Analysis of Hegel’s “Perception”

Introduction: “Perception” (Wahrnehmung, literally “true-taking” ) is the second sub-section of the Consciousness chapter in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It follows the collapse of Sense-Certainty, where immediate knowledge of the pure “This” proved self-undermining. In Sense-Certainty consciousness learned that the supposed singular now/here is in fact a universal . Thus the stage of Perception builds on that result-the object is no longer a featureless “This,” but a universal with multiple properties – a “thing” with determinate qualities** . Hegel will show how this naive concept of a thing and its properties contains contradictions that drive a new transition. This analysis proceeds paragraph by paragraph, highlighting key points, dialectical moves, and commentary by Robert Brandom and Jean Hyppolite. We will see how Perception mediates between the immediacy of sense-certainty and the more complex understanding of the world as appearance governed by forces and laws. Each paragraph’s explanation includes key quotes , the logical development, and interpretive notes. A final section connects Hegel’s insights to broader philosophical issues .

Paragraph 113: From “This” to a Thing with Properties

Summary: Hegel begins by incorporating the lesson of Sense-Certainty: the immediacy of the This has been sublated into a universal. The This does not vanish but is preserved in a new form – as a property of a thing. Paragraph 113 introduces the object of Perception as a “thing of many properties” .

Key Quote and Meaning: “The This is therefore posited as not-this, or as sublated, and thereby as not nothing but as a determinate nothing, or as a nothing of a specific content, namely, of the This. The sensuous is thereby itself still present… but instead as the universal, or as that which is determined to be a property.” . Here Hegel explains that the immediate This has been negated but not annihilated – rather it survives as a determinate negation . In other words, the pure this now appears as a universal immediacy, a sensuous universal. This universal immediacy is what we call a property. For example, the this that was immediately white or sweet is now understood as the whiteness or sweetness of a thing. This is the double meaning of sublation – it negates the This as an independent entity, yet preserves it as a universal content .

Dialectical Development: In Sense-Certainty, consciousness discovered that what it meant as a singular object could only be identified via universal categories . Now, in Perception, consciousness takes those universal aspects as properties of a thing. The object is posited as having a “mediated simplicity” : its immediacy is no longer simple, but mediated by negation and universality within it. Thus the “object for perception” is “a thing of many properties.” The wealth of sensuous data that was implicit in sense-certainty now explicitly belongs to perception . Only at this level does negation/difference become essential: perception contains difference within itself, whereas sense-certainty knew only an indistinct this . The result is that what seemed a simple given now reveals itself as a complex: a one-thing with many universals.

Example : Hegel gives the example of salt: “This salt is a simple Here and is at the same time manifold; it is white and also tart, also cubically shaped, also of a particular weight, etc.” . In one and the same simple location all these diverse properties coexist. Thinghood is introduced as a kind of “medium” or substratum in which properties inhere together. Hegel calls this medium the “Here and Now” as a simple togetherness of the many – essentially, the notion of a substance that holds various qualities. Jean Hyppolite points out that Hegel’s “thing with many properties” deliberately echoes the classical hypokeimenon or substratum of Aristotle and early modern empiricists . It “seems to precede knowledge; the thing is there before we have any knowledge of it” – a “this solidified into a thing” . However, as Hyppolite notes, this seemingly self-contained thing is actually mediated by the process of experience; in Hegel’s words, the thing is the forgetfulness of its own mediation . In other words, the “thing” presents itself as an immediate unity, but that unity is in fact a result of conceptual mediation . Robert Brandom emphasizes that even at this stage Hegel is dealing with conceptually articulated content: properties like white, tart, cube-shaped are determinate concepts that shape our perception . Rather than raw data, perception for Hegel is already a conceptual affair – applying universals to an object, much as Kant insisted that intuitions without concepts are blind.

Paragraph 114: The “Also” – The Indifferent Unity of Properties vs. the “One” – The Excluding Unity

Summary: In paragraph 114 Hegel introduces a crucial distinction between two ways of understanding the relation of the many properties in the thing. Initially, we consider only the “positive universality” of the thing – the way the thing serves as a neutral medium in which properties coexist. This aspect is labeled the “Also”: the thing is white also tart also cubic, etc., an “indifferent unity” holding the many characteristics together . However, Hegel now observes another necessary aspect: the properties are not merely indifferent; they are also exclusive opposites of each other . To be a determinate property at all, each must differentiate itself from the others . But if the properties truly exclude one another, how can they all be in one thing? This introduces the aspect of the thing as a “One” or unit that excludes otherness from itself . The One is the aspect of negation or unity that keeps the properties apart as opposites, by excluding difference. Thus the thing reveals two sides: as an Also, an inclusive medium for many diverse properties, and as a One, an exclusive unity that sets differences apart.

Key Quote : “If the many determinate properties were to be utterly indifferent…and related only to themselves, then they would still not be determinate properties, for they are determinate only insofar as they differentiate themselves from each other and relate as opposites. However…they could not be together in the simple unity of their medium… This simple medium is not only an Also, an indifferent unity; it is also a One, an excluding unity.” . In other words, determinateness demands contrast: each property is what it is by not being the others . So the thing cannot be merely a passive container – it must also be a unit that excludes the co-presence of incompatible properties. Hegel identifies the One with negation: it is “the moment of negation, as it relates itself to itself in a simple way and excludes others” . We might say the “One” is the thing’s self-identity that tolerates no internal division, whereas the “Also” is the thing’s plurality of content.

Dialectical Tension: Here we see the first contradiction start to emerge within the concept of the thing. On one hand, the thing’s nature is to be an Also – a togetherness of independent properties. Each property “leaves the others at rest” and coexists peacefully in the thing through the neutral Also (“white does not affect or alter the cubic shape, neither affects the tartness… they relate only through the indifferent Also” ). On the other hand, if the properties are truly independent, they lack determinate character . So the thing must also be characterized by exclusivity: the unity that negates the coalescence of opposites. Hegel personifies the thing as saying: “insofar as I am white, I am not cubical; insofar as I am both white and cubical, I am not tart,” etc. . The thing as One thus threatens to tear apart the very diversity that the thing as Also united.

Commentary: Brandom draws attention to Hegel’s insight that “determinateness requires…‘exclusive’ difference, and not mere ‘indifferent’ difference” . In inferential terms, to classify something as white is at the same time to infer that it is not black. The Also corresponds to an “indifferent difference” where differences coexist without interaction, while the One introduces “exclusive difference” where one property rules out the other. Brandom notes that Hegel sees this not as a mere observational fact but as a logical requirement for the object–property structure itself . Hyppolite, for his part, observes that Perception here recapitulates a classic problem of empiricist ontology-how can one substrate have many mutually exclusive qualities?** This was a question for thinkers like Locke and even Aristotle’s substance/accident relation. Hegel is beginning to show that the commonsense notion of a thing with properties is internally unstable.

Paragraph 115: The Thing as Truth of Perception – Three Moments

Summary: Paragraph 115 summarizes the constitution of the thing by bringing together the moments we’ve identified. Hegel enumerates three moments that define the “truth of perception” :

• The Also: Indifferent Universal Medium. The thing is an “indifferent passive universality, the Also of the many properties” . This is the aspect of the thing as a togetherness in which various qualities coexist without affecting each other – like a bowl holding different fruits.

• The One: Excluding Unity. The thing is equally “the negation as simple, or the One – the excluding of opposed properties” . This is the aspect of the thing as a unit that is self-identical and shuts out otherness . As a One, the thing stands distinct from other things and maintains an identity not dissolved by its internal diversity.

• The Many Properties . This moment is described as “the relation of the first two moments: the negation as it relates itself to the indifferent element and extends itself therein as a set of differences – the point of singular individuality in the medium of stable existence radiating out into multiplicity.” . In plainer terms, this is the totality of determinate properties that appear in the thing. It arises from the One asserting itself within the Also , resulting in a spread of distinct properties. Each property belongs to the thing , yet because they share the medium, each property also exists on its own indifferent to the others. The thing’s many properties are thus the product of the unity and universality interacting.

Hegel clarifies that according to one “aspect” the properties belong to the indifferent medium , but according to the other “aspect” they belong to the negative unity . This dual character will be crucial. At this stage, consciousness regards the thing as the true essence that unifies these aspects. The thing is for now “the truth of perception” – the stable being in itself – whereas the plurality and any disharmony were seen as phenomena possibly due to our perspective.

Dialectical Movement: With this triad, Hegel has effectively articulated the concept of a thing in full generality. It bears a strong resemblance to classical metaphysical distinctions: a thing can be seen as a substrate or substance , a unity of being-for-self , and a bundle of accidental properties that manifest that essence. Hegel notes this is the “culmination” of the thing’s concept as needed here – implying that this is as far as naive perception can go in defining its object. Importantly, all three moments are essential, yet they are in tension. The stage is set for Perceiving Consciousness to engage with this object and see whether it can consistently take it as true.

Commentary: We can see a foreshadowing of Hegel’s later logical categories: the thing as **Universal ** vs. **Singular ** with multiple **Particulars **; or substance , unity/one, and accidents. Hyppolite remarks that Hegel demonstrates already here an interplay of identity and difference that will reappear in the Logic: the thing tries to hold identity and difference together. As Brandom would say, the thing’s concept involves normative significance: by calling something a “thing” we implicitly commit to treating it as a unit and as having various features, and to navigating the inferential relations among those features . At this point, consciousness believes it can do this smoothly – the thing as such is the true being, and any clash between unity and plurality can be sorted out by careful attention. Now Hegel will examine how consciousness actually experiences this object in perception, and whether it can maintain the separation of these moments without contradiction.

