K.R. Westphal - Hegel’s Internal Critique of Naïve Realism

WESTPHAL, Kenneth R. 2000. ‘Hegel’s Internal Critique of Naïve Realism’. Journal of Philosophical Research 25:173–229. 1

Hegel’s Internal Critique of Naïve Realism

Kenneth R. WestphalUniversity of East Anglia, Norwich

The definitive version of this article appears in:

Journal of Philosophical Research 25 (2000):173–229.

ABSTRACT. This article reconstructs Hegel’s chapter, “Sense Certainty” (Phenomenology of Spirit, ch. 1),

in detail in its historical and philosophical context. Hegel’s chapter develops a sound internal critique

of naïve realism that shows that sensation is necessary but not sufficient for knowledge of sensed

particulars. Cognitive reference to particulars also requires using a priori conceptions of space, spaces,

time, times, self, and individuation. Several standard objections to and misinterpretations of Hegel’s

chapter are rebutted. Hegel’s proto-semantics is shown to accord in important regards with Gareth

Evans’ view in “Identity and Predication.”

[Note: The present anlaysis is extended (and completed) in: Westphal, Kenneth R., „Analytischer Gehalt und zeitgenössische Bedeutung von Hegels

Kritik des unmittelbaren Wissens“. Jahrbuch für Hegel-Forschungen 8/9 (2002/03h):129–43.(‘The Analytic Content and Contemporaneous Significance of Hegel’s Critique of Immediate

Knowledge’.)]

1 INTRODUCTION

The first chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), “Sense Certainty, or the This and the

Meaning,” has probably received more comment than any other section of Hegel’s book, even more

than his notorious discussion of Master and Bondsman. However, there has been substantial

disagreement about and misunderstanding of the aim and character of Hegel’s discussion and

argument in this chapter. Only two prior studies have examined and reconstructed Hegel’s text in

detail. Those studies, by Kettner and by Harris, have considerable merits, but I don’t believe that

they have fully or properly identified the subject of Hegel’s critique, nor have they quite properly

characterized or assessed the merits of Hegel’s argument. This essay reconsiders afresh the aim and1

structure of Hegel’s critique of “Sense Certainty.” I begin with a brief summary of Hegel’s argument

(§2). This provides a basis for identifying the philosophical views Hegel criticizes (§3). I then

reconstruct Hegel’s analysis in detail (§4) and assess its philosophical implications (§5).

An adequate interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology, as with any great philosophical text, requires

jointly fulfilling two requirements: systematically reconstructing Hegel’s theme in view of its central

issues and arguments within their philosophical and historical context, and reconstructing Hegel’s

text in detail to provide a maximally complete and accurate reconstruction, down to individual

sentences, phrases, even terms. These two aspects of an interpretation must match. I have2

reconstructed the systematic role of “Sense Certainty” within Hegel’s epistemological argument in


the Phenomenology elsewhere. Harris has reconstructed its role within Hegel’s philosophical3

Kulturkritik. (Hegel’s Phenomenology combines these two prongs, and my account of Hegel’s4

epistemology complements Harris’ account of Hegel’s Kulturkritik.) Here I present a complete

reconstruction of Hegel’s chapter in its historical and philosophical context. Thus I return once

again to “Sense Certainty” in order to provide a complete reading of Hegel’s chapter that (1) sets

it in its proper historical and philosophical context, (2) reconstructs the complete text of Hegel’s

chapter, and (3) examines and assesses its philosophical significance.5

Hegel’s phenomenological dialectic has been likened to Platonic dialogue. More illuminating,6

I think, is its relation to Platonic dialectic as “exercises” designed to improve not just our wits but

also our understanding of the concepts, examples, and issues involved in some particular topic of

philosophical inquiry. There is no question that Hegel greatly overestimated his readers’7

preparedness for, indeed often their patience with, his exercises. However, Hegel’s expositors have

worsened the situation by disregarding epistemology, and so failing to recognize Hegel’s clear

references (in his Introduction) to Sextus Empiricus’s dilemma of the criterion. Consequently,

Hegel’s expositors have assumed that the Phenomenology begins directly with metaphysics. They have

thus overlooked the absolutely central and basic epistemological issues Hegel addresses in the

Phenomenology. In particular, they have failed to interpret “Sense Certainty” in the epistemological

context Hegel provides for it. Thus it is well worth our while to return to Hegel’s text with epistemic

issues clearly in mind.8

2 PRELIMINARY SUMMARY OF “SENSE CERTAINTY”

Hegel’s chapter on “sense-certainty” argues for one of Kant’s dicta, that intuitions without

conceptions are blind, and against the possibility of aconceptual cognition of objects.9

“Sense-Certainty” presents a naïve realism, according to which there is a world that is what it is

independently of our thought, and that can be known intuitively or “immediately,” that is, without

applying conceptions to it (G63.4-8). This view is close to Russell’s “knowledge by acquaintance,”

though its prime examples of objects of knowledge are spatio-temporal particulars, not the sense-

data, universals, or complexes favored by Russell. By beginning with a form of consciousness that

holds this realism, Hegel discharges his own realist contentions in the Introduction to the

Phenomenology. Hegel aims to retain the realist tenet of this ontology while rejecting aconceptual10

empirical knowledge and, with that, rejecting correspondence as a criterion of truth. Hegel argues

on internal, phenomenological grounds rather than following Kant by arguing against aconceptual

empirical knowledge on the basis of a very controversial philosophy of mind. He focuses on the use

of singular demonstrative pronouns (tokens of indexical terms like “this,” “that,” “here,” and

“now” ) in putative knowledge claims, because the use of descriptive terms would either cede or11

beg the question of the necessity of universal conceptions for knowledge.

Hegel argues that even the use of tokens of indexical terms requires understanding indexical type

terms and the implicit spatio-temporal coördinate framework they presuppose. Understanding

indexical terms as tokens of types that have sense only within an implicit coördinate framework is

far too much mediation to count as “immediate knowledge,” for it presupposes conceptions of

space, time, self, and individuation. Conceptions of identity and individuation are necessary for

knowledge, insofar as they are necessary for identifying and individuating objects of knowledge and

for identifying and individuating cognitive episodes and subjects of cognitive episodes. These


conceptions thus involve or entail a conception of number, or at least of plurality. Hegel’s argument

shows the necessity of these elementary logical, spatial, and temporal conceptions for empirical

knowledge. His argument also shows that these conceptions are a priori, insofar as having and using

them is presupposed by any experience that could serve for learning or defining any a posteriori

conception. Furthermore, successful use of indexical terms or ostensive gestures indicates that we

have the ability to determine the scope or range of space or time designated as relevantly “here” or

“now,” but this obvious ability cannot be accounted for without recognizing our use of universal12

conceptions to designate or circumscribe the particulars we designate. Sense certainty is an

inadequate form of consciousness on all of these counts. In refuting this view of knowledge, Hegel

refutes strong forms of epistemological foundationalism. The important point Hegel sees, unlike

many recent critics of foundationalism, is that rejecting foundationalism need not rescind realism.13

Realism survives the loss of the myth of the given and the loss of the myth of confronting theories

with the brute facts or other unconceptualized reality. How realism survives this is, of course, a

complicated story.14

3 THE (MAIN) TARGETS OF HEGEL’S CRITIQUE

Who or what views does Hegel criticize in “Sense Certainty”? Henry Harris is certainly correct that

one important target of Hegel’s critique of “Sense Certainty” is the pre-philosophical naïve realism

of common sense, which Hegel calls “natural consciousness.” Common sense generally is confident

in its ability to know whatever particular facts or information about the world it desires.

Consequently, it disregards issues in epistemology and any controversies about the “possibility” of

knowledge, whether commonsense or “absolute.” One aim of Hegel’s analysis is to show that the

naïve confidence in our ordinary cognitive abilities and claims stems from how well our cognitive

abilities are suited to their aims, not from how simple—unstructured and so failsafe—they are.

Philosophy begins in perplexity, and the first epistemic perplexity involves recognizing that our

cognitive abilities and achievements, which we take for granted, are far more complex and

sophisticated than we ordinarily recognize.15

Certainly commonsense naïve realism is part of the story, but as Harris notes, Hegel’s

methodological reflections in the Introduction to the Phenomenology follow an important point of

Aristotle’s dialectical method, namely, critically reflecting on the opinions of the many and the wise.16

Who among the philosophically “wise” would or could Hegel have been considering? The strategic

role for aconceptual knowledge of particulars, as a standpoint outside our propositions or

conceptual schemes from which to assess their adequacy, justifies a primarily epistemological

interpretation of “Sense Certainty” for both systematic and historical reasons. In his Introduction

to the Phenomenology Hegel rehearses the “dilemma of the criterion” propounded by Sextus

Empiricus, the problem, roughly, of establishing criteria for judging disputed claims without

dogmatism, circularity, or question-begging. Aconceptual knowledge of particulars, or “sense17

certainty,” supposedly offers a direct escape from this dilemma by entitling us simply to look and

see what the facts are. Aconceptual knowledge of particulars was espoused, both in Hegel’s day and

in this century, just for this purpose. Among Hegel’s German contemporaries it was espoused by

G. J. Hamann, F. H. Jacobi, G. E. Schulze, and W. T. Krug.18

These Germans were influenced by the Scottish Common Sense philosophy, though they

simplified the Scottish view by disregarding the role of conceptions in forming beliefs about (and


hence knowledge of) commonsense objects or events. Reid rejected intermediating perceptual

representations (“ideas”), but held that beliefs with propositional, conceptual content were required

for knowledge of spatio-temporal particulars. In this regard, the Germans just mentioned held a19

view much more akin to what Moore and Russell called “knowledge by acquaintance.” However,

Moore and Russell thought that the objects of such knowledge were not spatio-temporal particulars

(physical objects and events), but rather sense data (and, in Russell’s case, universals and complexes).

They took recourse to sense data in order to uphold the prospect of indubitability, infallibility, or

incorrigibility. Moore avowed a representationalist account of perception of the kind those20

Germans rejected. In this regard, these German philosophers espoused a radically naïve direct21

realism with regard to spatio-temporal particulars. In the twentieth century, this kind of radical,

direct, naïve realism was espoused by Schlick and Ayer, precisely in order to check our propositions

from without, directly against reality.22

This purportedly simple, direct, immediate, aconceptual knowledge of particulars raises

enormously complex questions in each of the many versions in which it has been developed. It is

not germane to enter into most of these questions here because only one specific issue about this

kind of knowledge is raised by Hegel in “Sense Certainty.” In particular, Hegel does not raise issues

about the infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability (epistemic certainty) involved in such

knowledge, nor does he raise issues about whether the objects of such knowledge must be mind-

dependent, nor does he raise issues about whether such knowledge (if there is any) suffices to justify

even commonsense beliefs about ordinary objects and events in our immediate surroundings. The

sole issue Hegel investigates is whether basic knowledge of particular objects or events in our

environs is aconceptual. The “certainty” of sense certainty is the ‘certainty’—the conviction, the

position—that sensation alone suffices for knowledge of particulars. This is Hegel’s typical usage

of the term “certainty” in describing a form of consciousness; a form of consciousness’s “certainty”

indicates what that form of consciousness is sure its knowledge and objects of knowledge are like,

what their basic characteristics are. Hegel contends that sensation is insufficient for knowledge23

because simply picking out any alleged object of sensory knowledge requires conceptually mediated

use of indexical terms or ostensive gesture. (Epistemic certainty is quite beside this point.) It is

significant that Hegel focuses on demonstrative reference, for this involves non-logical yet non-

empirical conceptions. This suffices as a preliminary indication of the target of Hegel’s critique.24

Three facts may appear to make reconstructing Hegel’s critique of “sense certainty” a merely

historical exercise: the views he criticizes are generally very strong and hence inherently contentious;

most of these views are no longer widely espoused; and Hegel’s contemporaneous German

exponents of “sense certainty” were not models of philosophical rigor.

There are at least two reasons why Hegel’s critique of sense certainty retains philosophical

interest. First, the vagueness of the views of his contemporaries, combined with Hegel’s requirement

of strictly internal critique, entails that Hegel bears the burden of analysis and proof by beginning

with an utterly simple-minded view of “immediate” knowledge and distinguishing on grounds

internal to that view various relevant kinds of “mediation” within our knowledge of commonsense

particulars. The very terms of this debate—“immediacy” and “mediation”—are almost hopelessly

vague and equivocal. As I shall show, Hegel executes their difficult analysis and disambiguation

brilliantly.25

Second, taking recourse to aconceptual knowledge of particulars in order to avoid historicism

or relativism (to which Hegel’s views have been wrongly assimilated) exhibits a very common pattern


of argument that has been highly influential in epistemology from Descartes to the present. It has

been widely supposed that the only way to maintain realism is to identify a certain privileged set of

cognitions that individuals can have without relying on any social (and hence also linguistic)

resources, and that allow individuals to check their conceptually formulated beliefs (propositions,

judgments, theories) directly against the facts or reality. Realism thus is thought to require rejecting

a fundamentally social or historical account of human knowledge. Conversely, those persuaded that

human knowledge is fundamentally social and historical have generally held that this entails the

rejection of realism. This alternative to realism may be called historicist relativism. In Hegel’s day

it was espoused by Herder; in ours by Richard Rorty. Generally Hegel has been grouped with these26

historicist relativists simply because he holds that human knowledge is social and historical and he

rejects the alleged asocial, aconceptual basic cognitions often thought to be required for realism. This

dichotomy involves both a serious philosophical confusion and a serious misunderstanding of

Hegel’s epistemology. In responding to Herder’s historicist relativism, Hegel was the first27

philosopher to recognize that realism is consistent with an astute social and historical account of

human knowledge. Thus he shows that one of the most basic and pervasive (and often only implicit)

debates in epistemology rests on a false dichotomy. For this reason, Hegel’s views are of great28

contemporary importance. Although most of Hegel’s positive views cannot be addressed here29

because they are not developed in “Sense Certainty,” it is very important to have this context of30

Hegel’s critique clearly in mind and to recognize in advance that Hegel’s critique of sense certainty

is only a critique of epistemically naïve realism, not of realism per se.

4 RECONSTRUCTION OF HEGEL’S ANALYSIS OF SENSE CERTAINTY

Hegel’s discussion divides into five sections; an introduction (¶¶1–5), three sections of analysis

(¶¶6–19), and a conclusion (¶¶20–21). In the first analytical section the object of knowledge is

primary (¶¶6–11), in the second the subject of knowledge is primary (¶¶12–14), in the third the

subject and object are taken together (¶¶15–19). Though it inverts the order of the first two phases,

Hegel closely follows the classical skeptical modes based on the subject who judges, on the object

judged, and on both taken together. Hegel’s arguments turn on what can be “said” using tokens31

of demonstrative terms (in the first two analytical sections) and on what can be ostended by gestures

(in the third analytical section). (For easy reference I designate these three central analytical sections

as Phases I–III.) The transition from “Sense Certainty” to “Perception” appears to be made only

on the basis of a pun, but in fact is based on combining utterances with ostensive gestures. This

suggests that central to Hegel’s arguments are the nature of and relation between what are known

since Frege as “sense” and “reference,” or in earlier terminology, connotation and denotation or

intension and extension. Now it is not to Hegel’s point to develop a semantic theory in the first

chapter of the Phenomenology; the cognitive competence of philosophy must first be demonstrated (in

the Phenomenology) before promulgating positive philosophical theories (in the Logic and Encyclopedia).

However, it is very much to Hegel’s point to develop some basic parameters for, inter alia, a

semantic account of singular demonstrative reference so far as this pertains to knowledge of

particulars. In this regard, Hegel aims to explicate some basic conceptual presuppositions of32

cognitive reference to particulars. Hegel’s point is to show that what one says by uttering tokens of

demonstrative terms and what one points out by ostensive gesture are linked and are only successful

as referential acts and as components of knowledge of particulars by what one means, where definite


meaning and determinate reference to particulars are only possible via conceptually structured

determinate thoughts about the temporal and spatial scope of the object, event, or spatio-temporal

region one intends to designate. One can well argue that it belongs to the meaning of a token-usage

of a demonstrative term that some particular speaker picks out and refers to some particular spatio-

temporal region. The problem Hegel urges is that determining the original point of reference (the33

speaker) and the scope of reference (the designated region) requires conceptions of space and time

and specific determinations of spatio-temporal determinables, where these determinations involve

determinate use of conceptions. Hegel’s point is that demonstrative meaning or demonstrative

thought are unintelligible, indeed impossible, on the basis of allegedly aconceptual knowledge.

4.1 Hegel’s Introduction to Sense Certainty

In the first paragraph Hegel gives an all too brief account of why sense certainty is the first form of

consciousness considered in the Phenomenology. Note that his account says nothing of certainty (or

dubitability or fallibility or corrigibility), but places all the stress on immediacy:

The knowledge, which is at first or immediately our object, can be no other than that which is itself

immediate knowledge, knowledge of the immediate or of what is. (G63.4–6)

At the outset of Hegel’s examination of a series of apparent forms of consciousness (including forms

of cognitive consciousness) in the Phenomenology, nothing has been introduced to justify any particular

account of knowledge or of the objects of consciousness. To adopt any structured view of these

matters requires justification, and at the outset there is neither reason nor evidence for doing so. Any

such grounds must be developed through an internal critique of the most simple account there is

of consciousness, of knowledge and its objects. The simplest account possible just is “immediate,”

that is, unmediated knowledge; knowledge that involves no processing, no reflection, no conceptions,

just bare awareness of an object or event. Prima facie, the object of such knowledge or awareness

must also be immediate because if it were mediated, knowledge of it would have to grasp that

mediation. Perhaps that could happen without any mediations within knowledge, but if so, that, too,

needs to be shown to be the case. Hence at the outset of Hegel’s examination, the object must be

taken as immediate also. The terms “immediate” and “mediate” and their cognates are extremely

vague; it must be made clear what sorts of “mediation” or “immediacy” are relevant to the topic at

hand, in the present case, direct knowledge of commonsense particulars. Hegel’s analysis clarifies

these terms by examining various kinds or aspects of mediation or immediacy in elementary cases

of human knowledge.

Some of this clarification is provided, indirectly, in the second and final sentence of Hegel’s first

paragraph. Hegel there states that, as phenomenological observers of this first form of

consciousness, we, too, must observe this form of consciousness without misrepresenting it:

We must likewise conduct ourselves immediately or receptively, and thus alter nothing in it as it presents

itself, and keep comprehension out of our apprehension. (G63.6–8)34

Hegel’s term for comprehension is “Begreiffen,” which means to grasp or comprehend with

conceptions—Begriffe. Because “our” approach as observers must follow the lead of the form of

consciousness under observation (“likewise,” “ebenso”), Hegel’s comment about our proper attitude


also highlights the central issue for sense certainty itself, namely, whether even the simplest

knowledge of commonsense particulars is mediated by conceptions. (That the relevant conceptions

are formal but non-logical is made especially clear in Phase III of Hegel’s discussion.)

