The Phenomenology of Spirit

It is natural to suppose that in philosophy, before getting on with one’s main concern, that of actually knowing what in truth is, one first has to understand the intellect, this being commonly regarded as an instrument with which to get hold of the absolute truth or as a medium through which one beholds it. There seems good reason for concern whether there might be various kinds of knowledge, one perhaps better suited to this end than another, so that by choosing the wrong one—or, assuming the intellect to be a faculty finite in kind and scope, by failing to determine with precision its nature and limits—one might embrace clouds of error instead of the clear skies of truth. Such concerns are bound to lead to the conviction that the whole idea of undertaking to secure for consciousness what things are in themselves by means of the intellect is absurd, and that between the intellect and absolute truth there lies a barrier that quite simply separates them. For, supposing that the intellect is an instrument for apprehending what absolutely is, it readily occurs to us that when we apply an instrument to an object we aren’t letting it be what it is in its own right but are undertaking to alter it or change its form. Supposing, on the other hand, that the intellect isn’t a tool we actively employ but a more or less passive medium through which the light of truth reaches us, then once again what we receive isn’t the truth as it is in itself but only as it is in and through this medium. Either way we’re employing a means that brings about the direct opposite of its purpose—which is to say that the absurdity lies instead in our making use of a means at all. –It might of course seem that we could find a way out of this predicament by figuring out exactly how this “instrument” works, since that would enable us to take the representation of absolute truth that we obtained by means of it, subtracting the portion of the end-product that’s due to it and thus leaving us with what’s clearly true. Yet a remedy such as this would in fact only bring us back to where we were before. For were we to subtract from anything whose form has been altered by an instrument whatever effect is due to the instrument, then the thing (here absolute truth) becomes for us exactly what it was before this consequently pointless effort. Even supposing absolute truth to have somehow merely been brought closer to us without alteration by the instrument (like a bird caught with a lime twig), then it itself, were it not by its very nature and of its own accord by our side all along, would doubtless find this artifice laughable. For an artifice is just what the intellect would then be, pretending through elaborate labors to accomplish something altogether different from what would be achieved merely through a direct and hence effortless relation. –Or again, supposing the intellect to be some sort of “medium,” were we to examine it to ascertain the “law of its refraction” so as to remove this effect from the result, once again we’d gain nothing. For knowledge isn’t a refraction away from the ray through which truth reaches us, but rather is that refracted ray itself; and were this removed, nothing would be indicated to us but a sheer direction (namely that of our gaze)—in effect a blank spot. If, meanwhile, worry about falling into error makes one mistrustful of science, which goes right to work without such misgivings and actually does come to know, it’s hard to see why one shouldn’t instead mistrust this mistrust and be concerned as to whether dread of error isn’t itself already an error. Indeed it takes a good deal for granted, basing its doubts and conclusions on assumptions whose truth is itself in need of prior critical scrutiny. It presupposes that the intellect is validly represented as instrument or medium, and even as something distinct from ourselves. But above all it assumes that ‘what absolutely is’ stands fixed on one side and the intellect by itself on the other—separated from it, yet somehow still reliable—in other words takes for granted that an intellect excluded from it, and hence from the truth as well, nonetheless holds true: a presupposition whereby what calls itself (M59) fear of error sooner gives itself away as fear of the truth. The basis for so concluding is that only what is absolutely is true, i.e. that the truth alone is what absolutely is. One might disregard this, subtilizing that an intellect that doesn’t comprehend what absolutely is in the way that science does may nonetheless be true too, and that, even if the intellect were to prove incapable of grasping such, it might still be capable of truth of another sort. But by this point it’s obvious that all that comes of such mealymouthing is a murky distinction between absolute truth and some other kind of truth, and that the terms ‘absolute,’ ‘intellect,’ etc., presuppose a meaning that’s yet to be ascertained. Instead of troubling ourselves with such useless notions and locutions concerning the intellect as ‘instrument for apprehending what absolutely is’ or ‘medium through which we behold the truth’ (the sort of relations one ends up with when the intellect is thought of as cut off from the absolute and the absolute as isolated from it); instead of putting up with the evasions that scientific incompetence concocts once having presupposed such relations in order to avoid the rigorous demands of science while still appearing to be earnestly and zealously engaged; instead of bothering to refute all this, we could simply reject these arbitrary notions out of hand. And the concomitant use of words like ‘absolute’ and ‘cognition,’ ‘objective,’ and ‘subjective,’ and countless others whose meaning is presumed to be familiar to all, could be regarded as just so much cant. For the claim that their meaning is generally familiar, or even that anyone is in possession of their concept, has every appearance of an attempt to avoid doing what matters most, namely to provide this concept. With greater justification we could instead just ignore such locutions and notions whose effect would be to preclude scientific knowledge; for the vacuous appearance of knowledge they provide vanishes so soon as science emerges. (excerpted from Introduction)