selection one - Sound and Signifier

Meaning and Method of the Phenomenology / 23
We can call knowledge the concept and the true the object just
as well as we can call the true t;he concept and knowledge the
object, i.e., the object as it is for an other. There is nonetheless
always a difference, which is the heart of the development of the
figure : "The examination consists, in fact, in seeing whether the
concept corresponds to the object (or whether the object corresponds
to its concept)" (PE, I, 73-74; PC, 71; PM, 141). The
theory of knowledge is at the same time a theory of the object
of knowledge. Consciousness cannot be separated from what
for it is its object, from that which it takes to be the true. But if
consciousness is consciousness of the object,. it is also consciou.ness
of itself. These two moments lie in it and are different:
"[Consciousness] is consciousness both of what for it is the true
and of its knowledge of that truth." But these two moments are
related, and this relation, precisely, is what is called "experience,"
Consciousness tests its knowledge in that which it
takes to be true; and insofar as it is still finite consciousness, a
particular figure, it is constrained to go beyond itself. Its knowledge
of the true is changed when it discovers the inadequateness
present in that true. In its object it experiences itself, and
in its knowledge it experiences its object. In this manner, it
progresses of its own accord from one particular figure to
another without the philosopher, having to be anything but a
spectator who recollects the process.
Not only would our intervention be superfluous from the point of
view that concept and object, the measure and the matter to be
examined, are present in consciousness itself, but we are also
spared the trouble of comparing the two, of an examination in'
the strict sense of the word; so that, from -this point of view;
when consciousness examines- itSelf there remains for us only
to be mere spectators (PE, I, 74; PG, 72.; PM, 141).
We have already indicated that experience bears not only on
knowledge but also on the object, for this particular knowledge
is knowledge of an object. Consciousness tests its knowledge in
order to' render it adequate to that which it holds to be true-a
certain world posited as existing in-its elf-but, when its knowledge
changes, its object also changes. The latter had been the
object of a certain knowledge; this knowledge having become
other, the object also becomes other. In testing out its knowledge
of what it took as the in-itself, what it posited as being the
absolutely true, consciousness discovers the latter to have been
in-itself only for it. This, precisely, is the result of experience :