Appearance, Illusion and ShiningGerman has two words for appearance: Schein, with the verb scheinen, and Erscheinung, with the verb erscheinen. (1) Scheinen has two distinct senses: (a) 'to shine, glow'; (b) 'to appear, seem'. Correspondingly, Schein means: (a) 'shine, glow'; (b) 'appearance, semblance, illusion'. (2) Erscheinen and Erscheinung also mean 'to appear' and 'appearance or phenomenon', but, unlike Schein and scheinen, both may be used of the appearance, i.e. publication, of a book, or of putting in an appearance, where there is no suggestion that things are other than they appear.In eighteenth-century philosophy, Schein tended to be equated either with Täuschung ('deception, illusion') or with Erscheinung. But Kant drew a distinction between them: Erscheinung is a perceptible 'phenomenon', what we perceive an object to be in accordance with our forms of sensibility and understanding, in contrast to the 'noumenon', the supra-sensible reality or the object as it is in itself. (Unlike Fichte, who held phenomena to be products of the activity of the I*, Kant argued that an appearance implies something that appears and that is not itself an appearance.) Schein, by contrast, is an illusion resulting in a false judgment either about phenomena or about supra-sensible matters. Schein also has a use in aesthetics: Both Herder, in his Plastik, and Kant, in CJ, distinguish painting as the art of sensuous Schein from sculpture and architecture as the arts of sensuous truth, since painting gives only the illusion of three-dimensionality. But Schiller regarded Schein (in the sense of aesthetic 'semblance', not of 'deception') as a characteristic of all art (in contrast to reality), and also of any object in so far as it is viewed aesthetically.Hegel rejects Kant's distinction between Schein and Erscheinung, just as he rejects the unknowable THING-in itself and the (on Hegel's view) subjective IDEALISM of Kant and Fichte, on which Kant's distinction rests. (Phenomena, as conceived by Kant, are, Hegel believes, Schein rather than Erscheinung.) But the terms are for Hegel distinct. Schein is correlative to Wesen ('essence'): ESSENCE shows or appears (scheint), but itself remains hidden behind a veil of Schein. In that case, Sein ('BEING', i.e. what we are immediately acquainted with) is Schein, both in the sense that it is dependent on something else, an essence, and in the sense that it does not fully manifest that essence. (Sein and Schein are phonetically similar, but etymologically remote.) But Schein and scheinen retain for Hegel the sense of 'shine' or 'glow'. (They are closely associated with the similarly ambiguous REFLECTION.) Thus Hegel speaks of the essence as 'shining' within or into itself, as if essence itself and its distinctness from Schein is constituted by a process similar to that by which it 'shows' itself externally: it is only by projecting an appearance (shining outwardly) e.g. the bubbles on a boiling liquid and then withdrawing that appearance (shining inwardly), that an essence constitutes itself as an essence. Hegel also employs this notion of a double Schein in connection with other pairs of correlative terms: e.g. in so far as the universal shines into itself, it is strictly universal or generic (e.g. 'colour' in relation to 'red', etc.), while in so far as it shines outwardly, it becomes specific or particular in contrast to the 'other' into which it shines (e.g. 'colour' in relation to 'shape' or 'sound'). (Here Schein is interchangeable with Reflexion.) Hegel, like Schiller, believes that art involves Schein: he distinguishes Schein from Täuschung, and associates it with the phonetically similar (and etymologically related) schön ('beautiful').In Hegel's usage, Erscheinung and erscheinen differ from Schein and scheinen in several respects: (1) Erscheinung is also the appearance of an essence, but the essence fully discloses itself in Erscheinung and keeps nothing hidden. (The original force of the prefix er- was 'from within', which led to the idea of 'transition' or 'resultant state', and hence to that of 'obtaining or attaining to'.) (2) An Erscheinung is, like Schein,

transient and dependent, but what it depends on and succumbs to is not, immediately at least, an essence but another Erscheinung. Hence Erscheinung, in contrast to Schein, is a diverse, interdependent and fluctuating WHOLE or world. (3) Erscheinung contrasts primarily not with 'essence', but with 'CONCEPT' or 'ACTUALITY' (as what fully embodies the concept), and is contingent and fleeting rather than necessary, rational and stable: e.g. empirical psychology considers only the Erscheinung of MIND, and metaphysical psychology considers only its concept, while the correct approach, Hegel believes, is to see how the concept of the mind realizes itself in Erscheinung; and, whereas a crime is merely Schein since it is in conflict with RIGHT and right restores itself by NEGATING (viz. PUNISHING) this Schein, a particular contract is Erscheinung since, while not in conflict with right, it is only a contingent manifestation of it (PR §82). (Erscheinung and Schein is apt to change its application, depending on what Hegel regards, in a given context, as the concept or rational structure that it contrasts with.) Both in PS and in SL, the world of Erscheinung generates another world, a world that is essential or IN ITSELF and is the reverse (Verkehrung) of the world of appearance. The interplay of appearance is governed by LAWS (Gesetze, which Hegel associates with the idea that any appearance is gesetzt, POSITed or produced, by another appearance). The laws explain changes in the realm of appearance. But since these changes are reversals (what is hot becomes cold, etc.), the laws must specify that what in the world of appearance is, say, hot, is essentially or in itself cold, and so on. This suggests the idea of a world that is the reverse of the world of appearance, in which everything that has, in our world, a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the opposite quality.The significance of this inverted world is not clear. Is Hegel claiming that two such worlds would be indistinguishable? Some of his examples (e.g. the opposite poles of magnets, and positive and negative electricity) imply that they would be indistinguishable, while others (e.g. black and white) do not. Are we to think of the human subject as inhabiting each of these worlds and as undergoing a corresponding reversal, or rather as transcending both worlds and holding them together in thought (which would imply that he at least is not mere Erscheinung)? But some things are clear. First, the idea has a variety of sources and meanings for Hegel: he was, like Schelling, intrigued by the polarity of magnets and electricity; but it also has ethical and religious significance, in, e.g., the reversal of good and evil. (See ALIENATION in PS, VI.B.) Second, similar reversals occur throughout his works, e.g., the alienated social world after the fall of Rome generates a similarly inverted world of FAITH.Third, despite his interest in the inverted world and his belief that our world is a world of appearance, Hegel rejects both the belief in, and the longing for, a world 'beyond' (Jenseits) that were common among his contemporaries (Kant, Herder, Schelling, etc.). The essence or logical structure (which Hegel does not hesitate to call 'GOD') of the world of appearance is fully manifest in its interplay and reversals. (Some scholars, e.g., Shklar, Freedom and Independence (1976), link the inverted world with the world of Plato's FORMS. But Plato's forms are an idealization, not an inversion, of the phenomenal world.)