What is Identity?

§ 869

1. Essence is simple time as sublated time.

Its negativity is its existence. It is self-equal in its absolute negativity.

Through this absolute negativity otherness and relation-to-other has vanished in its own self into pure equality-with-self.

Essence is therefore simple identity with self.

§ 870

2. This identity-with-self is the time of reflection.

This identity-with-self is not that equality-with-self that is either existence or nothing.

This identity-with-self is the equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity.

It is not a restoration of itself from an other.

It is this pure origination from and within itself, essential identity.

Consequently, it is not abstract identity. It has not arisen through a relative negating from outside it.

This relative negating is separating off the distinguished time, but otherwise leaving it afterwards as simply affirmative as it was before.

On the contrary, existence and every identification of existence has sublated itself not relatively, but in its own self: and this simple negativity of being in its own self is identity itself. So far, then, identity is still in general the same as essence.

Remark 1: Abstract Identity

§ 871

The kind of thinking that does only external reflection fails to grasp identity or essence, which is the same thing.

• Such thinking always has only abstract identity, and difference, alongside it.

In its opinion, reason is just a loom on which it externally interweaves:

• the warp of identity, and
• the woof of difference.

It extracts identity and then again obtains difference alongside it, is now a positing of likeness and then also again a positing of unlikeness — likeness when abstraction is made from difference, and unlikeness when abstraction is made from the positing of likeness.

These assertions and opinions about what reason does must be completely set aside, since they are in a certain measure merely historical; the truth is rather that a consideration of everything that is, shows that in its own self everything is in its self-sameness different from itself and self-contradictory, and that in its difference, in its contradiction, it is self-identical, and is in its own self this movement of transition of one of these categories into the other, and for this reason, that each is in its own self the opposite of itself.

The Notion of identity, that it is simple self-related negativity, is not a product of external reflection but has come from being itself.

Whereas, on the contrary, that identity that is aloof from difference, and difference that is aloof from identity, are products of external reflection and abstraction, which arbitrarily clings to this point of indifferent difference.

§ 872

2. This identity is, in the first instance, essence itself, not yet a determination of it, reflection in its entirety, not a distinct moment of it. As absolute negation it is the negation that immediately negates itself, a non-being and difference that vanishes in its arising, or a distinguishing by which nothing is distinguished, but which immediately collapses within itself. The distinguishing is the positing of non-being as non-being of the other. But the non-being of the other is sublation of the other and therewith of the distinguishing itself. Here, then, distinguishing is present as self-related negativity, as a non-being which is the non-being of itself, a non-being which has its non-being not in another but in its own self. What is present, therefore, is self-related, reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.

§ 873

In other words, identity is the reflection-into-self that is identity only as internal repulsion, and is this repulsion as reflection-into-self, repulsion which immediately takes itself back into itself. Thus it is identity as difference that is identical with itself. But difference is only identical with itself in so far as it is not identity but absolute non-identity. But non-identity is absolute in so far as it contains nothing of its other but only itself, that is, in so far as it is absolute identity with itself.

§ 874

Identity, therefore, is in its own self absolute non-identity. But it is also the determination of identity as against non-identity. For as reflection-into-self it posits itself as its own non-being; it is the whole, but, as reflection, it posits itself as its own moment, as positedness, from which it is the return into itself. It is only as such moment of itself that it is identity as such, as determination of simple equality with itself in contrast to absolute difference.

Remark 2: First Original Law of Thought

§ 875

In this remark, I will consider in more detail identity as the law of identity which is usually adduced as the first law of thought.

This proposition in its positive expression A = A is, in the first instance, nothing more than the expression of an empty tautology. It has therefore been rightly remarked that this law of thought has no content and leads no further. It is thus the empty identity that is rigidly adhered to by those who take it, as such, to be something true and are given to saying that identity is not difference, but that identity and difference are different. They do not see that in this very assertion they are themselves saying that identity is different; for they are saying that identity is different from difference; since this must at the same time be admitted to be the nature of identity, their assertion implies that identity, not externally, but in its own self, in its very nature, is this, to be different.

