Hi Maude,

Here's the digested version of the lengthy and mangled version below:

I understand Paragraph 188 as showing the initial result of the fight to the death between the two consciousnesses. The both have to differentiate themselves from life (objective reality), and as such they risk their lives in a struggle to the death:

"This trial by death, however, cancels both the truth which was to result from it, and therewith the certainty of self altogether. For just as life is the natural "position" of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural "negation" of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition."

So the result of the struggle turns out to be negation without independence, i.e. without an objective being distinct from the rest of life - and as both are killed off there can be no recognition. Death demonstrates that the two consciousnesses are distinguished from life - but for the two that experienced this struggle this isn't much use, as they've cancelled themselves out.

"Through death, doubtless, there has arisen the certainty that both did stake their life, and held it lightly both in their own case and in the case of the other; but that is not for those who underwent this struggle. They cancel their consciousness which had its place in this alien element of natural existence; in other words, they cancel themselves and are sublated as terms or extremes seeking to have existence on their own account. But along with this there vanishes from the play of change the essential moment, viz. that of breaking up into extremes with opposite characteristics; and the middle term collapses into a lifeless unity which is broken up into lifeless extremes, merely existent and not opposed. And the two do not mutually give and receive one another back from each other through consciousness; they let one another go quite indifferently, like things."

The flux of recognition between the two (in which both served as the middle term for the other in the process of recognising itself in the other) disapears, and we end up with a lifelesss unity in which both are dead, no longer consciousness - just things.

"Their act is abstract negation, not the negation characteristic of consciousness, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated."

So this negation has ended up in a dead-end (pardon the pun), and it is in that respect that this negation is not the negation characteristic of conscoiusness. It is itself a contradiction that consciousness needs to get past - and it does so in the lord and bondsman relationship, in which neither are allowed to die, and take on different roles in differentiating themselves from objective being. This is introduced in paragraph 189.

The tattered remains of the group (Scott, Maude and myself) met at Maude's last night - but rather than wading our way through Perception as perhaps we should have done, Maude and I had an argument (in a good way, I hope) about one of the passages in Lordship and Bondage. This was more or less resolved at the time - if only so that I could get on a train - but I'm sure there's more to say. Pehaps the conversation can continue, as it was an interesting one and I was enjoying it

The bone of contention was the last sentence of paragraph 188, below (this is a copy of the Bailey translation, free on marxists.org, not the Miller one that we've been using - but the wording is essentially the same):

Φ 188. This trial by death, however, cancels both the truth which was to result from it, and therewith the certainty of self altogether. For just as life is the natural “position” of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural “negation” of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition. Through death, doubtless, there has arisen the certainty that both did stake their life, and held it lightly both in their own case and in the case of the other; but that is not for those who underwent this struggle. They cancel their consciousness which had its place in this alien element of natural existence; in other words, they cancel themselves and are sublated as terms or extremes seeking to have existence on their own account. But along with this there vanishes from the play of change the essential moment, viz. that of breaking up into extremes with opposite characteristics; and the middle term collapses into a lifeless unity which is broken up into lifeless extremes, merely existent and not opposed. And the two do not mutually give and receive one another back from each other through consciousness; they let one another go quite indifferently, like things. Their act is abstract negation, not the negation characteristic of consciousness, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated.

Now, as I understood it at the time, Maude's argument (and I apologise if I misrepresent it) was based on Hegel's statement that the negation that takes place here is "abstract negation", and "not the negation characteristic of consciousness." Maude's claim (and again, If I misrepresent this I'm sorry) is that negations take place in the Phenomenology that are not sublations ("they are not characteristic of consciousness").

I think she's right - but only in so far as these negations are mistakes, contradictions, fuck ups in the dialectic which immediately require a new stage, and are thus sublated. The stage that supersedes them is directly informed by and results from this error, and on this basis I disagree that they fall outside the movement of Spirit.

My understanding of this passage is that it is at this point in the narrative that the two consciousnesses have engaged in the struggle to the death, in order to prove their distinction from Life (the objective world). Each consciousness wants to supersede the other, to use the other as its means of being self consciousness ("it must supersede the other independent being in order thereby to become certain of itself as the essential being; secondly, in so doing it proceeds to supersede its own self, for this other is itself" p.111) and as such they enter in to a struggle to the death.

