I. SENSE-CERTAINTY: OR THE 'THIS' AND 'MEANING' [MEINEN]
90. The knowledge or knowing which is at the start or is immediately our object
cannot be anything else but immediate knowledge itself, a knowledge of the immediate or
of what simply is. Our approach to the object must also be immediate or receptive; we
must alter nothing in the object as it presents itself. In apprehending it, we must refrain
from trying to comprehend it.
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91. Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the
richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge of infinite wealth for which no bounds
can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or
when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it. Moreover, sense-certainty
appears to be the truest knowledge; for it has not as yet omitted anything from the object,
but has the object before it in its perfect entirety. But, in the event, this very certainty
proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows
is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing [Sache].
Consciousness, for its part, is in this certainty only as a pure 'I'; or I am in it only as a
pure 'This', and the object similarly only as a pure 'This'. I, this particular I, am certain of
this particular thing, not because I, qua consciousness, in knowing it have developed
myself or thought about it in various ways; and also not because the thing of which I am
certain, in virtue of a host of distinct qualities, would be in its own self a rich complex of
connections, or related in various ways to other things. Neither of these has anything to
do with the truth of sense-certainty: here neither I nor the thing has the significance of a
complex process of mediation; the 'I' does not have the significance of a manifold
imagining or thinking; nor does the 'thing' signify something that has a host of qualities.
On the contrary, the thing is, and it is, merely because it is. It is; this is the essential point
for sense-knowledge, and this pure being, or this simple immediacy, constitutes its truth.
Similarly, certainty as a connection is an immediate pure connection: consciousness is 'I',
nothing more, a pure 'This'; the singular consciousness knows a pure 'This', or the single
item.
92. But when we look carefully at this pure being which constitutes the essence of
this certainty, and which this certainty pronounces to be its truth, we see that much more
is involved. An actual sense-certainty is not merely this pure immediacy, but an instance
of it. Among the countless differences cropping up here we find in every case that the
crucial one is that, in sense-certainty, pure being at once splits up into what we have
called the two 'Thises', one 'This' as 'I', and the other 'This' as object. When we reflect on
this difference, we find that neither one nor the other is only immediately present in
sense-certainty, but each is at the same time mediated: I have this certainty through
something else, viz. the thing; and it, similarly, is in sense-certainty through something
else, viz. through the 'I'.
93. It is not just we who make this distinction between essence and instance,
between immediacy and mediation; on the contrary, we find it within sense-certainty
itself, and it is to be taken up in the form in which it is present there, not as we have just
defined it. One of the terms is posited in sense-certainty in the form of a simple,
immediate being, or as the essence, the object; the other, however, is posited as what is
unessential and mediated, something which in sense-certainty is not in itself but through
[the mediation of] an other, the 'I', a knowing which knows the object only because the
object is, while the knowing may either be or not be. But the object is: it is what is true,
or it is the essence. It is, regardless of whether it is known or not; and it remains, even if
it is not known, whereas there is no knowledge if the object is not there.
94. The question must therefore be considered whether in sense-certainty itself the
object is in fact the kind of essence that sense-certainty proclaims it to be; whether this
notion of it as the essence corresponds to the way it is present in sense-certainty. To this
end, we have not to reflect on it and ponder what it might be in truth, but only to consider
the way in which it is present in sense-certainty.
95. It is, then, sense-certainty itself that must be asked: 'What is the This?' If we
take the 'This' in the twofold shape of its being, as 'Now' and as 'Here', the dialectic it has
in it will receive a form as intelligible as the 'This' itself is. To the question: 'What is
Now?', let us answer, e.g. 'Now is Night.' In order to test the truth of this sense-certainty a
simple experiment will suffice. We write down this truth; a truth cannot lose anything by
being written down, any more than it can lose anything through our preserving it. If now,
this noon, we look again at the written truth we shall have to say that it has become stale.
96. The Now that is Night is preserved, i.e. it is treated as what it professes to be,
as something that is; but it proves itself to be, on the contrary, something that is not. The
Now does indeed preserve itself, but as something that is not Night; equally, it preserves
itself in face of the Day that it now is, as something that also is not Day, in other words,
as a negative in general. This self-preserving Now is, therefore, not immediate but
mediated; for it is determined as a permanent and self-preserving Now through the fact
that something else, viz. Day and Night, is not. As so determined, it is still just as simply
Now as before, and in this simplicity is indifferent to what happens in it; just as little as
Night and Day are its being, just as much also is it Day and Night; it is not in the least
affected by this its other-being. A simple thing of this kind which is through negation,
which is neither This nor That, a not-This, and is with equal indifference This as well as
That—such a thing we call a universal. So it is in fact the universal that is the true
[content] of sense-certainty.
