Differance and Identity

Author(s): KENNETH ITZKOWITZ

Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 8 (1978), pp. 127-143
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24654291
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Differance and Identity

KENNETH ITZKOWITZ

State University of New York at Stony Brook

The purpose of this essay is to think Derridean differance (with an a) in

tion to the Heideggerian conception of identity. That the two are related i
gested by the titles of the main texts under consideration: Derrida's "Diffe
(with an a) and Heidegger's Identity and Difference (with an e). Regarding
texts themselves, the essay "Differance" begins with a discussion of the ve
differ" which, Derrida says,

seems to differ from itself. On the one hand, it indicates difference

as distinction, inequality, or discemibility; on the other, it ex
presses the interposition of delay, the interval of a spacing and tern
poralizing that puts off until 'later' what is presently denied, the
possible that is presently impossible.1

It is significant that the verb "to differ" indicates, for Derrida, either differ
or the active differing as spacing/temporalizing. This account renders
ference as a passive which, as Derrida says later in the essay, "could never
to differing as temporalizing or to differing as polemos."* Hence diffe
signifies nonidentity but not the spacing/temporalizing which is, in cont
"the order of the same."'

The first of two essays in Heidegger's Identity and Difference, "The Principle
of Identity," begins by distinguishing identity as sameness from identity as

1 Jacques Derrida, "Difference" in Speech and Phenomena (Evanston: Northwestern

University Press, 1973), p. 129.

« Ibid., p. 137.

« Ibid., p. 129.

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 Differance and Identity

equivalence. Identity is usually represented by a relation called the principle of

identity, A = A. What this so-called identity in fact expresses, however, are two
different albeit equivalent A's, not one identical A which is the same as itself.
Heidegger concludes here that "The common formulation of the principle of
identity thus conceals precisely what the principle is trying to say; A is A, that is,
every A is the same."4
To construe identity as equality is hence to construe it not as sameness but as a
kind of difference. Equality implies two elements which differ insofar as they are
separate. The formula A = A acknowledges two spatially distinct elements, one
on each side of the equation. These elements are separated by an interval, the
equal sign, and hence differ in their Being although we do say that they can be
made to coincide. The two equal elements are separated spatially by the interval
of the equal sign and temporally by their congruence, i.e. the promise that they
can be made to coincide, will coincide in their Being at some future time.
We are at this point led back to Derrida's twofold articulation of the verb "to
differ" which refers to either passive difference as nonidentity or active differing
as the spacing/temporalizing order of the same. These meanings, according to
Derrida, are distinct. Difference cannot indicate an active differing of the same
and vice versa. Yet in our discussion of Heidegger, equality has been represented
as both passive difference qua the spatial distinctness of two elements and active
differing qua the promise that spatial difference is a mere detour through con
gruence in the articulation of the identity or sameness of A. The latter promise is
no more than the empty promise of sameness, and the equality relation ex
presses, strictly speaking, an inequality —the relation of two elements which are
not the same in their Being. From this we conclude that the equality relation is
indeed an expression, although covert, of both senses of the verb "to differ."
Equality expresses "to differ" as both "distinction, inequality, or discernibility"
and as the "interposition of delay, the interval of a spacing and temporalizing
that puts off until 'later' what is presently denied, the possible that is presently
impossible." Unlike "to differ," equality signifies both nonidentity and sameness
simultaneously, yet does so beneath a promise of identity. Equality is hence a
covert representation of what Derrida calls differance (with an a) — a term he
coins to express overtly the two senses of the verb "to differ" in a single "root"
word.

4 Martin Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity" in Identity and Difference (New York:
Harper & Row, 1969), p. 24.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

We provisionally give the name differance to this sameness which is

not identical: by the silent writing of its β, it has the desired advan
tage of referring to differing, both as spacing/temporalizing and as
the movement that structures every dissociation.®

