ABSTRACT
Understanding Hegel's account of particularity has proven to be anything but straightforward. We can see from the literature that two accounts of particularity have thus far predominated: one that understands the particular as an example, or instance, and another that reads the particular as a subjective perspective on a universal concept. The problem with these accounts is that they reduce particularity to either singularity or universality. As Derrida's analyses evidence, the “structure of exemplarity” in Hegel is relatively complex. This is partly because Hegel uses “example” in all three of the senses that are introduced in Chapter 1.2; that is, as an “instance” or “illustration”; as a “model,” “exemplary individual,” or “paradigm”; or as a “by-play” (the meaning of which is derived from Hegel's neologism, beiherspielen, in which Beispiel is understood quasi-etymologically as a “by-play” of accidental moments). A Beispiel, in the first sense, can be replaced by another instance in a free play (or “by-play”). This play of accidental moments, however, is not entirely free; rather, it generates a series (of replacements) that ultimately leads to an example in the second sense; that is, an exemplary individual. I argue that particularity can be taken as an exemplarity of this kind, which oscillates between a singular example and a universal paradigm. It is within this by-play that the universal concept, or “law,” is supposed to be mediated and determined. It is, however, from the differences between the examples that the by-play induces another law; namely, the law of nonmediation, which may, in Derrida's view, actually negate the dialectical movement toward universality. By utilizing Malabou's concept of plasticity, I argue that this disruption may be ameliorated. This implies that each individual example within a series is a particular determination of the universal. We can therefore take literally Hegel's claim that the movement of the concept is play.