Paragraph 116: The Attitude of Perceiving Consciousness – Objectivity and the Possibility of Error

Summary: Paragraph 116 shifts focus to the subject, i.e. the perceiving consciousness and its approach to the thing. After defining the object , Hegel now considers how consciousness must comport itself to grasp the truth. Consciousness assumes it needs only to “take the object” as it is, through pure apprehension, and the truth will emerge . Because the object is assumed to be the true, self-same reality, any discrepancy or error must come from the subject’s side. In Hegel’s words, the object is “the true and the universal, like unto itself,” while consciousness is “what is alterable and inessential.” . Therefore, the perceiver is aware that he could misperceive – illusions or mistakes are possible, but they would be his fault, not the thing’s. The criterion of truth in perception is thus the self-sameness of the object: if the object appears inconsistent, the perceiver concludes he must have made an error in apprehension .

Key Points: -Consciousness as Pure Apprehension: The perceiver strives to merely receive the object, doing nothing on its own. Hegel uses a wordplay on Wahrnehmung : the perceiver wants to have a “take” on the object that simply yields the truth . If the subject were to add or omit anything in this taking, it would “alter the truth” . This reflects the naïve empiricist stance: just observe carefully and accurately, and the truth of the object will be given.

-Objectivity and Error: The object is taken to be in-itself what it is . The subject knows itself to be fallible. Hegel writes: “It can happen to consciousness that it apprehends the object incorrectly and deludes itself. The one who is perceiving is aware of the possibility of illusion.” . This marks an advance from sense-certainty: consciousness now explicitly recognizes the difference between the object as it is vs. as it appears to me. This recognition of the possibility of misalignment is basically the concept of objectivity emerging. (Brandom notes that objectivity enters when a subject grasps that a claim can be wrong – that how things are might differ from how they are taken to be. Perceiving consciousness has exactly this insight built in .)

-Criterion of Truth: “His criterion of truth is thus self-equality, and his conduct is to be grasped as self-equality.” . In other words, the perceiver judges by whether the object remains consistent with itself. If the perceiver notices any “inequality” among the object’s aspects, he attributes it to a failure in his own perceiving, not to the object . For example, if the thing seems different under different conditions , the perceiver will assume one of those perceptions was misleading – the thing itself is presumed constant.

Dialectical Foreshadowing: This attitude sets up the next movement. Consciousness will now “learn from experience” by actually perceiving a thing and encountering a tension between what the object is supposed to be and what the act of perception delivers . The important point is that perceiving consciousness initially blames itself for any discrepancy. This is a critical form of mediation: the subject actively filters and adjusts its view to preserve the object’s unity. Inferentially, the perceiver is saying: “If I get conflicting results, I infer that one of my observations is incorrect, because the object must be one way or the other .” This mindset reflects what Hegel calls the “sophistry” of perceiving later : the subject will juggle different “points of view” to try to rescue the object’s self-consistency.

Commentary: Brandom highlights this section as encapsulating the normative dimension of perception: the perceiver holds himself responsible for getting it right about an object that exists independently. The distinction between appearance and reality is now explicit. In Kantian terms, consciousness is applying the category of substance and the idea of subjective error . Hyppolite might note that at this juncture, mediation enters as consciousness’s own activity of “reflecting into itself” – i.e. consciousness monitors and corrects its perceptions. The stage is set for a dialectical interplay: as consciousness tries to remove its own contribution to get the pure object, it will inevitably find that some “untruth” recurs. This will force consciousness to revise its understanding of where the untruth lies – initially in itself, but eventually in the object concept itself.

Paragraph 117: The Experience of Perceiving – Contradictions Emerge

Summary: In paragraph 117, Hegel invites us to watch perception in action. Consciousness now takes up a specific thing and perceives it, going through a series of steps where it alternately attributes errors to itself and refines its conception of the object. This paragraph is dense: it narrates how the simple concept of the thing unravels through experience. Essentially, the perceiver tries to hold onto the thing as a self-equal One, then as an Also with universals, then again as One excluding others – and ends up in a cycle of corrections. Let’s break down this cycle:

1. Taking the Thing as One: The perceiver initially “views the thing as one and must hold fast to it in this true determination” . The object is one self-same entity. But in perceiving it, a certain aspect appears that contradicts this oneness: the perceiver observes a property . For example, I see that the salt is white. Recognizing whiteness means I am relating this object to a universal quality that goes beyond this individual. I implicitly compare it to other white things . Thus, in perceiving a property, “I go beyond that singularity” of the object . The thing is not just a unique one; it has a general nature.

   -Result: The object’s first determination as pure One was “not its true being.” The thing turned out to have a character that connects it to others. Since the object is supposed to be the true, the error is put on me: “the untruth falls within me, and the apprehending was incorrect” . So consciousness corrects itself: *the thing is not just a single One, it must be understood as a “community” * . In other words, consciousness now regards the object as essentially having properties that link it to a kind – the thing is a medium sharing universals . This corresponds to emphasizing the Also/universal medium side.

2. **Taking the Thing as a Universal Continuity : Now I perceive further: the object has multiple properties. Say I also taste the salt – it is tart. Now I’ve recognized another property. I must understand the thing as a continuity of these properties. However, each property is also determinate : tart is not sweet, white is not black. So I realize each property excludes another. Whiteness excludes any non-white color; tartness excludes blandness, etc. This determinateness implies an exclusive aspect again.

   -Result: My previous correction – viewing the thing as a continuity or community – now seems incorrect. Hegel writes: “I did not apprehend the objective essence correctly when I determined it as a community with others, or as continuity” . Why? Because treating whiteness as a mere continuity with other white things ignored the fact that whiteness exists in contrast to other properties of the same thing . The thing cannot just dissolve into a network of shared universals; it has an internal exclusivity. Thus I must “break up the continuity into pieces” and “posit the objective essence as an excluding One.” . In other words, I swing back to emphasizing the One/excluding unity side: the thing is this white, not that . I now assert the thing’s unity by distinguishing its various properties as separate.

3. **Taking the Thing as Excluding One: I have now “broken up” the thing into an excluding One with several distinct properties in it . I regard the whiteness, tartness, cubic shape, etc., as each isolated within the thing . In this view, the properties “do not affect each other but are indifferent” within the thing . I’ve effectively treated the thing’s properties like a set of independent sub-things inside it. But if they are completely independent, then the unity of the thing is lost – I’ve turned the thing into just an aggregate. Hegel notes: now the thing appears as only continuity in general – a universal medium in which there are many properties as sensuous universalities, each existing on its own . We are back to the picture of the thing as an Also of independent properties!

   -Result: By insisting on the exclusive One, I ended up again with a collection of separate properties inside the thing. The unity has evaporated: “The simple and true which I perceive is thereby also not a universal medium but rather a singular property for itself. However, in that way it is neither a property nor a determinate being, for it is now neither in a One nor in relation to others.” . In other words, if I isolate one property completely , it ceases to function as a property . It becomes a mere sensuous immediate again – like going back to a pure “This”. Hegel says it “remains only sensuous being per se,” and consciousness at that moment has regressed to *“meaning something” * as in sense-certainty . This shows the futility: in trying to uphold the thing’s unity, I either break the thing into pieces , or if I treat one piece as the true, I fall back to the level of an immediate this. But that immediate is unstable and leads me back into perceiving relations again . In short, I’m “thrown back to the beginning and pulled into the same cycle” .

Thus, the perceiver goes through a cycle: One → Also → One → …, attempting to grasp the object’s truth but oscillating between contradictory requirements. Consciousness finds that each time it “holds fast” one aspect of the truth, the other aspect slips out and forces a revision, leading back to the first aspect.

Quote : “I am thus thrown back to the beginning and pulled back into the same cycle which sublates itself both in each moment and as a whole.” . The cycle “sublates itself” in each moment – meaning at each step the contradiction forces a negation of the approach – and as a whole .

Consciousness’s Realization: Paragraph 118 tells us that consciousness must run through this cycle again, but now with an awareness gained from the first run . The crucial lesson is: “the result and its truth are its dissolution” – i.e. the only stable result of perception was that no stable result was found! The truth of perceiving turned out to be the going into contradiction and reverting into self. Hegel writes, “perceiving is the reflective turn into itself from out of the true.” . That is, whenever perception tried to capture the true object, it inadvertently showcased its own activity . Now consciousness is aware that perception is not purely objective; it always involves our own contribution . In 118, Hegel says perceiving “is not a simple, pure apprehending, but in its apprehending it has at the same time taken a reflective turn into itself from out of the true” . Consciousness acknowledges this subjective reflex as an unavoidable part of perception.

However, rather than giving up, consciousness now consciously separates what it sees as its own “reflection” from the “simple apprehension” of the object . It takes responsibility for the aspect of error. Hegel puts it: “Consciousness... separates this reflective turn into itself from simple apprehension itself” . In doing so, “the truth, as the truth of perceiving, falls... into consciousness.” . In other words, consciousness admits that the only flaw so far was its own perceiving activity, not the thing – so the truth remains unsullied, and the false element is in consciousness’s handling.