The examination of the equality relation vis-à-vis Heidegger had led us to

Derridean differance: the unkept promise as nonidentity of the same. For Der
rida, differance is paradigmatic, and even to name it, to summon it with a word,
is a misnomer. The same, as differance, is never identical. Sameness, the order
of the same, is an active differing indelibly associated with nonidentity and dif
ference. There is a trace of the other as other in the same. Hence sameness ex
cludes identity which, as in Derrida's text, is found nowhere at all. According to
Derrida, there is no identity, only the "play of differences," the active differing
of passive differences, the differing of possible presences which are always ab
sent. There is no identity as such in the word where, too, the meant object is
never met. Experience of a world of objects is not governed by a collection of ob
jects present before us, nor were such objects ever present. The object of
signification has never been encountered, is always absent: and the object of ex
perience, seemingly present before us, originates not in an identity, an originary
rendezvous with the object, but in differance, the (pure) trace of such a rendez
vous. The object of signification, spoken of in discourse, is always but the trace
of a presence that never is and never was. The equality relation A = A is instruc
tive in this regard. It is the second A, the "inessential" moment of otherness, that
enables the principle of identity to speak of identity at all, no matter how inade
quately it does this. An element, as we have seen above, is not selfsame or self
present as represented by A = A, yet the spatial difference represented by two
A's is, in fact, what enables us to even mean to speak the identity of one A. A = A
is a meaningful statement in its conception and intent and it is only the moment
of otherness that makes it possible for identity, as meant, to be thought at all. In
Derrida's language, the trace of the other in the same makes meaning possible,
makes the notion of identity conceivable. In Of Grammatology we read:
"Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal experience, without a
trace retaining the other as other in the same.no difference would do its work
and no meaning would appear."®
It is thus Derrida's contention that identity reveals nonidentity, the trace of
the other, at its conception, and (re)presents in fact differance. All attempts to
articulate identity are dependent on moments of otherness and articulate in
stead differance as the belonging together of otherness and identity, difference

5 Derrida, "Differance," pp. 129-30.

• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,

1976), p. 62.

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 Differance and Identity

and the same. Differance signifies the impossibility of identity as pure sameness
without difference. In the strictest sense, there is no identity. There is only dif
ferance as the (pure) trace of identity which compels thought to move endlessly
toward new and different expressions of sameness. Identity, which at first
signifies sameness, in the end represents the self-differentiation within thought,
and is but the trace of the (pure) movement of the differance prior to all identity
and difference: "It is not the question of a constituted difference here, but
rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure movement which
produces difference. The (pure) trace is differance. 'n
We have moved with Derrida from equality as differance to identity as dif
ferance. We now step backwards in order to fill out the notion of identity
through Heidegger's essay "The Principle of Identity" which seeks identity in 1)
equality, 2) sameness, and 3) the ontological difference. We follow a path on
which identity eventually finds itself grounded in difference and, perhaps, Der
ridean differance. At the beginning of this path is the most common formula
tion of identity, A= A, to which we now return.

Heidegger's argument against the formulation of identity as the equality rela

tion is given as follows:

The formula expresses the equality of A and A. An equation re

quires at least two elements. One A is equal to another. Is this what
the principle of identity is supposed to mean? Obviously not. That
which is identical . . . means "the same."*

Heidegger's argument here is simply that two elements do not represent identity,
the sameness of one. A close look at equality shows it to be an abstraction which
simply asserts that two elements can and do represent sameness. Equality
represents the impossible promise that difference as separation is an inessential
function of space and time that must be overlooked in lieu of the prevailing in
tent to represent the sameness of identity. Yet equality does not express this
sameness; the equality relation merely intends to articulate sameness.
Heidegger's rejection of equality as an expression of identity is hence the con
tention that the moment of difference is essential, inherent to the equality rela
tion, and irreducible. Equality is difference hidden by the promise of sameness,
reiterated through repetition and replication of an element. The relation A = A
is a meaningless tautology and illegitimate reduction of the non-sameness of two
A's in their Being. Identity is better represented by the logical contradiction
A = Β M which preserves the thought that identity cannot be conceived of as an

' Ibid., p. 62.

• Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity," p. 23.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

abstract, two term relation, a simple equality, no matter what A might repre
sent.

That the equality relation A = A does not articulate identity, that the princ
ple of identity is better represented by the logical contradiction A = Β 4 A, is
worthy of note. Heidegger rejects equality as representative of identity for ide
tity so conceived is in fact conceived as non-selfsameness and pure self dif
ference: A = Β and A £B, or A = Β ΦΑ. Equality mouths the barren promise of
sameness but is only able to articulate identity as the pure self difference
A = Β Φ A. Identity can best be represented by symbolic logic as a contradictio
since sameness, which is what we take identity to mean, cannot be represente
by a two term equation. By its very nature an equation, even A= A, necessaril
generates difference, and identity qua sameness is a logical contradiction
Heidegger's procedure at this point is to look beyond the symbols of logic toward
sameness itself as that which we mean by identity.
The equality relation cannot articulate identity or sameness without introduc
ing an irreducible moment of difference within the element, the A, taken to b
the same. How can sameness be adequately voiced without the introduction of
irreducible difference? How should we conceive of sameness? Heidegger's answer
to these questions is that it is impossible to conceive of sameness without dif
ference—impossible to conceive of a simple unmediated sameness or identity.
He alludes to the speculative idealists, especially Hegel, who had already, in thi
regard, concluded that identity is not to be characterized as simple selfsameness

