The Dialectical Movement of Consciousness ─ On the Reconciliation of Subject and Object in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

• Main Authors: Ya-Ping Lin, 林雅萍
• Other Authors: Tran Van Doan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62555251902306349938

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 哲學研究所 === 90 === This thesis studies the reconciliation (Versöhnung) of Subject and Object in Hegel’s philosophy. Based primarily on Phenomenology of Spirit, I attempt to explicate how Hegel overcomes the dichotomies and oppositions between subject and object, and arrives at a synthetic unity. The thesis considers this issue with a historical as well as a systematic analysis. The subject-object dualism in Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophy is firstly discussed in the second chapter, in which I try to point out that how the opposition between knowing subject and objective world is to be sharpened after Descartes dichotomized mind and matter as two heterogeneous substances. The second concern is the Schelling’s absolute identity, in which all the differences and oppositions are cancelled and it fails to develop concrete contents, and is hence unscientific. In this light, I argue that there is a correlation between the theory of subjectivity and subject-object relation, and thereby only when an adequate theory of subjectivity is established could the philosophical problem of subject-object dichotomy be solved. The following two chapters examine the treatment of these issues in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In the third chapter, I attempt to interpret and define Hegel’s notion of subject as a self-developing movement of the Absolute, in which the absolute subject departs from the original unity and then returns to itself, i.e. a higher unity containing differences and oppositions. Such is the dialectical process of Spirit, which is an endless activity of self-realization of spiritual life. The objective world is nothing but the product of absolute subject’s self-development, and the separation between subject and object is thus overcome and reconciled in the process of Spirit’s self-knowing, i.e. Spirit’s becoming from substance to subject. The Phenomenology of Spirit intends to describe this Spirit’s self-developing process, and present the Spirit’s appearances in forms of consciousness. Consciousness contains two moments of the knowing and the known; therefore it is itself the contradiction of subject and object. In the fourth chapter, I try to indicate that consciousness is not only the contradiction but also its reconciliation. Because the disparity between knowing and the known which exists in consciousness inspires consciousness’s self-movement towards whose next new form, and the subject and object as two moments of consciousness are reconciled in this movement. This self-developing movement of consciousness is named by Hegel experience, i.e. the dialectical movement of consciousness. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn that, the contradiction between subject and object is reconciled in the dialectical movement of consciousness.