Hegels_Logic_Identity_Difference_chapter2_part2.mp3

It is remarkable that Hegel would bury this important observation on double transition in the middle of his discussion of quantitative ratio. However, this does not mean that the passage is an empty rhetorical flourish tacked on to a monist system. On the contrary, it clarifies what is at stake by subverting the monist reading of mediation as singular self-mediation. It seems that Hegel reflected on the importance of double transition-which was already an element in his method in quantitative ratio-and wanted to make it explicit and generalize it in order to forestall precisely that misreading of his thought presented by Desmond and others. Any suspicion that the double transition passage cited earlier is merely a rhetorical excess, unimportant, and at best marginal to Hegel’s thought can be laid to rest by the fact that Hegel makes the same point about double transition at the conclusion of the logic in the final 1830 edition of the Encyclopedia. He says: The development of this sphere becomes a return into the first, just as the development of the first is a passage to the second. It is only through this doubled movement [gedoppelte Bewegung] that the difference gets its due, since each of the two differences, considered in itself, consummates itself in the totality and in this totality works out its unity with the other. Only this self-suspension of the one-sidedness of both [sides] in themselves prevents the unity (totality) from being one-sided. The double transition is Hegel’s response to the limitations and distortions introduced into speculative thought when the latter is expressed in judgments and propositions at the level of the understanding (V erstand). Such judgments tend to assert identity and suppress difference.The first transition, he says, yields the implicit but one-sided identity of both relata, both terms. The second transition corrects this one-sidedness by articulating and preserving their difference. This reciprocal double transition or Aufhebung prevents the resulting totality from being one-sided and reductive. This is Hegel’s response to the half-truth distortion that the speculative dialectic reduces mediation by other to singular self-mediation, or reduces the other to the same. Double transition has profound implications for difference, otherness, plurality, relation, and the space of the “between.” It is only through the double transition that the difference gets its due. Instead of being subordinate to identity, difference is preserved as coequal and equiprimordial to identity. Double transition is Hegel’s antireductive, antimonist corrective of the abstract identity favored by the understanding. When employed by the understanding, abstract identity results in metaphysical atomism, and in a mechanical mode of thinking, “Its nature is an act completely external and devoid of thought, so that it can be performed even by a machine. Here there is not the slightest trace of a transition to an other.” This remark implies that a transition from one term to another implies and presupposes the difference of the two terms. Collapse the difference as formalism does and there could be no transition. The difference cannot be collapsed into abstract identity or unity without undermining and denying not only transition but the very possibility of transition. Transition, like contradiction, presupposes real, nonformal difference. There can be a double transition only if there is another, second term that is irreducible to the first. If there were no other, then there could be no double transition. Indeed, if there were no otherness in any sense, then there could be no transition at all, not even a tautological reiteration of the one and the same. If there is to be a genuine transition, then it must be a transition to an other, and this other must be irreducible to the first. Transition requires an other, a double, but this is a prenumerical plurality, a prenumerical difference. The same is true for the second transition: it too presupposes a double, an other. Both transitions together constitute the double transition. Double transition constitutes a relation between terms that can neither be identified nor separated. This “between,” the space of the middle, has to be jointly and reciprocally constituted from and by both sides. To return to the so-called “counting test,” we can say that doubling implies at least two; but if there are two then there must be a third, namely, the transition and relation (of some sort) between them. This relation must be two-sided and reciprocal, because “a one-sided relation is no relation at all.” Double transition clarifies the nature of the totality that Hegel intends. The whole cannot be simply identified with one of its terms, nor can it be produced by eliminating one term or reducing one term to the other.The unity that resulted from such suppression of the other would itself be a reductive unity, a closed and an exclusive unity. But if there is to be a whole at all in Hegel’s sense, then the whole must be the result of the double transition of its terms into each other. Hegel is explicit on this point: “It is only through this doubled movement [gedoppelte Bewegung] that the difference gets its due, since each of the two differences, considered in itself, consummates itself in the totality and in this totality works out its unity with the other.” Double transition is constitutive of a whole or totality that is not external to its members but present and immanent in them as their organizing principle. From the perspective of the whole, double