Chapter 15 Chapter 5 The Certainty and Truth of Reason

Consciousness returns to itself when it acquires the idea that individual consciousness itself is the absolute essence.For the troubled consciousness, being-in-itself is its own beyond.But this movement of consciousness has already transformed it in itself: it regards the fully developed individuality, or the individuality of actual consciousness, as its own negation, the extremes of opposites; or that it develops its own being for itself as an objective being; and, in this very movement of it, consciousness realizes that it has formed a unity with this universal or universal, This unity no longer appears to us outside consciousness, because the sublated individual consciousness is this universal, and since consciousness preserves itself in this negativity of its own, this unity is for consciousness itself. Word is its essence, the truth of consciousness is that which appears as the middle term in the process of inference with two extremes with absolute separation, which expresses to the unchanging consciousness that the individual consciousness has denied itself, and to the individual consciousness. Consciousness means that the unchanging consciousness is no longer one of its extremes, but has become one with it.This middle term is the direct recognition of the unity of the two extremes and its connection with them, and its awareness of the unity of the two extremes which it expresses itself, is the certainty that it is all truth.

Since self-consciousness is rationality, its negative attitude towards other things (or the other party) has been transformed into a positive attitude.In the past, self-consciousness has been concerned only with its independence and freedom, saving and maintaining itself at the expense of the reality of the world or of itself, taking both as part of its own essence. negation.But now, being reason itself assured, it feels itself at peace with them and can tolerate them; for it now knows with certainty that it is reality itself, or that all reality is nothing else. It is itself; its thinking itself is directly reality; therefore its attitude towards reality is that of idealism towards reality.When it adopts this attitude, it seems that the world is now for the first time a world to it; before then it knew nothing about it; The world, withdrawing itself, abolishes the world for itself, and abolishes itself as consciousness - abolishes, negates both the consciousness of the world as essence and the consciousness of its nothingness.Now, after its truth has lost its grave, after its reality negates its negation of itself, and the individuality of consciousness becomes its own absolute essence, it discovers for the first time that the world is its own reality Only in the world does it feel interested in its continued existence, whereas previously it was only interested in its disappearance.For the persistence of the world is now for it its own truth and presentness; it knows for sure that it experiences itself only here.

Reason is the certainty that consciousness knows itself to be all reality; this is how idealism expresses the concept of reason.Consciousness, which appears as reason, directly possesses this certainty in itself, and idealism also directly expresses this certainty: I am I, which means that the "I" as my object is unique. The object, which is conscious of the existence of no other object, is all reality and all present; it is neither the object of self-consciousness in general nor that of free self-consciousness, which is only An empty general object that is only an object that withdraws itself from other objects that still exist alongside it.But self-consciousness is not only all reality for itself, but also all reality in itself, and it is both reality for itself and in itself because it becomes this reality, or rather proves that it is. really.It justifies itself along this path: first, the other as being-in-itself disappears in the dialectical movement of signification, perception and understanding; Disappearing oneself in a movement through the struggles of independence of master-slave consciousness, free thought, dissolution of doubt, absolute emancipation of divided consciousness.Two aspects then appear successively, on the one side, essence or truth has the determination of existence for consciousness, on the other hand, essence has the determination of existence only for consciousness.But both boil down to the truth that what exists or is in itself exists only in so far as it exists for consciousness, and that which exists for consciousness is also being in itself.Consciousness that has reached this truth has already traveled this path, and it has forgotten this path when it appears directly as reason, or rather, this immediately appearing reason appears only as the certainty of this truth. .It only guarantees that it is all reality.But does not understand this assurance, because the forgotten path is precisely the understanding of this assurance or affirmation directly expressed.In the same way, a man who has not traveled this way, although he himself makes this affirmation in concrete experience, cannot understand it when he hears the affirmation in its simple (abstract) form.

An idealism which does not itself express the way to this affirmation, but begins only with this affirmation, is therefore a mere guarantee which neither understands itself nor makes itself intelligible to others.What it expresses is a direct certainty, and opposite to this direct certainty, there are other direct certainties that disappear by themselves only on the road of proof.Thus there are other certainty guarantees besides that certainty as well as claiming themselves alongside it.The basis of reason lies in the self-consciousness of each consciousness: I am I, my object and essence are me; no consciousness will deny the truth of reason.But since it recognizes this one truth by virtue of this ground, it also recognizes other certain truths, that is, it also recognizes that there is something else to me; something other than me is my object or essence. , or that I am my own object and essence only because I withdraw myself from the other to appear beside the other as a reality. —Only when reason rises above this opposite certainty and emerges as a reflection does its self-affirmation not only be certainty and assurance, but truth;The immediate appearance of truth is an abstraction of its being-at-hand, and the essence and being-in-itself of this being-at-hand is an absolute concept, that is to say, the forming movement of its becoming being. —Consciousness will determine its own relations to other things or objects in different ways, depending on the stage of development at which it is becoming conscious of its own world-spirit.How directly the world-spirit discovers and determines itself and its objects at each stage, or how the world-spirit exists for itself, depends on what it has become or what it has been in itself.

