The kind of Ideahsm which does not trace the path to that result, but starts off with the bare assertion of this truth, is consequently a mere assurance, which does not understand its own nature, and cannot make itself intelHgible to any one else. It announces an intuitive certainty, to which there stand in contrast other equally intuitive certainties that have been lost along that very pathway. Hence the claims and assurances made by these other certainties are equally VOL. I.—Q 226 Phenomenology of Mind entitled to a place alongside the assurance of that certainty. Reason takes its stand on the self-consciousness of each individual consciousness: I am I, my object and my essential reahty is ego; and no one will deny reason this truth. But since it rests on this appeal, it sanctions the truth of the other certainty, viz. there is for me an other; an other qua ego is to me object and true reality: or since I am object and reality to myself, I am only so by my withdrawing myself from the other altogether and appearing alongside it as an actuality.
Only when reason comes forward as a reflexion from this opposite certainty, does its assertion regarding itself appear in the form not merely of a certainty and an assurance, but of a truth — and a truth not alongside others, but the only truth. Its appearing directly and immediately is the abstract form of its actual presence, the essential nature and inherent reality of which is an absolute notion, i.e. the process of its own development.
Consciousness will determine its relation to otherness or its object in various ways, according as it is at one or other stage in the development of the worldspirit into self-consciousness. How the world-spirit immediately finds and determines itself and its object at any given time, or how it appears to itself, depends on what it has come to be, on what it has come from, or on what it already imphcitly and inherently is.
Reason is the certainty of being all reahty. This its inherent nature, this reality, is still, however, through and through a imiversal, the pure abstraction of reahty. It is the first positive character which selfconsciousness fer se is aware of being, and ego is, therefore, merely the pure, inner essence of existence, in other words, is the. Category bare and simple. The category, which usually had the significance of being the inmost essence of existence — leaving existence quite undetermined, or without determination by contrast to consciousness— is here the essential natm'e or simple imity of existence merely in the sense of a reaUty that thinks. To put it otherwise, the category means this, that existence and self-consciousness are the same being, the same not as a matter of comparison, but really and truly in and for themselves. It is onlj'' a onesided, unsound ideahsm which lets this imity again appear on one side as consciousness, with a reahty fcr se over against it on the other.
But now this category'-, or simple imity of self-consciousness and being, has difference within it; for its verv natiu'e consists just in this — in being immediately one and identical with itself in otherness or in absolute ditTerence. Difference therefore is, but completely transparent, a difference that is at the same time none. It appears in the form of a plurality of categories. Since ideahsm declares the miity of self-consciousness to be all reahty, and at once takes it for the essentially real without fii'st having comprehended its absolutely negative natiu:e, — only an absolutely negative reahty contains within its very being negation, determinateness, or difference, — still more incomprehensible than the former is this. auz. that in the category there are differences, kinds or species of categories. This assurance in general, as also the assurance as to any determinate nimiber of kinds of categories, is a new form of assiu-ance, which, however, itself implies that we are no longer to accept it as an assurance. For since difference starts in the pure ego, in pure understanding itself.
228 Phenomenology of Mind it is thereby affirmed that here immediacy, making assurances, finding something given, must be abandoned, and reflective comprehension begin. But to pick up the various categories again in any sort of way as a kind of happy find, hit upon, e.g. in the difierent judgments, and then to be content so to accept them, must really be regarded as an outrage on scientific thinking.* Where is understanding to be able to demonstrate necessity, if it is incapable of doing so in its own case, itself being pure necessity?
Now because, in this way, the pure essential being of things as well as their aspect of difference, belongs to reason, we can, strictly speaking, no longer talk of things at all, i.e. of something which would only be present to consciousness by negatively opposing it. For the many categories are species of the pure category, which means that the pure category is still their genus or essential nature, and not opposed to them. But they contain and imply the ambiguity which otherness too, in its aspect of plurality, involves as against the pure category. They, in point of fact, contradict the pure category by this plurality, and the pure category must sublate them in itself, a process by which it constitutes itself the negative unity of the different elements. Qua negative unity, however, it puts away from itself and excludes both the diverse elements as such, and that previous immediate imity as such; it is then individual singleness — a new category, which is an exclusive form of consciousness, i.e. stands in relation to something else, an other. This individuality is its transition from its notion to an external reality, the pure "schema," which is at once a consciousness, and * This refers to Kant's discovery of his "table of categories."