The remark just quoted expressly addresses Hegel’s readers, who are to “observe” various forms

of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Hegel’s view of such observation is complex; only a few

central points can be mentioned here. Hegel does not think that either philosophical reflection on35

theories of knowledge or phenomenological “observation” of forms of consciousness involves

aconceptual knowledge. One point of “observing” forms of consciousness is to examine a

conception of knowledge together with its associated conception of the objects of knowledge as they

are (or purportedly can be) instantiated in paradigm cases of human cognition. Each form of

consciousness has its own favored cases of knowledge and objects of knowledge; Hegel’s critical

examination ascertains whether a form of consciousness can account adequately even for those

favored cases. Hegel’s advice to us, his readers, that we must observe receptively and “keep

comprehension out of our apprehension” indicates that we should direct our attention, not to our

own pet philosophical theory of knowledge (or to other preconceptions about knowledge and its

objects), but to the cognitive phenomena generated by a form of consciousness’s attempt to

instantiate a pair of conceptions of knowledge and of its objects.

In this way Hegel’s phenomenological method extends and expands Kant’s notion of

transcendental reflection. Kant defines “transcendental reflection” as the act in which we determine

the proper origin (in sensibility, in understanding, or in reason) of various aspects or components

of knowledge. Transcendental reflection thus requires a complete and accurate account of the36

“sources” of knowledge. Kant’s claims to prove various theses about human knowledge

“apodeictically” plainly rest on his account of the sources of human knowledge. Kant’s claims37

about the apodeictic certainty of his conclusions have led generations of commentators and critics

to suppose that Kant aims for Cartesian certainty, which requires eliminating all logically possible

alternative accounts of human knowledge (or of apparent knowledge). Descartes failed to do this,

and Kant’s critics have pointed out that Kant did no better than Descartes in this regard. This38

involves serious misunderstanding of Kant’s methods. Kant recognizes that no philosopher can39

conclusively eliminate all logically possible alternative accounts of human knowledge. Kant’s

methods aim (inter alia) at determining what kinds of basic cognitive capacities we in fact have—sc.,

we have two particular forms of receptive sensibility, that we have a discursive kind of understanding

with twelve basic forms of judgment, that certain a priori concepts guide our integration of empirical

knowledge. Kant specifies our kinds of capacities by determining what they must be in view of

certain counterfactual circumstances that would preclude unified self-conscious experience; he does

not, and does not try to, determine what they are in view of what they might be (within the limitless

domain of logically possible views), nor what account of them might withstand the evil deceiver.40

This in turn raises the question of how to determine what are in fact our human kind of cognitive

capacities and, insofar as an account of them forms a central part of any philosophical proofs, how

to achieve agreement about that account. In the “Transcendental Doctrine of Method” Kant

recognizes that an account of our cognitive capacities—his metaphor is an inventory of the building

materials of human knowledge—can only be developed by mutual philosophical criticism. In the41

concluding part of that section, “The History of Pure Reason,” Kant strongly suggests that the

requisite mutual philosophical criticism is historical and must necessarily introduce an historical

dimension into philosophical justification. In a passage that surely would have caught Hegel’s


attention, Kant amplifies this theme in the Preface to the Metaphysics of Morals.42

Hegel’s phenomenological method recognizes and extends these points by considering a

comprehensive series of “forms of consciousness” that illustrate the core principles of the wide

variety of philosophical theories of human knowledge. By presenting these forms as good-faith

attempts to instantiate these theories, Hegel expects and enables us to examine the principles and

paradigm examples of knowledge embedded in those theories without our having to take

responsibility for those theories and their defense. By relieving ourselves of responsibility for

defending these theories, we can better attend to our own cognitive capacities and experiences, in

order better to determine what our cognitive abilities—that is, who we as cognizers—are. This shift43

in attitude should enable us to determine what our cognitive capacities are in fact without trapping

ourselves in the Cartesian conflation of justification with defensibility against even that most

obstinate of colleagues, the evil deceiver.

Hegel grants that sense certainty initially (or “immediately”) appears to be both the richest and

the truest kind of knowledge (¶2); the richest because it appears to have an unlimited domain in

space and time, whether macroscopically or microscopically, the truest because it omits nothing

from the object. Indeed, sense certainty “has before it the object in its entire completeness”

(G63.15). Hegel’s phrase “has before it” recalls the issue of direct, “immediate” presence to mind

found in many Modern period and recent epistemologies. This allusion is reinforced by Hegel’s

further discussion of what sense certainty excludes. Hegel indicates that the relevant “certainty” is

based on the idea that the object of knowledge is directly before the mind:

[sense certainty] still hasn’t left anything out of the object; instead, it has before it the object in its

entire completeness. This certainty ... (G63.15–16)

Directness is the main issue, not conviction, indubitability, incorrigibility, or infallibility; the relevant

“certainty” is the conviction that such direct, immediate knowledge is humanly possible and that it

grasps the object in its full specificity.

Hegel directly points out that the apparent richness and veracity of sense certainty is misleading;

“this certainty in fact presents itself as the most abstract and poorest truth” (G63.16–17). He claims that

all sense certainty can say about its object is, “it is.” Why is sense certainty’s cognitive claim so44

limited? One main reason is that its certainty excludes rather than requires any cognitive

development or manifold movement of thought (G63.20–22, .25–27), and it excludes rather than

includes any manifold intrarelations of characteristics within the object of knowledge or any

manifold of interrelations of that object with anything else (G63.22–24, .27–28). To know such

manifold characteristics or relations would require distinguishing and integrating them, and that

would require active comprehension; passive apprehension won’t suffice. Sense certainty, as direct

or passive apprehension, specifically excludes any such “manifold representing or thinking”

(G63.26–27). This unequivocally identifies the target of Hegel’s critique as aconceptual knowledge.45

(A second reason why sense certainty’s cognitive claim is so minimal is discussed just below and on

p. 20.) Hegel’s entirely prospective suggestion is that knowledge by acquaintance excludes any

complexity within cognition, and thus cannot accommodate any complexity in the object known.

However, proof must come from the internal critique of sense certainty. (It is characteristic of

Hegel’s introductory presentations of a form of consciousness to alert his readers to the main point

of difficulty infecting that form of consciousness. His actual examination and critique must be


strictly internal, but his introductory remarks need not.)

Because “immediate” knowledge excludes any complexity either in the act or the object of

knowledge, the cognitive claim made by sense certainty is very restricted. The essential point for

sense certainty is that its object is. Proper English usage would have us use “exists” here, but

“existence” is already a more complex conception. At the outset only the most undifferentiated,

simple conception of the object as something that is there and can be known is permitted, because

nothing more sophisticated or complex has been justified. Likewise for cognition; it is a simple act

of apprehension, nothing more. An act of immediate knowledge is a simple direct relation between

a particular subject and some particular object (G63.28–34). One point of starting with such

simple—the philosophically wise might already say, such impoverished—conceptions of knowledge

and its objects is to help us become clear about our own presuppositions, both the theoretical

presuppositions we often automatically make about knowledge and its objects, and about the actual

presuppositions of our actual cognitive acts and claims about the objects we actually experience.

Especially in philosophy it is all too easy to oversimplify our theories and underappreciate our

cognitive resources and abilities. Einstein surely is right that everything must be made as simple as

possible, but not any simpler. The difficulty lies in distinguishing accuracy from oversimplification.

Hegel’s phenomenological method is designed to address this difficulty. For the unphilosophical

many, Hegel’s point in starting with such simple conceptions of knowledge and its objects is to

invite the philosophically uninitiated to reconsider whether their commonsense realism is quite so

simple as they pre-reflectively assume.

Hegel indicates that sense certainty’s supposition about knowledge is, of course, too simple (¶3).

First, any actual sense certainty is only some particular instance or example of sense certainty. Sense

certainty is a recurrent, that is, repeatable, phenomenon (G64.1–4). Moreover, sense certainty is a

relation between knower and known. In any instance of sense certainty, these two terms mediate

each other (G64.4–11). Jacobi, for example, thought it sufficed for immediate knowledge to reject

representationalist accounts of perception, according to which we directly perceive mental

representations and thereby indirectly perceive their cause or causes. In reply Hegel points out that

eliminating a third, mediating term (medius terminus) doesn’t eliminate mediation, namely, the mutual

mediation of the two remaining terms, subject and object.46

Hegel further indicates that these distinctions are made by or within sense certainty itself (¶4).

For purposes of internal critique, we must take these distinctions as they are made by sense certainty

(G64.12–15). Sense certainty is realist; it holds (“posits”; setzt—i.e., its position is) that the object is47

essential (G64.15–16); it is regardless of whether it is known (G64.19–21). A knower is only a48

subject of knowledge insofar as it knows some object. The subject is thus inessential and mediated;

the subject doesn’t exist unto (or “in”) itself, it may or may not exist, and only exists insofar as it

knows an object, and cannot exist without an object (G64.21–22). (Here I use “exists” for stylistic

reasons where Hegel has cognates of “Seyn.”)

Because of the realist position of sense certainty, the critical question to consider (to “observe”)

is whether, in any instance of sense certainty, the object is in fact the kind of essence sense certainty

purports it to be (¶5). Does the object available within sense certainty correspond to sense certainty’s

conception of it as being essential (G64.23–25)? Hegel ends his introductory discussion by

reminding us that this question is not to be answered by philosophical reflections on the true nature

of the object. Instead, it is only necessary—and only legitimate—to observe the object as sense

certainty experiences it (G64.26–28).


4.2 Hegel’s Examination of Sense Certainty: Phase I

Hegel’s examination of sense certainty begins simply by asking it “What is the this?” (G64.29). The

expression “the this” is as unconventional in English as it is in German (das Diese). Since this usage

is unusual, I have retained it throughout, starting with Hegel’s chapter title. Because it is unusual, it

requires explanation. Hegel often nominalizes terms, but why does he nominalize this one? The

answer can be gleaned from the first claim—the first answer to this question—Hegel ascribes to

sense certainty. That answer, however, is given to a more specific question. Hegel divides Phase I

of his examination by distinguishing the temporal and spatial aspects of singular demonstrative

reference. Hegel substitutes for “the this” the two forms “the now” and “the here” (G64.29–31).

Hegel simply claims that this substitution provides an equally intelligible examination. If anything,

it makes examining sense certainty more accessible and thorough. At the very least, this substitution

is clearly foreshadowed by Hegel’s previous indication that space and time are the two dimensions

of the contents of sense certainty (G63.9–13). Because sense certainty is supposed in the first49

instance to provide knowledge of spatio-temporal particulars, dividing the examination of sense

certainty by distinguishing temporal and spatial examples is unobjectionable.

Hegel accordingly substitutes the question, “What is the now?” and gives the illustrative answer

“The now is the night” (G64.32–33). Both the question and the answer are grammatically stilted. Why?

Russell’s answer is that Hegel ignores the distinction between the “‘is’ of identity” and the “‘is’ of

predication.” Hegel does ignore that distinction here, but why?50 51

As immediate, aconceptual knowledge of particulars, sense certainty doesn’t have the conceptual

resources to distinguish identity from predication—at least not initially—and admitting predication

for the purpose of identifying particulars would admit that universal conceptions are necessary for

identifying particulars after all. (Indeed, to admit predication at the outset would give up sense

certainty’s characteristic aconceptual immediacy before all!) Distinguishing between identity and

predication must be justified, and if it is to be justified on the basis of internal criticism (as required

by Hegel’s phenomenological method), that criticism must begin with the denial of that distinction.

That denial is then to be reduced to absurdity, and the affirmation of that distinction is then inferred

by disjunctive syllogism. These reflections thus raise the question, why is sense certainty committed

exclusively to identity statements? The answer is, because it is committed to aconceptual, direct

knowledge of particulars. The only “relation” among particulars it can admit, at least initially, is the

degenerate case of a relation, namely identity. Hegel’s stilted usage of “the this,” “the now,” and “the

night” (in “The now is the night”) indicate that these designations are used by sense certainty in a

way tantamount to Russell’s logically proper names: “The this” names or designates some one

particular; “the night” also designates some one particular. The nominative usage of “the night” thus

helps disengage the predicative usage of “night” (as in “now it is night”) and thus underscores the

intended particularity of reference and the intended avoidance of predication of universal

characteristics. “The now is the night” indicates that “the now” and “the night” designate one and

the same particular of which sense certainty purports to be directly aware.52

To test the truth of sense certainty’s claim (“the now is the night”), Hegel proposes to preserve

it by writing it down and reexamining it later (G64.33–36). The connection between truth and

timelessness is both ancient and commonsensical. The Greek notion of truth involves not only a

propositional sense of truth but also a sense found in calling someone a true friend: Something’s

being true involves its being constant and thus being dependable. Referring to this aspect of the53

Greek notion of truth is not irrelevant, because elsewhere Hegel claimed that the ancient skeptical


tropes suffice to undermine sense certainty, and those tropes relied on this “ontological” conception

of truth. However, Hegel’s critique of sense certainty does not assume the Greek notion of truth;54

it assumes nothing more than our commonsense conviction that truth is not itself indexed to time.

Hence genuine truths do not lose their truth-value by writing them down or otherwise preserving

them (G64.34–37). This conviction requires no Platonic ontology; it is preserved even by that arch

anti-platonist Quine in his doctrine of eternal sentences. Of course, statements that are true may be

indexed to time. Indeed, this is Hegel’s point: statements made with indexical terms must be indexed

to time (and place), and this cannot be done aconceptually. The inscription “the now is the night”

has by mid-day gone stale (G64.36–37).55

Why should the inscription, “the now is the night,” be preserved over time? Because it is

presented as something that is (G65.2). This does not involve yet another alleged ambiguity in copula

‘is’ (as it were: identity, predication, and being). Rather, this claim recalls the “main point” of sense

certainty’s realism, namely, that the objects of its knowledge are (exist), and are what they are

regardless of their being known (G63.17–18, .28–30). The essence of the objects of knowledge,

according to sense certainty, is to be (G63.28–30, 64.1, .15–16, .29–31). This ontological claim by

sense certainty does involve a Greek notion of being as changeless permanence. This notion,

however, is not merely Greek; it is preserved in modern European languages and in philosophical

parlance, too; in German as the contrast between “Sein” and “Existenz,” in English in the parallel

contrast between “being” and “existence.” Sense certainty is committed to immediacy in all senses of

the term—at least until self-criticism drives it to recognize distinct senses of the term and to reject

some as inessential to its core position. Consequently, at the outset sense certainty is committed to

the most simple, least differentiated ontological claim possible, namely, that something simply is.

Period. Unchangableness is sense certainty’s criterion for something being essential. This must be

the case, because any change would involve some form of “mediation.” Consequently, Hegel’s

examination turns on determining what, if any, elements in sense certainty’s experience persist

unchanged in the face of its experience with the changing truth-value of its initial claim, “the now

is the night.” To preserve this initial claim by inscribing it is to treat this claim as something that is,

and thus as something changeless that thus fulfills sense certainty’s criterion for being essential. The

changing truth-value of this inscription shows, to the contrary, by sense certainty’s own criterion,

that the claim inscribed is a non-being (G65.3). Since the inscribed claim was intended to instantiate

or illustrate “the this,” this “this” that is the night proves to be, not a being, but a non-being. When

does it prove itself to be a non-being? “... Now, this noon” (G64.36). Temporal mediation is one kind

of mediation, and its role in or influence on the purported objects of knowledge is one count against

unqualifiedly “immediate” knowledge.

Hegel notes that “the now” preserves itself through these two different reports. Consequently,

“the now” cannot be identified with either night or day (G65.3–5). In this regard, “the now” is

something “negative”; it is distinct from (i.e., non-identical with) the day or night it designates.

Indeed, this “now” is not immediate, but rather is mediated because it is determined as something

that remains and preserves itself insofar as something else changes—namely night and day. Hegel’s

language is stilted, but for an important reason. Hegel here works to introduce a very general notion

of a “universal.” His account of universals must be very general for three reasons. First, he must

avoid philosophical controversies about the positive analysis of universals. Second, he needs to56

justify the introduction of universals to a view—namely, sense certainty—that rejects them

altogether as components of cognitive reference to sensed particulars. Third, for Hegel’s argument


to succeed, he only needs to show that universals must be admitted by an adequate account of our

knowledge of and reference to sensed particulars; he does not need to show how we are able to

identify or use universals, nor does he need to show just what universals are, or what kinds of

universals there are. Consequently he uses as untheoretical a formulation as he can.

This is Hegel’s formulation:

This self-preserving now is thus not something immediate, but instead something mediated, for it

is determined as something remaining and self-preserving through [the fact] that another is not, namely

the day and the night. Nevertheless it is still as simple as before, now, and in this simplicity it is

indifferent to that which occurs in it; just as little as night and day are its being, it is just as well also

day and night. It is utterly unaffected by this its otherbeing. Such a simple that, through negation, is

to be neither this nor that, a not this, and just as indifferently, also this as well as that, we call a

universal. (G65.5–13)

Hegel’s decidedly untheoretical, minimally extensional specification of universals makes the essential

point and leaves the theoretical details for later (i.e., for the positive doctrines Hegel develops after

the Phenomenology). The essential point is that one and the same universal has multiple instances. A

universal is instantiated and so is exhibited or exemplified by its instances. Conversely, because it

is a universal, the universal cannot be identified with or reduced to any of its instances, either

distributively (singly) or collectively. This is true of functions with variable placeholders and their

‘arguments’ (or specific values), it is true of types and their tokens, it is true of predicates and the

specific characteristics of things they designate, it is true of determinables and their determinates,

and it is true of repeatables and their repetitions generally. There are significant differences among57

these kinds of “universals” and they deserve philosophical attention—but not here, where the basic

point is that there is more to human knowledge of sensed particulars than simple direct

apprehension of those particulars.

The ironic point against sense certainty is that, by its own notion of truth and being as timeless

and so changeless, the paradigm example of a known particular—the now that is the night—is

neither a being nor true. In this episode (or “experience,” as Hegel calls it) the most obvious

component that fulfills the criterion of being an essence—changelessness—is “the now” that is

recognized to be a universal, a repeatable designation, tokens of which can be used to designate

various particular times (G65.14). By its own criterion, sense certainty’s ‘object’ of knowledge is a

universal.

Sense certainty could avoid this conclusion by altering instead its criterion of truth or being, but

that would require recognizing that its object of knowledge is mediated temporally and it would raise

the issue of how sense certainty is able to identity and distinguish particular temporally mediated

objects of knowledge. This issue is addressed in Phase III of Hegel’s examination.

Hegel then tries to reinforce the point, that the object known by sense certainty is a universal,

by appealing to the nature of linguistic expression. His argument is astonishing and easily misleading.

