Attention: Starting December 14, 2019 Yahoo Groups will no longer host user created content on its sites. New content can no longer be uploaded after October 28, 2019. Sending/Receiving email functionality is not going away, you can continue to communicate via any email client with your group members. Learn More
- Nov 16, 2018Bill,I agree with you this far -- Sense Certainty is content with the "surfaces of things", and cares nothing about the Thing-in-itself.I also agree with you that (some) people still speak by pointing and grunting. Well, we all might regress to that primitive level of language, depending on circumstances.Yet I would not say that Sense Certain is "not what it thinks it is." I would say that Sense Certainty never reflects upon itself. Reflection belongs to a later evolution.I would agree, however, that Sense Certainty isn't completely "displaced" with later evolutions of Consciousness -- rather, as you say, it's "sublated," to use Hegel's term.It is always there for us to rely on -- because it is part of our biological inheritance. We no longer crawl like babies to get from place to place -- but we will always know how to crawl, and might do it for games with children, perhaps. We don't just lose that stage of biology.It's similar with Sense Certainty. We have outgrown it for language, for the most part, but we still use it when we need to. For example, muscle memory. Playing a musical instrument. Sports. Labor. Actual fighting. Here is where Sense Certainty shows its great and abiding value.Yet Hegel's focus in his PhG (1807) about Sense Certainty, is its aspect of Consciousness, and he more specifically observes, appreciates and critiques the language skills of Sense Certainty. These are crude, they are minimal. Yet here again, Hegel has made another discovery -- here is the very origin of language.These very crude beginnings:"This!" "Yes!" "That!" "No!" "Other!" "Me!" "You!" "This!" "That!"These are the very first thoughts of the human brain that were translated into human language!All best,--Paul--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 10:43:47 AM CST, bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Paul, I've said already. People still speak by pointing and grunting sometime.
"This!" "Yes!" "That!" "No!" "Other!" "Me!" "You!" "This!" "That!"
"Etc."
The point of Sense Certainty is that it's not what it thinks it is. But as it rises to its truth, it isn't displaced completely. It's sublated.
Compare:
"Thus the foregoing has defined the nature of the activity of scepticism as such, and the way in which it operates. It exhibits the dialectical movement which Sense-certainty, Perception, and the Understanding each is ..." (PoS 203, Miller)"Where that 'other' is sought, it cannot be found, for it is supposed to be just a beyond, something that can not be found. When sought as a particular individual, it is not a universal individuality in the form of thought, not a Notion, but an individual in the form of an object, or an actual individual; an object of immediate sense-certainty, and for that very reason only something that has already vanished." (PoS 217, Miller)
"Just as Reason, in the role of observer, repeated, in the element of the category, the movement of consciousness, viz. sense-certainty, perception, and the Understanding, so will Reason again run through the double movement of self-consciousness, and pass over from independence into its freedom." (PoS 348, Miller)
"To pure insight, however, since it is pure consciousness from the side of the self that is for itself, the 'other' appears as something negative of self-consciousness. This could still be taken either as the pure intrinsic being of thought, or also as the being of sense-certainty." (PoS 552, Miller)
etc.Bill
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 9:18:11 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Sense CertaintyBill,
You notice that "We" in this passage refers to Hegel and the reader. I agree. Yet the scope of the passage is not "We" in the 19th century, as readers of Kant.
Rather, "We," in this passage refers to humanity at large (including Hegel and the reader) during the primitive historical period of Sense Certainty (very approximately 40,000 years ago) when people spoke by pointing and grunting.
"This!" "Yes!" "That!" "No!" "Other!" "Me!" "You!" "This!" "That!"
Here is the scope of Sense Certainty. Obviously, Hegel cannot use the vocabulary of Sense Certainty to deliver a dialectical accounting of Sense Certainty -- he must come up to present time, and use the language of Kant, Fichte and Schelling to do that.
Yet these very terms -- "This" and "Other" -- are indeed the very FIRST terms in any language. They are the very ROOTS of all language and all concepts.
This is why they are so rich in nuance -- so universal -- they can refer to ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in the entire Cosmos. Sadly, they have little further nuance than that, and further language is required to evolve past Sense Certainty towards the vocabulary of Perceptual Consciousness.
Yet the primitive nature of Sense Certainty is the main point of Hegel's narrative in this section.
Now, what do you see in Hegel that might challenge my proposed perspective?
All best,--Paul---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 8:35:01 AM CST, bill.hord bill.hord@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Paul, do you notice that the word "primitive," derived from a root that means first, doesn't apply to something and other in the text cited, since these are not the first?More germane, are proper names primitive forms? Who is the "we" in this passage? Isn't it Hegel and his reader?
"By “this” we mean to express something completely determinate, overlooking the fact that language, as a work of the understanding, only expresses the universal, albeit naming it as a single object."
"Completely" is a key word in this sentence. There is nothing out of the ordinary about you and I using "this" and being misunderstood. I take this to suggest that we also use "this" in the way Sense Certainty does. The fact that we can also disentangle those confusions by using language means we are not "completely" sense certain consciousness. Etc.
Bill
From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 12:29:54 AM
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] Sense CertaintyBill,
Do you notice in reading this passage in Hegel's SL (1812), that the terms "This" and "Other" are presented in their most primitive forms? Hegel exposes the primitive nature of these concepts. It seems to me that Hegel's works offer a major effort to express what Sensory Consciousness struggles to express.
All best,--Paul-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Monday, November 12, 2018, 8:33:30 AM CST, bill.hord bill.hord@hccs....edu [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:The passage below suggests another approach.SL, "Something and Other":"“This” serves to fix the distinction [between something and other, BH] and the something which is to be taken in the affirmative sense. But “this” also expresses the fact that the distinction, and the privileging of one something, is a subjective designation that falls outside the something itself. The whole determinateness falls on the side of this external pointing; also the expression “this” contains no distinctions; each and every something is just as good a “this” as any other. By “this” we mean to express something completely determinate, overlooking the fact that language, as a work of the understanding, only expresses the universal, albeit naming it as a single object. But an individual name is something meaningless in the sense that it does not express a universal. It appears as something merely posited and arbitrary for the same reason that proper names can also be arbitrarily picked, arbitrarily given as well as arbitrarily altered.[Note]"Note: "Hegel is repeating the argument of Chapter 1 of the Phenomenology of Spirit." (SL, Di Giovanni's translation and note, p. 91.)"The word 'this' serves to fix the distinction and the something which is to be taken affirmatively. But 'this' clearly expresses that this distinguishing and signalising of the one something is a subjective designating falling outside the-something itself. The entire determinateness falls into this external pointing out; even the expression 'this' contains no distinction; each and every something is just as well a 'this' as it is also an other. By 'this' we mean to express something completely determined; it is overlooked that speech, as a work of the understanding, gives expression only to universals, except in the name of a single object; but the individual name is meaningless, in the sense that it does not express a universal, and for the same reason appears as something merely posited and arbitrary; just as proper names, too, can be arbitrarily assumed, given or also altered." (Miller's translation, section 214)What it suggests is that the weakness of Sense Certainty is that it is satisfied with the surfaces of things and doesn't care to know things in themselves.
The meaning of a proper name (it has none, "in the sense that it does not express a universal") might rely on context; but the reference of a name doesn't depend on context once it is assigned. (This assumes, of course, that each individual has its own unique name -- a truly proper name (meinen).)Bill - << Previous post in topic Next post in topic >>