The Void in the Principle of Identity

Abstract:Though utterance assumes at least provisional determination, the very act of forming a proposition, sentence, or principle exposes gaps and indeterminacies in language itself. This essay unravels contradictions in Hegel's language on the ontological implications of meaning-making, in order to show that language abandons itself even as it seeks to leap from uncertainty into some form of determination. Hegel's identity principle, as linguistic enactment, reveals itself to be at once self-creative and self-destructive. Ultimately, this essay performs its own unraveling in an improvisational coda that exposes the internal negations of the Satz.