THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

Following Leibniz and Hegel, Bradley also argues that the basic structures of
representation present an example of the unity of identity and difference. He says:
As a fact and a given we have in feeling diversity and unity in one whole, a whole
implicit and not yet broken up into terms and relations. This immediate union of
the one and many is an ‘ultimate fact’ from which we start; and to hold that
feeling, because immediate, must be simple and without diversity is, in my view,
a doctrine quite untenable [emphasis added]. 73
Here Bradley further describes the basic structure of the copula or the object as one
whole that contains diversity and unity and as the immediate unity of one and many.
Moreover, he argues that feeling presents an example of this structure.
relationship between plurality and unity in terms of the unity of a process. For a further discussion of this
passage, see Section 4 of Chapter Four.
73 Appearance and Reality, p. 508. In a footnote following this discussion, Bradley acknowledges
Hegel’s psychology as the source for his conception of emotion as a unity that includes plurality. The
footnote reads: “Feeling is certainly not ‘un-differentiated’ if that means that it contains no diverse aspects.
I would take the opportunity to state this view as to feeling is so far from being novel that I owe it, certainly
in the main, to Hegel’s psychology” (Appearance and Reality, 509). In the Philosophy of Mind, Hegel
puts the point this way: “Although in practical feeling, will has the form of simple self-identity, none the
less, in this identity there is also difference; for though practical feeling knows its self-determining to be, on
the one hand, objectively valid, to be determined in and for itself, yet, on the other hand, it also knows itself
to be determined immediately or from outside, to be subjected to the alien determinateness of external
influences (Affectionen). The feeling will is, therefore, the comparing of the immediate determinateness
coming to it from outside, with the determinateness posited in it by its own nature [emphasis added]”
(472Z). Though we may experience feeling as an immediate unity without articulation, this unity
nonetheless contains a plurality that can be articulated. Feeling is a kind of non-articulate or implicit
representation. It reveals to us the relationship between our self, as constituted by our telos, and the
external environment as that which is helpful, harmful, or indifferent in relation to the telos or purpose that
constitutes our self. Thus Hegel describes joy as “the feeling of accordance of my whole being with a
single event, thing, or person,” and he defines fear as “the feeling of my Self, and at the same time of an
evil that threatens to destroy my self-feeling” (Philosophy of Mind, 472Z). So feeling contains the
difference between self and other in the immediate or non-articulated unity of their relation. Hegel holds
that feeling (1) possesses the basic structure of representation, and (2) contains plurality within unity.
Leibniz also emphasizes these points in his account of feeling. In a letter to Arnauld, dated 6 October
1687, Leibniz explains what he means when he says that monads “represent” or “express” the whole
universe. He says: “Expression is common to all forms, and is a class of which ordinary perception, animal
feeling and intellectual knowledge are species. In ordinary perception and in feeling it is enough that what
is divisible and material and what is found common to several beings should be expressed or represented in
a single indivisible being, or in the substance which is endowed with a true unity. We cannot at all doubt
the possibility of such a representation of several things in a single one, since our own souls furnish us
examples” (G.W. Leibniz, 212). Like Hegel, Leibniz agrees that knowledge, perception, and feeling all
have the same basic representational structure. He also agrees that this structure presents an example of
plurality contained within unity.
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