Hegel

III. THE CRITERION OF THE EXAMINATION AND THE ESSENCE OF THE EXAMINATION IN THE COURSE OF APPEARING KNOWLEDGE (PARAGRAPHS 9–13 OF THE “INTRODUCTION”)

1. The criterion-forming consciousness and the dialectical movement of the examination

We will let the questions about the criterion and the type of the examination of consciousness be answered by means of two sentences by Hegel that we pick out from the third part of the “Introduction”: These two sentences about consciousness have an inner connection to the sentence from paragraph 8 mentioned above (cf. above p.68) that says that consciousness is the concept of itself. One of the sentences can be found at the beginning of paragraph 12: “Consciousness furnishes its own criterion in it itself . . .” (WW II, 68 [§84]).

To what extent is consciousness as consciousness, and thus in itself, criterion-like, namely in such a way that it furnishes the criterion that accords to its essence already by being consciousness, i.e., that it “furnishes its own criterion in it itself”? Hegel deliberately says “in it itself” [an ihm selbst], not: in itself [an sich selbst], in order to express the point that consciousness does not need to develop after the fact and out of itself. Hegel not only thinks consciousness in general in the sense of Descartes as self-consciousness, so that all objects-of-consciousness are what they are for an I, i.e., something that stands over and against representation (object). At the same time, Hegel thinks consciousness in advance “transcendentally” in the Kantian sense, i.e., with a view to the objectness of the object of consciousness. But the objective of the object is grounded in and determined by the originarily unifying (synthetic) functions of self-consciousness. They constitute the objectness of the object so that every object as such, i.e., with respect to its objectness, has to measure itself against self-consciousness, i.e., against the essence of consciousness. This is the only sense of the idea that Kant expresses in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (B XVI [110])—an idea that is often quoted and that is equally often misinterpreted and equally often quoted only partially—in which he compares his transcendental inquiry with the inquiry of Copernicus. The sentences read: “Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts, whereby our cognition would be expanded, have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us try to see whether we do not make better progress with the tasks of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the demanded possibility of an a priori cognition of them that is to ascertain something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thought of Copernicus, who, having difficulties in making progress in the explanation of the celestial motions when he assumed that the entire host of stars revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he had the observer revolve and the stars remain at rest.”^[14]

This comparison does not at all sound like a “subjectivism” as it is conceived by common thought. The spectator ought to revolve around the stars, not the stars around the spectator. Kant mentions this in order to elucidate his own inquiry by means of a comparison with the Copernican turn. But does Kant not say that the object ought to conform to our cognition, and thus the stars to the spectator? No—let us read closely. Kant says: The objects ought to conform “to our cognition,” i.e., to the essence of consciousness. That is to say: Kant leaves beings in themselves alone and yet determines them in such manner that he lets appearance, and thus the spectator who represents that which appears, revolve around the thing itself. Kant does not want to say: That tree over there, as a tree, must conform to what I, here, think of it; but that the tree as an object has the essence of its objectness in that which belongs in advance to the essence of objectness. This objectness is the criterion of the object, which means that the originary unity of self-consciousness and its unifying representation is the criterion of the object-of-consciousness as such; this criterion is given in the essence of self-consciousness. Hegel says: Consciousness furnishes its own criterion in it itself because it always already expresses itself about the objectness of its object, and that means it expresses itself about itself. Unlike Kant, Hegel does not stop at human self-consciousness but explicitly makes even self-consciousness itself its own object, thus letting the more originary criteria unfold in it. Insofar as Kant makes assertions about the essence of self-consciousness that are measured against the essence of reason in general, he effectively already proceeds like Hegel. However, Hegel’s proposition: “Consciousness furnishes its own criterion in it itself,” does not only say that the criterion is given immediately with the essence of consciousness and that it lies in this essence; by saying “furnishes,” he says at the same time that on its course to its essence consciousness each time lets its own criterion appear, and thus it is in itself criterion-forming. This criterion changes at every stage insofar as the originary elevation into the absolute and thus the absolute itself appears step by step as the completeness of the essence of consciousness. Consciousness comports itself as such to what it is conscious of (the “object”), and in referring the object to itself as its own self it also already comports itself to itself.^[15] The object is thus what it is for self-consciousness. But the latter as well is what it is by appearing to itself: namely as that which constitutes the objectness of the object. Self-consciousness is in itself the criterion of its object. By comporting itself to the object, as that which is to be measured, at the same time, however, to itself, as that which does the measuring, in this twofold comportment self-consciousness carries out within itself the comparison of what is to be measured and its criterion. For it, as one and the same, are at the same time what is to be measured and what does the measuring. Consciousness is in itself essentially this comparison. And insofar as it is in itself this comparison, it is essentially examination. Consciousness carries out the examination of its essence not occasionally in critical situations but all the time insofar as it thinks as self-consciousness in the direction of its essence, and that means in the direction of the objectness of the object. Hegel thus says: Consciousness examines itself (compare paragraph 13, WW II, 69 [§85]). Just as the criterion of the examination does not need to be supplied to consciousness from somewhere or other, neither is the examination carried out on it only by us and from time to time. The course of consciousness into its own appearing essence is in itself at the same time criterion-forming and criterion-examining. Therefore, consciousness is in itself a confrontation with itself.

