ABSTRACT
Hegel announces in the introduction to his Science of Logic that the opposition of consciousness bars the way to philosophy and must be overcome (Hegel 1817: 45). This is because consciousness treats its mental content as an opposing objectivity from whose given material mind must fi ll itself in order to arrive at knowledge. If knowing is such as to always confront the given as the underlying standard of truth, it remains doubly conditioned. Such oppositional cognition is relative to the predetermined content that provides it with a determinate subject matter and it is relative to the method or thinking with which it addresses its topic. Since the subject matter is something given confronting knowing, it is di erent from the cognition employed in its investigation. Such investigation can never account for the knowing it uses, since it always addresses something distinct from how it knows. Accordingly, such investigation must presuppose both the given content of its subject matter and the method by which it is addressed. Philosophy can do neither without forsaking truth for opinion. Therefore, Hegel recognizes, philosophy must abandon confronting a given opposing its cognition and begin without any determinate claims about knowing and the object of knowing.