transition names the reciprocal movement whereby a self-organizing whole organizes itself. Such a selforganizing whole does not constitute “the reduction of a pluralized intermediation to a singular self-mediation,” because it requires and depends on double transition. Double transition requires plurality and mutual mediation of whole and parts. The whole is not the elimination but rather the consummation of the differences that it organizes. Judgment, Double Transition, and the First Category of Logic Judgment is the form in which understanding (Verstand) expresses its truth, but Hegel’s complaint is that judgment suppresses the difference. For example, judgments of the form “S is P” typically express only one aspect, the identity and unity, of S and P. This judgment also does not express their difference. The apparent suppression of difference then becomes a matter of concern for the understanding. Of course, difference can be expressed by the negative judgment, “S is not P,” but then only difference and not identity is expressed; the identity of S and P is excluded. For this reason Hegel believes that both judgments are inadequate and distortions, as he explains: “Judgment is an identical relation between subject and predicate; in it we abstract from the fact that the subject has a number of determinatenesses other than that of the predicate. . . . Now if the content is speculative, the non-identical aspect of subject and predicate is also an essential moment, but in the judgment this is not expressed.” Taken by itself, each judgment expresses only one aspect of the content that speculative reason (Vernunft) intends while omitting the others. Judgment is for Hegel not incorrect, but misleading, because it expresses identity while suppressing the essential nonidentity or difference, and thus it distorts or even suppresses speculative truth. As practiced by the understanding, judgment abstracts features of a whole from their context, suppresses the context on which these depend, and interprets the subject and some of its features as absolute in their isolation. Such judgments tend toward dogmatism and call forth a skeptical challenge. The skeptical principle of equipollence holds that to every judgment (thesis) there is an opposite, contradictory judgment of equal validity. The skeptical critique of dogmatism proceeds by constructing oppositions or antinomies that cancel each other out, and lead to the epoché, or suspension, of judgment. While Hegel rejects skepticism as incoherent, he nevertheless believes that the skeptical tropes contain rational demands, namely, the demand not to mistake abstractions for concrete realities, the demand not to suppress context or exclude essential aspects, and the demand for the whole truth, not just a partial or one-sided half-truth. Most important, the skeptical strategy raises the issue of the difference and exploits difference not only to the point of contradiction but to the point of cancellation- the skeptical epoché. Skepticism exploits difference in a negative dialectic, a dialectic of collapse. This dialectic of collapse undermines not only the opposition, but also the essential difference, namely, the truthquestion. In contrast to skepticism’s negative dialectic, Hegel maintains that the speculative dialectic preserves rather than suppresses truth and difference. While speculative dialectic also pushes the difference to the point of cancellation and collapse, such cancellation is only a partial or determinate negation and thus can have affirmative significance because it preserves the difference, that is, holds fast to the positive in the negative. Hegel explains: The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is not essentially the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic. Rather it is the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated-contains the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast to the positive in its negative . . . in the result, this is the most important feature in rational cognition. The holding fast to the positive in its negative requires the Aufhebung, or determinate negation. Determinate negation differs from abstract or total negation; it is a partial negation that can at the same time preserve aspects of that which is negated. Determinate negation means that opposites enter into relation to each other and become qualified by their relation. The most widely known, but perhaps least appreciated, example of double transition is found in the first category of the logic. Here Hegel attempts to isolate pure being and shows that the attempt to isolate being in its purity fails. It fails because pure being turns out to be empty featurelessness. Hegel expresses it this way: The determination of being is to have no determination. This empty featurelessness, this absence of determination, is indistinguishable from nothing, for empty featurelessness is also what nothing “is.” Thus being is indistinguishable from nothing, and the recognition of this is the transition, the passing of being into its apparent opposite, namely, nothing. Similarly, nothing is a featurelessness that nevertheless is, and so it passes over into being. The distinction between being and nothing proves to be without foundation, because both terms turn out to be the same empty featurelessness, thus their distinction turns out to be groundless (Bodenlosigkeit), and so it collapses. Does not the collapse of being into nothing and of nothing into being imply their identity? Indeed it does. “In representation, or for the understanding, the proposition: ‘Being and Nothing is