Abstract

This study focuses on self-consciousness and its role in the justification of knowledge. The first problem analyzed is a dilemma of justification confronting efforts to establish ontological principles. On the classical, objectivist account, the principles asserted to be true of being per se are not justified, while the transcendental approach is able to justify principles which govern knowledge, but is unable to demonstrate that these are true of being. The second concern is the Kantian thesis that self-consciousness is the ground of objective knowledge. I argue that the separation of the subject from being in itself also makes the theoretical explanation of the structure of self-consciousness impossible. ;The second and third chapters examine the treatment of these issues in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The focal point is Hegel's argument against the subject-object ontology. In the second chapter the concern is first, with the phenomenological alternative that Hegel proposes as a means of avoiding the problem of justification; and secondly, with the argument that the separation of subject and object characteristic of consciousness is untenable. The crucial claim analyzed here is that consciousness must become self-consciousness. The third chapter considers Hegel's effort to clarify the structure of self-consciousness. Particular attention is given to the paradoxes of conceiving self-consciousness on the model of reflection. This establishes the desideratum: a conception of self-consciousness able to account for the identity in difference of subject and object. ;In the fourth chapter I argue that the project of the Science of Logic is a reflexive consideration of thought by thought which shows that thought is able to comprehend being per se and thus to establish ontological principles, and how this is possible. In particular, I argue that the final book of the Logic develops an ontology of the subject qua thought able to account for the possibility of a form of self-consciousness which permits us to understand how ontology is possible. That is, Hegel's Logic explains ontology by explaining self-consciousness. I contend that this project constitutes one of the real contributions of Hegel's philosophy