But in the passage in question we see the immediate result of this struggle, in which on the one hand consciousness becomes negation (death, distinction from the objective world of life) and is thus shown to be consciousness, but has no independence (its fucking dead), whilst on the other consciousness as survivor becomes indistinguishable from life. Consciousness no longer has a consciousness to recognise. My claim is that this a contradiction which is then resolved into the relationship of lord and bondsman (where the loser in the struggle, instead of being killed off, is preserved as bondsman), which arises in the following passage (189, p.115).

In order to develop this claim, we might look back to a moment in The Truth of Self Certainty which echoes this movement. At that point in the text we see something very similar happening:

In The Truth of Self Certainty consciousness becomes desire ("self-consciousness is desire in general," p.105), and desires the object (which here becomes 'life': "the object has become life", p.106) - for it is through negating the object (consuming it, doing away with it) that it becomes self-consciousness. But if consciousness negates the object it will no longer have anything to bring it to self consciousness. The object which it wants to do away with is essential to its negating activity, and if the object has been done away with, this activity won't be possible. In this respect consciousness learns that the object must have independence. "...self certainty comes from superseding this other: in order that this supersession can take place, there must be this other. Thus self consciousness, by its negative relation to the object, is unable to supersede it; it is really because of that relation that it produces the object again, and the desire as well." (p.109).

Because of this contradiction the dialectic moves forward - we now come to realise that the object which provides desire with satisfaction (i.e. consciousness becoming self-consciousness) must be independent, and must negate itself ("On account of this independence of the object, therefore, it can achieve satisfaction only when the object itself effects the negation within itself; and it must carry out this negation of itself in itself, for it is in itself the negative, and must be for the other what it is." p.109) The object thus becomes another consciousness, and we now have two consciousnesses in relation with one another: "A self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness. Only so is it in fact self-conscoiusness; for only in this way does the unity of itself in its otherness become explicit for it." (p.110)


So conscciousness learns here that it can't negate the object completely. Doing so results in a contradiction - and the result is that the dialectic moves forwards, and we end up with two conscoiusnesses rather than a consciousness and an object. On the basis of this inadequacy we move forwards, and in this respect the contradiction has been sublated into the next stage.

With this in mind - if we now go back to the passage from Lordship and Bondage, I think we can see something similar happening with the immediate result of the life and death struggle between the two consciousnesses.

Now, death is shown to be the negation of consciousness, but a negation without independence, "which thus remains without the required significance of recognition...Death certainly shows that each staked his life and held it of no account, both in himself and in the other; but that is not for those who survived this struggle."

So he's talking about victors and vanquished here - and he's talking about both as plurals. Both are killed off, both survive. This stems from the claims made on p.112, paragraph 182 (and throughout this section):

"Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same. Action by one side would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both"

Each seeks the death of the other. Each seeks their own perpetuation. Because what is happening to one is happening to both, we have a sense in the struggle to the death that both lose their connection to life, and yet both survive. He's also stressing in this passage that life is indepndence without negativity, whilst death is negativity without independence ("For just as life is the natural setting of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence..." p.114).

So, with death the two consciousnesses are shown to be consciousness, but no longer have independent existance (i.e. they're fucking dead); with life, i.e. survival, those that live no longer have negativity, i.e. they can no longer be classed as consciousness, and can no longer be distinguished from life (the objective world). As such they become "like things".

So again, just as was the case in The Truth of Self Certainty, we've reached a contradiction. Just like when desire did away with the object, which then had to change into a consciousness, we now have a contradiction in that the two consciousnesses cannot do away with each other. We've ended up with "an abstract negation, not the negation coming from consciousness, which supersedes in such a way as to preserve what is superseded, and consequently survives its own supersession." In other words, the negation that we've just enacted (killing off consciousness) hasn't worked, and has demonstrated itself to be inadequate. We now need to move forwards, and that's precisely what happens next:

"In this experience, self-consciousness learns that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness."(paragraph 189, p.115). Consciousness has learned that self consciousness cannot be distinguished absolutely from life - doing so ends up with an 'abstract negation,' a dead end. In learning this, it sublates this contradiction into a new form: the relationship of lord and bondsman. The victor does not kill the vanquished, but keeps him in a subordinate role.


SO: after that long, tedious explanation - I don't see why this isn't an example of sublation. we reach a contradiction in paragraph 188, in that the negation that consciousness undertook turns out to be flawed. This is then remedied in 189, and in this respect the error is sublated into a new form.


