On Hegel's 'Philosophy of Mind': the self-knowing, actual Idea - part eighteen.

'Psyche; or, the legend of Love'

by Mary Tighe (1772 – 1810)

CANTO II. (continued)

No traces of those joys, alas, remain! 

A desert solitude alone appears. 

No verdant shade relieves the sandy plain, 

The wide spread waste no gentle fountain cheers, 

One barren face the dreary prospect wears; 

Nought through the vast horizon meets her eye 

To calm the dismal tumult of her fears, 

No trace of human habitation nigh, 

A sandy wild beneath, above a threatening sky. 

The mists of morn yet chill the gloomy air, 

And heavily obscure the clouded skies; 

In the mute anguish of a fixed despair 

Still on the ground immoveable she lies; 

At length with lifted hands and streaming eyes, 

Her mournful prayers invoke offended Love, 

"Oh, let me hear thy voice once more," she cries, 

"In death at least thy pity let me move, 

"And death, if but forgiven, a kind relief will prove. 

"For what can life to thy lost Psyche give, 

"What can it offer but a gloomy void? 

"Why thus abandoned should I wish to live? 

"To mourn the pleasure which I once enjoyed, 

"The bliss my own rash folly hath destroyed; 

"Of all my soul most prized, or held most dear, 

"Nought but the sad remembrance doth abide, 

"And late repentance of my impious fear; 

"Remorse and vain regret what living soul can bear! 

"Oh, art thou then indeed for ever gone! 

"And art thou heedless of thy Psyche's woe! 

"From these fond arms for ever art thou flown, 

"And unregarded must my sorrows flow! 

"Ah! why too happy did I ever know 

"The rapturous charms thy tenderness inspires? 

"Ah! why did thy affections stoop so low? 

"Why kindle in a mortal breast such fires, 

"Or with celestial love inflame such rash desires? 

"Abandoned thus for ever by thy love, 

"No greater punishment I now can bear, 

"From fate no farther malice can I prove; 

"Not all the horrors of this desert drear, 

"Nor death itself can now excite a fear; 

"The peopled earth a solitude as vast 

"To this despairing heart would now appear; 

"Here then, my transient joys for ever past, 

"Let thine expiring bride thy pardon gain at last!" 

Now prostrate on the bare unfriendly ground, 

She waits her doom in silent agony; 

When lo! the well known soft celestial sound 

She hears once more with breathless ecstasy, 

"Oh! yet too dearly loved! Lost Psyche! Why 

"With cruel fate wouldst thou unite thy power, 

"And force me thus thine arms adored to fly? 

"Yet cheer thy drooping soul, some happier hour 

"Thy banished steps may lead back to thy lover's bower. 

"Though angry Venus we no more can shun, 

"Appease that anger and I yet am thine! 

"Lo! where her temple glitters to the sun; 

"With humble penitence approach her shrine, 

"Perhaps to pity she may yet incline; 

"But should her cruel wrath these hopes deceive, 

"And thou, alas! must never more be mine, 

"Yet shall thy lover ne'er his Psyche leave, 

"But, if the fates allow, unseen thy woes relieve. 

"Stronger than I, they now forbid my stay; 

"Psyche beloved, adieu!" Scarce can she hear 

The last faint words, which gently melt away; 

And now more faint the dying sounds appear, 

Borne to a distance from her longing ear; 

Yet still attentively she stands unmoved, 

To catch those accents which her soul could cheer, 

That soothing voice which had so sweetly proved 

That still his tender heart offending Psyche loved! 

And now the joyous sun had cleared the sky, 

The mist dispelled revealed the splendid fane; 

A palmy grove majestically high 

Screens the fair building from the desert plain; 

Of alabaster white and free from stain 

Mid the tall trees the tapering columns rose; 

Thither, with fainting steps, and weary pain, 

Obedient to the voice at length she goes, 

And at the threshold seeks protection and repose. 

Round the soft scene immortal roses bloom, 

While lucid myrtles in the breezes play; 

No savage beast did ever yet presume 

With foot impure within the grove to stray, 

And far from hence flies every bird of prey; 

Thus, mid the sandy Garamantian wild, 

When Macedonia's lord pursued his way, 

The sacred temple of great Ammon smiled, 

And green encircling shades the long fatigue beguiled: 

With awe that fearfully her doom awaits 

Still at the portal Psyche timid lies, 

When lo! advancing from the hallowed gates 

Trembling she views with reverential eyes 

An aged priest. A myrtle bough supplies 

A wand, and roses bind his snowy brows: 

"Bear hence thy feet profane (he sternly cries) 

"Thy longer stay the goddess disallows, 

"Fly, nor her fiercer wrath too daringly arouse!" 

