Kathleen Wright

The question which motivates this paper concerns the source of the concept of identity fundamental to Hegel’s system. This concept is expressed as follows: the identity of identity and nonidentity. This articulation of the principle of speculation, or speculative reason, is found in Hegel’s first publication, Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie. In this work Hegel seems to side with Schelling against the concept of identity formulated by Fichte in his Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre. Here Hegel’s support for Schelling’s concept of Indifferenz might lead us to assume that this is the source of Hegel’s concept of identity. However, to proceed on this assumption would be not only to overlook the continuity in Hegel’s own development as a thinker but also to lose sight of the kinds of concerns which, for Hegel, give rise to the need for speculative reason.

Hartkopf’s monograph promises by virtue of its title to be a critical evaluation of both the continuity and discontinuity in Hegel’s thinking as he joins Schelling in Jena and publishes in 1801 his Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie. His question is to what extent the dialectical aspects of the Differenzschrift “are related to the dialectical traits already available in Hegel’s Frankfurt fragments as consequences or further developments, or whether these are inspired or even definitively co-determined by Schelling’s dialectic, which is already clearly further developed, especially his concept of identity which is in the making” Together the title and the question Hartkopf claims to be addressing lead us to expect a study of the Differenzschrift which extends and is comparable to Dilthey’s Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels. This is misleading. What we have instead, as the series title correctly indicates, is part of an ongoing study of the development of “modern dialectic.”