Opposition ( Der Gegensatz )

Now that likeness and unlikeness explicitly include their relation to each other within themselves, they are determined as the positive and the negative. The positive is the ‘self-likeness reflected into itself that contains within itself the relation to unlikeness’; the negative is the ‘unlikeness that contains within itself the reference to its non-being, to

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likeness’ (SL 424/LW 43). In that each determination contains its relation to its other within itself, the transition to the positive and the negative signals the return of a form of reflection that is no longer external. This is why there is no longer a distinction between reflection and the terms that are related. Nevertheless, the positive and negative are not united within a single process of reflection, for insofar as each contains the other, each is again the whole of which it is also a part. We are thus once again confronted with two forms of reflection which both seem to be self-sufficient:

The positive and the negative are thus the sides of the opposition that have become self-sufficient [selbständig]. They are self-sufficient in that they are the reflection of the whole in themselves, and they belong to opposition, insofar as it is the

determinateness which, as the whole, is reflected into itself’ (SL 425/LW 43, trans. modified).

The structure that has now emerged does not constitute simply a return to identity and difference as we encountered them just prior to the collapse into diversity. This might appear to be the case when Hegel writes that ‘each is itself and its other’ (SL425/LW 43). Yet here the structure is different because each includes its other in a particular way. The two moments are only just returning from the illusory self-sufficiency that they seemed to possess in the state of diversity, so although each has to include its other in itself in order to be what it is, each includes the other as excluded. For this reason, Biard et al. describe opposition in a formula similar to that with which Hegel describes essence as such, namely as the ‘simple, or non-mediated, unity of immediacy and mediation.’29 Here again we can witness the all-or-nothing character of the dialectical movement. It is

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because likeness and likeness first became completely indifferent to each other that, on rebounding out of this indifference, they set themselves up in a polemical relation to each other wherein each, in itself, explicitly and actively excludes the other. It is because this direct opposition ensues that, as we shall see, each term ultimately proves to be as much the other as it is itself, which means that they form a single whole.

The process of exclusion takes place differently in the positive and the negative. Where the positive is concerned, while the moment of exclusion is necessary to its self- identity, it does not constitute the major part of it—or as the Encyclopaedia succinctly puts it: ‘the positive is the identical relation to self in such a way that it is not the negative.’ The negative, on the other hand, has a certain positive being of its own, but is constituted almost entirely by its not being the positive: ‘the negative is what is distinct on its own account in such a way that it is not the positive’ (Enc § 119). Let us now consider the defining characteristics of the opposition that has developed between these two determinations.

The opposition that has arisen is a genuine or absolute opposition because it is based on the equality of identity and difference, in three crucial and related respects. Firstly, it is reciprocal: while one term constitutes itself through its exclusion of the other, this other also constitutes itself via the exclusion of the first. Secondly, as we have seen, the terms of the opposition are equiprimordial. André Doz, I would suggest, is therefore mistaken in claiming that the positive must logically precede the negative in order that the latter can exist as negative,30 for the positive is in itself already related to the negative and, furthermore, is itself contained within the negative. One could therefore say of opposition that which de Beistegui writes of the contradiction that it will become, that it

30 _{André Doz, La Logique de Hegel et les problèmes traditionnels de l’ontologie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1987), p.}

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‘disavows any problematic of the origin, as well as any attempt to elevate a given moment to a position of absolute superiority.’31 Thirdly, the relation between the positive and the negative is symmetrical: each is the mirror image of the other. Opposition as a whole is thus, like diversity, based on the equality of identity and difference in these three senses; what distinguishes it from diversity, however, is that in opposition identity and difference are more thoroughly intertwined.

Hegel calls opposition the Vollendung of difference and it is clearly one of the most radical forms of difference we have seen in the Logic. De Beistegui characterises it in the following way: ‘In opposition […] the positive and the negative find themselves united from the start within a relation which, far from cancelling out their difference, allows them to be thought on the basis of difference alone.’32 This does not capture the whole truth of this relation, however, for it is based not just on the determinations’ negative relation to each other, but also on their reflection into self, or their identity. Yet this identity, in each case, is of course disrupted by a difference that it cannot contain, for the other that each contains is ‘the non-being of that in which it is supposed to be contained as only a moment’ (SL425/LW 43). We might then say that each is both the condition of possibility and impossibility of the other, which would seem to indicate a point of great proximity to Derridean deconstruction. As we shall see in the next chapter, however, this resemblance only extends so far, since this Hegelian enabling-undermining relationship is based upon the relation of symmetrically determined, ‘own others,’ which undermine and enable each other equally.

