Can we have a Philosophy of Difference?
Can we have a Philosophy of Difference?
Hegel starts his ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ with the expression ‘pure This’ (Hegel 1977, Pg 58). This is supposed to represent the most ‘immediate’ and ‘receptive’, which he will then go on to show as the ‘most abstract and poorest truth’. Let’s contend with his argument a little bit. Hegel correctly notes here that ‘this’ is constantly changing in the face of flux of time. A ‘this’ is merely an instance; it will fly away at the very moment we attach an expression to it. Everytime we point at something using the expression ‘this’, it vanishes as soon as we begin to utter the word. For Hegel, it is ‘now’ and ‘here’ that would make up a ‘this’, and it is easy to see how both of these terms cannot really point to any particular place or capture any particular moment, since they both cannot capture a singular place or time due to the endless and continuous flux our immediate intuition offers us.