Since the era of speculative Idealism, it is no longer possible for

thinking to represent the unity of identity as mere sameness, and to
disregard the mediation that prevails in unity. Wherever this is
done, identity is represented only in an abstract manner.*

Heidegger's rejection of the notion of identity as equality is here com

plemented by a critique of the simple sameness that identity is usually taken t
represent. Similar to the relation A = A which, we have seen, maintains an ir
reducible difference, the proposition that A is A is likewise regarded by Heideg
ger as a barren abstraction. The statement AisA does not account for the
"mediation that prevails in unity." Sameness is in fact not simple and
unmediated, and sameness conceived of as unmediated is not identity but an
abstraction, the bare promise of identity. In actuality, sameness is complex and

The more fitting formulation of the principle of identity "A = A"

would accordingly mean not only that every A is itself the same; but
rather that every A is itself the same with itself. Sameness implies

Ibid., p. 25.

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 Differance and Identity

the relation of "with," that is, a mediation, a connection, a syn

thesis: the unification into a unity.10

It would perhaps be useful to backtrack a bit. Until now, I have tried to clarify
Heidegger's concern with the principle of identity, a principle ordinarily taken
to mean that any given element or being is itself, is itself the same, is not different
from itself. The equality relation is often given as an expression of the principle
of identity, but it turns out that equality is unable to verbalize sameness without
introducing an ineradicable difference, a second equivalent element from which
the first differs. We thus look beyond equality to the more fundamental expres
sion of identity, that of simple sameness: A is A. It is Heidegger's present conten
tion that this more fundamental expression is also inadequate—an abstraction
that merely "presupposes what identity means and where it belongs."11 Hence
identity is neither equality nor simple sameness, but rather a "mediation, a con
nection, a synthesis: unification into a unity."
What does it mean to call identity a mediation? An initial response to this
question, taken up but not explicated by Heidegger, is found in Hegel to whom
Heidegger refers as having, together with Fichte and Schelling, "established an
abode for the essence, in itself synthetic, of identity."11 Hence we turn to the
Phenomenology of Mind and the explication of Spirit or Mind, i.e. pure think
ing, as the paradigm example of identity, indeed the only pure or absolute iden
tity. This identity is such that Spirit, as all reality, is the same with itself.

Spirit is alone Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which
essentially is, and is per se: it assumes objective, determinate form,
and enters into relations with itself—it is self contained and self

complete, in itself and for itself at once.1'

Identity for Hegel can only mean the identity of Spirit. Reality, the inner being
of the world, that which is and is per se, is only Spirit. Since there is no reality or
being apart from Spirit, the principle of identity A is A is senseless unless it refers
above all to the sameness of Spirit. Yet we read that Spirit is externality and
otherness inasmuch as "it assumes objective, determinate form." In fact, Spirit is
itself, is identical with itself, only in relating to itself in its objective forms, its
moments of otherness. Hence to say that "Spirit is alone Reality" is not to deny
diversity and otherness, but rather to include these as essential moments of Spirit

10 Ibid., pp. 24-25.

11 Ibid., p. 25.

" Ibid., p. 25.

". G.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p.
86.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

as reality. There is nothing other than Spirit, yet diversity and otherness qua
Spirit are the life of Spirit. To speak of the sameness of Spirit is therefore
misleading if by sameness we mean lack of difference. Spirit thrives on dif
ference, even the extreme difference of non-being or death; and only when we
abstract from concrete existence do we even think of Spirit as simple sameness.

The life of mind [Spirit] is not one that shuns death, and keeps
clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its be
ing. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder
[italics mine].14