However, the course of consciousness has the basic trait of sublation in which consciousness itself exposes itself into the truth of its essence and brings its essential shapes to appearance in the unity of an essential history. Consciousness is confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] in a double sense: On the one hand, it is a disputing, examining laying-itself-asunder [Sichauseinanderlegen], a disputation with itself. As this laying-asunder, it is and it lays itself out and interprets itself, and it is this self-exposition in the unity of that which is gathered in itself.^[16] In Greek, the essence of the exposing, revealing gathering is the λέγειν. The essence of λόγος is δηλοῦν, ἀποφαίνεσθαι, ἑϱμηνεύειν. Aristotle’s treatise on λόγος therefore bears the title Περὶ ἑϱμηνείας (that means: On the letting-appear that lays asunder). {The inner relation to ἰδέα and ἰδεῖν and to εἰδέναι is obvious.} The exposition that lays asunder in the unity of the conversation that confronts is the διάλογος—the διαλέγεσθαι. The medial term captures the double meaning of διά as “through” and “between” and denotes the dialogue of a self-expression that runs through a subject matter and thus brings this subject matter to appearance. The self-expression about the being of beings is already for Plato a dialogue of the soul with itself. The dialogical-agonic essence of διαλέγεσθαι returns in a modified, modern, and unconditioned form in Hegel’s determination of the essence of consciousness. As the threefold sublating, thetic-antithetic-synthetic, and criterion-forming examination, the course of consciousness is “dialectical” in the originary sense. The course of consciousness that it works out on it itself [an ihm selbst] is a “dialectical movement.” In the first thirteen paragraphs the essence of the course of the consciousness that presents itself has been clarified so far and in such a unified manner that in paragraph 14, which makes up the fourth part, Hegel can move on to the decisive proposition of the “Introduction.”

2. Review of the previous discussion (I–III)

Since Hegel expresses the basic trait of the essence of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the three subsequent and final paragraphs of the “Introduction,” it is advisable to review our elucidation of the “Introduction” up to this point in summary form. At the beginning of the elucidation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit we pointed out the varied role and position of the Phenomenology in Hegel’s metaphysics. In the first system, which calls itself System of Science, the Phenomenology of Spirit constitutes the first part of the system under the title Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. “Science,” without any qualification, means here: “philosophy.” The title System of Science means “philosophy” in the shape of the developed “system,” which is its only suitable shape. Philosophy, as the unconditioned, all-conditioning knowledge, is in itself “systematic”; it is only what it is as a “system.” (This name names the essential structure of science itself, not the conventional form of a subsequent ordering of philosophical knowledge.) Due to the all-determining role that the Phenomenology plays in the first two-part system it may be called the “Phenomenology-system.” The second, three-part system, which must have gained primacy soon after the appearance of the Phenomenology of Spirit, knows the Phenomenology of Spirit only as a subordinate part of the third main part. What the disappearance of the Phenomenology of Spirit from the role of the first part of the system signifies for the system itself, and thus for the metaphysics of German Idealism, can only be gauged, in fact it can only clearly be asked, when the essence of the Phenomenology of Spirit has been sufficiently clarified. We are here attempting to take a few steps in the direction of this clarification, and we will do so on a simple path.

