THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

unity to be analyzed, not as a plurality to be synthesized. Thus judgment does not rest
upon a given, articulated plurality. Basic perceptual awareness does not present us with a
given (pre-judgmental) articulated plurality. Moreover, if we try to conceive what is
given pre-consciously to the mind prior to the acts of judgment that make perceptual
awareness possible, even this pre-conscious given cannot be construed as an articulated
plurality.
Hegel defines the most basic act that produces awareness as the act of attention
(Aufmerksamkeit), and he claims that apart “from such attention there is nothing for the
mind.” 196 Hegel describes the act of attention in three different ways. On the surface,
these different accounts of the process may not seem related. Our first task, therefore, is
to clarify the relation between these three different accounts. This clarification should
help us to see (a) that even the most minimal levels of perceptual awareness require an
explicitly cognitive act of attention, and (b) that attention ultimately rests upon an act of
division.
5.4) The First Description of Attention
Hegel first describes attention as the process whereby we distinguish the object
from our self, and, at the same time, relate it to our self. In this first account of attention,
we see the basic structure of judgment. This should not be surprising, since the structures
of judgment simply present the basic structures of thought. Here the basic structure of
judgment does not reflect the structure of an object, but rather it grounds the more basic
196 Philosophy of Mind, paragraph 448.
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