805

[R Srivatsan]

805.  This is perhaps one of the most abstruse paragraphs of the PhS, where Hegel makes the transition from phenomenology, to Hegelian Logic.  Let me try to make the best sense of it I can.

With Absolute Knowing, as a pattern of (self) consciousness, spirit has grown its shape to its full potential, pushing to the absolute limit of its possibility where this shape (knowing) is burdened with "the unsurmounted difference of consciousness", which means the subject object divide, or the barrier between truth and certainty that constitutes the form of knowing as an activity (knowledge as a kind of verbish activity rather than as a content).

With the concept, i.e., the union of the essence (i.e., law) and being (existence) which has achieved absolute freedom from the empirical world while accounting for its detail, the self becomes "self-estranging", i.e., it moves out from the selfish confines of identity into the world as conceptualized (by the I as the We).  This subjective knowing in this final form is the immediate unity of self knowledge.  I.e., the subject knows itself fully and immediately (without any mediation of thought) -- in other words, its certainty is its truth because there is no reference to an object outside.  The movement of this estrangement, whereby the self moves out from itself into the world in its concept, constitutes (builds, makes up) the necessity of its content -- the movement of thought into detail builds the content according to the form of thought.  

Thus the content is diversified, not in-itself (or as a self-sufficient closed entity) as with sense certainty and perception, but as determinate, i.e., specified in relation to that (world of otherness around it) which it is differentiated from. This  restlessness of knowing/known, this detailing, fine-tuning of the content consists in the thought of this content refining itself, its negative movement away from what it was before.   This negativity or diversity of content, insofar as it is thought, is also the self.  And at this moment, when everything is in thinking, the content is a concept, it is purely conceptual.  

With this, Spirit has won (comprehension of) the concept, and it unfolds doubly, its Self and the being-there (actual reality) in the aether of its life (in its framework of comprehension) and is thus now Science, as opposed to common knowing (also known as ordinary consciousness), which is both simplistic and burdened by the subject object opposition.

On the one hand, in Science, the aspects (drive, balancing forces) of spirit's movement (of negation) is not of the form of the determinate shapes of consciousness --remember consciousness means consciousness of something other, beyond the divide, and the modes of knowing of the Phenomenology are of finding the errors of subjectivity and objectivity, and sublating them.  Now in the mode of Science (of Logic) this difference is within itself (it is thinking about thinking as it thinks about reality: S' that looks at S -> O) Thus all concepts are determinate, determined logically and are grounded in thought and within themselves.  

On the other hand, in the Phenomenology, each moment or aspect or shape is the difference between knowing and truth (certainty and reality, expectation and experience) and spirit is the movement (thought) which sublates this difference.  

In Science (of Logic) there is no opposition between experience and expectation, rather, because it is within thinking, it unites the knowledge and the truth.   Thus, there is no oscillation between the subjective form and the objective, but there is only the progress within thought (subjectivity) purely determined by relation (negations and delineations) of thought within itself. 

But also, each abstract moment of Science corresponds to the shape of the Phenomenology (not a one to one sequence, but of a specific pattern).  Just as Spirit (the movement of the Phenomenology) is not richer than the Science of Logic, it is not poorer too.   

quote

Conversely, to each abstract moment of science corresponds a shape of appearing spirit in general. Just as the spirit that is there is not richer than science, so too it is not poorer in its content either. To cognize the pure concepts of science in this form of shapes of consciousness constitutes the side of their reality, on which their essence, the concept, which is posited in them in its simple mediation as thinking, breaks asunder the moments of this mediation and presents itself in accordance with the inner opposition.
end quote (Inwood 320) 

As far as I can understand, what this seems to mean is:  Each abstract moment of science (Being, Essence, Concept and their sub concepts) constitutes how it presents itself in reality as a specific shape of consciousness .  To cognize the Logic in these shapes implies the following:  On each of these shapes of consciousness, their essence -- here, their truth as a concept (the conceptual structure of thought that determines this pattern of consciousness) -- is first given (posited) in these shapes of consciousness as the simple form of thinking about the experience that is specific to that shape (perception, understanding, stoicism, spiritual substance, revealed religion). In the dialectical logic that is at work, this inner concept splits the moments (aspects, parts) of thinking in these patterns and presents these patterns as determined by their inner logic according to the concept.  In other words, empirical reality, passing through perception, understanding, reason, spirit and religion, are all shown to be composed of Logic expressed in a way specific to that pattern.

Srivats

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R Srivatsan
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There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work … in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion. - Simone de Beauvoir