Francis Berenson begins by praising Hegel’s ability to deeply understand the knowledge of mind in many regards. However, he is in disagreement with Hegel on several points. He uses an excerpt from Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind to give some background information on the subject matter as well as to draw points from to use for his argument. Contained in this information is the concept that our self-knowledge is attained by observing the responses of others to ourselves. In other words, because we live in a world with many people, and how they interact with us gives us more insight about one’s self than a simple self-reflection.
He continues by extracting Hegel’s concept that the mind reaches a point where it represents its thoughts in words, and can essentially speak their thoughts with minimal effort. This process is referred to as assimilation. Berenson’s first main argument is that Hegel is wrong by asserting that no validity can be asserted to knowledge until the assimilation stage. This is because in earlier writing Hegel states that the stage that precedes assimilation consists of objectivity which is impossible due to the inability to have true knowledge before the assimilation phase.
Additionally, Berenson points out that Hegel’s argument regarding reality is ambiguous because he never properly distinguishes the difference between reality and what an object means to us once we have a concept and experience of it. Berenson also touches upon Hegel’s conflict dealing with self-consciousness and self-knowledge being identical. Hegel repeatedly claims that consciousness includes the reality of the Other, and wishes this consciousness to be seen as knowledge. Therefore, the logic for equating the understanding another’s reality to be self-consciousness and self-knowledge simply are not supported in Hegel’s example of Master-Slave dialectic.
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