The Moments of Perception

^'114' This relation has emerged.

It is merely the character of positive universality that is first noticed and developed.

But if the many determinate properties were utterly indifferent to each other, and were entirely related to themselves alone, then they would not be determinate.

• They are determinate because they are distinguished and related to others as their opposites.*

In view of this opposition, however, they cannot exist together in the bare and simple unity of their “medium”, which unity is just as essential to them as negation.

The process of distinguishing them, so far as it does not leave them indifferent, but effectually excludes, negates one from another, thus falls outside this simple “medium”.

Consequently, this is not merely an “also” or a unity indifferent to what is in it.

It is a “one” as well, an excluding repelling unity.

The “One” is the moment of negation, as, in a direct and simple manner, relating itself to itself, and excluding an other: and is that by which “Thinghood” is determined qua Thing.

In the property of a thing, the negation takes the form of a specific determinateness, which is directly one with the immediacy of its being. It is an immediacy which, by this unity with negation, is universality.

Qua “one”, however, negation, the specific quality, takes a form in which it is freed from this unity with the object, and exists per se on its own account.

^'115' These moments taken together exhaust the nature of the Thing, the truth of perception, so far as it is necessary to develop it here.

It is:

1. a universality, passive and indifferent, the “also” which forms the sole bond of connection between the qualities, or rather constituent elements, “matters”, existing together
2. negation, likewise in a simple form, or the “one”, which consists in excluding properties of an opposite character
3. the many properties themselves, the relation of the two first moments-the negation, as it is related to that indifferent element, and in being so expands into a manifold of differences, the focal point of particularity radiating forth into plurality within the “medium” of subsistence.

Taking the aspect that these differences belong to a “medium” indifferent to what is within it, they are themselves universal, they are related merely to themselves and do not affect each other.

Taking, however, the other aspect, that they belong to the negative unity, they at the same time mutually exclude one another; but do no necessarily in the shape of properties that have a separate existence apart from the “also” connecting them.

The sensuous universality, the immediate unity of positive being and negative exclusion, is only then a property, when oneness and pure universality are evolved from it and distinguished from one another, and when that sensuous universality combines these with one another. Only after this relation of the unity to those pure essential moments is effected, is the “Thing” complete.

^'116' This, then, is the way the “Thing” in perception is constituted, and consciousness is perceptual in character so far as this “Thing” is its object: it has merely to “take” the object (capio-per-ception) and assume the attitude of pure apprehension, and what comes its way in so doing is truth (das Wahre).

If it did something when taking the given, it would by such supplementation or elimination alter the truth. Since the object is the true and universal, the self-same, while consciousness is the variable and non-essential, it may happen that consciousness apprehends the object wrongly and deceives itself.

The percipient is aware of the possibility of deception; for, in the universality forming the principle here, the percipient is directly aware of otherness, but aware of it as null and naught, as what is superseded. His criterion of truth is therefore self-sameness, and his procedure is that of apprehending what comes before him as self-same.

Since, at the same time, diversity is a fact for him, his procedure is a way of relating the diverse moments of his apprehension to one another. If, however, in this comparison a want of sameness comes out, this is not an untruth on the part of the object (for the object is the self-same), but on the part of perception.

^'117' What sort of experience consciousness forms in the course of its actual perception?

When we analyse the process, we find this experience already contained in the development (just given) of the object and of the attitude of consciousness towards it.

• The experience will be merely the development of the contradictions that appear there.

The object which I apprehend presents itself as purely “one” and single: also, I am aware of the “property” (Eigenschaft) in it, a property which is universal, thereby transcending the particularity of the object.

The first form of being, in which the objective reality has the sense of a “one”, was thus not its true being; and since the object is the true fact here, the untruth falls on my side, and the apprehension was not correct. On account of the universality of the property (Eigenschaft) I must rather take the objective entity as a community (Gemeinschaft) in general. I further perceive now the property to be determinate, opposed to another and excluding this other.

Thus, in point of fact, I did not apprehend the object rightly when I defined it as a “commonness” or community with others, or as continuity; and must rather, taking account of the determinateness of the property, isolate parts within the continuity and set down the object as a “one” that excludes.

In the disintegrated “one” I find many such properties, which do not affect one another, but are indifferent to one another. Thus I did not apprehend the object correctly when I took it for something that excludes. The object, instead, just as formerly it was merely continuity in general, is not a universal common medium where many properties in the form of sense universals subsist, each for itself and on its own account, and, qua determinate, excluding the others.

The simple and true fact, which I perceive, is, however, in virtue of this result, not a universal medium either, but the particular property by itself, which, again, in this form, is neither a property nor a determinate being, for it is now neither attached to a distinct “one” nor in relation to others.

But the particular quality is a property only when attached to a “one”, and determinate only in relation to others. By being this bare relation of self to self, it remains merely sensuous existence in general, since it no longer contains the character of negativity; and the mode of consciousness, which is now aware of a being of sense, is merely a way of “meaning” (Meinen) or “intending”, i.e. it has left the attitude of perception entirely and gone back into itself. But sense existence and “meaning” themselves pass over into perception: I am thrown back on the beginning, and once more dragged into the same circuit, that supersedes itself in every moment and as a whole.

^'118' Consciousness, then, has to go over this cycle again, but not in the same way as on the first occasion. For it has found out, regarding perception, that the truth and outcome of perception is its dissolution, is reflection out of and away from the truth into itself.

In this way consciousness becomes definitely aware of how its perceptual process is essentially constituted, viz. that this is not a simple bare apprehension, but in its apprehension is at the same time reflected out of the true content back into itself.

This return of consciousness into itself, which is immediately involved and implicated in that pure apprehension – for this return to self has proved to be essential to perception – alters the true content.

Consciousness:

• is aware that this aspect is at the same time its own.
• takes it upon itself

By so doing, consciousness will thus get the true object bare and naked.

In this way we have, now, in the case of perception, as happened in the case of sensuous certainty, the aspect of consciousness being forced back upon itself; but, in the first instance, not in the sense in which this took place in the former case – i.e. not as if the truth of perception fell within it.

Rather consciousness is aware that the untruth, that comes out there, falls within it. By knowing this, however, consciousness is able to cancel and supersede this untruth. It distinguishes its apprehension of the truth from the untruth of its perception, corrects this untruth, and, so far as itself takes in hand to make this correction, the truth, qua truth of perception, certainly falls within its own consciousness.

The procedure of consciousness is thus so constituted that it no longer merely perceives, but is also conscious of its reflection into self, and keeps this apart from the simple apprehension proper.