His pure white robe imploringly she held, 

And, bathed in tears, embraced his sacred knees; 

Her mournful charms relenting he beheld, 

And melting pity in his eye she sees; 

"Hope not (he cries) the goddess to appease, 

"Retire at awful distance from her shrine, 

"But seek the refuge of those sheltering trees, 

"And now thy soul with humble awe incline 

"To hear her sacred will, and mark the words divine."

'Catherine Vlasto', 1897, John Singer Sargent

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831). 'Philosophy of Mind'. 'Subjective Mind'.

CONSCIOUSNESS.

§416

'The goal of mind as consciousness is to make its appearance identical with its essence, to raise the certainty of itself to truth. The existence that mind has in consciousness, has its finitude in the fact that it is the formal relation to itself, only certainty; since the object is only abstractly determined as its own, or in the object the mind is only reflected into itself as abstract I, this existence still has a content that does not present itself as the mind's own content'.

'Zusatz. Mere representation does not distinguish between certainty and truth. What is certain for it, what it regards as a subjective state agreeing with the object, it calls true, no matter how trivial and bad the content of this subjective state may be. Philosophy, by contrast, must distinguish the concept of truth essentially from mere certainty; for the certainty which the mind has of itself at the standpoint of mere consciousness is still something untrue, self-contradictory, since here, along with the abstract certainty of being together with itself, mind has the directly opposite certainty of its relationship to something essentially other than itself. This contradiction must be sublated; the urge to resolve itself lies in the contradiction itself. Subjective certainty must not retain any barrier in the object, it must acquire genuine objectivity; and, conversely, the object, on its side, must become mine not merely in an abstract manner but in every aspect of its concrete nature. This goal is already glimpsed by reason that believes in itself, but is attained only by the reason's knowledge, by conceptual cognition'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Consciousness involves a bifurcation between the self-certain I and an object that albeit it is an object of the mind has no special affinity to the mind or to the I and has a content that is apparently quite different from and not determined by the mind. This bifurcation results from the appearance of the mind’s essence, its manifestation of the essence in consciousness of objects. The mind’s Existenz (literally stepping forth), consult §403, and hence similar to its Erscheinung, literally shining forth, consult §413, is finite in that it is bounded or limited by alien objects. The goal of the mind is to bridge this gulf by a transformation both of the I and of its object. The elevation of self-certainty to truth means, as Hegel will go on to explain, the sublation of this defect.

In ordinary German there is a distinction drawn between gewiss and wahr, as in ordinary English there is a distinction drawn between certain and true, as in I am not quite certain but I think it’s true. But Hegel’s point is that when one is certain of something or thinks that it is certain one says that it or a subjective state (ein Subjektives) corresponding to it, is true. If I am certain that this lily is white I say it is true that this lily is white and if I am certain that I exist I say it is true that I exist. Hegel on the other hand denies that the statement or belief that this lily is white is true, for the reason that its content is trivial or bad and ultimately in some manner contradictory, consult 'Encyclopaedisa Logic §172. Such is rhe case with self-certainty also, the mind is certain of being together with itself (bei sich selber zu sein) and also certain of being related to something other than itself. The contradiction is not just between self-certainty and the object but between two opposite certainties and this makes it look more like a standard contradiction than it initially does. The problem is not that these certainties are not true in the ordinary sense, they are in a way because the mind is both together with itself and related to an other but this is because the mind itself is at this stage in a self-contradictory condition and this precludes the mind and its own certainties about itself from being true in Hegel’s sense. The case is similar to the claim of Catullus (84 – c. 54 BC) that he hated and loved the same woman, Lesbia, at the same time. Odi et amo:

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.

Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.

I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

He is certain that he hates her and certain that he loves her, his certainties are doubless true in the ordinary sense but they are not true in Hegel’s sense since they contradict each other, correctly describing a mind that is itself in a contradictory state. Neither Catullus’ condition nor that of consciousness seems much like a standard contradiction, Hegel’s colloquial expression for that is wooden iron as ours is a square circle. ('Therefore, if one speaks of the limits of reason, this is worse than it would be to speak of wooden iron'. §441). It is more a tension or conflict but there is maybe a suggestion that just as for standard truth the subjective state and the object must agree hence Hegelian truth requires the agreement of subject and object but Hegel does not stress this parallel here. As to why such a contradiction has to be sublated the standard view is that a contradiction should be eliminated since it cannot be true in the standard sense and Hegel’s retort is that it is because it is not true in Hegel’s sense but he adds that the contradiction itself contains the urge to resolve itself. Catullus’s contradiction seems to involve an uncomfortable instability that calls for resolution, so does consciousness’s if we see its problem as for instance having an object that is quite alien and unintelligible to it. The contradiction is to be resolved by a convergence of the subject and the object, the subject becomes objective, the object ceases to be alien and becomes wholly mine. On reason that believes in itself consult §393, on the self-conscious reason of the European mind, on reason’s knowledge (Wissen) and conceptual cognition (begreifenden Erkennen), consult §§437–9, and 465–8.