Hence it requires careful interpretation. Hegel states:

We also pronounce [aussprechen] the sensuous as a universal. What we say [sagen] is: this, that is, the

universal this; or it is, that is being in general. Admittedly we don’t represent to ourselves the universal this,

or being in general, but we pronounce the universal; or, we just don’t speak [sprechen] as we mean it in

this sense certainty. As we see, however, language is the more truthful; in it we ourselves immediately

refute our meaning, and since the universal is the true of sense certainty, and language only expresses

[ausdrückt] this true, it is thus altogether not possible for us to be able to state [sagen] a sensuous being


that we mean. (¶8, G65.15–23)

Hegel’s argument uses several terms with closely related meanings, “aussprechen,” “sprechen,”

“ausdrücken,” and “sagen.” I have tried to preserve both their close association and their at least

terminological differences by translating them respectively as “pronounce,” “speak,” “express,” and

“say” or “state.” (“Say” comes closer than “state” to “sagen,” but doesn’t afford a well-formed

English translation of parts of this passage.) The understandable temptation is to interpret this

passage in light of Hegel’s remarks on language in his Jena manuscripts, on the one hand, and recent

semantics for demonstratives, on the other. As recent accounts have shown, token demonstratives

have a certain kind of meaning, a “character” or “role,” that is and is understood by competent

speakers to be context- and speaker-relative, by which such terms designate particulars. The58

implication, obviously enough, is that Hegel’s proto-semantics is inadequate because he overlooks

the fact that individual tokens of demonstrative terms do have this kind of meaning; uttering “this

...” in some context is in fact part of stating or indicating something quite particular. Hegel’s claim

to the contrary, that we only state what is universal, appears not merely unjustified, but outright

false.59

This criticism is understandable, but not ultimately tenable. Hegel’s passage must be interpreted

in context, which means in this case, in the context of examining and assessing sense certainty. The

point that token demonstratives have a certain kind of meaning (character or role) is of course

correct. The problem is that this kind of “meaning” of token demonstratives cannot be admitted by

sense certainty. Sense certainty tries to use token demonstratives as if they were logically proper

names. As a logically proper name, an utterance of “this” should pick out one and only one

particular. That it does not do. As a token demonstrative, an utterance of “this” picks out one and

only one particular, but only insofar as both the speaker and any auditors understand how using

token demonstratives functions on the basis of speaker- and context-relativity. This kind of relativity

is too much mediation to count as “immediate” knowledge. Indeed, by the end of “Sense60

Certainty” Hegel shows that this mediation is at least in part conceptual mediation (Phase III, §4.4

below). Solving such scope problems is precisely the point of sense certainty’s use of ostensive

gestures in Phase III. The salience of those issues, and of means for addressing them, in Phase III

strongly suggests that sense certainty overtly disregards such means in Phases I and II.

Risking the accusation of excessive interpretive charity, I propose another interpretation of this

passage (¶8). There are two important clues to guide a more charitable and ultimately more

illuminating interpretation here. One is the point already mentioned, that this passage must be

interpreted as part of an attempted internal critique of a radically naïve, radically immediate sense

certainty, a view tantamount to aconceptual knowledge by acquaintance. The other is the course and

culmination of Hegel’s whole argument in “Sense Certainty.” As mentioned above, the first two

phases (¶¶6–14) focus on utterances of token demonstratives. Phase III (¶¶15–19) focuses on

ostensive designation. In the concluding paragraph (¶21) Hegel introduces descriptions, and the

transition to “Perception” is made by combining descriptions with ostensive designation

(G70.21–29). (This skeletal structure of Hegel’s analysis in “Sense Certainty” has not been previously

noticed.) The purported result is to reject immediate knowledge and to take the object truly by

perceiving it. To be sure, Hegel’s paradigm example of an object of perception is a concrete

particular, a cube of salt (“Diß Saltz,” G72.26). Hegel’s formulation of his transition from “Sense

Certainty” to “Perception” is clearly aided and abetted by a German pun on “Wahrnehmen”


(perception) and “wahr nehmen” (take truly). But the philosophical weight of Hegel’s case rests on

combining descriptions with ostensive designation. This clearly indicates that Hegel’s proto-

semantics isn’t quite so crude as it initially seems. In particular, this clearly indicates Hegel’s

awareness of the joint necessity of meaning (as embodied in descriptions employing universal terms)

and reference (as embodied in context-specific designation or even ostensive gestures) for cognition

of particulars. If this is correct, one way to put Hegel’s thesis in “Sense Certainty” is that neither

meaning without reference, nor reference without meaning, suffices for sensory knowledge of

particulars. If these terms sound anachronistic due to their association with Frege, the same point

can be put in contemporaneous terms as follows: Neither connotation (intension) without

denotation (extension), nor denotation (extension) without connotation (intension), suffices for

sensory knowledge of particulars. In the remainder I shall show that a complete and careful

interpretation of Hegel’s chapter justifies ascribing precisely this point to Hegel’s argument in “Sense

Certainty.”

If this is Hegel’s point, then Hegel’s claims about what language expresses in ¶8 must be

interpreted very minimally. In particular, linguistic “expression” must here be taken in the minimal

sense of a verbal utterance, as distinct from sentential or speaker meaning. Distinguishing a verbal

utterance from linguistic meaning in this way, or at least distinguishing a speaker’s intended meaning

from linguistic meaning, is directly justified by Hegel’s claim in this paragraph (¶8) that

Admittedly we don’t represent to ourselves the universal this, or being in general, but we pronounce the

universal; or, we just don’t speak as we mean it in this sense certainty. (G65.17–19)

As a purported logically proper name, an utterance of “this” picks out indifferently any particular

whatsoever. To this extent, Hegel’s claim that uttering “this” expresses a universal (G65.15–16) is

correct. Because sense certainty’s radical immediacy commits it to treating any token demonstrative

as a logically proper name (and an unambiguous one at that), it confronts precisely the problem

Hegel brings out. Sense certainty cannot, at least initially, acknowledge this ambiguity because61

unambiguous use of “this” on any occasion would require disambiguation, and disambiguation

would require some kind of cognitive mediation.

The passage now under consideration (¶8) ends with what appear to be some very strong, even

flagrantly false conclusions:

As we see, however, language is the more truthful; in it we ourselves immediately refute our meaning,

and since the universal is the true of sense certainty, and language only expresses [ausdrückt] this true,

it is thus altogether not possible for us to be able to state [sagen] a sensuous being that we mean. (¶8,

G65.20–23)

If this passage is taken as Hegel’s expression of his own view, it sounds like he flatly denies the

obvious, that we can refer linguistically to particulars—as if Hegel never ordered a beer or a coffee,

and as if “Perception” didn’t begin with the example of a particular cube of salt—specified, of

course, linguistically. However, Hegel’s method of internal criticism doesn’t permit him to

pronounce conclusions on his own behalf at this stage. His method requires that we interpret this

passage as commentary internal to the constraints upheld by sense certainty. Within those

constraints, Hegel’s statements make sense, indeed good sense.

Hegel’s terms “Meynung” and “meynen” trade on the connotations of opinion, intention, and


ownership (what is one’s own or ‘mine’; in German, “das ist mein”). Hegel states that language is more

truthful than sense certainty (G65.20); this comparative statement pointedly does not say that

language here already expresses the whole truth, or even a truth. He does say that the universal is62

“the true” (das Wahre) of sense certainty (G65.21–22), and that language only expresses this “true”

(G65.22). However, Hegel uses “true” (“wahre”) or “the true” to designate what a form of

consciousness takes to be true. In the present context, Hegel says only that language expresses that63

which meets the criterion of truth upheld by sense certainty. That criterion requires changelessness.

The only aspect of sense certainty’s experience so far noted that fulfills this criterion is “the now”

as a universal that recurs unchanged with regard to its changing instantiations (night and day).

For this reason, it is supposed to be impossible to state or say, sagen, a sensible being that we

mean (G65.22–23). How so? Note first that Hegel does not deny that we mean or intend some

sensed particular, nor does he deny that sense certainty intends some sensed particular. He only64

denies that either “we” or sense certainty can simply say so. Why not, exactly? If my above

hypothesis about the skeletal structure of Hegel’s analysis is correct (p. 26), there is a good answer

to this question: mere intentions do not suffice to determine which if any particular(s) is (or are)

designated by a linguistic utterance. No verbal tag by itself suffices to determine reference, and no

verbal tag suffices to determine reference even in conjunction with (mere) conscious intentions to

refer to some sensed particular. Hegel does not argue that determinate reference to particulars is

impossible, either linguistically or intentionally; he argues that the conditions for successful singular

cognitive reference to sensed particulars are richer than sense certainty acknowledges. To anticipate,

once again, those conditions include conceptual determination of the determinable conceptions of

spaces and times via spatio-temporal coördinates.

Hegel next devotes a single brief paragraph to the parallel case of “the here” (¶9):

The case will be the same with the other form of the this, with the here. The here for example is the tree.

I turn around; thus this truth has vanished, and has inverted itself into the opposite: The here is not a

tree, but instead a house. The here itself doesn’t vanish; instead it is remaining in the vanishing of the

house, of the tree, and so on, and indifferently is to be house, tree. The this thus shows itself again

as mediated simplicity, or as universality. (G65.24–30)

Because the case of “the here” parallels the case of “the now,” Hegel’s discussion is quite brief. It

is worth stressing that Hegel uses terms that can be used descriptively, “a tree” or “a house,” but he

uses them here simply to designate particulars. He doesn’t press the issue that descriptive terms

make sense only because they have or convey meanings that are constituted by universals. This is

in keeping with his aim to press the issue of the a priori status of our conceptions of space, time,

individuation, number (plurality), and (as we shall soon see in Phase II) self. This charity towards

sense certainty is of course also an important convenience, insofar as Hegel sought to write down

his examination and have us learn from it by reading it. That leaves him no alternative but to use

descriptive terms in a designatory manner in order to indicate his commonsense examples of

putative sense-certain particulars. The main point of this episode is plain enough: any case of a65

particular object of sense certainty is only an instance; any human being who is sense-certain of one

thing has the experience of being likewise sense-certain of something, anything else. If we can

designate some one thing as “here,” it will not be long, given the vicissitudes of human life, before

we designate something else as “here.” It happens as soon as we turn around—or turn our heads,

or simply glance away. The term “here” shows the same kind of universality as does “now”; it can


be used equally well to designate any of a wide variety of particulars that happen, on some occasion

or another, to be “here” before one. Likewise, “here” cannot be identified with any one or with any

set of the particulars designated to be “here” on various occasions. The term “here” remains

throughout all these changes of contents of sense certainty. Consequently, the type term “here”

fulfills sense certainty’s criterion of truth—changelessness—whereas the purportedly sense-certain

particulars do not.

Hegel next draws some interim conclusions about the nature and status of sense certainty (¶10).

Hegel first stresses that, insofar as the conclusion (that the universal is the truth of the object of

sense certainty) has been reached internally—within and by sense certainty itself—this conclusion

follows from the fact that pure being remains essential to sense certainty (G65.31–32). Hegel uses

the dative case here, that “pure being remains to it [to sense certainty] as its essence.” (Indeed, his use

of the dative is clearly deliberate, since he places it for emphasis, at some cost to stylistic elegance,

at the head of his sentence; German grammar and style offer simpler, more idiomatic alternatives

had Hegel wanted to use the accusative case instead.) The dative case indicates that this factor in

sense certainty is one to which it responds, but also that this factor has not yet become fully explicit

for sense certainty. Hegel further indicates that this “pure being” has become to sense certainty66

something that is no longer immediate, but something to which “negation and mediation are

essential” (G65.32–33). Consequently, this enriched, mediated, and yet still implicit conception of

being is no longer present to sense certainty as what is meant or intended by being—i.e., something

altogether unmediated and hence unchanging. Instead, this enriched conception of being, present

to sense certainty, is “determined” or characterized as—i.e., it simply is (“ist”)—an “abstraction” or

a “pure universal” (G65.34–35). Hegel concludes by acknowledging that “our meaning” or intention

or opinion, according to which the true of sense certainty is not the universal nevertheless remains

over and against “this empty or indifferent Now and Here” (G65.35–37). Hegel doesn’t deny

intentional reference to particulars, certainly not here. Moreover, his use of the accusative case, “für

... unsere Meynung” indicates that sense certainty still explicitly conceives “the true”—its true, i.e., its

conception of what truth is (das Wahre der sinnlichen Gewißheit)—not to be something universal.

(Hegel’s contrastive use of dative and accusative cases could not be plainer.) The question this raises

is, how can sense certainty retain its explicit conception of its object while recognizing the

universality of “being,” of “now,” and of “here”?

As Hegel indicates in the next transitional paragraph (¶11), there is an obvious revision of sense

certainty that preserves its core conception in the face of Phase I of its examination. Hegel notes that

the initial relation between knowledge and object has been reversed. Originally, the object was

supposed to be essential and knowledge was supposed to be inessential (¶4, G64.15–22). Now,

however, the object doesn’t meet sense certainty’s explicit criterion of essence. (Note that Hegel

again goes out of his way to use an accusative construction to mark something being explicit: “the

universal, which [the object] has become, is no longer such as should be essential for sense certainty”;

“das Allgemeine, zu dem [der Gegenstand] geworden ist, ist nicht mehr ein solches, wie er für sie [sc. die sinnliche

Gewißheit] wesentlich seyn sollte” [G66.3–6; emphases added].) The object of sense certainty is mediated

by spaces and times, in sum by occasions on which someone is aware of an object, and its

designation is mediated by uses of tokens of the universal type terms “here” and “now.” Yet sense

certainty seeks to preserve its original conception of immediate knowledge of particulars. This it can

do by recognizing that sense certainty lies in the opposite element; that is, “it [sense certainty] is now

present in the opposite, namely in the knowledge, which previously was inessential” (G66.6–7).


Sense certainty can maintain its core conception of immediate knowledge by holding that

its truth is in the object as my object, or in my meaning [im Meynen]; it is, because I know of it.

(G66.7–8)

By this strategy sense certainty avoids refutation by adopting a certain kind of subjectivism that

purports to preserve immediate knowledge of an object—whatever object any particular subject

claims on any particular occasion to know. Hegel’s critical question then is, can this strategy account

for its own paradigmatic examples? Once again, the answer should be found by examining the

experience sense certainty generates on the basis of this modified strategy (G66.9–11). Thus begins

the third part of Hegel’s chapter, which contains Phase II of sense certainty’s examination.

4.3 Hegel’s Examination of Sense Certainty: Phase II

In the first paragraph of Phase II (¶12) of Hegel’s examination of sense certainty it is finally made

explicit that sense certainty is, of course, a sensory affair. In Phase II, sense certainty asserts the

primacy of the knowing subject, and maintains that “the force of its truth thus now lies in the I, in

the immediacy of my seeing, hearing, and so on” (G66.12–13). Insofar as Hegel does not deny the

obvious relevance of sensation for empirical knowledge, and does not deny that we sense and refer

to particular objects and events in having knowledge of them—and we shall see that he maintains

these unquestionable theses—his thesis is that sensation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition

for empirical knowledge of particular objects and events. This second strategy by sense certainty

avoids the problems found in Phase I—the multiple reference of the mere (type) terms “now” and

“here” and the multiplicity of referents, of objects of reference, on various occasions—by insisting

on the primacy of what I see here now:

The vanishing of the individual now and here, which we mean, is prevented because I hold them fast.

The now is day, because I see it; The here is a tree, for the same reason. (G66.13–15)

Hegel claims that the same problem arises again in connection with the “I” as arose in the first phase

regarding “here” and “now” (G66.15–16). His argument is surprisingly simple and brief:

I, this I see the tree, and maintain the tree as the here; an other I sees instead the house, and maintains, the

here is not a tree, but rather a house. Both truths have the same certification, namely the immediacy

of seeing, and the security and assurance both have of their knowledge; but the one truth vanishes

in the other. (G66.17–21)

In view of the preoccupation in mainstream epistemology with refuting skepticism and solipsism,

Hegel’s argument is astonishing. How can Hegel so blithely ignore the problem of other minds? The

answer is that neither skepticism nor solipsism can be defended, or even formulated, on the naïve

basis represented by sense certainty. Those pet problems of modern epistemology and its twentieth

century atavars arise only on the basis of first distinguishing our experiences or our cognitive

representations from our putative objects of knowledge. Sense certainty, which purports that we

have immediate knowledge of particular objects or events in space and time, rejects such distinctions

between appearances and reality, or rather, it simply does not admit them. Introducing such skeptical

distinctions between appearances and reality must be justified, and nothing found so far in sense


certainty’s experience justifies any such distinction. Naïve realism is incompatible with such

representationalism and skepticism; to address or even to formulate the issues of skepticism about

the “external” world or about other minds requires first giving up one’s naïveté about realism. Sense

certainty has not done that, because it still has no grounds to warrant such problems.67

These reflections provide the proper context for considering sense certainty’s second strategy

and Hegel’s critique of it. Taken at face value, that is, taken immediately, the existence of other people,

with their minds, together with our experience of them, is no less doubtful and no less obvious or

evident than our experience of commonsense objects and events in space and time. Nor is the fact

that other people experience and report on things and events they perceive prima facie any less

doubtful or evident to us than our own experience and reports on what we perceive. Like our own

claims, claims made by others are equally certified—that is, justified—by their (purportedly)

immediate perception of them; their claims have the same degree and kind of legitimacy as our own

(G66.19–21). About this, Hegel is clearly right. Since the contents of their claims can and often do

differ from the content(s) of our own claim(s) at any time, they cannot all be true, can they? Does

“the one truth vanish in the other” (G66.21)? If so, why?

Obviously something has gone quite wrong here, but what? Plainly there is a very naïve mistake

here, but which mistake is it, and who makes it? It is worth recalling here a classical formulation of

the law of non-contradiction by Aristotle:

the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the

same respect. (Metaphysics Ã 3, 1005 19–20; Ross tr.)b

This ontological principle, of course, has its semantic and cognitive corollary regarding our

ascription or attribution of characteristics to things or events (Met. Ã 3, 1005 25–30). The examplesb

of sense-certain knowledge in Phase II of Hegel’s examination, one person maintains “I see a tree

here” while another maintains “I see a house, not a tree” (G66.17–19), are only inconsistent if one

fails to distinguish among the subjects of knowledge who make these claims. Distinguishing different

subjects of knowledge enables us to distinguish different simultaneous cognitive states or claims,

each of which concern different objects of knowledge. Nothing requires us to suppose there is some

one object that is both a tree and also a house and so is also not a tree. (Hegel’s obvious contrast

between a tree and a house, retained from Phase I and continued here, shows that no treehouse is

at issue. Hegel himself is not one of those ‘hegelian synthesizers’ who would evade Russell’s point

that the present King of France must either be bald or not bald by suggesting his Majesty wears a

wig! ) The problem here is elementary enough. Hegel’s point is that the mere immediacy of sensory68

perception does not suffice to enable us to distinguish among subjects of knowledge. The solution69

to the problem is so obvious that our ability to solve it goes unnoticed, and so our resources for

avoiding this problem go unanalyzed. That is the naïvité of naïve realism, a.k.a. sense certainty.

