Idealistic Studies

Volume 35, Issue 2/3, Summer/Fall 2005

Hegel’s Real Issue
Judgment, Truth, and the Phenomenological Project

This paper traces Hegel’s conception of consciousness back to Hölderlin and argues accordingly that the structure of judging, which Hegel links to an attitude of knowing, determines the standpoint of consciousness to be overcome through the Phenomenology of Spirit. Taking Hegel’s texts into consideration comprehensively, it is then argued that a shape of consciousness is concerned with advancing its own nominal definition of the concept “Truth,” which is a concept reflecting a culture’s way to organize its life. The Phenomenology, accordingly, should be understood as an enterprise demonstrating that, though advancing their own definitions, shapes of consciousness nonetheless participate in the development of one single concept of the Truth.