The Problem with Knowing Anything and Method on How to Read the Phenomenology

The Problem With Knowing

Knowledge is divine. It is for this reason that very few before our age have possessed knowledge, and those that have we have considered to be holy men. This blog is an attempt to gain for myself, and for my readers, if they are patient and understand, the capacity to know the true, i.e. the Absolute. This is not one opinion among many, but an attempt to access the one and only Truth. Lucky for me, a path has been laid out by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit; unfortunately, it is difficult to tread that path. This is the first post on my interpretation of the phenomenology. We begin with an introduction on the method one must utilize in reading this book.  For two hundred years now, with the exception of some exceptional scholars, the Phenomenology has been interpreted by individuals with agendas. One can tell because they attribute to Hegel ideas that he never had, and then these attributions are taken to be Hegelian thoughts, when in truth they are thoughts of his interpreters. The most egregious of these is Karl Marx; he completely misunderstood what Spirit was, and in misunderstanding it he filled that blank space with what he grew up understanding spirit to be, God, and rejected it. He then claimed to turn Hegel's dialectic on its head into the material dialectic, and he farted out, seemingly out of his ass, that piece of shit philosophy of his. Marxist philosophy has caused much trouble for the human race in the past 150 years. Only now the Russians are beginning to recover from it, and Westerners are still having to deal with it, in a more potent in virile form. Another "Hegelian" idea is Alexandre Kojeve's End of History, which was taken up by Francis Fukuyama, advisor to the Bush administration. Hegel never talks about an End of History as if one day history will stop. History is ongoing. He does, however, talk about a Purpose of History, and "End" is a synonym for "Purpose", which is Absolute Knowing. The idea of "Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis" is not Hegelian. It is Fichtean, and was misattributed to Hegel by his interpreters. Finally, a variant of the previous misinterpretation, "Action, Reaction, Solution", is not Hegelian. It's what conspiracy theorists think Hegel is talking about, and it is really supposed to be a short-hand summary of the process that consciousness undergoes on its path towards Absolute Knowing.

This is what happens when you misinterpret Hegel.

For those that know history, you can see that misinterpreting Hegel is kind of a big deal. The difficulty of the phenomenology is that it actually leaves no room for misinterpretation. The concepts that he utilizes have a precise meaning and serve a precise function. No extraneous thought can be brought in that would aid you in interpreting the book. You have to essentially think about exactly Hegel was thinking about in order to understand what he is saying; however one needs to first understand that Hegel has a specific structure in mind, a specific intention, that animates his form of thought. He intends to make true knowledge, one that is independent of the opinions of one's peers, possible. This kind of knowledge is valid for eternity; he sets out on this endeavor by forming a construal of knowing that would accomplish this task. The question asked must be, "what must knowledge look like in order for one to truly know?"

In the Introduction, he begins by pointing out the difficulties in the activity that we engage in that we commonly conceive of as "knowledge". It takes no ideologue to proclaim that knowledge is distinct from the objects of knowing. This is to say that knowledge is always knowledge of something. One must make a distinction between the activity of knowing itself, and the object which that activity sets before itself and relates to and thereby comes to "know it". This opposition between knowing and its object is fundamental. It is the difference between res cogitans and res extensa, soul and substance, mind and matter, etc. Everyone accepts this opposition, whether it be dualists or monists. Consider the fact that knowledge of knowledge involves two distinct expressions of knowledge: knowledge as an activity sets before itself as an object the activity of knowledge. The activity is actively moving, while the object is passive. When you read this, you are engaging in an activity; but you are reading about your reading, and you set before yourself that activity as an inert object.

This kind of opposition makes knowing impossible, and the entire endeavor Hegel sets out upon in the phenomenology, absurd. The result of opposing knowing and its object is that both are estranged. They have different processes that animate them, one moving and active, the other stable and passive. It is for this reason that doubt and uncertainty plagues our thoughts, and why we come to rely on our knowledge of the world on authorities who claim to know, whether it be a priest, shaman, doctor, expert or scientist. In the natural sciences, the scientific method is a reaction to this difficulty. The making of hypotheses, the carrying out of experiments, the testing of hypotheses, the making of inferences, the revision of existing theories, the elevation of certain theories to the status of law, along with the rest, is all predicated on this fundamental opposition between knowing and its object.

As impressive as this group might seem, they only engage in this kind of activity because of a fundamental problem with knowing. 

This method of knowing makes an attempt to act upon the object. It is active. It falls prey to what has come to be called in physics "The Observer Effect", not to be confused with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The effect of the observer (knowing) is always present, and can never be completely eliminated. Here, knowing is utilized as a tool, or an instrument, that allows one to get to the truth of things. The scientific method is but one example of this method; there could conceivably exist others, if only someone went through the trouble of inventing it. The problem with this kind of knowing, when it is utilized as an instrument, is that it delivers to our conscious awareness the object as it has been altered by the activity of knowing. As soon as you set the object before your conscious awareness, you alter it. The object, before it having been known, is an object that exists with many properties. When you observe it, you introduce a new property - the fact that it is being observed. This is a notorious problem in chemistry and quantum physics. In order to resolve this problem, one must subtract the effects of the activity of knowing. But doing this gets us back to where we started. In this sense, knowing is unworkable. We can never know the truth, but only the approximate truth. This is precisely what true scientists proclaim in their humility. If we cannot know the true precisely using the scientific method on supposedly concrete, objective phenomenon in the natural hard sciences, then one has even less hope of arriving at the truth of cognition through softer sciences like psychology, and even less hope of understanding human nature from peer-reviewed literature, statistics, qualitative and quantitative analysis in the social sciences. Consensus is not knowledge.

