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EDITED BY J. H. MUIRHEAD, LL.D.
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HEGEL THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011 with funding from
University of Toronto
http://www.archive.org/details/phenomenologyof02hege
THE
PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES,
BY
J. B. BAILLIE
Kal TovTO kpyov iari, to voiTJarai ck tQv avTui -yvwpijxuTipuiv
TO. Tri \!/vaeL yvüpi/xa avTU) yvüpi/xa.
Kal lariv ij v6r]ai.s uorjcrecos vÖTiffis.
Aristotle, Metaphysics.
VOL. II
LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910
HE INSTITUTE OF ¥ED!AP/AL STUDIES
ID ELMSLEY PLACE Tö«CiMTO 5, CAi^ADA.
FEB 2 7 1932
Volume II
CONTENTS
(BE). SPIRIT VI. Spirit .......
A. Objective Spirit : the ethical order .
a. The ethical world : law divine and human : man and woman ....
[1 Nation and family. («) Human law. (6) Divine law.
(c) The claims of the individual. 2 The process involved in these two laws, (o) Government as positive power, war as
negative. (6) The ethical relation of man and woman
as brother and sister, (c) The interfusion of the two laws. 3. The ethical world as infinitude or self- complete totality.]
h. Ethical action : knowledge human and Divine :
guilt and Destiny ....
[1. Contradiction of individuality with its essence.
2. Opposite characteristics of ethical action.
3. Dissolution of the ethical being.]
c. Legal status ..... [1. Personality.
2. Contingency of the person.
3. The lord of the world ; the absolute person.]
PAOB
429-682 430-435 436-485
440-458
460-477
479-485
VI
Contents
B. Spirit in self-estrangement : The discipline
of culture and civilisation . . . 486-605
I. The world of spirit in self-estrangement . 493-545 a. Culture and its sphere of reality . 494-533
[(1) Culture as the estrangement of natural existence, (rt) Goodness and badness : state-power
and wealth. (6) The cleavage of self-consciousness :
nobility [and baseness, (c) Service and advice. (2) Language as the actuality ^of culture. (a) Flattery.
(&) The language of distraction, (c) The vanity of culture.] h. Belief and pure Insight . . . 534-545
[(1) The idea of belief.
(2) The object of belief.
(3) The rationality of pure insight.]
II. Enlightenment .... 546-591
a. The struggle of enlightenment with
superstition .... 549-581
[(1) The negative attitude of insight to- wards belief.
(2) The doctrine of enlightenment.
(3) The rights of enlightenment.]
h. The truth of enlightenment . . 582-591
[(1) Pure thought and pure matter.
(2) The sphere of utility.
(3) Self -certainty.]
Ill, Absolute freedom and terror . . 592-605
[The awakening of free subjectivity.]
C. Spirit certain of itself : Morality . . 606-682
a The moral view of the world . . . 610-623
Contents vii
PAGE
[(1) The postulated harmony of duty and reality.
(2) The ;divine lawgiver and the imperfect
moral consciousness.
(3) The moral world as a presented idea.]
h. Dissemblance ..... 625-639 [(1) The contradictions in the moral view of the world.
(2) The resolution of morality into its opposite.
(3) The truth of moral self-consciousness].
c. Conscience : the " beautiful soul " : Evil and
the forgiveness of it . . . . 642-682
[(1) Conscience as the freedom of the self within
itself. The reality of duty : conviction. (2) The universality of conscience. (.3) Evil and forgiveness.]
(CC). RELIGION . . 683-799
VII. Keligion in General . . . . 685-696
A. Natural Religion .... 698-711 a. God as Light.
h. Plants and Animals as religious objects. c. The artificer.
B. Religion in the form of Art . . . 712-758 a. The abstract work of art.
[(1) The representation of the gods.
(2) The hymn.
(3) The cult.]
h. The living work of art : the human form
as an embodiment of beauty. c. The spiritual work of art : art expressive of
social life. [(1) Epic.
(2) Tragedy.
(3) Comedy.]
.eis
viii Contents
PAOE
C. Eevealed Eeligion .... 759-799
[1. The presuppositions requisite for the notion of revealed religion.
2. The ultimate content of revealed religion :
the reality of the incarnation of God (a) in an individual, (6) in a religious communion.
3. Development of the notion of revealed
religion. The Absolute as a trinity : the Absolute as externalised in the world : the Absolute as fulfilled in a spiritual kingdom.] (DD). ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE . 800-823
VIII. Absolute Knowledge .... 800-823 [1. The ultimate content of the Self which knows itself as all existence.
2. Systematic Science as the self-comprehen-
sion of Spirit.