Reason is the certainty of knowing itself as all reality. But this in-itself, or this reality, is still quite a general thing, a pure abstraction of reality.It is the first affirmation that self-consciousness in itself becomes for itself, so that the self is only the pure essence or category of beings.The original meaning of the category refers to the essence of beings, but it is not sure whether it is the essence of general beings or the essence of beings as opposed to consciousness, but now it has become the essence of beings that only serve as thinking reality Sex or simple unity; in other words, category means: existence and self-consciousness are the same thing; and the so-called same thing is not comparatively the same, but is fundamentally one thing in itself.Only bad, one-sided idealism repositions this unity as consciousness on one side, and opposes it on the other side to an in-itself. ——

But this category, this simple unity of self-consciousness and being, is now different in itself, because the essence of the category consists precisely in this: it is immediately identical with itself in something else or in absolute difference.So the difference is there, but it is completely transparent, it is at the same time a difference and it is not a difference.It appears as a multiplicity of categories.Idealism presents the simple unity of self-consciousness as all reality, and takes it directly as its essence, without first understanding it as an absolutely negative (only this absolutely negative has negativity, determination, or difference), if this is incomprehensible, then what is even more incomprehensible is the idealist argument that the distinctions or categories of categories exist within the categories.Its general guarantee [of categories], like any guarantee of certain categories, is a new guarantee, but this new guarantee itself means that one should no longer regard it as a guarantee.For since in the pure ego, in the pure understanding itself, the distinction has already begun, it is tantamount to affirming that here immediacy, security, and confluence (of ready-made things) have been abandoned and conceptual understanding has begun.But idealism treats the multiplicity of categories afresh as a discovery, for example, from different judgments, and is complacent in seeing it in this way, in any way. In fact, it should be said to be a slander against science; understanding is pure necessity, and if understanding cannot express a necessity in itself, where can it express it?

For since, then, the pure essence of things and their differences belong to reason, it is true that we can no longer speak of things at all, of such things as mere negations of consciousness itself.For categories are genus of pure categories.That is to say, the pure category is also the species or essence of many categories, not something opposed to it.But they are already ambiguous in themselves, and in their multiplicity they at the same time contain the other as opposed to the pure categories.Because of this multiplicity, they in fact contradict the pure category, and pure unity must sublate this multiplicity in itself and thus constitute itself as the negative unity of differences.However, as negative unity, which excludes from itself both differences and the first immediate pure unity, then this pure category as negative unity is individuality. —a new category, which is the consciousness of exclusion, that is to say, that there is something other than it.Individuality is the transition of the category from its concept to an external reality, a pure schema.It is both consciousness and reference to an Other, for consciousness is the "oneness" of individuality and exclusion.But this other of the new category is only those other categories of the first, namely, pure essence and pure difference.In this category, precisely in the establishment of the other, or in this other in itself, consciousness is the other in itself.Each of these various moments indicates the other, but at the same time they are not something else themselves.The pure categories indicate the genus, and the genus turns into a negative category or individuality, but the latter turns back to indicate the former: because it is itself pure consciousness, it is always aware of the definiteness with itself in each genus. Unity, but this unity also indicates something else, which has disappeared when it exists and is reborn when it disappears.

Here we see pure consciousness in a double sense: in one case it is the restless movement that goes back and forth in all its moments.In these moments it sees something else which has arisen before it and which has been sublated in the process of grasping; in another case it is the static unity which is sure of its truth.To this unity the restless movement is something else; to that movement this still unity is something else.Consciousness and objects alternate with each other in these two mutual determinations.Therefore, sometimes consciousness itself is a reciprocating search, its object is pure in-itself and essence; the process itself;

It passes from itself as a mere category to individuality and the object; it intuits this process in the object, sublates and assimilates the object as a differentiator; and proclaims itself this certainty: it is itself all Reality is both itself and its object. The first statement of consciousness is just this last abstract empty sentence: Everything is its.For the certainty of the conviction that it is all reality is at first a pure category.Empty idealism expresses precisely this first reason which knows itself in objects, because it only takes first reason as reason; Thus expressing things as sensations or representations, he then thinks he has shown the Self as the complete reality.So this kind of idealism has to be an absolute empiricism at the same time.For, in order to fill this empty ego, that is, for its differentiation, development, and manifestation, its rationality needs an external impact, because the multiplicity of sensations or representations rests on the external impact. , this idealism is then a self-contradictory and ambiguous thing just like skepticism, with the difference that skepticism expresses itself negatively and idealism expresses itself positively; but it is exactly the same as Like skepticism, it is completely incapable of synthesizing its contradictory ideas about pure consciousness as all reality and external shock, or sensation and appearance as one reality, etc., it oscillates between the two, and finally falls into the bad, that is, In the infinite of sensibility.Since it thinks that reason is all reality and refers to the abstract self, and the other is an object that has nothing to do with the self, what it affirms here is the knowledge of an other that belongs to reason. That is, knowledge belonging to the meaning (Meinen), perception, and understanding that generalizes what is seen and known that has appeared before, but according to the basic concept of idealism itself, such a knowledge is affirmed as not real. knowledge; for only the unity of apperception is the truth of knowledge.Therefore, this idealistic pure reason, because it wants to reach other things, because it wants to reach that which is essential to it, that is, in itself, but which it does not have in itself, is rejected by itself. It denounces itself as a knowledge that is not true knowledge; it thus knowingly and willingly judges itself to be an untrue knowledge, unable to get rid of meanings and perceptions that have no truth for it.In affirming as the essence a double fundamental opposite, the unity of apperception and the thing, it finds itself in direct contradiction, for whether the thing is called an external shock, or an experience, Sex and things or sensibility or things in themselves, according to its concept, things are always things, and they are always foreign and do not belong to the unified thing.

This kind of idealism cannot get rid of this contradiction, because it affirms that the abstract concept of reason is truth.Thus, on the one hand, there is immediately before it realities which it does not belong to reason, and on the other hand, it considers reason to be all reality; In the process of seeking itself it declares the impossibility of seeking and obtaining. —But real reason is not so fruitless as it is said, when it is first of all only convinced of the certainty of itself as all reality, it realizes in this concept that, as certainty, as I, it is still Not really being reality, it has been compelled to elevate its certainty to truth, and has been compelled to fill out the empty ego.