or " emptiness " can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is, — in order to cast it into the same abysmal void. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself.
The goal, however, is fixed for Imowledge just as Introduction S^ necessarily as the succession in the process. The terminus is at that point where knowledge is no longer compelled to go beyond itself, where it finds its own self, and the notion corresponds to the object and the object to the notion. The progress towards this goal consequently is without a halt and at no earUer stage is satisfaction to be found. That which is confined to a life of nature is unable of itself to go beyond its immediate existence; but by something other than itself it is forced beyond that; and to be thus wrenched out of its setting is its death. Consciousness, however, is to itself its own notion; thereby it immediately transcends what is limited, and, since this latter belongs to it, consciousness transcends its own self. Along with the particular there is at the same time set up the " beyond," were this only beside what is limited, as in the case of spatial intuition. Consciousness, therefore, suffers this violence at its own hands; it destroys its own limited satisfaction. At the feeling of this violence, anxiety for the truth may well withdraw, and struggle to preserve for itself that which is in danger of being lost. But it can find no rest.
Should that anxious fearfulness wish to remain always in unthinking indolence, thought will agitate the thoughtlessness, its restlessness will disturb that indolence. Or let it take its stand as a form of sentiimentahty which assures us it finds everything good in its kind, and this assurance likewise will suffer violence at the hands of reason, which finds something not good just because and in so far as it is a kind. Or, again, fear of the truth may conceal itself from itself and others behind the pretext that precisely burning zeal for the very truth makes it so difficult, VOL. I.— G 8? Phenomenology of Mind nay impossible, to find any other truth, except that of which alone vanity is capable — that of being ever so much cleverer than any ideas, which one gets from oneself or others, could make possible. This sort of conceit which imderstands how to behttle every truth and turn away from it back into itself, and gloats over this its own private understanding, which always knows how to dissipate every possible thought, and to find, instead of all the content, merely the barren Ego — this is a satisfaction which must be left to itself; for it flees the imiversal and seeks only an isolated existence on its own account {Fiirsicliseyn).
As the foregoing has been stated, provisionally and in general, concerning the manner and the necessity of the process of the inquiry, it may also be of further service to make some observations regarding the method of carrying this out. This exposition, viewed as a process of relating science to phenomenal knowledge, and as an inquiry and critical examination into the reality of knowing, does not seem able to be effected without some presupposition which is laid down as •in ultimate criterion. For an examination consists in applying an accepted standard, and, on the final agreement or disagreement therewith of what is tested, deciding whether the latter is right or wrong; and bhe standard in general, and science as well, were this the criterion, is thereby accepted as the essence or inherently real (Ansich). But, here, where science first appears on the scene, neither science nor any sort of standard has justified itself as the essence or ultimate reality; and without this no examination seems able to be instituted.
This contradiction and the removal of it will become Introduction 83 more definite it, to begin witti, we call to mind tlie abstract determinations of knowledge and of truth, as they are found in consciousness. Consciousness, we find, distinguishes from itself something, to which at the same time it relates itself; or, to use the current expression, there is something for consciousness; and the determinate form of this process of relating, or of there being something for a consciousness, is knowledge. But from this being for another we distinguish being in itself or fer se; what is related to knowledge is likewise distinguished from it, and posited as also existing outside this relation; the aspect of being per se or in itself is called Truth. What really lies in these determinations does not further concern us here; for since the object of our inquiry is phenomenal knowledge, its determinations are also taken up, in the first instance, as they are immediately offered to us. And they are offered to us very much in the way we have just stated.
If now oitr inquiry deals with the truth of knowledge, it appears feljat we are inquiring what knowledge is in itself. But "In this inquiry knowledge is our object, it is for us; and the essential nature (Ansich) of knowledge, were this to come to hght, would be rather its being for us: what we should assert to be its essence would rather be, not the truth of knowledge, but only om* knowledge of it. The essence or the criterion would he in us, and what was to be compared with this standard, and decided upon as a result of this comparison, would not necessarily have to recognise that criterion.
