Hegel - Sense Certainity

Sense Certainty: Or the “This” and “Meaning”

Experience is a past collections of nows.

90. The start of recognition or knowledge is immediate,

• It is the knowledge of the immediate.
• Our approach must also be immediate.
• We must try to apprehend and object before we try to comprehend it.

91. Sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge.

• The truest knowledge
• But it is the poorest,
• All we know of the object is that it is.
• Just its sheer being.
• Before mediating on a thing,
• We just recognized it is.
• It is a particular.
• “This” refers to a particular thing,
• Framed in the know and the immediate,
• and we perceive it is true.

92. There are two thises in recognition:

• Recognition of perceiving the object, or the I
• Recognition of the object in and of itself, or the this.

93 It is the distinction between essence and instance,

• or immediacy and meditation.
• There is a knowing in an object because of its essence, it’s isness, 
• But it doesn’t determine if the object is known or not known.
• Its truth comes from being “there,”
• But it doesn’t mean we understanding it.

94. We must question if the object is as it is through sense-certainty,

• or is the object is something different, but is the object to us because of how our sense-certainty works.
• To question this means we do not need to look at an objects truth, 
• But to examine how an object presents itself.

95. We must question sense-certainty itself by asking “What is This.”

• This taken the twofold shapes 
• of The hear and now.

96. Now is a mediated term.

• Now loses reference after the immediacy of it.
• But it preserves itself as a negative.
• Now becomes not-now.
• But it retains itself and meaning.
• It also means now, as in before.
• This retains it’s meaning no matter when it is used.
• It becomes a universal.
• It is the universal that is the true content of sense-certainty.

97. We use the universal “This” to reference it is, or to being in general.

• We don’t think of “this” as a universal,
• But we use it anyway in language.
• Were not necessarily, in the strictest sense, 
• Saying what we mean

98. The same applies to “here.”

• Here is a tree, and then we turn around.
• The sensuous, and the associated truth has vanished.
• But it is still there.
• It retains its meaning although its context has changed.
• Another example of mediated simplicity,
• or Universality of the word here. 

99. Pure being remains.

• through sense-certainty.
• But it’s pure being does lie in immediacy,
• but in negation and mediation.
• It becomes an abstraction.
• Being is not referred to the objects pure being,
• But the abstraction we’ve given it.

100. The object that was necessary in sense-certainty is longer essential.

• That one knows the object becomes essential.
• It is becomes I know it.
• Its pure being becomes the abstraction we’ve given it.
• The force of its truth now lies with the individual, or the I.

101.  The universal of the here and now vanish, the thisness,

• and knowledge comes directly from the I.

107 The now becomes a pointing out.

• This conveys the now, that has passed.
• We turn on what has passed as the truth for the term now.
• and all the nows in between.
• The nows become a universal

108. Here, there, above, below, in, out refer are universals,

• and only become singular in the pointing out of a thing
• That exists in the collection of nows.

109. The dialectic of sense-certainly is the simple movement or of its experience.

111.  There are two acts occurring at the same time

• The act of point out something - the act of perceiving.
• And the object perceived.
• The object is apprehended by both movements.
• The abstraction of perception is the universal - and the essential
• The act of perceiving, and the object of perception become the unessential.

112. Abstraction is a mediated universal, and it

• is dependent on the qualities.
• In this sense the object becomes a thing with many properties.

117.  A thing is apprehended as a one,

• but is associated with like objects, and raises above its singularity.
• It is negated by differentiating what it is not.

119. We think of a thing as a one,

• Contained with many properties.
• However, we bring the properties to realization.
• A think is white because our eye sees it that way.
• Something is tart only because that’s the way we tasted,
• *** and because that’s the language and cultural context we’ve given it.
• We give it our reflection

120. A thing is perceived as a thing,

• by the properties we give through our senses,
• But also in its own being without consideration.
• The pure essence we cannot perceive.

There’s a bit more, but:

In essence and object’s being is derived from its appearance.

• It’s meaning is derived from abstraction

There is an understanding of a thing through itself to the inner being derived from the time remain in the immediacy of 

• sensuous experience.
• And there is understanding of a thing through abstraction as mediated through interpretation, abstractions and language. 

Hegel, Georg W. F. Sense Certain: Or the “This” and “Meaning.” The Philosophy of Communication. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2012. Pp 69-102. Print.