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hegel_phenomenology_of_spirit_intro_part_2.mp3
80. However, to knowledge, the goal is as necessarily fixed as is the series of the progression. The goal lies at that point where knowledge no longer has the need to go beyond itself, that is, where knowledge works itself out, and where the concept corresponds to the object and the object to the concept. Progress towards this goal is thus also unrelenting, and satisfaction is not to be found at any prior station on the way. What is limited to a natural life is not on its own capable of going beyond its immediate existence. However, it is driven out of itself by something other than itself, and this being torn out of itself is its death. However, consciousness is for itself its concept, and as a result it immediately goes beyond the restriction, and, since this restriction belongs to itself, it goes beyond itself too. In its own eyes, in positing the singular individual, it at the same time posits the other-worldly beyond, even if it is still only posited as it is in spatial intuition, that is, as existing only alongside the restriction. Consciousness suffers this violence at its own hands and brings to ruin its own restricted satisfaction. Feeling this violence, anxiety about the truth might well retreat and strive to hold onto what it is in danger of losing. But it can find no peace; even if it wants to remain in an unthinking lethargy, thought spoils thoughtlessness, and its unrest disturbs that lethargy. Even if it fortifies itself with a sentimentality which assures it that it will find that everything is good in its own way, this assurance likewise suffers violence by the rationality that straightaway finds out that precisely because it is just "that way," it is thus not good. That is, the fear of truth may lead consciousness to conceal itself both from itself and from others and to take refuge behind the facade that holds that its fiery enthusiasm for the truth itself makes it more difficult or even impossible to find some truth other than the individual truth of vanity itself, which is at any rate always takes fright about any of the thoughts one might get from oneself or from others. This vanity - which understands how to render each and every truth powerless so that it can return back into itself and revel in its own intellect, which always knows how to bring all thoughts to dissolution and which, instead of finding any content, finds merely the barren "I" - is a satisfaction which must be left to itself, for it flees from the universal and seeks only being-for-itself. 81. In addition to these preliminary and general remarks about the manner and the necessity of the progression, it might still be useful to remember something about the method by which the exposition is carried out. This exposition, represented as the conduct of science in the face of phenomenal knowledge and as an investigation and examination of the reality of cognition, looks as if it is unable to take place without having some kind of presupposition which would serve as a grounding standard. This is so because the examination consists in applying an accepted standard in order to decide whether what was examined is correct or incorrect, and it does this on the basis of the resulting parity or lack of parity between what is examined and the standard itself. The standard, along with science itself if it were to be the standard, is thereby accepted as the essence, that is, as the in-itself. But, here, at the point where science first comes on the scene, neither science itself nor anything else has been justified as the essence or as the in-itself, and without something like that taking place, it seems that no examination can take place at all. 82. One can have a more determinate grasp of this contradiction and the removal of the contradiction if, first of all, one is reminded of the abstract determinations of knowledge and truth as they come before consciousness. Consciousness distinguishes something from itself and at the same time it relates itself to it. Or, as this should be expressed: There is something for consciousness; and the determinate aspect of this relating, that is, of the being of something for a consciousness, is knowledge. However, we distinguish being-in-itself from this being for an other; what is related to knowledge is likewise distinguished from it and is also posited as existing external to this relation; the aspect of this in-itself is called truth. Just what might genuinely be there in these determinations is of no further concern for us here, since our object is phenomenal knowledge, and hence its determinations are also at first taken up as they immediately present themselves. Moreover, the way they have been grasped is indeed the way that they present themselves. 83. If we now investigate the truth of knowledge, it seems that we are investigating what knowledge is in itself. Yet in this investigation, knowledge is our object; it exists for us, and the in-itself of knowledge, which would have resulted from the investigation, would be even more so its being for us. What we would assert to be its essence would not be its truth but rather merely our knowledge of it. The essence, that is, the standard would lie within us, and that which was supposed to be compared with the standard, that about which a decision was supposed to be made on the basis of this comparison, would not necessarily have to recognize the validity of that standard itself. 84. However, the nature of the object which we are investigating exempts itself from this division, or this semblance of division and presupposition. Consciousness in itself provides its own standard, and the investigation will thereby be a comparison of itself with itself, for the distinction which has just been made belongs to consciousness. Within consciousness, there is one item for an other, that is, consciousness has the determinateness of the moments of knowledge in itself. At the same time, in its own eyes, this other is not merely for it; it is also external to this relation, that is, it exists in itself, exists as the "moment" of truth. Therefore, in what consciousness declares within itself to be the in-itself, that is, to be the true, we have the standard which consciousness itself erects to measure its knowledge. If we designate knowledge as the concept, but designate the essence, that is, the truth, as what exists, that is, the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the concept corresponds to the object. But if we take the essence, that is, the in-itself of the object, and designate it as the concept, and then in contrast understand by object the concept as object, which is to say, the concept as it is for an other, then the examination consists in our seeing whether the object corresponds to its concept. One clearly sees that both are the same; however, it is essential throughout the whole investigation to hold fast to this, that both these moments, concept and object, being-for-an-other and being-in-itself, themselves fall within the knowledge which we are investigating, and that we thus do not have to bring standards with us and apply our ideas and thoughts during the investigation. By leaving these aside, we succeed in regarding what is at stake as it is in and for itself. 