(b) Diversity

§ 890

1. 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 the negative of itself, are reflections-into-self, are self-identical;

In other words, precisely because identity itself immediately sublates its negating and in its determination is reflected into itself.

The distinguished terms subsist as indifferently different towards one another because each is self-identical, because identity constitutes its ground and element; in other words, the difference is what it is, only in its very opposite, in identity.

§ 891

Diversity constitutes the otherness as such of reflection. The other of determinate being has for its ground immediate being in which the negative subsists. But in reflection it is self-identity, reflected immediacy, that constitutes the subsistence of the negative and its indifference.

§ 892

The moments of difference are identity and difference itself. They are [merely] diverse when they are reflected into themselves, that is, when they are self-related; as such, they are in the determination of identity, they are only relation-to-self; the identity is not related to the difference, nor is the difference related to the identity; as each moment is thus only self-related, they are not determined against one another. Now because in this manner they are not different in themselves, the difference is external to them. The diverse moments are, therefore, mutually related, not as identity and difference, but merely as simply diverse moments, that are indifferent to one another and to their determinateness.

§ 893

2. In diversity, as the indifference of difference, reflection has become, in general, external to itself; difference is merely a posited or sublated being, but it is itself the total reflection. When considered more closely, both identity and difference, as has just been demonstrated, are reflections, each of which is unity of itself and its other; each is the whole. Consequently, the determinateness in which they are only identity or only difference, is sublated. Therefore they are not qualities, because through the reflection-into-self, their determinateness is at the same time only a negation. What is present, therefore, is this duality, reflection-into-self as such, and determinateness as negation or positedness. Positedness is the reflection that is external to itself; it is the negation as negation-and so therefore in itself or simplicity, the self-related negation and reflection-into-self, but only implicitly; it is relation to the negation as something external to it.

§ 894

Thus the reflection that is implicit, and external reflection, are the two determinations into which the moments of difference, namely, identity and difference, posited themselves. They are these moments themselves in so far as they have now determined themselves. Reflection in itset is identity, but determined as being indifferent to difference, not as simply not possessing difference, but as being self-identical in its relationship with it; it is diversity. It is identity that has so reflected itself into itself that it is really the one reflection of the two. moments into themselves; both are reflections-into-self. Identity is this one reflection of both, which contains difference only as an indifferent difference and is simply diversity. External reflection, on the other hand, is their determinate difference, not as an absolute reflection-into-self, but as a determination to which the [merely] implicit reflection is indifferent; difference’s two moments, identity and difference itself, are thus externally posited determinations, not determinations in and for themselves.

§ 895

Now this external identity is likeness, and external difference, unlikeness. Likeness, it is true, is identity, but only as a positedness, an identity that is not in and for itself. Similarly, unlikeness is difference, but as an external difference that is not in and for itself the difference of the unlike itself. Whether or no-, something is like something else does not concern either the one or the other; each of them is only self-referred, is in and for itself what it is; identity or non-identity, as likeness or unlikeness, is the verdict of a third party distinct from the two things.

§ 896

3. External reflection relates what is diverse to likeness and unlikeness. This relation, which is a comparing, passes to and fro between likeness and unlikeness. But this relating to likeness and unlikeness, back and forth, is external to these determinations themselves; also, they are related not to one another but each, by itself, to a third. In this alternation, each stands forth immediately on its own. External reflection is, as such, external to itself; the determinate difference is the negated absolute difference. Therefore it is not simple, not reflection-into-self; on the contrary, it has this outside it. Its moments, therefore, fall asunder and are related also as mutually external to the reflection-into-self confronting them.

§ 897

In the self-alienated reflection, therefore, likeness and unlikeness appear as mutually unrelated, and in relating them to one and the same thing, it separates them by the introduction of ‘in so far’, of sides and respects. The diverse, which are one and the same, to which both likeness and unlikeness are related, are therefore, from one side like one another, but from another side are unlike, and in so far as they are like, they are not unlike. Likeness is related only to itself, and similarly unlikeness is only unlikeness.

§ 898

But by this separation of one from the other they merely sublate themselves. 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. For both are determinations of difference; they are relations to one another, the one being what the other is not; like is not unlike and unlike is not like; and both essentially have this relation and have no meaning apart from it; as determinations of difference, each is what it is as distinct from its other. But through this mutual indifference, likeness is only self-referred, and unlikeness similarly is self-referred and a reflective determination on its own; each, therefore, is like itself; the difference has vanished, since they cannot have any determinateness over against one another; in other words, each therefore is only likeness.

§ 899

This indifferent point of view or external difference thus sublates itself and is in its own self the negativity of itself. It is the negativity that belongs to the comparer in the act of comparing. The comparer goes from likeness to unlikeness and from this back to likeness, and therefore lets the one vanish in the other and is, in fact, the negative unity of both. This unity, in the first instance, lies beyond the compared and also beyond the moments of the comparison as a subjective act falling outside them. But, as we have seen, this negative unity is, in fact, the very nature of likeness and unlikeness. The independent self-reference which each of them is, is in fact the self-reference that sublates their distinctiveness and so, too, themselves.

§ 900

From this side, likeness and unlikeness, as moments of external reflection and as external to themselves, vanish together in their likeness. But further, this their negative unity is also posited in them; they have, namely the [merely] implicit reflection outside them, or are the likeness and unlikeness of a third party, of an other than they. And so likeness is not like itself; and unlikeness, as unlike not itself but something else unlike it, is itself likeness. The like and the unlike are therefore unlike themselves. Consequently each is this reflection: likeness, that it is itself and unlikeness, and unlikeness, that it is itself and likeness.

§ 901

Likeness and unlikeness formed the side of positedness as against the compared or the diverse which had determined itself as the [merely] implicit reflection contrasted with them. But this positedness as thus determined has equally lost its determinateness as against them. But likeness and unlikeness, the determinations of external reflection, are just this merely implicit reflection which the diverse as such is supposed to be, the merely indeterminate difference of the diverse. The implicit reflection is self-relation without the negation, abstract self-identity, and so simply positedness itself. The merely diverse, therefore, passes over through positedness into negative reflection. The diverse is the merely posited difference, therefore the difference that is no difference, and therefore in its own self the negati on of itself. Thus likeness and unlikeness themselves, that is, positedness, returns through indifference or the implicit reflection back into the negative unity with itself, into the reflection which the difference of likeness and unlikeness in its own self is. Diversity, whose indifferent sides are just as much simply and solely moments of one negative unity, is opposition.