Consciousness

Sense-Certainty (90-110)

In its attempt to discover what is True, consciousness begins with what is immediate to it or immediately in front of it: The Here-and-Now. This claim posits that the Truth lies in the immediate presence/existence of things as opposed to comprehending specifics about them. Hegel claims that this appears to itself as the richest and truest form of knowledge due to it capturing “the This” in front of it as it is (91). “The This” to Hegel is simply the object of the I/me (subject) of Sense-Certainty. What Hegel means is that Sense-Certainty allows things to be as they are; nothing is added to what appears as concrete in-itself. To Sense-Certainty the object or the This is what is essential to consciousness (something that is essential is simply what is True or where the Truth resides). This is captured in Hegel’s remark that “I, this particular I, am certain of this particular thing” (91). While seeming simple enough and fairly straight forward, the problem that arises here begins when reflecting on the previous quote. There are two “actors” or “thises” in the play of Sense-Certainty: the this as I (subject) and the this as object. Now it is evident that the object of Sense-Certainty is not simply in-itself or essential, rather, it can only be known through a subject or mediated through a subject. To Hegel, if something is mediated through something else, that is how it is shown or reveals itself. The subject of Sense-Certainty cannot confirm that “this” exists without being a subject from which to make this claim. To consciousness, the subject now is what is essential. It does not end here. This problem becomes even more evident when it is reflected upon that a large portion of Sense-Certainty’s Truth rests on the fact that the “This” exists as a Here-and-Now, for that is how it presents itself or is mediated to the subject. To take this argument apart, Hegel looks into each claim of Here and Now separately.

Beginning with Now, Hegel takes what appears as Truth to Sense-Certainty “Now is Night” and writes it down. If this statement is True, it will remain true in all scenarios. Checking the time the next day, it appears that it is no longer Night. What appeared as Truth for Sense-Certainty did not hold true. But, that is not entirely the case, for as Hegel notes, it is still “Now”. “Now” may signify something else, but it still is. What was immediate (present or apparent) about the claim “Now is Night” (the Night) mediates the Truth of the claim. For when Hegel checks the time the next day, it is still “Now”, but it is no longer Night. In this sense, “Now” becomes a universal that is mediated by every instance of immediateness. This is why in the ultimate Truth of Now is that it is a “Now of Nows”, the relation of all Nows. A universal in this sense is the Truth that remains and is preserved across instances of differences or differentiation.

Following the checking of Now’s Truth, Hegel does the same for Here. When the claim is made “Here is a tree”, the subject making the claim can turn around and now make the claim “Here is a house”. These two claims cannot both be true under the guise of Sense-Certainty, but there is again an interesting play at work. For when Sense-Certainty posits “Here is a house” what is really saying is “Here is not a tree”. In this sense, the Truth of Here is not in the fact that “Here is a tree”, but rather that this tree is a stand-in for anything else that can be “Here”. Ultimately, Here also becomes a universal which signifies a “Here of Heres”. The words Here and Now in language become stand-ins for what is immediate. This is how it is possible to say “here is a tree” and “here is a bush” while both can be True. The emergence of language is where the Truth of Sense-Certainty is lost and begins to refute itself. So, rather than use language, Sense-Certainty attempts to “point” at what it claims to be True. It then turns out that it is impossible to keep its claim True without losing it after pointing to it. Returning to the concept of Now (“concept” being the idea of something), illustrates this loss perfectly. Consciousness experiences what it previously did with its claim of night, for the second that it points to Now, that very Now becomes a Then. Once again, Now becomes a universal as the “Now of Nows”. The Truth of Now has nothing to do with its presence and what is immediate, as claimed by Sense-Certainty, but rather ultimately in its relation to all the Nows.

Finishing the life of Sense-Certainty, we arrive at the the Truth it harbored all along, the universal. Moving from this stage of consciousness to the next (Perception) will allow consciousness to take with it what it has learned. Perception begins by taking the universal as essential.

Perception (111-131)

As previously stated regarding the end of Sense-Certainty, Perception begins with taking the universal as its object of interest. The Thing is taken into consciousness or perceived as a One, a singular and independent entity. Perception does not make the same blunder as Sense-Certainty, it has learned from its previous mistake. The Thing that is immediate and in front of me is independent of this other Thing to my left, but they can both be Things, they are simply different things. Language no longer becomes a problem to consciousness, for now not only can multiple Things exist, but Things can be described. The way in which Things are described has to do with referring to the properties of Things. Taking salt as an example, it is a Thing that has properties like color, taste, texture, shape, etc. We now have a Thing that is in-itself a One, but it is at the same time a Many (a Thing with many properties). Unfortunately, this differentiation, which is the hallmark of independence, becomes the eventual downfall of the Truth of Perception.

Perception begins its journey by positing a thing like a book. This book is a One and becomes, “the Thing”, the object of the perceiving subject. When attempting to describe the properties or characteristics of the book, consciousness creates a community of properties in which to identify this Thing. But, taking one property out from the community does not change the other properties. Taking one property, e.g. the cover is blue, consciousness becomes quick to note that each of these properties are not only universals in themselves, they all relate to something outside the Thing. The property of the blue color of the book is not wed to just this book, but rather relates to all things that are blue. Along with this, other properties are not dependent on this previous one (the number of pages does not have to do with the color of the book). In this discovery the One-ness of the Thing begins to take a backseat to the properties that make it up. For the properties (or the Many) are not specific to this One Thing, but rather could be properties of any other Thing. With this, the Thing loses its One-ness and becomes a Many.

Similar to what Sense-Certainty experienced, Perception too experiences this distancing from the universal object and “returns into itself” to see itself (the universal subject) as the bearer of the object’s Truth. In this sense, the book has a blue cover because it is I that perceives it as blue, it has 500 pages because it is I that perceives those 500 pages. Each property of a Thing is thus mediated through the subject perceiving them. This, however, becomes a problematic Truth to maintain without falling into pure relativism. Luckily, consciousness notes that this community of properties is just that, a community of properties that compose a Thing. The unity of properties and Thing being done by consciousness itself. This is only done by this One Thing having properties that distinguish it from other things. In this final conclusion, a thing exists as a thing for-itself and for-another: For-itself because of the necessity of its “reflection into itself” (its differentiation of itself and other things), and for-another, because it is unified by the consciousness that perceives it as object.

Force and the Understanding (132-165)