the same’ appears to be such a paradoxical proposition that it may perhaps be taken as not seriously meant. And it really is one of the most difficult propositions that thinking dares to formulate, for being and nothing are the antithesis in all its immediacy. . . . But . . . they do contain this determination [viz., empty featurelessness]; i.e., the one that is the same in both. . . . But correct as it is to affirm the unity of being and nothing, it is equally correct to say that they are absolutely diverse too- that the one is not what the other is.” The collapse of being into nothing and of nothing into being proves to be a double transition: Being and nothing are both absolutely the same and absolutely different. The upshot is that being and nothing can neither be identified nor separated. But if they cannot be separated then they must be related, and the category that relates them is becoming. Becoming names and is the result of the double transition of being into nothing (and nothing into being). Becoming is the unity of being and nothing. How is this unity to be understood? In his second remark on the defectiveness of the expressions “unity” and “identity,” Hegel observes that “unity” is a defective expression of speculative truth because it expresses abstract sameness. He further observes, “The statement: being and nothing are one and the same, is incomplete.” It is incomplete because “the sense seems to be that the difference is denied.” Moreover, the intention of this proposition “cannot be that abstraction should be made from them and only the unity retained. Such a meaning would self-evidently be one-sided because that from which abstraction is to be made is equally present and named in the proposition. Now insofar as the proposition, “being and nothing are the same,” asserts the identity of these determinations but in fact equally contains them both as distinguished, the proposition is self-contradictory and cancels itself out . . . it has a movement which involves the spontaneous vanishing of the proposition itself. But in thus vanishing there takes place in it that which is to constitute its own peculiar content, namely, becoming.” Becoming is not a one-sided or an abstract substantial unity of being and nothing. It is rather the joint and inseparable movement of being and nothing. Becoming, as the result of the Aufhebung, is not reducible to an original unity prior to the Aufhebung, for that would reduce one term to the other. “Becoming is the unseparatedness of being and nothing; but as the unity of being and nothing it is this determinate unity in which there is both being and nothing. But in so far as being and nothing, each unseparated from its other, is, each is not. They are therefore in this unity but only as vanishing, sublated moments.” Becoming names the common feature, namely, the double transition in which both being and nothing vanish into their opposite. Does this vanishing imply the reduction of the double transition to a single transition and singular self-mediation? Hegel denies any reduction of double transition to single transition here: “Becoming is in this way in a double determination. In the one, nothing is immediate, that is, the determination starts from nothing which . . . changes into being; in the other, being is immediate, which changes into nothing: the former is coming to be and the latter is ceasing to be.” Being and nothing do not simply vanish in an abstract negation or simple unity; rather, they enter into union with each other as the double movements of becoming. “Being is being and nothing is nothing only in their contradistinction from each other; but in their truth, in their unity, they have vanished as these determinations and are now something else. Being and nothing are the same; but just because they are the same they are no longer being and nothing, but now have a different significance. In becoming they [are] coming to be and ceasing to be.” Hegel’s exposition of becoming as the first concrete category reveals a double transition whose preservation of the difference constitutes a unity irreducible to singular self-mediation. It is here that Hegel introduces the Aufhebung, calling it one of the most important concepts in philosophy. In both versions of his logic, Hegel links the Aufhebung to the double meaning of terms. This double meaning not only shows the speculative spirit of language, it is linked to the double transition that “transcends the ‘either/or’ of mere understanding.” In the Aufhebung a term undergoes suspension. Hegel observes, “Something is sublated only insofar as it has entered into unity with its opposite.” But it also is the case that because each term enters into union with its opposite, both terms are transformed and preserved in a higher unity. Hegel insists that this unity is not adequately conceived or expressed as a reinstatement or restoration of an original unity or identity. “Becoming is the first concrete thought, and hence the first concept, whereas being and nothing, in contrast, are empty abstractions. If we speak of the concept of being, this can only consist in becoming . . . but this being which abides with itself in nothing is becoming. The unity of becoming cannot leave out the difference, for-without the difference-we would return once more to abstract being.” Similar double transitions also show up in the logic of essence in the discussion of identity and difference. In the logic of essence, Hegel points out that all the categories of essence are relative. What appear initially to be absolute differences and distinctions will break down and subvert