Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Martin Heidegger

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СКАЧАТЬ everything, lacks nothing quantitatively, and is therefore absolute, it is still relative according to the kind of knowing involved. For example, if we think of all the beings which exist and think of them as created by a God who also exists, then the totality of beings known in this way would still only be relatively known. Such a relative knowledge would be caught up in and imprisoned by what it knows. Hegel calls such knowing “consciousness.”

      But we must ask if there is a possibility of knowing which is qualitatively different from this. It is obvious that we can come to a proper decision about this only if we take it up in terms of the quality of knowing. This means that we have to ask whether the quality of relative knowledge as such allows for something qualitatively other than relative knowledge. For knowledge to be qualitatively other than relative knowledge, for it to be other than a knowledge which is carried over to what is known and bound there, it must not remain bound but must liberate and ab-solve itself from what it knows and yet as so ab-solved, as absolute, still be a knowledge. To be ab-solved from what is known does not mean “abandoning” it, but “preserving it by elevating it.”⁵ This elevation is an absolving which knows; that is, what is known is still known, but in being known it is now changed.

      Obviously such an absolving presupposes the attachment of relative knowledge. And absolving as a detaching which is aware of itself must first of all be a knowledge in the sense of relative knowledge. The possibility, as it were, to free the so-called relative knowledge is given in our capacity to know it again, to become conscious of that which is extant in the broadest sense. In the process of its unfolding alongside things, consciousness absolves itself in a certain way from them as soon as it becomes aware of itself as consciousness. Becoming aware of itself, this consciousness turns into what we may accordingly designate self-consciousness. Here in the nature of relative knowledge lies a possibility for detachment; and herein lies the question—and it is one of Hegel’s most decisive questions in his confrontation with the philosophy of his time and with Kant—whether in relative knowledge this detachment actually takes place or whether relative knowledge is still consciousness, albeit self-consciousness.

      Is not this knowledge, which knowingly absolves itself from consciousness and knows it (consciousness), in turn also a relative knowledge, bound now, of course, not simply by what is known in consciousness, but by consciousness as the known? Thus, we quite appropriately grasp the knowledge which absolves itself from consciousness as self-consciousness. Yes indeed, but the first consequence of this is that although self-consciousness is absolved, it is still relative, and therefore not absolute knowledge. What is known through such absolving is that that knowledge itself is a way of knowing, is aware of itself, and is a self-consciousness. Thus, in self-consciousness we realize two things: (1) that knowledge can be detached, and (2) that there is a new form of knowledge which can only be consciousness—such that now knowing insists on the I and remains entangled with itself, such that it gets tied to the self and the I. Thus, this knowledge is relative and bound in two ways: (1) This knowledge knows itself as self, and (2) it distinguishes this self from existing things. In this way self-consciousness remains relative in spite of the detachment that has asserted itself.

      Nevertheless, it is just this self-consciousness, relative in one respect and not relative in another, that reveals the possibility of a detachment or liberation. This liberation is indeed such that it does not discard that from which it liberates itself; but in knowingly absolving itself—knowing it—it takes and binds to itself, as that which frees itself. This self-conscious knowledge of consciousness is, so to speak, a relative knowledge which is free; but as relative it is still not absolute, still not genuinely free.

      Obviously the pure kind of non-relative knowledge will be primarily that which absolves itself even from self-consciousness, which is not fettered to self-consciousness and yet is aware of it—not as existing for itself, next to which there is still simple consciousness, but as self-consciousness of consciousness. The unbounded origin of the unity of both self-consciousness and consciousness, as they belong together, is a knowledge that is aware of itself as the purely unbounded, purely absolved absolute knowledge, which provisionally we call reason. This knowledge, absolute and absolved as it is, is a knowledge which, while not relative, holds onto, possesses, and retains that which it knows relatively.

      Hegel designates all three—consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason—as consciousness. Thus, consciousness means three things:

      1. Any kind of knowledge

      2. A knowledge which is related to things without being aware of itself as knowledge

      3. Consciousness in the sense of self-consciousness.

      Whatever is known relatively—in the qualitative sense, not merely quantitatively—is known as something limited. But whatever is limited is, in its multiplicity, related to the absolute, as that which has no limit. That is why Hegel, in his essay of 1801 on the difference between the systems of Fichte and Schelling, writes:

      But because the relation of the limited to the absolute is, like the limited, manifold, philosophizing must aim at relating to this manifold. The need necessarily arises for producing a totality of knowledge, a system of science. By this means the manifold of those relations will first be released from being accidental, in that they will preserve their places in the context of the objective totality of knowledge, and their objective completeness will be brought about. The philosophizing which fails to construct a system represents a continuous escape from limitations. It is more like reason’s struggle for freedom than reason’s attaining pure knowledge of itself, in its certainty and clarity about itself. Liberated reason is identical with its action, and its activity is a pure presentation of reason itself.⁶

      Absolute knowledge is genuine knowledge, the science. That science which knows in an absolute way “knows the absolute.”⁷ Science as absolute knowledge is in itself system, according to its most essential character. The system is not an optional framework or an ordering of absolute knowledge by way of addition. Rather, absolute knowledge is conceived and is exclusively aware of itself only when it unfolds and presents itself in and as system. Thus, we must not rewrite the main title of the Phenomenology of Spirit—“System of Science”—to read “System of Philosophy.” Rather, philosophy itself means nothing but the science in system or system of science (as absolute knowledge). (Hence it becomes clear how absurd it would be to say, with regard to this Hegelian concept of philosophy, that it expresses a striving for a “scientific philosophy” in the conventional sense of this word.)

§3. The significance of the first part of the system with regard to the designation of both of its titles

      What does it mean to say that the first part of the system of science requires the science of the experience of consciousness, or the science of the phenomenology of spirit?

      To begin with, we must not lose sight of the fact that the first part is science, which cannot now mean some scientific discipline or other. Rather, science means absolute knowledge, and this in turn means the system. The first part of the system of science, as science, is itself the system, the system in its initial presentation.

      What must this initial presentation of science be like? The answer is provided by both titles used for designating the first part of the system of science. These titles are worded differently, say something different, and yet they mean the same. We shall first try to elucidate each of these titles separately, in order then to determine what unites them in sameness. Subsequently we can grasp the specific character of the first part of science.¹ But this calls for a preliminary look at what is peculiar to the second part of the phenomenology-system; and in accord with what was said earlier, that in turn means taking a look at the first constitutive part of the final encyclopedia-system.

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