THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

Hegel believes that truth and falsity can be ascribed to all objects. Moreover, he
holds that all genuine objects must be at least partially true. Genuine objects must have
some inherent telos or norm, and they must at least partially instantiate that telos or norm.
All genuine objects must be at least partially true, though they may be largely false. The
failure of an object to instantiate its telos may be more prominent than its minimal degree
of success. Similarly, all objects must be at least partially good, though they may be
largely bad. Thus objects have an essentially normative structure, one that consists in the
relation between their concrete particularity and the inherent norm or telos that
determines their kind (the universal). 85
The examples that Hegel employs in his discussion of truth and falsity –
friendship, art, and the state – might lead us to assume that Hegel’s peculiar conceptions
of truth and falsity only apply to artifacts and social practices. However, Hegel makes it
clear that all objects are normatively structured and thus capable of being described in
terms of their degree of truth. In paragraphs 178 through 180 in the Encyclopedia Logic,
Hegel discusses notional judgments – i.e. judgments that ascribe properties like, “good”
and “true” to objects. Hegel explains how these normative judgments are grounded in the
nature of the object itself, and he concludes: “All things are a genus (i.e. have a meaning
or purpose) in an individual actuality of a particular constitution [emphasis added].” 86
All things have a normative structure that consists in the relationship between their
“genus” or “purpose” and their “particular constitution.” Terms like “true” and “good”
85 Here we can already begin to see how the phrase, “the unity of the universal and the particular,”
develops the more basic structure Hegel describes with the phrase, “the unity of identity and difference.”
The universal presents the telos that unites the manifold features that constitute the object’s particularity.
Thus the relationship between identity and difference – or between unity and plurality – becomes the
relationship between the universal and the particular.
86 Encyclopedia Logic, paragraph 179.
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