The identity of Spirit encompasses all differences. To be Spirit means to be "ut

terly torn asunder." According to Hegel, Spirit does not reject difference or op
position within itself, does not turn away from the negative, but "by looking the
negative in the face, and dwelling with it . . . converts the negative into
being."15
That Spirit encompasses the negativity of otherness is one way of stating
Hegel's rejection of the principle of pure, unmediated identity—for him
abstract identity. All things in their determinate otherness are indeed Spirit yet
are not reduced to equivalence in this relation with Spirit. Things are maintain
ed in their dissimilarity by Spirit which cannot be construed without reference to
all moments of otherness. All reality is Spirit and is, in the abstract sense, iden
tical, but at the same time Spirit is all reality, i.e. all beings—Spirit is entirely
diverse. Reality which is Spirit is hence maintained in its diversity by Spirit.
Spirit which is reality is referred back (by reality which is Spirit) to an identity
called "Spirit," but an identity which is now seen to stand only in the diversity of
the world of concrete experience. To conceive of Spirit otherwise, as an abstract
identity, would be tantamount to reducing all specificity of facts to the
monotony of equality and repetition. Spirit construed as a pure identity which
does not include otherness would obliterate specificity and otherness or at least
exclude such from the realm of essence or Spirit where everything is said to be
One. It is along these lines that Hegel constructs his well known analogy, in the
Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, comparing Schelling's absolute to "the
night in which, as we say, all cows are black."16 The point here is that dif
ferences (cows) persist in the absolute even if we are foolhardy enough to try to
disavow them in favor of some abstract notion of spiritual identity as Oneness.

14 Ibid., p. 9S.

15 Ibid., p. 9S.

" Ibid., p. 79.

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 Differance and Identity

Hegel's rejection of the principle of pure identity, Oneness, is thus the accep
tance of difference into that which is, i.e. the absolute or Spirit. We recall now
Heidegger's rejection of simple sameness as an inadequate, abstract, representa
tion of identity in favor of a "concrete" conception of identity as mediation and
unification into a unity—much the Hegelian conception. For Hegel, the identity
of Spirit is its unification into a unity in which diversity persists. Spirit is the pro
cess of Spiritualization, i.e. unification through the mediation of differences. To
speak of the identity of Spirit is hence to necessarily speak of differences and
mediation through the process of differentiation. And since, for Hegel, there is
no reality apart from Spirit, to speak of the identity of that which is has meaning
primarily in terms of Spirit as the absolute unity. Strictly speaking, only Spirit
belongs to itself and therefore only Spirit qualifies as an identity.
From Hegel's notion of identity as Spirit comes Heidegger's modified state
ment of the principle of identity: "A is itself the same with itself."17 As we have
already seen, the more common conception of identity, that "every A is itself the
same" is inadequate in that it implies immediacy (simple sameness rather than
the mediated "same with itself'), thereby excluding difference from identity.
The conclusion of both Hegel and Heidegger is hence that the ordinary view of
identity is based on an abstraction which is never borne out during the course of
concrete experience. If we wish to preserve the principle of identity, it is
therefore necessary to revise the common misconception of identity. Heidegger
attempts this with his contention, derived from Hegel's concept of Spirit, that
identity is a mediation.

The detour to Hegel has been useful in helping us to ascertain what it means
to say that identity is mediated. For Hegel, the absolute identity is Spirit which is
absolute thought, i.e. thought thinking itself. Heidegger relies greatly on this
conception of identity yet differs greatly as well. Heidegger depends on Hegel in
sofar as he thinks of identity as a mediation. He differs from Hegel in that he
thinks of identity as more than one kind of mediation, i.e. the mediated
otherness of thought thinking itself. Heidegger thinks of identity as the belong
ing together of two kinds of mediation. These two mediations involve man (qua
thinking, the determinative characteristic of man) and Being. Man appropriates
Being and Being appropriates man. Man's appropriation of Being reflects man
as a being; Being's appropriation of man reflects the Being of man. Yet neither
appropriation is in itself complete; both are haunted by a trace of the other as
unappropriated. Being escapes man's appropriation and itself appropriates
man; man escapes the appropriation to Being to himself appropriate Being. In
this way neither appropriation can be considered decisive. This contrasts with
Hegel for whom thought is decisive qua Spirit, the absolute identity. For
Heidegger, identity is more complex and its determination cannot be said to lie

" Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity," p. 25.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

