Identity and Difference: Studies in Hegel's Logic, Philosophy of Spirit, and Politics

1. Identity, Difference, and the Logic of Otherness

It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative , that speculative thought consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic, but for thinking which is as yet unpracticed and unfree it is the most difficult. The advance of culture generally, and of the sciences in particular, gradually brings into use higher relationships of thought. . . . It is a matter of infinite importance that in this way an advance has been made beyond the form of abstraction, of identity, by which a specific concept . . . acquires an independent self-subsistence, and that prominence and currency have been given to the determinate form, the difference, which is at the same time an inseparable element in the identity.1 More often than not, Hegel is understood and criticized as the consummate Identitätsphilosoph, disparaged for propounding an ontotheological , authoritarian metaphysics that has swallowed everything into the Absolute Idea.2 Of late, as postmodernists have railed ceaselessly against grand metanarratives and taken pen in hand to defend difference and otherness against the depredations ofWestern logocentrism, Hegel has faced increased obloquy as the systematic philosopher who brings the reductionistic, devouring quicksand of rational thought to the abyssal depths of its nadir of completion.3 While this view of Hegel’s system as an intolerant omnivore has a pedigree going back at least to Kierkegaard, it suffers from one defect. It is altogether wrong. In what follows I will contend that Hegel is not guilty of the charge of reductionistic absolutism with which he is so frequently smeared. 15 Chapter 1 Identity, Difference, and the Logic of Otherness William Maker Hand in hand with this, and on a positive note, I will indicate how he in fact crafts a philosophy that may successfully comprehend difference (the nonidentical or otherness) in a radically nonreductionistic manner. In short, my thesis is that Hegel may fairly lay claim to being the philosopher of difference, otherness, and nonidentity. The usual basis for charging Hegel with reductionism has been his very idea of philosophy as a rational system that promises to be unconditional, comprehensive, and complete. Conventional wisdom holds that such a system must manifest a totalizing logocentrism that betrays the inescapable finitude and incompleteness of our knowledge and denies the genuine independence of a reality given apart from thought, even as it offers an unavoidably distorted account of it. The crux of the criticism seems to be that the systematic demand for comprehensive completeness must privilege an idealistic notion of identity that cannot abide the truly different and nonidentical, that which is radically other than thought itself. Hegel’s critics hold that thought that purports to be unconditionally true and complete must be totalizing, allowing only for the truth, reality, and value of that which it can grasp in terms of its own primal and definitive identifying features; according to them, whatever else systematic thought may even attempt to conceive must be construed in terms of the identical, or ignored altogether. The lust for finality and inclusivity mandates a homogeneity of thought that denies, devalues, and denegrates the heterogenous.The view I will present is diametrically opposed in holding that the key to appreciating Hegel as the philosopher of difference lies precisely in his notion of philosophy as a comprehensive systematic science. So just what his critics see as the source of Hegel’s monological, totalizing, and authoritarian abrogation of difference I will present as the basis for his multifaceted, differentiated, and liberating celebration of it. As Hegel frequently insists, the logic first establishes and articulates the scientific character of the whole system. Throughout the system, Hegel refers us back to the logic as the resource for understanding and justifying what he presents elsewhere only, as he says, “in outline” form.4 Thus the logic and its notion of science are definitive for understanding any further treatment of identity and difference in Hegel. What we will see generally is that the fundamental nature of Hegel’s conception of science necessarily and unequivocally precludes reductionism. Hegelian philosophical science will be shown to necessitate a mode of logical conceptualization and development that engenders a conceptual framework where difference, the nonidentical, is given 16 William Maker full and undistorted acknowledgment, insofar as this is attainable in thought. So what are the distinctive features of Hegel’s conception of philosophical science? First I will discuss...