Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:
131.
ARGUMENT:
empty abstractions of 'singleness' 'universality' 'essence' 'non-essential' - whose
interplay is conceptual understanding - are often called 'sound common sense'
philosophy recognizes them in their perceptual determinateness - whereas common
sense takes them for the truth - as substantial material content - in fact they hold sway
over it
the essentialities in fact run to and fro through all material and content
they are what the sensuous is as essence for consciousness - and it is through them
that the process of perception and its truth runs its course
this course of perceptual alteration constitutes everyday life and activity of
consciousness
in each single moment it is conscious only of this one determinateness - and then in
turn the opposite one
it does suspect their unessentiality - and resorts to the sophistry of asserting to be true
what is declared untrue
the nature of these untrue essences tries to bring together and thereby supersede the
thoughts of these non-entities
the understanding makes itself responsible for one thought in order to keep the other
one isolated - but the nature of the abstractions brings them together
it is sound common sense that is prey to these abstractions
it calls their deceptiveneess a semblance of the unreliability of Things
when the understanding separates what is essential from what is unessential - it does
not secure their truth but convicts itself of untruth
COMMENTARY:
these abstractions are based on nothing - that is there is no knowledge behind them -
they exist - Hegel's abstractions and anyone else's - as explanations of the relation of
consciousness to its object -
they are that is tools for organization - for procedure and ultimately for action
consciousness which has no basis in itself manufactures categories to function as basis
- as foundation -
the object as unknown is not diminished by these efforts - it remains unknown and for
this reason the categories hoisted onto it never sit with any authority -
they are infected by the nature of the thing - that is consciousness is aware even as it
uses such concepts - that they have no foundation - that they are just responses to the
unknown - and thus finally without basis
it is not that consciousness is involved in a conflict of truth over its abstractions - one
minute true - the next false -
the truth is just that consciousness knows it does not know - there is no conflict here
and truth is what functions - is what enables - clearly there will not be no end to such
an endeavour - and whatever is useful to this enterprise will find its place
its dangerous to speculate about the nature of common sense - but in my view what
common sense points to is conceptual openness
absolutes tend to be the refuge of insecurity - the trick is to underdstand that insecurity
is the grain of being - that it is the essential intrigue of conscious being