in the movement of either thought or Being alone, since neither thinking nor
Being appropriates the other qua appropriator. Identity can reflect both Being
and man as such only if determined in the appropriative movements of Being
and thinking together. Identity as a unity is hence made possible only through
the belonging together of the two appropriative movements. Identity is a proper
ty of the two movements, and the togetherness or sameness of identity is ground
ed in the reciprocal belonging of the two movements. To represent identity sole
ly in terms of either man or Being alone would be to admit a concomitant lack of
either man or Being as such into identity. Heidegger therefore concludes that
identity is grounded in the irreducible yet unified difference of the appropriative
movements of man and Being—what he elsewhere calls the ontological dif
ference.
Heidegger talks of the ontological difference (Different) between Being and
beings as opposed to the difference (Unterschied) or distinction of one being
from another. The ontological difference is unique in that it distinguishes Being
as the ground of beings from the beings themselves. Hence the term ontological.
However, we have, in fact, not yet understood this difference as it is not enough
merely to distinguish (unterscheiden) Being from beings. The ontological dif
ference is not a simple analytic distinction between categories. But then how is it
possible to make sense of this difference? How is the difference between Being
and beings to be understood?
We have already, in talking about the mutual appropriation of Being and
man in what Heidegger calls the event of appropriation, ascertained an irreduci
ble difference between these two movements. This is the ontological difference
and it is to be understood in terms of both thinking and Being together, not
either one alone. Heidegger places the difference in the relation between these
two appropriative movements. Thinking appropriates Being as presence: "It is
man, open toward Being, who alone lets Being arrive as presence."1· As
presence, Being is the ground of each being as that which is present. Paradox
ically, however, Being, the ground, is grasped by thinking subsequent to the be
ings that are present, as Being never appears in itself but only as a presence
signified on the horizon of beings, seemingly contributed by thinking to beings.
Two things follow from this. In the first place, thinking reduces the on
tological difference "to a distinction, something made up by our
understanding."" Heidegger takes note of this reduction and argues that
"Whenever we come to the place to which we were supposedly first bringing dif
ference along as an alleged contribution, we always find that Being and beings

" Ibid., p. 31.

11 Martin Heidegger, "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics" in Identity

and Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 62.

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 Difference and Identity

in their difference are already there."10 Thinking is hence incapable of grasping

either the ontological difference or Being as such (i.e. the Being that is always
"already there") as it reduces both to categories of thought inadequate to the
task—the difference to a distinction and Being to presence.
The second consideration involves another distinction: Man qua thinking is
distinguished from all other beings in that only man appropriates Being. "Being
is present and abides only as it concerns man through the claim it makes on
him .... Such becoming present needs the openness of a clearing, and by this
need remains appropriated to human being."11 The corollary of man's ap
propriation of Being is hence that man is distinguished in his Being from all
other beings. Man is the only being who

as the being who thinks, is open to Being, face to face with Being;
thus man remains referred to Being and so answers to it. Man «
essentially this relationship of responding to Being, and he is only
this. This "only" does not mean a limitation, but rather an excess.
A belonging to Being prevails within man, a belonging which
listens to Being because it is appropriated."

All beings belong to Being in that Being is the ground of beings. Yet only man
qua thinking refers and responds to Being. Thinking distinguishes man from be
ings and man qua thinking is consequently not like other beings which belong to
Being. Unlike other beings, man is the being for whom Being is an issue. It is this
fundamental characteristic of man that Heidegger focusses on in the existential
analytic of Being and Time, where it is claimed in regard to Dasein that "Being
is that which is an issue for every such entity."" Hence thinking is ontologically
significant in two different ways: 1) Thinking ascertains Being as the presence,
the ground, of all beings including man; 2) thinking distinguishes man in his Be
ing from other beings, making the Being of man and Being in general an issue
for man. In the former, man is distinguished by thinking as the being who con
templates and appropriates the Being of beings as presence; in the latter, think
ing distinguishes man from beings in his Being, in the manner in which he is ap
propriated to Being. With regard to this latter sense, we read, again in Being
and Time: "Dasein always understands itself on the basis of [eus] its ex
istence—on the basis of [aus] a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself."'4 Be
ing is always an issue for man, for Dasein, that is only resolved through existence.

M Ibid., p. 62.

" Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity," p. 31.

» Ibid., p. 31.

" Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 67.

" Ibid., p. S3 (Translation altered).

13b

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

At this juncture, we note that man is an identity in the ontological difference.

Always and at every living moment, man is both the being who thinks and the
thinking of the Being of beings unified as one. As Hugh Silverman writes in his
essay "Identity and the Self as Identity of Difference," "The ontological dif
ference is not the difference that we remark when we read Heidegger, but rather
the difference that installs itself in human life. The ontological difference is the
true ontological status of man."" Man is an identity grounded in the ontological
difference of the appropriative movements of thinking and Being. Man is the
unity of that difference.
It should now be apparent that identity, for Heidegger, presupposes dif
ference. The attempt to locate identity leads Heidegger to a realm of difference
in the event of appropriation which, in "The Principle of Identity," he calls the
framework or frame for short. This realm is "more real than all of atomic energy
and the whole world of machinery, more real than the driving power of
organization, communications, and automation."" The frame is "more real"
and in this sense closer to man than the technological world, yet it is also further
away from us in that it is absent from the field appropriated by thinking. Pure
thinking is estranged from the frame and cannot represent the frame as such:

Because we no longer encounter what is called the frame within the

purview of representation which lets us think the Being of beings as
presence—the frame no longer concerns us as something that is
present therefore the frame seems at first strange. It remains
strange above all because it is not an ultimate, but rather first gives
us That which prevails throughout the constellation of Being and
man."

