Comments on §82-84, On the Criterion in the Exercise of Science
If, as argued in §81, science is not furnished with a criterion by which to measure its success, how can this success be sought? Evidently such a criterion in knowledge is the truth, or the nature of things as they are in themselves. Yet we are following Hegel here in a particular kind of inquiry which is concerned with the nature of knowledge just as it is for we knowers. Ought we perhaps to say that there is, in the context of this particular inquiry, no hard problem of truth: that since our very object is knowledge for us, the very truth of this object is then its truth for us, and there remains no occult in itself which escapes our grasp? (§83) Yet the distinction between the for us and the in itself of knowledge is a distinction posited in and by the consciousness of knowledge which distinguishes these two moments within the overall nature of its knowing. (§82) If the in itself is then our criterion, it is a criterion which presents itself even so within the moments constituting our consciousness of knowledge. This criterion then neither escapes the nature of our knowing, nor is present to it at the outset, nor again must be provided by some external virtue, but rather arises out of the activity of consciousness and is present for it. (§84)