To describe the journey of consciousness through the stages of its development, Hegel likens it to a kind of hunt – the hunt for ‘absolute’ knowledge, – absolute knowledge about oneself and absolute knowledge about the Absolute.ⁱ In this hunt, knowledge is merely a means, a « ruse », to « seize the absolute essence », to capture it « like a bird caught in glue« ⁱⁱ . But why should the absolute, this ‘bird’ that we can imagine as free and wild, allow itself to be so easily trapped? Why shouldn’t it soar high, far from the wiles of reason and the clutches of knowledge?

Moreover, is the metaphor of consciousness chasing the absolute with some kind of ‘glue’ relevant? To want to capture the « absolute » by a « means » (the « ruse ») is in itself contradictory, and self-defeating. « To win to consciousness what is in itself, by the mediation of knowledge, is a counter-sense ».ⁱⁱⁱ Isn’t any knowledge obtained by such a « means » necessarily partial? The hunt for the absolute will yield only relative game. Moreover, any knowledge aimed at the absolute can only lead to a relative truth, because « the absolute alone is true or the true alone is absolute ».^iv

Consciousness nevertheless follows its impulse, seeking knowledge that it believes will lead it to true knowledge. In so doing, « it rises to the spirit and, through the complete experience of itself, comes to the knowledge of what it is in itself ».^v It believes itself capable of real knowledge. But along the way, it gradually discovers that it is only capable of a « concept of knowledge »^vi .

As it advances along the path of ‘knowledge’, consciousness begins to lose itself. It is gripped by a growing doubt, which can go as far as despair. It doubts its own truth. It moves forward, but it also becomes aware of the non-truth of its phenomenal knowledge. The ‘supreme reality’ itself no longer appears as anything more than ‘an unrealized concept’^vii . To grasp this (as yet unrealized) concept is the whole ‘science’ that consciousness eventually acquires. The journey of consciousness, studded with doubts, reaches only an intermediate goal: the realisation of the need to train itself in the pursuit of the ‘science’ …^viii

What is this ‘science’? It is the ‘science’ of the very path of consciousness. It results from the « effectively real development » of consciousness, of which each of the stages along the way, each of the moments of development, is only a passing figure.

All these stages, these figures, must be ‘experienced’ and then ‘surpassed’. Consciousness must not cease to surpass itself in the knowledge it has of itself. Consciousness is constituted in the act of going beyond itself. « Consciousness is for itself its own concept; it is therefore immediately the act of going beyond the limited, and, when this limited belongs to it, the act of going beyond itself ».^ix For consciousness that goes beyond itself, there is no longer any object or subject to examine. Consciousness goes beyond itself because it is aware that the true is always beyond what it is aware of.^x

Consciousness splits into two. It becomes aware of what it knows, of what it takes to be true, then it measures its relativity, and then, of its own accord, it wants to go beyond this relativised knowledge, and thereby also wants to go beyond itself.^xi At each moment, the knowledge that consciousness acquires about new objects changes, and changes it too. From such and such an object, it obtains knowledge about what that object is ‘in itself’, and it integrates this knowledge as knowledge ‘in itself for itself’, knowledge that it considers to be ‘the true’, to be the very essence of the object. This ‘true’ essence is what consciousness really ‘experiences’, in the face of the object.

The essence of the object comes to be known as an object of ‘experience’, but only at the price of a ‘conversion of consciousness’ itself (ümkehrung des Bewußtseins)^xii .

It is ‘converted’, metamorphosed, by the new assimilation of a new object. The ‘conversion of consciousness’ is continually at work. It fills consciousness with new essences and new births.

Let’s recap. A new object appears before consciousness. It transforms this object into a certain knowledge of what it appears to be ‘in itself’. This knowledge itself becomes a living, autonomous part of consciousness, a being-for-consciousness of this in-itself^xiii . It is a new being-for-consciousness, a new ‘figure of consciousness’^xiv . This figure has a different essence from all the other figures that preceded it. At the moment when consciousness grasps this new figure, it situates it in « the whole succession of figures » that it carries within itself. The birth of a new figure in consciousness occurs « without its knowing how it came about ». For, being immersed in the world, how could it foresee everything that happens to it? This birth is what « happens behind its back, so to speak »^xv .

Consciousness is, as it were, relatively unaware that this new birth has taken place. The « moment » of birth is not glimpsed by consciousness, which remains « immersed in experience ». The content of what ‘we’ see being born is indeed acquired by consciousness, but not its concept, nor its essence. We do not yet conceive this content that is being born; we see it being born, but we do not conceive what is being born, we conceive only its pure movement of being born^xvi . At this point, then, there is a clear differentiation between « us » (« uns« ) and « it », the « consciousness » (« Bewußtsein« ).^xvii

What is the ‘we’ in us that distinguishes itself from ‘consciousness’ and puts us in a position to observe it as it ‘moves’ and ‘becomes’?

