Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:
147.
ARGUMENT:
the inner world or supersensible beyond has come into being - it comes from the
world of appearance which has mediated it - appearance is its essence and its filling
the supersensible is the sensuous and the perceived posited as it is in truth
the supersensible is appearance qua appearance
the supersensible is not immediate sense certainty and perception
the world of appearance - is not the world of sense-knowledge and perception - but the
world as posited as superseded - as the inner world
it is often said the supersensible is not appearance - what is here understood as
appearance is not appearance - but the sensuous world as itself - the actual
COMMENTARY:
appearance is the relation of consciousness and its object - consciousness and non-
consciousness -
the middle term is appearance
appearance that is - is the unity of the internal and the external
and this unity becomes - is - the actual ground of consciousness and the external
world
it is where we begin - though in truth it is not the beginning
Hegel's view here is very strange - appearance as the supersensible - as the inner world
it is not the inner world
and it is not supersensible
the inner world is consciousness -
appearance is a relation between consciousness and the non-conscious
there is no supersensibility involved here
sensibility is the relation between
the sensible world is a relation
what is given in this relation is in the first instance unknown
the relation itself though is necessary
reflection - the operation of consciousness is the creation of characterization
it is in reflection that we have 'knowledge of'
or to be precise the positing of knowledge
knowledge as that which gives us something to go on with
in itself it is nothing but a reflex -
a reflex of consciousness -
in principle no different to a reflex of the body
just the essential - natural - primitive action of the unity in action