Reason's Certainty and Reason's Truth 229 in consequence of its being a single individual and an excluding unit, points to the presence of an external other. But the " other " of this category is merely the "other" categories iirst mentioned, viz. pure essential reahty and pure difference; and in this category, i.e. just in affirming the other, or in this other itseK, consciousness is hkewise the other too. Each of these various moments points and refers to an other; at the same time, however, they do not involve any absolute otherness. The pure category refers to the species, which pass over into the negative category, the category of excluision, individuahty; this latter, however, points back to them, it is itself pure consciousness, which is aware in each of them of being always this clear unity with itself — a unity, however, that in the same way is referred to an other, which in being disappears, and in disappearing is once again brought into being.
We see pure consciousness here affirmed in a twofold form. In one case it is the restless activity which passes hither and thither through all its moments, seeing in them that otherness which is sublated in the process of grasping it; in the other case it is the imperturbable miity certain of its own truth. That restless activity constitutes the " other" for this unity, while this unity is the "other" for that activity; and within these reciprocally determining opposites consciousness and object alternate. Consciousness thus at one time finds itself seeking about hither and thither, and its object is what absolutely exists per se, and is the essentially real; at another time, consciousness is aware of being the category bare and simple, and the object is the movement of the different elements. Con- 230 Phenomenology of Mind sciousness, however, qua essential reality is the whole of this process of passing out of itself qua simple category into individuahty and the object, and of viewing this process in the object, cancelling it as distinct, appropriating it as its own, and declaring itself as this certainty of being all reality, of being both itself and its object.
Its first declaration is merely this abstract, empty phrase that everything is its own. For the certainty of being all reahty is to begin with the pure category. Reason knowing itself in this sense in its object is what finds expression in abstract empty ideahsm ] * it merely takes reason as reason appears at first, and by its pointing out that in all being there is this bare consciousness of a " mine," and by expressing things as sensations or ideas, it fancies it has shown that abstract " mine " of consciousness to be complete reality. It is bound, therefore, to be at the same time absolute Empiricism, because, for the filling of this empty " mine," i.e. for the element of distinction and all the further development and embodiment of it, its reason needs an impact {Anstoss) operating from without, in which lies the fons ei origo of the multiplicity of sensations or ideas. This kind of idealism is thus jiist such a selfcontradictory equivocation as scepticism; only, while the latter expresses itself negatively, the former does so in a positive way. But it fails just as completely as scepticism to hnk up its contradictory statements about pure consciousness being all reality, while all the time the ahen impact, or sense-impressions and ideas, are equally reality. It oscillates hither and thither from one to the other and tumbles into the false, or the * Kiclite, Berkeley.
Reason s Certainty and Reason's Truth 231 sensuous, infinite.* Since reason is all reality in the sense of the abstract "mine," and the "other" is an externahty indifferent to it, there is here affirmed just that sort of knowledge of an " other " on the part of reason, which we met with before in the form of " intending " or " meaning " {Meinen),-\ " perceiving," and " understanding," which grasps what is " meant " and what is " perceived." Such a kind of knowledge is at the same time asserted by the very principle of this ideahsm itself not to be true knowledge; for only the unity of apperception is the real truth of knowledge. Pure reason as conceived by this ideahsm, if it is to get at this " other " which is essential to it, i.e. really is per se, but which it does not possess in itself — is thus thrown back on that knowledge which is not a knowledge of the real truth. It thus condemns itself knowingly and voluntarily to being an rmtrue kind of knowledge, and cannot get away from " meaning " and " perceiving," which for it have no truth at all. It falls into a direct contradiction; it asserts that the real has a twofold nature, consists of elements in sheer opposition, is the unity of apperception and a " thing " as well; whether a thing is called an ahen impact, or an empirical entity, or sensibihty, or the " thing in itself," it remains in principle precisely the same, viz. something external and foreign to that imity.
This ideahsm falls into such a contradiction because it asserts the abstract notion of reason to be the truth. Consequently reahty comes directly before it just as much in a form which is not strictly the reality of reason at all, whereas reason aU the while is intended to be all reahty. Reason remains, in this case, a restless 232 Phenomenology of Mind search, which in its very process of seeking declares that it is utterly impossible to have the satisfaction of finding. But actual concrete reason is not so inconsequent as this. Being at first merely the certainty that it is all reahty, it is in this notion well aware that qua certainty, qua ego, it is not yet in truth all reality; and thus reason is driven on to raise its formal certainty into actual truth, and give concrete filling to the empty ' mine.'
