Hegel

IV. THE ESSENCE OF THE EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS PRESENTATION (PARAGRAPHS 14–15 OF THE “INTRODUCTION”)

1. Hegel’s “ontological” concept of experience

Paragraph 14 begins with the following words: “Inasmuch as the new true object arises from it, this dialectical movement that consciousness exercises on it itself, both on its knowing and its object, is what is genuinely called experience” (WW II, 70 [§86]). If the preceding deliberation has determined the essence of the dialectical course as the letting-appear of the essential shapes of consciousness, and if the absolute thus appears in the “dialectical movement,” and if this essence of the “dialectical movement” truly constitutes the essence of “experience,” then Hegel’s concept of “experience” cannot be thrown together with the common concept of “empirical evidence” [Empirie]. (“Movement” as μεταβολὴ ἔϰ τινος εἴς τι. Ἐνέϱγεια.^[22] Cf. for “sense certainty” paragraph 8 [§80].) And yet it will become apparent that Hegel’s concept of experience, and it alone and for the first time, thinks back into the concealed essential moments of experience that announce themselves at times also in the concept of experience of everyday “life,” though they do so contingently and without unity. In order to bring out the peculiarities of Hegel’s concept of experience with the necessary sharpness, we must keep in mind the traditional concept of “experience” in at least two of its main forms. Therefore we shall start by briefly recalling Aristotle’s concept of ἐμπειϱία and Kant’s concept of “experience.”

Aristotle determines what ἐμπειϱία is in the first chapter of the first book of the Metaphysics, which begins with the sentence: Πάντες ἄνθϱωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀϱέγονται φύσει.^[23] All human beings have from the bottom of their essence a pre-dilection to bring to their sight (everything toward which they comport themselves), in order to have it present in its outward look (εἰδέναι—ἰδεῖν).^[24] {What is not expressed or thought through in this sentence, even though it is its foundation, is that the human being essentially keeps beings present to himself as presence.} The manners according to which the human being has what is present in sight are manifold. One of them is the ἐμπειϱία. If, for example, we are familiar^[25] with the fact that every time someone falls ill with such and such a disease a particular medicine helps, then the having-before-oneself in advance of the matter, namely that “when this . . . , then that . . . ,” is ἐμπειϱία. Its essence consists in τὸ ἔχειν ὑπόληψιν—having at one’s disposal the fore-having of “if this . . . , then that. . . .” It is characteristic of the ἐμπειϱία that it remains merely the familiarity with the existence of this “if this . . . , then in each case that. . . .” The person who is familiar with such matters has in view that it is this way, but he does not see into what makes for why it is the way it is. oἱ μὲν γὰϱ ἔμπειϱοι τὸ ὅτι μὲν ἴσασι, διότι δ’οὐϰ ἴσασιν.¹ Those who are having an experience have the that in sight, but they do not have (the) why in sight (they lack insight). The having-in-sight of the why of a matter is characteristic of the τέχνη; it is the essence of ἐπιστήμη—of science.

(The essential event, namely that at the beginning of Western metaphysics with Plato and Aristotle the essence of “science” (ἐπιστήμη) develops out of the essence of τέχνη, corresponds in a concealed and necessary way to another event, namely that at the end of Western metaphysics (i.e., since the nineteenth century) the essence of modern science comes to light and establishes itself as an essential form of modern machine technology.)

That which for Aristotle is ἐμπειϱία, the familiar fore-having of the “If . . . , therefore . . . ,” (If . . . , then . . . )-matter is for Kant not yet an “experience” but a “perception.” In the Prolegomena Kant mentions the familiarity with the fact that every time the sun shines the stone gets warm as an example of this kind of acquaintance with things. We are dealing with an “experience” in the Kantian sense only when this familiarity has essentially been transformed into a cognition: Because the sun shines, the stone gets warm. In addition to the perception, the proposition “The sun warms the stone” gives the new kind of information of a sensibly perceptible and objective matter that is valid for everyone, namely that of a cause-effect relationship. Kant says: “Experience is an empirical cognition, i.e., a cognition that determines an object through perceptions. It is therefore a synthesis of perceptions, which is not itself contained in perception but contains the synthetic unity of the manifold of perception in one consciousness, whose {unity} constitutes what is essential in a cognition of objects of the senses, i.e., of experience (not merely of the intuition or sensation of the senses)” (Critique of Pure Reason, B218f. [295f.]^[26]). That which Kant conceives of as “experience” is actualized in the mathematical natural science in the Newtonian sense.

Hegel’s concept of “experience” is essentially, and that means infinitely (and thus not simply in some respect), distinct from both Aristotle’s ἐμπειϱία and Kant’s “experience.” Although Kant, in contrast to Aristotle, conceives “experience” as that which according to Aristotle differs essentially from ἐμπειϱία, namely the acquaintance [Kenntnis] with the διότι (in Kantian terms the representation of the cause-effect-synthesis), Aristotle and Kant agree that “experience” and ἐμπειϱία refer to beings that are immediately accessible in their everydayness. In contrast, what Hegel calls “experience” refers neither to beings that are perceptible in their everydayness nor to beings at all, nor is “experience” strictly speaking a “cognition” [Erkenntnis] in the sense of a merely representing human comportment. What then is “experience” for Hegel? If experience is directed toward “anything” at all, what is its “object”?

According to the first sentence of paragraph 14 and especially according to the words that are letter-spaced,^[27] “experience” is the letting-arise of the “new true object.” This letting-arise is carried out by consciousness. The letting-arise thus proves to be a movement that consciousness exercises on itself. In this movement the object that arises therein is explicitly given back to consciousness, to whom it has belonged in a concealed manner all along, as its essential property. The final sentence of the paragraph even says: “This new object contains the nullity of the first; it is what experience has learned about the first object” (WW II, 70 [§86]).