Commentary: This passage is rich. Hyppolite emphasizes the mediation at work: the perceiver discovered that the way the object appears depends on the perspective and faculties of consciousness . Hegel explicitly notes in §119 that “we ourselves are conscious that this diversity [of properties]… falls within us. The thing is only white as it is brought to our eyes, also tart on our tongues, and also cubical to our feel, etc. We do not take the entire diversity of these aspects from the thing but from ourselves. … We are thus the universal medium within which such moments dissociate themselves” . This is a key moment of insight: the senses mediate the object’s properties, splitting them up. Consciousness thereby attributes the breakdown to its own sensory apparatus, not to the thing. This is a move reminiscent of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in modern philosophy . Hegel’s perceiver is effectively saying the same: the object’s unity was disrupted because my senses are each separate , “because the eye is quite distinct from the tongue” . By recognizing this, the perceiver thinks he can now “preserve the self-equality and truth of the thing, namely its being One” , while shunting the multiplicity to the subject’s side.

Brandom might describe this as the perceiver undertaking an error-correcting strategy: we treat some of the conflicting appearances as “subjective” to rescue the notion of an objective thing. In doing so, the perceiver is implicitly using inference: e.g., “The salt seems both white and tart; but vision and taste are different modes, so I infer that salt in itself is a single thing that only appears differently to different senses.” Consciousness is thus actively theorizing: distinguishing what belongs to the object versus what is a result of its own perspective. This reflective move is a kind of proto-scientific thinking, partitioning primary essence and secondary appearances .

In sum, §117-118 depict Perception’s dialectic in motion: the concept of the thing couldn’t be sustained in immediate practice without entangling the subject. Consciousness’s solution is to explicitly take on the responsibility for any contradictions and trying again to perceive the thing, now armed with the idea that the thing is purely one in itself and all multiplicity or division must come from the subject’s operation. The stage is now set for consciousness to apply this solution systematically in the next paragraphs.

Paragraph 119: Distinguishing Subjective Reflection from the Thing’s Unity

Summary: Paragraph 119 details how consciousness re-perceives the thing with its new understanding. Consciousness will attempt to partition what belongs to the object and what belongs to itself to protect the object’s unity. Hegel writes: “Consciousness differentiates its grasping the true from the untruth of its perceiving; it corrects its perceiving… consciousness… is no longer merely perceiving but is conscious of its reflective turn into itself, and it separates this reflective turn from simple apprehension.” .

Now, concretely-Consciousness says: I must hold firmly that the thing is One . If during perception something arises that conflicts with this , I will identify that conflict as my own reflection, not a feature of the thing .

• Hegel illustrates: “Now, in perception various properties turn up that seem to be properties of the thing, yet the thing is One, and we are conscious of this diversity – through which it ceases to be One – as falling within us.” . So if I perceive salt as white, tart, cubic, etc., I attribute the disunity to the difference in my sensory faculties. “The thing is therefore in fact only white as it is brought to our eyes, it is also tart on our tongues, and also cubical to our touch, etc.” . I do not think the thing in itself has these disconnected attributes; rather, I have separated them by experiencing them through different senses.

• Hegel continues: “We do not take the entire diversity of these aspects from the thing but from ourselves.” . The eye delivers the color, the tongue the taste – these are our organs isolating aspects. Thus we are the universal medium in which these sensory properties are dispersed . By adopting this stance, consciousness believes it has solved the contradiction: “Since we regard this determinateness as our reflection, we preserve the self-equality and truth of the thing, namely its being One.” . In short, the thing remains a single, unified object, and all the heterogeneity is considered a result of the subject’s mode of access.

Key Point: Consciousness essentially distinguishes primary and secondary qualities here. The oneness of the thing is seen as its essential truth , whereas the manifold sensory properties are seen as dependent on the perceiver’s standpoint . By doing this, the perceiver thinks the thing in itself stays self-identical , and any time the thing “looked” divided, that was just an “appearance-for-us.”

Dialectical Move: This is a clever save, but it has a cost. Consciousness has now said that the diversity of properties is not truly in the thing. Yet recall, earlier we realized the thing must have many properties to be determinate at all. Consciousness cannot entirely deny the thing has properties; it is only saying the way they are separate is due to us. Paragraph 120 immediately examines this: even if the subject is the medium, the properties themselves still need to be understood. Are they merely subjective illusions? Or do they correspond to something in the thing?

Commentary: Hyppolite interprets this as consciousness splitting the cognitive work: the unity belongs to the object’s being, while the dividing of properties is an act of consciousness. In doing so, perception becomes aware of itself as mediator. However, this solution is unstable. By taking responsibility for separating the properties, consciousness has, in effect, *made the thing purely One *. But if the thing had no diversity in itself, it would have no content . The very properties we encountered must somehow belong to the thing or else we were perceiving nothing real. This paradox will surface: If the thing’s various properties are due to our senses, does the thing in itself even have those qualities? If not, what differentiates it from other things? The perceiver can’t say the salt isn’t really white or really tart – that would make it indistinguishable from other objects except by our perception. So, inevitably, consciousness must allow that the thing does have determinateness of its own, not just in our perception. Paragraph 120 tackles this.

Brandom would note that at this stage, the perceiver is basically applying a theory-laden filter: “the thing is one; if I see manyness, that’s on me.” This echoes the way scientists treat measurement error: we assume an underlying law and blame anomalies on measurement. Consciousness is inching toward the standpoint of Understanding, where it will explicitly posit an unseen true essence behind appearances. But first, it will try to keep the thing’s essence on the level of properties by making careful distinctions . This is the next step.

Paragraph 120: The Thing Reclaimed as Having Multiple Properties

Summary: Paragraph 120 confronts the fact that the properties cannot be purely our projection; they have an objective determinateness as well. Consciousness had attributed the dissociation of properties to itself, but now it considers the content of those properties. Each property is a specific quality – white, for example, has meaning only by contrast to black or other colors. Similarly, the thing being One means it is one among many – it stands in contrast to other things. So difference creeps back in, but now at the level of comparing things. Hegel writes: “The diverse aspects which consciousness takes upon itself are determinate in that each is regarded as existing for itself within the universal medium. White is only in contrast to black, etc., and the thing is One precisely as a result of its being contrasted with others.” . This means:

-Within the Subject : We treated whiteness, tartness, etc., as separated in our sensory medium. But even so, white is inherently defined by not-black; tart by not-sweet. These contrasts imply the existence of other properties somewhere. If not within the thing, then where?

-Among Things: The unity of the thing itself is meaningful only if there are other Ones from which it is distinct. “To be One is to be the universal relating-itself-to-itself, and as a result of its being One, it is instead the same as all others. Rather, it is through its determinateness that it excludes others.” . Paradox: as a sheer One, the thing is like every other thing that is one . What differentiates this thing is its specific properties . So the differences must be acknowledged as belonging to the thing itself, in order to distinguish it from other things.

Thus consciousness concludes: “The things themselves are thus determinate in and for themselves; they have properties whereby they are differentiated from others.” . In other words, a thing’s properties are its own, not just effects on us. Hegel elaborates: “As the property is the thing’s own property, or a determinateness in its own self, it has multiple properties.” . Why multiple? Because the thing is in-itself (it’s true being doesn’t depend on others – “what is in its own self is its own essence” ), and to have a determinateness, that determinateness implies contrast with others, which necessitates a plurality of properties within the thing to allow for multiple contrasts. Essentially, the thing needs a cluster of characteristics to carve out a unique identity in the field of many things. Each property is for-itself and also only makes sense by not being the other properties of that same thing . Hegel indicates three points: the thing is true in itself ; the properties are not merely for others but on their own ; yet they only are properties by coexisting with other different properties in the thing .

Key Quote: “Therefore, in truth it is the thing itself which is white and also cubical, also tart, etc., or the thing is the Also, which is to say, it is the universal medium in which the many properties stably exist externally to each other… Taken in that way, the thing is taken to be the true.” . This is a pivotal reversal: after trying to throw diversity into the subject, consciousness now resettles diversity in the object. The thing itself is acknowledged to be the Also – a host of various properties that do not fuse but “exist externally to each other” within it . And that is once again deemed the true object.

So we’re almost back where we started, but with a difference: previously, consciousness naively encountered the multiplicity and got confused; now it deliberately ascribes multiplicity to the thing as an essential feature, in order to account for determinacy and difference between things. It has effectively decided that the thing really is an aggregate of independent properties . It’s saying: yes, the thing is both one and also many – but perhaps we can compartmentalize these aspects properly.

Dialectical Tension: Immediately, a new problem arises. If the thing “is the Also” , what about its unity ? We’ve swung fully to the Also now. But consciousness remembers the earlier contradiction: those properties, if simply aggregated, will undermine unity. So unity must be addressed again. Paragraph 121 follows: it notes that along with “the Also,” the “moment opposed to the Also” still “crops up” – namely, the unity excluding difference. The thing’s properties are each exclusive: “insofar as it is white, it is not cubical” etc. . We cannot ignore that within the thing, the properties are incompatible if taken in the same respect. So who or what keeps them from blurring into each other or annihilating each other? Consciousness will now again assign that role to itself, with a refined tool: the use of the qualifier “insofar.”

