Hegel Questions

Paragraph on page 10: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Desire, what are they?

• Consciousness: Recognition or awareness of an object
• Self-Consciousness: A full understanding of who you are - awareness of self
• Desire: the practical activity of negating objects, ‘In Hegel’s own words, the origin of desire is thus the fact that “self-consciousness is . . . essentially the return from otherness.”’ - how we get to self-consciousness?

Paragraph 2 on p.10 - What does it remind you of?
Hume - sensory perception is only way to attain this self-consciousness

p.11 “sensous certainty” to “absolute knowing” -define

• sensuous certainty - consciousness from its most primitive or naïve form
• absolute knowing - consciousness in its most mature form = self-consciouness

p.11, “this, here, now”, “many nows, many heres”

• time is a series of individual immediacies
• consciousness and time are intertwined
• through perception you gain self-consciousness

p.11 “perception ceases and becomes understanding”

• this is the maturation of consciousness into self-consciousness
• “Perception ends up distinguishing between the manifold character and the inner unity of the object. As soon as it regards its object as having an inner unity, however, it ceases to be mere perception and becomes understanding”
• Perception is an attempt to grasp a concept, object, anything
• Understanding is a state of consciousness
• It’s like an enlightenment
• Pure, internalized, comprehension

p.13 - Unity of the one with itself

• “Note that what we desire, in Hegel’s view, is not the object as such, but rather, as Jean Hyppolite puts it, “the unity of the I with itself.” If Hegel is right, in seeking to enjoy the object, we are in fact seeking to enjoy ourselves.”

top of p.15 bottom of 1st Paragraph

• ‘The logic of self-consciousness demands, however, that we achieve self-certainty in relating to objects that retain their independence from us. We can satisfy this demand only by relating to an object that negates itself but that is “equally independent in this negativity of itself.” Such an object, Hegel maintains, cannot merely be a living thing (or an inorganic object), but must be another consciousness or self- consciousness. Consequently, “self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.”’

Last 2 paragraphs of page 17

• Hegel truly believes that genuine, mutual recognition is possible, but almost all post-Hegelians disagree and state that it is, at most, simply idealist, and can be viewed a a moral ideal in an essentially imperfect world
• saying that Hegel is too optimistic - believes in the good in people

“Intersubectivity” - page 18

• only enlightened people have a lack of social conflict
• mutual recognitions of self-consciousnesses

Page 19, 4th paragraph down, “mutual....”

• ‘Mutual recognition, for Hegel, requires the uncoerced cooperation of the two (or more) self-consciousnesses involved. Indeed, not only must the two self- consciousnesses freely recognize one another; in fact, they must both recognize that their mutual recognition and cooperation is needed for either to be concretely and objectively self-conscious. In Hegel’s own words, they must “recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.”’
• pretty self-explanatory