What is the Phenomenology of Spirit? We take the answer to this question from the “Introduction” that Hegel places between the actual work and the more extensive “Preface.” What does the “Introduction” introduce and how does it do so? It is the preparation of the approach to the leap into the thinking that thinks in this work. The preparation of the leap is carried out by way of the elucidation of the title Science of the Experience of Consciousness. This title, however, is missing in the work published in 1807 and likewise in the publication of 1832. The proper purpose of the “Introduction” is therefore not plain to see. After Fichte’s Doctrine of Science, it is understandable that Hegel names an essential part of the System of Science “science.” It is also not surprising that the system of modern metaphysics, which has found its ground and foundation in “consciousness,” thematizes “consciousness.” The characterization of metaphysics as “science of consciousness” also makes sense. In contrast, what is surprising is that the word “experience” appears in the title of a work of absolute speculative metaphysics; because the “empirical” is precisely that which in all metaphysics, not only in modern metaphysics, remains inessential and remains precisely in need of the essentiality of the essence.

The clarification of the concept of “experience” in the title Science of the Experience of Consciousness has to hit the center of the elucidation and thus has to hit the core of the explanation of the essence of the Phenomenology of Spirit. That which is unique about this work arises from the basic position that Western metaphysics had reached in the meantime. Metaphysics is the cognition of the totality of beings as such from their ground. It cognizes that which truly is a being in its truth. According to the onto-theological essence of metaphysics, that which truly is a being is the being that is most in being (ens entium), that which alone is from and through itself: the absolute. The “final end” (Kant) of metaphysical cognition is the cognition of the absolute. Only the metaphysics of German Idealism has recognized clearly and decisively that the cognition “of” the absolute can be so only if it cognizes at the same time in an absolute manner. Metaphysics’ claim of absolute knowledge must now be comprehended in its essential necessity. This claim must justly demonstrate its rightfulness because it essentially reaches beyond the boundaries of the everyday cognition of finite things. It must be examined if and how cognition can be such an absolute cognition. In accordance with modern thought’s own epistemic stance, this examination is completely inevitable; because for modern thought “truth” means self-demonstrating certainty without doubt. Absolute metaphysics can therefore the least elude the demand for an “examination” and a demonstration. But the decisive question is what sort of examination the examination of absolute cognition alone can be and how it must be carried out. For if cognition is being examined, then there already exists a prior opinion about the essence of the cognition that is to be examined, prior to the enactment of this examination. And the common view of cognition holds that cognition is either a “tool” or a “medium” and thus in any case a “means” that lies between the cognizer and the cognized, and that is neither one nor the other. If, however, the cognition of absolute cognition were a mere “means,” then it would remain “outside” the absolute and thus would not be absolute. But as “something relative,” cognition always stands in relation to . . . , it is related to the absolute. It is therefore in any case necessary to focus immediately and in advance on this relation to the absolute and to lay it down as the essence of cognition. Provided that we think the absolute as the absolute, cognition’s relation to the absolute can only be the relation of the absolute to us, the cognizers. It belongs to the thoughtful art of Hegel’s thoughtful power of presentation that he mentions this essence of absolute cognition in the “Introduction” almost only in passing in subordinate clauses toward the end of the first paragraph. Formulated in the form of guiding propositions, Hegel says the following about the absolute and the cognition of the absolute:

1. The absolute is in and for itself already with us and wants to be with us (cf. WW II, 60 [§73]).

2. Cognition is “the ray itself through which the truth touches us” (ibid. [§73]).

With respect to the necessity of the examination we must now ask: What is absolute cognition if it cannot be a “means”? And: Of what sort is the examination if it does not need to examine a “means” with respect to its suitability?