Commentary: This stage corresponds to what we might call a Lockean view of the thing as a bundle of qualities supported by something. Consciousness has, in effect, returned to thinking of the thing as a bundle , but it still wants to maintain that there is a support keeping them as one thing. Hyppolite notes that at this juncture the thing is “elevated into being a genuine Also” – it “becomes a collection of matters and, instead of being a One, it becomes merely an enclosing surface.” . That phrase Hegel uses – “merely an enclosing surface” – indicates the thing’s unity has become almost empty, just a boundary around the set of properties . This is reminiscent of Hume’s idea that an object is just a bundle of perceptions with perhaps a fictional idea of unity. Hegel is showing that perceptual understanding is on the brink of that conclusion. Brandom might point out that at this point, the perceiver’s stance is almost oscillating in real time: one moment the properties are in the thing, next moment the unity is posited by me to avoid contradiction. The tool “insofar” is basically a logical operator to separate aspects. We will see in §121 how consciousness uses it to keep properties from clashing.

Paragraph 121: Using “Insofar” – The Thing as a Collection of Independent Matters

Summary: Paragraph 121 describes consciousness’s strategy to salvage the thing’s unity now that it admits the thing has many exclusive properties. The idea is to prevent the incompatible properties from collapsing the thing’s oneness by carefully separating their domains. Hegel writes: “Consciousness is at the same time conscious that it also reflects itself into itself and that in perceiving, the moment opposed to the Also crops up. However, this moment [the unity] is the unity of the thing with itself which excludes difference from itself. It is accordingly the unity that consciousness has to take upon itself, for the thing itself is the stable existence of many various and independent properties.” . In simpler terms:

• Consciousness recognizes that exclusion is still needed, but it assigns that exclusion to its own activity, not to the thing. The thing “itself” will be regarded purely as the stable collection of properties . The perceiver will supply the unity by the way it speaks about the thing, without letting that unity merge the properties.

• The key linguistic tool is the “insofar” clause. Hegel illustrates: “It is said of the thing: It is white, also cubical, and also tart, etc. However, insofar as it is white, it is not cubical, and insofar as it is cubical and also white, it is not tart, etc.” . The phrase “insofar as…” restricts each property to an aspect of the thing, preventing contradiction. The thing as white is just white , the thing as cubical is just cubical , etc. This way, none of the properties directly negate each other within the thing – they are compartmentalized by our descriptions.

• By doing this, “the positing-into-a-one of these properties belongs only to consciousness, which thus has to avoid letting them fall into a One in the thing.” . So consciousness explicitly takes on the job of saying the properties together only via the list and denies any single perspective where they would conflict. In effect, the perceiver treats each property as a free-standing “matter” on its own and the thing as nothing but an “enclosing surface” around them . Hegel: “Quite rightly, consciousness takes upon itself the Oneness in such a way so that what was called a property is now represented as a free-standing matter. In this way, the thing is elevated into being a genuine Also, while it becomes a collection of matters and, instead of being a One, it becomes merely an enclosing surface.” .

In summary, consciousness’s refined model is: A thing is basically an assemblage of independent elements like a bag containing marbles, and the unity is not active in mixing those qualities, it just holds them together externally. The perceiver, in describing the thing, will not attribute any contradictory predicates to the thing in the same respect. Each property is isolated by an “insofar” clause.

Outcome: By comparing this to previous steps, Hegel notes in §122 that consciousness, over the course of these adjustments, has “alternately makes itself, as well as the thing, into both a pure One without multiplicity and into an Also dissolved into self-sufficient matters.” . Initially it put unity in the thing and multiplicity in itself; then it put multiplicity in the thing and unity in itself. Now it’s explicitly doing the latter: the thing is just an Also of self-sufficient pieces, and the unity is an imposition of consciousness . Through this alternating, consciousness finds that the truth of the thing is not simply one-sided: “not only its ‘taking the true’ has in itself the diversity of comprehending and returning-into-itself, but the true itself, the thing, instead shows itself to be in this doubled fashion.” . The thing itself appears to have a “doubled” nature . In Hegel’s words, the thing “has an opposed truth in its own self.” . This is crucial: even after all efforts, the object itself seems inherently bifurcated – its truth comes out as contradiction .

Commentary: The use of “insofar” is a kind of logical sophistry (Hegel later calls it that ): it’s a way of talking that tries to circumvent a real ontological problem by clever qualification. We might compare it to how one might say: “This coin is both hot and cold – hot on one side, cold on the other” to avoid contradiction. But the fact remains the coin as a whole has these opposed states. Similarly, the thing “as a whole” still has contradictory determinations, we just choose not to speak of them simultaneously. Brandom would note that this is juggling perspectives: a perspectival resolution rather than a real one. Consciousness at this point is doing everything a logically sophisticated common-sense realist might do to defend the idea of independent objects with properties: distinguishing between contexts, separating attributes carefully, etc. Indeed, Hegel equates this stance to the way “healthy common sense” operates – it flip-flops between asserting unity and multiplicity depending on convenience, without seeing the underlying contradiction.

Hyppolite remarks that at this juncture “the thing’s unity is preserved only as an enclosing surface” , meaning the One has been emptied of all content . The properties have become “free matters” – almost as if each property were itself a little thing. This foreshadows the breakdown: if each property stands on its own, why even call them one thing? The perceiver has nearly reduced the thing to a set of independent sub-things . This resembles the way science might analyze an object into independent qualities or how an empiricist might think of an object as a bundle of independent “ideas.” The friction is that we’re still saying it is one object. The splitting device “insofar” only papers over the contradiction.

Thus, by the end of §121, the internal contradiction of the object has been exposed: the object must be both a unified one and a mere assemblage of independent elements. Consciousness tried to assign one aspect to itself, but ultimately it found that both aspects belong to the object. This sets the stage in §122 and §123 for consciousness to explicitly acknowledge that the contradiction lies in the object itself – which is a new insight.

Paragraph 122: Realizing the Object Itself is Contradictory

Summary: In paragraph 122, Hegel has consciousness reflect on what it just did. By comparing its previous attributions, consciousness sees a pattern of oscillation: sometimes it treated the thing as pure One, other times as *mere Also *, alternately locating one aspect in the thing and the other in itself, and vice versa . Now, however, consciousness recognizes that these were not just errors of perception but expressions of the thing’s own nature. It finds that “the true itself, the thing, instead shows itself to be in this doubled fashion.” . In other words, the thing manifested itself both as a unitary self-same and as a collection of indifferent properties, depending on the viewpoint. The contradiction is inherent to the object: the thing appears to have “an opposed truth” within itself .

Hegel describes it thus: “Through the comparison, consciousness thus finds that not only its taking of the true had in itself the diversity of comprehending and returning-into-itself, but… the thing… shows itself in this doubled fashion. Therefore, what is present is the experience of the thing which exhibits itself in a determinate way for the comprehending consciousness but at the same time takes itself in terms of the way it offers itself and is reflected back into itself, or in its own self it has an opposed truth.” . This is a dense sentence. It means: The thing appears one way to the perceiver and at the same time it has another aspect in itself . The perceiver’s acts of separating unity and multiplicity were actually mirroring the thing’s own two-faced character. The **experience ** gained is that the object is through-and-through contradictory: it cannot be pinned down to a single consistent determination.

This admission paves the way for a shift: if the contradiction lies in the object, perhaps the perceiver will stop blaming his own perception and instead reconceive what the object truly is. That is precisely what happens in §123 onward: consciousness will reconfigure the world of things to accommodate this contradiction by splitting it across multiple objects .

Transition: By the end of §122, the stage of Perception proper is reaching its conclusion. Consciousness has effectively refuted its own assumptions: a thing with independent properties turned out to generate contradiction. The “notes” it tried failed to yield a stable, non-contradictory account of what the thing is. The inevitability of contradiction is recognized as the thing’s truth.

Commentary: This marks a crucial turning point. Hyppolite stresses that consciousness now has the “experience of the thing” as contradictory. It’s no longer the fault of subjective mixing – the objective essence itself is rent by opposite conditions. As Hyppolite phrases it, “the contradiction which is present in the objective essence as a whole is distributed between two objects… thus the unity of the thing is preserved and at the same time the otherness is preserved outside of the thing as well as outside of consciousness.” .

Brandom would likely highlight that we have an ontological commitment change: initially there was one object with many properties; now consciousness is about to say “maybe there are really two objects or levels here.” This is the seed of the transition to Force and Understanding, where the appearance vs. essence split becomes explicit. But first, consciousness tries to salvage the world of “things” by populating it with multiple interacting things.

In short, by recognizing the object’s twofold nature, consciousness prepares to move beyond the naive concept of an independent thing. We are at the threshold of a new sublation: perception as a mode of consciousness is about to collapse, and Understanding will emerge, seeking a deeper account to explain why things behaved so paradoxically.

Paragraph 123: Splitting the Contradiction – Introduction of Other Things

Summary: In paragraph 123, consciousness responds to the object’s internal contradiction by spreading it out into multiple objects. Instead of one thing with opposing principles, we consider a plurality of things such that each embodies one side of the opposition. Hegel says consciousness still takes “the thing as the true, the thing as self-equal,” but now sees the whole movement of unity vs. diversity as belonging to the object realm . The solution-distinguish different things**: one thing’s unity versus another thing’s difference. Concretely:

• The thing is now conceived as One and “reflected into itself, for itself” , and as “for another.” But these cannot both apply to one thing without contradiction. So consciousness posits that the thing is One , while the differences fall into other things. Hegel writes, “The thing is One, reflected into itself; it is for itself, but it is also for an other – namely, it is an other for itself as it is for an other. The thing thereby is for itself and also for an other, a doubly diverse being, but it is also One. However, its oneness contradicts its diversity; consciousness would thereby have to take this positing-into-a-one upon itself again… Yet, as consciousness has learned from experience, oneness also corresponds to the thing itself… The Also, or the indifferent difference, falls just as much into the thing as it does into oneness, but since both are different, it does not fall into the same thing but rather into different things. The contradiction, which is per se in the objective essence, is distributed into two objects.” .