First we must ask: What does the talk of “the new true object” mean? From the introductory sentence we can infer that experience is exercised on consciousness as a “dialectical movement.” Consciousness is in itself the having-consciousness [Bewußthaben] of an object to which consciousness relates immediately. Insofar as one can speak of a “new true object” that arises from “consciousness” for the very first time, consciousness “has” properly speaking “two objects” in this experience. Hegel says: “We see that consciousness now has two objects: one is the first in itself, the second is the being-for-it of this in itself” (ibid. [§86]). Let us look at the example of consciousness in the shape of a sensible intuition, for instance the sensible intuition of this book here. The object of this sensible intuition (in the broad sense) is this book here, and it is intended in this sensible intuition as this sense object. This book here, which according to the opinion of sensible intuition is that which is in itself, is, however, “also” intuited, and therefore as something intuited at the same time it “is” “for it,” namely for the intuitive consciousness. In the “in itself,” as that which is indeed legitimately intended as such, lies nevertheless the “being-for-it-(consciousness)” of the in itself. This being-for-it is nothing else than the being-object [Gegenstandsein] of the object “book.” The being-object and everything that belongs to it is called the objectness of this object. Objectness itself is not nothing but is only that which has until now continuously remained unknown to sense intuition. To the extent that the objectness of the object comes forth in addition to the usual and well-known object, it is something “new.” If the objectness itself is specifically represented and intended, then it is “the new object.” The being-object of the object (book) is determined by the being-for-consciousness of the book and thus appears to be nothing other than the knowledge of the book in the manner of the intuition of the book. But when considered up close, the objectness of the object is not something that is merely affixed to the object but that aside from this is of no concern to it. The first object (book) now rather becomes itself another; for as the object, it has now only come into that which it is, i.e., into its essence, namely into objectness. But the essence of something is what is “true” “in” an object. The objectness as the essence of the object is therefore not only “the new” object but at the same time and first and foremost “the true object.” And according to the final sentence of the paragraph, this new true object contains “the nullity of the first.” That is to say: The first object is “in itself” not that which is true, precisely because it is only “in itself,” so that its objectness, i.e., its truth, does not yet come out. Viewed in this light, the first object (for instance, the book) is that which is un-true, that which is not-properly-true, that which viewed from its essence is that which is “null and naught.” The new object—the objectness of the object—“is” its truth. But thus it “contains” that which the untrue object as the untrue object truly is; it contains its nullity. The new object “is” the experience concerning the first object.

What is that which one experiences in such an experience? It is something new and the true, namely the objectness of the object. The object of “the experience of consciousness” is the objectness.

And thus the first basic trait of Hegel’s concept of experience, which supports all further moments, emerges in contrast to the Aristotelian and the Kantian conceptions. The ἐμπειϱία is directed toward beings that are everywhere accessible in their everydayness. The Kantian “experience” is the mathematical natural science; as such it is directed toward the object “nature” that lies before us. However, it was Kant who for the first time in modern thought clearly carried out the inquiry into the being of beings and who developed this inquiry specifically into the shape of a question [Fragestellung] and outlined this question itself. For modern thought, a being is that which is represented to and placed alongside consciousness in consciousness for consciousness. Only now do beings become that which stands against [Gegen-stand] or objects [Objekt]. “Object” [Gegenstand] is the modern term for that which in actuality stands over and against [Entgegenstehende] the re-presentation that knows itself, the “object” [Objekt] for the subject. In modern thought, the actual, i.e., beings, is essentially object [Gegenstand]. In Greek thought, the concept of that which stands against [Gegenstand] and of the object [Objekt] is nowhere to be found because it is impossible here: man does not experience himself as “subject.” Admittedly, Plato’s theory of forms prepares the interpretation of the being of beings as objectness in a decisive manner. Since for Kant metaphysics does not inquire into beings but into being, which is very much in line with Greek philosophy, yet at the same time, following Descartes, the truth of being rests on the certainty of the representedness, the question of the being of beings, if understood in Kantian terms, is the question of the objectness of objects. This grasping of the objectness of the object is a completely distinct cognition, one that in relation to the immediate cognition of beings—nature—is a novel cognition. Kant therefore says: “I call all cognition transcendental that deals not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this mode of cognition is to be possible a priori. A system of such concepts would be called transcendental philosophy” (Critique of Pure Reason, “Introduction,” B25 [149]). The cognition that deals with the objects themselves is for Kant experience. However, the cognition that thinks in the direction of the objectness of objects inquires into the conditions of the possibility of the object of experience. This grasping of the objectness of the object of experience in the Kantian sense is transcendental or ontological cognition. And exactly this letting-arise of the new true object in contrast to the old untrue one, this transcendental grasping of the objectness of objects, is what Hegel calls “experience.” Thus, for Hegel “the experience” is not ontic cognition, as it is for Kant, but ontological cognition. This transcendental experience lets the objectness of the objects arise from “consciousness,” it lets it emerge for the first time, namely in such a way that the objectness itself is now the object that has emerged for the first time and thus is the new object. This transcendental object is essentially, and not just incidentally, “the new” object. Its objectness consists in the “newness,” in the having-emerged of the emerging through the experience. “Emerging” [Ent-stehen] does not mean: being fabricated as a thing, but: to come to stand within and for re-presentation, i.e., to appear. In Platonic terms: to become “viewable.” But if according to Kant’s fundamental step, which received its determination from Descartes, the conditions of the possibility of the object of experience lie “in consciousness,” which means that they are nothing else than “self-consciousness,” the essentially new object, i.e., the transcendental object, i.e., the object of Hegelian “experience,” is nothing else than self-consciousness as such. But insofar as the latter constitutes the essence of consciousness, transcendental experience is essentially “experience of consciousness,” and this in the threefold sense: Consciousness is that which is experienced in this experience, namely the objectness of the object. Consciousness is at the same time that which experiences, that which carries this experience out. And consciousness is therefore that to which what is experienced and the experiencing belong in such a way that consciousness itself “is” this experience.

