Soledades y remembranzas: de la oportuna evasión al incurable estado de

2.2.1 The Diverse

Since both identity and difference now contain both their other and their difference from their other within themselves, they both take on a seeming self-sufficiency. Though each is one side of reflection, each is also the whole of reflection, and for this reason they now fall apart from, and become indifferent to, one another. As Hegel writes, ‘Identity falls apart within itself into diversity because as absolute difference it posits itself as its own negative within itself, and these its moments, namely itself and its negative, are reflections in themselves [Reflexionen in sich], are self-identical‘ (SL 418/LW 35). As cut off from and indifferent to one another, identity and difference now come to appear as two distinct beings; as such, they are called by Hegel ‘the diverse.’

Furthermore, the diverse are not indifferent to one another simply because they are what we might call two separate ‘spheres’ of reflection, but rather because these two spheres have themselves undergone an internal collapse. Let us consider why this should be. Each determination contains its difference from the other within itself. Yet because this difference is wholly internal, it has always already been cancelled as a difference— once again, we could say that it ‘makes no difference.’ As Lakebrink observes, it is then

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because the diverse are indifferent to their own ‘interior difference’26 that they are wholly indifferent to each other. Since the diverse are thus no longer differentiated within themselves, they collapse, as Houlgate emphasises, into the simple immediacy encountered in the logic of being,27 such that their difference falls outside them (SL418- 9/LW 36).

Now here of course we might question quite why the diverse should collapse into such wholly simple self-identity. We might question, in other words, why the fact that the difference of each term from the other is internal to each should mean that this internal difference now makes no difference. Why should it not persist as a ‘contaminating’ difference? It is not clear, then, that the transition from a state in which identity and difference only coincide with each other to one in which they fall wholly outside each other can be justified on a purely immanent basis. Yet it is this either-or movement that, in Hegel’s analysis of identity and difference, serves to prevent any prolonged contamination between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ difference.

The diverse, then, are simply self-identical and indifferent to their difference. We might then say that the foundation of diversity is identity in a dual sense: firstly, diversity rests on the simply immediate identity of the diverse terms themselves. As Hegel puts this, ‘They are diverse when they are reflected into themselves, that is, when they relate to themselves; as such, they are in the determination of identity’ (SL 418/LW 35), trans. modified). Secondly, the simple self-identity of the diverse is itself a result of the interpenetration, or the identity, of identity and difference. Only because both

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Bernhard Lakebrink, Kommentar zu Hegels Logik in seiner Enzyklopädie von 1830, Bd. 1, Sein und Wesen (Freiburg: Alber, 1979), pp. 224–5; cf. also J. Biard et al., Introduction à la lecture de la ‘Science de la logique’ de Hegel, vol. 2, La doctrine de l’essence (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1983), p. 70.

27 _{As Houlgate writes, ‘reflexion produces simple, non-reflexive immediacy by becoming wholly external}

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determinations contain their other within themselves do they both collapse, as we saw, into simple immediacy. This point, it is worth noting, is clearly acknowledged by Derrida in Glas:

Diversity is a moment of difference, an indifferent difference, an external difference, without opposition. As long as the two moments of difference (identity and difference since identity differs, as identity) are in relationship to themselves and not to the other, as long as identity does not oppose itself to difference or difference to identity, there is diversity. So diversity is a moment both of difference and identity, it being understood, very expressly, that difference is the whole and its own proper moment. (Gl 168/189).

Nevertheless, though the basis of diversity is identity, this does not mean that diversity constitutes a reduction of difference. Within the sphere of diversity, difference remains equal to identity, but is now, as we shall see, wholly external to ‘the diverse’ or to the self-identical terms.

2.2.2 Likeness and Unlikeness: External Difference

The falling apart of identity and difference into the diverse itself implies the falling apart of reflection and immediacy. Though the diverse terms are implicitly reflexive, they are now wholly indifferent to their mutual mediation. This does not mean that reflection disappears, but it does mean that reflection can only relate the diverse beings to one another in an external manner, or from the perspective of a ‘third’ (SL 420/LW37).

