THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

thought he describes as the understanding or reflection for its failure to grasp the unity of
identity and difference, for its tendency to see identity and difference as rigidly opposed
categories. This failure to grasp the unity of identity and difference leads to a host of
philosophical problems, including the problems associated with the distinctions between
“spirit and matter, soul and body, faith and intellect, freedom and necessity.” 99 In other
words, Hegel claims that the distinction between identity and difference reappears in the
traditional distinctions between spirit and matter, soul and body, faith and intellect,
freedom and necessity. Categories such as spirit, soul, faith, and freedom rest upon
various developments of identity, while categories such as matter, body, intellect, and
necessity rest upon the development of difference or plurality. On Hegel’s view, the
failure of philosophy to explain the relationship between these various sets of categories
stems from the failure of the understanding to grasp the unity of identity and difference.
Even in the earliest stages of Hegel’s development, in the Differenzschrift, we can
already see the central importance that Hegel accords to the problematic relationship
between identity and difference – or between identity and dichotomy, pure unity and
opposition, infinity and finitude. Hegel argues that reflection or the understanding fails
to grasp the unity of identity and difference. It takes identity and difference as rigidly
distinct categories, and it tends to emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Hegel
contrasts the understanding with reason or speculation, the mode of thought that can
correctly grasp the unity of identity and difference. In the Differenzschrift, Hegel argues
that philosophy must overcome its all too common one-sided reliance upon the
understanding. It must recognize the essential mode that reason or speculation needs to
play in grasping the unity of identity and difference. He argues that in grasping the unity
99 Hegel: Selections, p. 95.
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