But the nature of the object which we are examining surmounts this separation, or semblance of separation, 84 Phenomenology of Mind and presupposition. Consciousness furnislies its own criterion in itself, and the inquiry will thereby be a comparison of itself with its own self; for the distinction, just made, falls inside itself. In consciousness there is one element for an other, or, in general, consciousness impHcates the specific character of the moment of knowledge. At the same time this " other " is to consciousness not merely for it, but also outside this relation, or has a being in itself, i.e. there is the moment of truth. Thus in what consciousness inside itself declares to be the essence or truth we have the standard which itself sets up, and by which we are to measure its l^TL0wledge. Suppose we call knowledge the notion, and the essence or truth "being" or the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the notion corresponds with the object. But if we call the inner nature of the object, or what it is in itself, the notion, and, on the other side, understand by object the notion qua object, i.e. the way the notion is for an other, then the examination consists in our seeing whether the object corresponds to its own notion. It is clear, of course, that both of these processes are the same. The essential fact, however, to be borne in mind throughout the whole inquiry is that both these moments, notion and object, " being for another " and " being in itself," themselves fall within that knowledge which we are examining. Consequently we do not require to bring standards with us, nor to apply our fancies and thoughts in the inquiry; and just by our leaving these aside we are enabled to treat and discuss the subject as it actually is in itself and for itself, as it is in its complete reahty.
But not only in this respect, that notion and object, Introduction 85 the criterion and what is to be tested, are ready to hand in consciousness itself, is any addition of ours superfluous, but we are also spared the trouble of compariag these two and of making an examination in the strict sense of the term; so that in this respect, too, since consciousness tests and examines itself, all we are left to do is simply and solely to look on. For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what to it is true, and consciousness of its knowledge of that truth. Since both are for the same consciousness, it is itself their comparison; it is the same consciousness that decides and knows whether its knowledge of the object corresponds with this object or not. The object, it is true, appears only to be in such wise for consciousness as consciousness knows it.
Consciousness does not seem able to get, so to say, behind it as it is, not for consciousness, but in itself, and consequently seems also unable to test knowledge by it. But just because consciousness has, in general, knowledge of an object, there is already present the distinction that the inherent nature, what the object is in itself, is one thing to consciousness, while knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is another moment. Upon this distinction, which is present as a fact, the examination turns. Should both, when thus compared, not correspond, consciousness seems bound to alter its knowledge, in order to make it fit the object. But in the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself also, in point of fact, is altered; for the knowledge which existed was essentially a knowledge of the object; with change in the knowledge, the object also becomes 86 Phenomenology of Mind different, since it belonged essentially to this knowledge. Hence consciousness comes to find that what formerly to it was the essence is not what is fer se, or what was fer se was only fer se for consciousness. Since, then, in the case of its object consciousness finds its knowledge not corresponding with this object, the object hkewise fails to hold out; or the standard for examining is altered when that, whose criterion this standard was to be, does not hold its ground in the course of the examination; and the examination is not only an examination of knowledge, but also of the criterion used in the process.
This dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself — on its knowledge as well as on its object — in the sense that out of it the new and true object arises, is precisely what is termed Experience. In this connection, there is a moment in the process just mentioned which should be brought into more decided prominence, and by which a new hght is cast on the scientific aspect of the following exposition. Consciousness knows something; this something is the essence or what is fer se. This object, however, is also the fer se, the inherent reality, for consciousness. Hence comes the ambiguity of this truth. Consciousness, as we see, has now two objects; one is the first fer se, the second is the existence for consciousness of this fer se. The last object appears at first sight to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself, i.e. an idea not of an object, but solely of its knowledge of that first object. But, as was already indicated, by that very process the first object is altered; it ceases to be what 'is fer se, and becomes consciously something which is fer se only for consciousness. Consequently, then, Introduction §7' wtat this real fer se is for consciousness is truth: which, however, means that this is the essential reahty, or the object which consciousness has. This new object contains the nothingness of the first; the new object is the experience concerning that first object.
