Discourse On Method And Meditations By René Descartes And Georg Hegel

The definition of subjectivity is: belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought. Most of the time, it is usually understood with the correspondence of opinion and personal viewpoints. In today’s society the subjective viewpoint can often go unnoticed. Every person has their own experiences, their own beliefs, their own life; so, why is the subjective experience so personal and what creates subjectivity? Philosophers have been digging at this question for years. Ones such as René Descartes and Georg Hegel addressed this concept in very different ways but, the same truth was found. The essence of subjectivity is self-consciousness.
Most notably, René Descartes is known for his essay Discourse on Method and Meditations

To say that there is a God then the exact opposite would be an Evil Genius, one who creates everything tangible to be false. Descartes could not trust is senses because anything he perceived could have been created by the Evil Genius, and therefore be a lie. There was nothing tangible that could be proved absolutely true – just because an individual sees an apple as red does not entitle others to also see it as red. Even though the apple may not be red, however the subject is still thinking. Descartes says, “For since I now know that bodies are not… perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone… only through their being understood” (Descartes 69) The mind itself is the only true, indubitable tool of an individual. The subjectivity exists because of thinking. Their perspective and opinions still exist because they are a thinking thing. There is the possibility of an Evil Genius, “Yet I am a true thing and am truly existing; but what kind of thing? I have already said it: a thinking thing” (Descartes 65) The realization and existence of a thinking thing is the one unquestionable notion of subjectivity. An Evil Genius can make the world an illusion but there is nothing that can diminish the subjectivity of an individual. Subjectivity is the “I” which can only be achieved in the realm of the mind. Certain knowledge is only in itself – the

Essentially a “Lord” is an individual with an essential consciousness whom is recognized by an inessential consciousness othrwise known as the “Bondsman”. In the terms of subject and object this is again where recognition leads an important role. This is because “The lord relates himself mediately to the bondsman through a being [a thing] that is independent…” (115) In Hegelian vocabulary, recognition between the lord and the bondsman is “in-and-for-itself”. The result of this “in-and-for-itself” resolves a contradiction when an individual is “for-other”. A double reflection takes place between two subjects achieving recognition of self-consciousness in both the lord and the bondsman. Being acknowledged as a self-conscious being and the relationship of recognition fulfills the criteria of an individual’s claim to independence and creates unity between subject and object. Subjectivity – the understanding of self-consciousness in-itself and in relation to others – is found to be true from this