La teoría ecológica

Phenomenology is a discipline, developed by the speculative philosopher, to show that the standpoint of speculative, ontological logic - the identity of thought and being - is nec­

essarily entailed by the perspective of ordinary, natural consciousness itself (though ordi­

nary consciousness does not initially realize this). If, however, the philosopher-as- phenomenologist is to succeed in persuading consciousness that its ordinary certainties, taken on their own terms, do indeed lead to the standpoint of philosophy or absolute knowing, the philosopher may not simply assume from the start that the ordinary per­

spective will inevitably be overcome or undermined. The philosopher must, rather, put his own expectations to one side, examine consciousness with an open mind and seek to dis­

cover whether or not ordinary certainties lead to absolute knowing. Otherwise, ordinary consciousness may justifiably complain that its point of view is not being taken seriously, but is being subjected to an examination whose outcome is predetermined. If ordinary con­

sciousness is to be given a ‘ladder’ to philosophy that is accep table to consciousness, it cannot be given one whose rungs are already fixed in advance. In fact, strictly speaking, the philoso­

pher may not himself provide consciousness with a ‘ladder’ or ‘map’ of any kind whatso­

ever, but must simply analyse the certainties of ordinary consciousness and note where, if anywhere, they lead. As Quentin Lauer puts it, Hegel must allow consciousness ‘to follow out its own implications’.10 During the course of the Phenomenology Hegel shows that such certainties do take us necessarily to the standpoint of philosophy; but he shows that they do so immanently - wholly by themselves - without any guidance from the philosopher.

Hegel demonstrates, indeed, that ordinary consciousness actually builds its own ladder to absolute knowing, and that it does so not through any effort to reach some anticipated height, but precisely by endeavouring to stay where it is and adhere to its own certainties.

Yet in the minds of some commentators, there lingers the suspicion that, behind the back of consciousness, Hegel is actually pulling puppet-strings all along. This is because phe­

nomenology is an examination of the development of consciousness that is undertaken by

philosophical thought The phenomenologist does not go out into the street, like a modern- day Socrates, engage people in dialogue and then watch them argue themselves into an acceptance of the philosophical point of view. The phenomenologist works out for himself - in thought - the paradoxical consequences of espousing the various perspectives of ordi­

nary consciousness. According to some, however, the very fact that the examination of con­

sciousness is carried out by philosophical thought means that the path that consciousness must take is, in Paul Redding’s words, already "rigged from the start5.11 For such commen­

tators, to think through the perspective of consciousness in a Hegelian manner is from the outset to think consciousness dialectically; that is, to think consciousness according to a prior conception of ideological development or, as Heidegger daims, "in accordance with a predetermined idea of being’.12

According to Hegel himself, however, philosophical thought is not inevitably bound by predetermined concepts of ‘development’ or ‘dialectic’, but is capable of entering into the perspectives of consciousness and understanding them wholly in their own terms. Hegel does not deny that phenomenology is a discipline undertaken by philosophical thought or

‘absolute knowing5. It is undertaken, however, by absolute knowing that sets to one side its ontological conviction that being can be understood from within thought (as well as concepts such as ‘dialectic’) and seeks to understand the immanent character of ordinary consciousness itself. For Hegel, indeed, every form of consciousness is ‘a complete indi­

vidual shape, and one is only viewed in absolute perspective [absolut betrachtet] when its determinateness is regarded as a concrete whole, or the whole is considered in the specificity of this determination [Eigentümlichkeit dieser Bestimmung]9.13 These lines make it clear that, for Hegel, philosophical thought considers consciousness from an ‘absolute’ per­

spective only when it attends to and lingers over the unique specificity of each shape of consciousness and does not assume in advance that such shapes lead necessarily and dialec- tically to absolute knowing. Phenomenology must, therefore, be an open-minded and open-ended examination of consciousness, undertaken in the hope that it will lead to the standpoint of philosophy, but with no prior assumption that we will be taken beyond the shape of consciousness with which we start.

The Preface and Introduction to the Phenomenology do, of course, tell us in advance that consciousness will lead dialectically to the standpoint of philosophy; but they also tell us that consciousness will be shown to do so only when it is considered immanently on its own terms without assuming in advance that it will lead anywhere. Science, Hegel writes in the Preface, requires that one ‘enter into the immanent content of the m atter,, . . sur­

render oneself to the life of the object, or, what amounts to the same thing, confront and express its inner necessity; and this applies as much to phenomenology as to philosophy proper.14

How does Hegel ensure that his examination of consciousness is rigorously immanent?

By refraining from comparing the claims of ordinary consciousness with the world as phi­

losophy comprehends it, and confining himself instead to studying the relation between consciousness and what consciousness itself takes its object to be. Hegel notes in the Intro­

duction that consciousness is minimally aware of something and so draws a distinction between itself and the object it knows. Furthermore, he notes that consciousness regards its object in two ways: once as being whatever it is in itself and once as being known by - or being for - consciousness:

Consciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time relates itself to it, or, as it is said, this something exists for consciousness; and the determinate aspect of this relat­

ing, or of the being of something for a consciousness, is knowing. But we distinguish this

being-for-another from being-in-itselfi whatever is related to knowledge or knowing is also distinguished from it, and posited as existing outside of this relationship; this being-in-it$elf is called truth.15

This is not to say that there are two distinct objects of consciousness: the object in itself and the object known. There is only one such object, but consciousness distinguishes between what it takes the object itself to be and the way it actually knows or experiences that object. Moreover, consciousness itself is able to establish whether its knowledge or experience of the object concerned actually matches what it understands the object in itself to be:

for consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what for it is the Thie, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth.