Kant says: Transcendental cognition deals with the conditions of the possibility of experience (of the natural sciences), i.e., with objectness. Thus it is in line with Kant’s thinking when we say that transcendental cognition as cognition also has its object, yet this object is not nature itself but consciousness. But why should the same question not be asked in relation to this transcendental object as well, i.e., the question about its objectness? Why should finite human consciousness itself, in which Kant finds the condition of the possibility of the object, and thus of objectness, not be interrogated about that through which it—self-consciousness—is a priori possible? Why should the transcendental question halt at the first new object—the objectness of the objects of the ontic cognition of mathematical natural science—and cease its inquiry here? Is this not only the very beginning of an inquiry from which, according to its essence, a new object must arise again and again, i.e., the conditions of the conditions of the possibility of the object of nature and so forth, all the way to the first all-conditioning unconditioned that is no longer itself conditioned?

These questions inquire “beyond” the question that Kant poses, albeit only in the way that was first opened by Kant himself. Indeed, we must still say more if we stay attentive to the traces of what is abyssal in Kant’s thinking that can be encountered again and again, and if we do not want to degrade the Critique of Pure Reason to the status of a textbook. Kant understood consciousness as self-consciousness, but the self as “I”; and Kant sees in the essence of the I, i.e., in that it can say “I” to itself, the ground of this essence: reason. In a “Retraction” of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes: “How it should be possible that I, who think, can be an object (of intuition) to myself, and thus distinguish myself from myself, is utterly impossible to explain, although it is an indubitable fact; it suggests, however, a power so far superior to all sensory intuition, that as ground of the possibility of an understanding . . . it looks out upon an infinity of self-made representations and concepts” (What real progress has metaphysics made in Germany since the time of Leibniz and Wolff, 362).2

Experience, as the transcendental letting-arise of the new true object, is necessarily related to an infinity, i.e., to consciousness as the in-finite, i.e., that which is not endless but what is originarily one, i.e., to consciousness as that which is unconditioned and all-conditioning. However, the relation of transcendental experience to what is unconditioned in consciousness is such that this “experience of consciousness” lets consciousness appear in its unconditioned truth and lets consciousness show itself in its complete conditionness that determines all objects in their possibility in a unified manner. Hegel’s concept of “experience,” in essential contrast to Kant’s concept, is therefore not only in general ontological rather than ontic, i.e., transcendental in Kantian terms, but the experience that is in itself transcendental is directed toward what is unconditioned in all conditioning and thus toward the entire relation of conditioning. The “experience” is the unconditionally transcendental letting-arise of consciousness, the letting-appear of its shapes in the unconditionedness of their conditioning of all conditioned objects as such. Hegel and the metaphysics of German Idealism in general take this “looking out upon that infinity of self-made representations and concepts” seriously. To take this “looking out” seriously means not merely to add it here as a complement to Kant’s transcendental inquiry and to view it alone as its end, but to begin with this looking out into the unconditioned and to let all “looking” be determined from here.

From this it becomes clear that Hegel uses the word “experience” as the name for unconditioned transcendental “cognition.” This type of experience will therefore differ essentially from what is usually called experience. At the beginning of paragraph 15 Hegel explicitly refers to one of these differences in order to introduce, by way of this remark, the step toward that determination of the essence of “experience” that seeks to grasp its innermost core. The experience corrects (leads to the truth). Hegel says: “This exposition of the course of experience contains a moment in virtue of which it does not seem to agree with what is usually understood by experience. The transition, namely, from the first object and the knowledge of it to the other object with which one is said to have undergone the experience, was specified in such a way that the knowledge of the first object, that is, the being-for-consciousness of the first in-itself, is itself now supposed to become the second object. Whereas usually it seems to be the case that we undergo the experience of the untruth of our first concept with another object that we come across by chance and externally, so that our part in all this would be merely the pure apprehension of what is in and for itself” (Hoffmeister p.73 [§87]).3

What about the “usual” experience that we normally undergo? Ordinary experience is directed toward beings. We undergo our experiences of something with something. We thereby go from that of which we undergo the experience and with which we are in a way acquainted and which we take to be right and thus hold fast and initially “have,” over to the other with which we undergo the experience. Experience is such a transition. We have for instance our representation of what a tree is, and we have taken this representation from the intuition of birches and beeches. On our course and during our journey through beings, an object steps in the way that is different from the birch and the beech. Our representation “tree” (e.g., with respect to the type of leaves that a tree can have) that we had until now is wrecked by this “other” object, namely the fir. The object that happens to come to us proves our old representation of a tree, i.e., the first object, to be inadequate, and that entails that it proves it to be an untrue object. We undergo the experience of the untruth of the first object with another object, namely in such a way that now we only have to look at the other object that is already present-at-hand—the fir—in order to correct our acquaintance with the tree by means of the experience. Insofar as the new experience is not undergone with the first object, the first object is not needed in the new experience. The experience remains directed toward objects, yet within the domain of this direction experience goes not toward the first but toward the other. Experience is thus the taking up of a finding that is discovered in another object that we come across, i.e., an object that is also already present-at-hand. In this experience it appears to us that our part is merely the pure apprehension and looking on; because we came across the other object in the same line of sight; it happened to come to us.

But what about the transition in the transcendental experience? It lets the objectness of the object come to sight and into view. What the first object is, i.e., what we experience about it as an object, its objectness, does not show itself here in “another” object but precisely in the first one itself, and only in the first. We do not let the first object go but we experience [er-fahren] it, we journey, as it were, right through it.^[28] That which we experience, i.e., the experience that we undergo, shows itself in the first object in such a way that the object itself becomes another, i.e., it comes out in its objectness. This other object in which we now have a view of that which is to be experienced has emerged only as this other object that has come into being in this experience. In ordinary experience we go from the first object to another object that is already present-at-hand in the straight direction of ordinary consciousness away from something simply in order to apprehend this other object. In the transcendental experience, by contrast, we stay precisely with the first object of consciousness in such a way that what we are conscious of shows itself as that which a consciousness of it is conscious of [das Bewußte eines Bewußtseins]. The first object, not another object but the first itself, now shows itself, but in the direction of its standing-over-and-against to representation. In this direction in which the object stands over and against consciousness, the objectness of the object, i.e., the new other object, comes into “view.” Therefore Hegel says regarding that which comes into view in the transcendental experience: “From that viewpoint, however, the new object shows itself to have come into being through a reversal of consciousness itself” (p.73f. [§87]). That is to say: 1. The objectness of the new object is the emergence. 2. The transcendental experience in which this emerging takes place is a self-reversal of consciousness. The transcendental experience in which the other new object is said to show itself is consequently not a pure apprehension and is no mere “looking on.” The reversal of consciousness that prevails in the transcendental experience and that sustains it is a distinct way of looking at; and it is of such a “distinct” kind that Hegel must say the following about this kind of contemplation: “This way of contemplating the matter is our contribution, by means of which the series of the experiences of consciousness is raised into a scientific progression—but this contemplation does not exist for the consciousness that we are considering” (p.74 [§87]).

