THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

experience in which certain things are presented to us. By contrast, judgment is an active
process, one that we must initiate.
In perception we seem to be immediately aware of various objects, of tables,
chairs, rocks, birds, and trees. This visual experience of the world, and of the
objects in the world, does not seem to rest upon our own cognitive activity. On
this initial impression, perceptual or sensory awareness presents us with various
discrete objects. It seems that awareness of these discrete objects precedes the
acts of judgment, which then synthesize or analyze that which is given to the
mind as discrete. On this initial impression, it seems that experience or the world
presents us with a discrete plurality, not with an undifferentiated manifold.
In contrast to this initial impression, Hegel’s account of judgment rests upon the
crucial claim that judgment does not begin with anything discretely given to it. In this
Appendix, I will not exhaustively defend this claim, for the issues involved are complex.
However, I will consider Hegel’s claim that even the most basic forms of perceptual
awareness involve conceptual content. I will examine this claim within the context of
Hegel’s more general view that all mental phenomena – including emotions and
instinctive urges – already have conceptual structure. I will also consider some of
Hegel’s reasons for these claims. In Section 5.2 I will examine various passages where
Hegel insists that even the most basic levels of perceptual or sensory awareness contain
conceptual structure, and in Sections 5.4 through 5.9 I will examine a kind of argument
for accepting this account of basic perceptual or sensory awareness.
5.2) Textual Support
Throughout his philosophy, Hegel insists that implicit conceptual structure, and
thus also implicit conceptual activity, permeates all aspects or modes of our mental life.
Conceptual activity structures our most basic sentient awareness and emotional
affectedness. The following passages from various texts present Hegel’s commitment to
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