Abstract

Ordinary consciousness absorbed in natural life is unable on its own to go beyond its immediate existence. Only if it is somehow forced out of its complacency by something other than itself can it be raised beyond itself, such that this being torn from itself is its death — its negation. However, because consciousness is for itself its own Concept, it is immediately both Concept and object for itself. Thus its original immediacy (taken as object) is overcome or negated by its own self. In this way it goes beyond or transcends its own immediate limited being. Therefore, by positing the singular individual, consciousness also posits an other-worldly beyond, which it may intuit from a spatial perspective as if they were existing alongside each other. Of course consciousness is not spatial and therefore such a perspective fails to grasp its true notion. It is only when consciousness turns upon itself — suffers violence at its own hands, that the Concept of consciousness can grasp its own self and thereby establish its truth. The path by which this self-critique of consciousness is accomplished is the science of consciousness. Because it is accomplished by rational introspection and direct experience it is also called the phenomenology of consciousness.