The “experience,” i.e., the letting-itself-show of the object in its objectness, is therefore not a mere looking on and taking up but a “contribution.” But now we recall that in the preceding paragraphs, which move toward the essential concept of experience and its demarcation at the beginning of paragraph 14, Hegel devotes all his efforts to showing that the presentation of appearing knowledge in its appearance must remain a “pure looking on.” Hegel explicitly notes at the end of paragraph 12: “But the essential point to bear in mind throughout the whole investigation is that both of these moments, concept and object, being-for-another and being-for-itself, themselves fall within that knowledge which we are investigating, and that consequently we do not need to supply criteria and to apply our mere ideas and thoughts during the investigation; by leaving these aside, we succeed in contemplating the matter as it is in and for itself” (p.71f. [§84]). And directly after this, at the beginning of paragraph 13, he continues even more explicitly: “But not only is a contribution by us superfluous because concept and object, the criterion and what is to be examined, are present in consciousness itself, but we are also spared the trouble of comparing the two and of conducting a genuine examination, so that, while consciousness is examining itself, all that is left for us to do is simply to look on” (p.72 [§85]).

If, however, the transcendental reversal belongs to the essence of the experience of consciousness, and if this reversal is “our contribution,” then the experience cannot be a “pure looking on.” But have we already made sufficiently clear what in the domain in question something like the “pure looking on” is? Not at all. If we do not know yet what its essence is, it cannot simply be decided that “the pure looking on” excludes every contribution from itself. It could indeed be that the “pure looking on” demands the “contribution” in a pre-eminent sense and that without it it cannot be what it is. The essence of this “contribution” must be clarified, and we must see if and to what extent it belongs to the “pure looking on.”

Our contribution is the “reversal of consciousness.” By asking transcendentally, i.e., by making it our aim that the objectness of the object show itself, we turn the viewing direction of consciousness, which is normally directed toward objects, around and into the opposite direction, namely toward the consciousness of objects. The object that shows itself in this transcendental perception, namely the former object in the how of its objectness, i.e., objectness itself, is the object that thereby emerges for the first time and that is thus the new object. At the same time, however, in the decisive determination of the essence of experience Hegel calls this new, transcendental object the “true object.” The truth of the object lies in what conditions its objectness in its essence and what constitutes this objectness. Yet we saw that Hegel’s transcendental experience does not stop at self-consciousness as the condition of the objectness of the natural object, but that—following Fichte and Schelling’s procedure—it also interrogates Kant’s finite transcendental self-consciousness as the first new object about its objectness; it thus inquires into a connection of conditions and their conditioning that each time points beyond itself, all the way to the unconditioned. The newness of the new object and the truth of the true object consist in the completeness of its coming forth, i.e., of its emergence. This completeness of the appearance rests originarily in unconditioned, absolute self-consciousness. Absolute consciousness “is” the truth of the true object. Absolute consciousness, i.e., the consciousness that is essentially absolving, “is” the emergence, i.e., the newness of the new object, i.e., its constant appearance. The appearance is in fact the being-new. (A “new book” is “new” for us as one that appears to us and that is comprehended in its appearance.)

The manifold of these conditions is a unity that unfolds and is structured from the unconditioned. The manifold of these conditions that show themselves is irradiated and thus in advance and everywhere unified by that which shows itself, i.e., the idea that the absolute spirit itself is. Kant says at the end of the Critique of Pure Reason in the section on the architectonic of pure reason (A832, B860 [691]^[29]): “By a system, however, I understand the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea.” According to this, the unity of the manifold of the transcendental conditions of the objectness of the object is a systematic unity. And therefore, in the section mentioned, which elucidates the essence of transcendental cognition, Kant immediately speaks of a “system of concepts.” For Hegel’s transcendental experience, the truth of the new object is absolute consciousness itself. Thus, insofar as the unity is a systematic unity it must be the unity of the absolute system. In the “Preface” to the Phenomenology of Spirit we read: “The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth” (p.12 [§5]). The system, as the unconditionally certain connection of conditions in the unity of the unconditioned, posits within itself the manifold conditions into the order of a “series.” By letting emerge the conditions of objectness, each of which is one condition more originary than the previous, experience—as the letting-arise of the new true object—opens up in advance the systematic realm of the series of experiences. Transcendental experience is as an unconditionally transcendental experience in itself systematic. And it is only from the full essence of the unconditioned-systematic transcendental experience that we can see what the nature of the “reversal of consciousness,” which belongs to the essence of experience as a “contribution” by us, is.

The transcendental reversal of consciousness, to the extent that it is unconditioned and systematic, fixates in advance the view to what is unconditioned in all conditioning and its successive order. As that which conditions everything, the unconditioned stands in the fore-view for the letting-emerge of the new true object. But how does that which conditions, and it alone, come to light as such, i.e., in its conditionness? Only in such a way that what conditions shows itself in what is conditioned. If, however, not just any conditioning thing but the unconditioned itself is to appear in the manner in which it conditions everything, one must start from that which is the most conditioned. This, however, is farthest away from the unconditioned. Thus, the objectness of that object must show itself first that is farthest away from the truth of the unconditioned self-consciousness, i.e., from the non-sensible absolute spirit, and that stands at the extreme opposite end from it. Since the objectness of the most conditioned object is the condition that is the farthest away from the unconditioned, it can be only the emptiest and poorest objectness. However, to the extent that even the emptiest and poorest objectness of an object is still a condition, it is also from the essence of the absolute and belongs to it. To the extent that the transcendental turning is unconditioned and systematic, it is necessary that absolute consciousness distances itself from itself and its fullness and its rights in order to let its unconditioned conditioning appear in all that is conditioned. Absolute consciousness turns away from itself and toward its most external and most empty shape.

