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represented as in immediate being and at the same time as 'ideal', it is as consciousness only the appearance
(phenomenon) of mind.
¤ 415 As the ego is by itself only a formal identity, the dialectical movement of its intelligible unity, i.e. the
successive steps in further specification of consciousness, does not, to it, seem to be its own activity, but is
implicit, and to the ego it seems an alteration of the object. Consciousness consequently appears differently
modified according to the difference of the given object; and the gradual specification of consciousness
appears as a variation in the characteristics of its objects. Ego, the subject of consciousness, is thinking: the
logical process of modifying the object is what is identical in subject and object, their absolute
interdependence, what makes the object the subject's own.
The Kantian philosophy may be most accurately described as having viewed the mind as consciousness, and
as containing the propositions only of a phenomenology (not of a philosophy) of mind. The Ego Kant regards
as reference to something away and beyond (which in its abstract description is termed the thing-in-itself);
and it is only from this finite point of view that he treats both intellect and will. Though in the notion of a
power of reflective judgement he touches upon the Idea of mind - a subject-objectivity, an intuitive intellect,
etc., and even the Idea of Nature, still this Idea is again deposed to an appearance, i.e. to a subjective maxim
(¤ 58). Reinhold may therefore be said to have correctly appreciated Kantism when he treated it as a theory of
consciousness (under the name of 'faculty of ideation'). Fichte kept to the same point of view: his non-ego is
only something set over against the ego, only defined as in consciousness: it is made no more than an infinite
'shock', i.e. a thing-in-itself. Both systems therefore have clearly not reached the intelligible unity or the
mind as it actually and essentially is, but only as it is in reference to something else.
As against Spinozism, again, it is to be noted that the mind in the judgement by which it 'constitutes' itself an
ego (a free subject contrasted with its qualitative affection) has emerged from substance, and that the
philosophy, which gives this judgement as the absolute characteristic of mind, has emerged from Spinozism.
¤ 416 The aim of conscious mind is to make its appearance identical with its essence, to raise its
self-certainty to truth. The existence of mind in the stage of consciousness is finite, because it is merely a
nominal self-relation, or mere certainty. The object is only abstractly characterized as its; in other words, in
the object it is only as an abstract ego that the mind is reflected into itself: hence its existence there has still a
content, which is not as its own.
¤ 417 The grades of this elevation of certainty to truth are three in number: first (a) consciousness in general,
with an object set against it; (b) self-consciousness, for which ego is the object; (c) unity of consciousness
and self-consciousness, where the mind sees itself embodied in the object and sees itself as implicitly and
explicitly determinate, as Reason, the notion of mind.
(a) CONSCIOUSNESS PROPER(1)
(a) Sensuous consciousness
¤ 418 Consciousness is, first, immediate consciousness, and its reference to the object accordingly the simple,
and underived certainty of it. The object similarly, being immediate, an existent, reflected in itself, is further
characterized as immediately singular. This is sense-consciousness.
SUB-SECTION B. PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND, CONSCIOUSNESS 19
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Consciousness - as a case of correlation - comprises only the categories belonging to the abstract ego or
formal thinking; and these it treats as features of the object (¤ 415). Sense-consciousness therefore is aware
of the object as an existent, a something, an existing thing, a singular, and so on. It appears as wealthiest in
matter, but as poorest in thought. That wealth of matter is made out of sensations: they are the material of
consciousness (¤ 414), the substantial and qualitative, what the soul in its anthropological sphere is and finds
in itself. This material the ego (the reflection of the soul in itself) separates from itself, and puts it first under
the category of being. Spatial and temporal Singularness, here and now (the terms by which in the
Phenomenology of the Mind (Werke ii, p. 73), I described the object of sense-consciousness) strictly belongs
to intuition. At present the object is at first to be viewed only in its correlation to consciousness, i.e. a
something external to it, and not yet as external on its own part, or as being beside and out of itself.
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