For the chapter on Sense Certainty, it seems that Hegel believes that all sense certainty is mediate knowledge. It's not possible to have any immediate knowledge of an object. From his text, I think I understand why he thinks that but don't feel that it applies to all knowledge. Hegel's main examples are of the "this", "now", "here", and "I". Hegel will say that something is the now but at a different moment that object will be gone and something will take it's place. However both moments are still part of the "now" when sensed. The only thing that remains constant or by how Hegel puts it "Universal" is the actual moment of now.
I agree that we are always living in the "now" and that's the only time we have any sense certainty but I don't get how this applies to certain knowledge. One example I am thinking of is something like freedom. Isn't that a type of knowledge that is always there? Its not something that is an object we can sense normally. Would Hegel totally disregard this because its outside our senses? I wasn't sure how literal he meant sense-certainty. Another example is God. A normal person isn't always "here" but for the definition of God, it's always supposed to be "here". I wonder how Hegel would answer that kind of perspective?
Another thing that I don't really follow is the universality of these terms. For something that's always flowing and changing within it, a term like "this" or "now" doesn't appear to be consistent. In section (99) Hegel refers to the term "here" by saying "To this sense-certainty, since in itself it has proved that the universal is the truth of its object, pure being therefore remains as its essence, but not as immediate" This statement really confuses me because it sounds like that the term "here" is an object. So what makes it universal is the fact that "here" is a space that contains objects within it? To me it would make more sense if this was the case. It would be like having a box that never changes but everything inside it is always changes.
When it comes to sense-certainty as a whole, it almost sounds like Hegel is trying to explain a formula to me. All these terms are the variables(x and y) and objects are always the result but what they represent is what changes. The point being that x and y are always there. I don't know if that actually applies for other people but the way Hegel writes about these subjects is really cryptic to me and this is my method to trying to understand it.
Hegel claims that we do have some immediate knowledge of an object. At the beginning of ¶ 91 Hegel wrote in part, “to appear immediately as the richest knowledge”. However, according to Hegel, pure immediacy is what we can have a sense-certainty. In other words, to know “this” in pure immediacy is to have “sense-certainty” about the object. We become to be certain by mediating the relationship with the other. And the other will reflect back to us our certainty from what we are not in them. Therefore, by negating the other, that is to be conscious of what we are not within the other, we come to the universal of “sense-certainty.” In addition to being in pure immediacy “an example of it” ¶ 92 is needed. To have a model is important to be able to compare to “have sense-certainty.”
ReplyDeleteAn observation: I see a contradiction in this piece. You wrote that “it’s not possible to have any immediate. . .” and than you wrote that “The only thing that remains constant. . . is the actual moment of now.” Re: thi post my question to you is: Do you mean that “immediacy” is different than “moment of now”?
To me it sounds like they are separate things from what Hegel writes in the text. When I say the immediate, I am refering to whatever object is within the "moment of now". That's what is always changing. I am trying to say that the object in the moment is always different but the moment itself is always there. I gave an example in class that a defined space is always there represents the now and any objects that pass through the space represent the immediate knowledge Hegel is talking about. Apparently that was getting too complex but that's how I view it. Like I said in my post, how Hegel phrases this passage is really hard to grasp for me.
ReplyDeleteLike Kant, Hegel approaches space and time as purely relational. It is extremely confusing the way he explains it, but he purely means that here and now will change at every given moment. For example, right now the "here" for my computer is my lap, or the "now" for myself is the night. But writing this down and expressing it makes these truths untruths, because when we go back and reread it or someone else reads it, they are not true to this person. The "now" and "here" both change.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how the now can be constant as you say in your post because it is always changing. I do not see how the "here" or the "now" could ever remain constant.