97. It is as a universal too that we utter what the sensuous [content] is. What we
say is: 'This', i.e. the universal This; or, 'it is', i.e. Being in general. Of course, we do not
envisage the universal This or Being in general, but we utter the universal; in other
words, we do not strictly say what in this sense-certainty we mean to say. But language,
as we see, is the more truthful; in it, we ourselves directly refute what we mean to say,
and since the universal is the true [content] of sense-certainty and language expresses this
true [content] alone, it is just not possible for us ever to say, or express in words, a
sensuous being that we mean.
98. The same will be the case with the other form of the 'This', with 'Here'. 'Here'
is, e.g., the tree. If I turn round, this truth has vanished and is converted into its opposite:
'No tree is here, but a house instead'. 'Here' itself does not vanish; on the contrary, it
abides constant in the vanishing of the house, the tree, etc., and is indifferently house or
tree. Again, therefore, the 'This' shows itself to be a mediated simplicity, or a universality.
99. Pure being remains, therefore, as the essence of this sense-certainty, since
sense-certainty has demonstrated in its own self that the truth of its object is the universal.
But this pure being is not an immediacy, but something to which negation and mediation
are essential; consequently, it is not what we mean by 'being', but is 'being' defined as an
abstraction, or as the pure universal; and our 'meaning', for which the true [content] of
sense-certainty is not the universal, is all that is left over in face of this empty or
indifferent Now and Here.
100. When we compare the relation in which knowing and the object first came
on the scene, with the relation in which they now stand in this result, we find that it is
reversed. The object, which was supposed to be the essential element in sense-certainty,
is now the unessential element; for the universal which the object has come to be is no
longer what the object was supposed essentially to be for sense-certainty. On the
contrary, the certainty is now to be found in the opposite element, viz. in knowing, which
previously was the unessential element. Its truth is in the object as my object, or in its
being mine [Meinen]; it is, because I know it. Sense-certainty, then, though indeed
expelled from the object, is not yet thereby overcome, but only driven back into the 'I'.
We have now to see what experience shows us about its reality in the 'I'.
101. The force of its truth thus lies now in the 'I', in the immediacy of my seeing,
hearing, and so on; the vanishing of the single Now and Here that we mean is prevented
by the fact that I hold them fast. 'Now' is day because I see it; 'Here' is a tree for the same
reason. But in this relationship sense-certainty experiences the same dialectic acting upon
itself as in the previous one. I, this 'I', see the tree and assert that 'Here' is a tree; but
another 'I' sees the house and maintains that 'Here' is not a tree but a house instead. Both
truths have the same authentication, viz. the immediacy of seeing, and the certainty and
assurance that both have about their knowing; but the one truth vanishes in the other.
102. What does not disappear in all this is the 'I' as universal, whose seeing is
neither a seeing of the tree nor of this house, but is a simple seeing which, though
mediated by the negation of this house, etc., is all the same simple and indifferent to
whatever happens in it, to the house, the tree, etc. The 'I' is merely universal like 'Now',
'Here', or 'This' in general; I do indeed mean a single 'I', but I can no more say what I
mean in the case of 'I' than I can in the case of 'Now' and 'Here'. When I say 'this Here',
'this Now', or a 'single item', I am saying all Thises, Heres, Nows, all single items.
Similarly, when I say 'I', this singular 'I', I say in general all 'Is'; everyone is what I say,
everyone is 'I', this singular 'I'. When Science is faced with the demand—as if it were an
acid test it could not pass—that it should deduce, construct, find a priori, or however it is
put, something called 'this thing' or 'this one man', it is reasonable that the demand should
say which 'this thing', or which 'this particular man' is meant; but it is impossible to say
this.
