Knowledge in Hegel's early works

Fabio Dasilva
1974 Social Thought and Research  
Most contemporary work in the realm of the sociology of knowledge, it is here contended, has focused primarily on objectified forms and on the analysis of their relationships. In so doing they have evaded the real dynamics of knowledge and the links thereof between objectified knowledge and epistemology. Recent work, such as that by Berger and Luckmann, presents a more comprehensive approach. Nevertheless, an examination of Hegel's early theological writings reveals in more detail the
more » ... of the dynamic process of knowledge, its objectifi cation and transformation. This essay takes for consideration the analysis of some of these dimensions present in Hegel. It focuses in particular on: the 'break' and re-unification; the relationship between immediacy and mediation, and the general structure of the context of knowledge and knowing. With regard to the usual conceptions in the sociology of knowledge this paper might appear unusual. The realm of the sociology of knowledge is generally identified in contemporary American sociology as having developed from Wissensoziologie. This cultural transposition has interesting implications even at the linguistic level. The English translation for instance reduces to a single word both the verbal and substantive forms of Wissensoziologie so that these dimensions become obscured. This ambiguity does not occur in other linguistic systems, for instance: as a verb:tftfcJlf < *l" , noscere, kennen, connaitre (to know) as a substantive:6V ^£VHL , scire, wissen, savior (knowledge) Thus, in a strict sense, Wissensoziologie refers to a sociology of substantivated knowledge, which evades the processual formulation where subject-object and the category of mediation between them becomes crucial. The positing of such a question immediately reveals two different results, even in the most systematically developed approaches to a sociology of knowledge, those of Karl Mannheim and Max Scheler. On the one hand there is the dichotomization of the enterprise into two approaches, the "structurally" oriented sociology of knowledge and the "sociology of the mind." Secondly, there is the unitary approach that focuses upon theoretical concerns at the level of the mind. Thus, in Mannheim's orientation the unity of the processes of knowing and of knowledge are formally split into two realms. Regarding Max Scheler's orientation, he "identifies to know and the knowledge of the essential structure of everything that KJS, JC, 1 43 Spring 1974
doi:10.17161/str.1808.6106 fatcat:tw3b4xwozvcqbbipm7idph76ba