THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

the Encyclopedia, Hegel describes the most basic forces that constitute matter in terms of
purposive striving – i.e. in terms of categories associated with the notion. He says:
Together, attraction and repulsion constitute gravity, which is the Notion of
matter. Gravity is the predicate of matter, which constitutes the substance of this
subject. Its unity is a mere should, a yearning. 43
This passage confirms the interpretation presented thus far in a number of ways. 44 We
can see how Hegel, at least in this passage, uses the terms “notion” and “substance” more
or less interchangeably. If we take the term “substance” in its most general sense, as it
seems to be employed here, then we can say that the notion presents one particular
conception of the substance, the particular conception that Hegel endorses. If, however,
we take the term in a narrow sense, identifying it with certain traditional conceptions of
substance that rely upon the category of necessity, then we might say that the notion
presents Hegel’s alternative to the ontology of substance.
Hegel’s discussion in this passage focuses on how the force of gravity constitutes
the notion or substance of matter qua matter – i.e. matter as it is considered from the
standpoint of mechanics, in abstraction from all chemical and biological forces or
activities. Moreover, Hegel describes the force of gravity in explicitly purposive terms as
a yearning or desire for unity. Gravity is the force of attraction that all matter exerts on
all other matter. 45
43 Philosophy of Nature, Paragraph 262Z.
44 In this passage, Hegel implicitly relates the structure of the notion to the structure of judgment
when he describes the relationship between matter and gravity in terms of the relationship between the
“subject” and the “predicate.”
45 For a thoughtful reconstruction and at least partial defense of this position, see Stephen
Houlgate An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History, Chapter Six. Houlgate emphasizes this
account of gravity as the striving of matter. He describes it as the “movement of uniting-with-other-matter
that is intrinsic to matter as such” (p. 133). He goes on to describe the difference between Hegel and
Newton’s conception of gravity. He says: “One needs to exercise caution, therefore, when considering
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