A OBSERVATION AS A PROCESS OP REASON This consciousness, whicti takes being to mean what is its own, now seems, indeed, to adopt once again the attitude of " meaning " * and " perceiving,"; but not in the sense that it is certain of what is a mere " other," but in the sense that it is certain of this "other" being itself. Formerly, consciousness merely happened to perceive various elements in the " thing," and had a certain experience in so doing. But here it settles itself the observations to be made and the experience to be had. " Meaning " and " perceiving," which formerly were superseded so far as we were concerned {fiir tins), are now superseded by consciousness in its own behalf {fiir es). Eeason sets out to know the truth, to find in the form of a notion what, for " meaning " and " perceiving," is a "thing"; i.e. it seeks in thinghood to have merely the consciousness of its own self. Reason has, therefore, here a universal interest in the world, because it is the certainty of having the present within it, or is certain that the actual present is rational. It seeks its " other," while knowing that it there possesses nothing else but itself: it seeks merely its own infinitude.
While, at first, merely surmising that it is in the world of reahty, or knowing this only in a general way to be its own domain, it goes forward on this understanding * V, p. 95 ff.
234 Phenomenology of Mind and appropriates everywhere and at all points its own assured possession. It plants the symbol of its sovereignty on the heights and in the depths of reahty. But this superficial " mine " is not its final and supreme interest. The joy of universal appropriation finds still in its property an otherness and externality which does not involve abstract reason. Eeason has the presentiment of being a deeper reahty than pure ego is, and must demand that difference, the manifold diversity of being, should itself become its very own, that the ego should look at and see itself as concrete reahty, and find itself present in objectively embodied form and in the shape of a " thing." But if reason probes and gropes through the inmost recesses of the hfe of things, and opens their every vein so that even reason itself may gush out of them, then it will not achieve this desired result; it must, for its purpose, have first brought about in itself its own completion in order to be able after that to experience what its completion means.
Consciousness " observes," i.e. reason wants to find and to have itself in the form of existent object, to he in concrete sensuously-present form. The consciousness thus observing fancies {meint), and, indeed, says that it wants to discover not itself, but, on the contrary, the inner being of things qua things. That this consciousness " means " this and says so, lies in the fact that it is reason, but reason as such is for it not as yet object.
If it were to know reason to be equally and at once the essence of things and of itself, and knew that reason can only be actually present in consciousness in the shape and embodiment pecuharly appropriate to reason, then it would descend into the depths of its own being, and seek reason there rather than in things.
Observation by Reason 235 If it had found reason there, it would again turn from that and be directed upon concrete reahty, in order to see therein its own sensuous expression, but would, at the same time, take that sensuous form to be essentially a notion.* Reason, as it immediately appears in the form of conscious certainty of being all reality, takes its reality in the sense of immediacy of being, and also takes the imity of ego with this objective existence in the sense of an immediate unity, a unity in which it (reason) has not yet separated and then again united the moments of being and ego, or, in other words, a unity which reason has not yet come to understand. It, therefore, when appearing as conscious observation, turns to things with the idea that it is really taking them as sensuous things opposed to the ego. But its actual procedure contradicts this idea, for it knows things, it transforms their sensuous character into conceptions, i.e. just into a kind of being which at the same time is ego; it transforms thought into an existent thought, or being into a thought-constituted being, and, in fact, asserts that things have truth merely as conceptions. In this process, it is only what the things are that consciousness in observation takes account of; we, however, [who are tracing the nature of this experience] are interested in what conscious observation itself is. The outcome of its process, however, will be that this consciousness becomes aware of being for itself what it is in itself [i.e. becomes aware of being to itself what, in the meantime, it is to us].
We have to consider the operation of this observa- * This paragraph is a passing remark and refers to the method of the Logic.