31 _{Beistegui, p. 100.} 32

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2.3.1 The Relation to an Own Other

The transition from diversity to opposition is particularly significant for Hegel because it demonstrates that beings are not essentially diverse—i.e. simply external to one another—but are what they are not only through their relations to other things, but more specifically, through processes of reciprocal exclusion. Opposition in a general sense is thus the state in which the difference of something from other things has become

internal to it. But since opposition is not solely based on the negative relation to other things, it also has the consequence that something comes to be opposed not just to all other things, but above all, to its polar opposite. It is due to the equality of the positive and the negative in opposition that, for example, red is not simply not a whole range of other colours, but that it has its own other in green. Red, in being positively red, specifically excludes green more than it excludes other colours. And vice versa for green. It is then through the equality of the positive and the negative that beings come to have their ‘own,’ necessary others. As Hegel writes in the following, crucial passage of the

Encyclopaedia:

Ordinary consciousness treats the distinct terms as indifferent to one another. Thus we say, “I am a human being, and I am surrounded by air, water, animals, and everything else.” In this ordinary consciousness everything falls outside everything else. The purpose of philosophy is, in contrast, to banish indifference and to become cognizant of the necessity of things, so that the other is seen to confront its other. And so, for instance, inorganic nature must be considered not merely as something other than organic nature, but as its necessary other. The two are in essential relation to one another, and each of them is [what it is], only insofar as it excludes the other from itself, and is related to it precisely by that exclusion […] In any case, it

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is an important step in thinking, when we cease to say, “Well, something else is possible, too.” When we say that, we are burdened with the contingent, whereas, as we remarked earlier, true thinking is the thinking of necessity (Enc § 119, Add. 1).33

We can already see then, that the importance of opposition is not limited to its status as one category among others in Hegel’s Logic. Indeed, its central importance within Hegel’s ontology was emphasised by Jean Hyppolite in his Logic and Existence.34 As we shall see in chapter 4, opposition—at a ‘methodological,’ rather than a ‘categorial’ level—might be considered the motor of the logic of essence, since it is because the contrary logical categories at any given stage come into opposition with one another that they come to be sublated into the unity of the same ‘ground.’ It is therefore through opposition that we pass from one dialectical stage to the next. Throughout the logic of essence, opposition usually enters at the end of the second moment of any dialectical stage. In the first moment, the two contrary terms are given their initial minimal definitions. But because these are so minimal, the terms pass into each other quite trivially (in the manner of identity and absolute difference). Because each contrary thus already contains the other in itself, in the second moment they take on a seeming self-sufficiency, falling into

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Hegel also states that ‘the distinction of essence is opposition through which what is distinct does not have an other in general, but its own other facing it; that is to say, each has its own determination only in its relation to the other: it is only inwardly reflected insofar as it is reflected into the other, and the other likewise; thus each is the other’s own other’ (§ 119).

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Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, trans. by Leonard Lawlor and Amit Sen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 115–22. Nevertheless, insofar as Hyppolite emphasises the priority of the

negative in the transition from diversity to opposition, rather than the equality of the positive and the negative, it remains unclear, on his account, exactly how a given being comes to be opposed to its own

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absolute indifference to each other (as in the case of diversity). This leaves the terms open to being determined in different ways. Opposition ensues when the indifference of diversity is seen to be only an abstraction from the essential mediation of the terms by each other, at which point the indifference swings to the other extreme and becomes the exclusion in which each ‘recognises’ the other as its own other. This exclusion, as we shall see, leads to contradiction, and to the sublation of the distinction between the contrary terms. In the following chapter I shall consider Derrida’s departure from this Hegelian logic of opposition and contradiction. His response to the above statement from the

Encyclopaedia will of course be: “Doch! ‘Something else’ always remains possible, and the ‘contingent’ need not be a ‘burden.’”