[90] The knowledge or knowing which is at the start or is immediately our object cannot be anything else but immediate knowledge itself, a knowing of the immediate or of what simply is. Our approach to the object must also be immediate or receptive; we must alter nothing in the object as it presents itself. In apprehending it, we must refrain from trying to comprehend it.
Thus begins Hegel’s phenomenological exercise.
How to interpret Hegel’s words
Among the problems I face in deciphering Hegel, there is at least one which is present immediately: in what sense am I, the reader, to comprehend these words? – The tone of voice is suggestive. He is instructing, “This is how you must perceive, and then this will be the result of your perception.” I apply this to the quoted section. Hegel is not describing what the most basic form of consciousness must be – although this can be directly extrapolated – rather, he (indirectly) makes us aware of our ability to mold our consciousness by (directly) describing a form of consciousness we can emulate.
This is a meditation (for want of a word). Much of the Phenomenology of Spirit will be meditations; different ways in which we can exist. One constant throughout all these transformations of consciousness is that presence of a dipole – an “I” that receives experience, and the “experience” that is defined by the I. Even if I merely contemplate my own existence, I must differentiate myself from my thoughts. This separation is obviously not so simple as just stated, after all, what am I without thoughts? In raising this problem I am getting ahead of the text, since this paradoxical dichotomy and its solution will form much of the workings of the Phenomenology.
I return to the quoted text – it commands: Strip away everything from your consciousness that you can. This is Descartes’ meditation, taken to its extreme of experience, and then left there to ponder its existence. In this virgin paradigm, there is only the absolute immediacy of existence. Everything just “is” without name or quality to delineate it, including myself.
The dichotomy inherent in sense-certainty’s object
Hegel calls this perspective “sense-certainty”, and in describing its contents [91], the job of the reader is to experience the same during their own meditation. A contradiction immediately arises: there is a fundamental difference between two categories of experience, between the “I” and the “object” [92]. This is not just a logical distinction, or of categorization, rather – and this is important for the reader to experience the Phenomenology properly – this is dichotomy that can be experienced whilst meditating as “sense-certainty”. When I experience as a “sense certainty”, then among my experiences there will be some that are of a “this” that is “simple, immediate being, or as the essence, the object“, while others present as a “this” that is “unessential, and mediated, something which… is not in itself, but through an other, the ‘I’” [93].
I divert attention from the text for a moment to emphasize the experience of the Phenomenology. It is certainly possible to proceed through the book as if it were a set of axioms and postulates, following its meaning by saying to oneself, “If A then B, A therefore B”, but this is to miss out on the phenomenological aspect of the book. And so, to return to the text once more, Hegel’s characterization of the object and the “I” will appear disconcerting and obtuse, especially if the text itself is new and unfamiliar. Therefore, in order to gain appreciation for what Hegel means in describing the two types of experience of “sense-certainty”, it is necessary to place oneself in the frame of mind of “sense-certainty”, and pay attention to what it means to experience.
Hegel addresses this problem by focusing on a particular detail of “sense-certainty’s” experience: When it experiences an object, “sense certainty” experiences it as an “essence“, as if in itself and as a “this” of experience it had an absolute existence – but does this cohere with “sense-certainty’s” experiences? [93-94] We (Hegel and readers) will answer this question by attending further to experience: When (we qua) “sense certainty” experience, we experience a continuous array of “this” and “now”. Instead of each “this” or “now” appearing as an immediate essence, it appears as a channel. That is to say, “this” is something that continues through existence, but it is without essence, it is what mediates our experience (as if) of essences. Hegel has a name for this preserved mediator of content: “the universal” [95-97], which is “mediated simplicity” [98] and “empty or indifferent” [99].
The dichotomy inherent in sense-certainty’s “I”
In our attempt to grasp hold of certainty from within the framework of “sense-certainty”, we began by perceiving an immediate “this”, but could not hold onto it, and so instead reached out to hold the universality which is mediation of “this”. What his means, however, is that instead of considering the object as being the “essential element in sense-certainty“, we find certainty in the very knowing. As for the object, “it is, because I know it” [100].
The same problem repeats itself: The “I” reveals itself to be an array of experiences, and thus in order to find certainty we consider the “I” as a universality [101-102]. “Thus we reach the stage where we have to posit the whole of sense-certainty itself as its essence” [103]. “This pure immediacy” is no longer concerned with the distinction between differing “here’s”, and “Its truth preserves itself as a relation that remains self-identical, and which makes no distinction of what is essential and what is unessential, between the ‘I’ and the object, a relation therefore into which also no distinction whatever can penetrate” [104].
The dichotomy inherent in sense-certainty itself
In order to test the veracity of this certainty, Hegel adopts its perspective and attends to what it means for it point out a particular experience within itself [105]. What happens conforms to the expected pattern: “sense-certainty” can perceive that to distinguish a moment of experience is to transform it, and therefore realize that such a moment is a mere aspect of a universality. In more detail: it becomes apparent that anything pointed out becomes a new distinguished “this”, and therefore also, every “this” contains a “not this” in its conception. In other words, in attempting to grasp hold of what it is that is the immediate presence of experience, “sense-certainty” undergoes a continuous back and forth between what is perceived to be immediate and what is revealed to be universal [109].
[109] It is clear that the dialectic of sense-certainty is nothing else but the simple history of its movement or of its experience, and sense-certainty itself is nothing else but just this history. That is why natural consciousness, too, is always reaching this result, learning from experience what is true in it; but equally it is always forgetting it and starting the movement all over again.
Hegel has some words on how this relates to (and undermines) skepticism in philosophy, but this is effectively a conclusion to part one of natural consciousness, “sense-certainty”. The next step, and the beginning of part two, “perception”, is to step outside the repetitive movements of “sense certainty”:
[111] Immediate certainty does not take over the truth, for its truth is the universal, whereas certainty wants to apprehend the This. Perception, on the other hand, takes what is present to it as a universal. Just as universality is its principle in general, the immediately self-differentiating moments within perception are universal: ‘I’ is a universal and the object is a universal.
Some comments
Personally I can follow phenomenologically the overall trend of this chapter, but am less convinced by many of the details which comprise the specific turns Hegel forces “sense-certainty” to take. That is to say, I can experience in my own meditations that dialectic between ego and object, and the resultant universality, but become confused when I try to distinguish what Hegel achieved throughout the three dialectics in this chapter. To some extent they feel arbitrarily designed, and to another extent they feel heavily dependent on semantics (or even logic) at the expense of phenomenology-proper.
I am also troubled by the perspective I must take in order to follow the text. At times it is obvious that Hegel is talking to me qua “sense-certainty” and other times qua self-aware reader. But at times the boundary blurs, especially when it feels like the reader qua reader is also acting a puppet master controlling the “sense-certainty” that is his alter ego.
Briefly, this is what I take away: (1) appreciation for the phenomenological method, (2) an appreciation for an immediately-basic form of consciousness, (3) a consideration for how consciousness can grow. Nb. I would call that last point an epiphany moment for consciousness, as a mechanism for transforming (say) sense-certainty into perception type consciousnesses, but insofar as I can tell, Hegel leaves it to the reader to leap from one to the other. Also: (4) appreciation for what an experience of reading Hegelian writing entails.
