THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

proximate truth of that from which it results.” 92 The different stages of nature correspond
to the basic kinds that differentiate objects. Hegel says that a higher stage presents the
“proximate truth” of the stage below it. Hegel makes the same claim elsewhere. He
says: “The animal world is the truth of the vegetable world, which in turn is the truth of
the mineral world.” 93 The meaning of this strange locution, “X is the truth of Y,” can be
clarified in terms of three claims. First, “X is the truth of Y,” means that X is truer than
Y. Animals are truer than vegetables, which are in turn truer than minerals. Second, “X
is the truth of Y,” means that as we move along the scale of truth from lesser to greater
degrees of truth, the objects that belong to kind X come immediately after the objects that
belong to kind Y. So in this sense, the animal kingdom is truth of the vegetable kingdom,
but it is not the truth of the mineral kingdom.
92 Philosophy of Nature, paragraph 249. Two things must be carefully noted in order to avoid any
misinterpretation of this passage. First, the development or process that Hegel speaks of here is not a
temporal process. Strangely enough, at least in light of many nineteenth century appropriations of Hegel’s
work, Hegel himself does not believe that the natural world evolves or develops. He says: “Thinking
consideration must reject such nebulous and basically sensuous conceptions as for example the so-called
emergence of plants and animals out of water, and of the more highly developed animal organization out of
the lower etc.” (Paragraph 249Z). So the development that Hegel speaks of is merely the increasing degree
of complexity in unity as we proceed from lower level organisms to those that are higher. Hegel makes the
same point about this series in a different way, stating: “This [the development of the series] is not to be
thought of as a natural engendering of one out of the other however, but as an engendering within the inner
Idea which constitutes the ground of nature” (Paragraph 249). In other words, the progression refers to a
series of conceptual structures, not a process in natural history. Second, in order to avoid any
misunderstandings, we need to consider carefully what Hegel means when he speaks of the “necessity” of
this progression. No law governs this progression, and there is no algorithm that would allow us to deduce
one stage from the next. Hegel makes this clear in the following passage: “This leads on to the concept of a
series of natural things, and in particular, of living things. The desire to understand the necessity of such a
development makes us look for a law governing the series, or a basic determination which, while positing
variety, recapitulates itself within it, and so simultaneously engenders a new variety. But to augment a
term by the successive addition of uniformly determined elements, and only to see the same relationship
between the members of the series, is not the way in which the Notion determines” (Paragraph 249Z). This
passage is crucial for understanding Hegel’s more general claims about the “necessity” of the dialectic as
well has his claim that the notion unites “necessity” and freedom. In both cases, Hegel does not associate
“necessity” with a natural law or logical deduction. I would suggest that for Hegel, “X necessarily leads to
Y” if Y provides the solution for some unresolved problem with X. In the natural world, each stage or kind
of object presents a striving to integrate complexity in unity. Each stage or kind of object faces some
fundamental frustration in achieving this unity. This frustration or failure presents a problem, one that is
resolved by the higher stage or kind of object.
93 Philosophy of Nature, paragraph 249Z.
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