Natural consciousness and the problem of the subject of experience in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

The article examines the problem of the structure of the subject of “experience of consciousness” in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”. The author analyzes the relationship between “natural consciousness” (the “living” consciousness of an individual) that performs random experiences and the transcendental subject. In the structure of the transcendental subject there is the fundamental difference between “observing consciousness”, which Hegel designates as “we”, and consciousness as the subject of consideration. Although in the experience of “Sense-certainty” natural consciousness discovers the universal, and not the individual, which it held on, as its truth, it continues to be a necessary participant of experience. At each step of experience, the phenomenologist is identified with “observing consciousness”, while the changing content of natural consciousness acts as a subject of consideration. The movement of experience is guided by the “observing consciousness”, which sees not only the content of natural consciousness, but also the process of the emergence of its objectivity. The natural consciousness perceives this path as the path of “losing oneself”, although in reality it is also the path of its “cultural development”. The life of natural consciousness forms the “texture of history” as a prerequisite for the formation of the self-consciousness of Spirit. The unity of natural consciousness and the transcendental subject is restored in Absolute knowledge. The historical existence of Spirit in time coincides with its comprehension in the “scientific process”. The conceptually grasped history becomes the starting point of speculative philosophy, and the achievement of this outcome is possible only as a result of the interaction of natural consciousness and the transcendental subject. In “Preface” Hegel returns to this topic in the context of demonstration that concept is an adequate form of philosophical knowledge, since the rational and discursive nature of philosophy corresponds to the historical dynamics of phenomenological experience. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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