ACADEMIA Letters

The Subject and Object in Knowledge and Understanding

Susan Archer, Mitchell College

What is knowledge and how do we know things? Enlightenment philosophers Immanuel

Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Modern philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin provide
insight into knowledge formation within oneself and as an interaction with others. I begin
this paper with Kant’s explanation of knowledge formation by investigating the subject-object
relationship. Kant provides a springboard for Hegel’s shift beyond subjectivity through desire
and negation to developing the notion of absolute knowledge or self-consciousness. Bakhtin
applies a lens of diversity or inclusivity to expand past Hegel in relating freedom from sub-
jectivity to recognizing universal societal truths.
Kant describes knowledge formation as an interaction between the subject and object. The
subject develops knowledge of an object from two “fundamental sources of the mind” (Kant
161). These sources are intuition of information from sensory interaction with the object and
a mental “concept” of the object based on categories the subject uses to understand objects
(Kant 161). Jaspers explains this thinking, “Kant starts from the knowledge at hand … He
starts, not from the objects of cognition but from the cognitive process as manifested in judg-
ments” (Jaspers 29). Kant describes five components of judgment or mental representation
of an object. The first component is that “thinking is the act of relating a given intuition to an
object” (Jaspers 25). The subject must have some prior knowledge to apply thought to intu-
ited sensations in order to recognize an object. The second component describes the object
as differentiated from other objects (Jaspers 25). Upon recognizing differences, the subject
separates the object from others but combines knowledge of the object with existing a priori
knowledge in general.
Combining the intuited sensations with a priori knowledge of like and different involves
the act of thinking or reasoning – Kant’s third component (Jaspers 25). The fourth component
comprises Kant’s idea of concrete synthesis as the basis for thinking. The individual develops

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Susan Archer, [email protected]

Citation: Archer, S. (2021). The Subject and Object in Knowledge and Understanding. Academia Letters,
Article 3488.

1
knowledge through linking new intuitions to previous knowledge or experience via thought, as
opposed to developing the concept of an object through empirical abstraction of many objects
(Jaspers 25). The fifth component introduces the idea of mediation – the subject intuits an
object and then uses the mediator, thought, to know the object (Jaspers 25). This process
is not necessarily unidirectional from intuition to knowing; it involves relating the sensual
intuition to existing knowledge by thinking.
The mediation of intuition by thought to achieve knowledge implies the possibility of
an unknown, generating uncertainty. Kant sets limits on understanding by writing that being,
rather than derived from some “conceptual One as the source of all things … remains unknown
to us” (Jaspers 28). To Kant, there is something that cannot be known. His explanation of the
dichotomy of subject and object involves “elucidation of the area in which we think, [and] we
can perhaps, in our thinking pass beyond it, transcend it” (Jaspers 28). There is a limitation
to this description that it revolves around how the individual subject uses reason to combine
intuitions and concepts to know the object. There may be characteristics of the object that
the subject does not intuit, or that they cannot assign to any of the categories within their
conceptual base. This limitation engenders expansion or extension of Kant’s ideas to seek a
more complete understanding of knowledge formation.
Hegel’s discussion of self-consciousness can be interpreted as an extension of Kant’s ideas
or as giving detail to the transcendence beyond the area in which we think. Hegel agrees
that “thoughts” mediate information gathered via the senses in the creation of knowledge but
refers to this as the first mode of consciousness (Kojève 3). To Hegel, there are three modes
of consciousness that one might describe as progressive levels. He argues that the first mode
involves the individual and internal mediation but that this is “subjective certainty” which
is not yet knowledge (Kojève 11). The subject has some level of self-perception but it is
purely internal and thus may not be valid. This potential difference introduces an instability
or insecurity to knowledge that Kant did not consider.
Hegel argues that due to subjective certainty, the subject defines anything outside itself
as other or object “without essential reality …. marked with character of a negative entity”
(Kojève 10) because it is not of or within the subject. Negativity generates the instability or
insecurity and compels the need for a higher level of consciousness. The second mode of
consciousness, perception, involves a desire for universal definitions of objects (Kojève 12).
The subject uses ideas or categories that have been previously agreed upon through common
language and meaning (by other subjects throughout history) to inform their understanding of
an object that is new to them. Hegel considers a negation between the intuitive evidence the
subject collects and the categories the subject has learned so that they can assign meaning to
that intuited evidence. Existing or known categories might be inadequate to classify a new

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Susan Archer, [email protected]

Citation: Archer, S. (2021). The Subject and Object in Knowledge and Understanding. Academia Letters,
Article 3488.