'Lady in White Dress on Sofa', Georges Croegaert (1848 – 1923)

§417

'The stages of this elevation of certainty to truth are mind as (a) consciousness in general, which has an object as such, (b) self-consciousness, for which I is the object, (c) unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, where the mind intuits the content of the object as itself and intuits itself as determined in and for itself;-reason, the concept of mind.'

'Zusatz. The three stages of the rise of consciousness to reason indicated in the above Paragraph are determined by the power of the concept, active in the subject and in the object alike, and can therefore be considered as three judgements. But as we already remarked earlier, the abstract I, mere consciousness, as yet knows nothing of this. Consequently when the non-!, which initially counts for consciousness as independent, is sublated by the power of the concept at work in it, when the object is given the form of a universal, of an internality, instead of the form of immediacy, externality, and individuality, and when consciousness receives this recollection into itself, then the I's own internalization, which comes about in just this way, appears to it as an internalization of the object. Only when the object has been internalized into the I and when consciousness has in this way developed into self-consciousness, does mind know the power of its own internality as a power present and active in the object. Thus what in the sphere of mere consciousness is only for us, the onlookers, in the sphere of self-consciousness becomes for the mind itself. Self-consciousness has consciousness for its object, hence confronts it. But at the same time consciousness is also preserved as a moment in self-consciousness itself. Self-consciousness necessarily goes on, therefore, to confront itself with another self-consciousness by repulsion of itself from itself and in this to give itself an object which is identical with it and yet at the same time independent. This object is initially an immediate, individual I. But when it is freed from the form of one-sided subjectivity still clinging to it and conceived as a reality pervaded by the subjectivity of the concept, consequently as Idea, then self consciousness abandons its opposition to consciousness and advances to a mediated unity with it and thereby becomes the concrete being-for-self of the I, the absolutely free reason that recognizes in the objective world its own self'.

'It hardly needs to be noted that reason, which in our exposition appears as the third and last term, is not merely a last term, a result emerging from something alien to it, but is, on the contrary, the foundation of consciousness and selfconsciousness, therefore the first term, and by sublation of these rwo one-sided forms it proves to be their original unity and truth'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

In §416Z reason is presented as the solution to the contradiction between self-certainty and certainty of the object while here the procedure begins with consciousness of an object (Gegenstand), then moves to self-consciousness, and concludes with the unity of the two. Reason is the concept of mind in the sense that it is the fully developed mind, the full-grown oak-tree rather than the acorn or the sapling, and here concept (Begriff ) is roughly equivalent to Idea (Idee), in contrast to the use of concept discussed in §383. As to why the mind intuits the content of the object as itself but intuits itself not as the object but as determined in and for itself, the mind is now determinate, not merely I-awareness and yet it is determined independently, not merely a mirror-image of the object, the mind is the dominant partner in the subject–object relationship.

Consult §415: ‘the progressive logical determination of the object is what is identical in subject and object’. The stages are judgements (Urteile: original divisions) since the concept is divided into two terms, the subject and the object. and consult §415. §413, 414, 415, attend to the distinction between what we know and what consciousness or the I knows. At first the object is a sensory individual, and is hence with good reason considered as independent of the I (consult §418). Gradually but more particularly in §§422–3, the sensory object is considered as an expression of universals - force, laws, and so on - which constitute its internality or inner nature, a recollection (Erinnerte: recollected, but also ‘nternalized: consult §§401, 406) that consciousness receives. The I too undergoes a parallel internalization (Innerlichwerden, literally becoming internal), because in general the subject and the object mirror each other but the I considers its own internalization as an internalization (Innerlichmachung, literally making internal) of the object. That is to say, the I does not appear to itself as undergoing an internalization, it attributes the internalization to the object alone. The text might alternatively mean that the I regards its own internalization as brought about by the object. Roughly speaking the I considers the theoretical entities that emerge (laws, and so on) as empirical discoveries, rather than as its own contributions to the object by way of the concept active in both the subject and the object hence the I does not consider itself as having undergone any essential internalization apart from whatever it needs to register its discoveries about the object.

