Hegel's Phenemenology of Spirit:
163.
ARGUMENT:
infinity or this absolute unrest of pure movement - is being - is the soul of all that has
gone before -
it is in the inner world that it has freely and clearly shown itself
appearance or the play of forces displays it - but it is as explanation that it first freely
stands forth
and in being finally an object of consciousness - as that which it is - consciousness is
thus self-consciousness
the Understanding's 'explanation' is primarily the only description of what self-
consciousness is
the reason why 'explaining' affords so much satisfaction is just because in it
consciousness is so to speak communing directly with itself - enjoying only itself -
although it seems to be busy with something else - it is in fact occupied only with
itself
COMMENTARY:
it is very disappointing to finally get to self-consciousness in Hegel's argument - and
to get nothing from him
it appears that he does not see that the question of how the inner world of
consciousness becomes an object of consciousness - is the question that must be
answered in any theory of consciousness
it is not even on his radar - as if there is no question here
and this is the central issue of consciousness - the nature of self-consciousness -
how does the subject hold itself as object - how can the subject be object?
what kind of thing can be subject and object - how can we explain or comprehend
this?
to simply say - consciousness exists as 'object consciousness' - and thus consciousness
is self-consciousness - is at the best breathtakingly naive
in what sense - how - does consciousness exist as an object?
we have no account form Hegel on this issue
his next point is that the understanding's explanation of consciousness is the only
description of what self-consciousness is -
so on this view - the understanding is something other than consciousness
to be cruel here you could say therefore the understanding is by definition - non-
conscious - and this of course is ridiculous
or the alternative is - that the understanding is consciousness - and therefore
consciousness' explanation of itself is the only description of self consciousness
OK - so how does consciousness 'describe itself" - what is being described?
and again - how is that consciousness can regard itself as the object of consciousness?
these are all questions Hegel's seems not to have recognized - or if recognized decided
not to address
and everything depends on the answers here
finally it's clear that he has put all this in the too hard basket - and just taken the
apparently easy way out - an unexplained solipsism -
'it is in fact only occupied with itself'
as I said this is a sad chapter in Hegel's discussion
I was really hoping he would take this issue on - instead he has just sidestepped it
I am going to jump in here and put some conclusions -
consciousness is self-consciousness -
to be aware one must be aware that one is aware
so this is just the nature of consciousness - of awareness
by its nature consciousness is 'self-illuminating' - and this is where we begin
if so consciousness - does not become self-conscious
the categories of subject and object - of knower and known are constructs of
consciousness deigned to give some logical foundation to our dealings with the
unknown that is appearance
consciousness recognizes itself as internality - it is thus aware of its meta place
the world outside of consciousness is the external world
the external world is the object of consciousness
consciousness recognizes itself as knower -
the idea that consciousness is known - that you can know yourself - is to confuse
subject and object
consciousness does not - cannot know itself
'itself' is internal - the known is external -
consciousness is not external to itself
consciousness is aware of itself - aware of itself as unknown
this is the essential nature of consciousness - that it recognizes itself as unknown
in fact it sees itself as unknowable
the category of knowability does not apply to consciousness - only to that which is
outside of consciousness
awareness of self is simply and only the awareness of internality
and this awareness is not an awareness of something - of substance - it is an awareness
of dimension -
which is simply to say it is an awareness of logic - of logical form
that is consciousness' awareness of 'itself'
my view is that the world of appearance is the relation of consciousness and its object
that this relation is the common ground of conscious and non-conscious being - it is
the working reality
and so it is the case that consciousness reflects on what is given in this working reality
and what is it that is given?
I am going to put something quite radical in answer to this -
my view is that the relation of consciousness and the non-conscious is the common
reality that is image -
the relation of mind to its object results in image
the ground that consciousness comes to in the second moment is the world of image
I say this here to get to the fact that image is not a characteristic of the internal - and it
is not a characteristic of the external - not that such a view would generally need to be
argued
image is the relation
image is the reality of the relation of the conscious and non-conscious
therefore as object the image is reflected on by consciousness
it is this reflective action that transfers the image as reflection to consciousness
so it will be asked - if so what is the internality of consciousness?
most would say it is the world of image - at the very least
the internality of consciousness is thought
and thought is without image
imagination is the action of thought in the world of image
it is consciousness' dealing with the world of image
and what can we say of the nature of the this relational world - this unity of the
conscious and non-conscious?
it is not to be confused with the internal or with the external -
so how is it to be characterized?
my answer is both ways -
it's really the Blues Brother's joke - "what kind of music have you got here?" "we got
both kinds - country and western"
the point is - we can only explain the unity in terms of thought or non-thought
in terms of mind or matter
the unity that is the unity of mind and matter is not definable - it is unknown
