THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

declines to advance, for it is precisely the concept [Begriff] which it persists in
calling the inconceivable. 58
Hegel describes the will as the unity of the universal and the particular. This unity is the
individual. Hegel says this individuality is “just precisely the concept.” The unity of the
individual is the “Begriff,” the term translated elsewhere as notion. Hegel makes it clear
that the structure of the will is the structure of the notion. Thus the will presents the
highest instantiation of the structures Hegel develops in the Phenomenology of Spirit,
where he seeks to conceive the substance as subject. It presents the structures that
constitute all genuine objects, structures that Hegel employs to characterize various kinds
of objects in the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind. Finally, the will
presents the same structures that determine the cognitive activities of the self, structures
Hegel associates with Kant’s doctrine of apperception.
This passage also hints at the difficulty involved in grasping the will as the unity
of the universal and the particular. We can easily grasp the first two moments of the will
or the notion in abstraction from one another. We can easily grasp the will either (1) in
its abstract universality or (2) in its determined particularity. The mode of thought that
Hegel describes as the understanding allows us to grasp these two moments in
abstraction from one another, but it does not allow us to grasp the essential unity of these
two moments. Only reason or speculation can grasp the third moment of the will, the
moment that unites of the first two.
Hegel explains the difficulties involved in conceiving the unity of these two
moments in the previously quoted passage about the unity of the “I.” Speaking of the
first two moments of the “I,” Hegel makes a point that applies equally to the first two
58 Philosophy of Right, Paragraph 7A.
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