Hegel is often regarded as a thinker of identity who marginalizes differences. The essay examines this criticism in four steps. (1) With regard to the science of logic, it can be seen that the absolute idea is conceived as contradictory in itself and does not mean subsuming the individual or the particular under the general. In a further step, finite reality in the philosophies of nature and spirit is examined, beginning with the determination of nature as the externality of the idea (2), in order to then analyze two cases from the realm of objective spirit in which there is not a negation but a lasting negativity: the simultaneity of the right of blood and the right of reason and the lasting rift between civil society and the state in modernity (3). Finally, the critical function of the concept in relation to reality is discussed (4).