Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:
104.
ARGUMENT:
sense-certainty as a whole stands firm in itself as immediacy
its truth preserves itself as a relation that remains self-identical and makes no
distinction between the essential and the non-essential
I take no notice of the fact that another 'I' sees the Here as not a tree - or that I myself
at another time take the Here as not-tree, the Now as not-day
on the contrary I am a pure act of intuiting
I do not compare Here and Now themselves with one another - but stick firmly to one
immediate relation - the Now is day
COMMENTARY:
consciousness moves in relation to its object
it is no surprise therefore that the object has no permanence in consciousness
and as we cannot 'see' outside of consciousness
we cannot establish the non-conscious nature of the object of consciousness
we understand there is an external dimension - and therefore its 'inhabitants' are not
internal - they are of a different dimension
consciousness is though the means of knowing
so our understanding of the external is consciousness dependent
out of this - if we are to speculate on the nature of the object in itself - we can only -
and as a matter of logic - recognize it as that which is unknown
if an entity has an internality it is conscious - if it has an internality - it necessarily has
an external dimension
the internal exists in the external
the external and the internal are therefore two dimensions of the one thing
in a logical sense we can understand the internal as basically a reflection of the
external
we can say what we apprehend in consciousness is the truth of that which is outside of
consciousness
but if so - it is a truth we can never be certain of
it is an uncertain truth