The frame is strange in that it is not an ultimate being or an absolute unity,

i.e. a construct of thought, but rather contains the ontological difference in the
relation between man and Being. Yet man and Being do belong to one another
in the frame, and as belonging are unified into a unity in the sense of an inex
tricable togetherness which prevails. Most generally, it is this togetherness or
unity determined by the belonging or unification that Heidegger calls identity or
"That which prevails." Identity is the togetherness grounded in the belonging
which characterizes the mutual appropriation of man and Being, and which
reflects a non-appropriation or unmediated difference called the ontological dif
ference.

11 Hugh Silverman, "Man and the Self as Identity of Difference" in Philosophy Today
XIX, 2 (Summer, 1975), p. 13$.

" Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity," p. 35.

" Ibid., p. 36.

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 Differance and Identity

Because identity is grounded in the belonging, Heidegger critiques the

Hegelian or idealist notion that identity is "a mediation, a connection, a syn
thesis: the unification into a unity" for its neglect of the primordiality of the
belonging as determinative for identity. To think of identity simply as a media
tion is to fall short of the belonging and short of the realization that identity,
even the identity of Being or man, is subsequent to the event of appropriation
and the ontological difference. Heidegger alludes to Hegel in writing that

We stubbornly misunderstand this prevailing belonging together of

man and Being as long as we represent everything only in categories
and mediations, be it with or without dialectic. Then we always
find only connections that are established either in terms of Being
or in terms of man, and that present the belonging together of man
and Being as an intertwining.
We do not as yet enter the domain of the belonging together."

To enter the domain of the belonging is to succeed where Hegel and all
metaphysical or "pure" thinking fails. It is to acknowledge the primordiality of
the event of appropriation in relation to sameness and identity. Heidegger
makes this shockingly plain when, after a lengthy discussion of the event, he
ironically asserts that appropriation has nothing to do with identity. However,
he then goes on to say: "Identity, on the other hand, has much, perhaps
everything, to do with appropriation.""
Heidegger wants to shock us here because he has effected a reversal that com
pletely turns the ordinary notion of identity as simple sameness on its head in
two regards: 1) Identity or sameness is, in essence, difference; and 2) appropria
tion, ordinarily conceived of as the taking up and making use of what we assume
is a self-identical object is but the shadow of an appropriation more primordial
than the identity of the object itself, in which the identity of the object is
grounded. Here the relation between identity and appropriation is entirely
reversed. Whereas appropriation and difference had been seen by thinking as
grounded in identity, Heidegger now asserts that the abode of identity is built on
a foundation of appropriation and the ontological difference. To talk of identity
as sameness is no longer to talk of repetition and tautologies; nor even to talk of
simple mediation. Instead,

The question of the meaning of the Same is the question of the ac

tive nature of identity. The doctrine of metaphysics represents
identity as a fundamental characteristic of Being. Now it becomes

" Ibid., p. 32.

" Ibid , p. 38.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

clear that Being belongs with thinking to an identity whose active

essence steins from that letting belong together which we call the
appropriation. The essence of identity is a property of the event of
appropriation [italics all mine].'0

Heidegger concludes at this point that identity is active in essence. The identity
of all beings, including man, reflects the appropriations of both Being to man as
presence and man to Being as that for whom Being is an existential issue and is
present. These two different appropriations belong to one another, are framed
together by Heidegger, and in this way are the same. Still, identity, as the
belonging together of two separate appropriations, is, in all cases, maintained
by an absolute, ontological difference.

The nearer your destination,

The more you're slip slidin' away.
— Paul Simon, "Slip Slidin' Away"

The event of appropriation is that realm, vibrating within itself,

through which man and Being reach each other in their nature,
achieve their active nature by losing those qualities with which
metaphysics has endowed them.
— Martin Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity"

The active nature of identity ascertained by Heidegger is a property of the

event of appropriation. It is an activity sustained by the ontological difference.
In this difference, Being is appropriated to man not in itself but as presence.
Man is appropriated to Being, but insofar as he, qua thinking, differs from be
ings, the appropriation is incomplete and his ontological status is in question.
Consequently, the truth of man lies outside Being and the truth of Being lies
outside man. Even more interestingly, insofar as Being does belong to man and
man to Being, the truths of man and Being lie outside themselves as well. The
ontological difference hence implies that Being and man are not only external to
each other but are also irreducibly external to themselves. According to Heideg
ger, it is precisely this irreducible externality, this otherness within the same, this
nonidentical sameness, which is in fact the ground of identity, i.e. the on
tological difference. Identity is active in nature because it represents sameness
which differs internally; a vibrating sameness which is, in fact, nonidentical.

