HEGEL ON SINGULAR DEMONSTRATIVE REFERENCE

Abstract

The initial one-third of the paper is devoted to exposing the first chapter ("Sense- Certainty") of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as a thesis about reference, viz., that singular demonstrative reference is impossible. In the remainder I basically argue that such a view commits one to radically undermining our conceptions of space, time, and substance (concrete individuality), and rests on the central mistake of construing this on the model of a predicable (or property). . . . Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is about the logical and temporal progression of what he calls "Spirit" (Geist) from being primarily potential to being in its essentials most fully actual. Spirit may be understood as fundamental reality, which for Hegel is intrinsically tied up with consciousness. The last stage of this story of development is "Absolute Knowing." Just this much is sufficient to indicate two basic concerns of the work: consciousness, and knowing (in a broad sense). It begins by considering a constituent of these which Hegel appears to take as their most primitive human (or more generally, rational) aspect, that is, the mentality of "sense-certainty." Here, I shall critically explicate this first phase of the first stage of the Phenomenology. Why another analysis of Sense-Certainty? 1 Recent examinations 2 of it reveal a notable lack of sustained evaluation, even in those treatments which purport to be mainly critical assessments 3 —most of what follows is devoted to this task, and to sketching an alternative position in the process. Furthermore, so far as I know, no one has explicitly developed in any depth an interpretation that takes Sense-Certainty as I think it should be taken: primarily as a thesis about reference. In the main, I shall argue that Hegel (mistakenly) denies the possibility of singular demonstrative reference, and that such a view commits one to radically undermining our conceptions of space, time, and substance (concrete individuality), and apparently even to denying the possibility of cognitive thought.