Pedro Alonso Lopez
28th January 2005, 22:32
Here is my interpetation (from an essay I wrote) of Hegel's idea of conciousness. Might be useful for anybody tackling Marx.
In the Introduction we are given a clear indication of what we are to take consciousness to be. In his own words:
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 .
Consciousness does not discriminate between them, they are all treated the same. The same consciousness will know if it has complete, ‘true’ knowledge with the object. For the object can only appear to consciousness as consciousness can know it. The examination thus moves on towards the distinction between the object in itself and the being of the object for consciousness.
The dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself – on its knowledge as well as on its object – is the sense that out of it the new and true object arises, is precisely, what is termed Experience .
Here we have Hegel outlining the dialectical process for us which is essential to
the project of the Phenomenology. Each step forward involves a dissolving of the previous step, what is known is Hegelian terminology as ‘determinate negation’. The reason it is not simply negation is that the previous step is not exactly negated in the traditional sense but still contains vestiges of truth. The realization of failure in these early stages is what Hegel terms ‘experience’. Each step is a logical one and T
he Phenomenology is grounding after all for his later work the The Science of Logic. He goes on to say that through experience we learn the untruth of the first concept by looking to some chance object and all we have of it is what ‘it is in and for itself’. The change in
4
the object is due to a change or transformation in consciousness itself. The object becomes whatever consciousness takes it to be. The object is reduced once it ‘passes into consciousness’ to what it becomes for knowledge. The ‘implicit nature’ becomes per se for consciousness. This is a transformation into a new mode of consciences different from what went before.
The final paragraph of the Introduction tells us that the experience which consciousness has of itself cannot but embrace the ‘entire system of consciousness’. In the progress to its ‘true form of existence’ consciousness will dispose of what is seen to be foreign to it and a position will be reached where the ‘appearance becomes identified with essense’. The exposition it engages on will coincide with this very point.
Once it is capable of grasping its own essence it will be able to understand Absolute knowledge itself . This final passage gives us the criteria in which the goal of Absolute knowledge which is the final objective of the Phenomenology of Spirit and shows that it requires a form of knowing in which both the knowing subject and the object to be known are Absolute. Thus the Introduction ends and we have an understanding of what Hegel means by experience leading us into the difficult journey that lies ahead for us in the actual body of work itself.
In the Introduction we are given a clear indication of what we are to take consciousness to be. In his own words:
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 .
Consciousness does not discriminate between them, they are all treated the same. The same consciousness will know if it has complete, ‘true’ knowledge with the object. For the object can only appear to consciousness as consciousness can know it. The examination thus moves on towards the distinction between the object in itself and the being of the object for consciousness.
The dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself – on its knowledge as well as on its object – is the sense that out of it the new and true object arises, is precisely, what is termed Experience .
Here we have Hegel outlining the dialectical process for us which is essential to
the project of the Phenomenology. Each step forward involves a dissolving of the previous step, what is known is Hegelian terminology as ‘determinate negation’. The reason it is not simply negation is that the previous step is not exactly negated in the traditional sense but still contains vestiges of truth. The realization of failure in these early stages is what Hegel terms ‘experience’. Each step is a logical one and T
he Phenomenology is grounding after all for his later work the The Science of Logic. He goes on to say that through experience we learn the untruth of the first concept by looking to some chance object and all we have of it is what ‘it is in and for itself’. The change in
4
the object is due to a change or transformation in consciousness itself. The object becomes whatever consciousness takes it to be. The object is reduced once it ‘passes into consciousness’ to what it becomes for knowledge. The ‘implicit nature’ becomes per se for consciousness. This is a transformation into a new mode of consciences different from what went before.
The final paragraph of the Introduction tells us that the experience which consciousness has of itself cannot but embrace the ‘entire system of consciousness’. In the progress to its ‘true form of existence’ consciousness will dispose of what is seen to be foreign to it and a position will be reached where the ‘appearance becomes identified with essense’. The exposition it engages on will coincide with this very point.
Once it is capable of grasping its own essence it will be able to understand Absolute knowledge itself . This final passage gives us the criteria in which the goal of Absolute knowledge which is the final objective of the Phenomenology of Spirit and shows that it requires a form of knowing in which both the knowing subject and the object to be known are Absolute. Thus the Introduction ends and we have an understanding of what Hegel means by experience leading us into the difficult journey that lies ahead for us in the actual body of work itself.