Have a good weekend,

Tom

Force and the Understanding Summary

I've changed this as I was hopelessly wrong, and feel duly ashamed




The universal that consciousness starts off by looking at is a construct of consciousness. In Sense Certainty he describes a universal as follows: "A simple entity of this sort, which is by and through negation, which is neither this nor that, which is a not-this, and with equal indifference this as well as that — a thing of this kind we call a Universal." The universal is a product of consciousness' interaction with the object, a union of object and consciousness, and as such when consciousness takes the universal as its object it is looking at an object which comprises its own relationship with objectivity.

When we start the book looking at particulars (the tree at night, the house at day) and end up learning that the truth of any one particular is the universal - i.e. I can only know this particular thing by knowing it as a particular moment within a plurality of moments. It seems from this that the true 'essence' of particularity is universality. But this means that we have a conditional universality, a universality that is derived from and hence 'burdened' with sensual objectivity. In Perception this is addressed, and we end up looking at the relationship between universality and particularity. In so doing we resolves this conditional relationship; universality is not the essential part of the relationship between universality and particularity, rather both are equally essential to the other. Everything is in so far as it is for another; the essential truth of the particular object is not particular to it, but ris ather its existance within the universal, whilst the essential truth of the universal is that it comprises particularity.

So when we start Force and the Understanding we have this 'unconditioned' universality as our object; and although this object is in fact a construct of consciousness, consciousness is not aware of this as its been looking at objectivity throughout, and considers the 'answer' its ended up with to also be an object. In this universal it sees the movement between particularity and universality, which Hegel calls force. So force must therefore essentially be the movement of consciousness as it constitutes this universal - and not an objective, real, substantial force that constitutes objective, real, substantial being which is how I'd first understood this. As I now understand it, force is consciousness itself as the object of the Understanding (although the understanding doesn't know this).

When force is first introduced its a differentiation between universality and particularity that only exists in the Understanding, as we've already established that these are differences that are really no differences at all. Force is only implicitly a Notion, is only within the understanding, and as such is a Notion that has not been actualised. However, we've established that the truth of the unconditioned universal is that what something is for another it also is in itself - and as such these distinctions must be real and present within the unconditioned universal. We start off saying that the unconditioned universal is itself force, and that the particularities within this universal are force expressed. The movement of force is then resolved into the reciprocal relationship between two forces - and this is then resolved into a second universal, which is the Notion, the thought of the unity of these two forces. This becomes the inner world.

So there's a sense in which this section of the text follows the movement of the Notion (of which I have only a rudimentary understanding) - a blank, imediate universality (the unconditioned universal); particular moments (the two forces); particular moments within a mediated universality (force as an actualised). The inner world - which at this stage is noumenal - is implicitly the Notion, and is essentially the movement of consciousness in its interaction with the objective world.

The chapter then goes on to describe how this inner world is populated by laws, how these laws condense into an overall Law, and how the distinction between the Law and law is really no difference at all. In explaining the world we put forward accounts of the difference between the particular and the universal (a lightning strike and electricity, for example), but in so doing also say that there is no distinction between the universal and the particular (the lightning strike is electricity). So in putting forward these explanations we are implicitly describing consciousness in its interaction with the objective world; we are describing a relationship between universality and particularity, a relationship between the positive (particularity, objective being) and the negative (universality, consciousness).

Having understood that the truth of the inner world is a difference that is really no difference at all, the inner world becomes the inverted world; the truth of every thing is that it is in opposition to itself, and from this we end up with the concept of infinity - every unity is an opposition, and every opposition is a unity. Infinity now becomes the object of consciousness.

Although infinity is the movement of consciousness, and its essential truth, consciousness doesn't know this yet - it still takes it as an object. However, when consciousness comes to take infinity as its object, it knows this object - and the nature of it (infinity) is such that it knows that the difference between itself and its object is really no difference at all. We, as observers, have known that infinity is in fact the real nature of consciousness; but now that consciosuness does away with the distinction between itself and infinity it knows itself in its object. consequently, it differentiates itself from itself, whilst understanding that this distinction is really no distinction at all, and is therefore self-consciousness.

