self-knowing of spirit, i.e., absolute metaphysics. The Phenomenology of Spirit by no means begins with “sense certainty” out of pedagogical consideration for the human being, in order to initiate the course with the shape of consciousness that is the most likely to be understood by the human being. The first shape of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit—sense certainty—is as far as our ability to understand is concerned in fact the most difficult one to understand, because in it the absolute must already be thought, albeit in its poverty and untruth (its not yet consummated truth). The course of the Phenomenology of Spirit is as it is not for our sake but for the sake of the absolute, and only for its sake. And how could it be otherwise if the cognition of the absolute is the ray by which the absolute touches us so that we think according to its will and not according to ours, provided that we think!
When we look closely at what Hegel calls the “reversal of consciousness,” we see that it contains a double reversal: on the one hand, the turning of the object into its objectness that belongs to the essence of the transcendental in general; on the other, the turnabout into the externalization that is necessarily demanded by the unconditionedness and the systematics of absolute transcendental consciousness. This turnabout, as the turning away that is turned to the unconditioned, first opens up the course of the return. But according to Hegel’s proposition, quoted earlier, this intrinsically twofold “reversal of consciousness,” the transcendental turning and the absolute turnabout into the externalization, is “our contribution.” As such it seems to disturb the “pure looking on,” if not to destroy it. However, the opposite is the case. For it is only when the view upon the absolute and down the way of the return to it has been opened and paved by the double reversal that it is possible for the “new true object” to show itself on this open way. It is only this contribution [Zu-tat] of the reversal that gives the looking on the opportunity of a sight [Sicht] and a view [Ansicht]. But in other instances as well the “pure looking on” is never a mere passive receiving. Every looking-on is in itself a pursuit that goes along with; it is the casting of a glance that requires in advance a passageway that has been opened up. Moreover, the omission and non- application of our “mere ideas” is not nothing. The omission does not happen on its own. The ability to omit what is unsuitable is essentially determined by the constant prior involvement with the new true object and its unconditioned truth as the appearing criterion itself.
The purity of the pure looking on consists in no way of a divestment of all doing, but rather of the highest enactment of the deed that is an essential necessity for this looking and its possibility. That which this deed adds here is the looking ahead upon the unconditioned. The looking