Hegel by Martin Heidegger

Author:Martin Heidegger [Heidegger, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780253017789
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2005-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

1. Note from the German editor: The quotations from the Phenomenology of Spirit are from hereafter cited according to the complete edition of Hegel’s works (cf. above p.51, footnote 1 and 2) in abbreviated form after the quoted passage from the text.

II. THE SELF-PRESENTATION OF APPEARING KNOWLEDGE AS THE COURSE INTO THE TRUTH OF ITS OWN ESSENCE (PARAGRAPHS 5–8 OF THE “INTRODUCTION”)

If we understand cognition in the manner of everyday representation as a course, and if we hear about the course of consciousness to its essential truth, i.e., to spirit, then we can indeed conceive all this “from the standpoint” of natural consciousness as a “path of the soul” to absolute spirit. The course is, then, an Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Bonaventura). Indeed, all attempts that have been undertaken so far to interpret Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit have conceived of it in the sense of such a course that “natural consciousness” passes through. However, Hegel explicitly says (paragraph 5 [§77]) that one “can” conceive of the Phenomenology of Spirit from the standpoint of natural, i.e., non-philosophical consciousness in this manner. This means, however, precisely that this conception is philosophically untrue. For we are not dealing with a path that lies before natural consciousness and that it wanders on as wayfarer in the direction of the absolute. The course that Hegel has in mind is rather the course that the absolute itself goes, namely in such a way that in this course the absolute wends its way to its goal: the truth of its complete appearance. In this process, natural consciousness shows itself as a knowledge that has not yet actualized in itself the truth of knowing and therefore has to give up its obstinacy. But here everyday opinion again pushes itself to the front and grasps this path of consciousness to its truth and certainty in the manner of Descartes as a path of doubt. At most, however, the path of doubt, once it has passed through that which can be doubted, aims at obtaining and securing the matter again in the same way that it was before the occurrence of the doubt. The path of doubt becomes simply set on the certainty that the doubt, as the belief in itself and in its right, already presupposes. But the course of appearing knowledge to its essential truth is a course on which the first step already thinks toward the essence of consciousness, yet in doing this it must recognize that the essence that it grasps first, taken by itself, offers no hope of bringing the absolute in its truth, i.e., as absolvent and absolved, to appearance. The first step on the course of the absolute, which brings itself to appearance, demands another, to which, in turn, the same applies; and this continues as long as the totality of the essential shapes of consciousness has not yet been absolved; it is in this absolving alone that it is absolute. The course of appearing knowledge is thus from one step to the next rather a “path of despair” (paragraph 6, WW II, 63 [§78]).

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