therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity.”1
But Hegel in his Logic has not only made visible the richer truth of the laws of thought, now brought back to their ground, he has also demonstrated at the same time in an irrefutable manner that our customary thinking, precisely where it proffers itself as correct, does not itself obey the laws of thought at all, but instead constantly contradicts them. This proves to be so, however, only as a consequence of the state of affairs whereby all that is has contradiction at its base, which Hegel asserts often and in multiple ways. Once in the statement “contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.”2 Better known, because catchier and thus often cited, is Hegel’s thought concerning the relationship between life and death. The latter, death, is commonly held to be the annihilation and devastation of life. Death stands in contradiction to life. The contradiction tears life and death apart, the contradiction is the tearing [Zerrissenheit] of the two. Hegel says, however (in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit): “But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It <spirit> wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment [Zerrissenheit] <i.e., in contradiction>, it finds itself.”3 And Hölderlin’s late poem “In lovely
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Zweiter Teil, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1923), 31. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Band. Die objective Logik (1812/1813), Gesammelte Werke vol. 11, ed. Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1978), 264. English translation: G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1993), 415.
2. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, 58. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Gesammelte Werke 11, 286. English translation: Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, 439.
3. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister, 4th ed. (Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1937), 29–30. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Gesammelte Werke vol. 9, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard Heede (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1980), 27. English translation: G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19.