THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

These contradictions can only be resolved from the standpoint of Sittlichkeit, from
the standpoint that recognizes the essential relation between subjectivity and objectivity.
Subjectivity only exists as it is embodied in an objective social world. It always exists in
relation to its objective manifestations or external expressions, and thus it should not be
construed as some power, capacity, or realm distinct from its specific acts. Alternatively,
the objective social world only exists as the embodiment of subjectivity. Thus
tertiary effects over which the agent has no direct control. Paragraph 119 sets out this conception of action
and then presents Hegel’s response. It says: “An action as an external event is a complex of connected
parts which may be regarded as divided into units ad infinitum, and the action may be treated as having
touched in the first instance only one of these units. The truth of the single, however, is the universal; and
what explicitly gives action its specific character is not an isolated content limited to an external unit, but a
universal content, comprising itself in the complex of connected parts. Purpose, as issuing from a thinker,
comprises more than the mere unit; essentially it comprises that universal side of the action, i.e. the
intention” (Philosophy of Right). This passage describes the transition from the category of “purpose” to
the category of “intention.” When we construe action in terms of the category of “purpose,” we construe it
as a subjective or mental event that causes a physical effect. Here the question becomes: what physical
effects can we ascribe to the purpose? Since the physical world and its events are infinitely divisible, any
effect we might ascribe to the purpose can be further subdivided indefinitely. The act of killing the man
can be subdivided into (a) the act of pulling the trigger, which causes (b) the motion of the bullet, which (c)
ultimately kills the man. Similarly, the act of pulling the trigger can be divided into the act of (a) the brain
generating electrical impulses, (b) the electrical impulses traveling through the nervous system, and (c) the
muscles in the finger contracting. Hegel argues that this division can be carried on indefinitely, and that
therefore there is no first effect. Moreover, he argues that the more we sub-divide the effect, the more we
lose the nature of the action. Actions are defined holistically rather than atomistically. Thus Hegel argues
that, “what gives action its specific character is not an isolated content limited to an external unity, but a
universal content, comprising itself in the complex of connected parts. This universal, which Hegel
designates as the intention, exists immanently in the physical event itself. It is the form that organizes the
matter of the event. Hegel argues that we construe action in terms of intentions, not in terms of purposes,
for a conception of action in terms of purpose leads to contradiction. The account of action in terms of
purpose claims to construe action in terms of the immediate effect of the purpose. This leads to
contradictions because: (1) there is no immediate or first effect, and (2) insofar as we try to characterize the
event as an action, we must always explain the sub-parts or moments in terms of the action as a whole, not
the action as a whole in terms of the sub-parts, one of which is somehow privileged as the first part. Hegel
expands upon this basic argument in the Remark to paragraph 119. He says: “Actuality is touched in the
first instance only at a single point (arson, for instance, directly concerns only a tiny section of the
firewood, i.e. is describable in a proposition, not a judgment), but the universal nature of this point entails
its expansion. In a living thing, the single part is there in its immediacy not as a mere part, but as an organ
in which the universal is really present as the universal; hence in murder, it is not a piece of flesh, as
something isolated, which is injured, but life itself which is injured in that piece of flesh. It is subjective
reflection, ignorant of the logical structure of the single and the universal, which indulges ad libitum in the
subdivision of single parts and consequences” (Philosophy of Right).
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