Philosophy begins in perplexity, and Hegel’s deliberately simple-minded examples are designed

to get us to ponder exactly why and how we do not ordinarily face the problems he points out in

sense certainty. This is good Hegelian dialectical practice, at which Hegel is the past master: take a

view absolutely literally and see what follows from it about its own paradigm examples. Taking a

view in an excruciatingly literal manner makes it possible to expose further unacknowledged

assumptions made by those who espouse that view, assumptions that are necessary for the view to

be plausible, even though those assumptions require a far richer account than the view admits.


Hegel next points out that these examples make the same semantic point about tokens of the

demonstrative type term “I” as was made about tokens of “now” and “here” in Phase I. The “I”

who sees is a universal in two regards. First, its—anyone’s—sensing and sensory knowledge persist

through various changing instances of sensed particulars. The ‘I’ who sees, and its seeing, cannot

be identified with any of those instances, though it recurs in each of them (G66.22–26). Second,

simply uttering the verbal tag “I,” although intended to refer to some one particular person, namely

to oneself, no more designates oneself than it does any other person, each of whom is equally a

cognizant subject who uses the term “I,” purportedly to refer to him- or herself (G66.26–31). In this

way, the case is entirely parallel to Hegel’s case about utterances of “now” and “here”: Hegel doesn’t

deny the intention to refer to particulars, nor does he deny the particulars referred to. Hegel only

denies that sensation—here, the act of sensing—alone suffices to account for how we can use

tokens of indexical terms to refer to particulars, even to ourselves. Immediate knowledge is too

naïve, too simple, to use utterances as anything more than linguistic tags, as putative (unambiguous)

logically proper names. As mere linguistic tags, tokens of “this,” “now,” “here,” and “I” do not

name, refer to, or otherwise pick out any one particular from any others.

Hegel closes this paragraph with a polemical rebuke to a polemical critic of Reinhold, Fichte, and

Schelling: Willhelm Traugott Krug. Hegel reviewed three works by Krug in a highly impatient and

polemical way in 1802 in the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie. Hegel pointed out that Krug simply70

missed the fact that the theoretical part of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre purported to deduce the reality

of the external world. In this context Krug issued his challenge to idealists to “deduce” or prove71

the existence of any particular at all, including e.g. his pen. Hegel seized on this alleged counter-72

example and pointed out that, whatever Krug’s professed integration of transcendental realism with73

transcendental idealism amounted to, his actual argument for the reality of outer things was74

tantamount to Jacobi’s, and both Krug’s view and his critique founder on the fact that he ladles75

out naïve commonsense facts without considering how we are able to identify these facts. Although76

Hegel was never (quite) an orthodox Schellingian, Hegel’s philosophical enthusiasm ran quite high

during his early years in Jena. Philosophical sobriety returned when G. E. Schulze published his77

brilliant anonymous satire and critique of Schelling and Hegel in his “Aphorismen über das

Absolute” (“Aphorisms on the Absolute”) in 1803. Among much else, Schulze brought home to78

Hegel the point that no philosophy, not even transcendental idealism, and certainly not any form

of it that appeals to alleged intellectual intuition, can dismiss the problem of begging the question

against dissenters. This set the problem for Hegel’s Phenomenology, especially his re-consideration79

of Sextus Empiricus’s dilemma of the criterion, his phenomenological re-examination of

epistemology, and his requirement of internal critique of opposed views. In the closing lines of this80

paragraph (¶13) Hegel again taunts Krug and the naïve common sense he espouses so confidently

for overlooking the crucial question about the conditions for the possibility of singular

demonstrative reference and, through that, of knowledge of particulars. Hegel’s positive point,81

again, is that uttering linguistic tags does not suffice for such reference or knowledge.

The fact that the same problem with the use of token demonstrative terms recurs both in tokens

that purport to designate particular objects and in tokens that purport to designate particular subjects

sets the stage for the third and most important phase of Hegel’s examination. Hegel develops the

strategy sense certainty deploys in Phase III in the next paragraph (¶14). Here Hegel reports that

sense certainty has experienced that neither its express criterion of essence nor its express criterion

of immediacy is fulfilled either by its object or by itself (G66.37–39). The intended particular


referents are found to be inessential (G66.39–67.1)—not in the sense that they are dispensable or

otherwise not necessary for knowledge, but in the sense that they have no permanence and hence

have no being, in that undifferentiated, “immediate” sense of the term canvassed earlier (G67.1–2).82

Hegel states that “the object and I are universals” (G67.1). Hegel uses the term “Gegenstand” here,

by which he surely means object of knowledge, for he explains this by saying that in “the object and

I ... that previous now and here and I, which I mean, do not remain constant, or are not” (G67.1–2).

(Note again the explicit association of “being” with constancy.) In this sense “the object of

knowledge” is a universal in the sense that this phrase indifferently designates any of the objects one

happens to know on any of the occasions one has sensory knowledge of some particular object or

event. Each of the two previous phases purported to locate the essence and the required immediacy

in one or another aspect (or “moment”) of sense certainty. Phase I focused on the object of

knowledge, Phase II on the subject of knowledge. In neither case could sense certainty sustain its

claim immediately to know something essential (something that “is”). The third and final strategy

is to take both of these aspects together (G67.2–6). The third strategy for sustaining sense certainty’s

claim to immediate knowledge of something that is takes both moments together as a whole and

seeks in this way to exclude the oppositions (among instances and between repeatables and

repeateds) that occurred in the first two phases (G67.6–8). This strategy ushers in the third and most

important phase of Hegel’s examination of sense certainty.

4.4 Hegel’s Examination of Sense Certainty: Phase III

The problem found in the first two phases of sense certainty’s examination is that sense certainty’s

use of tokens of indexical type terms as mere verbal tags doesn’t suffice to restrict the scope of any

of its claims. Only by restricting the scope of any particular claim to a particular time, place, and

person can sense certainty plausibly claim to have immediate knowledge of any particular. Indeed,

given the impoverished use of language to which sense certainty is committed, it is a mistake for it

to make a verbal claim to knowledge at all. If there is immediate knowledge of particulars within the

strictures of naïve realism, it must be found in the particular cognitive act itself. That is the core of

sense certainty’s third strategy. Hegel develops its strategy in two paragraphs (¶¶15, 16). In the first

Hegel sketches sense certainty’s restriction to some one particular cognitive act; in the second he

notes that this restriction requires that sense certainty only use ostensive or demonstrative gestures,

and rescind even the use of token demonstrative terms.

Hegel expressly indicates that sense certainty now restricts itself to some one cognitive act

regarding some one object of knowledge, and simply disregards any other cognitive acts regarding

any other objects of knowledge, whether its own or those of others (¶15, G67.9–12, .15–19). The

inverted order of Hegel’s first sentence places the accusative object at the head of the sentence,

“This pure immediacy” (“Diese reine Unmittelbarkeit” [G67.9]); here again Hegel uses the accusative

case to indicate something that is explicitly for sense certainty. The explicitness of sense certainty’s

third strategy is emphasized later in the paragraph by locutions concerning what sense certainty

maintains (“This I thus maintains ...”; “Ich dieses behaupte also ...” [G67.15]), what it “takes” no notice

of (“I also take no notice that ...”; “ich nehme auch keine Notiz davon ...” [G67.16–17]), and especially

what sense certainty expressly upholds and what comparisons it does not make:

For myself I remain by the now that is day, or also by the here that is a tree; I also don’t compare the

here and now themselves with each other, but rather hold fast to one immediate connection: now is

day. (G67.19–22)83


The immediacy of this purported cognitive connection again requires relinquishing predication.

Hegel’s phrasing accordingly stresses the non-predicative use of the descriptive terms used to

designate the relevant examples of objects of knowledge. He omits, that is, an article (whether

definite or indefinite) when referring to “tree,” “non-tree,” “day,” “night” (in line 11 “das” before

“Nacht” is a relative pronoun referring to “Itzt”; “Nacht” is feminine), “non-day,” and he uses a non-

predicative copula, an “is” of identity. This makes the full connotations of this paragraph even less

idiomatic in translation (German retains from Latin many ordinary uses of nouns without an article),

but the philosophical point behind Hegel’s deliberately stilted usage is plain. A new key to sense

certainty’s third explicit strategy is no longer to distinguish either the object or the subject as the

essential moment in immediate knowledge of particulars (G67.12–15). By rejecting this distinction,

by disregarding other subjects and instances of knowledge, and by holding fast to one particular

cognitive connection, sense certainty proposes to avoid scope problems and to obtain immediate

knowledge of some one particular.

The question is, which particular does sense certainty know on any given occasion? How does

sense certainty determine which particular it knows on any given occasion? Its answer requires

ostensive designation, as Hegel notes (¶16). In effect, sense certainty’s response to the previous

difficulties is to suppose that the “mediations” that have been uncovered all concern exporting its

cognitive claim out of the immediate context of its direct cognition of an object. The immediacy of

its knowledge cannot be preserved either through time or across space, and so cannot be reported

to anyone else (G67.27–30). Cognitive immediacy can only be had, if at all, by rigorously restricting

one’s scope to the object present here and now (G67.23–25, .27). Whatever object this is can only

be indicated by ostensive designation, the gesture of pointing (G67.25–27, .30–32). For these two

reasons, we as phenomenological observers (that is, as Hegel’s readers who observe, assess, and learn

from the various forms of consciousness examined in the Phenomenology) must enter into the same

point of space and time and allow ourselves to be pointed to the very object here and now that sense

certainty purports to know (G67.30–32). This thought experiment is an act of interpretive charity

on Hegel’s and on our part. In making this thought experiment, it is significant that Hegel insists that

sense certainty must point out to us which object is meant to be known now and here; Hegel’s

passive constructions emphasize that we are not interfering with or taking over sense certainty’s

activity or strategy.84

Hegel’s express contrast between the lack of immediacy involved in reporting a claim to another

and the purported immediacy involved in directly pointing out an object of knowledge in the here

and now (¶16) clearly marks the contrast between the use of linguistic utterances as verbal tags to

designate particulars (in Phases I and II) and the use of ostensive gestures to designate particulars

(in Phase III). This contrast needs to be noted here, for it will be important later for properly

interpreting Hegel’s conclusion (in §4.7).

Having set out the essential points of sense certainty’s third strategy, Hegel devotes three

paragraphs to its examination (¶¶17–19). In general, Hegel’s point is that scope problems are neither

avoided nor resolved by recourse to ostensive gestures. The punctual here and now does not contain

any object of knowledge, and any extended here and now that can contain an object of knowledge

can only be specified or determined by conceptual mediation of the sort eschewed by sense certainty.

The first of these three paragraphs briefly develops the problem of the punctual present (¶17).85

Simple ostensive designation, the gesture of pointing, by itself at most indicates a punctual present

that vanishes just as it is pointed out. (The bare gesture of pointing can only indicate a punctual


present because indicating a period of time, however short, requires specifying the indicated period,

and that requires mediation, including the use of conceptions of times, durations, beginings and

ends, and some sort of temporal framework of reference within which to specify these parameters

of any indicated period of time.) Hegel of course grants that there is a punctual ‘now’ at present, but

as present this punctual moment is distinct from whatever punctual moment was just now ostended.

Hegel also grants that the moment that is or was pointed out of course did occur. However, because

that moment is past, it is no longer. This is at odds with sense certainty’s purported knowledge of

a particular object that is here and now. The extended present in which any particular object can be

or can be known is not specified simply by ostensive gesture. Or rather, as Hegel goes on to show,

the extended present in which any particular object can be known can be specified by ostensive

gesture, but not in the simple, immediate way purported by sense certainty.

Hegel develops the problems of the punctual present and the temporal scope involved in

ostensive designation in the subsequent paragraph (¶18). Here he reiterates (twice) the points of the

previous paragraph in greater detail (G68.1–7, .10–12) in order to show that the “now” that is

presently pointed out in any knowledge of any particular is at least to some extent temporally

extended; it is a “now” that contains a plurality of moments (G68.7–9). The crucial point is that this

enduring “now” crucially differs from the punctual “now” that was initially intended and ostended

because the enduring now is not immediate; it is complex or mediated because it contains a plurality

of moments or specious “nows” (G68.12–16). Because sense certainty officially intends something

immediate, it is committed to intending a punctual now. This raises the issue of how to specify or

determine the proper scope of the actually intended, extended present “now” in which any particular

is known. Hegel raises this issue simply by noting that “now” could specify simply a day, which

contains a plurality of nows measured as hours; or the “now” could specify an hour, which likewise

contains a plurality of nows measured as minutes; and likewise again for any minute designated as

occurring “now” (G68.16–18). Hegel doesn’t develop this point further in this paragraph, but the

import of this point is plain: designating any period of time as occurring “now” requires specifying,

at least approximately, how long this period lasts, and this can only be done by distinguishing that

period of time from other periods before and after it. (This point is reinforced subsequently in

connection with the “here,” in ¶19.) Even rough, approximate specification of any present period

of time requires having a conception of time and a conception of specific times or periods of time

by which alone one can specify the actually intended, relevant scope of any period of time indicated

by ostensive gesture (or, analogously, to specify the relevant scope of any use of the token

demonstrative type term “now”).

Ascribing this point to Hegel does not exceed interpretive charity; he highlights this point in the

final sentence:

Pointing out is thus itself the movement which pronounces what the now is in truth, namely a result,

or a plurality of nows taken together ... (G68.18–20)

Taking a plurality of moments, of “nows,” together requires grouping those moments together and

distinguishing that group from any and all other periods of time. That is (at least in part) a

conceptual achievement because it requires conceptions of time and of periods of time, and it

requires the ability to use these conceptions in order to identify and distinguish specific times. This

achievement may be ordinary enough, for it is presupposed by any of our ostensive gestures (or our


uses of temporal token demonstratives). However, the fact that this achievement is ordinary does

not justify its disregard in an analysis of sensory knowledge of particulars, nor does it justify

disregarding the fact that it is a conceptual achievement. Realism in epistemology may be

defensible—Hegel certainly seeks to defend it—but not naïve realism.

Hegel closes this paragraph by stating that “pointing is the experience, that now is universal”

(G68.20–21). This statement is puzzling because it is not entirely clear what considerations are

supposed to lead to this statement as a conclusion. The immediate sentential antecedent concerns

the true now as a result or as a plurality of nows taken together. This suggests that any particular,

cognitively actual, temporally extended “now” is a universal insofar as it contains within it a variety

of punctual nows. This does not quite fit even the very general sense of “universal” Hegel uses in

this chapter; any particular extended now contains a plurality of moments; thus it cannot be86

identified with any one of those moments, but it can be identified with the set of those moments.

However, a more satisfactory and sensible interpretation is available by emphasizing Hegel’s

point that any particular extended now is a “result.” It results from taking some set of specious

moments together, because taking those moments together is only possible by—it only results

from—distinguishing that intended set of moments from any and all others, both preceding and

succeeding. In this way Hegel drives home the point that designating any particular moment or

period of time as occurring “now” requires some temporal coördinate system, and it requires

understanding that system of temporal coördinates. Only by presupposing and understanding a

temporal coördinate system of some sort can one intelligibly use gestures to designate some

occurrent time (or period of time) ostensively; and likewise only in that way can one intelligibly use

tokens of the demonstrative type word “now.” Note that this condition for intelligible use of

temporal gestures (and demonstrative terms) holds for any and every one of us, either to use

ourselves or to understand anyone else’s use of those terms or gestures. Token gestures or token

terms only make sense to ourselves or to others as instances of type gestures or type terms, and

those type gestures or type terms only make sense (to ourselves or to others) by reference to some

temporal coördinate, and such a coördinate only makes sense (to ourselves or to others) insofar as

we have conceptions of time and of specific periods of time, and insofar as we can and do use these

conceptions in order to identify specific periods by distinguishing them from other periods of time.

All of this is presupposed by any designation of any object as being presently before one, and hence

as an object of knowledge now. Sensory knowledge of particulars is conceptually mediated; sensation

alone is insufficient for knowledge of sensed particulars because sensation alone does not suffice

even to designate or identify which particular is known—wherever, whenever, and by whomsoever

it may be known.

To say all this is to give a rather fulsome account of the point of one paragraph (¶18), but saying

less fails to make sense of Hegel’s deliberately foreshortened expression. (Hegel’s dialectical exercises

can be strenuous, but philosophical insight cannot be won by stinted effort.) This account does,

however, anticipate some of what Hegel says in his concluding paragraphs (¶¶20, 21) and will

facilitate their analysis. Before turning to Hegel’s final conclusions, however, his brief parallel case

about “here” must be considered.

Having spelled out his case about time in comparative detail, Hegel is briefer about space (¶19).

Hegel notes that the two cases are parallel (ebenso, G68.22, .24; cf. .32–33). The way he develops his

point about spatial designation thus helps to confirm the above interpretation of temporal

designation as requiring the conceptual use of a temporal coördinate system. His argument about


space also helps illustrate the importance of a strictly immanent interpretation of his text, as

undertaken in the present essay.

Hegel’s case about spatial designation is straightforward. Any space that is pointed out as

relevantly “here” is relative to what is in front and behind, above and below, and to the right and

left (G68.22–24). The same holds for whatever is above the relevant “here,” and likewise for any

other point in any direction (G68.24–25). Any space that is designated relevantly as “here” is a

“negative this” and is something that “is” (Hegel’s emphases) only insofar as it is contradistinguished

from other locations (that is the relevant sense of “negative”: negation as contradistinction). This

is the point of Hegel’s otherwise obscure remarks that “the heres are taken as they should be, but in

this they sublate each other” and that this is a “simple complex [Complexion] of many heres”

(G68.27–29). Hegel then says:

The here that is meant would be the point; but it is not. (G68.29–30)

Hegel’s use of the definite article in connection with the point indicates, once again, that some one

particular point is meant, regardless of any other points; it is not meant as one point among many.

This isolated, independent, context-free point is all that could be “meant” or intended by immediate

knowledge. Hegel makes this clear by contrasting actual ostension of a spatial region with

“immediate knowledge” later in the same sentence (G68.30–31). Before developing this positive part

of Hegel’s case, it is worth pausing to note an important hermeneutic point.

4.5 A Brief Hermeneutic Excursus.

Hegel’s premise quoted above, that “the here that is meant would be the point; but it is not,”

matches perfectly an historically prominent school of thought: materialistic atheism. As radical

materialists, modern atheists contended, in the words of Ralph Cudworth, that “whatsoever is not

Extended, is Nowhere and Nothing.” As John Yolton notes, Locke’s Essay refers to the same view87

en passant. Now Hegel was very interested in materialism; indeed, his account of religion was88

strongly influenced by D’Holbach. Does this fact, together with the virtually identical wording of89

Hegel’s premise and the main ontological principle of atheistic materialism, show that Hegel

introduces a reductive materialist premise into his case against sense certainty? Certainly not, and not

merely because Hegel’s naturalism is non-reductive. Interpreting Hegel’s premise as an expression

of reductive materialism is ruled out by the philosophical context of Hegel’s chapter. That chapter

aims to prove a specifically epistemic conclusion, opposed to naïve realism, based on an internal

critique of naïve realism. Reductive materialism is not relevant to this issue, and appeal to such

materialism is ruled out by Hegel’s method, which requires strictly internal criticism.

