Phenomenology of Spirit: Force and Understanding

I've been taking my time getting through Hegel; I finally realized that I couldn't continue without some sort of commentary or summary reading of Hegel, and further that I most likely have been misreading some sections. After going through this, I had to go back and reread this current section to try to make sense out of it. But, here is the next portion of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: Force and Understanding.

Outline

1. Notion of Force overcomes problem with Perception
1. Force must express itself
2. Necessity of active-passive poles show Force to be mere notion
2. Law as the Super-sensible Realm
1. Law must be unified, but only gives content as determinate particulars
2. No necessity to law, but simply description
3. Only constant difference...
3. Second Super-sensible Realm, Infinity, and Beyond
1. ...as well as constant unification
2. Since law is super-sensible "in-itself," everything must constantly differentiate and unify
3. Second super-sensible world opposite of first, to explain first
4. Interplay between two creates an "infinity," shows self-consciousness

Previously in Hegel, he has been looking at forms of consciousness, showing how each ,is inadequate for the task it has set out for itself. Sense certainty, in the end, cannot actually provide it's own certainty, nor can it account for the richness of its supposed content. This does not mean that we ignore it, but rather that there must be another level which can explain this. Perception makes some headway, but in the end cannot reconcile its vision of the object as both universal and particular. In addition, the possibility of deception removes poses a serious problem for Perception, which cannot explain how a thing can have its united grouping of particular properties based solely on sense perception. We need concepts to do this, and so we proceed to the Understanding.

Understanding's big problem in what follows is this: it posits some concept, some notion in order to fix the problems which it sees, but these notions always remain just that: notions in consciousness rather than a fix in reality. To start from where perception leaves off, Hegel posits force, which differentiates unities in its expression, and then unifies this plurality as well, binding together the object which is both many and one. However, since the force must express itself, there must be a soliciting force as well. These two forces, in turn, cannot exist without each other, and show that the idea of "two forces" is something merely in our minds rather than the structure of reality.

Further, we assume that there is an "in-itself" of the object, which the forces are supposed to be. Appearance supposedly joins this in-itself to our understanding, but what could this super-sensible world behind appearances be? Hegel responds that, on this level of consciousness (we must answer the question from Understanding's perspective, not from our own as philosophers looking on), the only thing that we can tell about this in-itself is that it is unified, that it is a constant difference (the one thing common to everything is that everything is different from everything else).

From here, one can try to posit laws behind the flux of the sensible world, but this does not work. For one thing, this supersensible reality is unified, but laws only tell us something when they are broken into parts (force equals mass times acceleration, for example, needs "force" to be split into "mass" and "acceleration," space and time; electricity needs to be split into positive and negative aspects). Either these aspects suffer the same fate as active and passive forces (they are mental constructs used to example a simple reality), or the describe things which are, at this level of consciousness, indifferent to each other (such as space and time). Any "necessity" to these laws is a sham, as the laws must only describe what is happening. They cannot explain.

But, Hegel continues, these laws do show something: what is simple, what is itself, must be unlike itself. Simple laws tell us nothing, so they differentiate into particular, determinate laws. These, in turn, show us that the unlike becomes the like: these particular, determinate, partial laws can only be insofar as their differences vanish. We are in a sea, as it were, of thing continually differentiating and unifying, never capturable in a single moment. But this is the nature of the super-sensible realm, then, and we must posit a secondary super-sensible realm which is the opposite of the first to make sense of this (note: I still don't understand this part, but I'll put down what I have so far).

If something is sweet, then by the rule of difference, it must be sour in the second super-sensible realm. A crime in the 1st must be justice in the second. These are also not merely one-possibility-against-anothers, but rather both are true of something; there is an inner world in which something can be unlike itself. There is a possibility of intentions, of meanings and thoughts which are not quite the same as the outside world. This removes the determination of the world in a way, and creates a self-reflection which is self-consciousness. However, there has been no nature given to self-consciousness yet, and so that is where Hegel continues is his next rather large section.