If cognition, our cognition, is essentially the ray by which the absolute touches us, then cognition, viewed from our standpoint, proves to be a radiating that we who have been touched by the ray radiate back, so that in this reverse ray we can follow the ray that touches us in its opposite direction. Cognition is thus no longer a “means” but a “path.” This basic trait of cognition, which announces itself as ὁδός (μέθοδος) since the beginning of Western metaphysics, is repeatedly mentioned in the “Introduction” to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel thus determines in what sense the cognition of the absolute has the basic trait of a “path.” This is done in the service of the task of the “Introduction” that consists in constantly starting from common views while, at the same time, making visible their unsuitability. At first one could indeed still say: The characterization of cognition as path likewise considers cognition as means. After all, we speak of “the means” and “paths” in the same phrase.

But if cognition is the ray, then the path cannot be a “stretch” that exists for itself between the absolute and us and thus is distinguished from both. There is nothing between us and the absolute except the absolute itself, which comes toward us as a ray. We can grasp this coming [of the absolute] only by traveling it ourselves as a course; that is, by coming toward it. But this course never begins by taking place away from, i.e., outside, the absolute, so that it will eventually reach the latter; instead, the course is in advance already with the absolute in the sense of the originary synthesis of the elevation where it is radiated upon by the ray. The synthesis alone determines the stages of the course, and thus the progression and the totality of its states are determined. Insofar as the movement is the unfolding of the synthesis, it has the character of a thetic-antithetic succession of steps, i.e., the character of the “dialectical” path.

Absolute cognition must be examined. In the examination cognition must prove that it is what it claims to be. If, however, the cognition of the absolute is the ray by which the absolute touches us, then the absolute—if this manner of speaking is at all still permitted—can prove that it is the absolute only by appearing out of itself, and by thereby manifesting this appearance as its essence. The absolute is spirit, or put in modern terms: it is unconditioned self-consciousness. Consciousness is unconditioned self-comprehension. The first proposition “of” consciousness reads: “Consciousness . . . is for itself its own concept” (paragraph 8, WW II, 66 [§80]). In self-comprehension, absolute knowledge brings itself to appearance in accordance with its essence. The absolute is as consciousness essentially the appearing knowledge. Our examination of absolute cognition can thus no longer be an accomplishment that tackles cognition as if the latter were a means that was somewhere present-at-hand. Since cognition itself is the irradiated course to that which radiates, the essence of the examination, which becomes possible only here, fulfils itself in that it is this course itself in a determinate manner. This course must let the appearing knowledge show itself in its appearance, i.e., in its own truth. On this course the absolute comes to us as the appearing consciousness that unfolds itself in the truth of its essence. It proves that it is the absolute by exhibiting itself and thus shows that in this appearance it is commensurate with its essence that shows itself in this appearance. This implies: The examination does not need to supply the criterion that it requires.

The second proposition “of” consciousness says: “Consciousness furnishes its own criterion {i.e., the truth of its essence} in it itself” (paragraph 12, WW II, 68 [§80]). And so long as consciousness appears essentially and this appearance is an examination in the sense of such an “exhibiting,” the third proposition “of” consciousness holds true: Consciousness examines itself (paragraph 13, WW II, 69 [§85]). What remains for us is only “the pure looking on” during the appearance of consciousness, which is a movement that consciousness exercises on it itself. It remains to be seen in what manner we, as the ones who examine, are ourselves the enactment of the performance of this movement. We must comprehend what Hegel understands by the “experience of consciousness.”

