ugh
the field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. Hegel
felt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he
saw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the
brilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance
from the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of
thought. 'The so-called maxim of identity,' he wrote, 'is supposed to
be accepted by the consciousness of every one. But the language which
such a law demands, "a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism,
mind is mind," deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks
or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no
existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never view
identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference.
That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what
alone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than
registering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous
performance. Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in
so far as at the same time they involve distinction.'[1]

The distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first
instance distinction from all other things or concepts. But in his
hands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally,
reflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent
self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the
propulsive logical force that moves the world.[2] 'Isolate a thing
from all its relations,' says Dr. Edward Caird,[3] expounding Hegel,
'and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself
as well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing.' Or, to
quote Hegel's own words: 'When we suppose an existent A, and another,
B, B is at first defined as the other. But A is just as much the other
of B. Both are others in the same fashion.... "Other" is the other by
itself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of
itself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,'
etc.[4] Hegel writes elsewhere: 'The finite, as implicitly other than
what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being,
and to turn suddenly into its opposite.... Dialectic is the universal
and irresistible power before which nothing can stay.... _Summum jus,
summa injuria_--to drive an abstract right to excess is to