This case is worth stressing for three reasons: First, it is unprecedented; no one has previously

noticed the coincidence in the formulation of Hegel’s premise and the key ontological principle of

atheistic materialism. Second, it is clearly implausible; no one could seriously suggest that Hegel

espoused reductive atheistic materialism—certainly not in the middle of “Sense Certainty,” not even

as part of an internal critique of it (which would relieve Hegel of responsibility for the premise). And

third, interpreting Hegel’s premise in this way is no less justified than the common practice among

Hegel’s expositors of finding passages or statements elsewhere in Hegel’s vast corpus—or indeed

elsewhere in the history of philosophy—that match or echo a passage or sentence in the

Phenomenology, and then importing whatever the interpreter thinks Hegel (or another author) meant


in that other context into the interpretation of the Phenomenology. If the present example is indeed90

far-fetched, so is the common hermeneutic practice of Hegel’s commentators. The connotations of

Hegel’s statements must be interpreted strictly in context. In the Phenomenology, this means in the

context of internal critique of opposed views, where the key issues addressed by those views are set

by Hegel’s Introduction, not his Preface. Hegel’s Introduction provides the properly prospective view

of Hegel’s problem and project. There he makes clear that his main project is to defend the

legitimacy—the justifiability—of philosophical claims to knowledge, and that his main problem is

to defend that legitimacy against the absolutely fundamental problems posed by Sextus Empiricus’

dilemma of the criterion. Hegel’s Preface, written after completing the Phenomenology, provides a91

preliminary conspectus of his entire projected “philosophical science,” that is, the Phenomenology plus

the projected “system of science” that subsequently became the Logic and Encyclopedia. Hegel’s

Introduction places quintessential epistemological problems at center stage. Because his commentators

have generally disregarded epistemology (or have treated it only in extremely general terms), they

have failed to understand Hegel’s Phenomenology, beginning already with its Introduction and certainly

its first chapter, “Sense Certainty.”

4.6 Conclusion of Hegel’s Examination of Sense Certainty, Phase III

To recall, Hegel’s premise is this:

The here that is meant would be the point; but it is not. (G68.29–30)

Hegel uses a definite article in connection with “point,” i.e., “the point,” to contrast with an

indefinite article, “a point,” which would more clearly connote one point among others. Sense

certainty can only maintain its claim to immediate knowledge if it can point to or ostend some one

point without referring to or distinguishing that point from other points in space. That is not

humanly possible. That is Hegel’s point in claiming that “the” point “is” not; no point we can

designate fulfills sense certainty’s utterly simple, unmediated sense of “being.” Any actual, extant

point in space that any human being can point out is located within the context of, and its location

is identified by contradistinguishing it from, other points in or regions of space. Consequently, no

actual ostended point is identified or known immediately. It is only identified or known within the

context of a spatial coördinate system, and identifying any one point within that system requires

using conceptions of space and of particular spaces in order to contradistinguish some one intended

point in space from any and all others. That is the lesson Hegel clearly if somewhat loosely sketches

in his closing remark:

Instead, since it [the point] is pointed out as being [seyend], pointing out shows itself to be, not

immediate knowledge, but instead a movement, from the meant here out through many heres, to the

universal here, which, is a simple plurality of heres, just as the day is a simple plurality of nows.

(G68.30–33)

The corollary for knowledge of particular objects in space is plain: if we cannot designate their

location “immediately,” then we cannot know them “immediately” either. Whatever mediation in

terms of a spatial coördinate system, and whatever mediation via conceptions of space and of

particular spaces or points in space is required to use that system, is likewise required for knowledge

of particulars in space—and, analogously, in time.92


4.7 Hegel’s Conclusions

Hegel develops his conclusions in two long paragraphs. The first of them develops Hegel’s sole

ontological conclusion of his critique of naïve realism (¶20); the second develops his epistemological

conclusions, and indeed, it extends his argument in an important regard (¶21). Hegel’s discussion

is compressed, highly allusive, and sometimes polemical. However, with care good sense can be

made of it.

Hegel’s ontological conclusion is simply that thinking in terms of “being” or “reality” is not the

proper way to conceive the sensible spatio-temporal particulars we experience. Why not? Obviously

that depends on the sense, meaning, or connotations of these terms. As noted above, the sense of93

“being” intended by sense certainty, the only sense it, as “immediate” knowledge, can admit, is

entirely undifferentiated and hence changeless. (Recall, any change would be some form of

mediation.) “Reality” in the relevant sense is equally unmediated. Any more complex or sophisticated

conception of “reality” requires justification, and ab initio no grounds to specify or to justify such a

conception have been or could be introduced. Specifically, this undifferentiated or “immediate”

sense of “reality” includes something not being dependent for its existence or characteristics on

anything else; that is a key form of causal mediation. Hence this rarefied and highly metaphysical

sense of “reality” is inherent in sense certainty’s conception of “being” or “reality” precisely because

it intends to exclude any and all forms of mediation.

Hegel formulates the thesis he rejects (and purports to refute) as follows:

the reality or the being of external things as thises, or as sensibles, has absolute truth for

consciousness. (G69.4–6)

The new term here, “absolute,” contrasts here with “relative,” “conditional,” or “mediated,” and

thus joins the connotations of “being” and “reality” implicit or explicit in immediate knowledge. The

conclusion of Hegel’s critique of sense certainty simply is that no allegedly immediate human

knowledge of sensed particulars warrants ascribing such absolute being or reality to those particulars.

Indeed, Hegel generalizes this point to contend that no human sensory knowledge of particulars

warrants ascribing such absolute being or reality to those particulars. This generalization is involved

in Hegel’s pointing out that several different forms or accounts of human knowledge all converge

in upholding the thesis Hegel rejects, and that they are all mistaken in doing so. In particular, Hegel

mentions “sense certainty” (G68.34)—the idealized form of consciousness analyzed in the first

chapter of his Phenomenology, “natural consciousness” (G68.36–37)—pre-philosophical commonsense

or naïve realism, and the supposed “universal experience” (G69.3, .8), “philosophical contention”

(G69.3–4), and “result of skepticism” (G69.4), all of which issue in the thesis of the reality of sensed

particulars. This provides five routes to the thesis Hegel rejects. His mention of an alleged “universal

experience” generalizes the point of his conclusion, and he reinforces this generalization by

reference to “such a contention” (G69.6); which is to say, any view that upholds the thesis that

sensed particulars are absolutely real or are absolute beings is mistaken. Hegel’s counter-thesis is not

that we do not sense or know particulars, nor that there are no particulars we sense, experience, and

know. His point is that those particulars do not qualify as absolutely real or as absolute beings, in

the abstract, unmediated sense often intended or expressed or presupposed by insufficiently

sophisticated views.

Who holds such views? Only a preliminary answer should be given here. First, any


commonsense or naïve realism that holds that we simply sense and thereby know things and events

in our immediate vicinity. Second, the editors of the critical edition of Hegel’s works rightly note that

Jacobi’s naïve realism is a prime instance of the “philosophical contention” (G69.3–4) Hegel refers

to, just as G. E. Schulze’s skepticism about reason is a prime instance of the “skepticism,” to the

result of which Hegel also refers (G69.4). To these specific references can be added W. T. Krug’s94

naïve commonsense realism, to which Hegel explicitly alluded earlier. I return to the question of95

the targets of Hegel’s critique below (§5).

To be sure, Hegel’s sole explicit conclusion regarding the thesis of the absolute reality or being

of sensed particulars is only that we do not experience them as such. Our universal experience,

Hegel points out again, is that each of us experiences a wide variety of sensed particulars, and that

any particular we happen to sense is an instance of an object-known-here-and-now (G69.8–17).

Consequently, none of the particulars we experience is experienced as a changeless, stable, persisting

being or reality not relative to anything else. At the very least, as an instance of an object of sensory

knowledge, it is relative to our experiencing it, and none of us direct our attention only to one thing

all the time.

Hegel then extends his conclusion by anticipating the parallel case in the domain of practice. His

explicit mention of “anticipation” (G69.18) indicates Hegel’s clear awareness of going beyond what

he has proved so far. Since he does not argue a further point here, he extends his ontological

conclusion by appealing, in a highly ironic way, to what we all know quite well on the basis of our

universal experience: sensed particulars don’t count as absolute realities or beings just because of our

fluctuating attention or cognition; they don’t count as absolute realities or beings because they are

subject, if not to generation, at least to corruption. Even animals know that sensed particulars are

subject to change insofar as they eat things. That, Hegel suggests, is the most basic school of wisdom

taught in the ancient eleusinian mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus through the mystery of eating bread

and drinking wine (G69.20–31). Anyone who maintains that sensed particulars are absolute beings

or realities has forgotten this basic point (G69.18–20) and ought to reconsider it at mealtime. Hegel’s

reminder may be heavy-handed, but it is not misguided. We do know of the corruption of things on

the basis of our quite general experience of them. The question then is: how do we know this about

sensed particulars? What cognitive abilities are required or presupposed by this knowledge? Hegel’s

main point in “Sense Certainty” is that this is a genuine and legitimate philosophical question, one

that cannot be answered simply by saying “we open our senses and voilà we know!”

Hegel’s final paragraph (¶21) is compressed, allusive, and easily misunderstood. However, it

contains some very important points that must be disentangled in order to understand and assess

the proper conclusion to Hegel’s internal critique of naïve realism. Hegel once again stresses the

tension between the express thesis, that “the reality or the being of external things as thises, or as

sensibles, has absolute truth for consciousness” (¶20, G69.4–6; this thesis is the grammatical

antecedent to “such a contention” [G69.32]), and what strictly speaking is said by proponents of

naïve realism. Indeed, Hegel insists that they say quite the opposite of what they mean or intend, and

that this phenomenon (Erscheinung [G69.34]) ought best to stimulate their reflection on the nature

of sense certainty (G69.32–35). Hegel reports:

They speak of the being of outer objects, which can be determined still more precisely as actual,

absolutely individual, utterly personal, individual things, none of which has an exact duplicate; this

existence is to have absolute certainty and truth. They mean this piece of paper, on which I write, or

rather have written, this. But what they mean they do not say. (G69.35–70.3; cf. G70.10–13)96


The problem with such descriptions, Hegel rightly notes, is that they are entirely general; they utterly

fail to pick out any one particular because these terms apply equally well to any and every particular.

Consequently, such expressions characterize similarities among particulars instead of their

particularities (G70.14–19). It is important to note that only in this last paragraph of Hegel’s chapter,

does he so much as mention “absolute certainty,” and this is only the second time Hegel mentions

“certainty” as an element of cognition. (The first mention is at G66.17–21; discussed above, p. 34f.)

This confirms as clearly as possible that the point of Hegel’s chapter is not to dispute the

corrigibility, fallibility, or dubitability of allegedly basic sensory knowledge of particulars. His concern

is more basic than those issues about epistemic certainty: How do we, under what conditions is it

possible for us to, refer cognitively to particulars?

Before explicating the positive point of Hegel’s argument, it is very important to note two claims

that Hegel does not deny. First, Hegel does not deny that particulars are particular. On the contrary,

his argument depends on the premise that they are:

... everything is an individual thing. Similarly, this thing is anything one wants. If it is more precisely

indicated as this piece of paper, then every and any piece of paper is a this piece of paper ... (G70.19–21)

Second, Hegel does not deny that we mean or intend to refer to particulars. He grants repeatedly

that proponents of sense certainty do mean or intend particulars (G70.2, .3, .4), most explicitly in

this passage: “[t]hey of course mean this piece of paper here ...” (G70.10). These points must be

noted, because Hegel’s chapter has been misunderstood to aim to show either that the world

consists of nothing but universals or that we simply cannot refer to particulars. The first97

supposition is wildly at odds with any examples, premises, or arguments Hegel develops in “Sense

Certainty”; the second rests on too hasty an interpretation and on disregarding the fact that the next

chapter, “Perception,” begins with the example of perceiving a particular cube of salt (G72.26).

Hegel’s argument may be difficult to interpret, but it makes much better sense than these

interpretations suppose!

The notion that Hegel argues either that there are no particulars or that we cannot refer to them

rests mainly on this admittedly puzzling passage:

If [proponents of sense certainty] actually wanted to say this piece of paper, which they mean, and

would want to say, this is impossible, because the sensuous this that is meant is unreachable by

language, which belongs to consciousness, to the universal in itself. In the actual attempt to say it,

it would therefore decompose. Those who began its description couldn’t complete it. Instead they

must leave it to others who themselves ultimately would have to admit that they were speaking about

a thing that is not. (G70.3–10)

It is certainly surprising to read that “the sensuous this that is meant is unreachable by language,” and

even more so, to read that this is because language belongs to consciousness, which is inherently

universal. (This formulation recalls the end of ¶8, which was puzzling for similar reasons. ) Here98

Hegel’s final emphasis on “is” indicates that he is still criticizing sense certainty on internal grounds,

and that introducing descriptions, whether brief or exhaustive, is inconsistent with the

undifferentiated sense of “being” sense certainty ascribes to its putative object(s) of knowledge. To

resort to descriptions is to introduce conceptual mediation into empirical knowledge because


descriptions only convey knowledge if the predicates they contain are understood and if those

predicates pick out actual characteristics of the item allegedly known. If knowledge of a particular

requires distinguishing and identifying its characteristics, then knowledge of particulars cannot be

“immediate”; especially it cannot be aconceptual. Moreover, what any particular object of knowledge

is, is a function of, or—to put it in the terms Hegel is trying utterly to wear out—is mediated by, its

properties. In this regard, “the sensuous this that is meant” (emphasis added) is indeed “unreachable

by language,” insofar as what is “meant” is supposed to be something unmediated (a mere being)

that is immediately accessible to cognition. Sense certainty’s official conception of being (of what it

is for something to be) is completely at odds with its own experience and with its actual conception

of particular beings—of sensed particulars—regarding which it now admits that each has a variety

of characteristics.

Hegel’s rejection of the merely meant as untrue and irrational also must be interpreted as

commentary internal to sense certainty’s own strictures on knowledge and its objects. Hegel states:

They of course mean this piece of paper here, which is completely different from the one above. But

they say actual things, outer or sensuous objects, absolutely individual beings [Wesen], and so on. That is, they

say about them only the universal. Consequently, what is called the inexpressible is nothing other than

the untrue, the irrational, the merely meant. (G70.10–14)

Hegel’s surprising conclusion, “consequently ...” follows (if at all) only from the preceding premises.

(In the original, this quotation is a single sentence; Hegel’s conclusion is introduced with the

inferential connective “daher,” which functions grammatically like a relative pronoun to refer to the

earlier clauses in the sentence.) Sense certainty finally took recourse to descriptions in order to try

to specify a particular linguistically. The problem is that, however extensive a description may be,

the amount of descriptive detail it contains does not insure that any extant thing satisfies the

description, nor does it insure that no more than one thing satisfies the description. Consequently,

descriptive detail does not suffice to secure cognitive reference to any particular. Consequently, just

introducing descriptions does not suffice to express any particular that sense certainty may intend.

Thus, on these grounds, sense certainty would have to admit that any intended particular is

“inexpressible” (G70.13), it cannot be designated by this use of language. Because sense certainty

is committed to knowledge of particulars, but because it has now taken recourse to descriptions to

try to achieve that knowledge, it must conclude that the particular it intends is something “untrue”

(G70.14). This conclusion follows in either of two ways: Its intended particular would count as

untrue because sense certainty now expresses its truth and knowledge in a description, but that

description fails to express (designate) the intended particular. Alternatively, it would count as untrue

because sense certainty associates the truth of something with its “being,” and sense certainty now

realizes that, because the particular it purports to know is characterized by a variety of characteristics,

it is not a simple or unmediated being after all. Hegel does not make clear which of these alternatives

is intended or is most important. I don’t believe that this question must be decided; each is sufficient

and both are relevant.

Hegel’s claim that the intended particular would now count as something “merely meant”—“bloß

Gemeynte” (G70.14)—deliberately puns on what is merely intended, what is merely meant, and what

is opined or believed in contrast with what is known. This, too, follows from sense certainty’s

recourse to descriptions, together with the realization that descriptive detail alone does not suffice

to insure that the description is satisfied by one and only one particular. Once sense certainty takes


recourse to expressing its knowledge verbally, if verbal specification is insufficient to secure

particular cognitive reference, then sense certainty fails to know any particular at all. If it does not

have knowledge, but intends and maintains that it does, this is a prime instance of mere doxa, belief

that does not count as knowledge. Likewise, the contrast between sense certainty’s intention to refer

cognitively to a particular and the inherent generality of any description it can provide to express its

purported knowledge, shows that its purported particular knowledge is merely meant or intended,

but not achieved.

The remaining term of abuse in Hegel’s list is “irrational” (G70.14). Hegel has not previously

discussed reason or rationality in this chapter. Consequently, its meaning and appropriateness cannot

be judged solely on local terminological grounds. There is, however, a clear thematic ground for

interpreting this term. One target of Hegel’s critique of sense certainty is Jacobi. Jacobi’s intensive

attack on discursive reasoning led to the charge that he was an irrationalist. Jacobi responded to this

objection by claiming the mantle of reason for his own view, by claiming that “reason” is our

capacity for direct, immediate knowledge of particulars. Hegel’s point is that Jacobi cannot make99

his view of immediate knowledge hold up, and that once he is driven to use descriptions, he would

have to confess that any merely intended particular is an object of unreason, not of reason—in his

own use of the term “reason.”

Hegel’s discussion of what is “unreachable” by language or what is “inexpressible” (G70.13) is

very compressed and initially quite puzzling, but I believe good sense can be made of it. In

particular, if these remarks are interpreted in view of what Hegel suggests at the end of this

paragraph, very good sense can be made of them. Notice that Hegel only once refers to “language”

(G70.5); otherwise he consistently refers to what can be said or (once) expressed. This usage is, I

believe, deliberate and is intended to recall Hegel’s point about linguistic usage in Phases I and II,

namely, that sense certainty can use terms only as linguistic tags. At the very least, sense certainty

does not admit (in Phases I and II) that conceptual mediation in terms of a spatio-temporal

coördinate system and conceptions of time, times, space, and spaces is necessary to use (and to

understand the use of) tokens of demonstrative type terms. Hegel has been criticized for

disregarding the possibility of definite descriptions, descriptions that happen to describe one and

only one thing. Such descriptions do refer to and pick out only one thing. This criticism is100

misguided. A definite description ex hypothesi picks out only one thing. Does that suffice for

knowledge? The issue in “Sense Certainty” is cognitive reference to particulars. Definite descriptions

per se do not suffice for knowledge of particulars. To have knowledge of a particular by means of a

definite description requires that we know that the description is satisfied by something; an empty

description provides no knowledge of any particular. Such knowledge also requires that we know

that the description is satisfied by no more than one thing; any description satisfied by more than

one thing does not refer to only one thing and so does not provide knowledge of only one thing.

