Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel)

G.W.F. Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit examines the meaning of mind the working of the mind, and the sphere of knowledge possible through the use of the mind. He begins in Section A to consider consciousness, and he starts from what he calls "sense-certainty." This discussion is part of the longstanding argument over whether the mind can perceive truth or only sensory, and thus untrustworthy, inputs. For Hegel, sense-certainty refers to the thought that the sense provide us with immediate consciousness of an object. The usual conception is that the senses provide us with sensations that are construed as forms of the immediate awareness of objects. This immediate consciousness comes to us already divided into discrete elements, this sensation or sense-datum, this, and this, and so on. Hegel argues that this conception is wrong because any such divisions of consciousness would be mediated by concepts so that we would have an understanding of what we were perceiving. This presupposes relevant concepts--we would have to know colors, sounds, shapes, and so on to identify our observations. Sense-certainty offers the illusion of truth and meaning.

Hegel notes the apparent trust we place in sense-certainty and the ways in which we are wrong:

Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge, for it has not as yet omitted anything from the object, but has the object before it in its perfect entirety. But, in the event, this very certainty proves to be the m

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what is true in it; but equally it is always forgetting it and starting the movement all over again (64). Hegel seems to demonstrate that there are three different types or levels of knowledge of the external world for Hegel. the fist is the presentation of the different ways in which the object is grasped, first by prescientific everyday consciousness as the thing and its properties, and second by two forms of scientific understanding which describe the object as the interplay of certain forces and as the exemplification of universal laws. Second, knowledge is found in the reflective discovery of the active role of consciousness in all that first order knowing. Finally, there is the reflective discovery of the contingent character of that transcendental activity. The mediated character of sense perception is an important concept in Hegel. Hegel's method in analyzing these issues is to observe the contradiction between the criterion by which the natural consciousness seeks to validate its knowledge and the actual knowledge it may produce. Sense-certainty wants to achieve immediate knowledge, but at the same time it wants to be knowledge of the immediate or of what is. Sense-certainty claims to be the richest form of knowl

Category: Philosophy - P