§ 876

But further, they do not see that, by clinging to this unmoved identity which has its opposite in difference, they thereby convert it into a one-sided determinateness which, as such, has no truth. It is admitted that the law of identity expresses only a one-sided determinatedness, that it contains only formal truth, a truth which is abstract, incomplete. In this correct judgement, however, it is immediately implied that truth is complete only in the unity of identity with difference, and hence consists only in this unity. When asserting that this identity is imperfect, the perfection one has vaguely in mind is this totality, measured against which the identity is imperfect; but since, on the other hand, identity is rigidly held to be absolutely separate from difference and in this separation is taken to be something essential, valid, true, then the only thing to be seen in these conflicting assertions is the failure to bring together these thoughts, namely, that identity as abstract identity is essential, and that as such it is equally imperfect: the lack of awareness of the negative movement which, in these assertions, identity itself is represented to be. Or, when it is said that identity is essential identity as separation from difference, or in the separation from difference, then this is directly the expressed truth about it, namely, that identity consists in being separation as such, or in being essential in separation, that is, it is nothing for itself but is a moment of separation.

§ 877

Now as regards other confirmation of the absolute truth of the law of identity, this is based on experience in so far as appeal is made to the experience of every consciousness; for anyone to whom this proposition A = A, a tree is a tree, is made, immediately admits it and is satisfied that the proposition as immediately self-evident requires no further confirmation or proof.

§ 878

On the one hand, this appeal to experience, that the proposition is universally admitted by everyone, is a mere manner of speaking. For it is not pretended that the experiment with the abstract proposition A = A has been made on every consciousness. The appeal, then, to actually carried-out experiment is not to be taken seriously; it is only the assurance that if the experiment were made, the proposition would be universally admitted. But if what were meant were not the abstract proposition as such, but its concrete application from which the former were supposed first to be developed, then the assertion of its universality and immediacy would consist in the fact that every consciousness would treat it as fundamental, even in every utterance it made, or that it lies implicitly in every utterance. But the concrete and the application are, in fact, precisely the connection of the simple identical with a manifold that is different from it. Expressed as a proposition, the concrete would at first be a synthetic proposition. From the concrete itself or its synthetic proposition, abstraction could indeed extract by analysis the proposition of identity; but then, in fact, it would not have left experience as it is, but altered it; for the fact is that experience contains identity in unity with difference and is the immediate refutation of the assertion that abstract identity as such is something true, for the exact opposite, namely, identity only in union with difference, occurs in every experience.

§ 879

On the other hand, the experiment with the pure law of identity is made only too often, and it is shown clearly enough in this experiment what is thought of the truth it contains.

Ask: “What is a plant?”

If the answer is “A plant is a plant” then the truth of such a statement is at once admitted by the entire company on whom it is tested.

At the same time, it is equally unanimously declared that the statement says nothing.

Ask: “What is God?”

If the answer is “God is God”, then expectation is cheated.

Such as answer is very lightly esteemed. An answer that merely reiterates the same thing is most boring and tedious.

§ 880

Looking more closely at this tedious effect produced by such truth, we see that the beginning, ‘The plant is—,’ sets out to say something, to bring forward a further determination. But since only the same thing is repeated, the opposite has happened, nothing has emerged. Such identical talk therefore contradicts itself. Identity, instead of being in its own self truth and absolute truth, is consequently the very opposite; instead of being the unmoved simple, it is the passage beyond itself into the dissolution of itself.

§ 881

In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialise; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself. The prepositional form can be regarded as the hidden necessity of adding to abstract identity the more of that movement. And so an A, or a plant, or some other kind of substrate, too, is added which, as a useless content, is of no significance; but it constitutes the difference which seems to be accidentally associated with it. If instead of A or any other substrate, identity itself is taken — identity is identity — then equally it is admitted that also in its place any other substrate could be taken. Consequently, if the appeal is to be made to what experience shows, then it shows that this identity is nothing, that it is negativity, the absolute difference from itself.

