The Truth which Conscious Certainty of Self Realises

1. Consciousness In Itself

¹⁶⁶ The truth for consciousness is something other than consciousness itself.

Howver, this truth vanishes as we experience it.

The object immediately in itself could have been:

• a mere being in metaphysical perception
• a concrete thing in physical perception
• force in the case of understanding

But in truth, it is none of these.

This inherent nature of consciousness (Ansich) proves to be a way in which it is for an other.

The abstract conception of the object gives way before the actual concrete object.

• Its first immediate idea is cancelled in the course of experience.

Mere certainty vanished in favour of the truth.

There has now arisen, however, what was not established in the case of these previous relationships,

Here arises a certainty which is on a par with its truth.

• The certainty is the object of certainty.
• Consciousness is the truth of consciousness.

Otherness is also found there.

Consciousness makes a distinction.

• But at the same time it does not make a distinction.

Assume:

• conception is the movement of knowledge
• knowledge is simple unity or Ego, the object,

Then, for us and knowledge, the object corresponds to the movement of knowldge.

Assume:

• conception is the essence of the object
• the object is in the other form

Then, the essence of existence and the perception of existence are the same.

This is because the inherent existence is consciousness.

Yet inherent existence is still what the other is.

And it is for consciousness that the inherent nature of the object, and its “being for an other” are one and the same.

Ego is:

• the content of the relation
• the process of relating.
• opposed to an other

Ego reaches out beyond this other, which other is all the same taken to be only itself.

¹⁶⁷ Self-consciousness is the native land of truth.

What is the form of self-consciousness?

This self-consciousness is the knowledge of self.

This makes the knowledge of an other vanish.

Yet the moments of that other are preserved.

Only the principal moment was lost.

• The principal moment is the simple fact of having an independent existence for consciousness.

But, in reality, self-consciousness is:

• reflexion out of the bare existence that belongs to perception
• essentially the return out of otherness.

As self-consciousness, it is movement.

But when it distinguishes only its self as such from itself, distinction is straightway taken to be superseded in the sense of involving otherness.

The distinction is not, and self-consciousness is only motionless tautology, Ego is Ego, I am I. When for self-consciousness the distinction does not also have the shape of being, it is not self-consciousness.

For self-consciousness, then, otherness is a fact, it does exist as a distinct moment; but the unity of itself with this difference is also a fact for self-consciousness, and is a second distinct moment.

With that first moment, self-consciousness occupies the position of consciousness, and the whole expanse of the world of sense is conserved as its object, but at the same time only as related to the second moment, the unity of self-consciousness with itself. And, consequently, the sensible world is regarded by self-consciousness as having a subsistence which is, however, only appearance, or forms a distinction from self-consciousness that per se has no being. This opposition of its appearance and its truth finds its real essence, however, only in the truth — in the unity of self-consciousness with itself.

This unity must become essential to self-consciousness, i.e. self-consciousness is the state of Desire in general. Consciousness has, qua self-consciousness, henceforth a twofold object — the one immediate, the object of sense-certainty and of perception, which, however, is here found to be marked by the character of negation; the second, viz. itself, which is the true essence, and is found in the first instance only in the opposition of the first object to it. Self-consciousness presents itself here as the process in which this opposition is removed, and oneness or identity with itself established.