themselves. This means that as categories of essence neither identity nor difference can be thought apart from each other but only through and by means of each other. Hegel shows that the attempt to isolate difference from identity fails. Absolute or pure difference must differ from itself, hence, absolute difference “is not itself but its other.” (Otherwise it would be identical to itself.) If pure difference differs from itself, then it can differ from itself only by being other than itself. “But that which is different from difference is identity. Difference is therefore itself and identity. Both together constitute difference; it is the whole and its moment.” Critics object that this subordinates difference to identity by thinking it as a negation and contradiction. For example, Deleuze maintains that when difference is pushed to the limit in contradiction, difference becomes one with identity and is therefore eliminated. Deleuze is correct that difference when, pushed to its limit, becomes one with identity, but he is wrong in thinking that this eliminates difference. Everything turns on what this unity of identity and difference is. Like Desmond, Deleuze interprets it one-sidedly as a simple unity that eliminates difference. Hegel corrects this apparent one-sidedness when he writes: “Sublated contradiction is not abstract identity, for that is itself only one side of the contradiction.” Hegel continues: “When we say that ground is the unity of identity and difference, this unity must not be understood as abstract identity, for then we would just have another name for a thought that is once more just that identity of the understanding which we have recognized to be untrue. So in order to counter the misunderstanding, we can also say that ground is not only the identity, but equally the difference, of identity and difference.” Thus Hegel employs double transition to deconstruct the ordinary language and the propositional forms that distort speculative truth. Double Transition and Syllogism, Reciprocity What follows is not a treatment, much less a commentary, on syllogism, reciprocity, and teleology per se but only a highlighting of the presence of double transition in these discussions. We should recall Hegel’s assertion that “everything rational is a syllogism.” He construes syllogism in a broad, nonformal sense, not confining it to a formal three-proposition structure. Organisms are syllogisms for Hegel and already syllogize in the world prior to philosophical-logical reflection on them. Hegel begins his discussion of syllogism with a plea for the reconciliation of the analytical reason that syllogizes with the intuitive reason that thinks absolute thoughts. The latter’s immediate vision of the whole as an immediate unity may appear to suppress otherness and difference. However, its immediate vision is the result of mediation, and those mediations preserve the otherness and difference necessary to the articulation of the whole. Syllogism is the structure of reason that exhibits the full process of mediation as double transition. Anything short of this is incomplete mediation, or one-sided, reductive, single “mediation.” Thus syllogism serves as a corrective to the previously noted onesidedness of judgments. For Hegel the syllogism structure “makes room” for the second or double transition suppressed by judgment; consequently, syllogism preserves the difference that is suppressed by judgment, without landing in sheer pluralism of external relations, as in atomism or mechanism, and without collapsing difference into abstract identity. Syllogism “works” because it involves the double transition of the extreme terms into the middle and of the middle into the extremes. The preservation of difference is safeguarded and expressed in the double transition and reciprocal mediation of the relata constitutive of syllogism. Hegel expressed this point in his 1827 Lectures: “It is not yet correct to say ‘the unity of thought and being’. For ‘unity’ implies that the difference of the two is suspended. Only when thought coincides with itself in a syllogism is it the essence, the concrete thought.” Double transition structures not only syllogism but the entire system insofar as the latter is characterized by Hegel as a threefold syllogism with a threefold mediation: . . . everything rational shows itself to be a threefold syllogism and it does that in such a way that each of its members occupies the position both of an extreme and of the mediating middle. This is the case especially with the three “members” of philosophical science, i.e., the logical idea, nature, and spirit. In Hegel’s view, each division or “part” of the system plays both the role of extreme and the role of mediator for the other parts of the system. The complex relation between the middle and the extremes exhibits the double transition. In this way the whole is present in each of the parts and connects them. No part has any absolute priority over the others. Double transition also is evident in Hegel’s treatment of the category of reciprocity, which is the sublation of mechanism and external causality into the higher unity of organic life. Reciprocity is a specification of organic double transition. Namely, in reciprocity, “The terms that appear initially to be bound together are not in fact alien to one another; instead they are only moments of one whole, each of which, being related to the other, is at home with itself, and goes together with itself.” The whole is the coincidence, the collective double transition, of its members.

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