In this treatment of the course of experience, there is an element in virtue of which, it does not seem to be in agreement with what is ordinarily understood by experience. The transition from the first object and the knowledge of it to the other object, in regard to which we say we have had experience, was so stated tbat the knowledge of the first object, the existence for consciousness of the first ens per se, is itself to be the second object. But it usually seems that we learn by experience the untruth of our first notion by appealing to some other object which we may happen to find casually and externally; so that, in general, what we have is merely the bare and simple apprehension of what is in and for itself. On the view above given, however, the new object is seen to have come about by a transformation or conversion of consciousness itself. This way of looking at the matter is our doing, what we contribute; by its means the series of experiences through which consciousness passes, is lifted into a scientifically constituted sequence, but this does not exist for the consciousness we contemplate and consider. We have here, however, the same sort of circumstance, again, of which we spoke a short time ago when dealing with the relation of this exposition to scepticism, viz. that the result which at any time comes about in the case of an untrue mode of knowledge cannot possibly collapse into an empty nothing, but must necessarily be taken as the negation of that of which it is a result 8S Phenomenology of Mind — a result which contains what truth the preceding mode of knowledge has in it. What we have here is presented to us in this form: — since what at first appeared as object is reduced, when it passes into consciousness, to what knowledge takes it to be, and the ultimate entity, the real in itself, becomes what this entity per se is for consciousness; this latter is the new object, whereupon there appears also a new mode or embodiment of consciousness, of which the essence is something other than that of the preceding mode. It is this circumstance which carries forward the whole succession of the modes or attitudes of consciousness in their own necessity. It is only this necessity, this origination of the new object — which offers itself to consciousness without consciousness knowing how it comes by it— that to us, who watch the process, is to be seen going on, so to say, behind its back. Thereby there enters into its process a moment of being per se or of beiag for us, which is not expressly presented to that consciousness which is in the grip of experience itself. The content, however, of what we see arising, exists for it, and we lay hold of and comprehend merely its formal character, i.e. its hare origination; for it, what has thus arisen has merely the character of object, while, for us, it appears at the same time as a process and coming into being.
In virtue of that necessity this pathway to science is itself eo if so science, and is, moreover, as regards its content. Science of the Experience of Consciousness.
The experience which consciousness has concerning itself can, by its essential principle, embrace nothing less than the entire system of consciousness, the whole realm of the truth of mind, and in such wise that the Introduction 89 aaoments of truth are set forth in the specific and pecuhar character they here possess — i.e. not as abstract pure moments, but as they are for consciousness, or as consciousness itself appears in its relation to them, and in virtue of which they are moments of the whole, are Bmbodiments or modes of consciousness. In pressing forward to its true form of existence, consciousness will come to a point at which it lays aside its semblance of being hampered with what is foreign to it, with what is only for it and exists as an other; it will reach a position where its appearance becomes identified with its essence, where, in consequence, its exposition coincides with just this very point, this very stage of the science proper of mind. And, finally, when it grasps this its own essence, it will indicate the nature of absolute knowledge itself.
A.
CONSCIOUSNESS CEETAINTY OE KNOWLEDGE AT THE LEVEL OF SENSE —THE "THIS," AND "MEANING."
