β. “Ordinary conception is now a sort of comprehension (κατάληψις), or correct opinion or thought, or the universal indwelling power of thinking; that is to say, it is the recollection of that which has often appeared to us,”—the picture. “For instance, when I say, ‘this is a man,’ I, with the help of previous perceptions, at once by my power of representation recognize his form.” By dint of this repetition the sensuous perception becomes a permanent conception in me, which asserts itself; that is the real foundation of all that we hold true. These representations are universal, but certainly the Epicureans have not placed universality in the form of thinking, but only said it is caused by frequency of appearance. This is further confirmed by the name which is given to the image which has thus arisen within us. “Everything has its evidence (ἐναργές) in the name first conferred on it.”[150] The name is the ratification of the perception. The evidence which Epicurus terms ἐνάργεια is just the recognition of the sensuous through subsumption under the conceptions already possessed, and to which the name gives permanence; the evidence of a conception is therefore this, that we affirm an object perceptible by the senses to correspond with the image. That is the acquiescence which we have found taking place with the Stoics when thought gives its assent to a content; thought, however, which recognizes the thing as its own, and receives it into itself, with the Stoics remained formal only. With Epicurus the unity of the conception of the object with itself exists also as a remembrance in consciousness, which, however, proceeds from the senses; the image, the conception, is what harmonizes with a sense-perception. The recognition of the object is here an apprehension, not as an object of thought, but as an object of imagination; for apprehension belongs to recollection, to memory. The name, it is true, is something universal, belongs to thinking, makes the manifold simple, yea, is in a high degree ideal; but in such a way that its meaning and its content are the sensuous, and are not thus to be counted as simple, but as sensuous. In this way opinion is established instead of knowledge.
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Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume Two (of 3) — Part 162
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