The Goal of Knowledge

^'80' The goal is fixed both for knowledge and for the succession in the process.

The end is where:

• knowledge is no longer compelled to go beyond itself
• it finds its own self
• the notion corresponds to the object and the object to the notion.

Consequently, the progress towards this goal never ends.

That which is confined to a life of nature is unable of itself to go beyond its immediate existence.

It can only go beyond its immediate existence through something other than itself which can force it beyond that existence.

Thus, it dies if this other wrenches it out of existence.

Consciousness, however, is to itself its own notion.

Thereby, it immediately transcends what is limited. Whatever is limited belongs to consciousness. And so, consciousness transcends its own self.

Consciousness sets up a “beyond”, a spatial intuition that is different from what is limited.

Consciousness, therefore, suffers this violence at its own hands.

• It destroys its own limited satisfaction [with this ‘beyond’].
• When feeling for the beyond, its anxiety for the truth decreases
• Consciousness struggles to preserve for itself that beyond which is in danger of being lost.

But it can find no rest.

An anxious fearful consciousness might wish to remain always in unthinking indolence.

• But thought will agitate the thoughtlessness.
• Its restlessness will disturb that indolence.

Consciousness might take its stand as a form of sentimentality which assures us it finds everything good in its kind. This assurance likewise will suffer violence at the hands of reason.

Reason finds something not good just because it is a kind.

Or, the fear of the truth might conceal itself from itself and others behind the pretext that

The burning zeal for the truth makes it impossible to find any other truth except that which vanity alone is capable.

• That vanity leads to consciousness thinking that it is so much cleverer than any ideas from oneself or others.

This conceit:

• understands how to belittle every truth
• can turn away from the truth and go back into itself
• gloats over its own private understanding
  • This private understanding always knows how to:
    • dissipate every possible thought
    • find, instead of all the content, merely the barren Ego

This is a satisfaction which must be left to itself; for it flees the universal and seeks only an isolated existence on its own account (Fürsichseyn).

^'81' How can this be done?

This exposition, viewed as a process of relating science to phenomenal knowledge, and as an inquiry and critical examination into the reality of knowing, does not seem able to be effected without some presupposition which is laid down as an ultimate criterion.

An examination consists in applying an accepted standard, and, on the final agreement or disagreement therewith of what is tested, deciding whether the latter is right or wrong.

The standard in general, and so science, were this the criterion, is thereby accepted as the essence or inherently real.

But, here, where science first appears on the scene, neither science nor any sort of standard has justified itself as the essence or ultimate reality; and without this no examination seems able to be instituted.

^'82' This contradiction and the removal of it will become more definite if , to begin with, we call to mind the abstract determinations of knowledge and of truth as they are found in consciousness.

Consciousness distinguishes from itself something, to which at the same time it relates itself.

There is something for consciousness.

The determinate form of this process of relating, or of there being something for a consciousness, is knowledge.

But from this being for another we distinguish being in itself or per se; what is related to knowledge is likewise distinguished from it, and posited as also existing outside this relation; the aspect of being per se or in itself is called Truth.

What really lies in these determinations does not further concern us here; for since the object of our inquiry is phenomenal knowledge.

Its determinations are also taken up, in the first instance, as they are immediately offered to us. And they are offered to us very much in the way we have just stated.

^'83' If our inquiry deals with the truth of knowledge, then we are inquiring what knowledge is in itself.

But in this inquiry knowledge is our object, it is for us.

The essential nature of knowledge, were this to come to light, would be rather its being for us. What we should assert to be its essence would rather be, not the truth of knowledge, but only our knowledge of it.

The essence or the criterion would lie in us; and that which was to be compared with this standard, and on which a decision was to be passed as a result of this comparison, would not necessarily have to recognize that criterion.

^'84' But the nature of the object which we are examining surmounts this separation, or semblance of separation, and presupposition. Consciousness furnishes its own criterion in itself, and the inquiry will thereby be a comparison of itself with its own self ; for the distinction, just made, falls inside itself.

In consciousness there is one element for an other, or, in general, consciousness implicates the specific character of the moment of knowledge. At the same time this “other” is to consciousness not merely for it, but also outside this relation, or has a being in itself, i.e. there is the moment of truth.

Thus in what consciousness inside itself declares to be the essence or truth we have the standard which itself sets up, and by which we are to measure its knowledge.

Suppose we call knowledge the notion, and the essence or truth “being” or the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the notion corresponds with the object.

But if we call the inner nature of the object, or what it is in itself, the notion, and, on the other side, understand by object the notion qua object, i.e. the way the notion is for an other, then the examination consists in our seeing whether the object corresponds to its own notion. It is clear, of course, that both of these processes are the same.

The essential fact, however, to be borne in mind throughout the whole inquiry is that both these moments, notion and object, “being for another” and “being in itself”, themselves fall within that knowledge which we are examining.

Consequently, we do not require to bring standards with us, nor to apply our fancies and thoughts in the inquire.

By leaving these aside, we are enabled to treat and discuss the subject as it actually is in itself and for itself, as it is in its complete reality.

^'85' But not only in this respect, that notion and object, the criterion and what is to be tested, are ready to hand in consciousness itself, is any addition of ours superfluous.

But we are also spared the trouble of comparing these two and of making an examination in the strict sense of the term; so that in this respect, too, since consciousness tests and examines itself, all we are left to do is simply and solely to look on.

For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what to it is true, and consciousness of its knowledge of that truth. Since both are for the same consciousness, it is itself their comparison; it is the same consciousness that decides and knows whether its knowledge of the object corresponds with this object or not.

The object, it is true, appears only to be in such wise for consciousness as consciousness knows it. Consciousness does not seem able to get, so to say, behind it as it is, not for consciousness, but in itself, and consequently seems also unable to test knowledge by it.

But just because consciousness has, in general, knowledge of an object, there is already present the distinction that the inherent nature, what the object is in itself, is one thing to consciousness, while knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is another moment.

Upon this distinction, which is present as a fact, the examination turns. Should both, when thus compared, not correspond, consciousness seems bound to alter its knowledge, in order to make it fit the object.

But in the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself also, in point of fact, is altered; for the knowledge which existed was essentially a knowledge of the object; with change in the knowledge, the object also becomes different, since it belonged essentially to this knowledge.

Hence consciousness comes to find that what formerly to it was the essence is not what is per se, or what was per se was only per se for consciousness.

Since, then, in the case of its object consciousness finds its knowledge not corresponding with this object, the object likewise fails to hold out; or the standard for examining is altered when that, whose criterion this standard was to be, does not hold its ground in the course of the examination; and the examination is not only an examination of knowledge, but also of the criterion used in the process.