Absolute consciousness must externalize itself into its most external shape. Since consciousness, in turning away from itself in its fullness, turns yet again only to itself, albeit in its emptiness, the turning away is only a turning around in which absolute consciousness does not give itself up and does not leave itself. It is only in this turning around into the externalization that the expanse of a distance from itself opens up for consciousness. This open expanse of consciousness’s own distance from itself within itself is as an expanse the free pathway for the journeying of experience. This open passageway is opened up only in the course of experience, i.e., it is explored [ergangen] and experienced [er-fahren] on the journey. And it is only in this passageway that is opening up that absolute consciousness has the opportunity to return to itself. In this return to itself as the unconditioned truth, the latter, i.e., that which conditions unconditionally, comes to appear in its conditionness. The turn to externalization is necessary for the sake of the absolute, namely so that it has the opportunity to return to itself. Because of that the Phenomenology of Spirit begins with the presentation of the poorest and most untrue shape of consciousness, with “sense certainty,” and ends with the shape of absolute self-knowing of spirit, i.e., absolute metaphysics. The Phenomenology of Spirit by no means begins with “sense certainty” out of pedagogical consideration for the human being, in order to initiate the course with the shape of consciousness that is the most likely to be understood by the human being. The first shape of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit—sense certainty—is as far as our ability to understand is concerned in fact the most difficult one to understand, because in it the absolute must already be thought, albeit in its poverty and untruth (its not yet consummated truth). The course of the Phenomenology of Spirit is as it is not for our sake but for the sake of the absolute, and only for its sake. And how could it be otherwise if the cognition of the absolute is the ray by which the absolute touches us so that we think according to its will and not according to ours, provided that we think!

When we look closely at what Hegel calls the “reversal of consciousness,” we see that it contains a double reversal: on the one hand, the turning of the object into its objectness that belongs to the essence of the transcendental in general; on the other, the turnabout into the externalization that is necessarily demanded by the unconditionedness and the systematics of absolute transcendental consciousness. This turnabout, as the turning away that is turned to the unconditioned, first opens up the course of the return. But according to Hegel’s proposition, quoted earlier, this intrinsically twofold “reversal of consciousness,” the transcendental turning and the absolute turnabout into the externalization, is “our contribution.” As such it seems to disturb the “pure looking on,” if not to destroy it. However, the opposite is the case. For it is only when the view upon the absolute and down the way of the return to it has been opened and paved by the double reversal that it is possible for the “new true object” to show itself on this open way. It is only this contribution [Zu-tat] of the reversal that gives the looking on the opportunity of a sight [Sicht] and a view [Ansicht]. But in other instances as well the “pure looking on” is never a mere passive receiving. Every looking-on is in itself a pursuit that goes along with; it is the casting of a glance that requires in advance a passageway that has been opened up. Moreover, the omission and non-application of our “mere ideas” is not nothing. The omission does not happen on its own. The ability to omit what is unsuitable is essentially determined by the constant prior involvement with the new true object and its unconditioned truth as the appearing criterion itself.

The purity of the pure looking on consists in no way of a divestment of all doing, but rather of the highest enactment of the deed that is an essential necessity for this looking and its possibility. That which this deed adds here is the looking ahead upon the unconditioned. The looking ahead as a contribution to the looking on thus proves to be the pure taking-upon-oneself of that which is already contained in the looking on as its essential condition and which radiates toward us from the new true object as the ray, and which we are asked to expressly bring along as our own. Only the contribution [Zu-tat] that prevails in the reversal makes possible the pure looking on that is in accordance with its essence. This essence of the looking on, so conceived, is the essence of that “looking” (speculari) that is called “speculation” in the absolute metaphysics of consciousness. Speculative thinking lets consciousness show itself systematically in its transcendental unconditioned truth and thus is a “pointing out,” taken in the strict sense that this word has in Hegel’s language (“pointing out” = “not an immediate knowing”; cf. sense certainty, paragraph 19 [§107]). The pointing out is a prior laying open (the reversal) in such a way that in the open of this laying open the shapes of consciousness can “open up” in their objectness and show themselves for the first time. The pointing out is at the same time a showing-itself and a letting-arise (letting-emerge). Thus, the “pure looking on” as a transcendental pointing out in a way has the character of “activity” (laying open), at the same time, however, that of “passivity” (letting-itself-show and taking up). The originary unity of the representing faculty, which in its representations is both “active” [activ] and “passive” [passiv], reveals itself in what Kant and German Idealism call transcendental imagination. The “reversal of consciousness” is the essence of the “experience of consciousness.” The experience is the transcendental-systematic pointing out that lets the “new true object” arise. This letting-arise pursues the object that is just emerging on the path of the return to itself. The objectness of this object is the emergence that shows itself in this pursuit. The emergence “is” and essentially occurs only in the emerging that is for the sake of pointing out, i.e., in and as experience. Experience is essentially a “course,” i.e., a path on which and through which and in which the objectness of consciousness itself is explored [ergangen] and experienced [erfahren]. The experience that one “undergoes” on this course is not lost; for by being essentially correcting, i.e., by leading to the true object, the experience, as this essential correction, is the objectness of the true object. As a course, this path is the movement of the coming into being of the objectness of the object. But the latter is consciousness itself, and its objectness is its emerging into the truth of its essence. The path is consciousness itself as the emergence of its truth. The objectness of the object is the “formal aspect” [das Formelle] in the strict sense of that which determines. (Cf. for instance Kant’s distinction of nature in a “formal” and a “material” respect. Form means the “existence [Dasein] of things” as the being of beings. The material aspect concerns the scope of beings themselves.) The “formal aspect” is not the outer nondescript form but the essentially occurring essence [wesende Wesen] of consciousness to the extent that it is in itself the self-appearance in whose appearance it manifests its objectness. Experience as the transcendental-systematic course into the truth of consciousness is as pointing out at the same time the presentation of appearing knowledge. As a transcendental systematics this presentation is in itself “scientific,” i.e., it is commensurate with the essence of the absolute knowledge that knows itself. Because of this, after the decisive remark about the “reversal of consciousness,” Hegel immediately says the following about this reversal: “This way of contemplating the matter is our contribution, by means of which the series of the experiences of consciousness is raised into a scientific progression—but this contemplation does not exist for the consciousness that we are considering” (p.74 [§87]). According to the essence of experience, which is determined by the reversal of consciousness, the difference between that which is “for us” and that which is “for it,” i.e., for consciousness, necessarily and constantly obtains in experience.

