Hegel`s Phenomenology of Spirit and the Problem of the Kantian Thing-in-itself

Alikhani Dehaqi, Afshin; Meshkat, Mohammad; Safian, Mohammad Javad

doi:10.22059/jop.2024.373761.1006825

Hegel`s Phenomenology of Spirit and the Problem of the Kantian Thing-in-itself

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Afshin Alikhani Dehaqi ¹

Mohammad Meshkat ²

Mohammad Javad Safian ²

¹ Ph.D. Candidate of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Isfahan, Iran.

² Associate Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Isfahan, Iran.

10.22059/jop.2024.373761.1006825

Abstract

The concept of the thing in itself in Kant's philosophy is the element which deprives us of knowing the thing as it is in itself. Hegel, who believed that knowledge is limited by nothing but itself, had to eliminate the thing in itself in his Absolute Idealism and in this way make his concept of Knowledge absolute. Many scholars believe that he did so in the first part of his Phenomenology of Spirit, titled 'Consciousness'. In this paper, in contrast to other studies which are concerned with Hegel's external critique of this concept and what he has said about it here or there in his System of philosophy, we'll examine his internal encounter with the Thing in Itself as it is occurred in the first chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In doing so, we will try to show why he believed that, if we pursue the process of sublating the shapes of consciousness into one another, there won't be anything like the Thing in Itself. Then We will attempt to explain why his efforts are futile and why, even in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the thing in itself exists exactly in the sense that Kant meant by the term.

Keywords

thing in itself

sense certainty

perception

understanding

consciousness

ontology

the Absolute

Subjects

philosophy

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