Yet that was the point at issue. Hegel is quite right that listing characteristics—whether cursory or

extensive—does not suffice to secure cognitive reference to any one particular (G70.6–10, .17–21).

And now for the crucial move: Hegel expressly combines descriptions with ostensive

designation. His discussion is compressed, but clearly hits the main point:

... if I wanted to help speech by pointing out this piece of paper, then I would have experience of what

in fact is the truth of sense certainty. I point it out, as a here, which is a here among other heres, or

which has within itself a simple togetherness of many heres, that is, it is a universal. By taking it up in this

way, as it is in truth, instead of knowing something immediate, I perceive. (G70.21–29)


Hegel’s main point is clear: Neither merely uttering descriptions nor merely pointing things out

suffices for knowledge of particulars. Combining ostensive gestures with a verbal description overtly

constitutes attributive use of the predicates contained in the description, and using a description

attributively in this way either acknowledges or concedes, first, that the particular in question

occupies some amount of space within a larger spatial region and coördinate spatial framework (and

likewise endures for some period of time within a larger temporal period and coördinate temporal

framework), and second, that the predicates contained in that description designate (putatively—no

issues about fallibility need be raised here) characteristics exhibited by that particular. Here, at last,

is genuine predication, though Hegel does not label it with a distinct sense of “is.” Note that

predication as a necessary component of cognitive reference to particulars is based on an ability to

identify (at least approximately) the spatio-temporal boundaries of objects or events, and that such

predication is used to determine (at least approximately) the temporal and spatial scope of token

demonstrative reference (whether by ostension or by token indexical terms).101

Note, too, that Hegel’s argument is sensitive to the important contrast between specificity and

particularity. Specificity of description—the detail involved in compiling ever more predicates—does

not suffice for particularity of reference. No matter how specific a description may be, as a

description it may be satisfied by nothing or by several things. In either case, descriptive specificity

alone does not suffice for particularity of reference. If a description (lacking overt or covert

indexicals) counts as a definite description, that is a contingent fact about the contents of the world.

Particularity of reference is secured by ostensive gesture, but only if the relevant region of space and

time is indicated by distinguishing it from other spaces and times, and that can be achieved only by

recognizing and characterizing at least some of the properties of the particular(s) occupying that

region. Ostensive gestures only suffice for particular cognitive reference if these further conceptual

achievements are involved in or coördinated with such gestures.

The actual “truth” (die Wahrheit) of sense certainty (G70.25), in the sense of what is actually going

on that underlies and explains the phenomena encountered in and by sense certainty—including its

apparent cognitive claims—is that we perceive things (and events) that have some temporal and

spatial extension and that have a variety of sensed characteristics. Correlatively, we are able to

identify sensed particulars because we identify their sensed characteristics and, through that, we can

identify (at least approximately) the relevant region of space and time occupied by that particular.

In this way Hegel introduces the much richer account of knowledge discussed in the subsequent

chapter, “Perception.” His transition is no mere pun (on “Wahr-nehmen”), but is a legitimate result

of his internal critique of sense certainty: nothing as simple as “sense certainty” can be, and nothing

simpler than “perception”—as anticipated here and as sketched in the opening of Hegel’s next

chapter—suffices as, an account of human knowledge of sensed particulars.

5 SUMMARY AND ASSESSMENT OF HEGEL’S CONCLUSIONS IN “SENSE CERTAINTY”

Insofar as sense certainty espouses “immediate” knowledge, Hegel’s chapter analyzes out of sense

certainty’s own experience a whole budget of ineluctable, cognitively relevant kinds of mediation.

The most elementary kind of mediation involved in sensory knowledge of particulars is the mutual

mediation of subject and object in any cognitive act. More significantly, our knowledge of sensed

particulars is mediated both by time and space in terms of when and where we know various

particulars; sensory knowledge of particulars is occasional and repeatedly instantiated by various


referents. Likewise, our cognitive reference to particulars is mediated by the distinction between

types and tokens of the demonstrative terms “now,” “here,” “this,” and “I,”—terms we can only

use significantly by distinguishing, for any occasion, what is here now before me from what was

experienced there or then by myself (on that occasion) or by others. Identifying what is here and

now before me involves distinguishing the relevantly present spatial location and temporal duration

from other spatial regions and other periods of time. Specifying the scope of “here” and “now” in

these ways presupposes that we have and can effectively use conceptions of time and of periods of

time, and of space and regions of or points within space.

Our effective use of these conceptions requires that we understand and can effectively use some

kind of temporal and spatial coördinate system. Our effective use of conceptions of time, times,

space, and spaces to delimit the scope of the relevant “now” and “here” also requires that we can

identify at least some of the manifest characteristics of the things or events we know. Identifying

characteristics of things requires our possession, understanding, and effective use of predicates to

designate those characteristics. In this regard, our knowledge of sensed particulars is also “mediated”

by the variety of characteristics they have. More importantly, singular cognitive reference to

particulars requires integrated understanding and integrated use of token demonstratives and

descriptive predication. Thus sensation is necessary, but in all these regards is not sufficient, for

knowledge of sensed particulars. In this regard, finally, knowledge of sensed particulars, though not

effected solely by sensation, is mediated by sensation. All of this has been shown by Hegel’s internal

critique of radically naïve realism.

These are significant results; how significant they are can be better appreciated by considering,

again, who among the philosophically wise is subject to Hegel’s critique. Space does not permit

researching particular philosophers at this point, but two closely related, highly influential views can

be discussed briefly. (For ease of expression, I shall here revert to the ordinary use of “concept.”)

Concept empiricism is the thesis that every term in a language is either a logical term, a term defined

by ostending a sensory object, or can be defined by means of these two kinds of terms. Closely102

related to concept empiricism is a thesis about concept acquisition which holds that non-logical

concepts are learned by ostending a sensory object, or by recombining terms learned by such

ostension by use of logical operators. Taken together, these two theses, about meaning and about

learning respectively, form the view known as “abstractionism,” traditionally (if wrongly) associated

with Aquinas’ dictum, nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu. This dictum has been central to empiricism,103

both in the modern period and in this century. In opposition to this, a priori concepts were and are

defined by rationalists as just those terms that cannot be defined in accord with concept empiricism

or learned in accord with abstractionism. Insofar as defining a term ostensively or learning a term

by ostensive definition requires identifying the ostended object or event (or its relevant, ostended

characteristic), Hegel shows in “Sense Certainty” that rationalists are correct to hold that our

conceptions of identity and individuation, of self, object, time, and space are all a priori; they are all

presupposed by any cognitive experiences of any objects or events that could serve to define or to

learn any a posteriori conception. The same holds for a rudimentary conception of number or

plurality, by use of which alone we can have conceptions of identity and individuation, and so can

distinguish different objects and occasions of knowledge.

Before closing it is worth noting that a more radical form of empiricism can evade these

objections. Hume mostly espouses abstractionism as defined above. However, when pressed his laws

of association are cast, not as propensities “we” have to associate impressions or ideas, but as


1. Matthias Kettner, Hegels »Sinnliche Gewißheit«. Diskursanalytischer Kommentar (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 1990). Kettner’sanalysis is by far the most rigorous and detailed heretofore, and should be studied much more widely. However, I donot believe that he sufficiently maintains the proper immanence of Hegel’s critique of sense certainty. Kettner is rightthat Hegel opposes ontological atomism (9), but he unnecessarily brings this point into “Sense Certainty” from Hegel’sLogic (67, 77). This undermines one key aim of Hegel’s Phenomenology, namely, to provide an exoteric introduction to hisLogic (G23.3–4; cf. 47.34–48.4; 55.18–24/M 14–15, 42–43, 49). Kettner later recognizes that Hegel’s arguments in “SenseCertainty” cannot presuppose any of Hegel’s positive doctrines (the Encyclopedia or the Logic) because Hegel’s critiquemust be strictly immanent (109, 173, 196, 205–08, 213, 240–41, 243, 246). Kettner’s reconstruction rightly focuses onreconstructing Hegel’s account of indexical reference (9, 83). Unfortunately, Kettner’s discussion of the “strongimmediacy thesis” mixes these ontological and semantic issues. The real point of Hegel’s ‘relational’ theses in “SenseCertainty” is to explicate the conceptions necessary for determining the spatio-temporal scope of particular uses oftokens of indexical type terms, and to show that such determination is presupposed by normal usage of token-demonstrative terms. On this count, our reconstructions largely coincide in substance.

Harris’s commentary, Hegel’s Ladder (2 vols.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), on “Sense Certainty,” I ch. 4, reconstructsHegel’s philosophical Kulturkritik brilliantly. However, by deemphasizing the Phenomenology as a “self-completingskepticism” (G56.12–13, M50), he disregards most of Hegel’s engagement with the philosophically ‘wise’ and theirmyriad of (inter alia) epistemological views. See my discussion, “Harris, Hegel, and the Spirit of the Phenomenology” (Clio,1998 [cited as Westphal 1998a]).

The present essay is thus only the third attempt to meet Wolfgang Wieland’s important demand to come to gripswith the details of Hegel’s text and arguments—and Harris does not dig into the textual details. (See Wieland, “HegelsDialektik der sinnlichen Gewißheit,” rpt. in H. F. Fulda & D. Henrich, eds., Materialien zu Hegels »Phänomenologie des Geistes«[Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1973], 67–82; 67–68). Elsewhere I have reconstructed in detail Hegel’s Introduction (inHegel’s Epistemological Realism; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989; abbreviated “HER”) and “Perception” (in Hegel, Hume und dieIdentität wahrnehmbarer Dinge; Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1998; abbreviated “HHW”).

propensities of or indeed statistical regularities by which ideas happen to agglomerate together and

thus to produce certain complex ideas. On this more radical view, complex ideas aren’t learned by104

us or defined by us, rather they just come about within a—“our”—bundle of impressions following

upon a certain kind of pattern of impressions and their consequent ideas. This is a drastic view, but

radical enough to avoid refutation by Hegel’s critique of sense certainty. It is thus noteworthy that

Hegel criticizes Hume’s view directly in his next chapter, “Perception,” for Hegel saw more deeply

than Hume the troubles faced by this radical empiricism in attempting merely to account for our

very concept of the identity of perceptible things.105

6 CONCLUSION

In “Sense Certainty” Hegel develops a powerful internal critique of radically naïve realism. In the

course of his critique, Hegel also defends the a priori status of a number of key conceptions necessary

for knowledge of sensed particulars—and for defining or learning a posteriori conceptions. By placing

Hegel’s chapter in its proper philosophical and historical context, as a key debate in epistemology,

it is possible to provide a complete, accurate, and philosophically illuminating interpretation of

Hegel’s brief but challenging analysis. Hegelians who would resist such a strong epistemological

interpretation of Hegel’s chapter must find another way of completing Hegel’s dialectical exercises

that provides an equally, if not more, complete, accurate, and illuminating interpretation.106

[AFTERWORD: There is one final step in Hegel’s anlaysis of Sense Certainty which I examine in: „Analytischer

Gehalt und zeitgenössische Bedeutung von Hegels Kritik des unmittelbaren Wissens“, Jahrbuch für Hegel-

Forschungen 8/9 (2002/2003):129–43.]

Notes


I refer throughout exclusively to the critical edition of Hegel’s Phänomenologie in his Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg:Meiner, 1968f.), vol. 9. (This volume is designated “G”; otherwise this edition is designated “GW .”) All translations aremy own. Neither Miller’s (Phenomenology of Spirit; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) nor Baillie’s (The Phenomenology of Mind;London: Macmillan, 1931) translations are accurate enough to support the detailed analysis undertaken here. HowardKainz’s translation (in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) isbetter, but not altogether satisfactory. I refer throughout to the 21 paragraphs of Hegel’s chapter. These may benumbered in Baillie’s, Miller’s, or Kainz’s translation. (Miller and Kainz number Hegel’s paragraphs from the beginningof Hegel’s book; “Sense Certainty” is ¶¶90–110.) On the few occasions that I cite passages from Hegel’s Phänomenologieoutside of “Sense Certainty,” I provide a page number in Miller’s translation, designated “M .”

2. To determine a philosopher’s meaning, there are generally three sources of information. One is contemporaneoususage, both popular and technical. A special case of this, of course, are texts a philosopher cites, alludes to, or is knownto have used. A second source is explicit definitions a philosopher may provide. A third is the particular way in whicha philosopher uses a term or phrase. A special and especially important case of this is the philosopher’s use of a termor phrase in an argument. One main component of linguistic meaning is the inferential role played by key terms orphrases. (The idea, made explicit by Carnap, is that terms or phrases with different meanings can be used to drawdifferent inferences. Hence distinguishing among those inferences that can be drawn only with the use of a particularproposition and those that cannot is Carnap’s method for specifying and distinguishing between the meanings ofpropositions [The Unity of Science, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1931, 91; “The Methodological Character ofTheoretical Concepts,” Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science 1, 1956, 38-76; 49-52]. Carnap’s account of “explication”is virtually identical to Kant’s account of “Erklärung;” see KdrV A727–9/B755–7.) All of these considerations arerelevant, indeed often crucial, to determining what a philosopher means and what he or she has proven or has failed toprove. Ideally, these three considerations about meaning should complement each other, not conflict. One of thechallenges of philosophical interpretation of historical texts is to construct the most charitable and coherent account ofa philosopher’s intent, regarding both what he or she meant to claim and also the persuasiveness or conclusiveness ofthe grounds he or she provided for those claims. One of the great hermeneutical benefits of analytic philosophy is thatit involves careful attention to usage, inference, potential equivocation, and enthymemes or other implicit assumptions.This alone enables us to understand and assess the justification a philosopher provides for his or her views, along witha precise understanding of the main claims, principles, or theses expressed in those views. This is especially importantin interpreting Hegel, for these techniques alone enable us to understand how and why Hegel contextually redefines histerms and principles as his analyses develop. Unfortunately, almost none of the vast commentary on Hegel’s philosophyhas even tried to fulfill these requirements. Rather than bemoaning the continuing fallout of the split between“continental” and “analytic” philosophy, Hegel scholars should study, admire, and emulate the classic works on Greekphilosophy. Research in ancient philosophy has flourished by using just the procedures recommended here. For furtherdiscussion of these issues and circumstances, see Westphal 1998a, and my review article, “Hegel’s Epistemology?Reflections on Some Recent Expositions” (Clio, 1998 [cited as Westphal 1998b]), on the work of Klaus Hartmann,Joseph Flay, Robert Pippin, Michael Forster, Terry Pinkard, and Justus Hartnack.

3. HER ch. 11.

4. 1997 1: ch. 4.

5. Space considerations require brevity about which views are subject to Hegel’s critique. I take up this issue in detailelsewhere. I comment on secondary literature only where I wouldn’t simply repeat Kettner’s or Harris’s remarks.

6. E .g, by Wieland (1973).

7. Cf. Plato’s references to exercises in the Parmenides (135d, 136c, 136e). Hegel admired the Parmenides as “indeed thegreatest work of art of the ancient dialectic” (G48.34–35/M44), in which Plato ascribed to Parmenides “the most sublimedialectic ... there has ever been” (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I [E. Moldenhauer & K. M. Michel,eds., Werke in 20 Bände; Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1971; designated “MM”] 18:286, cf. 19:79; [E. S. Haldane & F. H.Simson, trs., Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy; New York: Humnaities, 1955; designated “H&S”] 2:250, cf. 2:56).

8. Most of the recent attempts to explicate Hegel’s epistemology suffer from inadequate grasp of epistemology (seeWestphal, 1998a, 1998b). The general disregard of epistemology among Hegel scholars has the additional cost that,because epistemology centrally concerns issues of justification, Hegel scholars have not attended adequately to the issuesof justification Hegel addresses, nor to the issues of how and how well Hegel justified any of his views about thoseissues. This has had disastrous consequences for Hegel’s image and reputation outside of Hegel studies.

9. Throughout I use the term “conception” in order to underscore the point that mental constructs and our abilities touse them are at issue, and to leave the tern “concept” aside for the ontological structure Hegel designated by “Begriff.”For an analogous contrast, see Peter Geach, who uses “concept” for mental structures in contrast to Russell’s “concepts”and Frege’s “Begriffe” as non-mental structures (Mental Acts; rpt. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1992; 14). On Hegel’s ontology, seeHER ch. 10. I summarize some main points of contrast between Hegel’s and Bradley’s ontologies in Westphal 1998b,


§4.

10. HER , chs. 7, 8.

11. G63.18-20, 64.29-31, 65.24-25.

12. G67.33-39, 68.22-33.

13. Evan Fales comments: “Philosophers who oppose the doctrine of the given have often made use of the findings oftwentieth-century work on the psychology of perception in arguing that the doctrine is untenable. To a philosopher offoundationalist stripe who maintains the doctrine, it might at first seem that such empirical discoveries could hardly beused to undermine the empirical foundations upon which any such discoveries must depend” (A Defense of the Given;Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996; 41). Fales cites Price as an example of this rejoinder (85 n1); to his credit,Fales takes these psychological findings seriously. However, he does not comment on how this rejoinder, exemplifiedby Price, assumes that foundationalism is the only candidate for realism in epistemology. Fales does insist thatfoundationalism is “the best hope” for realism in epistemology (xiv), and he is convinced that coherentism is inherentlyanti-realist and skeptical (xiii).

14. This summary is drawn from HER 158–59. The present essay aims to substantiate this sketch. On Hegel’s sociallyand historically grounded realism, and the role of “Sense Certainty” in it, see HER ch. 11.

15. Note that amidst his lengthy list of commonsense propositions he’s quite sure he knows, Moore states that “We areall, I think, in this strange position that we do know many things, with regard to which we know further that we must havehad evidence for them, and yet we do not know how we know them, i.e. we do not know what the evidence was” (“ADefence of Common Sense,” in Philosophical Papers; New York: Collier, 1962; 44). That Moore restricts the question of“how” we know to the question of what our evidence was indicates his lack of concern with questions Hegel examinesof how we are able to identify the various particular objects and events about which we have or from which we deriveevidence.

16. 1997 1:82, 166.

17. See HER chs. 1, 7, 8. For a summary of some main points, see “Hegel’s Solution to the Dilemma of the Criterion”(revised version published in: J. Stewart, ed., The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: A Collection of Critical and Interpretive Essays;Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998; 76–91 [cited as Westphal, 1998c]).

18. See: F. H. Jacobi, David Hume Über den Glauben: Ein Gespräch (in: Werke; Leipzig: G. Fleischer, 1815-), 2:34–35, 58–62,175–76; G. di Giovanni, ed. & tr., The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel ALLWILL (Montreal: McGill Queen’sUniversity Press, 1994), 276–78. Cf. Humboldt’s report of Jacobi’s own account of his view from November 1 and 4,1788 (Tagebuch, A. Leitzman, ed., in Humboldt’s Gesammelte Schriften; Berlin: Behr, 1916; vol. 14], 1:58, 61).

