Hegel's Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit brings up the idea of self-certainty and how this destructive and equally frustrating concept is a mere acceptance of ignorance and avoidance of absolute truth. It is a cycle that is both unending and tiresome as it continuously leaves the individual in a state of self-certainty and therefore ignorance. Hegel writes "The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account..." (P. of S. § 31). He goes on to describe that it is vital to not accept things as familiar and to instead use a different process of coming to understand. It is the process by which one analyses an idea by separating it into individual parts as they appear to consciousness. These individual thoughts/parts are in themselves identified as familiar, but by taking the idea and breaking it into 'non-actual' pieces is what allows what Hegel describes as an 'essential moment'. Hegel moves forward making the claim that, "The activity of dissolution is the power and work of the Understanding, the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power" (P. of S. § 32). It is possible that this interpretation of self-certainty and the necessity for further analysis is in correlation with Hegel's ideas on 'in itself' and 'for itself,' such that the individual is stuck in one's own consciousness 'for itself' and forgetting that the idea 'in itself' exists outside of ones consciousness. For example, my understanding is that when looking at a ball there are three different perspectives that are coexisting; the ball's existence outside of one's consciousness, the ball's existence as one's consciousness observes and interprets it, and finally the understanding that both are intertwined and connected to bring upon a deeper and possibly more 'True' understanding of such ball. To stay within the realms of self-certainty is to be stuck in a state of understanding the ball only by means of consciousness's creation of the ball, which would be to exclude another understanding of the ball. Hegel talks about how it is education's goal to strip away or break down these barriers of familiarity and certainty in order to introduce the different perspective of understanding an idea's existence outside of self-consciousness. He says that the goal of education is to free "determinate thoughts from their fixity so as to give actuality to the universal, and impart to it spiritual life" (P. of S § 33). It seems as if one of the important processes involved in coming to
'Understand' is to deteriorate the familiar and attempt to interpret and experience the phenomenological processes involved in the idea such that it exists 'in itself' as well as 'for itself.'
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. --G.W.F. Hegel
I think Will is onto something interesting here; so much of our lives are spent trying to convince ourselves that we are certain of something, certain of anything. When we come to deeply believe something, we tend to stick our belief, and to defend it right up until the point at which contrary evidence overwhelms it, and forces us to accept a new viewpoint. Other times, we take our experiences of ourselves, of others, and of surroundings for granted, accepting their meanings uncritically. It is only when we shed our sense of certainty that we can approach the world with new eyes, open to the myriad possibilities it may hold. Creativity is only found in certainty’s cracks. More importantly however, certainty almost always opens the door to judgment. When we see something’s meaning in only one dimension we are closed off to any possibilities. Seeing Will’s ball in only one dimension can be problematic for sure, but how much more so if the object we see one dimensionally happens to be a person. When we look on another person with absolute certainty in our full understanding of them, we close ourselves off to true interaction with them.
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