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58
Alexandru Petrescu
Intelligence. This is no longer a merely passive retention, but one which
spontaneously (not fully arbitrary, yet still not completely free)
impregnates to the given content inner determinations pertaining to the
Spirit itself. Intelligence begins thereby to be active, for it can now “call
forth” (though, not yet willfully) a content which is already its own. This
recollected content, posited as Seinige (Spirit’s own) is called image
(Bild). Hegel feels the need to introduce this new term to designate the
new content. What is essentially, radically new about it is on the one
hand, in connection with the new inner spatio-temporal determinations
and, on the other hand, with the loss of “freshness”, “clarity” and “firmly
determined singularity” which characterizes the recollected content.
Hegel uses the metaphor of “Night” to designate the subconscious
reserve of Spirit, the moment of Aufhebung (meaning both preserving or
maintaining and putting something to an end and thereby overcoming it)
in relation to the immediately intuited. But there is still however a new
determination that the recollected object acquires; the object is no longer
merely what it is; rather it is as being mine (Spirit’s own “property”). It is
thereby no longer merely something external, merely alien to the Self; it
is rather what is familiar to it. It is that in which Spirit recollects itself; that
which Spirit reminds itself of; but equally, by reminding itself of the
object, Spirit reminds itself of itself. The being for self of the object is
thus in a preliminary fashion disclosed. The object is not merely what it
is – it equally is a preliminary (not yet determinate) indication of
something which it itself is not. In or through it, Spirit is directed upon
something else than the external content – upon itself.
This moment is of uttermost importance for whatever will be further
said about the imagination as sign-making phantasy, for in itself, this
moment of Erinnerung is implicitly whatever its following moments
present us explicitly with. What must be necessarily understood at this
point is that that which Spirit reminds itself of in recollection is not an
other to itself – but rather it is itself. The internalized content announces
that into which it has been immersed, its Being: the Night (incapable yet
to shine forth). At this level, Hegel says, Spirit does not yet voluntarily,
fully consciously select its images:
“Initially, therefore, I still have an imperfect control of the images
slumbering within the abyss of my inwardness, for I am unable to
recall them at will”.
The previous initial relation of indifference has been sublated in the
familiarity, which now unites the two. The two, content and I (being and
Being) are no longer indifferent to each other. The being counts /