. . . the same is not merely identical. In the merely identical, the

difference disappears. In the same, the difference appears, and ap

Ibid., p. 39.

1S9

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 Difference and Identity

pears all the more pressingly, the more resolutely thinking is con
cerned with the same matter in the same way.51

The closer thinking comes to its subject matter, the more urgently the dif
ference appears. A particular subject matter, taken initially as identical, is, in
this way, conceived by Heidegger as, at bottom, a sameness which is not iden
tical. The active essence of identity refers to a sameness which is not identical.
Man, for instance, as the thinking being, is one being, the same as himself, yet
reflects a difference, ontologically, as both the being who thinks and the think
ing of the Being of beings. He who thinks and thinking (as appropriated to Be
ing) are ontologically different yet ontically the same and go under the single
name man.

With this definition of identity as the sameness which is not

ing paradox resolvable in terms of the ontological difference)
ridean differance at the end of the Heideggerian path. We reca
of this essay that differance, too, speaks of a nonidentical sam
dication of the debt owed by Derrida to Heidegger's analysis
ontological difference, a debt Derrida himself repeatedly ack
ferance" and in Of Grammatology, for instance, we are expli
with the Heideggerian path as the road to differance:

To think through the ontological difference doubtless re

difficult task, a task whose statement has remained nearl
ble. And to prepare ourselves for venturing beyond our ow
that is, for a differance so violent that it refuses to be sto
examined as the epochality of Being and ontological diffe
neither to give up this passage through the truth of Being,
in any way to "criticize," "contest," or fail to recognize the
necessity for it. On the contrary, we must stay within the
of this passage in a rigorous reading of metaphysics, w
metaphysics serves as the norm of Western speech, and no
the texts of the "history of philosophy."55

The ontico-ontological difference and its ground (Gran

"transcendence of Dasein" ... are not absolutely origin
ferance by itself would be more "originary," but one w
longer be able to call it "origin" or "ground," these notion
ing essentially to the history of onto-theology, to the sys
tioning as the effacing of difference. It can, however, be th
in the closest proximity to itself only on one condition: t

51 Heidegger, "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics,"

" Derrida, "Differance," p. 154.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

begins by determining it as the ontico-ontological difference before

erasing that determination. The necessity of passing through that
erased determination, the necessity of that trick of writing is ir
reducible."

In the two texts just cited, differance is held apart as more "originary" than
the ontological difference: "something so violent that it refuses to be stopped
and examined as the epochality of Being and ontological difference." Yet Der
rida links differance to the ontological difference in the passage beyond the
"logos of metaphysics" which, as is evidenced by the appropriative movement of
Hegel's absolute thought, maintains identity as a property of Being, a "full
presence" that belongs to beings and is ascertained in thinking alone. In contrast
to metaphysics, both differance and the ontological difference indicate the im
possibility of full presence in principio. In the ontological difference, Being is
acknowledged as prior to any cognitive designation as presence and therefore as
equally determinative, with thinking, of identity in its active essence. That iden
tity implies not presence but sameness in the ontological difference, that we, in
our encounter with the "things" of this "world," are necessarily held "in a rela
tion with what exceeds . . . the alternative of presence or absence"54—for
Heidegger the relation with Being prior to any determination by thought—takes
us immediately beyond metaphysics and the attempt to ascertain a full presence.
Derrida's contention is that differance articulates this fundamental im

possibility of a full presence even more consistently than the ontological dif
ference whose reference to "Being" and "beings" suggests an abiding structure.
For this reason, Derrida, vis-à-vis differance, points out the decisiveness of
Heidegger's ontic-ontological difference in which "all is not to be thought at one
go, " but immediately adds in reference to the structure of difference which
abides in Heidegger's text that it too is subject to the "law of difference:" "entity
[being] and being [Being], ontic and ontological, "ontico-ontological," are, in
an original style, derivative with regard to difference."55 Hence the ontological
difference, constitutive of all identity, is itself, in its "lived identity," derivative
of difference and is not to be construed as a kind of presence or transcendental
signified. The ontological difference differs internally and is, in this way,
grounded in difference, i.e. is subsequent to a difference "older" than on
tological difference. It is this "older" difference, "a difference even less con

" Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 25-24.

" Derrida, "Difference," p. 151.

" Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 25.

