Difference within identity, difference as a paradoxical expression of identity entirely without an other - so not even identity - would seem to be the only way to understand consciousness in it 'social' dimension. The world is then the ultimate development and full ramification of difference and every ontology, no matter how at odds it would appear to be with this view, is a stuttering expression of it. Are we at the very apex of difference, or can it go further? Is this a stable expression of difference, or not? Can any such expression be stable? Isn't difference also the ultimate of instability, that is of life, of pure dynamism, both upward and downward?