Introduction

I mostly only cover the broader sense of knowledge and conscious, and some parts in the end. I did not include everything in here. If I can, I would put a question mark behind every sentence because this anxiety and violence of my consciousness is currently in doubt of everything. Path of despair, here I go.


What is knowledge?

First, knowledge according to Hegel is our object; it exists for us and that the in-itself as knowledge is the truth of knowledge. Consciousness uses knowledge for its investigation. When we use our cognition as a medium and an instrument to grasp some other truth but not the truth in the absolute alone, the notion of true and untrue knowledge appears on the scene. [Q: But then what’s the difference between knowledge and cognition since both of them seems to be our object and instrument?] The science we recognize through appearance is untrue knowledge because it exists “to a bad mode of its being and to its appearance” [perhaps we can say mere representation?] rather than “exists in and for itself” (§76). On the other hand, true knowledge, also known as phenomenal knowledge, is “free and self-moving within its own distinctive shape” (§77). Because a fixed goal exists for knowledge, and there’s no need for it to go beyond itself and that knowledge can work itself out. He argues that only the natural consciousness can “untruth” true/phenomenal knowledge, even if it leads to the path of despair and doubt, while the absolute in the truth is “merely the unrealized concept” (§78).

What about consciousness?

Consciousness examines itself while itself being both a concept and an object. He notes that consciousness goes beyond itself; it can never satisfy itself and might even ruin its own satisfaction because it has an “anxiety about the truth” and that it suffers “violence by its rationality” (§80). Moreover, in section §84, he notes that conscious provides its own standards in examining itself, in other words, it is determinate by and through itself; it is also in-itself, it has a content, whereas it also has something for an other, and that is its “moments of knowledge”. Meanwhile, this other, “moments of knowledge,” is also the “moment of truth” [Q: Is he planting seeds for the spirit, religion, and finally, the absolute when he mentions about “moment of knowledge”? I’m not quite sure about what I’m talking about anymore.] Like knowledge, consciousness, too, exists in and for itself [it seems to me that Hegel defines EVERYTHING exists in and for itself, but also for the other? So, everything is technically interrelated with each other), but he warns the readers about the limitation of natural consciousness can only be proven to be the “concept of knowledge” and that it is “not real knowledge” (§78). While he notes that the path of consciousness is a path of despair and doubt, and that it might even loss itself and its truth, but somehow it can grasp some kind of truth. Consciousness can know about the object that’s for consciousness, but it is incapable of “testing its knowledge by the object” (§85). In §79, he also notes that consciousness can result in pure nothingness [skepticism detected here]. Pure nothingness is also determinate and has a content since it results in itself. So I guess pure nothingness is not simply nothingness after all, and it has some sort of truth in it, too.

What is this dialectical movement?

In the dialectical movement that Hegel discusses about, the consciousness examines what it does on itself, knowledge, and its objects and most importantly, to the new and true object of this movement, experience. So, in consciousness, we can say that there are two objects, one is “in-itself”, and the other is “being-for-it of this in-itself”, while the second is merely the representation or nullity of its knowledge of the first object. Because of the necessity, the second, namely the new object emerges. [Q: what is this “coming-to-be” in the end of §87?] The “spirit of truth” is the experience in which consciousness learns about itself in a system of consciousness itself.



I surrender.