This is crucial-the contradiction is resolved by saying we aren’t dealing with one object, but at least two**. For instance, consider two salts or salt vs. sugar: one object can be white and cubical, another object tart, etc., so that no single object has opposing properties. Each thing is now simply itself but in interaction or comparison with others shows difference. The statement “the thing is for itself and also for an other” now is read as: the thing is in itself one, and relative to others it has difference. The unity is preserved “within” each thing, while the diversity is realized “between” things.

• Hegel continues: “The thing therefore is in and for itself, self-equal, but this unity with itself is disturbed through other things. In that way, the unity of the thing is preserved and, at the same time, that otherness, which is external to the thing just as it is to consciousness, is preserved.” . So each thing can be thought of as having a stable essence that isn’t self-contradictory, and the differences are external, lying in the relations among distinct entities.

This effectively shifts the problem: we now have a plurality of one-propertied things instead of one thing with many properties. Consciousness is heading toward a notion of each determinate property as a distinct substance and their combinations as composite things, but to avoid internal conflict, you might ascribe each core property its own object. However, Hegel immediately sees an issue: even dividing into separate things, difference is still essential and will sneak inside each thing’s concept of itself. That’s tackled in §124.

Dialectical Note: By distributing attributes across things, consciousness introduces the idea of an objective network: multiple things affecting each other. We’re moving closer to the idea of a world of interacting objects, which is the province of Understanding. But first, Hegel will examine if this division truly resolves the contradiction or if it resurfaces.

Commentary: Hyppolite summarizes this move: “The moments fall not in the same thing, but in diverse things. The contradiction… is distributed between two objects. In and for itself the thing is self-identical, but this unity is disturbed by other things. Thus the unity of the thing is preserved and at the same time the otherness is preserved outside of the thing as well as outside of consciousness.” . So consciousness externalizes otherness both from the thing and from itself . This is essentially the step into an interaction paradigm: differences become forces between things instead of contradictions within one thing. We see the germ of the concept of Force .

Brandom might frame it as a shift from a monadic view to a relational view . Each object is now something like a “this-not-that” in relation to others. But as Brandom and others note, once you say each thing is conceptually determined by not being the others, that difference is part of its identity – implying the seeds of contradiction remain, just now at a higher level . That will be the next discovery.

Paragraph 124: Persistence of Contradiction – Each Thing Contains Otherness

Summary: Paragraph 124 immediately observes that simply assigning different properties to different things doesn’t fully remove contradiction – it just relocates it. If various things exist, each thing still must have a definite character distinguishing it from others, and this introduces difference into each. Hegel says: “Although the contradiction in the objective essence is shared among various things, the difference will for that very reason reach as far as the isolated individual thing itself.” . In other words, making many things doesn’t eliminate difference from any single thing; each thing is now “different from others” by its nature.

He explains: “The various things are posited as each existing for itself, and the conflict falls into each of them reciprocally such that each is different not from itself but only from others. However, each is thereby itself determined as something different and has the essential difference from others in it, but at the same time not in such a way that this would be an opposition in its own self. Rather, it is for itself simple determinateness, which constitutes its essential character and differentiates it from others.” . Breakdown:

• We have multiple things each “for itself” . The opposition is now said to be not internal, but a relational difference between things. Each thing is not self-contradictory; it’s just different from others.

• However, to be different from others is indeed an essential aspect of each thing’s being. For instance, one thing might be essentially white . So “the essential difference from others” is in each thing as its defining determinateness .

• But consciousness still tries to claim this difference is not an “opposition” within the thing. The thing simply has a positive character of its own , and that happens to not be the others. So difference is acknowledged but downplayed as not a self-conflict, just a defining property.

• Hegel adds: “Since diversity is in it, the same difference necessarily is as an actual difference of multiple constitutions in it. Yet because the determinateness constitutes the essence of the thing, whereby it distinguishes itself from others and is for itself, this otherwise multiple constitution is the inessential. Within its unity, the thing thereby has in itself the doubled Insofar, but with unequal values.” . This is dense:

  • “Diversity is in it” means even a single thing presumably can be viewed as having different aspects which in principle correspond to how it differs from various other things. E.g., salt differs from sugar in taste, from charcoal in color, etc., implying salt has multiple aspects corresponding to each comparison. So multiple “constitutions” exist in each thing insofar as we consider its relations to all others.
  • But, we declare only one determinateness as the thing’s essence . The rest is considered inessential variations. So we reintroduce a hierarchy: one aspect is the thing’s true character , the others are incidental.
  • Thus the thing still has a “double Insofar”: aspects considered or ignored, but now “with unequal values.” One “insofar” is privileged; the other differences are marginalized as inessential.
  • By doing so, we hope the thing does not have actual opposition in itself, just a primary character vs trivial other features.

So consciousness is basically saying: Let's say each thing has one essential property that defines it , any other differences are negligible. This way, a thing won’t have two equally essential opposite properties fighting within; it has one essence, the rest is accident. For example, consider salt: maybe we decide its essence is saltiness , while color or shape are less essential. Or another example: one thing is essentially white , another essentially black . Each has one key property. But notice, to compare them, each still has to have some relation to the other's property , which is difference within it conceptually.

• Hegel concludes that by giving “unequal values” to the aspects, consciousness prevents the difference from appearing as a contradiction inside the thing. “As a result, its being-posited-in-opposition does not therefore become an actual opposition of the thing itself.” . In short, each thing is now thought to have a single-valued nature, and opposition only exists as a comparison between distinct things, not a conflict inside one.

Commentary: We see a pattern of temporary fixes: whenever contradiction looms, consciousness tweaks its conception to avoid two equally necessary but incompatible determinations in one unit. Here it does so by a kind of reductionism: picking out one essential predicate per thing. This is akin to saying, “This object is characterized by quality Q . That object by quality P. So no object has both P and Q essentially; they just each have one.”

However, this fix is unstable. If “inessential” differences are still present, why are they there at all? And if a thing’s essence is defined by excluding others, then others are part of its identity conditions . That interdependence suggests the difference is still lurking within concept. Hegel, in fact, is preparing to show that even isolating one essence per thing doesn’t solve it, because being an independent thing requires relation .

At this point, Hegel’s narrative is getting quite complex. It might help to simplify: The initial one thing became a plurality of things, each supposedly self-contained. But to be distinct, each took on a unique defining quality, making the quality an “inner essence” of the thing. Yet each such essence implies an opposition to other essences . Consciousness tries to keep those oppositions external, but logically the negative relation is part of each definition. We are basically transitioning from the idea of independent things to the idea of an interaction of forces or opposites that goes beyond individual things – which is the subject of the next section .

Hyppolite notes on this part that Hegel is effectively demonstrating the inadequacy of the “thing-property” model and hinting that we must move to a “force-law” model . The text is showing that you can’t just assert things with fixed essences in isolation; their meaning comes from a whole play of differences. We will soon see consciousness make the leap that the truth is not the immediate things, but something underlying .

Paragraph 125: The Essential Property Destroys the Thing’s Independence

Summary: Paragraph 125 drives home the failure of the last strategy. Hegel argues that even if a thing is defined by one essential determinateness, that determinateness by its very nature connects the thing to others, undermining the thing’s supposed self-contained being-for-itself. The thing cannot both have an essential property that differentiates it and remain absolutely independent of others.

Key lines: “This determinateness, which constitutes the essential character of the thing and which differentiates it from all others, is now determined in such a way that the thing thereby is in opposition to others but is supposed to preserve itself for itself in that opposition. However, it is only a thing, or a One existing for itself insofar as it does not stand in this relation to others, for instead in this relation, the connection to others is posited, and the connection to others is the cessation of being-for-itself. Directly through the absolute kind and its opposition, it relates itself to others and essentially it is only this relating. However, the relationship is the negation of its self-sufficiency, and the thing instead perishes through its essential property.” .

In essence:

• A thing’s essential property is what sets it apart to others.
• If the thing truly exists for itself , it should not be essentially in a relation to others. But by having an essential property , the thing is in relation.
• As soon as we acknowledge the thing “has to exclude others” via its essence, we’re saying the thing depends on the presence of those others . That means it is not absolutely for-itself; its being-for-itself is compromised.
• The thing’s very being-for-itself was its essence, but that essence turns out to require others, thus the thing’s self-sufficiency collapses. It “perishes through its essential property” – i.e., the property that was supposed to guarantee the thing’s identity winds up dissolving that identity because it ties the thing into a web of interdependence .

This is the dialectical climax of Perception: the one thing cannot maintain itself because to be defined, it must relate to others, losing its independent status. We see the unity and multiplicity fully conflating: the thing is for-itself only by not being others, which means its for-itself actually depends on others .

