THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

that the unity of a genuine object can only be determined by the purposive action of the
object itself. Genuine objects are constituted by their own purposive action. Hegel
designates this conception of the genuine object with the term “notion,” in order to
differentiate it from more traditional conceptions of the substance.
As these passages from the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic demonstrate,
Hegel’s critique of substance and his development of the notion present central themes in
his philosophy. As I shall argue in the chapters that follow, these arguments stem from
basic metaphysical or ontological considerations about the necessary conditions for any
genuine object.
3.3) Instantiations of the Notion: Plants, Matter, and the Self
Throughout the Encyclopedia, Hegel makes it clear that all basic objects
instantiate the structures of the notion. For instance, Hegel often discusses the
development of a plant as an example of the manner in which the purposive action of the
notion constitutes the object. Hegel says:
This disruption of the notion into the difference of its constituent functions – a
disruption imposed by the native act of the notion – is the judgment. A judgment
therefore means the particularizing of the notion. No doubt the notion is
implicitly the particular. But in the notion as notion the particular is not yet
explicit, and still remains in transparent unity with the universal. Thus, for
example, as we remarked before… the germ of a plant contains its particular, such
as root, branches, leaves, etc.: but these details are at first present only potentially,
and are not realized till the germ uncloses. This unclosing is, as it were, the
the series, or a basic determination which, while positing variety, recapitulates itself within it, and so
simultaneously engenders a new variety. But to augment a term by the successive addition of uniformly
determined elements, and only to see the same relationship between all the members of the series, is not the
way in which the notion determines. It is in fact precisely this conception of a series of stages and so on,
which has hindered advances in the recognition of the necessity of formations” (Philosophy of Nature,
paragraph 249Z). Hegel argues that there is a necessity that governs the series, but that this necessity
cannot be determined by a law, that it cannot be construed as a kind of algorithm that always repeats the
same relation in producing one member of the series from the previous one. So even where there can be no
universal laws, necessity, in Hegel’s sense, is possible.
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