Kommentar zum subjektiven Geist, Chapter 18
What Consciousness Is (§§ 413–417)
The determination is a statement of position: consciousness constitutes “the stage of reflection or of the relation of spirit, of itself as appearance” (§ 413).
Appearance here does not mean semblance. It means that spirit stands opposite itself — it exists for itself, but as something it distinguishes from itself.
What the I is here is stated in § 414: “only its abstract, formal ideality” — no content yet, only the form of relating itself to itself.
And from this the peculiarity that determines the whole part (§ 415): because the I is only formal identity, the movement of the concept appears to it not as its own activity. It experiences it as a change of the object.
This is the crucial piece of information: consciousness takes for a property of the thing what is really its own constitution. Whoever regards sensuous certainty as the most certain attributes to the thing what actually lies in its relation to it.
The lecture course says it even more sharply. On § 332 of the first edition:
“We have seen that distinguishing, determining itself, this negativity of the I, is only for us, not yet for the I; the determinations of the object are given to the I, or are its activities, which first exist in spirit. The object is something given, and however it is determined, consciousness is likewise determined.”[1]
The “for us” recurs here — the same distinction as in § 381, now within the Phenomenology: we see what consciousness does; it itself does not see it.
And Hegel names the standpoint outright: “The I is related to this other; this is the relation, the standpoint of contradiction” (§ 329). Consciousness is the contradiction of the independent sides — and therefore it cannot remain where it is.
The goal is determined accordingly (§ 416): “to make this its appearance identical with its essence, to raise the certainty of itself to truth.”
Certainty is what someone holds to be true. Truth is what holds up. The entire movement is the distance between the two. [KF]
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes, on §§ 329–332 of the first edition (= §§ 413–415): GW 25.1. ↩︎