Hegel says nothing about this.

Let’s try an explanation, however. We are undoubtedly made up of the sum total of all the moments of ‘consciousness’, past and future. We ‘constitute’ ourselves through the entire succession of figures born in consciousness.

It is up to ‘us’ to bring together all these moments, all these ‘figures’, and to gradually aggregate them into knowledge, in order to finally subsume them under an absolute knowledge, or perhaps even under a knowledge of the absolute. We observe consciousness giving birth to new ‘objects’ and new ‘figures’, and ‘we’ are aware of the continuous becoming of ‘consciousness’. We embody, as it were, a higher level of consciousness: the awareness that ‘consciousness’ is essentially in movement, in becoming, and that it must keep the memory of this becoming, in its progression towards the absolute. At each ‘moment’, ‘consciousness’ experiences new objects, and it is ‘up to us’ to transform these experiences into a ‘science’ – the ‘science of the experience of consciousness’^xviii . It is « up to us » to compare the successive moments of consciousness with all the other moments already experienced, to add each experience to the totality of all the experiences that consciousness has already had, in order to « lead us » towards the « realm of the truth of the mind ».^xix Consciousness hunts, it seeks to seize this essence of its own, and only then will it be able to « designate the nature of absolute knowledge itself ».^xx

Pointing to the nature of absolute knowledge? Sketching it in one swift stroke? Or just glimpsing it from a distance, following its silhouette for a moment, like that of the divine bird, decidedly subtle, that has decided not to get caught up in our human glue?

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iIn his Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit.

iiG.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.66

iiiG.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.65

ivIbid. p.67

vIbid. p.69

viIbid. p.69

viiIbid. p.69

viii« The series of figures that consciousness traverses on this path is rather the detailed history of the formation of consciousness itself in science. » I bid. p.70

ix« Das Bewußtsein aber ist für sich selbst sein Begriff, dadurch unmittelbar das Hinausgehen über das Beschränkte und, da ihm dies Beschränkte angehört, über sich selbst. » G.W.F. Hegel. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Leipzig, 1907, p.55

x« When consciousness examines itself, we are left with the pure act of seeing what is happening. For consciousness is on the one hand consciousness of the object, on the other hand consciousness of itself; it is consciousness of what is true for it and consciousness of its knowledge of this truth. Since both are for it, it is itself their comparison: it is for it that its knowledge of the object corresponds to this object or does not correspond to it. The object seems, to tell the truth, to be only for her as she knows it; she seems incapable of going behind the object, so to speak, to see it as it is not for her, and therefore as it is in itself. » G.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.74

xi« Consciousness knows something; this object is the essence or the in-itself; but it is also the in-itself for consciousness; with this comes into play the ambiguity of this truth. We see that consciousness now has two objects, one, the first-in-itself, the second, the being-for-itself of this in-itself. The latter appears to be only first the reflection of consciousness in itself, a representation not of an object, but only of its knowledge of the first object. » G.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.75

xiiCf. G.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.76

xiii« Das Ansich zu einem Für-das-Bewußtsein-Sein des Ansich wird » Ibid.

xiv« Eine neue Gestalt des Bewußtseins auftritt« . « When the in-itself becomes a being-for-the-consciousness-of-the-in-itself, this is then the new object by means of which a new figure of consciousness arises; and this figure has an essence different from the essence of the preceding figure ». Ibid. p.76

xv« Die Entstehung (…) ist es, was für uns gleichsam hinter seinem Rücken » G.W.F. Hegel. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Leipzig, 1907, p.60. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.77

xvi« For it [for consciousness] what is born is only as an object, for us it is at the same time as movement and becoming ». The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.77

xviiJean Hyppolite notes in this regard: « In the Phenomenology there will therefore be two dialectics, one is that of consciousness immersed in experience, the other, which is only for us, is the necessary development of all the figures of consciousness. The philosopher sees the birth of that which only presents itself to consciousness as a ‘found’ content ». Ibid. p.77, Note 27

xviii Wissenschaft der Erfahrung des Bewußtseins » (« Wissenschaft of the Experience of the Bewußtseins »)

xix« The experience that consciousness makes of itself cannot, according to the concept of experience itself, include anything less in it than the total system of consciousness or the total realm of the truth of spirit. « G.W.F. Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Jean Hyppolite. Aubier. 1941, p.77. « Die Erfahrung, welche das Bewußtsein über sich macht. kann ihrem Begriffe nach nichts weniger in sich begreifen als das ganze System desselben, oder das ganze Reich der Wahrheit des Geistes, » Phänomenologie des Geistes. Leipzig, 1907, p.60-61

xx« Und endlich, indem es selbst dies sein Wesen erfaßt, wird es die Natur des absoluten Wissens selbst bezeichnen. » Phänomenologie des Geistes. Leipzig, 1907, p.61