Hegel's Phenonenology of Spirit:
120.
ARGUMENT:
the diverse aspects for which consciousness accepts responsibility are specifically
determined - white is white only in opposition to black etc.
and the Thing is one precisely by being opposed to others
it is not by being a One that a thing excludes others from itself - for to be a One is the
universal relating of self to self - it is through its determinateness that it excludes
others
things are therefore in and for themselves determinate - they have properties by which
they distinguish themselves
the Thing has a number of properties
in the first place the thing is what is true - it possesses intrinsic being - and what is in
it is the thing's essence
secondly - the determinate properties do not exist on account of other things - and for
other things - but in the Thing itself - they are determinate properties in it because they
are a plurality of reciprocally self-differentiating elements
they exist in and for themselves
the Thing is the Also - or the universal medium in which many properties subsist apart
from one another
COMMENTARY:
my argument is that pre-consciousness - what exists is unknown - and that therefore
the object of knowledge - is the unknown
consciousness reveals the world - as the revelation of consciousness
so yes the sky is blue the grass is green and the farmer and his tractor are coming up
the road
what we perceive is the revelation of consciousness
now the question - can we say that the world of veridical perception is a true account
of the nature of the world?
can we start at least with this assertion?
my answer is that we don't know -
what we do know is that such a world is revealed in consciousness - it is what we
know - because of consciousness -
outside of consciousness - or let us say in terms of some other form of consciousness -
some other revelation - the world may look entirely different to how we see it
or indeed it could be that how we see it just is the way it is -
the point is we can't know the answer here -
so we are wise to regard the deliverances of consciousness for just what they are -
deliverances of consciousness
why a thing is white and has certain shape or taste - why that focus of consciousness
yields those descriptions is not a question we can finally answer - we only have these
deliverances - and the explanation that they are not properties of the thing - but rather
descriptions of it given in consciousness
now we may wish to explain this and account for it - and to this end sciences have
been developed
clearly our perception of the world is determined by our physicality - that is the forms
of that perception are determined by the body
consciousness as the internal dimension of a two-dimensional being operates through
the agency of the body
this though is not to argue consciousness is of the external dimension - that it is
physical -
awareness is not an external property - it is therefore not a physical manifestation
even so we can understand something of the way consciousness receives the external
world through an understanding of its immediate external - the body
the limit though that science has to recognize here is that it is only ever a reflective
argument - that is an argument after awareness -
understanding the surface world (the body and beyond) is not to explain the internal
dimension
the internal dimension is the seeing - it is the seeing that is never seen
we do of course reflect on the nature of consciousness - but again this is awareness
holding itself as object -
the subject truly cannot be the object - so any internal focus of consciousness will only
reveal consciousness
the point being that consciousness though it reveals - is never revealed