THE knowledge, which is at the start or iromediately our object, can be nothing else than just that which is immediate knowledge, knowledge of the immediate, of what is. We have, in dealing with it, to proceed, too, in an immediate way, to accept what is given, not altering anything in it as it is presented before us, and keeping mere apprehension (Auffassen) free from conceptual comprehension (Begreifen) The concrete content, which sensuous certainty furnishes, makes this prima facie appear to be the richest kind of knowledge, to be even a knowledge of endless wealth — a wealth to which we can as little find any limit when we traverse its extent in space and time, where that content is presented before us, as when we take a fragment out of the abundance it offers us and by dividing and dividing seek to penetrate its intent. Besides that, it seems to be the truest, the most authentic knowledge: for it has not as yet dropped anything from the object; it has the object before itself in its entirety and completeness. This bare fact of certainty, however, is really and admittedly the abstractest and the poorest kind of truth. It merely says regarding what Sense-certainty 91 it knows: it is; and its truth contains solely tke heing of tlie fact it knows. Consciousness, on its part, in the case of this form of certainty, takes the shape merely of pure Ego. In other words, I, in such a case, am merely qua pure This, and the object likewise is merely qua pure This. I, this particular conscious I, am certain of this fact before me, not because I qua consciousness have developed myself in connection with it and in manifold ways set thought to work about it: and not, again, because the fact, the thing, of which I am certain, in virtue of its having a multitude of distinct quahties, was replete with possible modes of relation and a variety of connections with other things. Neither has anything to do with the truth sensuous certainty contains: neither the I nor the thing has here the meaning of a manifold relation with a variety of other things, of mediation in a variety of ways. The I does not contain or imply a manifold of ideas, the I here does not think: nor does the thing mean what has a multiphcity of qualities. Rather, the thing, the fact, is; and it is merely because it is. It is — that is the essential point for senseknowledge, and that bare fact of heing, that simple immediacy, constitutes its truth. In the same way the certainty qua relation, the certainty " of " something, is an immediate pure relation; consciousness is I — nothing more, a pure this; the individual consciousnes knows a pure this, or knows what is individual.
But, when we look closely, there is a good deal more implied in that bare pure being, which constitutes the kernel of this form of certainty, and is given out by it as its truth. A concrete actual certainty of sense is not merely this pure immediacy, but an example, an instance, of that immediacy. Amongst the innumerable 92 Phenomenology of Mind distinctions that here come to hght, we find in all cases the fundamental difference — viz. that in sense-experience pure being at once breaks up into the two " thises," as we have called them, one this as I, and one as object. When we reflect on this distinction, it is seen that neither the one nor the other is merely immediate, merely is in sense-certainty, but is at the same time mediated: I have the certainty through the other, viz. through the actual fact; and this, again, exists in that certainty through an other, viz. through the I.
It is not only we who make this distinction of essential truth and particular example, of essence and instance, immediacy and mediation; we find it in sense-certainty itself, and it has to be taken up in the form in which it exists there, not as we have just determined it. One of them is put forward in it as existing in simple immediacy, as the essential reality, the object. The other, however, is put forward as the non-essential, as mediated, something which is not per se in the certainty, but there through something else, ego, a state of knowledge which only knows the object because the object is, and which can as well be as not be. The object, however, is the real truth, is the essential reahty; it is, quite indifferent to whether it is known or not; it remains and stands even though it is not known, while the knowledge does not exist if the object is not there.
We have thiis to consider as to the object, whether in point of fact it does exist in sense-certainty itself as such an essential reality as that certainty gives it out to be; whether its meaning and notion, which is to be essential reahty, corresponds to the way it is present in that certainty. We have for that purpose not to Sense-certainty 93 reflect about it and ponder what it might be in truth, but to deal with it merely as sense-certainty contains it.
Sense-certainty itself has thus to be asked: What is the This? If we take it in the two-fold form of its existence, as the Now and as the Here, the dialectic it has in it will take a form as intelhgible as the This itself. To the question. What is the Now? we reply, for example, the Now is night-time. To test the truth of this certainty of sense, a simple experiment is all we need: write that truth down. A truth cannot lose anything by being written down, and just as httle by our preserving and keeping it. If we look again at the truth we have written down, look at it noiv, at this noon-time, we shall have to say it has turned stale and become out of date.
The Now that is night is kept fixed, i.e. it is treated as what it is given out to be, as something which is; but it proves to be rather a something which is not. The Now itself no doubt maintains itself, but as what is not night; similarly in its relation to the day which the Now is at present, it maintains itself as something that is also not day, or as altogether something negative. This self-maintaining Now is therefore not something immediate but something mediated; for, qua something that remains and preserves itself, it is determined through and hy means of the fact that something else, namely day and night, is not. Thereby it is just as much as ever it was before, Now, and in being this simple fact, it is indifferent to what is still associated with it; just as little as night or day is its being, it is just as truly also day and night; it is not in the least affected by this otherness through which it is what it 94 Phenomenology of Mind is. A simple entity of this sort, whicii is by and through negation, which is neither this nor that, which / is a not-this, and with equal indiiTerence this as well as that — a thing of this kind we call a Universal. The Universal is therefore ia point of fact the truth of sensecertainty, the true content of sense-experience.