103. Sense-certainty thus comes to know by experience that its essence is neither
in the object nor in the 'I', and that its immediacy is neither an immediacy of the one nor
of the other; for in both, what I mean is rather something unessential, and the object and
the 'I' are universals in which that 'Now' and 'Here' and 'I' which I mean do not have a
continuing being, or are not. Thus we reach the stage where we have to posit the whole of
sense-certainty itself as its essence, and no longer only one of its moments, as happened
in the two cases where first the object confronting the 'I', and then the 'I', were supposed
to be its reality. Thus it is only sense-certainty as a whole which stands firm within itself
as immediacy and by so doing excludes from itself all the opposition which has hitherto
obtained.
104. This pure immediacy, therefore, no longer has any concern with the
otherness of the 'Here', as a tree which passes over into a 'Here' that is not a tree, or with
the otherness of the 'Now' as day which changes into a 'Now' that is night, or with another
'I' for which something else is object. Its truth preserves itself as a relation that remains
self-identical, and which makes no distinction of what is essential and what is
unessential, between the 'I' and the object, a relation therefore into which also no
distinction whatever can penetrate. I, this 'I', assert then the 'Here' as a tree, and do not
turn round so that the Here would become for me not a tree; also, I take no notice of the
fact that another 'I' sees the Here as not a tree, or that I myself at another time take the
Here as not-tree, the Now as not-day. On the contrary, I am a pure [act of] intuiting; I, for
my part, stick to the fact that the Now is day, or that the Here is a tree; also I do not
compare Here and Now themselves with one another, but stick firmly to one immediate
relation: the Now is day.
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105. Since, then, this certainty will no longer come forth to us when we direct its
attention to a Now that is night, or to an 'I' to whom it is night, we will approach it and let
ourselves point to the Now that is asserted. We must let ourselves point to it; for the truth
of this immediate relation is the truth of this 'I' which confines itself to one 'Now' or one
'Here'. Were we to examine this truth afterwards, or stand at a distance from it, it would
lose its significance entirely; for that would do away with the immediacy which is
essential to it. We must therefore enter the same point of time or space, point them out to
ourselves, i.e. make ourselves into the same singular 'I' which is the one who knows with
certainty. Let us, then, see how that immediate is constituted that is pointed out to us.
106. The Now is pointed to, this Now. 'Now'; it has already ceased to be in the act
of pointing to it. The Now that is, is another Now than the one pointed to, and we see that
the Now is just this: to be no more just when it is. The Now, as it is pointed out to us, is
Now that has been, and this is its truth; it has not the truth of being. Yet this much is true,
that it has been. But what essentially has been [gewesen ist] is, in fact, not an essence that
is [kein Wesen]; it is not, and it was with being that we were concerned.
107. In this pointing-out, then, we see merely a movement which takes the
following course: (1) I point out the 'Now', and it is asserted to be the truth. I point it out,
however, as something that has been, or as something that has been superseded; I set
aside the first truth. (2) I now assert as the second truth that it has been, that it is
superseded. (3) But what has been, is not; I set aside the second truth, its having been, its
supersession, and thereby negate the negation of the 'Now', and thus return to the first
assertion, that the 'Now' is. The 'Now', and pointing out the 'Now', are thus so constituted
that neither the one nor the other is something immediate and simple, but a movement
which contains various moments. A This is posited; but it is rather an other that is
posited, or the This is superseded: and this otherness, or the setting-aside of the first, is
itself in turn set aside, and so has returned into the first. However, this first, thus reflected
into itself, is not exactly the same as it was to begin with, viz. something immediate; on
the contrary, it is something that is reflected into itself, or a simple entity which, in its
otherness, remains what it is: a Now which is an absolute plurality of Nows. And this is
the true, the genuine Now, the Now as a simple day which contains within it many
Nows—hours. A Now of this sort, an hour, similarly is many minutes, and this Now is
likewise many Nows, and so on. The pointing-out of the Now is thus itself the movement
which expresses what the Now is in truth, viz. a result, or a plurality of Nows all taken
together; and the pointing-out is the experience of learning that Now is a universal.
108. The Here pointed out, to which I hold fast, is similarly a this Here which, in
fact, is not this Here, but a Before and Behind, an Above and Below, a Right and Left.
The Above is itself similarly this manifold otherness of above, below, etc. The Here,
which was supposed to have been pointed out, vanishes in other Heres, but these likewise
vanish. What is pointed out, held fast, and abides, is a negative This, which is negative
only when the Heres are taken as they should be, but, in being so taken, they supersede
themselves; what abides is a simple complex of many Heres. The Here that is meant
would be the point; but it is not: on the contrary, when it is pointed out as something that
is, the pointing-out shows itself to be not an immediate knowing [of the point], but a
movement from the Here that is meant through many Heres into the universal Here which
is a simple plurality of Heres, just as the day is a simple plurality of Nows.
