Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why. Subject and object, God, Nature , Understanding, sensibility, and so on, are uncritically taken for granted as familiar, established as valid and made into fixed points for starting and stopping. While these remain unmoved, the knowing activity goes back and forth between them, thus moving only on their surface.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why. Subject and object, God, Nature , Understanding, sensibility, and so on, are uncritically taken for granted as familiar, established as valid and made into fixed points for starting and stopping. While these remain unmoved, the knowing activity goes back and forth between them, thus moving only on their surface." in the context of "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Preface, A. V. Miller translation (Oxford: 1977), § 31" to mean that wisdom is timeless.