It is as a universal, too, that we give utterance to sensuous fact. What we say is: " This," i.e. the universal this; or we say: " it is," i.e. being in general. Of course we do not present before our mind in saying so the universal this, or being in general, but we utter what is universal; in other words, we do not actually and absolutely say what in this sense-certainty we really mean. Language, however, as we see, is the more truthful; in it we ourselves refute directly and at once our own " meaning "; and since universahty is the real truth of sense-certainty, and language merely expresses this truth, it is not possible at all for us even to express in words any sensuous existence which we " mean."
The same will be the case when we take the Here, the other form of the This. The Here is e.g. the tree. I turn about and this truth has disappeared and has changed round into its opposite: the Here is not a tree, but a house. The Here itself does not disappear; it is and remains in the disappearance of the house, tree, and so on, and is indifferently house, tree. The This is shown thus again to be mediated simflicity, in other words, to be universality.
Pure being, then, remains as the essential element for this sense-certainty, since sense-certainty in its very nature proves the universal to be the truth of its object. But that pure being is not in the form of something Sense-certainty 95 immediate, but of something in which the process of negation and mediation is essential. Consequently it is not what we intend or " mean " by being, but being with the characteristic that it is an abstraction, the purely universal; and our intended " meaning," which takes the truth of sense-certainty to be not something universal, is alone left standing in contrast to this empty, indifferent Now and Here.
If we compare the relation in which knowledge and the object first stood with the relation they have come to assume in this result, it is found to be just the reverse of what first appeared. The object, which professed to be the essential reahty, is now the nonessential element of sense-certainty; for the universal, which the object has come to be, is no longer such as the object essentially was to be for sense-certainty. The certainty is now found to lie in the opposite element, namely in knowledge, which formerly was the non-essential factor. Its truth lies in the object as my (meinem) object, or lies in the " meaning " (meinen), in what I " mean "; it is, because I know it. Sense- certainty is thus indeed banished from the object, but it is not yet thereby done away with; it is merely forced back into the I. We have still to see what experience reveals regarding its reality in this sense.
The force of its truth thus Hes now in the I, in the, immediate fact of my being conscious of seeing, hearing, ( and so on; the disappearance of the particular Now ' and Here that we " mean " is prevented by the fact that / keep hold on them. The Now is daytime, because I see it; the Here is a tree for a similar reason. Sensecertainty, however, goes through, in this connection, 96 Phenomenology of Mind the same dialectic process as in the former case. I, tins I, see the tree, and assert the tree to be the Here; another I, however, sees the house and maintains the Here is not a tree but a house. Both truths have the same authenticity — the immediacy of seeing and the certainty and assurance both have as to their specific way of knowing; but the one certainty disappears in the other.
In all this, what does not disappear is the I qua universal, whose seeing is neither the seeing of this tree nor of this house, but just seeing simpliciter, which is mediated through the negation of this house, etc., and, in being so, is all the same simple and indifferent to what is associated with it, the house, the tree, and so on. I is merely universal, like Now, Here, or This in general. No doubt I " mean " an individual I, but just as little as I am able to say what I " mean " by Now, Here, so it is impossible in the case of the I too. By saying " this Here," " this Now," " an individual thing," I say all Thises, Heres, Nows, or Individuals. In the same way when I say " I," " this individual I," I say quite generally " all I's," every one is what I say, every one is " I," this individual I. When philosophy is requested, by way of putting it to a crucial test — a test which it could not pqssibly sustain — to " deduce," to " construe," " to find a priori," or however it is put, a so-called this thing, or this particular man,'* it is quite fair to ask that this demand should say what " this thing," or what " this I " it means: but to say this is quite impossible.
Sense-certainty discovers by_ej;perimce, therefore, that its essential nature lies neither in the object nor Sense-certainty 97