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Consciousness will determine its relation to otherness or its object in various ways according as it is at one or
other stage in the development of the world-spirit into self-consciousness. How the world-spirit
immediately finds and determines itself and its object at any given time, or how it appears to itself, depends
on what it has already come to be, or on what it already implicitly and inherently is.
Reason is the certainty of being all reality. This its inherent nature, this reality, is still, however, through and
through a universal, the pure abstraction of reality. It is the first positive character which self-consciousness
per se is aware of being, and ego is, therefore, merely the pure, inner essence of existence, in other words, is
the Category bare and simple. The category, which heretofore had the significance of being the inmost
essence of existence--of existence indifferent to whether it is existence at all, or existence over against
consciousness--is now the essential nature or simple unity of existence merely in the sense of a reality that
thinks. To put it otherwise, the category means this, that existence and self-consciousness are the same being,
the same not as a matter of comparison, but really and truly in and for themselves. It is only a onesided,
unsound idealism which lets this unity again appear on one side as consciousness, with a reality per se over
against it on the other.
But now this category, or simple unity of self-consciousness and being, has difference within it; for its very
nature consists just in this--in being immediately one and identical with itself in otherness or in absolute
difference. Difference therefore is, but completely transparent, a difference that is at the same time none. It
appears in the form of a plurality of categories. Since idealism pronounces the simple unity of
self-consciousness to be all reality, and makes it straightway the essentially real without first having
comprehended its absolutely negative nature--only an absolutely negative reality contains within its very
being negation, determinateness, or difference--still more incomprehensible is this second position, viz. that
in the category there are differences, kinds or species of categories. This assurance in general, as also the
assurance as to any determinate number of kinds of categories, is a new assurance, which, however, itself
implies that we need no longer accept it as an assurance. For since difference starts in the pure ego, in pure
understanding itself, it is thereby affirmed that here immediacy, making assurances, finding something given,
must be abandoned and reflective comprehension begin. But to pick up the various categories again in any
sort of way as a kind of happy find, hit upon, e.g. in the different judgments, and then to be content so to
accept them, must really be regarded as an outrage on scientific thinking.(5) Where is understanding to be
able to demonstrate necessity, if it is incapable of so doing in its own case, itself being pure necessity?
Now because, in this way, the pure essential being of things, as well as their aspect of difference, belongs to
reason, we can, strictly speaking, no longer talk of things at all, i.e. of something which would only be
present to consciousness by negatively opposing it. For the many categories are species of the pure category,
which means that the pure category is still their genus or essential nature, and not opposed to them. But they
are indeed that ambiguous being which contains otherness too, as opposed to the pure category in its
plurality. They, in point of fact, contradict the pure category by this plurality, and the pure category must
sublate them in itself, a process by which it constitutes itself the negative unity of the different elements. Qua
negative unity, however, it puts away from itself and excludes both the diverse elements as such, and that
previous immediate unity as such; it is then individual singleness--a new category, which is an exclusive
form of consciousness, i.e. stands in relation to something else, an other. This individuality is its transition
from its notion to an external reality, the pure "schema", which is at once a consciousness, and in
consequence of its being a single individual and an excluding unit, points to the presence of an external other.
REASON'S CERTAINTY AND REASON'S TRUTH 83
 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
But the "other" of this category is merely the "other" categories first mentioned, viz. pure essential reality and
pure difference; and in this category, i.e. just in affirming the other, or in this other itself, consciousness is
likewise itself too. Each of these various moments points and refers to an other; at the same time, however,
they do not involve any absolute otherness. The pure category refers to the species, which pass over into the
negative category, the category of exclusion, individuality; this latter, however, points back to them, it is
itself pure consciousness, which is aware in each of them of being always this clear unity with itself--a
unity, however, that in the same way is referred to an other, which in being disappears, and in disappearing is
once again brought into being.
We see pure consciousness here affirmed in a twofold form. In one case it is the restless activity which passes
hither and thither through all its moments, seeing in them that otherness which is sublated in the process of
grasping it; in the other case it is the imperturbable unity certain of its own truth. That restless activity
constitutes the "other" for this unity, while this unity is the "other for that activity; and within these
reciprocally determining opposites consciousness and object alternate. Consciousness thus at one time finds
itself seeking about hither and thither, and its object is what absolutely exists per se, and is the essentially
real; at another time consciousness is aware of being the category bare and simple, and the object is the
movement of the different elements. Consciousness, however, qua essential reality, is the whole of this
process of passing out of itself qua simple category into individuality and the object, and of viewing this
process in the object, cancelling it as distinct, appropriating it as its own, and declaring itself as this certainty
of being all reality, of being both itself and its object.
Its first declaration is merely this abstract, empty phrase that everything is its own. For the certainty of being
all reality is to begin with the pure category. Reason knowing itself in this sense in its object is what finds
expression in abstract empty idealism;(6) it merely takes reason as reason appears at first, and by its pointing
out that in all being there is this bare consciousness of a "mine", and by expressing things as sensations or
ideas, it fancies it has shown that abstract mine" of consciousness to be complete reality. It is bound,
therefore, to be at the same time absolute Empiricism, because, for the filling of this empty "mine" , i.e. for
the element of distinction and all the further development and embodiment of it, its reason needs an impact
(Anstoss) operating from without, in which lies the fons et origo of the multiplicity of sensations or ideas.
This kind of idealism is thus just such a self-contradictory equivocation as scepticism, only, while the latter
expresses itself negatively, the former does so in a positive way. But it fails just as completely as scepticism
to link up its contradictory statements about pure consciousness being all reality, while all the time the alien
impact, or sense-impressions and ideas, are equally reality. It oscillates hither and thither from one to the
other and tumbles into the false, or the sensuous, infinite.(7) Since reason is all reality in the sense of the
abstract "mine", and the "other" is an externality indifferent to it, there is here affirmed just that sort of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]