The first part is devoted to Hegel's method and to the specifics of his theory of consciousness as a theory of the mental. The second part presents an approach to detailed analyses of the first chapter of the Phenomenology. The primary form of consciousness would like, by means of its minimal conceptual apparatus (indexical expressions), to receive the variety of what is offered to it. The relating of sense-based certainty to the variety of individual things soon, however, displays itself as aporetic because the indicators have no descriptively-determinable content. Its aporetic situation is diagnosed as being the consequence of its own requirement to relate straight to individual things, without the contribution of concepts, albeit in the mode of knowledge. (The author in this connection introduces Hegel's reflections into the context of current debate on the theory of direct reference.) In the third part, the author finally shows that we can relate to individuals in space and time (in thought and speech) by means of indicators which create a system of co-ordinates. This system is founded in a relative framework by which I am, here and now, an embodied being. Such a framework is founded in itself. The indicators (I, here, now) thus have two systematic senses. In the author's view, the self-location of the person and the relation to individuals in space and time are guaranteed by viewpoints de se, which themselves are irreducible and immune to error. The question of the possibility of self-localisation (assuming that the pure self is quite general and undifferentiated) is not, however, susceptible of solution by a mere pointing to the practical character of our thinking. It is necessary, in addition, to consider the pre-indexical and pre-descriptive relating, which allows the mutual interaction of the indexical and descriptive relating to individuals.