Summary of the first few chapters

I love my job and I work really hard when I'm in the office, so one particularly boring day I wrote this summary of the first few chapters of the Phenomenology whilst pretending to write e-mails. I've just read it through and played around with it a little, and I'm posting it here as I thought it may be useful to others - and as it would certainly be useful for me if other people pick holes in it and point out where I'm wrong. It's more a summary of what Hegel says than an explanation, but as I struggle to figure out wuite what it is he's saying most of the time, let alone understand it, I thought a summary may be worthwhile.

...but as it was written pretty much from memory, between faxes, e-mails and futile attempts to look busy, it probably misses lots out. If you spot important things that I've missed please let me know.

Sense Certainty

We start off with Sense Certainty. This is the simplest, barest form of consciousness possible, althought it is often (Hegel tells us) mistaken for being the truest and richest. With sense certainty the object is the true, and I am certain of its truth. The object is a 'This', and I, as a simple ego certain of it in only an immediate (i.e. unmediated) way, am also a 'This'. But the two 'Thises', consciousness and the object, are in fact found to be in a mediated relationship with each other, and this can be seen in that the object must be understood as a particular moment within a unity of other moments. Hegel explains this in terms of time and space:

This is introduced by way of the concept of 'Now': now is night - but if we look again a little later, now turns out to be day. However, this doesn't mean that the now that was night is untrue; it has being, but a being that has passed, that is not this particular present now. As a result, the truth of 'Now' is revealed as follows: in order to know a particular now we must undertstand it as a particular point within a continuum of 'now's. This particular now, the now that we percieve, is as such for the consciousness that percieves it - and therefore this union of consciousness and the particular point in time is a definite moment amongst other such moments.

The same is the case with the concept of 'Here'. I look at a house, and the house is here; but if I turn around, I look at a tree, and the tree is here. In the same way as the now, the here is a particular point within a universal. Hegel then expands this, and shows that what might be true as a here and now for my particular consciousness is not necessarily that which is true for another observing subject: where I percieve a tree at night, he/she may percieve a house during the day. And this is the crucial bit: we must presume that the objects of the world are always in a unity with consciousness. For in order to know this particular now, this particular here, I must take all possible nows and heres as a universal, and distinguish this particular point amongst them. Therefore it is inadmissable for Hegel to claim that all of the above is merely contingent on consciousness's presence in relation to the object - that all of the above only takes place when consciousness happens to look at that object. The nature of the above is that consciousness is always tied to the objective world, and vice versa.

(I stress that last aspect as I had a hell of a time with some of the later chapters until I went back and re-read this chapter. I could follow the movement of the argument, but I couldn't get past the fact that the movement between consciousness and object and the revelations as to the object's nature seemed to be entirely contingent on the fact that consciousness was looking at the object - which therefore introduced a noumenal aspect into the proceedings, i.e. what is the object like if I'm not looking at it. It's therefore important to note that consciousness is always looking at an object.)

So the conclusion of Sense Certainty is that consciousness and the object exist in a unity. Any moment of particularity within that unity is, in fact, a universality. It therefore seems that we've reached a dead end, as we've resolved everything into a universal.

But as Hegel points out, consciousness is led out of this impasse as it wants to know the object in question beyond this flat universality. We now start to look at the object itself, and this takes place in the second chapter, entitled Perception.


Perception

When we look at the object we see it in two senses: firstly as a One, as a discrete object, and secondly as the subsistance of various properties within a universal (i.e. the object is either taken to be an object in its own right, in which case the different properties are a manifold and operate as a single property, or the object is simply a medium in which these differentiated properties exist).

The dual aspects of the object's existance as a One and as a plurality of properties stand in opposition to each other. The process by which consciousness deals with this is as follows: it identifies that the thing is not just a One, but also a plurality of properties. It then identifies that each property is indifferent to each other, each has no connection with the other beyond the fact that they exist within the medium of 'thingness' (i.e. the object). The object's claim to unity then dissolves, and as such consciousness finds itself looking only at the properties themselves. the properties become mere objects for the senses, and consciousness therefore finds itself returned to the very beginning of Sense Certainty (it's just sensing discrete objects again, rather than percieving their qualities)..