85. However, on these terms, it would not only be superfluous for us to add anything since concept and object, the standard and what is to be examined, are present in consciousness itself. We will also be spared the trouble of comparing the two and of conducting a genuine examination of them. Since consciousness is examining itself, all that remains for us is merely to watch what is going on. This is so because, on the one hand, consciousness is consciousness of the object, and, on the other hand, it is consciousness of itself; and it is both consciousness of what in its own eyes is the truth and consciousness of its knowledge of that truth. Since both are for the same consciousness, consciousness itself is their comparison; it is for that consciousness whether or not its knowledge of the object corresponds with this object. To be sure, for consciousness the object merely seems to exist in the way that consciousness knows it. Consciousness, as it were, seems to be incapable of getting behind the object, that is, of getting at the object not as it is for consciousness but as it is in itself, and consciousness thus seems also to be incapable of really testing its knowledge by the object. Yet precisely because consciousness itself has knowledge of an object, the distinction is already present, namely, that in its eyes something is the in-itself, but another moment is knowledge, that is, the being of the object for consciousness. It is on this very distinction, which is itself now on hand, that the examination rests. If in this comparison, neither corresponds with the other, then consciousness looks as if it is required to alter its knowledge in order to make it adequate to the object. However, as knowledge changes, so too, in the eyes of consciousness, does the object itself change, since the knowledge at hand was essentially a knowledge of the object. With a change in knowledge, the object also becomes something different, since it essentially belonged to this knowledge. To consciousness, what thereby comes to be is that what was formerly in its eyes the in-itself does not exist in itself, that is, that it that it existed in itself merely for consciousness. Since it therefore finds in the object itself that its knowledge of the object is not in correspondence with it, the object itself does not persist. That is, the standard for the examination is altered when that for which it is supposed to be the standard itself fails the examination, and the examination is not merely an examination of knowledge but also that of the standard of knowledge. 86. This dialectical movement is what consciousness practices on itself as well as on its knowledge and its object, and, insofar as, to consciousness, the new, true object arises out of this movement, this dialectical movement is what is genuinely called experience. In this relation, there is a moment in the process which was just mentioned and which should be underscored even more dramatically. Indeed, doing so will cast a new light on the scientific aspects of the following exposition. Consciousness knows something, and this object is the essence, that is, the in-itself. However, the object is also the in-itself for consciousness. As a result, the ambiguity of this truth emerges. We see that consciousness now has two objects: One is the first in-itself, and the second is the being-for-it of this in-itself. The latter appears at first to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself, that is, to be a representation not of an object but merely of its knowledge of that first object. Yet, as was previously shown, in its eyes, the first object is thereby altered; it ceases to be the in-itself and in its eyes becomes the in-itself merely for consciousness. However, what we thereby have is the truth, the being-for-it of this in-itself, which means that this is the essence, that is, its object. This new object contains the nullity of the first, and it is what experience has learned about it. 87. In this account of the course of experience, there is a moment in which the exposition does not seem to correspond with what is ordinarily understood by "experience." The transition, namely, from the first object and the knowledge of it to the other object in which, as one says, one is supposed to have "had an experience," was specified in such a way such 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. In contrast, it usually seems that we learn about the untruth of our first concept by means of the experience of another object which we may accidentally and externally come across, so that what would fall into our sphere would be merely the pure apprehension of what exists in and for itself. However, from that viewpoint the new object shows itself to have come about by means of a reversal of consciousness itself. This way of regarding what is at stake does not exist for the consciousness that we are considering; it is our contribution, by way of which the series of experiences traversed by consciousness is elevated into a scientific progression. However, this is in fact also the same sort of circumstance which was previously discussed concerning the relation of this exposition to skepticism. In each and every case of a non-truthful knowledge, all the results which come about may not simply converge into some kind of empty nothingness; rather, each result must necessarily be apprehended as the nullity of that of which it is the result, a result which contains whatever truth the preceding knowledge has in itself. Here it presents itself as follows. Since what at first appeared as the object for consciousness descends into a knowledge of the object, and the in-itself becomes a being-for- consciousness of the in-itself, this latter is the new object. As a result, a new shape of consciousness also emerges for which the essence is something different from what was the essence for the preceding shape. It is this circumstance which guides the whole succession of the shapes of consciousness in their necessity. However, it is just this necessity itself, that is, the emergence of the new object, which presents itself to consciousness without consciousness knowing how that happens to it; it takes place for us, as it were, behind the back of consciousness. A moment of the in-itself, that is, of being for us, thereby enters into its movement which does not exhibit itself for the consciousness which is comprehended in experience itself. However, the content of what emerges in our eyes exists for consciousness, and we comprehend only what is formal in it, that is, its pure emergence. For consciousness, what has emerged exists merely as the object, whereas for us, what has emerged exists at the same time as a movement and a coming-to-be. 88. Through this necessity, this path to science is itself already science, and in terms of its content it is thereby the science of the experience of consciousness. 89. In terms of its concept, the experience through which consciousness learns about itself can comprehend within itself nothing less than the entire system of consciousness, that is, the entire realm of spirit's truth. For that reason, the moments of truth in their distinctive determinateness show themselves not to be abstract, pure moments; rather, they show themselves as they are for consciousness, that is, in the way that consciousness itself comes on the scene in its relation to them and through which they are moments of the whole, that is, are themselves shapes of consciousness. Since consciousness pushes itself ever forward towards its true existence, it will reach a point where it sets aside its semblance of being burdened with what is alien to it, that is, the semblance of being burdened with what exists both merely for it and as an other. That is, it will push itself to the point where appearance comes into parity with essence, and where its own exposition at that very point thereby coincides with the genuine science of spirit. Finally, when consciousness itself grasps its essence, consciousness will indicate the nature of absolute knowledge itself.
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