this unity, one that focuses on the rational activity of the mind via the categories, rather than the nonrational
operation of a basically associative mechanism, his theoretical philosophy of the phenomenal realm
remains within the contours of Humean empiricism, at least according to Hegel. However, in his
conception of the noumenal realm, Kant posits an explanation that moves from unified ground (self as
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