This distinction between the “for us” and the “for it” constantly recurs on the course of the entire work. The “for us” is the object for the transcendental-systematic experiencers who look toward the objectness of the object, i.e., upon the emergence of its emerging. “For us” does not mean” “us” who just live along in our everydayness and who momentarily come to appearing knowledge, but us who look on in the manner of the reversal. “For it,” however, means consciousness that freely unfolds its shapes historically as self-consciousness and that preserves these shapes in the memory of historiology, and thus knows itself in the fullness of its content. Both that which is “for it,” i.e., for consciousness, and that which is “for us” do not coincide with what we usually think of as the domain of objects. Rather, each time this distinction concerns absolute spirit: in the “for it” it concerns absolute spirit in its history, and in the “for us” it concerns absolute spirit in the historicity of the history of its appearance. The historicity is the developed systematic, i.e., the organization of the labor of the concept. (Cf. the final sentence of the entire work.)

That which in the experience of consciousness is “for us,” the essential truth of its objectness, shows itself only by virtue of the reversal. In this reversal we take the object not according to that which draws us to it in terms of its content, so that in going toward it we take it from the front. In the reversal of consciousness, i.e., in looking at the objectness of the object we do not go toward the object but we go around it and take it, as it were, from behind. But the objectness that the reversing experience aims at is consciousness itself. Hegel therefore says of the emerging of the new object that it “proceeds, as it were, behind its {namely consciousness’s} back” (ibid. [§87]). For consciousness, i.e., “for it,” everything that emerges in it is only as that which has emerged itself. The object that has emerged is “for us” as the “new true object,” i.e., in its emerging, i.e., the object “at the same time as movement and a process of becoming” (ibid. [§87]). But this emerging in its emergence is the essence and the truth of consciousness. As this essence, this emerging is thus at the same time a necessary stepping forth, a necessity of consciousness itself, if its truth is indeed the unconditioned certainty of itself in the completeness of what is to be known in its essence.

Now the sentences that conclude paragraph 15 and that, at same time, constitute a segue to a short transitional section that, in turn, forms a bridge to paragraph 16—the fifth part—become more intelligible:

“However, it is just this necessity itself, or the emerging of the new object, which presents itself to consciousness without consciousness knowing what is happening to it, which proceeds for us, as it were, behind the back of consciousness. Thus in the movement of consciousness there occurs a moment of being-in-itself or being-for-us that does not present itself to the consciousness that is comprehended in the experience itself; the content, however, of what we see emerging exists for it, and we comprehend only the formal aspect of it, or its pure emergence; for it, what has emerged exists only as an object, whereas for us it exists at the same time as a movement and a process of becoming” (ibid. [§87]).

From this it becomes clear that the transcendental systematic presentation is not offered to the experience of consciousness as an addition, but that the experience itself as the letting-arise of the “new true object” is a pointing out and thus a presentation [Dar-stellung]. This presentation pursues the return of the conditions into the conditioning of the unconditioned and is thus a course that receives its necessity from the essence of the objectness of the new object. This yields the following sentence, in which Hegel summarizes the discussion of the “Introduction” up to this point in order to express the interpretation of the title of the work: “Because of this necessity, this path to science is itself already science, and in terms of its content is thus the science of the experience of consciousness” (ibid. [§88]).

In other words and looking back to the beginning of the “Introduction” this means: The “experience of consciousness” is the course that belongs to its essence and that leads to it as self-consciousness. Since the cognition of the absolute is essentially a course, and that means a path, the examination that examines absolute cognition can take this “cognition” never as a “means,” nor as a “tool” that is at our disposal nor as a present-at-hand “medium.” This presentation of appearing knowledge as the unconditioned transcendental-systematic science is that toward which the experience of consciousness unfolds: its suitable ether. The appearance of this science does not succumb to the semblance of arbitrarily entering the scene, as if shot from a pistol, in an indeterminate domain. The appearance of science is the self-presentation of experience, which—out of its essence, namely out of the reversal—opens up the domain of the appearance of consciousness for the latter, but at the same time necessarily determines the beginning of the course, the progress of the course, and before all the goal of the course of appearance. (Cf. “Preface” about “experience,” p.32 [§36].) In the return of the absolute consciousness from the externalization to itself, which is a return that is itself already transcendentally oriented, the appearance of the unconditioned is carried out. Consciousness appears, i.e., it steps out of itself and into “view” by going back into itself. It manifests itself by entering into its concept (λόγος) which it is for itself. Consciousness is φαινόμενον, that which appears, as λογία in the mode of such a science. Consciousness is consciousness as “phenomenology.” Since, however, consciousness is appearing knowledge, yet absolute self-knowing is spirit, the phenomenology is essentially “the phenomenology of spirit.” Since consciousness turns itself forth in the return, the course of its appearance is essentially a “reversal.” If the reversal is our “contribution” to the “looking on,” then this contribution [Zu-tat] “adds” nothing foreign to consciousness. The contribution only brings the looking on to the enactment of its innermost essence. The contribution is the first and highest act of the looking on, which thus in advance sees to it, i.e., looks and watches out to ensure, that the absolute is respected as the absolute and thus only the absolute and not something else comes to appearance.^[30] The “experience of consciousness” is the “phenomenology of spirit.” The “experience,” however, is only as the experience that presents itself, i.e., as science. The Science of the Experience of Consciousness is the Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

