THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

Bradley argues that our conception of the copula must avoid two pitfalls. On the
one hand, we should not construe it as an expression of mere identity. This interpretation
would either reduce all judgments to tautologies, or else it would lead to contradictions.
If the copula expresses identity, then from “Sugar = White,” and “Sugar = Sweet,” it
follows that “Sweet = White.” In this case, either “Sweet” and “White” are in fact the
same, and our judgments become meaningless tautologies, or else “Sweet” and “White”
are different, and thus we must assert two contradictory claims – namely, “Sweet =
White” an “Sweet ≠ White.”
On the other hand, we should not construe the subject as a collection of terms and
the copula as an expression of the mere togetherness of the features expressed by the
subject term and the feature expressed by the predicate term. On this view, “The sugar is
white,” would really mean, “Hardness, sweetness, etc. exist together with whiteness.”
While this conception of the object avoids contradictions, it destroys the genuine unity
that makes a thing a thing. Speaking of this conception of the copula, Bradley says:
The thing [or this conception of the thing] avoids contradiction by its
disappearance into relations, and by its admission of the adjectives to a standing
of their own. But it avoids contradiction by a kind of suicide. It can give no
rational account of the relations and the terms which it adopts, and it cannot
recover the real unity, without which it is nothing. 67
This conception of the copula as an expression of conjunction leads to the “admission of
the adjectives to a standing of their own.” It makes each of the properties into a distinct
thing or entity. If we admit that each property or adjective has an existence of its own,
then we cannot explain the “real unity” of the thing as a whole. Without this unity, the
“inheres in” the subject. Hegel’s discussion of judgment attempts to determine the various ways in which
the predicate is joined to the subject.
67 Appearance and Reality, p. 19.
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