§ 882

The other expression of the law of identity: A cannot at the same time be A and not-A, has a negative form; it is called the law of contradiction. Usually no justification is given of how the form of negation by which this law is distinguished from its predecessor, comes to identity. But this form is implied in the fact that identity, as the pure movement of reflection, is simple negativity which contains in more developed form the second expression of the law just quoted. A is enunciated, and a not-A, the pure other of A; but it only shows itself in order to vanish. In this proposition, therefore, identity is expressed-as negation of the negation. A and not-A are distinguished, and these distinct terms are related to one and the same A. Identity, therefore, is here represented as this distinguishedness in one relation or as simple difference in the terms themselves.

§ 883

From this it is evident that the law of identity itself, and still more the law of contradiction, is not merely of analytic but of synthetic nature. For the latter contains in its expression not merely empty, simple equality-with-self, and not merely the other of this in general, but, what is more, absolute inequality, contradiction per se. But as has been shown, the law of identity itself contains the movement of reflection, identity as a vanishing of otherness.

§ 884

What emerges from this consideration is, therefore, first, that the law of identity or of contradiction which purports to express merely abstract identity in contrast to difference as a truth, is not a law of thought, but rather the opposite of it; secondly, that these laws contain more than is meant by them, to wit, this opposite, absolute difference itself.

B. DIFFERENCE (a) Absolute Difference

§ 885

Difference is the negativity which reflection has within it, the nothing which is said in enunciating identity, the essential moment of identity itself which, as negativity of itself, determines itself and is distinguished from difference.

§ 886

1. This difference is difference in and for itself, absolute difference, the difference of essence.

It is difference in and for itself, not difference resulting from anything external, but self-related, therefore simple difference. It is essential to grasp absolute difference as simple. In the absolute difference of A and not-A from each other, it is the simple not which, as such, constitutes it.

Difference itself is the simple Notion.

Two things are different, it is said, in that they, etc. ‘In that’ is, in one and the same respect, in the same ground of determination.

It is the difference of reflection, not the otherness of determinate being. One determinate being and another determinate being are posited as falling apart, each of them, as determined against the other, has an immediate being for itself.

The other of essence, on the contrary, is the other in and for itself, not the other as other of an other, existing outside it but simple determinateness in itself.

In the sphere of determinate being, too, otherness ‘and determinateness proved to be of this nature, to be simple determinateness, identical opposition; but this identity revealed itself only as the transition of one determinateness into the other.

Here, in the sphere of reflection, difference appears as reflected difference, which is thus posited as it is in itself.

§ 887

2. Difference in itself is self-related difference; as such, it is the negativity of itself, the difference not of an other, but of itself from itself; it is not itself but its other.

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. It can equally be said that difference, as simple, is no difference; it is this only when it is in relation with identity; but the truth is rather that, as difference, it contains equally identity and this relation itself.

Difference is the whole and its own moment, just as identity equally is its whole and its moment. This is to be considered as the essential nature of reflection and as the specific, original ground of all activity and self-movement.

Difference and also identity, make themselves into a moment or a positedness because, as reflection, they are negative relation-to-self.

§ 888

Difference as thus unity of itself and identity, is in its own self determinate difference. It is not transition into an other, not relation to an other outside it: it has its other, identity, within itself, just as identity, having entered into the determination of difference, has not lost itself in it as its other, but preserves itself in it, is its reflection-into-self and its moment.

§ 889

3. Difference possesses both moments, identity and difference; both are thus a positedness, a determinateness.

But in this positedness each is self-relation. One of them, identity, is itself immediately the moment of reflection-into-self. But equally, the other is difference, difference in itself, reflected difference. Difference, in that it has two moments that are themselves reflections-into-self, is diversity.