Since both are for the same consciousness, this consciousness is itself their comparison; it is for this same consciousness to know whether its knowledge of the object corresponds to the object or not.16

It is im portant to note here that consciousness is not being asked to compare its know­

ledge of things with things as they might be outside the perspective of consciousness al­

together. Such a comparison would clearly be impossible. It is also unnecessary, for, as Hegel points out, consciousness has a standard or ‘criterion’ (Mafistab) within itself by which to judge the merits of its own knowledge, namely the object as consciousness itself under­

stands it to be in itself: ‘in what consciousness affirms from within itself as being-in-itself or the True we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows’.17 Consciousness is thus in a position to establish from within itself whether its knowledge is adequate, because it can directly compare the way it knows and experi­

ences things with what it takes them to be in themselves. For this reason the analysis of consciousness undertaken in the Phenomenology is wholly immanent: it makes reference to no standard of judgement other than one that is set up by consciousness itself. It seeks to determine not whether consciousness’s knowledge of the world meets the standards established by philosophy, but whether such knowledge is satisfactory in consciousness’s own terms.18

As I pointed out above, the examination of consciousness carried out in the Phenome­

nology is undertaken by philosophical thought. Yet it has now become clear that such thought brings no standards of its own to bear on consciousness. The task of thought is, instead, to describe and articulate the experience that consciousness itself makes of the objects it declares to be the ‘truth’. To be more precise, thought describes not the contin­

gent experiences made by ordinary consciousness in history, but the experience that, logi­

cally, consciousness must make, given the way it initially understands its object to be in itself. It should be noted that, although philosophical thought tells the story of conscious­

ness’s experience, such thought does not undertake any active comparison of its own between the object of consciousness and consciousness’s knowledge of that object. Con­

sciousness examines itself and its own object, so, in fact, ‘all that is left for us to do is simply to look on [zusehenY and describe what must occur.19

Hegel believes that the actual examination o f consciousness shows that its knowledge or experience turns out not to accord with its initial conception of the object itself. The object as it is known in experience proves to be different from what it is first understood to be.

Now in everyday circumstances, if we note such a discrepancy between our experience of an object and what we understand the object itself to be, we might suspect that our ex­

perience is deficient and in need of revision. If we understand the object to be a dog, but find that it looks like a large cat, we might assume that something is wrong with the way

we are looking at it and try to see it properly. Similarly, one might think that conscious­

ness in the Phenomenologyy upon finding that its experience or knowledge does not corre­

spond to what it holds the object in itself to be, would seek to revise its ‘knowledge’ to make it accurately reflect the object ‘if the comparison shows that these two moments do not correspond to one another, it would seem that consciousness must alter its knowledge to make it conform to the object’.20

The experience described in the Phenomenology cannot, however, be revised in this way because it does not misrepresent the object, but discloses what the object itself necessarily proves to be. In the course of its experience, Hegel argues, consciousness’s knowledge of its object changes; that knowledge, however, is not something wholly detached from the object, but is knowledge o f the object itself, of what that object itself turns out to be. As the knowledge changes, therefore, so the object itself changes for consciousness: the object proves to be not just what it is first understood to be after all, but what it is revealed to be in the experience o f i t ‘In the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself alters for it too, for the knowledge that was present was essentially a knowledge of the object: as the know­

ledge changes, so too does the object, for it essentially belonged to this knowledge.’21 Since consciousness’s experience is experience of the object itself consciousness cannot simply reject that experience and revert to its initial conception of the object. Rather, it must rec­

ognize that through such experience the initial conception of the object has been under­

mined and the object shown to be other than it is first taken to be. That is to say, consciousness must acknowledge that what it initially took to be the object in itself was in fact merely what it took to be the object in itself, and that the object has now shown itself in the experience of it to be somewhat different. As Hegel puts it, ‘it comes to pass for con­

sciousness that what it previously took to be the in-itselfis not an in-itself or that it was only an in-itself for consciousness\22

Needless to say, such a recognition will only ‘come to pass’ if Hegel can prove that the experience in which the object of consciousness is transformed is, indeed, genuine experi­

ence of what the object proves to be, and does not simply misrepresent that object. He can prove this only if he can demonstrate that such experience is made necessary by nothing other than the object as it is itself initially conceived to be. Hegel must show, therefore, that the object itself, as it is first understood by consciousness, generates the very experience in which it is transformed.

When consciousness accepts that its object must be understood in a new way and has in fact turned out to be a different kind of object, it becomes a new shape of conscious­

ness. This new shape now declares its object to have its own distinctive character, and the phenomenologist has to describe the experience that the new shape of consciousness makes of this newly conceived object. If the object again proves in the experience of it to be other than what it is first declared to be, then consciousness must mutate logically into a further shape, and so on. In this way, Hegel maintains, consciousness can be shown to develop logically through a series of different shapes as more and more of the character of the object of consciousness is disclosed in the experience of consciousness itself. Hegel’s claim that such a development must occur will, of course, only be justified, if he can prove that the experience in which the object of consciousness is transformed is in each case made nec­

essary by the object as it is initially understood.