Hegel’s Phenomenology, Perception: or the Thing and Deception, illustrates the point in which one’s consciousness perceives reality from a different perspective. Thus, hinders the actuality of reality. This point is shown with optical illusions. Multiple examples could be used with optical illusion. One example could be where an object has an illusion of colors or an image that contains two different perspectives (or two objects). Many different examples can portray variation in human perspective.
One such illusion that I have experienced personally is jewelry that has properties that exhibit Pleochroism. These stones change color due to how they are viewed in the light and their angular positions. Just recently, I had my iridescent earrings under the light. It would have a pinkish hue, then it would change to a blue hue. This could fit with Hegel’s perspective on perception. The way how another person would view my earrings could be different. They may think it could be x color at first glance. While another person could see another color. According to Hegel, “…the thing thereby is in opposition to others but is supposed to preserve itself for itself in that opposition”(§ 125). Determinateness can be set in opposition in order to maintain its true self. The pair of earrings that I own is a perfect example of this. The true purpose of the earrings, which contain pleochroism, is to project different hues at various lights and angles. It wasn’t meant to have a set color, it was meant to be everchanging. So in terms of perceiving the earrings to have a certain color, would be an inaccurate perception. For the earrings to have their full potential, one will have to accept the fact there is no one color.
This ties back to the passage, Perception: or the Thing and Deception. Because the earrings have intricate qualities, they can have numerous colors and they vary from many factors. Hegel proved a great point that to accept the true potential of the things that we observe in our everyday lives, we have to learn to accept complexities rather than trying to come up with different perceptions.
Fareena, you did a nice job explaining how color-changing jewelry illustrates how varying perspectives make it difficult to determine what the actual reality is like. We must embrace the complexities of objects and accept that the appearance of an object from one perspective may not reflect its true reality. Your discussion on how the jewelry is ever-changing and not how it initially appears reminds me of the points that I made in my own post, “The Challenges of Sensuous-Certainty Illustrated by Trick Candles.” I talked about how trick candles, which may initially mislead us and constantly change, represent sensuous-certainty’s misrepresentation of itself as well as the dynamic and elusive quality of the truth. I think these ideas can also be applied to your example of color-changing jewelry.
I really appreciate how you’ve used the example of your pleochroic earrings to bring Hegel’s ideas to life. Look at the earrings, and they’re pinkish under one type of light, but shift a bit, and suddenly they’re blue. It’s a classic case of perception playing tricks on us, exactly the kind of thing Hegel was talking about. The earrings aren’t choosing to be one color or the other; they’re designed to show a spectrum of colors depending on the angle and the light. It’s a reminder that things aren’t always as straightforward as they seem.