2
thought.
This second level of negation, exposes inner contradictions in the limitation of existing
categories and obliges an even higher level of consciousness to satisfy the subject’s desire to
know. The learning process by which the subject generates a more comprehensive set of cat-
egories is the third mode of consciousness, understanding or autonomous self-consciousness.
The subject cannot achieve true self-consciousness without “overcome[ing] his being-outside-
of-himself” (Kojève 13). This act of overcoming is “absolute negating-negativity” and “nec-
essarily takes the form of a fight” (Kojève, 13, 11). The other is perceived as the negation of
the subject and the subject must overcome or negate that different-ness. The other must be
compelled to recognize the subject as a self-consciousness, either through killing the other
– which would eliminate the opportunity to be recognized, or through subjugation – which
then treats the other as an object, less than a true self-consciousness. Neither of these options
results in the subject ever receiving the desired recognition; the best outcome is recognition
mediated by the subjugated other in what Hegel terms a “Master-Slave” relationship (Kojève
16). This relationship between Master and Slave is one-directional with respect to recognition.
Kojève writes, “for he can be satisfied only by recognition from one whom he recognized as
worthy of recognizing him” (19). The Master’s desire to be recognized can only be the desire
to overcome the corresponding desire for recognition from a thing (how the Slave is perceived)
which is not sufficient (the Slave is not considered an equal self-consciousness). Hegel further
discussed slavish Consciousness as the Slave’s recognition that they are “ready for change; in
[their] very being” by knowing they are not free but that they want to be free (Kojève 22).
In this recognition, the Slave achieves some level of subjective self-consciousness if only as
object (Kojève 22).
There is a further shift beyond Hegel in Bakhtin’s description of Dostoevsky’s approach
to construction of his novel. Where Hegel seeks elimination of contradictions, Bakhtin argues
that Dostoevsky does not classify the “multi-leveledness and contradictoriness” as subjective
to the author’s own life but recognizes these as “condition[s] of society” (Bakhtin 27). Dosto-
evsky shifts back-and-forth between levels of self-consciousness during his life, indicating this
freedom of “coexistence and interaction” within and between contradictory levels (Bakhtin
28). Bakhtin discusses this freedom in its association with carnival, where traditional social
norms are suspended and traditional subject-object (or Hegelian Master-Slave) dichotomies
are transcended, not because they are eliminated but because they are accepted as part of how
multiple subjects function and develop understanding in the same space.
When considering the ideas of Kant, Hegel, and Bakhtin, there is a discernable expansion
of thinking about how knowledge is developed. Kant focuses on how an individual subject
applies reason to integrate sensory intuitions of an object and mental concepts of objects to

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Susan Archer, [email protected]

Citation: Archer, S. (2021). The Subject and Object in Knowledge and Understanding. Academia Letters,
Article 3488.

3
know a new object. He recognizes a flaw in earlier thinkers who suggest that this subject—
object relationship is one based solely on the intuited information from the object entering a
blank mind. By reversing this thinking in a Copernican turn, Kant argues that the mind is not
empty but possesses concepts of objects and the subject uses categories derived from these
concepts to classify a new object from the intuitions. In this manner, Kant avoids the issue
of knowledge being contradicted by an object possessing characteristics that the subject does
not intuit. However, Kant’s ideas describe only individual thinking for knowledge formation.
Hegel expands Kant’s philosophy from the individual subject—object relationship for form-
ing knowledge to include interaction between the subject and others for transcendence beyond
knowledge to absolute knowledge or self-consciousness. Self-consciousness involves not just
the subject’s recognition and knowledge of the object or other, but consciousness of self that
is achieved through recognition by others. Hegel’s ideas about how this consciousness is real-
ized involve negation of the desire of the others, subjugating them to the self. This reduction
of the other to an object creates a contradiction because the subject can no longer be recog-
nized by other subjects. Bakhtin suggests that it is not necessary to eliminate contradictions,
especially those developed because of societal levels. He expands the Kantian/Hegelian ideas
of subjectivity by arguing that contradictions are an integral part of society and members of
all social groups can ignore traditional subject-object hierarchies when forming knowledge.

References
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson.
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Jaspers, Karl. Kant. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Ralph Manheim 1962. Har-
court Brace & Company, 1957.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics with Selections from the Critique
of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Gary Hatfield. Cambridge University Press,
1997.

Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Edited by Allan Bloom. Translated
by James H. Nichols, Jr. Cornell University Press, 1969.

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Susan Archer, [email protected]

Citation: Archer, S. (2021). The Subject and Object in Knowledge and Understanding. Academia Letters,
Article 3488.