109. It is clear that the dialectic of sense-certainty is nothing else but the simple
history of its movement or of its experience, and sense-certainty itself is nothing else but
just this history. That is why the natural consciousness, too, is always reaching this result,
learning from experience what is true in it; but equally it is always forgetting it and
starting the movement all over again. It is therefore astonishing when, in face of this
experience, it is asserted as universal experience and put forward, too, as a philosophical
proposition, even as the outcome of Scepticism, that the reality or being of external things
taken as Thises or sense-objects has absolute truth for consciousness. To make such an
assertion is not to know what one is saying, to be unaware that one is saying the opposite
of what one wants to say. The truth for consciousness of a This of sense is supposed to be
universal experience; but the very opposite is universal experience. Every consciousness
itself supersedes such a truth, as e.g. Here is a tree, or, Now is noon, and proclaims the
opposite: Here is not a tree, but a house; and similarly, it immediately again supersedes
the assertion which set aside the first so far as it is also just such an assertion of a
sensuous This. And what consciousness will learn from experience in all sense-certainty
is, in truth, only what we have seen viz. the This as a universal, the very opposite of what
that assertion affirmed to be universal experience.
With this appeal to universal experience we may be permitted to anticipate how
the case stands in the practical sphere. In this respect we can tell those who assert the
truth and certainty of the reality of sense-objects that they should go back to the most
elementary school of wisdom, viz. the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries of Ceres and
Bacchus, and that they have still to learn the secret meaning of the eating of bread and the
drinking of wine. For he who is initiated into these Mysteries not only comes to doubt the
being of sensuous things, but to despair of it; in part he brings about the nothingness of
such things himself in his dealings with them, and in part he sees them reduce themselves
to nothingness. Even the animals are not shut out from this wisdom but, on the contrary,
show themselves to be most profoundly initiated into it; for they do not just stand idly in
front of sensuous things as if these possessed intrinsic being, but, despairing of their
reality, and completely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and
eat them up. And all Nature, like the animals, celebrates these open Mysteries which
teach the truth about sensuous things.
110. But, just as our previous remarks would suggest, those who put forward such
an assertion also themselves say the direct opposite of what they mean: a phenomenon
which is perhaps best calculated to induce them to reflect on the nature of sense-certainty.
They speak of the existence of external objects, which can be more precisely defined as
actual, absolutely singular, wholly personal, individual things, each of them absolutely
unlike anything else; this existence, they say, has absolute certainty and truth. They mean
'this' bit of paper on which I am writing—or rather have written—'this'; but what they
mean is not what they say. If they actually wanted to say 'this' bit of paper which they
mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is
meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which
is inherently universal. In the actual attempt to say it, it would therefore crumble away;
those who started to describe it would not be able to complete the description, but would
be compelled to leave it to others, who would themselves finally have to admit to
speaking about something which is not. They certainly mean, then, this bit of paper here
which is quite different from the bit mentioned above; but they say 'actual things',
'external or sensuous objects', 'absolutely singular entities' [Wesen] and so on; i.e. they
say of them only what is universal. Consequently, what is called the unutterable is
nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant [but is not actually
expressed].
If nothing more is said of something than that it is 'an actual thing', an 'external
object', its description is only the most abstract of generalities and in fact expresses its
sameness with everything rather than its distinctiveness. When I say: 'a single thing', I am
really saying what it is from a wholly universal point of view, for everything is a single
thing; and likewise 'this thing' is anything you like. If we describe it more exactly as 'this
bit of paper', then each and every bit of paper is 'this bit of paper', and I have only uttered
the universal all the time. But if I want to help out language—which has the divine nature
of directly reversing the meaning of what is said, of making it into something else, and
thus not letting what is meant get into words at all—by pointing out this bit of paper,
experience teaches me what the truth of sense-certainty in fact is: I point it out as a 'Here',
which is a Here of other Heres, or is in its own self a 'simple togetherness of many Heres';
i.e. it is a universal. I take it up then as it is in truth, and instead of knowing something
immediate I take the truth of it, or perceive it.