J. G. Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (Amsterdam: 1759; Sämtliche Werke, J. Nadler, ed.; Vienna: Herder,1949–57), 2:57–82; bilingual edition in: Socratic Memorabilia (J. C. O’Flaherty, tr.; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1967), 73–74.

G. E. Schulze, Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 1801) 1:55–63; esp. 56, 58, 62–63.W. T. Krug, Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus. Eine Fortsetzung der Briefe über die Wissenschaftslehre (Leipzig, 1801), rpt. in:

Krug’s Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1839), 7:449–95; 489, 491.Hegel criticized Jacobi’s views in detail in his ‘conceptual preliminaries’ (Vorbegriff) to his Encyclopedia. For discussion

see my article, “Hegel’s Attitude Toward Jacobi in the ‘Third Attitude of Thought Towards Objectivity’” Southern Journalof Philosophy 27 No. 1 (1989), 135-56 [cited as Westphal, 1989].

The clearest and most developed representative of “sense certainty” is G. E. Schulze. Even in his most matureworks, Schulze insisted that sensation sufficed for knowledge of particular physical objects, that such knowledge wasimmediate rather than mediate (i.e., inferential), and that such knowledge required no representations or thoughts toidentify the object in question. He rejected Kant’s view that all knowledge requires judgment, and he rejectedrepresentational theories of perception because they lead to idealism. To criticize Kant, he adduced Reid’s objectionsto representational theories of perception, but he neglected Reid’s doctrine that a conception of the object is requiredto identify it (see next note). Schulze insisted on these views, even though he recognized that any belief that somethingis true (Fürwahrhalten) required judgment by the understanding. See Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie (Hamburg: Bohn,1801) 1:58–62; Psychische Anthropologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1826), §§22, 52–55, 59, 60, 120–22; andUeber die menschliche Erkenntniß (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1832), Vorrede, §§5, 9, 11, 13, 17, 18. Though hismature works appeared well after Hegel’s Phänomonologie, Logik, and Encyclopädie (1 ed.), indeed after Hegel’s call tost

Berlin, Fichte was the most recent idealist Schulze took notice of.C. A. Crusius espouses views similar to Schulze’s, but he ascribes the power of sensation to the understanding and

speaks freely of “sensation-ideas” (Empfindungs-Idee). This mixture of issues and capacities disables Crusius from evenposing the question that Schulze could and should have addressed, namely, how we identify (and thus know) the thing(s)we sense. See Weg zur Gewißheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen Erkenntnis (Leipzig: J. F Gleditsch, 1747; rpt. S. Tonelli,


ed., Die philosophische Hauptwerke; Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1965; vol. 3), §§64, 65, 435, 437.

19. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), 111–12, 212, 249, 265, 287–90, 302; cf.251.

20. Roughly, infallibility is the impossibility of error, indubitability is the impossibility of grounds for doubt, andincorrigibility is the impossibility of grounds for revision. For discussion, see William Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1989), 249–85.

21. Moore 1962, 54.

22. Schlick: “I have maintained ... [that statements can be compared with facts]. I have often compared propositions tofacts; so I had no reason to say that it couldn’t be done. I found, for instance, in my Baedeker the statement: ‘Thiscathedral has two spires’, I was able to compare it with “reality” by looking at the cathedral, and this comparisonconvinced me that Baedeker’s assertion was true ... I meant nothing but a process of this kind when I spoke of testingpropositions by comparing them with facts” (“Facts and Propositions,” Analysis 2 No. 5, April 1935, 65-70; 65-66). Ayerexpressly agrees with most of Schlick’s view, though he tends toward a phenomenalism according to which reality isnothing but our sensations (“The Criterion of Truth,” Analysis 3 Nos. 1 & 2, 1935, 28-32). For discussion see HER62–64, 245–46. (HER 246 note 121 concerns Schlick, not Ayer, and the correct page in “FK” is 213, not 214.)

23. See HER 92. Wieland (1973, 73), Quentin Lauer (A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; New York: Fordham,1976; ch. 2), Caroline Dudeck (“Hegel on Private Experience,” Philosophy Research Archives 3, 1977, 103–112 [B–5–B–14],105), Martin De Nys (“‘Sense Certainty’ and Universality: Hegel’s Entrance into the Phenomenology,” InternationalPhilosophical Quarterly 18, 1978, 445–65; 446); and Willem de Vries (“Hegel on Reference and Knowledge,” Journal of theHistory of Philosophy 26, 1988, 297–307; 298) rightly understand the thesis Hegel seeks to refute, but do not adequatelywork out the details of Hegel’s analysis.

24. The idea persists that Hegel’s critique of sense certainty “must” somehow address sense data theories or (mutatismutandis) unsynthesized Kantian sensations, because these are the most basic candidates for objects of knowledge andHegel addresses them nowhere else. This suggestion is understandable, but mistaken. These topics are intricate, anddeserve more detailed discussion than can be given here. I shall try to indicate briefly why these views cannot, are not,and need not be Hegel’s concern in “Sense Certainty.”

What counts as “epistemically basic”? Sense data or unsynthesized Kantian sensations count as epistemically basiconly on the basis of quite definite theories of human knowledge. At the beginning of Hegel’s Phenomenology, no theoryof knowledge has yet been introduced, and none has been justified in any way. Hence no theory of human knowledge canbe used to identify what is supposed to be “epistemically basic.” To do that would be to engage in what Hegel calls inJena a “philosophy of reflection”--a philosophy that constructs an account of knowledge and its objects based on anassumed view of what human knowledge and its objects are like--rather than to engage in Hegelian phenomenology.Also, to begin with those views would fail to engage Hegel’s most serious philosophical challenge at the beginning ofthe Phenomenology, namely, to show that we should and must engage in philosophizing about our knowledge and itsobjects. The point and validity of such philosophizing must be justified to naïve common sense, to advocates of“immediate knowledge” (especially Jacobi and Krug), and to skeptics about philosophy, none of whom would acceptKantian or sense-data starting points. Both Kantian sensations and sense data can be analyzed and defended only onthe basis of fairly recondite philosophical psychology. Philosophical psychology is legitimate only if philosophy is agenuine mode or kind of knowledge. Hegel’s Phenomenology aims to establish this latter, more basic thesis beforepropounding positive philosophical doctrines, including in philosophical psychology. Hegel does aim to justify Kant’sthesis that intuitions without conceptions are blind, that objects and events can be known only by identifying themconceptually. But Hegel cannot justify this thesis by assuming a starting point of pre-synthesized sensations that are notobjects of awareness, because that starting point begs the question. For all of these reasons, neither sense data norKantian sensations can be Hegel’s concern in “Sense Certainty.”

At no point in “Sense Certainty” do Hegel’s examples, or the conclusions he draws from them, involve a pluralityof sensations or sense data. Those issues are all reserved--rightly, I believe--for his subsequent chapter, “Perception.”Hegel’s examples in “Sense Certainty” involve a plurality of similarly ranked objects: day and night, tree and house, etc.Those objects are perfectly legitimate examples if indeed naïve realism is Hegel’s target, and they do not raise problemsof internal complexity until they are understood, i.e., conceived differently as things with multiple properties. Thatconception is neither reached nor justified until the very end of “Sense Certainty.”

Second, at no point in “Sense Certainty” do Hegel’s examples, or his critical arguments, turn on the purportedhallmarks of sense data, their epistemic certainty, i.e., their infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability. (Compare RobertMeyers’ critique, which does focus on these issues; The Likelihood of Knowledge [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988], chs. 1–3.) Forthese two reasons, Hegel’s concern in “Sense Certainty” are not sense data.

The reasons Hegel need not concern himself in “Sense Certainty” with sense data are indirect. First, philosophershave appealed to sense data as the only possible foundations for empirical knowledge. If Hegel can provide a non-foundationalist account of empirical knowledge that responds to skepticism, then he will have removed one of the


primary motivations for espousing sense data (see HER , passim); those motivations always have been fundamentallyprogrammatic.

Second, sense data require an internalist account of thought (roughly, the view that the content of any particularthought is nothing but a subjectively accessible mental act or entity). Hegel argues against such internalism, and in favorof an externalist account of thought (according to which the contents of many thoughts typically are or involve objectsor events in the world) in “Self-Consciousness” and “Reason.” (I sketch Hegel’s argument for this externalism in HER ,160–71. I argue independently for it, though in line with Hegel’s arguments, in “Transcendental Reflections on PragmaticRealism,” in: K. R. Westphal, ed., Pragmatism, Reason, & Norms [New York: Fordham, 1998], 17–59; cp. “Kant, Hegel,and the Transcendental Material Conditions of Possible Experience,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 33, 1996,23–41).

Third, I believe that Hegel’s arguments against naïve realism, that is, against aconceptual knowledge of spatio-temporal particulars, in fact also hold against sense data. (This I shall undertake to show elsewhere.) The basic problemis that sense data conflate two senses of “object”; one is an entity of which one is aware, the other is a propositionalcontent expressing one’s awareness that something or other “appears” to be the object of one’s awareness. “Appears”is ambiguous between whatever sensory characteristics some object or event exhibits, and whatever sensorycharacteristics one takes that object or event to reveal; sense data theories require supressing this ambiguity. Also, asparticulars, sense data must be located, individuated, and in a word identified within (phenomenal) space and time.Hegel’s arguments focus on the requirements for such identification of particulars; substituting sense data for spatio-temporal objects does nothing to evade Hegel’s critique.

25. De Nys (1978) tries to no avail to use the terms “immediacy” and “mediation” to explicate Hegel’s arguments.

26. On Herder’s historicism, see Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987),ch. 5.

27. See, e.g., Thelma Z. Lavine, “Knowledge as Interpretation: An Historical Survey,” Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch 10, 1949–50, 526–40, & 11, 1950–51, 88–103. According to Lavine, “The distinguishing feature of interpretation-ism, from the German Englightenment through American pragmatism to mid-twentieth century Wissenssoziologie is anaffirmation of the activity of mind as a constituent element in the object of knowledge. Common to all of thesephilosophical movements ... is the epistemological principle that mind does not apprehend an object which is given toit in completed form, but that through its activity of providing an interpretation or conferring meaning or imposingstructure, mind in some measure constitutes or ‘creates’ the object known” (526). Hegel argues that empirical knowledgemust be interpretive in order to recreate, not to create, the object known. (See the next note.) That Lavine alsomisunderstands at least one main current of American pragmatism has been well argued by Frederick L. Will, Pragmatismand Realism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).

28. I document this specious dichotomy in HER , 62–64, 245–46. I show that Hegel was well aware of this speciousdichotomy in HER , 67, and “Harris, Hegel, and the Truth about Truth” (in: G. Browning, ed., Hegel’s Phenomenology ofSpirit: A Reappraisal; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997; 23–29). That Hegel was not an historicist-relativist is shown by FrederickC. Beiser, “Hegel’s Historicism” (in: F. C. Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel; Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993; 270–300). Also see HER , esp. chs. 10, 11.

29. Only very recently have analytic epistemologists begun to explore the prospects of a socially and historically basedepistemological realism. See the contributions by Alston, Kornblith, Kitcher, Longino, and Solomon to F. Schmitt, ed.,Socializing Epistemology (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).

30. I summarize Hegel’s positive epistemological views in HER ch. 11.

31. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1:38. Hegel knew Sextus very well, and he remarks on this set of three tropesin his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (MM19:376; Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte (Hamburg:Meiner, 1983-; designated “V”) 8:152; H&S2:347). Although he recounts the main 17 tropes in his early essay onskepticism (GW4:214–18), Hegel does not mention these three there.

32. Cp. Kettner 1990, 197, 252, 256, who suggests (mistakenly, I believe) that Hegel intended or is required to establishmore than parameters. Because Hegel aims only to establish some parameters of a positive account of indexicals inhuman knowledge, it is not germane to develop any detailed relations between “Sense Certainty” and recent semantictheories of indexical reference.

33. Cf. Kettner, 1990, 160; G. Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch. 6.

34. Charles Taylor mistakenly quotes this passage as if it characterized sense certainty itself, instead of our proper attitudeas Hegel’s readers and phenomenological “observers” (Hegel; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975; 141). Lauer(1976, 42) cites it to the same effect.


35. Hegel discusses the relevant kind of “observation,” not here, but in his Introduction. The main point to bear in mindis that Hegel’s phenomenological examination of forms of consciousness rests squarely on internal criticism of thoseforms of consciousness. Hence whatever grounds are developed to reject one form of consciousness and to adopt amore sophisticated form of consciousness must be developed on the basis of principles and examples inherent in thecriticized form of consciousness itself. See HER , chs. 6–9. For a brief discussion of some key points, see Westphal,1998c, or more briefly my entry “Dialectic (Hegel)” (in: E. Sosa & J. Dancy, eds., A Companion to Epistemology; Oxford:Blackwell, 1992; 98–99).

36. KdrV A262–3=B318–9. For discussion of Kant’s view of transcendental reflection, see Herbert Schnädelbach,Reflexion und Diskurs: Fragen einer Logik der Philosophie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 87–133. He points out thattranscendental reflection is the very method Kant employs in the Critique of Pure Reason. Also see Dieter Henrich’soutstanding essay, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique” (in: E.Förster, ed., Kant’s Transcendental Deductions; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989; 29–46), 40–46. Although Kantdefines “transcendental reflection” in his prefatory remarks about distinguishing phenomena and noumena,Schnädelback and Henrich point out that this kind of reflection has a much broader, indeed fundamental role in Kant’sfirst Critique.

37. Kant claims apodeictic certainty, e.g., KdrV Axv, Bxxii note.

38. On Descartes’ failure, see HER ch. 3. The classic criticism of Kant in this regard is Stephen Körner, “TheImpossibility of Transcendental Deductions” (in: L. W. Beck, ed., Kant Studies Today; La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1969;230–44). His view has obtained wide currency.

39. See Eckart Förster, “How are Transcendental Arguments Possible?” (in E. Schaper & W. Vossenkuhl, eds., ReadingKant; Oxford: Blackwell, 1989; 3–20).

40. On Kant’s “transcendental” (as opposed to empirical) psychology, see Paul Guyer, “Psychology and theTranscendental Deduction” (in Förster, 1989, 47–68) and Patricia Kitcher, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (New York:Oxford, 1990). On Kant’s Table of Judgments, see Michael Wolff’s brilliant study, Die Vollständigkeit der kantischenUrteilstafel (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1995).

41. See Onora O’Neill’s excellent discussion in “Vindicating Reason” (in: P. Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant;Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; 280–308).

42. Ak 6:206–07.

43. Cf. HER chs. 7–9; Kettner 1990, 101–02; J. Lowenberg 1935, 27.

44. Cf. Jacobi, who could only say about the fact that something, anything, everthing is, “Es ist!”— It is! (Briefe über die Lehrevon Spinoza, 7. Beylage; Werke 4/1–2a:155, cf. 150–151; di Giovanni, 376, cf. 374).

45. Kettner sometimes overlooks this (1990, 70–71), but elsewhere clearly recognizes that the target of Hegel’s critiqueis an aconceptual, direct cognition of particulars (1990, 233, 242). Unfortunately, his criticism of Hegel turns on pointingout the rich pragmatic aspects of the meaning (Bedeutung) of particular uses of tokens of indexical terms (1990, esp.256–65). Hegel’s point is that this kind of Bedeutung is, inter alia, conceptually mediated, and so is not available to sensecertainty. If sense certainty thus seems to be too strong and hence too vulnerable a position, one must recall theenormous philosophical compulsion to espouse it as (supposedly) the only way to assess the truth of our propositionsor conceptual schemes, the only way to provide secure foundations for empirical knowledge, the only way to defendrealism, or (in fine) the only adequate way to settle epistemological controversies.

46. See Westphal, 1989, 147. Cf. MM 11:181–2 (cited by Kettner 1990, 91), and the passage quoted from G. E. Schulzein note 48.

47. Wieland mistakenly suggests that the critical issue concerns the match between “our” view of sense certainty and itsown view of itself. His attempt to substantiate this in the text disregards the contrast between Hegel’s introductorypresentation of the issues (¶¶1–5) and his subsequent internal critique of a form of consciousness (¶¶6–19) (1973,71–74). Occasionally Wieland does recognize that only internal criticism is legitimate (ibid., 74).

48. Cf. G. E. Schulze: “And because even in immediate knowledge of objects, these objects do not stand to our ‘I’ inthe relation of an accident to a subject, but rather are related to the ‘I’ as self-sufficient things relate to each other, [things]that are compared with one another in order to grasp (einzusehen) their relations; we thus judge, that the objects ofintuition (des Anschauens) would be there, even if our ‘I’ were not there, and didn’t intuit them” (Kritik der theoretischenPhilosophie, op. cit., 1:61, cf. 62).

49. Cf. Kettner 1990, 109.


50. See Russell, “Hegel and Common Sense” (1912; review of H. S. Macran, tr., Hegel’s Doctrine of Formal Logic; in: TheCollected Papers of Bertrand Russell; London: Routledge, 1994; 6:365) and Our Knowledge of the External World (London: GeorgeAllen & Unwin, 1914), 48–49 note. Although Russell raises this objection against Hegel’s Logic, his point also applies toHegel’s analyses in “Sense Certainty” and “Perception.” (On this latter, see HHW §7.)

51. Wieland (1973, 69–70) recognizes the importance of raising such questions, but does not adequately answer them.Plumer overlooks these important questions, and criticizes Hegel for making elementary errors (“Hegel on SingularDemonstrative Reference,” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 11, 1981, 71–94; esp. 84). His critique of Hegel is completelymisguided. Likewise, Werner Becker (wrongly) charges that Hegel’s argument turns on a mere solecism, treating theadjectives “here” or “now” as if they were nouns (Hegels Begriff der Dialektik; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969; 114–16).Becker fails to raise the proper logical and semantic questions Hegel addresses. Cast in his terms, the question is, Whatmust we understand, and what conceptions are involved in this understanding, in order to use the terms “now” and“here” adjectivally?

52. Because sense certainty disregards predication, it eludes the issues about the relation between predicates, properties,and particulars as characterized by properties. Consequently, “Sense Certainty” does not address issues regarding “bareparticulars.” Taylor (1976, 166; “The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology” [in: A. MacIntyre, ed., Hegel: A Collectionof Critical Essays; New York: Anchor, 1972; 162–63], 144) and De Nys (1978, 456, 458) mistakenly import thisterminology and concern into Hegel’s chapter. For the same reason, sense certainty makes no judgments, causal orotherwise, about the objects it senses, contra R. Wiehl, “Über den Sinn der sinnlichen Gewißheit” (Hegel-Studien Beiheft3, 1966, 103–34), 112–34.

Compare Gareth Evans’s deliberately simplified, non-predicative language in “Identity and Predication” (Journal ofPhilosophy 72 No. 13, 1975, 343–63), 347–50.

