Cuadrados y ángulos: las calles bonaerenses

The final moment of the conceptual process—that of singularity—is the point at which the negative comes to coincide with itself again after having separated from itself as the particular. This returning movement can be regarded as the second phase of the

Doppelschein of the universal. As Hegel puts it, the singular is ‘The reflection of the

16 _{Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. by E. F. N. Jephcott}

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concept out of its determinateness into itself. It is the self-mediation of the concept insofar as its otherness has made itself into an other again, whereby the concept has established [hergestellt] itself as self-identical, but in the determination of absolute negativity’ (SL 618/LB 53, trans. modified).

The true conceptual form of the singular is once again contrasted with the manner in which it is conceived by the understanding or representational thinking (Vorstellung). As with the first two moments of the concept, the understanding abstracts the singular from the total movement of the concept. It sees the closure of this movement as the formation of an atom that is self-sufficient in its separation from the whole. In doing so, it again takes the universal to be external to the singular, as that which is ‘common to several singulars’ which in themselves are indifferent substances (SL 621/LB 56). This is again contrasted with an adequate conception of the singular, ‘to which the universal in the determinateness itself descends [heruntersteigt]’ (SL 619/LB 53). At this point, the unity of the concept is once again grounded in the self-division of the universal, which prevents any diverse multiplicity from entering here.

This is still, however, to focus only on the more contingent and more obvious way in which identity is privileged in Hegel’s account of the concept, namely as the self- determination of the universal. But it is particularly in Hegel’s subsequent description of the singular that a more subtle relation between the moments of the concept comes to the fore, which provides a more sophisticated account of its unity.

This conception of the unity of the concept is based not on the self-differentiation of one of its moments, but on the mutual opposition between these moments as ‘equiprimordial’ terms. In order to explain this relationship, it is helpful here to return to the transition from essence to the concept. As we saw, this transition represents the culmination of the logic of opposition through which each stage of essence sublated itself

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into the next: in being totally opposed to each other, the passive and the active passed into each other without remainder. The concept results from, and is defined by, this logic of total opposition. Each of the terms—the universal, the particular, and the singular— contains both of the others within itself, and thus the whole conceptual process. In this respect, no moment is subordinate to any other since each contains the others just as much as they contain it. Each is therefore the ‘totality’ in which it is also a moment, and can then be considered the ‘ground’ of the others:

The universal has proved to be not only the identical, but at the same time the different [Verschiedene] or contrary as against the particular and individual, and in addition, also to be opposed to them or contradictory; in this opposition, however, it is identical with them and is their true ground in which they are sublated. The same is true of particularity and individuality which are likewise the totality of the determinations of reflection (SL 616/LB 50, trans. modified).17

It is through this total opposition that the ‘inseparability’ of the determinations of the concept is achieved, and that each moment simply ‘dissolves’ or continues itself in the others (SL 620/LW 55). We should note, of course, that this immanent unity of the concept does not imply that its moments can no longer be distinguished. As Houlgate writes:

Each moment of the concept is thus the whole concept in a different form or with a different emphasis. The universal is self-relating being that continues in its

17

Cf. also SL 620-21/LB 55-56; SL 600/LB 32: ‘each of these moments [universality, particularity, and singularity] is no less the whole concept than it is a determinate concept and one determination of the concept’ (trans. modified).

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differences: it is thus one, single self-identical being. Particularity, on the other hand, is that same universal explicitly differentiated into two (or more) contrasting moments […] Individuality, finally, is this explicitly differentiated and determinate universal, understood as reflected back into itself and thus as free standing.18

Although the Heruntersteigen of the universal does play an important part in Hegel’s description of the ultimate unity of the concept, then, it does not have to be invoked in order to explain the moment of ‘return’ constituted by singularity. Indeed, Hegel also writes that ‘The return of the determinate concept into itself means that it has the determination of being, in its determinateness, the whole concept’ (SL 621/LB 56). Here it is precisely because the singular is not simply posited by the universal and because it is ‘reflected into itself’ that it comes to be united with the universal.