236 Phenomenology" of Mind tional phase of reason in all the various moments of its activity. It takes up this attitude towards Nature, Mind, and finally towards the relation of both in the form of sense-existence; and in all these it seeks to find itself as a definitely existing concrete actuality.
a(l) Observation op Nature When the unreflective consciousness speaks of observation and experience as being the fountain of truth, the phrase may possibly sound as if the whole business were a matter of tasting, smelhng, feeling, hearing, and seeing. It forgets, in its zeal for tasting, smelling, etc., to say that, in point of fact, it has really and rationally determined for itself already the object thus sensuously apprehended, and this determination of the object is, at least, as important for it as that apprehension. It will also as readily admit that its whole concern is not simply a matter of perceiving, and will not allow, e.g. the perception that this penknife lies beside this snuff-box to pass for an " observation." What is perceived should, at least, have the significance of a universal, and not of a sensuous particular " this."
The universal, here regarded, is, in the first instance, merely self-sameness; its movement is merely the uniform recurrence of the same operation. The consciousness, which thus far finds in the object merely universality or the abstract " mine," must take upon itself the movement peculiar to the object; and, since it is not yet at the stage of understanding that object, it must, at least, be the recollection of it, a recollection Observation of Nature 237 which expresses in a universal way what, in actual fact, is merely given in the form of a particular. This superficial method of gettuag out of particularity, and this equally superficial type of universahty, into which the sense element is merely taken up, without the sense element havmg in itself become a universal, this description of things — is not as yet a process effected in the object itself. The process really takes place solely in the function of describing. The object, as it is described, has consequently lost interest— while the one object is being described another must be kept in view and continually sought, so as not to put a stop to the process of description. If it is no longer easy to find new and whole things, then there is nothing for it but to turn back upon those already found, in order to divide them still further, break them up into component parts and look out for any new aspects of thinghood that still remain in them. There can be no stopping this restlessly active instinct in dealing with its material. To find a new genus of distinctive significance, or even to discover a new planet, which although an individual entity, yet possesses the nature of a universal, can only fall to the lot of those who are lucky enough to do so. But the boundary hne of what, like elephant, oak, gold, is markedly distinctive, the Ime of demarcation of what is genus and species, passes through many stages into the endless particularisation of the chaos of plants and animals, kinds of rocks, or metals, forms of earth, etc., etc., that only art and craft can bring to light. In this reahn where universality means indeterminateness, where particularity now approximates to singleness, and again at this point and that even descends to it entirely, there is offered an 238 Phenomenology of Mind inexhaustible supply of material for observation and description to deal with. Here, where a boundless field is opened up, it can have found at the boundary line of the universal, not an immeasurable wealth, but instead, merely the limitations of nature and of its own operation. It can no longer know whether what seems to have being per se is not a chance accident. What bears the impress of a confused or unformed feeble image, that has barely got out of elementary indeterminateness, cannot claim even to be described.
While this seeking and describing seem to be concerned merely with things, we see that in point of fact it is not carried on at the level of sense-perception. Rather, what enables things to be known is more important for that process than the range of sense properties still left over, qualities which, of course, the thing itself cannot do without, but which consciousness dispenses with. Through this distinction into what is essential and what is unessential, the notion rises out of the dispersion of sensibility, and knowledge thereby makes it clear that it has to do with its own self at least quite as essentially as with things. This duaUty in the observed object produces a certain hesitation as to whether what is essential and necessary for knowledge is also so in the case of things. On the one hand, the qualifying " marks " have merely to serve the purpose of knowledge in distinguishing things mter se; on the other hand, however, it is not the unessential quality of things that has to be known, but that feature in virtue of which they themselves break away from the general continuity of being as a whole, get cut off from others and stand by themselves. The distinguishing "marks" must not only have an essential relation to Observation of Nature 239 knowledge but also be the essential characteristics of things, and the system of marks devised must conform to the system of nature itself, and merely express this system. This follows necessarily from the very principle and meaning of reason; and the instinct of reason — for it operates in observation merely as an instinct — has also in its systems attained this unity, a unity where its objects are so constituted that they carry their own essential reality with them, involve an existence on their own account, and are not simply an incident of a given particular time, or a particular place. The distinguishing marks of animals, for example, are taken from their claws and teeth; for, in point of fact, not only does knowledge distinguish thus one animal from another; but each animal itself separates itself off thereby, it preserves itself for its own sake by means of these weapons, and keeps itself detached from the universal nature. A plant, on the other hand, never gets the length of existing for its own sake; it touches merely the boundary line of individuality. This line is where plants show the semblance of diremption and separation by the possession of different sex-characters; this furnishes, therefore, the principle for distinguishing plants inter se. What, however, stands on a still lower level cannot of itself any longer distinguish itself from another; it gets lost when the contrast comes into play. Being per se and being in a relation come into conflict; a "thing" in the latter case is something different from a " thing " in the former state; whereas the " individuum " is what it is by preserving itself in relation to another. What, however, is incapable of this and becomes in chemical fashion something other than it is empirically, confuses knowledge and gives rise to the 240 Phenomenology of Mind same doubt as to whether knowledge is to hold to the one side or the other, since the thing has itself no self-consistency, and these two sides fall apart within it.