Through a transition discussed in §423 the object becomes the I and consciousness becomes self-consciousness. There follow four steps. First, self-consciousness has consciousness as its object (Gegenstande), it both confronts and involves consciousness. Second, by self-repulsion self-consciousness confronts another self-consciousness as its object (Objekt), an immediate, individual I. These two steps correspond to stage (b) in the passage. Third, this object loses its one-sided subjectivity that is to say its exclusive I-hood and is conceived as Idea, that is to say as reality pervaded by the non-one-sided subjectivity of the concept. Fourth, now that the object of consciousness is pervaded by the concept, self-consciousness no longer opposes consciousness, it unites with it, not immediately, but in a manner mediated by the third step. Self-consciousness is no longer just the self-contained, exclusive I that cannot accommodate consciousness and its object, it is the concrete being-for-self of the I, reason that recognizes (erkennenden) itself in the world. Steps three and four correspond to stage (c) in the passage. The first step lands us with a difficulty, granted that self-consciousness has consciousness as its object, why must it confront (stellt sich gegenüber) it, stand in opposition (Gegensatze) to it? There is ambiguity in Gegenstand (object, but literally standing against). Is this merely a revival of the contradiction between I-awareness and object-awareness discussed in §416 or is there more to it? But remember the youth of §396 whose growth to adulthood seems to require opposition to the world he finds before him. The second step involves a special difficulty: why is it necessitated (daher, ‘therefore’) by step (1)? Perhaps Hegel’s train of thought is this: since self-consciousness is dissatisfied with consciousness, yet still involves it, it needs an object that is as little like an ordinary object of consciousness, i.e. as much like itself, as possible. This too reminds us of youth. Youths need companions, rivals, lovers, and so on. The third step is also difficult: how does the awareness of another I necessitate (or facilitate) the conceptualization of ‘reality’? The youth in §396 gradually comes to understand and accept the world in which he finds himself. This world is a world shared with others, including earlier others who have already structured the world in an intelligible way. Conceptualization is a collective enterprise. The fourth step coheres naturally with the third. Self-consciousness, united with consciousness, is concrete, not abstract, and ‘being-for-self ’ or actualized, not simply in itself, or potential.

Consult §387 on the centrality of reason’ (Vernunft) to the mind. That the last term (das . . . Letzte) is also the first term (das Erste), propelling the movement by which it is reached, is a fundamental schema for Hegel, corresponding to the idea that the third term is a restoration of the first on a higher level: consult §381. And so for instance the full-grown oak realizes its concept, having sublated the onesided stages of acorn, sapling, and so on. And yet the concept is also embedded in the acorn and propels the growth of the tree and hence the concept is the first term as well as the last.

'The White Dress', 1901, Thomas Wilmer Dewing.

( a ) CONSCIOUSNESS AS SUCH

(i) Sensory Consciousness

§418

'Consciousness is initially immediate consciousness, its relation to the object accordingly the simple, unmediated certainty of it; the object itself is therefore similarly determined as immediate, as being and reflected into itself, further as immediately individual;-sensory consciousness'.

'Remark: Consciousness as relationship involves only the categories belonging to the abstract I or to formal thinking; and these are, for it, determinations of the object (§415). Sensory consciousness is therefore aware of the object only as a being, a something, an existing thing, an individual, and so on. It appears as the richest in content, but it is the poorest in thoughts. That wealth of filling is constituted by determinations of feeling; they are the material of consciousness (§414), the substantial and qualitative element, that the soul, in the anthropological sphere, is and finds within itself The reflection of the soul into itself, I, separates this material from itself, and gives it initially the determination of being.-Spatial and temporal individuality, the here and the now, as I have determined the object of sensory consciousness in the Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 25 ff., strictly belongs to intuition. Here the object is initially to be taken only in accordance with the relationship which it has to consciousness, namely something external to consciousness, and is not yet to be determined as external within itself, or as being outside itself'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The subject, object, and the relation of subject to object are parallel to each other: consult §417. Hence all three are immediate and not reached by inference or by any other roundabout route. The object is determined as just being (seiender) and as reflected into itself, that is, cut off from other things, self-contained, and so immediate in the sense that it is not mediated, produced or affected, by anything else. Elsewhere, individuality is mediated, derived from universality and particularity:

'The Concept as such contains the moment of universality, as free equality with itself in its determinacy; it contains the moment of particularity, or of the determinacy in which the Universal remains serenely equal to itself; and it contains the moment of singularity, as the inward reflection of the determinacies of universality and particularity. This singular negative unity with itself is what is in and for itself determined, and at the same time identical with itself or universal'.

