Thought and Reality in Hegel's System

Thought and Reality in Hegel’s System/9close the important change that takes place between subject and objectas the knowing experience is traced through the various attitudes ofconsciousness. As Lasson aptly remarks in the introduction to his recentedition of the Phenomenology, the point of interest in the work isthe transition “from one relation of consciousness to the entire world ofbeing, to another such relation.” 7 Hegel’s purpose in this novel Introductionto Philosophy is not like Kant’s in the first of the Critiques,namely, to investigate the possibility and limitations of knowledge. Heaccepts knowledge and the knowing experience very much as it is acceptedby common-sense, and then proceeds to develop its implications.Passing dialectically from sensuous consciousness through self-consciousness,reason, spirit, and religion, he finally arrives at what seemsto him to be the true attitude of consciousness, the truth of the knowingexperience. This final result of the Phenomenology, which Hegel callsAbsolute Knowledge (das absolute Wissen), is thus his definition of thereal nature of knowledge; it is his final statement of the significance ofthe subject-object relation within concrete experience.It is very important to notice at the outset, and to keep constantly inmind, the fact that Hegel bases this conception of absolute knowledgedirectly and unequivocally upon our common knowing experience. Thispoint is so fundamental, and is so generally neglected by the critics, thatit needs emphasis even at the risk of digression. If there is wanted moreevidence than has already been adduced, it is not far to seek. In thePreface to the Phenomenology itself, we find an explicit statement tothe effect that there is no break between consciousness as it appears insensuous perception and in absolute knowing; and this very fact, Hegelargues, makes possible the transition from the lower to the higher stage.“The beginning of philosophy,” he says, “makes the presupposition ordemand that consciousness be in this element” (i.e., as the context indicates,in the ‘element’ of ‘absolute science,’ which is simply the point ofview of absolute knowledge). “But this element receives its completionand clearness only through the process of its development.... On its side,science demands of self-consciousness that it raise itself into this ether....On the other hand, the individual has a right to ask that science at leastlet down to him the ladder to this standpoint, that is, show him the standpointwithin himself.” 8 Furthermore, in the Introduction to the largerLogic we read: “Absolute knowledge is the truth of all modes or attitudesof consciousness.” 9 Finally, there is a passage in the smaller Logicwhich runs thus: “In my Phenomenology of Spirit... the method adopted