Commentary: Hegel’s argument here is profoundly philosophical: it’s essentially saying no object can be absolutely self-standing if it has any definite character. The definite character inherently references a system of possible differences. This prefigures later ideas in metaphysics and philosophy of language .

Brandom might phrase it in terms of inference and incompatibility: for something to be X , it must not be Y . Thus the identity “X” is bound up with inferential connections to “not-Q”, etc. The object can’t be identified without a conceptual network, so it’s not standalone.

Hyppolite would likely point out that now the category of relation has supplanted the category of thing: the truth of the thing is the relationship that negates its independence. In the Phenomenology, this is moving us towards understanding that the truth of the perceptual world is a “supersensible” unity behind the things – essentially the law of their interaction .

To put it plainly: If salt’s essence is tartness, it only has meaning because other things are not tart; thus salt depends on not-sugar for its identity. So salt-as-independent fails; what’s real is perhaps the contrast “tart vs sweet” as a universal difference playing out across instances.

At this point, consciousness must abandon the idea of stable “things” as ultimate. They seem to appear and perish through their qualities. This sets the stage for a new approach: treat what’s really stable as not the perceptual thing at all, but something behind or beyond – which will be Understanding’s object .

Paragraph 126: The Necessity of the Thing’s Collapse – Toward a New Concept

Summary: Paragraph 126 reflects on the necessity of this outcome for consciousness. Hegel recaps that the thing was bound to “perish through the very determinateness which constitutes both its essence and its being-for-itself” . He emphasizes that this wasn’t an accident; it followed from the concept of a thing being-for-itself with determinacy.

He then condenses it: “According to its simple concept, this experience can be briefly looked at in this way. The thing is posited as being-for-itself, or as the absolute negation of all otherness. Thus, it is posited as the absolute negation relating only itself to itself, but negation relating itself to itself is just the sublation of itself, or it has its essence in an other.” . This is a wonderfully terse statement of the dialectic:

• Being-for-itself = being absolutely not dependent on anything else .
• But if something is pure negation of other, and only relates to itself, that self-relation as negation = negating itself.
• Therefore the being-for-itself is self-cancelling: to define itself it had to use negation , which ends up meaning its essence is outside itself .

So the thing in trying to be absolutely self-determined ends up alienating its essence .

Transition: At this juncture, Perceiving consciousness has effectively destroyed the naive object it started with. What is left? Hegel implies that what remains is a kind of universality freed from the specific thing. The talk of “its essence in an other” hints that the truth might lie in something beyond the thing.

Commentary: Many commentators see here the transition from the empirical thing to the notion of forces and laws. The “essence in an other” signals that the understanding of objects will now point to something invisible or underlying that ties the object and others together. The perceiver is on the verge of realizing that behind the fluctuating things, there must be a stable “unconditioned universality” (which Hegel soon mentions explicitly in §129 ).

Brandom might comment that this passage shows a classic “dialectical sublation”: the concept of object has sublated itself into a new concept – likely the concept of a law-governed relation. But first Hegel will articulate that new form as the Understanding’s object in the subsequent paragraphs.

In short, §126 is wrapping up the lesson: the collapse of the thing was logically necessary. Now consciousness must seek a new form of objectivity that can handle the unity-in-difference problem. That next object will be the concept of an inner play of forces and an underlying law, which doesn’t present itself as a static thing but as a dynamic relation – previewed by the phrase “unconditioned absolute universality” in §129 .

Paragraph 127: Self-sublating Inessential vs. Necessary – Final Nail in the Coffin

Summary: Paragraph 127 further dissects the final contradiction in perception’s terms: the distinction we tried to maintain between “inessential but necessary” aspects of the thing is itself nonsensical. Hegel says: “As the object has shown itself to be, the determination of the object in fact contains nothing else. The object is supposed to have an essential property which constitutes its simple being-for-itself, but in this simplicity, it is also supposed to have diversity in its own self, which in turn is indeed supposed to be necessary but is indeed not supposed to constitute its essential determinateness. However, this is only a verbal difference; something which is inessential but which at the same time is nonetheless supposed to be necessary is something which is self-sublating. That is, it is what was just called the negation of itself.” .

To unpack:

• We tried to say each thing has one essential property , and also some diversity which are “necessary” in that they had to be there but “inessential” to what the thing truly is.
• Hegel points out this is a mere play with words: calling something necessary yet inessential is contradictory. If it’s necessary to the thing, how can it be inessential? If the salt must be white to contrast sugar, then whiteness is part of its essence after all.
• Thus that supposed distinction collapses. The “necessary inessential” aspect is a direct self-contradiction, it cancels itself. This “sublating itself” is exactly the mechanism by which the object’s last formulation fell apart: the so-called inessential differences turned out to matter essentially.
• This explanation aligns with what just happened: the thing’s essence couldn’t exist without the “inessential” other differences , so those inessential conditions proved essential and took the thing down.

This paragraph is basically Hegel saying: we ended up with a lot of fancy footwork , but those distinctions were untenable. So the final verdict is that the object of perception annihilates itself through its own internal and relational contradictions.

Commentary: This is reminiscent of Hegel’s earlier conclusion in Sense-Certainty when “Here/Now” ended up being universals – except here it’s more complex. We once more see Hegel’s intolerance for something that is in itself X but for an other Y as a stable stopping point – it has to be resolved.

Brandom would note that any attempt to separate “what’s really the object” from “what is necessary but external” fails because if it’s necessary, it influences what the object really is. So normative talk aside, we can’t keep them separate. This is a critique of trying to salvage naive realism by slicing off “primary vs secondary qualities” or “intrinsic vs extrinsic” if the extrinsic are actually required.

Hyppolite likely emphasizes that with this, the concept of the independent thing has been thoroughly negated. The stage is set to move to a higher concept that embraces the necessity of interrelations, i.e., the Understanding’s domain of forces and laws where appearance and essence are distinguished.

Paragraph 128: The Fall of the Final Distinction – Being-for-self is Being-for-other

Summary: Paragraph 128 declares that the last “insofar” separation collapses entirely. Hegel writes: “The last Insofar which separated being-for-itself and being-for-others thereby falls by the wayside. Instead, the object is in one and same respect the opposite of itself; it is for itself insofar as it is for others, and it is for others insofar as it is for itself.” . This is a striking statement: the very condition of the thing’s self-identity is now directly tied to its being-for-others. They are one and the same aspect.

In other terms-the thing is what it is only by relating to others; and it relates to others only by being what it is. The distinction we tried to maintain is gone – they’ve fused.

Hegel continues: “It is for itself, reflected into itself, One. However, this for itself, reflected into itself Oneness, is posited as existing in a unity with its opposite, with being for an other, and for that reason is posited only as what is sublated. Or, this being-for-itself is just as inessential as that which alone was supposed to be inessential, namely, the relationship to an other.” . This says:

• Yes, the object is One for itself .
• But that very Oneness is immediately united with its opposite .
• Therefore, the object as we’ve conceived it only exists as a sublated thing – not a real, stable entity.
• The being-for-itself of the thing is now as inessential as the being-for-other was. Both are equated in status and both shown to be unreal abstractions in isolation.

So the final truth of the perceptual object is that it has no independent being at all. The only “being” it has is a kind of suspended, negated being in a movement of mutual reference. The object of perception dissolves into a relation .

Result: At this point, the object in the form of a “thing with properties” has completely evaporated as a fundamental truth. What remains is a “being” that is not a being – essentially, an abstract universality or relational structure. Hegel sums up in §129 that now “unconditioned absolute universality” is present as the new truth . In other words, consciousness is forced to shift from the level of concrete things to a level of the universal or law-like.

Commentary: This paragraph is basically the tipping point into the next section. Hegel has deduced that the object as previously understood is inherently a unity-of-opposites . So something new must be posited to account for how an object can be both at once in a higher unity. Hegel will propose that the truth is a “negative unity” not visible to perception: the interplay of forces, and an underlying law that is the true concept of object.

Philosophically, one can see Hegel critiquing any attempt to think of objects as having an inner essence separate from external relations. He finds they’re one and the same – a view somewhat echoed by modern philosophers who argue that an object’s identity is constituted by its relations.

Brandom might emphasize the normative language: now what is to count as the object’s identity is inseparable from its interactions. The thing concept is empty without the network of inferences to other things. So the “last insofar” – the dividing line between intrinsic and extrinsic – falls.

Hyppolite would highlight the emergence of “universality devoid of difference” that Hegel mentions as essence : meaning after all differences cancel out, what’s left is a pure universal . This is precisely the seed of the Understanding’s object, the supersensible beyond the sensible play.

Thus Perception ends with the collapse of the naive realist worldview and the necessity for a more sophisticated concept – which is exactly what the next section, Force and Understanding, will develop.

Paragraph 129: Unconditioned Universal – Transition to Understanding

Summary: Paragraph 129 explicitly states the result of the Perception dialectic in terms of what the object has become and prepares the move to Understanding. Hegel writes: “The object is thereby sublated in its pure determinateness, or in the various determinatenesses which were supposed to constitute its essentiality, in the same way as it had been sublated in its sensuous being. From out of sensuous being, it becomes a universal, but since it emerged from out of the sensuous, this universal is essentially conditioned by the sensuous and is thus not truly self-equal. Rather, it is a universality affected with an opposition, which for that reason is separated into the extremes of singularity and universality, of the One of properties and of the Also of the free-standing matters. These pure determinatenesses seem to express essentiality itself, but they are only a being-for-itself which is burdened with being for an other. But while both are essentially in one unity, unconditioned absolute universality itself is now present, and for the first time consciousness truly enters into the realm of the understanding.” .