The second method of knowing is one that was utilized by classical philosophers, and by mystics, modern and ancient. This includes self-seekers ranging the amateur practitioner of yoga, to the yogis, to the masters of the tradition themselves, who have attempted to know the self by means of meditation, and in some extreme cases, social isolation and self-mortification. The Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates himself committed this error. Socrates at least admits that he knows nothing. Here, rather than use knowing as an active instrument to get at the truth, one uses it as a passive medium, where knowing sets itself up to passively receive its object, the object as it exists in truth, how it actually is in truth. Here we have three terms. The object passes through knowing as a medium, and reaches the knower. The medium receives the object in a refracted mode; i.e. it is altered in such a way that the medium is able to digest that knowledge. In the case of meditators, the object in question is the self. They attempt to grasp knowledge of self using this method. Knowledge received in this manner must be interpreted by the knowing self. And this interpretation requires the use of language, a symbolic manner of communication that is extraneous to the object of knowing. Unless one is thinking about the Germans in German, one is altering the knowledge one receives passively by the fact that they need to interpret it. Again, one can only get the object as it truly is if one removes the effects of the medium, the knowing. But again, we are left with an object as it was before it came to be known, and we are again back to where we started. Knowing, if taken to be a passive medium, is unworkable.

All these categories need to be labelled by words. These words are not themselves true aspects of the things they describe. Thus, by attaching to them, again they are altered.

Construing knowledge in either one of these two manners, as active instrument or passive medium, exhausts the possibilities of how we are to relate knowing and its object. It seems that knowing is impossible. In either case, knowledge falls into an erroneous situation.

Method on How to Read the Phenomenology

One must approach Hegel's phenomenology with the awareness that his method of knowing is fundamentally distinct from what we are used to calling the activity of "knowing". He neither uses knowledge as an instrument, nor as a medium. This is what makes understanding the phenomenology so difficult. One must read the words and know precisely what they mean. One cannot introduce any extraneous element in the interpretation of the phenomenology, whether consciously or by accident; otherwise one will quickly fall into a state of frustration and confusion. Regardless, one still has hope, for once we understand exactly what Hegel is trying to do, we can better grasp the contents of the phenomenology, and attain for ourselves the divine capacity to know.

Hegel stipulates that we can only address knowing as a phenomenon; we can only approach knowledge initially as it appears to us. We can make no claims about knowing. We can only take it as given, where nothing further is maintained. Indeed, we can make no assumptions at all about knowing, except for that one fundamental assumption that knowing is distinct from its object. From this assumption, we proceed. Thus, in every step of the way along the phenomenology, knowing confronts a given, i.e. an independently determined object. Knowing stands opposed to its object and evaluates it. We will observe how this construal of knowing works itself out on its own terms, bringing nothing new, in an attempt to legitimate itself. Knowing, being distinct from its object, stands opposed to its object, and the object stands opposed to knowing. Whereever there is an asymmetry between knowing and its object, for example, knowing is active and the object is passive, then we know that there is a problem.

In every stage, an object for knowing is posited. This object as it appears serves as the standard of truth for knowing; it is the foundation for that kind of knowing. One can say that knowledge assumes a particular shape in reference to its object. Each different shape of knowledge, what Hegel calls "Consciousness", that appears in the phenomenology appears because it has developed a new object, a new standard of truth against which it compares itself. It just so happens that what we call consciousness shares characteristics with what Hegel calls "consciousness", however, we are to assume that this is accidental. We are only evaluating consciousness on its own terms; we must avoid the temptation to relate consciousness to the actual phenomenon of consciousness as we watch consciousness work itself out. Hegel is not engaging in a psychological project, but an epistemological project.

In determining whether its claim that the object before it is the true, and that there is no other truth beyond it, consciousness makes a claim of which it is initially certain. It is so certain that it tests out its claim by elaborating upon its object, and itself, and its relation to the object. Its elaboration ends up presenting to consciousness conflicts and tensions that it cannot resolve in its current shape. Therefore, it must make a new object that is able to reconcile the conflicts and tensions of that previous object, and thereby assumes a new shape. When it does so, Hegel begins to use new terminology to describe the newly developed object. This process repeats up until a point where consciousness can evaluate the object, itself, and its relation to its object, and it finds no tension, no conflict, no contradiction, no contradiction between the poles. At this point, it has reached a state of supreme self-confidence; it is absolute knowing. Each successive shape arises from the one that precedes it. Consciousness will make a heroic attempt to maintain its object as it first appeared for it; using all the tools at its disposal in every possible way that it can. Each time it does these new tensions arise, and it has no choice but to assume a new shape. The new shape has aspects about it that were found in previous stages.

Think of the phenomenology as a game that begins with very few rules. All one needs to know is two things are the same, or they are different. If they are different, there is tension. If they are the same, there is no tension. Consciousness relates to its object. The rules of distinction and identification arise from the nature of our only assumption, that knowing is distinct from its object. Knowing is distinct from its object, therefore there is distinction. Hegel calls distinction "being-for-another". It will appear again and again in the phenomenology. Knowing is identical to itself, knowing is knowing. And the object is identical to itself. The object is the object. Therefore, there is identification. Hegel calls identification, self-relating, or "being-for-self". The only tools that knowing has at its disposal right at the beginning, in Sense-Certainty, is the capacity to distinguish and the capacity to identify. We will begin with a shape of consciousness that is absolutely simple, Sense-Certainty, in the next post.