Summary: The Phenomenology of Spirit (page 8)

In this light, we can see that it is no longer possible to speak, as the proponents of the doctrines of enthusiasm do, of an 'immediate knowledge' of the thing-in-itself, of God, and so on.

In reality, knowledge at its initial stage—knowledge as it first appears, immediate spirit—is nothing other than sense-certainty. ¹ This spiritless consciousness is only an inadequate, lower form, in which very little truth is to be found.

Unlike enthusiasm, which begins with a bang—with absolute knowing, we must understand that in order to become true knowledge, […] it must carve out for itself a long and laborious path.

As we have seen, it is the stages of this path—each constituting a figure of Spirit—that the Phenomenology sets out to present:

We must endure the length of this path, for each moment is necessary—and at the same time, we must linger with each of them, for each is itself a complete individual figure, and can only be truly understood if its determinacy is grasped as a whole or as something concrete.

This operates on two levels, which must be clearly distinguished for a better understanding of Hegel's project.

First, at the level of universal Spirit, which transcends any individual human being—the perspective of the progress of the human Spirit in its historical unfolding. For example: the discovery of mathematics.

This is what Hegel refers to when he says that we must examine the universal individual—the world-spirit in the process of its formation.

But also at the level of each individual, whose task is to traverse, for themselves as well, the various stages of this progress—for instance, by studying mathematics. This is a somewhat easier path: Each singular individual […] passes through the different degrees of culture of universal spirit, […] but as forms already laid down by spirit—as stages along a path that has already been carved out and levelled.

Or again: It is because […] the world-spirit has had the patience to pass through these forms over the vast expanse of time, and to take upon itself the enormous labour of universal history […] that the individual cannot afford to devote less effort to the comprehension of this substance. But at the same time, the labour is lighter, since it has already been accomplished in itself. […] One no longer needs to overturn actuality into being-in-itself, but only to convert the in-itself into the form of being-for-itself.

We must therefore bear in mind that the Phenomenology of Spirit can be read on both of these levels. But Hegel, in a certain sense, privileges universal spirit. It is primarily the journey of this spirit through History that is described; the fact that individual spirits reproduce this journey for themselves is of course meaningful for the individual, but remains secondary.

At this point, Hegel anticipates an objection: why present the various inadequate, incomplete, and therefore always somewhat distorted forms that spirit successively takes—that is, how it appears phenomenally to itself—instead of simply giving us the truth of what it is? Is that not what we expect from a philosophical work: that it delivers truths, not a catalogue of successive errors that eventually led to the discovery of truth?

Since this system of the experience of spirit includes only the phenomenal appearance of spirit, the progression leading from this system to the science of truth—truth in the form of truth—seems to be merely negative. One might wish to avoid the negative, insofar as it is the false, and demand instead to be led straight to the truth; after all, why bother with the false?

This is, in fact, what we find in mathematics: it is the truth that is given to us—not the successive errors made before arriving at the correct calculation or the valid demonstration, the famous Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum) of geometry.

As early as the seventeenth century, this mathematical model led philosophers to reflect on the validity of their own discipline's conclusions. Some adopted it—such as Descartes and Leibniz, who envisioned the constitution of a mathesis universalis, or Spinoza, who structured his Ethics more geometrico, in the manner of a geometer, starting from axioms and deducing propositions in turn.

This model remained dominant in the nineteenth century, at the time when Hegel was writing. But Hegel undertakes a critique of it, and it is precisely here that he develops his effort to reassert the value of philosophy against this sovereign discipline—mathematics.

This critique leads him to rethink the very notion of truth, in order to fully legitimise philosophical truths:

Representations on this point particularly hinder the path to truth. This will give us the opportunity to speak about mathematical knowledge, which non-philosophical consciousness regards as the ideal that philosophy ought to strive to attain—although its efforts, up to now, have remained in vain.

It is this fundamental redefinition—which underlies Hegel's critical analysis of mathematics—that we shall now examine.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Hegel: A Close Reading