Hegel’s Sense-Certainty 91

“Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately
appears as the richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge
of infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either
when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed,
or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into
it.”

Hegel describes the content of the experience of the pure knowledge of the object should be without altering or without allowing perception to interpret the meaning of the object, he calls it ‘Sense-Certainty’. this sense-certainty has richest knowledge and has no boundaries. it is beyond time and space, even if you take a part of it can still enrich the mind with beautiful experience. Hegel means this beautiful experience as ‘pure’.

“Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge;”

Hegel expresses his concept of Sense-Certainty is not only Rich but also Truest. The truest experience is more like you see a baby coming into the world. you see the baby first then you move on to see whether it is a boy or a girl. Before identifying the sex of the baby the presuppose event is the purest and the truest.

“Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge;
for it has not as yet omitted anything from the object,
but has ‘the object before it in its perfect entirety. But, in the
event, this very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and
poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows is just that
it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the
thing [Sache].”

The moment of experience is truest coz nothing added to the experience. It is pure coz it is pure ‘I’ and pure ‘thing’ in the experience. He calls the experience a ‘perfect entirety’. Then he also expresses the experience will never bring anything to the experiencer because it was more like an abstract and also not able to understand because nothing was added into the object in order for the thinking mind to understand. Hence it is the poorest truth to our understanding.

“Consciousness, for its part, is in this certainty only
as a pure’I’; or I am in it only as a pure ‘This” and the object
similarly only as a pure ‘This’,”

Hegel says the consciousness of the experience of certainty is pure ‘I’ and pure ‘this’.
Further the concept of ‘I’ can also be termed as ‘this’ and the object normally termed as ‘this’
In simple terms, our experience as ‘this’ instead of ‘I’ and also the visible of the object as ‘this’.

“I, this particular I, am certain
of this particular thing, not because I, qua consciousness, in
knowing it have developed myself or thought about it in various
ways; and also not because’ the thing of which I am certain, in
virtue of a host of distinct qualities, would be in its own self
a rich complex of connections, or related in various ways to
other things. Neither of these has anything to do with the truth
of sense-certainty:”

Hegel explains the pure ‘I’ and the pure ‘this’ i.e thing,
was certain to him not because his consciousness developed his own perception or connection to the object and also not because it possesses distinct qualities or connections to various things. The experience of sense-certainty was just pure ‘before any thought arises out of the experience of the object’.

“here neither I nor the thing has the significance
of a complex process of mediation; the’!, does not have
the significance of a manifold imagining or thinking; nor does
the ‘thing’ signifies something that has a host of qualities.”

What was beautiful is the pure experience coz there is no addition or subtraction to produce a beautiful experience to mind.
Hence the ‘I’ will not do anything significant like adding or subtracting in our experience and the ‘thing’ will not signify anything to the experiencer.
Both stand as ‘this’ to each other.

“On the contrary, the thing is, and it is, merely because it is. It is;
this is the essential point for sense-knowledge, and this pure
being, or this simple immediacy, constitutes its truth.”

The object stands as an object and nothing else. No addition to your ‘I’ was considered an important point in Sense-Certainty.

“Similarly, certainty as a connection is an immediate pure connection:
consciousness is ‘I’, nothing more, a pure ‘This’; the singular consciousness
knows a pure ‘This’, or the single item.”

Hegel reiterates, the certainty is nothing but an immediate pure connection i.e. more an enlightenment.
Where the dancer and the dancing merged, hence you only see the ‘the dance’ or
It is like an ‘experience’ where the experiencer and the experienced merged to be a single item.