- 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §163

But also elsewhere universality is mediated, while discrete individuals are what is immediately given, a sensory given whose essential feature is individuality:

'If we take thinking according to the most obvious notion of it, then it appears (a) first in its ordinary subjective significance, as one spiritual activity or faculty side by side with others such as sensation, intuition, imagination, etc., desire, volition, etc. What it produces, the determinacy or form of thought, is the universal, the abstract in general. Thus, thinking as an activity is the active universal, and indeed the self-actuating universal, since the act, or what is brought forth, is precisely the universal. Thinking represented as a subject is that which thinks, and the simple expression for the existing subject as thinker is 'I'.

- 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §20.

Consciousness is a relationship (Verhältnis), a sort of ratio or proportion in which subject and object stand to each other as in a numerical ratio, a : b, with no complex interaction between them. consult §413. Hence consciousness has to hand merely categories derived from its own side of the relationship, the abstract I, not categories presupposing interaction between entities, such as reflexion, causality, difference, and so on. In 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§122–3, existence is a complex category, involving mediation, and so, in 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §§124–5, is thing. And yet existing thing, existierenden Dinge, is here used in a non-Hegelian sense. Consciousness is aware of the object in other ways in addition, as green, furry, cute or whatever. But greenness and furriness and cuteness are not categories but at best representations, empirical specifications of general categories or thoughts and such representations as enter consciousness’s awareness here must conform to the thoughts available to consciousness which may exclude its regarding one and the same thing as both green and furry and cute as this involves a complex thought: consult §419. This rich content, but not the meagre categories applied to it, comes from the feeling soul: consult. §§403. And yet the feeling soul did not distinguish the determinations of feeling from itself and now the mind does so. It is reflected into itself as I and consequently separates off the material, giving it the determination of being [des Seins], a lowly category, but sufficient to distinguish an entity from itself.

In 'Phenomenology of Spirit' sensory consciousness refers to its object as here and as now and Hegel now goes bac on this as such terms belong to intuition (Anschauen), which is not dealt with until §449, where in the Zusatz Hegel explains the relation between intuition and sensory consciousness. The relationship (consult §418) of the object to consciousness is just to be something external to it, and this limits what can be said of the object. It is not external within itself (an ihm selbst) or being outside itself (Aussersichsein). If it were we could refer to one part of the object as here, in contrast to other parts of it or to other objects to which it is spatially related. We could locate the object as now, in contrast to other preceding and subsequent objects but the object is not regarded as spatially extended or as related to other things. Hence here and now cannot be applied to it and the reason for now excluding space and time from sensory consciousness is to distinguish consciousness in general from free mind and, more specifically, sensory consciousness from intuition (consult§§ 448–9), which is responsible for the projection of sensations into space and time. consult §449.

On the defect of sensory consciousness, consult §419. On perception, consult §§420–1 The object, though individual, is related (bezogen) to a universal in that it shares universal properties with other things. On the intellect, consult §§422–3 The universal is now incorporated into the individual object as an interior [Inneren] that is for itself. The transition from the object as the appearance of such an interior to the object as the living creature is to a degree rather sudden and brings together two ideas. First, the inner nature of the possibly inanimate object is viewed as something projected into the object by consciousness. Second, the inner nature of the living object is seen as similar to consciousness, even as a second consciousness, but not one supposes as projected into the object by the first consciousness.

Consult §418, where the content is derived from feeling (Gefühl) rather than sensation (Empfindung). On these words consult §402. And §400 'Encyclopaedia Logic' where the doctrine of immediate knowledge (Wissen) of God, etc. is associated with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 – 18190. Here and elsewhere the principle objection to immediate consciousness or knowledge of such things is not that the consciousness and its claims are unsupported and unreliable but that the content is inevitably diluted by the form in which it is accommodated. Why? An ethical intuitionist might profess to be immediately aware, for instance, that it is always wrong to lie. This is a universal claim, in the traditional sense of universal, not conspicuously individualized (Vereinzelten). Maybe intuitionism inevitably misses the interconnections or mediations between lying and other actions, institutions, and so on, that it can only focus on things piecemeal; that it cannot, or can only with difficulty, prmit exceptions to the general rule and that it can at the most give an account only of morality (Moralität), not of the rich texture of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). Immediate knowledge of God can only affirm that he is, etc., applying the categories to which sensory consciousness is restricted in virtue of its relationship to the object: consult §418. The properties of God are derived from feeling or sensation, and are equivalent to the content discussed in §418. A property (Eigenschaft) of a thing is a more complex category, that strictly oversteps the boundaries of immediate consciousness: the self-aware I is not a thing with properties (consult §419 and 'Encyclopaedia Logic', §125).