In those systems where the elements involve general self-sameness, this character connotes at once what is self- same for knowledge and for things themselves as well. But the.expansion of these self-identical characteristics, each of which describes undisturbed the entire circuit of its course, and gets full scope to do as it likes, necessarily leads as readily to its very opposite, leads to the confusion of these characteristics. For the qualifying mark, the general characteristic, is the unity of opposite factors, viz. of what is determinate, and of what is 'per se universal. It must, therefore, break asunder into this opposition. If, now, on one side, the characteristic overmasters the universahty in which its essence lies, on the other side, again, this universality equally keeps that characteristic under control, forces the latter on to its boundary Une, and there mingles together its distinctions and its essential constituents.
Observation which kept them apart in orderly fashion, and thought it had hold there of something stable and fixed, finds the principles overlapping and dominating one another, sees confusions formed and transitions made from one to another; here it finds united what it took at first to be absolutely separated, and there separated what it considered connected. Hence, when observation thus holds by the unbroken selfsameness of being, it has here, just in the most general determinations given — e.g. in the case of the essential marks of an animal or a plant — to see itself tormented with instances, which rob it of every determination, Observation of Nature 241 silence the universality it reached, and reduce it again to unreflective observation and description.
Observation, which confines itself in this way to what is simple, or restricts the sensuously dispersed elements by the imiversal, thus finds its principle confused by its object, because what is determined must by its very nature get lost in its opposite. Reason, therefore, must pass from that inert characteristic which had the semblance of stability, and go on to observe it as it really is in truth, viz. as relating itself to its opposite. What are called essential marks, are passive characteristics, which, when expressed and apprehended as simple, do not bring out what constitutes their real nature — which is to be vanishing moments of its process of withdrawing and betaking itself into itself. Since the instinct of reason now arrives at the point of looking for the characteristic in the hght of its true nature — that of essentially passing over into its opposite and not existing apart by itself and for its own sake — it seeks after the Law and the notion of law. It seeks for them, moreover, as existing reality; but this feature of concrete reahty will in point of fact disappear before reason, and the aspects of the law will become for it mere moments or abstractions, so that the law comes to fight in the nature of the notion, which has destroyed within itself the iadifferent subsistence of sensuous reafity.
To the consciousness observing, the truth of the law is given in " experience," in the way that sense existence is object for consciousness; the truth is not given iu and for itself. If, however, the law does not have its truth in the notion, it is something contingent, not a necessity, in fact, not a law. But its being essentially in the form VOL. I.— R 242 Phencnnenology of Blind of a notion does not merely not contradict its being present for observation to deal with, but really gives it on that account necessary existence, and makes it an object for observation. The universal in the sense of a rational universaUty, is also universal in the sense imphed in the above notion: — its being is for consciousness, it presents itself there as the real, the objective present; the notion sets itself forth in the form of thinghood and sensuous existence. But it does not, on that account, lose its nature and fall into the condition of immovable subsisting passivity, or mere adventitious {gleichgiiltig) succession. What is universally normal is also universally valid: what ought to be, as a matter of fact is too; and what merely should be, and is not, has no real truth. The instinct of reason is entirely within its rights when it stands firm on this point, and refuses to be led astray by entia intellectus which merely ought to be, and would have truth in the sense of this " ought to be," even though they are to be met with nowhere in experience; and dechnes to be turned aside by the hypothetical suggestions and all the other impalpable unreahties designed in the interest of an everlasting " ought to be " which never is.* For reason is just this certainty of having reality, and what this consciousness is not aware of as an existent entity, i.e. what does not appear, is nothing for consciousness here at all.
The true nature of law, viz.: that it essentially is reality, will, no doubt, again assume for consciousness, if it stops at the level of observation, the form of an opposite over against the notion and the inherently universal; in other words, this consciousness does not take such an object as its law to be a reality * Directed against Kant and FJchte, Observation of Nature 243