It is on the basis of this immanent unity that Gerard Lebrun defends Hegel against the criticisms that have often been made against the concept, and which he draws from the Althusserian reading of Hegel in particular. The concept, Lebrun remarks, can be neither an inner essence which expresses itself through its (phenomenal) determinations nor that which subjugates such finite determinations to a given principle. For to conceive the concept in such a way would already be to fall back into an essentialist form of thinking, one which maintains a certain separation between the inner and the outer or essence and appearance and in which the essence maintains a certain power over its determinations.19 As he writes, in such criticisms of the concept, ‘it is as though Hegel were accused of having reinstated in his turn a division that he precisely aimed to dismiss.’20

18 Houlgate, p. 25. 19 _{Lebrun, pp. 349–50.} 20 Lebrun, p. 350.

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The totality of the concept, he notes, cannot be thought as that which ‘results from a reunification of given elements’—as a form of magic trick solution to the problem of diversity.21 This would of course amount precisely to the external application of a universal that we saw Hegel contrast with the immanent unity of the concept. The concept is rather, Lebrun states, that structure within which ‘each of the different terms has meaning only to the extent that it exhibits the persistence and continuation of the others through it; the function of each moment is to affirm that it is a moment of this totality.’22 His reading, then, affirms that the conceptual totality is achieved through the self-sublation of its moments as merely finite moments. To this extent he claims that it is a ‘totality without totalisation.’23

Now Lebrun is of course right to point out that objections to Hegel along the above lines would fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the concept. The concept, even as self-determining, is of course not conceived by Hegel as a violent subjugation of finitude. For Lebrun, however, this is the end of the matter. Like Hegel, he does not consider whether any more subtle form of ‘violence’ might remain after its most obvious form—that of external subjugation—has been ruled out. But here one might of course object that there is no longer any ‘external’ violence precisely because each ‘finite’ term has already lost any resistance to its inclusion within one, univocal whole. And as Lebrun would be the first to agree, this whole does not include simply all that there happens to be: rather, all that there is only is what it is as part of and as containing within itself this one whole. Because the remainder within the terms has been reduced to nothing through the logic of opposition within the sphere of essence, there is no longer a possibility of

21 Lebrun, p. 353. 22 _{Lebrun, p. 346.} 23 Lebrun, p. 353.

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reconceiving or determining otherwise the sense of this whole or that of its moments. Rather than a ‘totality without totalisation,’ one might therefore call the conceptual unity a form of ‘totalisation without a totalising agent.’

Furthermore, in this way, as we saw above, the concept cannot but reinstate the privilege of terms such as ‘inner, ‘essence,’ ‘identity,’ etc., even if they are not reinstated in their essential sense but at a ‘meta-level.’ When this reinstatement takes place, there is always the risk that one will come to forget that it has occurred at a meta-level and will fall back into a simpler usage of such terms. We have seen that this occurs when Hegel comes to privilege one moment of the concept over the others. Likewise, Lebrun himself proves not to be immune to this slippage when he writes that the concept ‘neither expresses itself nor signals itself through its determinations: it shows itself [s’y démontre] by dissolving them and nullifying [en niant] their seeming independence.’24 For these reasons, the concern that underlies the Althusserian critique of the concept remains valid even if the critique itself misses its mark.

Why is it, then, that Lebrun does not consider such reservations regarding the Hegelian concept? This would seem to be because he remains within the horizon of an all- or-nothing Hegelian logic that distinguishes only between the violence of external subjugation and the peace of a wholly internal harmony. In leaping from the one to the other he therefore does not consider that the latter might not simply constitute the resolution of all violence. Now in the following chapter we shall see that Derrida, for his part, does not disavow a certain ‘originary violence’ or necessary repression. But this violence is not ‘overcome,’ for Derrida, by working toward the ‘phantasm’ of a final peace; and this means that this violence, in truth, can never be definitively overcome, but only continually displaced. This takes place through the affirmation of a remainder which

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175 prevents any given unity from being ultimate.

Having now given a characterisation of the general structure of the concept, the second part of this chapter will turn to the end of the logic of the concept, which is also the ‘end’ of the Logic as such. Here I shall consider how the Logic comes to turn around upon itself and reconceive its ‘original’ beginning and subsequent development.