So consciousness loops back and goes through the dialectic of sense certainty again. In so doing it is returned to the issues of Perception armed with the knowledge that the error (that which had sent it back to the beginning again) lies within it, rather than within the object (it's process of deduction ended up dissolving the object altogether). As a result, consciousness concludes that it must itself unite the properties as a One, that it must hold the properties together and focus them as an object. For example, the computer screen is translucent and also convex, also smooth, also illuminated etc. These properties are in danger of drifting off altogether, as they seem to be indifferent to each other. But consciousness, in its attempt to hold the properties together, now states that the computer monitor is both translucent and convex - but in so far as it is not translucent it is not smooth, and in so far as it is smooth it is not illuminated. This 'in so far as' is a construction of consciousness, which holds the diverse properties together in a One.
We therefore have a sense in which consciousness serves as a focal point for the diverse properties of the thing.

But these properties are properties of a thing, and are determinate - they come from the object in question, and as such it must be the object that is holding the properties together. It must therefore be the case that the object is the focal point, and the diverse properties subsist in the senses of the observing subject. Where consciousness was the particular point, focussing the plurality of the properties, now the object becomes the focal point.

Hegel now applies the terms 'in itself' and 'for itself.' In so doing, he points out that if the object is a focal point (the particular moment) whilst consciousness contains the properties (which are universal and indifferent to one another within consciousness), the object would be IN itself (as a One) and FOR another (for the observing consciousness as a diversity of properties). Therefore, the object would seem to have two aspects - the one that it has in itself, and the other that it presents to the observing consciousness.

...but as Hegel points out, this means that we're now really talking about two objects - and we know from previous experience that the truth of the object is as a One. The object's twofold existance is therefore a contradiction of its Oneness.

In order to solve this problem, consciousness posits that this twofold existance is now shared between two objects. This means that the properties of the object are taken as a manifold, and that this manifold is contrasted with the manifold properties of another object. The properties are held together as an 'in so far as' (i.e. as a one), in relation to another 'in so far as.' For example, the computer monitor is distinct from the mug; it is convex, smooth and illuminated, and these properties characterise the object in so far as they are distinct from the properties of the mug. The object retains a diversity of properties but is also able to exist as a One.

But this doesn't work. Consciousness realises that what becomes important is the distinction between two manifold sets of properties, and as such each manifold blurs into a single property. Each object becomes, in effect, a single property - and this means that the diversity of the properties is lost.

However, we're not sent back to the beginning again as consciousness has realised that the object's existance as a One must fall outside of that object. It now comes to the conclusion that the object is for itself only in so far as it is for another - and that it is for another only in so far as it is for itself:

"...the last qualifying "in-so-far", which separated self-existence and existence for another, drops away altogether. The object is really in one and the same respect the opposite of itself - for itself "so far as" it is for another, and for another "so far as" it is for itself. It is for itself, reflected into self, one; but all this is asserted along with its opposite, with its being for another, and for that reason is asserted merely to be superseded. In other words, this existence for itself is as much unessential as that which alone was meant to be unessential, viz. the relation to another."

So where it might have been thought that the object was the essential thing and the observing consciousness inessential (i.e. the object exists perfectly well without an observing consciousness), we now find that this independent existance is just as inessential. Both presuppose the other. The object's existance as a One is contingent upon its existance for another, and vice versa. Consciousness and object exist only so far as they exist in a relationship with each other - a relationship in which the particularity of each is reliant upon its diremption into its opposite. Both exist only so far as they exist for the other, and this realisation is what Hegel calls the 'unconditioned universal.' With this the chapter on Perception is concluded.


Force and the Understanding

We now get to Force. We've seen that this unconditioned universal is characterised by a movement between particularity and universality; each moment of particularity (i.e. space and time, the properties of the object) exist only in so far as it takes place within a universality of other moments. Likewise, the universal exists only in so far as it is focussed into the particular. There seems to be a constant pulsing between the two conditions of universality and particularity - but it is also recognised that the two states exist simultaneously.

Consciousness describes this movement as Force. It thinks this as a Notion, as an idea existing only within the Understanding of this condition (that of unconditioned universality). Force therefore exists at the moment only as its own Notion - it is not yet real.

BUT - everything that exists does so only in so far as it has its being in its opposite (something is for itself only in so far as it is for another). By this logic, it is recognised that Force must be a real phenomena. Force is now taken to be the real force that governs the movement between particularity and universality; therefore it is not something existing solely within consciousness, but rather is a real force that governs the unity of consciousness and its objects. My perception of the computer monitor is force expressed (as particularity); the existance of this moment within universality is force as such, i.e. force retracted. Force is recognised to be the reality of the unconditioned universal itself.

