114 5 Reason Observing Nature Cinzia Ferrini 1 THE DIALECTIC OF REASON OBSERVING NATURE . 1.1 External Descriptions and internal Differences in the Classification of Nature. Hegel’s basic speculative thesis is that “the true is actual and must exist” (Enc. §38Z). This is the ‘highest’ justification of empiricism and of reason’s drive 1 to seek its infinite determinations in the world, because this is the reason for the collapse of the empty “beyond.” However, this thesis also contains the unavoid- able ‘lowest’ inadequacy of the particular sensible “this here” to be what is true, because the truth of things does not genuinely exist in external finitude, but in thought: whatever is external is merely true in itself. Therefore, although empiri- cism contains the principle of freedom (Enc. §38), one is only truly free in thinking, while in an important sense, as finite cognition that has the significance only of abstraction and formal identity that seizes upon isolated aspects of the concrete without integrating them, empiricism remains a doctrine of unfreedom . 2 The observed and experienced content which consciousness as Reason takes as the source of truth cannot, for consciousness itself, any longer have the form of the immediacy of sense-certainty or perception. This is Hegel’s first point at the 3 beginning of “Observation of Nature,” when considering the role and limits of description and classification in empirical sciences. This point has been relatively neglected by commentators, though it is extremely instructive. Hegel’s analysis starts by remarking that “observation” requires advancing from perception to thought: for consciousness itself, despite its declarations, a mere perception cannot pass for an observation because “what is perceived should at least have the significance of a universal, not of a sensuous this” (eines