3. The experience [Er-fahren] of consciousness^[17]

Even though Kant designates as “experience” that which according to Aristotle is essentially distinct from ἐμπειϱία, namely the acquaintance [Kenntnis] with the διότι (i.e., of causality for Kant), both agree that “experience” and ἐμπειϱία refer to beings that are immediately accessible in their everydayness, and that both are thus modes of cognizance [Kenntnisnahme] and cognition.

What Hegel calls “experience” in the Phenomenology of Spirit refers neither to beings that are perceptible in their everydayness, nor to beings at all; nor is “experience,” strictly speaking, a mode of cognition.

If, for Hegel, “the experience” is not any of this, then what is it? For Hegel experience is “the experience of consciousness.” But what does that mean? We will now attempt to name the essential moments of experience (seemingly in the form of an external list) with constant reference to the elucidation of the “Introduction” that has been given so far.

Experience is “the dialectical movement.” Experience is a journeying [Fahren] (pervagari) that traverses a “path.” But the path does not in itself lie before the journeying. The path is a course in the double sense of the activity of going (going to the countryside) and of a passageway (subterranean passageway).^[18] More precisely, the course as a passage is only experienced [er-fahren] in the course as a going, i.e., it is explored [er-gangen], and that is to say: it is opened up so that what is manifest can show itself. That which travels this going und the opening of this passageway is consciousness as re-presentation. The placing-before-oneself goes ahead and opens up and presents, and only thereby it becomes the ether of the self-showing and appearance.

Experience, conceived as this course (pervagari), is at the same time experience in the originary sense of πεῖϱα. This means the involvement with something out of the intention of seeing what comes out of it.^[19] This involvement with what has not yet appeared as what is not yet decided has its essential location in the domain of competition where it means: the involvement with an opponent, the “taking on” of the same. Experience as probare is an examination that aims at that which it has to expect on its course as course.

Experience as this course of the examination examines consciousness with regard to that which it is itself, with regard to its essence against which it constantly measures itself as self-consciousness. This weighing experience is not directed toward beings but being, namely being-conscious.^[20] Experience is not ontic but ontological, or to use Kant’s language: it is transcendental experience.

However, as probare and pervagari this transcendental measuring and weighing (librare) is a course that examines and goes over the essential succession of the shapes of consciousness, and that means it goes through this essential succession. Experience is a “going through”; for one in the sense of enduring and suffering, namely of the violence of its own absolute essence that essentially occurs in consciousness. The going through is a being-wrested into the essential height of the concealed and unconditioned “elevation”; at the same time, however, this going through is a “passing” in the sense of absolving, of the passage through the totality of stages and shapes—predetermined from the elevation—of the being of consciousness.

As this ambiguous [doppelsinnig] going through, the experience of consciousness is the passage through the three senses of sublation. The negation of the thesis by the antithesis belongs to sublation in such a way that what is negated in this negation is preserved, and the negation of the antithesis is, in turn, negated by the synthesis. The going through has the basic trait of this originary double negation that demands a constant giving up of what has supposedly been achieved. The course of experience is a “path of despair,” and therefore experience is essentially a “painful experience.” Hegel always conceives of “pain” metaphysically, i.e., as a type of “consciousness,” the consciousness of being-other, of the tearing, of negativity. The experience of consciousness is as a transcendental-dialectical experience always the “bad” experience in which the object of consciousness each time turns out to be different from what it appeared to be at first. The experience is the transcendental pain of consciousness. Insofar as the experience of consciousness is “pain” it is at the same time a going through in the sense of an elaboration [Herausarbeiten] of the essential shapes of appearing self-consciousness. To say that experience is the “labor of the concept” means that it is the self-elaboration of consciousness into the unconditioned totality of the truth of its self-comprehension. Experience is the transcendental labor that wears itself out [abarbeiten] in the service of the unconditioned violence of the absolute.^[21] Experience is the transcendental labor of consciousness.