It is then recognised that the force expressed exists only in so far as force as such exists. It seems that both are seperate elements in a reciprocal relationship with each other. From this it is posited that what we really have are two separate forces, rather than the one single force which we first assumed.

The apparent opposition between these two forces is sublated via the concept of Law. The expression and retraction of the two forces is said to be itself the expression of an inner law of things, a law that lies behind the appearances of sensible reality (remembering that with the movement of force we are looking at the perceptible world). It would now seem that we have a noumenal world of laws behind the phenomenal world of appearances, as if this is something that lies behind appearances we don't know what it is. All we have is the phenomenal expression of this inner world. But by the same logic that we have seen throughout - something is for itself only in so far as it is for another - we recognise that the inner world is not independent; it is the inner world of appearances, and Hegel thus describes it as appearance qua appearance. It therefore becomes populated by the particular laws that govern the particular manifestations of appearance (gravity, electricity, chemistry etc.).

But this isn't enough; we now have a diversity of laws within the inner world, and this constitutes a plurality of disconnected particulars. To solve this, their sublation into one overall Law is posited, and law thus gives way to the Notion of law. The diverse laws become the manifestations of the particular Law - and in this we can see that we have something analogous to the movement of force operating within the inner world. The particular laws are only in so far as they are the expressions of the one Law; and the one Law is only in so far as it is expressed in the particular laws (we saw in the movement of force that force expressed, i.e. particularity, is only in so far as it is also force as such, i.e. univerality).

...here it gets really wierd, as the inner world is now considered to be the opposite of the real substantial world. That which is sweet in the substantial world has its being, is defined (i.e. is sensible and comprehensible only in so far as) as such as it is sour in the inner world. What is good in the substantial world is bad in the inner world, and so on. The inner world is the opposite to the substantial world, and gives the sensible world meaning. The inner world is this the inversion of the world of appearances.

But just as the object was the opposite to consciousness and also a unity with consciousness, so too is the inverted world a unity with the world of appearances. It is recognised that sour objects exist alongside sweet ones in the sensible world, and it is recognised that all the aspects of the inner world are in fact sensible - and as such the inverted world sublates the sensible world, and the two are united. We now find that the law governing everything that exists within the unity of consciousness and the objective (i.e. within the unconditioned universal with which we started this section) is that everything splits and changes into its opposite - and that which is opposite is reunited back into an identity. The pulsing between universality and particularlity that we identified within sense certainty, perception and the movement of force has its truth in this: everything that is identical splits into its opposite, and everything that is opposite is reunited into an identity.

Consciousness therefore recognises that it itself is also subject to this law, and that it exists in a state of simultaneous identity and difference with materiality. As such, it becomes self consciousness, as when it looks at the objective world it sees itself. Where we had consciousness peering through appearance into the inner truth of the world, we now find that the inner world and consciousness are in a state of identity. Their mediation by appearance thus falls away, and we have the emergence of Spirit.

Next reading group date

As a provisional suggestion - would those who want to take part in this group be able to meet up on Monday the 17th July? Say...6 o clock in one of the pubs?

Maude has suggested trying to meet up weekly, so as to try and get through the book a little more quickly - I'd like to give this a go and see if it works out, but due to the fact that we've all got other commitments (and the sheer density of the text) it might not be suitable. If anyone thinks meeting weekly is a bad idea, please say so.

I missed the last reading group session, but unless you did two sessions on Sense Certainty the group would have been looking at the chapter on Perception. This means that the next one will be Force and the Understanding - but if I'm wrong, or if people want to look at the Perception chapter again, then we can do.

Owl of Minerva refusing to take flight

Hi all, and cheers to Jeff for sorting this out

I don't think the reading group ever got any further than chapter on Perception, so this may be asking a bit too much - but does any one have any comments to offer on the transition from consciousness/object to Desire/Life? I thought I'd got it sorted, but was looking over it again the other day and realised that I hadn't

Also - I'm busy battling it out with the Unhappy Consciousness at the moment (sounds like i should be whining in a cafe about existential angst), so if anyone has any sage words of wisdom to offer (I've just got to the bit where he talks about Unhappy Consciousness emerging from scepticism) it would be much appreciated.

cheers

Welcome

Welcome