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 Differance and Identity

ceivable than the difference between Being and beings"" whose trace "no longer
belongs to the horizon of Being,"" that Derrida attempts to express with the a of
differance.

The keynote of differance is struck by the unheard a that both signifies and
conceals the difference of differance from difference. Derrida makes use of the

fact that "this graphic difference (the a instead of the e), this marked difference
between two apparently vocalic notations, between vowels, remains purely
graphic: it is written or read, but it is not heard."" Since the a of differance is
pronounced the same as the e of difference, the words "differance" and "dif
ference" are, as heard, identical. To hear "differance" is to hear "difference,"
and an identity is present which conceals the phonetically absent difference of
"differance."

The above word play is significant in that the difference between differance
and difference is concealed in the phonetic present. According to Derrida, the
ideology of full presence, metaphysics, always conceals the difference more fun
damental than all heard or thought identity, viz. Heidegger's ontological dif
ference or his own differance. In other words, the fact that identity reflects not a
full presence, but rather a nonidentical sameness, remains an implicit, though
necessarily hidden feature of metaphysical thinking for which full presence is
both the origin and goal of all "ideas in the mind." For this reason, both Derrida
and Heidegger criticize full presence as a dogmatic ideal maintained by an
epoch of metaphysics. Identity and presence are in fact grounded in a difference
neither identical nor present — a difference which cannot be heard or in any way
"thought at one go." To try to understand this difference as present, to try to
analyze it into component parts, is to fail, in the manner of metaphysical think
ing, to acknowledge the difference which constitutes not only the whole but all
parts as well. It is to fail to acknowledge that this difference does not belong to
Being. The difference is prior to Being and in this sense is not. And since all
identity and presence is grounded in the difference as distinguished by its non
Being, it follows that whatever we say is, whatever is identical or present to
thought, at bottom is not, i.e. does not exist as it is thought to exist. If anything
at all can be thought to exist fully, it would have to be the difference as ground.
But this difference is distinguished by its non-Being. It resists categorization in
terms of Being.
Note that the difference is distinguished from all of that which is present by its
non-presence. The failure of metaphysical thinking is that it reduces the dif

" Jacques Derrida, "Ousia and Gramme" in Phenomenology in Perspective (The

Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1970), p. 95.

17 Derrida, "Difference," p. 154.

" Ibid., p. 152.

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 Kenneth Itzkowitz

ference (Different) to this distinction (Unterschied). The ontological difference

and differance, distinguished by their non-Being, must at the same time be
acknowledged as the ontologically different or différant ground of identity and
presence. Hence Heidegger tells us that the domain of the difference can only be
entered through a "leap" or "spring" "away from the attitude of representational
thinking[,] . . . away from being ... as the ground in which every being as
such is grounded," and into the realm of the mutual belonging of man and Be
ing in the event of appropriation represented by metaphysical thinking as an
abyss." Neither differance nor the ontological difference (Different) can be
understood by the metaphysical thinking which reduces Different to a distinc
tion and the realm of the Different to an abyss, an absence which veils Different
and subsequently differance in non-presence. Although the primordial, con
stitutive difference is indeed not present, it is also, most certainly, not absent.
Rather it precedes and constitutes the identical things to which presence and
absence are predicated.
Derrida and Heidegger thus agree that metaphysical thinking is inadequate to
grasp "originary" difference (for Heidegger, the ontological difference; for Der
rida, differance) and the true nature of identity grounded in this difference.
Both communicate the need to go beyond the ordinary or metaphysical concep
tion of the objects of experience as fully present to a conception in which full
presence is deemed impossible and the object is regarded not as selfsame but as a
nonidentical sameness. For this reason, Heidegger uses expressions like "active
essence," "active nature," and "that realm, vibrating within itself' to
characterize identity. Derrida goes even a step further. He completely neglects
identity as if to emphasize a philosophical "twist of fate." Whereas it had long
been thought that the identity of one is necessarily prior to the difference bet
ween two or more, Derrida now contends that differance, the "originary" and
incessant play of differences, is prior to and unthinkable in terms of identity.
Even that which pervades all experience—appropriately called "differance"
although in fact unnamable, i.e. unidentifiable—cannot be construed as an
identity. The moment of sameness is mutable, subject to differentiation, and
ultimately an expression of nonidentity. Sameness is therefore never more than a
trace (of identity). Differance is not an identity but a trace, and the (pure) trace
is not an identity but differance. We can conclude that for Derrida, identity is
an abstraction and reification of differance, an arbitrary stoppage of the play of
differences.

'· Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity," p. 32.

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