Only now are we in the position to become aware of the concealed content of these two titles. At first and if taken thoughtlessly, the title Science of the Experience of Consciousness denotes for us a science “of the” experience, the experience that is undergone “concerning” consciousness. We think the two genitives as genitivus objectivus and grasp the title by fixing its semantic content in the first word, “science.” But if we now remember the elucidation of the “Introduction” that was given, we know that consciousness itself demands and carries out the “experience” of its own accord, namely in such a way that the experience that is carried out has to present itself necessarily as science. We must therefore understand the title from its last word and in the opposite direction. This “reversal” signifies at the same time that the genitives must not be thought as genitivus objectivus but as genitivus subjectivus. Consciousness is the subject, that which supports the experience; the latter is the subject of science. However, since the word “consciousness” is the “subject” not only in a grammatical logical sense but also according to its metaphysical essential content, the genitivus subjectivus here is a genitivus subjectivus in an “emphatic sense”; for consciousness is essentially “subject” in the meaning of “self-consciousness”; yet the essence of the latter consists in that by knowing its other, i.e., the object, it knows itself at the same time. With respect to the subjectivity that is named essentially in the title by the word “consciousness,” the genitivus subjectivus can accordingly not be a genitivus subjectivus in the usual sense; since the subject remains at all times related to an object, it is at the same time also a genitivus objectivus. Therefore, the title must be thought in such a way that the genitives are primarily, i.e., determinatively, understood as genitivus subjectivus, which implies, however, that they are at the same time understood as genitivus objectivus. And yet, we would still not hit the core of the truth of the title if we thought that the genitives would have to be thought as both “subjective” and “objective.” The decisive thing is to recognize that neither the “thetic” interpretation of the title (in the sense of gen. obj.), which is the most obvious one, nor the “antithetic” one (in the sense of gen. subj.) is sufficient. The genitive that must be thought here is the “synthetic” one, which does not push the two aforementioned genitives together after the fact, but thinks the ground of their unity originarily. This ground of their unity is the essence of the “experience” itself in which appearing knowledge, consciousness, appears to itself in its appearance as “science.” The “genitive” that is to be thought here is the originarily synthetic one, i.e., the “dialectical-speculative” genitive that the language of this work employs everywhere.

Strictly speaking, language has no “grammatical” forms for these relations of the essence of consciousness, and that means for the actuality of the actual of modern metaphysics. Language, which according to Hegel always immediately “expresses” the universal and thus speaks it away from itself, is therefore unable to say what is to be thought in the opposite direction of all of spirit’s externalization, i.e., what is to be thought with respect to its return to itself. Language must therefore disappear in relation to “consciousness itself” if the latter is to be thought truthfully, just like it fades away as expression in the utterance of the sound. Hegel says at one point in his Jena Lectures, crucial portions of which prepare the elaboration of the Phenomenology of Spirit: “Language must fade away in consciousness, just like it fades away in the air.”4

We therefore understand the first, determinative utterance of the Phenomenology of Spirit, i.e., its first chosen title—Science of the Experience of Consciousness—, which is interpreted in the “Introduction,” only when the wording and the understanding that is at first suggested by it has truly disappeared into knowledge. This disappearance, however, must be enacted in a letting-disappear. This happens in the “experience” that no interpretation of the “genitives,” whether taken by themselves or together, is sufficient in order to grasp what is essential here. But because the matter of the language of thoughtful thinking stands like this, this language is not left to arbitrariness but is bound into a stringency, and all mere measuring to the objects of description and recounting falls infinitely short of this stringency.

But why did Hegel let the title Science of the Experience of Consciousness disappear? Was the word “experience” for him, after all, too charged in the direction of the non-speculative, i.e., “empirical” usage? And yet, the words “experience” and “experiencing” constantly recur in the work on the course of the Phenomenology of Spirit—namely in the sense that they receive in the “Introduction”—and it is furthermore printed in italics in the preface (Hoffmeister p.32 [§36]) that was written after the introduction. (The immediate as what is not experienced.) Therefore, this word and what it means cannot be contrary to spirit itself and its “phenomenology.” And indeed it is not contrary to it. For what is “spirit”? Hegel concludes his second and definitive system, the “Encyclopaedia-system,” not with his own words but with a Greek text whose words are taken from Book Λ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (ch.7). In these sentences the beginning of Western metaphysics, whose consummation Hegel considered his own work to be, speaks. In these sentences Hegel lets the spirit of Western metaphysics itself say, from its beginning, what spirit is. Spirit is νοῦς. And in the section quoted by Hegel Aristotle says of the “actuality” of the νοῦς: ἡ γὰϱ νοῦ ἐνέϱγεια ζωή (Λ 7, 1072 b 27), “The pure being-at-work out of itself, i.e., the presencing of the apprehension of the presence of everything that is present, is life.” Translated into modern terms: “The actuality of spirit is life.”

2. Guiding propositions to Hegel’s concept of experience

We now know: Consciousness is the appearing spirit and thus “life” in its appearance to itself. But if “experience” is determined from the essence of consciousness, its essence arises from the essence “of life.” “Experience” is a part of life. To live “life” means nothing else than to be experienced in the experience of life. If we ponder these connections, then it can no longer appear strange that in Hegel’s concept of “experience” the concealed and scattered essential elements of “experience” come to light, precisely because the concept of “experience” is taken in the transcendental sense and thus denotes the non-empirical speculative experience of spirit. We will try to name the essential moments that come to appearance in Hegel’s concept of experience in the form of short guiding propositions:

1. Experience is pervagari—a journeying traversal of courses.^[31]

2. This traversing experience does not stick to rutted paths; in the process of journeying through courses it opens the courses to passageways for the first time.