'Lise holding a bunch of wild flowers', 1867, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

§419

The sensory as something becomes an other, the reflection of the something into itself, the thing, has many properties, and as an individual in its immediacy has various predicates. The multiple individual of sensoriness thus acquires breadth - a variery of relations, determinations of reflexion, and universalities. - These are logical determinations posited by the thinker, i.e. here by the I. But for the I, as appearing, the object has undergone this change. When the object is determined in this way sensory consciousness is perception.

Zusatz. The content of sensory consciousness is in its own self dialectical. The content is supposed to be the individual; but by this very fact it is not an individual but every individual, and just by excluding from itself the Other, the individual content relates to another, shows that it goes beyond itself, that it is dependent on another, is mediated by it and has another within itself. The proximate truth of the immediately individual is therefore its relatedness to another. The determinations of this relation are what are called determinations of reflection, and the consciousness apprehending these determinations is perception.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

The sensory (Das Sinnliche) is the object of sensory consciousness. It is a something (Etwas) and so, by a process described in 'Encyclopaedia Logic', it ‘becomes an other’. When reflected back into itself, the something is a thing (Ding), which though still an individual (Einzelnes) has many properties and corresponding predicates: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic', §125. Properties and predicates are universal, not individual: they belong or apply, in principle at least, to indefinitely many things or individuals, not just to one. Thing and properties are determinations of reflexion because the thing is reflected back into itself out of its external properties, somewhat like the way in which a 'ray of light in a straight line impinging upon the surface of a mirror is thrown back from it’ ('Encyclopaedia Logic', §112Z. §125). So it is this reflection that makes it a single thing and not just a collection of properties. Relations are presumably the relations of the something to the other but it is not so evident whether the other is the properties of the thing or other things. Maybe it is both. A thing’s properties involve other things in various ways: the properties are shared with some other things ... a thing sometimes manifests and/or acquires its properties by interaction with other things; a thing’s boundaries are established by adjacent things with different properties. It is in addition not so evident why the immediate sensory object becomes a thing with properties. A parallel passage in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit'maes i more explicit. Maybe it is because the properties are required to establish the boundaries between the object and other entities.

And then we encounter some ambiguity. Für dasselbe als erscheinend hat der Gegenstand, etc. If appearing (erscheinend) qualifies the I (dasselbe), it maybe means that the I is only making its first appearance or that it is shining forth (consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §131), not reflected back on itself, so that it cannot recognize its own activity. If it qualifies the object then it means that the object appears to the I as having undergone the change, as in §415. We may presume that an actual change is not being reported here the idea is that the difference between a sensory object and a thing with properties is made by the thinking I, and, hypothetically, if a consciousness were to progress in the way described, it would change the object without recognizing its own handiwork.

On dialectical consult §415 where it contrasts with formal identity. The force of the word is more evident in the Hegelian application whereby the dialectical movement involves two steps. First the content is supposed (soll) to be the individual (das Einzelne), that is the individual that sensory consciousness focuses upon. But any and every individual can be referred to as the individual hence the object is not an (or one: ein) individual, but every individual. Second the individual content excludes the other and so has the other in itself, that is, specifying that I am conscious of this, not that, involves an essential reference to that as well as to this. As in §419 it is not so evident how this relation to an other (content or object) generates a thing with properties. The‘proximate truth (nächste Wahrheit) of something, x, is something else, y, such that (a) x involves some intrinsic contradiction, (b) y resolves this contradiction for the time being (though not ultimately, since y is likely to involve a contradiction of its own), and (c) there is nothing else, z, such that z resolves the contradiction of x as directly and obviously as, or more directly and obviously than, y does. For instance:

I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a bird, How absurd to swallow a bird! She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a cat, Imagine that, to swallow a cat! She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a dog, My, what a hog, to swallow a dog! She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a goat, Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat! She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a cow, I wonder how she swallowed a cow?! She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, I guess she'll die. I know an old lady who swallowed a horse, She's dead, of course!

