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Alexandru Petrescu
thereby represented. On the contrary, the arbitrariness of the relation
between the sign-image and the signified content increases the freedom
that both acquire. In signs, there is no “natural” bound (yet there is a
real, ontological bound, as we shall see) between the signifier and the
signified. The particular image of the sign (what is immediately intuitable
in it) is rather unimportant, for the sign knows its imediate being as
“sacrificed” to its own meaning. The sign is therefore the unity of an
immediate intuition (the intuited content) and a general, universal
independent presentation (the meaning content). As phantasy, Spirit
becomes existent; it
“makes itself be as a thing”.
It is important to remark that Hegel does not thereby say that Spirit is a
thing, one among other things. On the contrary, that Spirit makes itself
be as a thing means: Spirit can be said to be only in so far as it is actual,
namely only in so far as it manifests itself, objectivates itself (in signs, its
own traces in the world of things). How can the sign be said to be the
proper externalization of Spirit? To answer this question I will first try to
determine what is the proper nature of a sign in general; only on the
grounds of such a preliminary clarification the ontological sense that
Hegel ascribes to sign in the present context will become manifest.
As generally understood, the sign is a concrete representation of
something. The sign has therefore the character of showing or
indicating. The indicating peculiar to the sign is a specific kind of
referring, thus a specific relating of something to something else. Every
indicating, every reference is a relation; but not every relation is an
indicating. Two things might for instance stand in a certain merely spatial
relation, but this does not immediately mean that they thereby indicate
each other. My watch therefore is not by itself a sign for my ring (at least
until I take it to be so, but this would mean that their merely spatial
relatedness has already been sublated). What then is the specific kind of
reference or indicating-structure disclosed by signs in general? The
reference characteristic to a sign is a disclosing or revealing reference.
The sign reveals something about that which it signifies. That which it
signifies is not itself, but another, that which it is not. The sign itself
presents us with an absence. But now this absence is always a
determinate one, for each time each sign refers to something specific, to
its other, therefore, a mediated absence. The absence announced in a
sign is not an absolute, but merely a relative absence. A sign, as thing,
has always this twofold characteristic: being itself and being for another;
it knows itself to be a sign, to be in service for another.