Hegel described sense-certainty as turning into despair. It is phenomenal knowledge, which is related to appearances in the sense that they are illusions. By our lack of knowledge we learn that we were wrong when we actually begin to learn how something or someone really is. Sense-certainty is an empty universal. It is knowledge that you are unable to describe in words which causes this idea to vanish. I see sense- certainty as a never ending road. Even though we determine what an object is through relation and negation to our consciousness we can never desribe it fully which can never actually make us certain of what the truth is about the object. I believe that we can never fully be certain of anything since we base something on what it is not and what we know about it in our own minds a lot of the time and even if we learn how something works or learn more about something there are so many things to consider that we base it on what we believe in our minds/ perceive.
By inevitable mediation Hegel means that a "here" or "now", which is an object, is a constant movement of moments and is not immediate knowledge. As Hegel says in paragraph 108, "Rather, since the point is pointed out as existing, the pointing out points to itself as showing itself to be not immediate knowledge but rather a movement from out of the many “here's” which were meant and a movement into the universal “here,” which is a simple plurality of “here's” in the way that the daytime is a simple plurality of “now's”. This describes inevitable mediation. He is trying to say that for example saying it is night “now” we are pointing it out and that now gets crossed out for the “now” it is after the movement of time. For example, it was six at night when we first pointed out its night, at a different time the last now has been negated by the “now” now.
Sense- certainty leads us to talk about individual things in general instead of actually talking about the specific object is what hegel is trying to say. Hegel uses a great example of a piece of paper. You know what a piece of loose leaf paper is and some can say how it is made but can you really say how that specific one came to be and the truth of everything behind it?. We just start talknig about how paper is made in general but not about the specific paper in front of me. I interpret Hegel believing in what he is saying, we cant fully descibe an object so we can not be certain of the truth behind the object.
I never looked at here and now the way Hegel does until now. Looking at the concept of 'now' and combination of the here and now and how ambiguous it is. I agree with Hegel’s uncertainty but not that it leads to despair per se. Yes we have no true knowledge since we can’t exactly trust our senses, be that as it may we all do have a sense of time. Collectively we know (sorta) that time as being linear and the ‘now’ being a point in time, so that should give us some knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe ‘here’s’ are definitely less clear since, like Hegel states that it could all be an illusion of the senses. And since sensing things like the keys on this keyboard cannot be proven as being ‘here’, I guess any and all knowledge is therefore uncertain!