3. The traversing-opening experience is experience in the originary sense of πεῖϱα. This means the involvement with something with the intention of seeing what comes out of it, i.e., what appears. The involvement with . . . , as it were, the “taking on” of the opponent for a competition, brings each time a decision one way or another. Experience is the confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with something; it is “dialectical” insofar as the setting-asunder [Auseinandersetzung] essentially sets what is set asunder [Aus-einander-Gesetzte] into the light, i.e., lets it appear.

4. As this involvement with something that lets appear, experience sets that which results from it (i.e., the new) in relation to what came before. Experience is a weighing, probing, and examining. The ἐμπειϱία is the journeying and going and standing in the πεῖϱα, the looking on that gets involved with and examines.

5. But since the involvement goes through a decision every time, in each instance the experience is in some respect a correction; and thus the decision that is contained in the experience proves to be the notification about what is right and what is not right, about what is true and what is untrue. Since the experience is correction, it lets a new true object arise each time.

6. Experiences do not take place on their own. It is always we who undergo experiences in the manner of a proceeding [Vorgehen] and undertaking [Vornehmen]. Experience itself steps expressly into its realm, and as such an event [Veranstaltung] it is not a coincidental taking cognizance but an experiri, an experimentum. Where the proceeding of experience assumes the character of a self-empowered attack on the appearances, experience begets the “experiment” in the modern sense of a technical intervention. By getting involved with something, experience each time also “takes a chance” on what it undertakes.^[32] Experience is not only a weighing and examining but at the same time a venturing.

7. In venturing and getting involved experience intervenes into that which appears, namely in such a way that this intervention produces precisely that which appears in its appearance. The intervening and seizing production that places itself in the service of the appearance is the essence of labor. The experience is essentially labor. Insofar as the experience is the experience of consciousness and the latter is for itself its own concept, the concept itself has to be “labor.” Hegel therefore speaks multiple times of the “labor of the concept.” By this he does not mean the corporeal-psychic effort and strenuousness of thinking but the essential manner of the proceeding in comprehension according to which comprehension takes up the deed [Tat] of the contribution [Zutat] and stands in the service of the “reversal.”

8. The labor-character of experience does not exclude but indeed implies the fact that all experience and undergoing of experiences contains a “going through” in the sense of a suffering and enduring. Experience endures the violence of that wherein it is raised [erhoben] and with which it is in each case involved. The wealth of experience is determined by the strength to suffer.

9. At one with this moment of “going through,” the experience is “painful.” The pain of the experience is not a consequence of it as a kind of impact on our corporeal-psychic state. The pain is rather the innermost essence of the experience in which all previously mentioned moments have their unity and determinateness. The pain is essentially consciousness and knowledge. The pain is the essence of knowing insofar as the latter is constantly a passage through the corrections that each experience contains. Every experience is, essentially understood, a dis-illusionment. It lets what was hitherto held fast come out as that which is untenable. The so-called good experience that we undergo with something is a dis-illusionment as well. In such cases we are “pleasantly” dis-illusioned. But if that is the case, is it still true that every experience is “painful”? Indeed, every experience is a pain, pain in the sense of the consciousness of the transposedness into the necessity of going through the dis-illusionment as the only path of the truth of consciousness to itself. Since consciousness is self-consciousness, it is never the indifferent differentiation of itself from itself, but in this differentiated being-itself it is only equal to itself as the being-other to the other. This manifold united differentiatedness of consciousness in itself, the being-itself in the manner of the absolute being-other, is the essential ground of the tearing that appears at every stage of consciousness so long as it is not absolute in an absolute sense. By turning around toward externalization and then back from it, experience goes through the tearing of consciousness; since experience is the knowledge of this tearing, it is this pain itself. (On tearing, pain, and the labor of negativity, cf. “Preface” p.29 [§32], especially p.20 [§19] about the essence of the absolute—“Pain” cf. also the end of Faith and Knowledge, p.190.^[33]—experience as boldness—mindful courage.)

Every experience as experience is painful, because as experience it is a “bad experience,” i.e., one in which the badness (not the moral wickedness) of the violence of the negative manifests itself. Even the seemingly “good” and “pleasant” experience is, essentially understood, a “bad” one.

That is the abyssal essence of experience. If Hegel indeed understood the appearance of consciousness as a course of the essential disillusionment, he must have encountered this essence of experience that is the essence of life itself.

In comparison to this fulfilled concept of experience, the empirical concept of experience of the empirical and of the empiricists is only the insipid and dried-up sediment of a formerly lively drink.

But Hegel still let the title Science of the Experience of Consciousness disappear. Was the full essence of “experience” not sufficiently present to him in its unity and for that reason does not figure as the guiding word of the title? Why was the title dropped?

We do not know.

It is enough that it has remained preserved for us as the strange impetus for a reflection that thereby sees itself pushed into a confrontation with absolute metaphysics and thus becomes prepared for the pain of the diremption from it.

1. Aristotelis Metaphysica, ed. Wilhelm von Christ (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1886), 981a28ff. [English: The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). “For men of experience know that the thing is so, but do not know why.”]

2. Kant, Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolffs Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat? (Preisschrift) Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, ed. Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 20, 270. Cf. ibid. in: Kant, Zur Logik und Metaphysik. Dritte Abteilung: Die Schriften von 1790–93, second edition, ed. Karl Vorländer (Leipzig, 1921), 95. [English: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, trans. Henry Allison et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 362; translation modified.]

3. Note from the German editor: From this point forward Heidegger cites the Phenomenology of Spirit after the edition by Johannes Hoffmeister: G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Leipzig: Meiner, 1937).—The page numbers cited refer to this edition.

4. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenenser Realphilosophie I, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Leipzig, 1932), Hegels Philosophie des Geistes von 1803–04. Cf. 235.

Cf. also Jenenser Philosophie des Geistes, in Jenenser Realphilosophie II (1931), 183. [English: System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, trans. T. M. Knox and H. S. Harris (Albany: SUNY Press, 1979), 226; translation modified.]