53. See G. Vlastos, “The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides” (in: R. E. Allen, ed., Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics;London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, N.Y.: Humanities Press, 1965; 231-63), 245-48; M. Burnyeat, “Can the Sceptic Livehis Scepticism?” (in: M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, & J. Barnes, eds., Doubt and Dogmatism; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980;20–53), 25; and Charlotte Stough, Greek Skepticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 142f..

54. Hegel claims that the ancient tropes suffice to refute sense certainty in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy,MM19:369–70, 372, 374–75, 395, 400; V8:145, 149, 151; H&S2:343–34, 347, 351. On the role of the Greek conceptionof truth in pyrrhonian skepticism, see HER 15, 162–63, and Westphal (1998c), §7.1. On the pyrrhonist roots of Hegel’sarguments in “Sense Certainty” see Klaus Düsing, “Die Bedeutung des antiken Skeptizismus für Hegels Kritik dersinnlichen Gewißheit” (Hegel-Studien 8, 1973, 119–30). That Hegel’s arguments have pyrrhonist roots, however, does notentitle us to assimilate Hegel’s arguments to Sextus’s. (Düsing does not propose such an assimilation.) On this, seeAndreas Graeser, “Hegels Kritik der sinnlichen Gewißheit und Platons Kritik der Sinneswahrnehmung im Theaitet” (Revuede Philosophie Ancienne 3 No. 2, 1985, 39–57). Whatever may be the roots of Hegel’s issues, examples, or arguments, themain point must be to reconstruct and assess Hegel’s own analysis as accurately and thoroughly as possible.

55. It is worth noting that the examples “it is day” and “it is night” are among those presentations of sense (phantasia)that Sextus Empiricus grants are not equally credible, so that not all phantasia can be accepted as true (Against the Logicians[Works 2] I:391); “those things are pre-evident which come to our knowledge of themselves—such as, at the presentmoment, that fact that ‘it is day’ and that ‘I am conversing’” (AL II:144).

56. For this reason alone, Hegel’s topic in “Sense Certainty” cannot concern the debate between realism and nominalismabout universals, contra many interpretations of this chapter. We shall see that none of his arguments address that debate.

57. Cf. Kettner 1990, 129.

58. D. Kaplan uses “character” (“On the Logic of Demonstratives,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 8, 1970, 81–98), JohnPerry uses “role” (“Frege on Demonstratives,” The Philosophical Review 86 No. 4, 1977, 474–97; 493f.), to designate thatfeature of token demonstratives that, in context, enables us to understand what object(s) is or are referred to.

59. Cf. Kettner 1990, 130–38.

60. Kettner appears to recognize this elsewhere (1990, 146, 157).

61. Russell recognizes that “this” is an ambiguous logically proper name (“Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” CollectedPapers 8:179).

62. M. Westphal (History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology; Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1979; 73) and De Nys (1978,456) miss this important point. Much of what M. Westphal says about Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel is vaguely relevantto Hegel’s discussion, but it does not come to grips with the details of Hegel’s argument. At least he recognizes that“none” of what he says “is explicit in the text” (M. Westphal, 1979, 79). This is the typical result of trying to summarizerather than to analyze and explicate Hegel’s text and arguments: In attempting to speak on Hegel’s behalf, the


“commentator” speaks in Hegel’s stead.

63. See HER 104, 116, 121, 123, 129–30, cf. 164 and below, p. 31.

64. Findlay entirely misunderstands this crucial point (Hegel: A Re-examination; New York: Oxford, 1958; 90–91).

65. Taylor suggests that Hegel’s objection turns on the requirement that knowledge be expressible in language, and thatdescriptions or classifications are inherently selective (1972, 141–42, 145). Basically the same idea is presented by TerryPinkard (Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994], 24, 26–27). Theirclaims disregard the carefully articulated details of Hegel’s analysis.

66. On Hegel’s use of dative and accusative cases to mark distinct levels of explicitness, see HER chs. 7, 8; esp. 105–06.In his review of HER , Harris claimed that Hegel did not mean to make a conceptual distinction by use of dative andaccusative cases (Philosophy of the Social Sciences 22 No. 4, 1992, 512–34), 514. In Hegel’s Ladder he admits that Hegel doesdistinguish between what is implicit and what is explicit by using dative and accusative cases (1997, 1:203 note 43).Hegel’s use of such case distinctions here and below further substantiates my analysis in HER . On whether my analysisof Hegel’s criterion is “unnecessarily complicated” (Harris, 1997, 1:204 note 45) see Westphal, 1998a, §7.1.

67. Hegel offers no refutation of solipsism here, naive or otherwise, because solipsism is not espoused or adopted bysense certainty, contra e.g., J. Lowenberg (“The Comedy of Immediacy in Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology’ II,” Mind 44, 1935,21–38; 32), J. Hypolite (Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; S. Cherniak & J. Heckman, trs., Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1974; 94), Lauer (1976, 49), David Lamb (“Hegel and Wittgenstein on Language andSense-certainty,” Clio 7 No. 2, 1978, 285–301; 292–95, and “Sense and Meaning in Hegel and Wittgenstein,” in: D. Lamb,ed., Hegel and Modern Philosophy; London: Croom Helm, 1987, 70–101; 77–81), and Plumer (1981, 73, 76–78). If sensecertainty did adopt solipsism, Hegel’s internal critique, which turns on what others purport to be directly aware of, wouldbe irrelevant. Likewise, Hegel’s argument does not concern private sense data because sense certainty maintains that itknows spatio-temporal particulars, pace, e.g., M. Westphal (1979, 70).

68. Russell, “On Denoting,” Collected Papers 4:420.

69. Hegel only makes a semantic point about the demonstrative type term “I” and token uses of it; he does not offerany grounds here for a social conception of human individuals (pace Hypolite 1974, 95–96). Hypolite claims that “Hegel’sargument here can be understood only if we already know where it is leading” (96). This is a sure principle by which toget out of a text only what one already expects to find in it, and to disregard and fail to assess the character andsoundness of an author’s actual argument. This principle condemns Hegel to the cardinal Hegelian sin of begging thequestion and insures that Hegelian legends shall be perpetuated without checking them against Hegel’s text.

70. “Wie der Gemeine Menschenverstand die Philosophie nehme, --Dargestellt and den Werken des Herrn Krug’s,” GW4:174–87; tr. H. S. Harris in G. di Giovanni & H. S. Harris, eds, Between Kant and Hegel (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1985), 292–310. I shall refer to the pagination in GW ; both it and the translation carry the pagination of theoriginal edition.

71. GW 4:176.7–14. In his translator’s notes, Harris points out that Krug clearly misunderstood Schelling’s argumenton this count (308 note 20).

72. Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus (Leipzig: H. Müller, 1801), 31f., 38, 73–74.

73. He mentions it repeatedly in his review (GW 4:178.26, .35, 179.1, .4, .22, .32, 180.3, 184.14), and recurs to it in later(Enz. §250 note) as well as here in the Phenomenology.

74. GW 4:181.30–182.7, 182.22–34.

75. GW 4:184.30. In his translator’s notes, Harris points out that Krug does not identify his view with Jacobi’s, althoughhis formulation (Entwurf eines neuen Organon’s der Philosophie [Meissen & Lübben: Erbstein, 1801], 27, 37–38) is strikinglysimilar (309 note 48).

76. GW 4:180.5–11, 181.16. Hegel suggests the issue of the conditions for the possibility of singular reference andknowledge of particulars in the early idealist language of “constructing” consciousness (GW 4:181.3).

77. See Klaus Düsing, “Spekulation und Reflexion: Zur Zusammenarbeit Schellings und Hegels in Jena” (Hegel-Studien5, 1969, 93–128), “Vernunfteinheit und Unvordenkliches Daßsein: Konzeptionen der Überwindung negativer Theologiebei Schelling und Hegel” (in: K. Gloy & D. Schmidig, eds., Einheitskonzepte in der idealistischen und in der gegenwärtigenPhilosophie; Bonn: Lang, 1987; 109–36), and especially “Die Entstehung des spekulativen Idealismus. Schellings undHegels Wandlungen zwischen 1800 und 1801" (in W. Jaeschke, ed., Transzendentalphilosophie und Spekulation: Der Streit umdie Gestallt einer Ersten Philosophie (1799–1807); Hamburg: Meiner, 1993; 2:144–63).


78. G. E. Schulze, “Aphorismen über das Absolute,” in F. Bouterwek, ed., Neues Museum der Philosophie und Literatur;Leipzig, 1 No. 2, 1803, 107–48; rpt. in Transzendentalphilosophie und Spekulation, op. cit., Quellenband 2.1:337–55; see K. R.Meist, “‘Sich vollbringender Skeptizismus.’ G. E. Schulzes Replik auf Hegel und Schelling” (ibid. 2:192–230). Schelling’sapologists should consider Schulze’s critique very carefully.

79. See my essay, “Kant, Hegel, and the Fate of ‘the’ Intuitive Intellect,” in: S. Sedgwick, ed., The Idea of a System ofTranscendental Idealism (forthcoming). [Published in: S. Sedgwick, ed., The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling,and Hegel. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 283–305.]

80. On these topics, see HER passim .

81. Hegel states: “If the demand is made of science as its crucial test, which it simply could not pass, to deduce,construct, to find a priori, or however one wants to put it, a so-called this thing, or a this person, it’s only fair that thisdemand say, which this thing or which this I it means, but it is impossible to say this” (G66.31–36).

82. See above, p. 21.

83. “Ich für mich bleibe dabey, das Itzt ist Tag, oder auch dabey, das Hier ist Baum; vergleiche auch nicht das Hier undItzt selbst mit einander, sondern halte ein Einer unmittelbaren Beziehung fest: das Itzt ist Tag.”

84. “... we must go to it, and allow the now that is maintained to be pointed out to us. We must allow it to be pointed outto us ...” (G67.25–26); “We must therefore enter into the same point of time or of space which it shows us, that is, wemust allow ourselves to be made into the very same this I who knows with certainty” (G67.30–32). Both Miller andBaillie fail to preserve Hegel’s deliberate passive constructions. On the importance of our non-interference asphenomenological observers, see HER 134–39. M. Westphal (1979, 72) seriously misunderstands Hegel’s point here.

85. “The now is pointed out, this now. Now; it has already ceased to be as it is pointed out. The now that is, is an other thanthe one pointed out, and we see, that the now is just this: insofar as it is, already no longer to be. The now, as it is pointedout to us, is something that has been [ein gewesenes], and this is its truth; it doesn’t have the truth of being. It is thereforeof course true that it has been. But what has been, is in fact no being [Wesen]; it IS not, and the concern was with being” (¶17,G67.33–39).

86. See above, p. 22f.

87. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein, All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism Is Confuted; and Its ImpossibilityDemonstrated, 1678, 9; quoted by John Yolton, Thinking Matter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 5.

88. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (P. Nidditch, ed., Oxford: Clarendeon Press, 1975), Bk. 2 Ch. 13 §24; citedby Yolton, op. cit., 64. Yolton has “§25"; this must be a misprint. Yolton also argues persuasively that Hume likely wasinfluenced by this materialist doctrine (ibid., 83).

89. For D’Holbach’s influence on Hegel’s Phenomenology, see Harris 1997 (see his index for references).

90. Perhaps the prime instance of this procedure with regard to “Sense Certainty” are the parallels Purpus draws betweenHegel’s discussion and ancient Greek sources (Die Dialektik der sinnlichen Gewißheit bei Hegel; Nürnberg: Schrag, 1905; ZurDialektik des Bewusstseins nach Hegel; Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1908), which Hypolite (1974) follows. Lauer (1976, 42) rightlycautions against this procedure. Displaying thematic parallels, similarities, or echoes does not suffice to show that Hegel’sanalysis is about those texts or issues. Rather, which textual parallels or allusions are relevant must be determined byreconstructing the aim and course of Hegel’s argument(s). See above, note 2. This point holds also of appealing to Hegel’sremarks about Stilpo (MM18:534–38, H&S1:464–69) in order to interpret his remarks about language in “SenseCertainty” (¶¶8, 21; see pp. 24, 27, 55). Obviously there are thematic relations between these texts, though there are alsothematic differences, and Hegel’s lectures are too unspecific to prove anything, much less to prove exactly what or howhe argues in “Sense Certainty.” Documenting possible or probable sources does not suffice to identify a topic, issue, orargumentative strategy. This is all the more the case regarding Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic,” which M. Westphal(1978, 68) claims forms the background to Hegel’s argument. Whatever arguments are “familiar” from Kant’sTranscendental Aesthetic, they are not reiterated in “Sense Certainty.” See note 92.

91. See HER passim and Westphal, 1998a.

92. Hegel’s arguments in Phase III parallel an important set of arguments in Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic. Kantargues that space and time are each wholes and that any of their “parts” exist only by distinguishing regions of (or pointin) space or periods (or moments) of time within space or time as wholes (KdrV A25/B39, A31–32/B47–48). However,Kant’s arguments primarily concern the nature of space and time themselves (namely, Kant contends, they are formsof human intuition) and only secondarily concern our conceptions of space or time, where those conceptions mustreflect the properties of space and time themselves (A25, 26, 32/B39, 42, 49; 4:33.2, 33.16, 37.11/3:53.13, 55.1, 59.18;Kant added explicit reference to the “concept” of space and of time in the second edition: B38, 40, 48; 3:52.15–19,


54.1–8, 59.1). Hegel’s arguments do not address the nature of space or time themselves (and so do not invoke Kant’sidealism at all), but address solely and explicitly our conceptions of space and time.

93. Page 21.

94. See the editor’s notes to G69.3–6 at G495. Cf. Schulze’s 1801 claim: “What we intuit (anschauen), is altogether anindividual, determinate thing, and no universal property of several objects. We do not perceive or immediately know anextension, an animal, a triangle in general, but rather an individual and determinate body, an individual and determinateanimal, an individual and determinate triangle” (Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie, op. cit., 1:57). Note the emphasis Schulzehimself places on the contrast between particularity and any universal characteristics of things.

95. ¶13, G66.31–36; see above, p. 37.

96. Cf. the passage quoted from Schulze (1801) above, note 94.

97. E .g., D. W. Hamlyn (Sensation and Perception; New York: Humanities, 1961; 140–46), Ivan Soll (An Introduction to Hegel’sMetaphysics; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969; 91–110), Plumer (1981), and M. J. Inwood (Hegel; London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983; 311–17) contend that Hegel’s whole argument aims to deny the possibility of singulardemonstrative reference. Their mistake is corrected by de Vries (1988).

Joseph Flay contends that Hegel simply accepts the cognitive claims made by sense-certainty; that sense-certaintyclaims absoluteness, totality, and totalization; and that Hegel seeks merely to develop the absolute standpoint thatwarrants these claims (Hegel’s Quest for Certainty [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984], 35, 50, 256–58, 266).However, sense-certainty only claims to know various particulars wherever each may be found; it does not make the“totalizing” claim (to be able to know everything all at once) Flay ascribes to it. In logical terms, Flay mistakes adistributive claim to know each particular where- and whenever it is found for the collective claim to know all particularsen masse. “Sense-certainty” never makes that collective claim; hence Flay’s objection is misguided.

98. See above, p. 28.

99. Werke 2:34–35, 58–62; cf. Westphal 1989, §V.1, and Beiser 1987, ch. 2.

100. Soll has urged this criticism most strongly. Soll (1969, 101, 103-104) thinks that the target of Hegel’s attack isreference to (and with that, knowledge of) particulars, and notes accordingly that definite descriptions, comprising solelyuniversal terms, may successfully pick out particulars. For a detailed refutation of Soll’s interpretation of “Sense-certain-ty,” see Katharina Dulckheit, “Can Hegel Refer to Particulars?” (The Owl of Minerva 17 No. 2, 1986, 181-94). Also seeDudeck, 1977.

101. Cf. Evans 1975, 351–52. (By referring to Evans I do not mean to suggest that Hegel had a prescient, if nascent,objection to Quine.) Evans concludes: “... the line tracing area of relevance delimits that area in relation to which oneor the other, but not both, of a pair of contradictory predicates may be chosen. And that is what it is for a line to be aboundary, marking something off from other things” (ibid., 352; cp. Geach 1992, 69.) This idea bears careful comparisonwith Michael Wolff’s very insightful discussion of Kant’s and Hegel’s views on the law of contradiction and logicalreflection in Der Begriff des Widerspruchs (Königstein/Ts.: Hain, 1981). (The main points of his study relevant to the presentpoint are summarized in HHW §18.) Fales supports his account of a conceptually informed “given” that can include“primitive acts of recognition” in large part because he equates intellect (and learning!) with inference (1996, 82, 104–06,123). This is an absurdly limited and historically uninformed equasion; identifying particulars by subsuming them underconcepts (classifications, or “stereotypes” in Putnam’s sense) has been recognized from the Port Royal Logic onward tobe a paradigm case of judgment, an act of the intellect. (Fales does once allow that classification is an intellectualoperation [121], but this idea is strikingly absent from his polemic—because of its absence his ‘argument’ is only apolemic—against the idea that unconscious inference or other information processing undermines the “givenness” ofsensory elements in perception.) Fales admits so much historical, educational, conceptual, and memorial mediation intohis version of “the given” that he is no exponent of “sense certainty” as characterized and criticized by Hegel; indeed,he proffers such a vitiated version of the “given” that almost any coherentist could accept it—to say nothing of thosephilosophers, such as Hegel and Haack, who reject the supposed exclusive and exhaustive dichotomy betweenfoundationalism and coherentism. Nevertheless, Fales flirts with a pure and unqualified concept empiricism that isrefuted by Hegel’s critique of sense certainty when he states: “... propositions, and propositional thought, have the formthey do just because that is the form of our experience of the world—and our conception of that world is formed byour experience of it” (119). (Also see note 103.)

102. For discussion, see HER 48f. Lauer (1976, 42–43, 50, 52) rightly notes that empiricism must be a main target ofHegel’s critique in “Sense Certainty,” but he does not specify which kinds or aspects of empiricism Hegel criticizes.


103. Geach (1992, 130–31) argues that Aquinas did not hold the radically empiricist thesis usually associated with thisslogan. Geach’s discussion and critique of abstractionism is excellent. Geach addresses this view in the abstract. For anexcellent analysis and critique of a recent proponent of abstractionism, C. D. Broad, see Robert Turnbull, “Empiricaland A Priori Elements in Broad’s Theory of Knowledge” (in: P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of C. D. Broad; New York:Tudor, 1959; 197–231). Fales espouses a very weak form of “the given,” one that admits a good deal of conceptualizationinto “the given,” but even his view requires an untenable abstractionist account of empirical concepts and theiracquisition (1996, 100, 103, 106, 108).

104. See Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge, 1977), ch. 6.

105. See HHW . A summary is given in “Hegel and Hume on Perception and Concept-Empiricism,” Journal of the Historyof Philosophy 33 No. 1 (1998), 99–123.

106. I wish to thank Robert Wicks and two anonymous referees for suggesting clarifications.

K.R. Westphal - Hegel’s Internal Critique of Naïve Realism

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