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h e g e l ’ s c r i t i q u e o f m e ta p h y s i c s
(thought) unity also means that although the structure of “real possibility� is defined on the model of the relation of conditions and ground, it nevertheless corresponds to a more determinate moment of thought. In the sphere of conditioned ground, the conditions have outside them the form, that is, the ground or the reflection which is for itself; and this ground or reflection relates them into moments of the thing, and produces existence in them. Here, in contrast, immediate actuality is not determined by a presupposing reflection to being a condition. Rather, it is posited that this actuality itself is possibility. (GW 11, 387; S. 6, 210; L. 548)
The unity of ground and conditions defined a figure of thought that structures all cognitive process. It is the tension of reflexive unity and the manifold this reflexive unity gives itself to unify. The unity can exist only through the manifold and conversely the manifold is the manifold it is only by virtue of this reflexive unity, just as in Kant the unity of apperception is conditioned by the manifold of intuition and the manifold of intuition is constituted as an object of perception only through the unity of apperception. But here, unity is in the object itself; the unity of thought does not exist outside the object constituted and the object is constituted as unity of thought. But then, what distinguishes actuality from possibility, if the possibility of the thing is completely defined by the totality of its conditions, and the conditions have no existence as conditions outside the thing? Well, what distinguishes them is only reflection itself, which returns from the thing to its conditions to recapitulate the totality of relations that connect the latter. Possibility and actuality are therefore identical, while being distinct only insofar as they constitute two separate moments of modal reflection. Hegel makes this clear as soon as he introduces the category of real possibility: Real actuality likewise has possibility immediately present in it. It contains the moment of the in-itself; but, insofar as it is at first only immediate unity, it is in one of the determinations of the form, and is thus distinguished, as what is [als das Seiende], from the in itself or possibility. (GW 11, 386; S. 6, 208; L. 547)
If real possibility and real actuality were not distinct, that would mean thinking the thing (die Sache) and thinking the conditions that constitute it would be identical. Then the absolute necessity of the thing would be thought just by virtue of thinking the thing itself. We are not there