----- Original Message -----
From: wmdepot
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 2:47 PM
Subject: [hegel] Re: Translating the Image?


JH wrote:
... translation IS influenced by philosophical interpretation, even more: it is influenced by it to a degree, that - concerning the PhdG - the crucial point of it - as it seems to me - is missed from the very beginning ...

... I still would like to give a suitable example for that concerning J.B.Baillie ...

Hegel: Die sinnliche Gewissheit oder das Diese und das Meinen

Baillie (a): headline in the table of contents
I. Sense-Certainty, This, and Meaning

Baillie (b): headline in the text
I. CERTAINTY AT THE LEVEL OF SENSE-EXPERIENCE - THE "THIS", AND "MEANING"

... it is apparent that the term "sense-experience" is added by J.B.Baillie to the headline and it is quite apparent that this term is a concept/conception of Empirism, be it classical empirism, be it logical empirism ... I do not want to say anything against empirism with that and there is nothing to say against (logical) empirism as such but Hegel does not deal with empirism as a conception in this first sub-chapter of the PhdG ...
... in my view by this headline Baillie puts a misleading switch ... but on the other hand: when I got this translation of Baillie, I found it sensationel, that Baillie speaks of a LEVEL of knowledge ... yes, sense-certainty/sensual witness indeed IS a LEVEL ... and it is a phenomenologically REDUCED level by Hegel ... it is a level of knowledge/wit which as such is an IRREDUCIBLE level ... that means: it is a LEVEL and it is a phenomenologically reducible level, and being a phenomenologically reduced level it is immediately (gleichursprünglich) held for irreducible ... there is a german word for irreducible: "unhintergehbar" which means: "something that 'you' cannot get behind of" ... yes, sense-certainty/sensual witness is a "unhintergehbar" feature if a Phenomenology of Spirit is to be set up or intended (that's what I am convinced of) ...

... but it seems that those who are occupied with PhdG are not aware of that ... because "everbody" (e.g. a professor of philosophy by announcing his seminar on the PhdG) talks about a point that Hegel gives "stands of perception" ... no, Hegel does not start psychologically with perception (no psychologialism) but the starting point is an so-to-say irreducible level of formal ontology, an/the 'absolute minimum': sensual certainty/witness AND mineness (that would and could have to be more narrowly explicated by the Hegel-text itself )... Hegel, by that, is giving an/the absolute basic-level of a formal ontology, a level which is the "Bedingung der Möglichkeit" (condition of possiblity) for any possible perception at any possible empirical time and in any possible empirical case ... which makes this absolute minimum-level transcendental and unrefrainable ... "you" can never abstain/refrain from it because by that you would abstain/refrain from "your self" which is - transcendentally as well as phenomenologically spoken - impossible to do and even further impossible to think without getting into a "performative contradiction" ...

... this makes clear that english translations can and do as well give powerful hints as well as they may be and can be misleading ... another powerful hint of Baillie, this time a hint to the powerfull potentials of latin-english vocabluary in my view refers to the second sentence:

"We have, in dealing with it (with knowledge/wit which is 'our' immediate 'counter-standing' topic), to proceed, too, in an immediate way, to accept what is given, not altering anything in it as it is presented before us, and keeping mere apprehension (Auffassen) free from conceptual comprehension (Begreifen)." (Baillie)

For a german native speaker this differentiation of "apprehension" and "comprehesion" can be (sort of) electrifiing, derived from the latin "prehendere" and its composita: "ap-prehendere" and "com-prehendere" ... yes, in this case the going-back to latin meaning and construction is worthfull ... because it gives - true: just and only in my view - it gives the essential of this second sentence and it gives opportunity to get aware of the fact that there is a WAY from apprehension to comprehension which actualizes the whole philosophical program, Hegel is occupied with, in a very nucleus (in PhdG and elsewhere) ...

... by consequence of that any movement of "Aufhebung" never can let out of sight WHAT has to be brought to "Aufhebung", the/an irreducible level of sense-certainty/sensual witness ... that means the critique of "pure meaning" does not mean that mineness/meaning is despised or could even be despised; meaning/mineness is just un-complete and this uncompleteness of miness/meaning is irreducible uncompleteness (but it can sequentially be completed up to absolute knowledge/wit which is the knowledge/wit of the absolute IN ITS RELATION TO MINENESS) ...

meaning/mineness never can be given up because the subject itself is irreducible and the basic feature of subjekt is sense-certainty/senusal witness ... wherein the subject itself is being included ... etc. etc.

ok, I'll stop here because I do not know if I am already writing into an possible emptiness of resonance ... that means: maybe it's just of no importance for anyone in the international Hegel-list ...

best regards
Juergen Hilbers


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