The contradictory condition of the woman who swallowed a fly has its proximate truth in her swallowing a spider. She then swallowed a bird, the proximate truth of her spider. The bird is the proximate truth of the spider, not the fly, since we may suppose a bird would not eat the fly, only a spider does that, and, moreover, it is more obvious and easy to swallow a spider than a bird. The problem of condition (c) is simplified by Hegel in supposing that the proximate truth of x is not something we or consciousness need to look for among several candidates, but something that x becomes or turns into ... as if the spider were generated by the fly itself and then devoured its own progenitor. It is, according to Hegel, not Hegel himself who produces dialectical arguments; the subject matter is intrinsically dialectical: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §81.

'Woman in White', 'La Nichée', 1879, Eva Gonzalès

(b) Perception

§420

'Consciousness, having passed beyond sensoriness, wants to take the object in its truth, not as merely immediate, but as mediated, reflected into itself, and universal. The object is thus a combination of sensory determinations and extended thought-determinations of concrete relationships and connections. Hence the identity of consciousness with the object is no longer the abstract identity of certainty, but determinate identity, an awareness'.

'[Remark] The more specific stage of consciousness at which Kantian philosophy conceives the mind is perception, which is in general the standpoint of our ordinary consciousness and more or less of the sciences. The sensory cenainties of individual apperceptions or observations form the starring-point; these are supposed to be elevated to truth, by being considered in their relation, reflected upon, generally by becoming, in accordance with determinate categories, at the same time something necessary and universal, experiences'.

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

‘To perceive is wahrnehmen, and perception is here the infinitive used as a verbal noun: das Wahrnehmen. Nehmen is to take, and wahr is true hence Hegel takes wahrnehmen to mean something like to take truly, in its truth. As it happens, the wahr in Wahrnehmen derives from an obsolete noun meaning attention, heed, and is not related to wahr, true. So wahrnehmen originally meant take heed of, which explains why it also means, in current German, look after, protect. Because of this putative connection between perception and truth, Hegel here downplays the chief feature of perceptionthat a single thing has many properties and brings in more advanced scientific ideas that really belong to the intellect and hence to §§422–3: and consult §420.

Identity (Identität) is used in a loose sense for a ind of identity in difference. Consciousness and its attitude to its object vary in accordance with the nature of the object: consult. §418. Gewissheit, certainty, and Wissen, awareness or knowledge, are near relatives yet Wissen is the nominalized infinitive of wissen that can be used for knowing about something, etc., so is more suited for knowledge of a complex thing and its properties.

Apperception was brought in by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) to distinguish selfconscious perception from passive sensation. Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) distinguished between empirical and transcendental apperception whereby empirical apperception is the unity of our mental experience as we observe it, transcendental apperception is the intellectual activity that makes this unity possible. However, apperceptions (Apperzeptionen), and observation (Beobachtungen), are here closer to the objects of sensory certainty, and to what Kant designates intuitions (Anschauungen), than to perception in Hegel’s or Kant’s sense. They are transmuted into experiences, the objects of perception, by the application to them of categories, etc. Necessary and universal refer not simply to an individual object of perception, but also to the necessary laws, etc., which on Hegel’s and Kant’s view, need to govern all our experience if we are to perceive an individual, objective thing: consult §420. Hence ordinary consciousness of things is not sharply distinct from the sciences that study the interconnections between things.

Hegel distinguishes between show (weisen) and demonstrate (erweisen). Perception involves not just the ability to attribute qualities perceived by different senses to a single object (a step taken by ordinary consciousness), but scientific explanation of the object’s internal unity in terms of for instance force (Kraft) and of the object’s relations to other things by law-like generalizations. To demonstrate things as true (die Dinge als wahr zu erweisen) is hence both to disclose the truth about things and to explain it by deriving it from laws about the interconnection of things. A demonstration in the sciences makes presuppositions, of laws, empirical facts, etc. So demonstration can in principle go on ad infinitum. Philosophy advances from demonstration (Erweisen) to proof (Beweisen) of the absolute necessity of things, that is. a necessity that is not conditional upon or relative to any presupposition. But philosophy cannot dispense with experience. Things have to be experienced empirically and demonstrated by the sciences, before philosophy can prove their absolute necessity. Hegel undertakes this proof not in 'Philosophy of Mind' but in the 'Encyclopaedia Logic'I, the 'Science of Logic', and 'Philosophy of Nature': consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §147 on necessity.6. Consciousness sublates the individuality of things by disclosing them to have many universal properties (consult §419), to be expressions of a universal force, and to be connected with other things by universal laws. It posits them ideally by imbuing them with universal thoughts or categories. It therefore negates the externality of the object’s relation to the I by making the object as thought-laden as the I and, in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit' by the interplay between the many properties of a unitary thing and the many sense-organs of the unitary self. The I withdraws into itself , etc. in that it retrieves more of the categories implicit in itself. According to §418 it can only deploy these categories when it is no longer externally related to its object by a relationship.

