it presents the transition from the finitude of consciousness to the infinity of spirit; and viewed in terms of the special problem of understanding, this section presents the transition from the negative determination of the thing in itself to its positive determination.
The task now is to follow the main steps and to go along with the movement in which understanding in its knowing relatedness to its object— coming from perception—sublates perception along with the sense certainty included in perception, in order to elevate itself and thus consciousness as a whole into the truth of consciousness, which is basically self-consciousness.
§11. The transition from consciousness to self-consciousness
a) Force and the play of forces: Being-for-itself in being-for-another
What is required now is to go along with the movement of understanding. What do we mean by this "going along"? We do not mean observing the procedures of something like the crude activity of understanding vis-à-vis an object as something roughly intuited. Rather, we mean following absolvently and intelligently the mutuality and multiplicity of the inner, essential relations of this mode of consciousness, which Hegel calls understanding, to the essence of what is known therein, and the other way around. Do we mean, consequently, "the dialectic of understanding"? Yes, but what does this dialectic mean? Should we now apply dialectic—the sequence of the three steps of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—to understanding? But how? What is understanding, and what is its relation to what is known in it like?
Certainly, "dialectic" is a magnificent thing. But one never finds the dialectic, as if it were a mill which exists somewhere and into which one empties whatever one chooses, or whose mechanism one could- modify according to taste and need. Dialectic stands and falls with the matter itself, just as Hegel took it up as the matter of philosophy. To speak more clearly, one cannot be enthusiastic about dialectic and involve oneself in the revival of Hegelian philosophy while at the same time pushing aside—with a wink of the eye and a pitiful smile—things like his Christianity, his Christology, and his doctrine of the Trinity. If one does this, then the whole of Hegelianism turns into a mendacious prattle; and Hegel himself becomes a ridiculous figure. In the present case, understanding is not our theme because we know something somehow about understanding and, in the dialectic, want to shuffle these known properties around and oppose them to one another. Rather, what understanding is is already determined in advance in the absolvent beginning and becomes visible through dialectic.
For Hegel the whole of knowledge—as every page of the Phenomenology