Key points:

• The object of perception is “sublated” in terms of both its sensuous immediacy and its determinate properties. Just like in sense-certainty the immediate this became a universal, here the determinate thing dissolves into a new universal.
• Initially, out of the sensuous object we got a “universal” . But those were still tied to sensuous contexts and split into One vs Also .
• Those pure categories looked like the essence, but each was incomplete, being a “being-for-itself burdened with being-for-other.”
• Now that we saw both are one unity, Hegel proclaims that we have arrived at “unconditioned absolute universality.” This is a fancy term for a universal that is no longer limited by being tied to a specific sense-property or this-or-that, nor split by conditions – essentially the concept of lawlike universality or the concept as such.
• With this, consciousness “truly enters the realm of the Understanding.” Understanding is the faculty that looks for the hidden essence or law behind appearances, that posits something like force, cause, or substance that is not directly perceived.

So, the transition is: the failure of the thing with properties leads consciousness to posit an inner unity behind the appearance of properties. Instead of discrete things with independent properties, consciousness will now think in terms of a single continuum of lawful forces that manifest as those properties in relation. We move from the world of sense-perception to the supersensible world that Understanding investigates .

Analogy: If one were telling a story: At first we thought reality was a bunch of solid apples with colors and tastes. Then we found contradictions in that view. Now, we come to think maybe there's an underlying chemical composition or force that makes an apple apple-y, and its color/taste are surface manifestations. That underlying is not directly seen – it's a universal that explains the appearances. That is akin to unconditioned universal – something like an idea of matter or law that accounts for properties.

Commentary: Philosophically, Hegel is moving from empiricism to a kind of rationalism or structuralism. The Understanding corresponds in part to the scientific worldview: we don't trust appearances, we theorize invisible forces that necessarily produce those appearances. It also corresponds to Kant’s notion of the understanding that applies categories to make sense of phenomena. Hegel’s “unconditioned universal” is similar to a Kantian “noumenon” but he’s going to explore it differently .

Brandom would say that at this point Hegel introduces the idea that the only way to resolve the contradictions is to treat those earlier simple concepts as not things-in-world but as conceptual determinacies that play out in a higher-level pattern. Now it’s the patterns that matter.

Hyppolite likely notes this is the birth of the concept out of the demise of the thing. Consciousness is now aware that what is true is not any given object of perception, but a conceptual unity that governs the multiplicity. Historically, this mirrors how science arises from naive observation: e.g., Newtonian force as a universal replacing the medieval idea of each element having its own nature.

Thus, Phenomenology’s next task is to examine this “unconditioned universality” – which will be the play of Force and the notion of Law in the Understanding section.

Paragraph 130: Recap and Final Word on Perception’s Failure

Summary: Paragraph 130 recapitulates the journey from Sense-Certainty to Perception and highlights the outcome: the victory of an undifferentiated universality as the essence. Hegel notes:

• “Sensuous singularity” vanished in sense-certainty’s dialectic and became universality, but only a sensuous universality .
• Perceiving took the object “as it is in itself, as a universal as such” .
• Then “singularity emerges in the object as true singularity, as the being-in-itself of the One” – i.e., the object was posited as a genuine individual for-itself .
• But it turned out this singular being-for-itself was “conditioned” by an opposite, an opposed universality. The One and the Also were contradictory extremes, yet “not only alongside each other but in one unity” .
• “Being-for-itself is burdened altogether with an opposition, which is to say it is at the same time not a being-for-itself.” . This is summarizing that the independent thing wasn’t independent.
• Hegel refers to all the “expedients” as the “sophistry of perceiving” which tried to save the appearances from contradiction . But these were “null and void.”
• The upshot: “the true, which is supposed to be won through this logic of perceiving, turns out to be in one and the same regard the very opposite and thereby to have as its essence the universality completely devoid of difference and determination.” .

So the final essence is a pure universal with no difference. This is a stark outcome: basically, after all the attempts to articulate the object, the result is an undifferentiated unity. This “universality devoid of determination” is essentially what a law or force might look like from the standpoint of perception . It signals that the next quest is to find content for that pure universal – which Understanding will do by positing a structure behind phenomena .

Commentary: This concluding remark shows that for Hegel, Perception ended in a kind of negative result that paradoxically reveals a positive new object: pure universal . This is reminiscent of how in sense-certainty the “Now/Here” ended up as an empty universal which propelled into the next stage . Now, again, we have an empty universal that will get content in the next stage .

Brandom might point out how each stage’s failure provides the conceptual tools for the next. Here, we have the simple categories like One and Also, essential vs inessential, appearance vs truth, which Understanding will now use explicitly in a more sophisticated way. Understanding will openly talk about a “appearance” vs “true inner being” .

Hyppolite notes that Hegel calls the perceiver’s attempts “sophistry” – indicating that common sense tends to juggle perspectives to avoid challenging its own assumptions, accusing philosophy of being abstract while itself unconsciously moving between abstractions . Now philosophy has revealed those abstract categories and sublated them. We are ready to take conscious hold of them in Understanding.

Thus, Consciousness is ready to graduate from dealing with immediate objects to dealing with a mediate object – one that appears but whose truth is behind the appearance . This is the next chapter.

Paragraph 131-“Healthy Common Sense”** and the Departure to Understanding

Summary: In paragraph 131, Hegel takes a parting shot at “healthy common sense” – the natural attitude of perception – and contrasts it with philosophical understanding. He points out that what common sense considers solid reality is in fact a game of abstractions , whereas philosophy recognizes them as thoughts and thus can master them. Common sense ends up being “the poorest where it means to be the richest” , because it only juggles empty categories without realizing it.

Hegel writes: “These empty abstractions of singularity and of the universality opposed to it, as well as the empty abstraction of essence which is bound up with an inessential… are the powers whose play is the perceptual understanding, often called healthy common sense. That healthy common sense which takes itself to be solid, real consciousness, is, in perceiving, only the play of these abstractions, and that common sense is the poorest exactly at the point where it means to be the richest.” . Common sense thinks it deals with concrete rich objects, but because it doesn’t grasp the concept, it gets flung from one abstraction to the other without resolution .

He continues: “While it is pushed around by these empty essences… alternately clinging to one… then to its opposite… it says that philosophy only deals with thought-things. In fact, philosophy also deals with such thought-things, and at the same time it is cognizant of them in their determinateness and for that reason is master over them, whereas the perceiving understanding takes them to be the true, and such thoughts send it on its way from one error to another.” . So:

• Common sense accuses philosophy of being abstract .
• But Hegel retorts: philosophy indeed deals with “Gedankendinge” , but it knows them for what they are and their limits, thus it can handle them properly. Common sense by contrast unwittingly lets these “thought-things” control its experience, lurching from one mistaken certainty to the next.
• So the difference: philosophy knows the categories and so is their master; common sense doesn’t, so it is their plaything. This is a pointed defense of why doing the Phenomenology is superior to staying at the level of naive experience.

Hegel concludes that common sense “does not amount to the awareness that it is those kinds of simple essentialities which are governing in it; rather, it always supposes that it is dealing with entirely solid material and content” . It doesn’t realize it’s been moving among pure abstractions . But in truth those abstractions “alone determine the relation between consciousness and the sensible” and “alone are what the sensuous, as essence, is for consciousness” . So, the whole perceiving process was actually fueled by these categories. Philosophy made that explicit.

Finally, Hegel notes that this constant alternating and sublating of determinations “constitutes the everyday and constant life and drive of perceiving consciousness” . Perception is always implicitly doing this, suspecting something’s off then adjusting. It “presses forward to the result in which it sublates all these essential determinations” but at each moment only sees one side then the other, engaging in a kind of unconscious dialectic .

Significance: This critical reflection in §131 is like a closing commentary that highlights the value of the dialectical journey. It also sets expectation: the next shape will explicitly take those abstract essentialities as its object of thought, not just implicitly chase them. So consciousness is now ready to think about “appearance and the supersensible” consciously.

Commentary: This passage might be read as Hegel’s jab at empiricists who dismiss metaphysics: they think they’re sticking to solid facts but are unwittingly using metaphysical abstractions without critical insight. Hegel is saying: we need to surface those concepts and examine them so we can move beyond the errors.

Brandom and others in the analytic tradition often appreciate this part: it resonates with Sellars’ critique of the “Myth of the Given” – that what common sense takes as given is actually theory-laden and one must become aware of that conceptual scaffolding. Hegel basically did that and found the scaffolding contradictory as initially set.

With Understanding , consciousness will attempt a more sophisticated scaffolding: an explicit theory of the world . That will eventually also encounter contradictions and lead to self-consciousness.

In sum, by the end of Perception, consciousness has learned that the truth of its object is not something immediately perceived, but an intelligible inner unity behind the perceived properties. It’s ready to actively theorize a two-level reality-Appearance** and the Supersensible . This ushers in the “Force and Understanding” chapter.