'Sarah Curran playing the harp', William Beechey (1753 – 1839)

§421

'This connection of the individual and universal is a mixture, since the individual remains the being that lies at the foundation and remains firm in the face of the universal, to which it is nevertheless related. The connection is therefore a many-sided contradiction - in general berween the individual things of sensory apperception, which are supposed to constitute the foundation of universal experience, and the universality which is supposed rather to be the essence and the foundation,-berween individuality, which constitutes independence, taken in its concrete content, and the various properties which are on the contrary free from this negative bond and from one another, and are independent universal matters (see §§ 123 ff.) , and so on. This really comprises the contradiction of the finite running through all forms of the logical spheres, most concretely in so far as the something is determined as object (§§ 194 ff.)'

- 'Philosophy of Mind'

Hegel reverts to the main theme of perception, a single thing with many properties, consult §§419, 420. Perception involves two contradictions that are species of a third more general type of contradiction: First, experience sets out from empirical observations of individuals, and upon this foundation (Grund) bases its claims about universal properties, forces, laws, and so on, but these universals are supposed to ground or constitute individual things. The individual things here are the sensory certainties of individual apperceptions, and so on of §420, not necessarily fully fledged things with properties, consult cf. §420. This contradiction is prima facie only apparent, sensory individual things and universality are each supposed to be the foundation but in different senses of the word. Individual things are the epistemic or epistemological foundation of the structure whereas universality is its ontological foundation. Second, the individual thing has independence or self-subsistence (Selbständigkeit), it stands on its own two feet in its concrete content not just as a bare individual. However, the thing has properties, it is not simply identical with its properties in the way that the something (consult §419), the object of sensory certainty, is identical with its quality: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §125. It can change its properties without ceasing to exist. It is relatively independent of its properties and, conversely, the properties are relatively independent of the thing. This leads to the notion that the properties of a thing are really types of stuff or matter ... scientists had postulated, for instance, electrical matter, magnetic matter and caloric or heat matter: consult 'Encyclopaedia Logic, §126, 'Philosophy of Nature', §§304–5, 334. Now it is the properties that are independent; the thing is just an aggregation of matters.

The pervasive contradiction of the finite is explained in 'Encyclopaedia Logic', §92Z. A finite entity has a boundary or limit (Grenze) that makes it what it is. A meadow of six acres, for instance, has a quantitative limit making it six acres and a qualitative limit making it a meadow, not a wood or a pond. The limit makes the reality (Realität) of the entity, but is also its negation: beyond the limit lies what the entity is not, and this too is bounded by the limit. This is why the thing is the negative bond of its properties. So the reality of a finite entity is in essence dependent on its other, on what it is not. Therefore a finite entity is susceptible to alteration, to becoming other than it is. In 'Encyclopaedia Logic' §194 the object (das Objekt) contrasts with the concept and Hegel looks into three increasingly satisfactory versions of objectivity as opposed to subjectivity: mechanism, chemism and teleology. Each of these versions involves intrinsic defects, such as that a mechanical object has distinct parts that have no affinity to each other, and these are overcome only by the Idea, the unity of concept and objectivity.

'The concern of philosophy has always been simply with the thinking cognition of the Idea, and everything that deserves the name of philosophy has always had at its foundation the consciousness of an absolute unity of what is valid for the understanding only in its separateness.-It is not j ust now that we can for the first time ask for a proof that the Idea is the truth; the whole preceding exposition and development of thinking contains this proof. The Idea is the result of this journey. But this result is not to be understood as if it were only mediated, i. e., mediated by something other than itself. Rather, the Idea is its own result, and, as such, it is immediate just as much as it is mediated. The stages of Being and of Essence, previously considered, and similarly those of the Concept, and of objectivity, while distinct from one another, are not something fixed and resting upon themselves; instead, they have proved to be dialectical, and their truth is only that they are moments of the Idea'.

- 'Encyclopaedia Logic', §213.

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Dedicated as always to my muse.🌹 Speaking of connecting the individual and the universal:

Sometimes you get so lonely

Sometimes you get nowhere

I've lived all over the world

I've lived every place

Please be mine

Share my life

Stay with me Be my wife

Sometimes you get so lonely

Sometimes you get nowhere

I've lived all over the world

I've lived every place

Please be mine Share my life

Stay with me

Be my wife

Sometimes you get so lonely

__________

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