In its external form, reflection too is divided into distinct moments. The latter are no longer identity and difference; since these have become external to themselves, they

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are replaced by ‘likeness’ [Gleichheit] and ‘unlikeness’ [Ungleichheit]. Furthermore, in the comparison of external reflection, likeness is posited without reference to unlikeness and vice versa; though external reflection continually switches from the one to the other, they are never brought together in the same moment of reflection. The diverse are, as Hegel writes, ‘in one respect [Seite] like one another [einander gleich], but in another respect

are unlike, and in so far as they are like, they are also unlike. Likeness relates only to itself, and likewise unlikeness is only unlikeness’ (SL 420/LW 37).

In the Encyclopaedia Hegel notes that comparison based on isolated respects of likeness and unlikeness can yield valuable results in the experimental sciences, but that it is not sufficient for truly scientific [wissenschaftlich]—that is, philosophical— comprehension (Enc § 117). The problem with such comparison is that it sets out from the assumption that things in themselves are simply immediate and indifferent to one another; it thereby fails to see that the seeming immediacy of these things is constituted through their relations to other things, and, above all, through their relations to their

polar opposites. For example, it determines red as not yellow, not green, not blue, etc., but does not identify red in and through its opposition to green. As we shall see at the end of this chapter, it thereby fails to ground its comparative activity, and so fails to bring the various ‘respects’ and ‘points of view’ into one unified totality. In chapter 4, we shall see how a more developed form of the structure of diversity gives rise to the problem of relativity, such that things are intrinsically susceptible to being determined in different ways.

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2.2.3 From Diversity to Opposition

Although Hegel takes the complete separation of likeness and unlikeness to emerge through the Logic’s immanent development, he writes that it can also be thought as the motivated attempt of the understanding to avoid contradiction, an attempt that is doomed to failure: ‘The very thing that was supposed to hold off contradiction and dissolution from them, namely, that something is like something else in one respect, but is unlike it in another—this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness is their destruction [Zerstörung]’ (SL420/LW 38). We can now turn to the manner in which Hegel shows that likeness and unlikeness, as well as the diverse themselves, presuppose one other.

We already know of course that likeness and unlikeness and the two diverse terms are abstractions from, and moments within, a wider process of reflection. Yet Hegel does not draw on their genesis in order to show that, in truth, they are mediated by one another. With respect to unlikeness, he first states that, insofar as it is distinct from likeness, it is ‘like itself [sich selbst gleich] and ‘a reflection for itself’ (SL 420/LW 38, trans. modified). But this means it is not simply unlikeness but rather contains likeness within itself. Furthermore, both likeness and unlikeness are the likeness and unlikeness of a ‘third,’ namely, of the diverse. This first of all means that likeness is the likeness of what is other than likeness itself, and so is not ‘the likeness of itself,’ or is not simply ‘self- referred.’ Unlikeness, on the other hand, as the unlikeness of what is unlike unlikeness is thereby not unlike itself, or, as we might put it, ‘itself unlike,’ but rather like itself and only unlike something else (SL 421/LW 38).

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Now on Houlgate’s reading, these arguments also serve to show why likeness and unlikeness are determinations of the diverse themselves, and so why the diverse are not in truth indifferent to one another, but rather within themselves like and unlike one another. As Houlgate writes, ‘the diverse, as diverse, are both unlike and like likeness and unlikeness.’28 In my view, however, this cannot serve as an explanation here since, whereas likeness and unlikeness are themselves essentially referred to the diverse, the diverse themselves are simply indifferent to likeness and unlikeness. Hegel, as I understand him, thus takes the following approach to explaining why the diverse must be in themselves like and unlike (one another): As reflected into themselves, the diverse are characterised simply by self-likeness. But this self-likeness, since it results from the annulment of their internal difference, is the abstract identity of simple immediacy. From the transition to essence, we know, however, that this immediacy is not truly self- sufficient, but immediately sublates itself. In Hegel’s words, ‘the implicit [an sich seiende] reflection is self-relation without negation, abstract identity with itself, and so is positedness itself’ (SL421/LW 39). The consequence of this is that in order to be and to maintain themselves as themselves, the diverse, just like likeness and unlikeness, must include within themselves their relation to each other.