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Transition to Force and Understanding: The failure of the perceptual model compels consciousness to reconceive the object as having two layers: an appearance and an essence . Consciousness will now investigate this essence by positing that behind the multiplicity of properties and interactions of things, there is a single unified reality – a “One” that is not like a static thing, but rather something like a force that expresses in opposition . The next section, Force and the Understanding, explores this in detail, introducing the notion of forces that come in opposing pairs and a “medium” that unites them, culminating in the concept of a law of nature .

Essentially, Understanding takes the “universality devoid of determination” that emerged and gives it determination in the form of law – linking differences in a necessity. It is a crucial step toward eventually realizing that the knowing self is deeply implicated in what counts as the object .

To sum up: Perception ended with the disintegration of the naive realist thing and the emergence of the idea that **the truth is a conceptual unity that only manifests through relative differences **. Consciousness is about to embrace a proto-scientific worldview of forces and laws to capture that truth – a significant development on its way to Absolute Knowing.

Connecting Hegel’s “Perception” to Broader Philosophical Debates

Hegel’s analysis in “Perception” resonates with and challenges several key positions in philosophy:

-Kant’s Thing-in-Itself vs. Appearance: Hegel’s Phenomenology can be seen as walking the path beyond Kant’s distinction between noumenon and phenomenon . In “Perception,” consciousness grapples with the thing as it appears and finds that the truth of the thing eludes immediate grasp. Kant held that the thing-in-itself is unknowable – we only know appearances structured by our concepts. Hegel’s perceiver indeed discovers that the “in-itself” of the thing is not what it seemed: it cannot be pinned down as a simple independent object. However, instead of declaring the essence unknowable, Hegel transitions the search for the in-itself to a new plane . In effect, Hegel is reconstructing how the concept of a hidden essence arises necessarily from the failure of naive realism . Unlike Kant who would stop at saying our knowledge is of appearances governed by categories, Hegel’s consciousness will try to penetrate the essence by thinking it through . Hegel thus aims to sublate the thing-in-itself: it becomes knowable as a concept that mind itself posits and eventually recognizes as its own thought. This is part of Hegel’s project to overcome Kant’s unknowable noumenon – showing that what Kant left “in the dark” is gradually brought into the light of thought, step by step, by consciousness itself. In “Perception,” we see the necessity of distinguishing appearance from true essence, which is a very Kantian move; in Understanding, Hegel will show consciousness trying to grasp that essence . Thus, Hegel both acknowledges Kant’s insight and goes further by making the dialectical path to understanding the essence explicit.

-Early Modern Empiricism : The dilemma of Perception closely mirrors problems raised in British empiricism. John Locke posited that objects are substrata with primary qualities and secondary qualities . Hegel’s perceiver goes through a similar distinction: the thing is thought to have inherent properties vs. those due to our senses . Hegel effectively critiques the Lockean substance-quality model: the “thing and its properties” starts as a straightforward idea, but ends in contradiction. Locke struggled with the notion of the substratum . Hegel’s dialectic shows why that substratum is problematic: if it’s entirely featureless apart from properties, it evaporates under scrutiny . In fact, Hegel’s result that the thing becomes a “collection of matters” and an “enclosing surface” is very close to Hume’s bundle theory of objects . Hume would conclude that our belief in a unitary object is a habit of association. Hegel instead provides a rational reconstruction: the mind is compelled to move to a new concept to explain the bundle. In this sense, Hegel’s analysis vindicates empiricists’ doubts about a simple substance, but he does not stop at skepticism. He shows the mind must posit connections – something Hume said we project as custom, whereas Hegel will treat it as a new stage of knowledge . Moreover, Hegel implicitly addresses the classic empiricist problem of perceptual error: how can our senses deceive us, and what does that imply about the object? His perceiver initially says “if I’m wrong, the object is still what it is” , analogous to Locke’s view that real essence of the object is independent of our ideas. But by the end, the line between subjective illusion and objective truth blurred: the object’s identity became tied to the perceiver’s conceptual framework. This anticipates Kant’s/Transcendental Idealism’s lesson but derived within the empiricist’s own scenario. In sum, Hegel’s Perception can be read as a critique of empiricism from within: it starts by taking empiricist assumptions and shows they lead to contradictions, thereby justifying a more rationalist or holistic approach . It demonstrates the inadequacy of naive realism and the need for what Sellars later called the “scientific image” . Thus, Hegel mediates between empiricism and rationalism – empiricism provides the data and initial concept, rationalism provides the necessary conceptual unity.

-The Myth of the Given and Conceptual Structure of Perception **: Hegel’s insight that perception is permeated by universals aligns with modern critiques of the idea of a pure, unconceptualized given. In Wilfrid Sellars’ terms, Hegel is debunking the “myth of the given” – the notion that we can have knowledge by just receiving sense data without prior concepts. In Sense-Certainty, no knowledge was possible without invoking universals; in Perception, those universals are explicitly at play. Moreover, the perceiver is performing what we’d call conceptual processing: distinguishing sensory modalities, using logical connectives , classifying something as “this kind of thing” vs “that kind”. Modern philosophers like John McDowell and Robert Brandom often point to Hegel to argue that our perceptual experience is always already within the “space of concepts,” not a raw datum . In Hegel’s text, when the observer says “This is white, cubical, tart,” he is applying general terms. And the drama comes from how those general terms relate within a conceptual scheme of an object. Hegel even plays on the German word Wahrnehmung to indicate an active taking that can go wrong . This foreshadows ideas in analytic epistemology that perception is a form of judgment or at least involves propositional content that can be correct or incorrect. Hegel’s analysis also relates to the contemporary debate on direct vs. indirect realism. Direct realists think we perceive objects and their properties directly. Indirect realists or representationalists argue we perceive them via representations or sense-data. Hegel’s perceiver started as a direct realist but ended up positing a kind of mediation . Hegel shows a trajectory where naive direct realism refutes itself and something akin to a representational theory emerges – but Hegel won’t stop there; eventually, he’ll dissolve the appearance/essence dualism at a higher level . In cognitive science terms, one could say Hegel anticipates the idea that what we “perceive” is theory-laden. The Perception chapter dramatizes how one’s theory of the object guides what one takes as veridical or erroneous. The perceiver kept adjusting the theory of the object to make sense of experience. This is very congenial to the view that observation is not purely passive but shaped by prior concepts and can be revised.

-Metaphysical Issues: Identity, Difference, and Relationality: Hegel’s handling of the one-and-many problem speaks to perennial metaphysical questions-What makes a thing the same through change?** and Is identity independent of difference? He shows that trying to have pure identity without difference fails – a view arguably harmonious with some strands of metaphysics that emphasize internal relations . This can be related to Spinoza’s claim that only the whole is self-caused, everything else is defined through others, or to modern ontologies where objects have no meaning outside a network . Hegel’s dialectic also implicitly touches on the problem of individuation: How do we individuate one object from another? He answers: only by difference which leads to contradiction if the object is just a support for those properties. It suggests a holistic view: objects are not absolutely individuated atoms – a hint toward the concept of an organic whole or system . In “Perception” we’re far from talk of Spirit, but the necessity of relating each element to others prefigures the social/holistic turn later .

-From Epistemology to Ontology: The journey in Perception is both about how we know an object and about what an object is. Hegel refuses to keep epistemology separate from ontology – each shapes the other in the phenomenological story. By the end of Perception, the very concept of what is “real” has shifted: it’s no longer the immediate thing but an abstract universal . This anticipates Hegel’s later absolute idealist claim that what is truly real is the Concept or Spirit. But at this stage, we can link it to scientific realism: the real is not the immediately given but something behind . So Hegel supports a kind of scientific realism over naive empiricism, but one that will ultimately morph into an absolute idealism .

-Historical Context – From Enlightenment to German Idealism: Hegel is writing after Kant, and also after Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling, who tried to resolve Kant’s dualisms. Hyppolite notes that Phenomenology’s dialectic retraces a path from a pre-critical naive view through increasingly Kantian insights toward an idealist resolution . Sense-Certainty corresponds to the simplest empiricism . Perception corresponds to the more sophisticated empiricism of a Locke or common-sense realism . The crisis of Perception echoes the crisis in the Enlightenment’s trust in empiricism that led to Kant’s critical philosophy – Kant realized you need categories for experience to be possible, much as Hegel’s consciousness realizes here it must bring in a notion of unity outside the object. The move to Understanding maps onto the Kantian level of understanding which uses categories to constitute experience of objects . But Hegel, unlike Kant, is showing this from the first-person developmental perspective, not presupposing the categories as given a priori.

In conclusion, Hegel’s “Perception” section serves as a microcosm of how any knower might evolve beyond simple empiricism to a more conceptually informed view of reality. It bridges early modern concerns about perception and objectivity with the emerging idealist notion that what we take to be “object” is a product of a conceptual mediation. It challenges us to reconsider what we perceive – is it a thing out there or the interplay of our concepts with sensory input? – and sets the stage for recognizing that knower and known are deeply intertwined. This insight will eventually flower in the idea that the truth is not a thing or an abstract force alone, but the entire process of knowing itself . For now, consciousness has learned that objectivity is not simplicity: the object is in truth an “appearance” of a deeper universal, and to know it, one must think – not just sense. This Hegelian lesson remains relevant to debates from how perception is theory-laden to the status of unobservable entities in science and the way language shapes our access to “the world.” The movement from Perception to Understanding is thus not only a moment in a two-century-old text, but an enactment of the perennial movement from experience to theory, from the seen to the unseen, which lies at the heart of philosophy and science alike.