Morrone

Gennaro Morrone

Philosophy 272

Prof. Hicks

12/22/03

The Ladder of Dialectic

         In the Preface to the Phenomenology, Hegel gives us a metaphor which serves as the anchor to his entire philosophic system. This metaphor is presented as the ladder which Science must provide mankind in order for consciousness to reach the level of pure scientific philosophy. In the beginning of consciousness’ journey towards this goal, there is contradiction between our sense of understanding and that which true science affirms. The sensory consciousness is the starting point simply because it is our most basic ground for knowledge, from which develops the concept of science. Thus, the bottom of the latter represents our sense certainty, and the top absolute knowledge. Insofar as there is an overarching theme in this work, it is that this progression is the fundamental process of development for individuals as well as reality at large, which to Hegel is a dialectical process. This system needs to direct us from our starting point to the viewpoint of science. It cannot be a system which is based on intuition, but instead must be a process of reasoning which will ultimately be able to express reality as a whole, and as it truly exists.

        In opposition to this great task stands Kierkegaard, who under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus is concerned with dismantling any philosophical “System,” and particularly that of Hegel. His attempt to construct a philosophical system to encompass all thought and reality is viewed by Kierkegaard as an ultimately doomed endeavor in that to create a philosophy from a detached standpoint would mean that the philosopher would be removed from the very same system. In his writings we can find no trace of a coherent system, because he is concerned primarily with man in the world, and as its most relevant state, the individual before god. The dialectical method which Hegel posits is viewed as limited in that it cannot transcend the physical limitations in which it is grounded, and therefore unable to uncover truth since it is a continual process toward it. Such a system, one which encompasses everything, negates itself and collapses. Kierkegaard uses the name of Climacus to invoke such a ladder as Hegel proposes, though ultimately he rejects this method in spiritual matters, believing it wrong to approach the Absolute except through faith.

        But Hegel’s aim is to show the opposite: that the world is rational if we look at it in the correct way (Hegel’s system). Thus the goal of philosophy must be to make man aware of this rationality which exists in the world, so to achieve a full understanding of reality; he seeks to bring “consciousness out of its chaos back to an order based on thought” (§6). This goal is arrived at by a historical process which has culminated in the philosophy of Hegel, and the Phenomenology provides a map of the modes of consciousness which have not supplied the conception which makes the world appear rational. Each of these forms of though are necessary steps which lead us to absolute knowledge. The process of history has taken each step to synthesize the more perfect form which follows it, represented as Spirit taking successive steps on the ladder to truth. Hegel begins his discussion with the first step Spirit has to take, that of sense-certainty.

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        This fist section is a dialectical examination of perception. Here he posits that knowledge of the physical world implies viewing that world as a set of forces which interact with each other by governing laws. But here Spirit is experiencing reality directly without concepts, as this is our most elementary way of thinking about our relation to the world at large. Hegel attempts in this chapter to point out the problematic nature of this level of consciousness by showing that sense-certainty does not allow us to go beyond the level of universals as it originally supposes. The only way for ...

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