As a course, an examination, a going through (a carrying out and a consummation), pain, labor, the experience of consciousness is always also and everywhere a cognizance and a taking notice. But this taking notice is never a mere apprehension but the letting-appear that as course and journeying each time experiences [er-fährt], i.e., attains, an essential shape of consciousness.

Experience as attaining is, however, only the unfolding of consciousness into the truth of its being. The experience of consciousness is not only and not primarily a kind of cognition, but it is a being [ein Sein], namely the being of the appearing absolute whose own essence lies in unconditioned appearing to itself. For Hegel, the absolute is “the concept” in the sense of the unconditioned self-comprehension of reason. This unconditioned concept is the essence of spirit. Spirit is in itself and for itself “the absolute idea.” “Idea” means: the showing of itself, but understood in modern terms: as representation of oneself to the one who represents—unconditioned representation [Repräsentation], manifestation of its own self in the unconditioned truth of its own essence, which in modern terms is certainty and knowledge. Spirit is absolute knowledge. The experience of consciousness is the self-presentation of knowledge in its appearance. “The experience of consciousness” is the essence of “phenomenology.” Phenomenology, in turn, is “the phenomenology of spirit.”

Only if we succeed at thinking the moments of the essence of experience mentioned here from the ground of their unity in a unified manner are we in the position to think the wording of the titles “the Experience of Consciousness” and “the Phenomenology of Spirit,” truthfully, i.e., in a speculative and metaphysical way.

Linguistically both titles contain a genitive. We ask: Is the genitive a genitivus objectivus or a genitivus subjectivus? Does “the experience of consciousness” only mean that consciousness is the object [Objekt] of and what stands against [Gegenstand] experience? This is evidently not the case, because experience itself is in its essence as a course and a coming to itself the being of consciousness. “Experience” fully comprehended expresses for the first time what the word “being” in the word being-conscious [Bewußt-sein] means. Consciousness is the “subject” of experience; it is that which goes through the experience with itself. Therefore the genitive must be understood as a genitivus subjectivus. However, the essence of the subject as self-consciousness consists precisely in not only that consciousness is consciousness of something and has its object, but that it is itself object for itself. Therefore, the experience that consciousness goes through is at the same time the experience that it undergoes “with itself” as an object. The genitive is thus at the same time also a genitivus objectivus. And yet, the genitive is not simply both together, but it is a genitive that names the unity of the subject and the object and the ground of their unity, i.e., the elevation and synthesis in the metaphysical essence of consciousness. The genitive in the expressions “the experience of consciousness” and “the phenomenology of spirit” is the speculative-metaphysical genitive. All genitives of the language of the Phenomenology of Spirit belong to this type. In fact, not only the genitives but also the other cases and all inflections of the words have a speculative meaning. Only if we bear this in mind, and that means if we practice this, we can follow the web of this language, and that means we can understand the text.

It is even necessary to follow this instruction in order to think the complete title of the work correctly: Science of the Experience of Consciousness, Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The genitive “science of . . .” is speculative, i.e., the science not only deals with the experience of consciousness but consciousness is its subject, which supports and determines science. Science is cognition. But according to the proposition of the first paragraph of the introduction cognition is “the ray through which the truth touches us.” Our cognition, i.e., the speculative thinking of the absolute, is only when and insofar as it is the ray, and that means insofar as it radiates itself while being radiated upon by the ray.

Across the essential transformations of modern metaphysics the same thing appears that Plato pronounces at the beginning of metaphysics: that the eye must be ἡλιοειδές. The sun is the image for the “idea of the good,” i.e., for the unconditioned.

Since consciousness has the essence of its being in the “experience” that we have characterized, it examines itself and unfolds from itself the criteria of the examination. Therefore, what remains for us in the realization of this self-presentation of consciousness is a pure “looking on,” and “a contribution by us is superfluous” (paragraph 13, WW II, 69 [§85]).