selection one - Sound and Signifier

16 / G E NE R A L IT I E S
knowledge is to say that it transcends itself, that it is in-itself
what it must become for-itself. "Consciousness is for itself its
own concept; it is therefore immediately the act of exceeding
the limited, and, when the limited pertains to it, the act of going
beyond itself" (PE, I, 7I; PG, 69; PM, I38). The positive and
the negative meanings of aufheben merge in a third meaning:
transcending. Consciousness is not a thing, a determinate
Dasein;. it is always beyond itself; it goes beyond, or transcends,
itself. This transcendental requirement constitutes the nature of
consciousness as such. Was this not the case in some respects
for Kantian philosophy'? If truth is defined as an accord between
subject and object, it is -not clear how this accord is ascertainable,
since representation cannot step out of itself to give proof
of its cbnformity or nonconformity to its object .. Yet if the
object is not posited beyond representation, truth loses its transcendental
signification for consciousness, while,' if this trariscendence
is absolutely maintained, representation is radically
cut off from its object. The immanence of the object in_common
consciousness on the one hand and radical transcen!ience on
the other equally make it impossible to pose the problem of
truth .. But for Kant, that which made the objectivity of the object
was i:l:nmanent not, to be sure, in common consciousness but in
transcendental consciousness. Thus, the object was transcendent
to common, or finite, consciousness but immanent in transcendental
consciousness. The problem of truth was shifted
away from the relation betw'een consciousness and its object to
the relation between common consciousness and that within
common consciousness that goes beyond it-transcendental
consciousness. Now every common consciousness is also a
transcendental consciousness, and every transcendental consciousness
is also necessarily a common consciousness; the first
is realized only in the second. This is to say that common consciousness
goes beyond itself; 'it transcends itself and becomes
transcendental consciousness. But the movement of transcending
itself, of going beyond itself, is typical of consciousness as
such. Every consciousness is properly more than it thinks it is,
and because of this its knowledge divides,: it is certainty (sub
jective ) and as such is contraposed to [itself as] truth (objective
). Thus, since it must continually go beyond itself knowledge
is disquieted. And this disquiet, which Hegel describes in
existential terms, is unassuaged so long as the end point of the ,
process is not reached, an end point set necessarily by the
"given" of the problem : "The goal is the point at which knowl-