ABSTRACT
The first chapter of the Phenomenology, on Consciousness, opens with a section on ‘Sense-Certainty: Or the “This” and “Meaning”’. At the most general level, commentators are agreed about how Hegel intended us to conceive of sense-certainty, namely, as a form of consciousness that thinks the best way to gain knowledge of the world is to experience it directly or intuitively, without applying concepts to it: what Hegel calls ‘immediate’ rather than ‘mediated’ knowledge, which involves ‘apprehension’ rather than ‘comprehension’ (PS: §90, p. 58).1 It is clear that Hegel thinks that this is the most elementary and fundamental way we have of thinking about how the mind relates to the world, which is why he begins the Phenomenology here. At the same time, Hegel wishes to bring out how sense-certainty gains its attractiveness by trading on a commitment that appears plausible, but which turns out to be highly problematic, and once this is recognized our attachment to sense-certainty as a paradigm of knowledge will be lost.