3. The return of Spirit so comprehended to
immediate existence]
PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
(BB) SPIRIT *
[In the preceding section there is analysed the attempt on the part of individuality to operate as its own legislator and judge of laws holding for individuals. Individuality may claim the privilege of enunciating laws universal in character but having their source and inspiration solely in the single individual. Such laws can at best only be regulative and cannot be constitutive of the substance of individuality ; for the sub- stance of individuality necessarily involves other individuals within it. In short individuality is itself only realised as a part of a concrete whole of individuals : its life is drawn from common life in and with others. To attempt to enunciate laws from itself as if it could create the conditions of its own inherent universality can only issue in one result : laws are furnished without the content which gives those laws any meaning, or else the laws and the content remain from first to last external to one another. But if laws are purely formal, they cease to be " laws," i.e. constitutive conditions of individuality. Hence the attempt above described is sure to break down by its own futility. What is wanted to give the laws meaning is the concrete substance of social life : and when this concrete substance is provided ipso facto the attempt of individuality to create laws disappears, for these laws are already found in operation in social life. Only such laws have reality. But this involves the further step that in- dividuality is only realised, only finds its true universal content, in and with the order of a society. Here alone is individuality what it is in truth, at once a particular focus of self-consciousness, and a realisation of universal mind. This condition where individuality is conscious of itself only in and with others, and conscious of the common life as its own, is the stage of spiritual existence. Spiritual existence and social life thus go together. The following section begins the analysis of this phase of experience, which extends from the simplest form of sociality — the Family — up to the highest experience of universal mind — Eeligiou.
The immediately succeeding section may be taken as tlie keystone of the whole arch of experience traversed in the Phenomenology. Here it is pointed out that all the preceding phases of experience have not merely been preparing the way for what is to follow, but that the various aspects, hitherto treated as separate moments of experience, are iu reality abstrac- tions from the life of concrete spirit now to be discussed and analysed.
It is noteworthy that from this point onwards the argument is less negative in its result either directly or indirectly, and is more systematic and constructive. This is no doubt largely because hitherto individual mind as such has been under review, and this is an abstraction from social mind or spiritual existence.]
* The term "Spirit" seems better to render the word "Geist" used here, than the word " mind '' would do. Up to this stage of experience the word "mind" is sufficient to convey the meaning. But spirit is mind at a much higher level of existence.
VOL. II.— B 429
VI
SPIRIT
REASON is spirit, when its certainty of being all reality has been raised to the level of truth, and reason is consciously aware of itself as its own world, and of the world as itself. The development of spirit was indicated in the immediately preceding movement of mind, where the object of consciousness, the category pure and simple, rose to be the notion of reason. When reason " observes,'' this pure unity of ego and existence, the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, of for-itself-ness and in-itself-ness — this unity is immanent, has the character of implicitness or of being ; and consciousness of reason finds itself. But the true nature of " observa- tion " is rather the transcendence of this instinct of finding its object lying directly at hand, and passing beyond this unconscious state of existence. The directly perceived {angeschaut) category, the thing simply "found," enters consciousness as the self-existence of the ego, — ego, which now knows itself in the objective reality, and knows itself there as the self. But this feature of the category, viz. of being for-itself as opposed to being immanent within itself, is equally one-sided, and a moment that cancels itself. The category therefore gets for consciousness the character which it possesses in its universal truth — it is self-contained
430
Sfirit 431
essential reality {an und fürsichseyndes Wesen). This character, still abstract, which constitutes the nature of absolute fact, of "fact itself," is to begin with " spiritual reahty " {das geistige Wesen) ; and its mode of consciousness is here a formal knowledge of that reahty, a knowledge which is occupied with the varied and manifold content thereof. This consciousness is still, in point of fact, a particular individual distinct from the general substance, and either prescribes arbitrary laws or pretends to possess within its own knowledge as such the laws as they absolutely are {an und für sich), and takes itself to be the power that passes judgment on them. Or again, looked at from the side of the sub- stance, this is seen to be the self-contained and self- sufficient spiritual reahty, which is not yet a conscious- ness of its own self. The self-contained and self-suffi- cient reality, however, which is at once aware of being actual in the form of consciousness and presents itself to itself, is Spirit.
Its essential spirtual being {Wesen) has been above designated as the ethical substance ; spirit, however, is concrete ethical actuahty {Wirklichkeit). Spirit is the self of the actual consciousness, to which spirit stands opposed, or rather which appears over against itself, as an objective actual world that has lost, however, all sense of strangeness for the self, just as the self has lost all sense of having a dependent or independent existence by itself, cut off and separated from that world. Being substance and universal self-identical permanent essence {Wesen), spirit is the immovable irreducible basis and the starting point for the action of all and every one ; it is their purpose and their goal, because the ideally imphcit nature {Ansich) of all self-conscious-
432 Phenomenology of Mind
nesses. This substance is likewise the universal product, wrought and created by the action of each and all, and giving them unity and Hkeness and identity of meaning ; for it is self-existence (Fürsichseyn), the self, action. Qita substance, spirit is unbending righteous self-same- ness, self-identity; but qua for-itself, self-existent and self-determined (Filrsichseyn), its continuity is resolved into discrete elements, it is the self-sacrificing soul of goodness, the benevolent essential nature, in which each fulfils his own special work, rends the continuum of the universal substance, and takes his own share of it. This resolution of the essence into individual forms is just the aspect of the separate action and the separate self of all the several individuals ; it is the moving soul of the ethical substance, the resultant universal spiritual being. Just because this substance is a being resolved in the self, it is not a lifeless essence, but actual and alive.
Spirit is thus the self-supporting absolutely real ultimate being (Wesen). All the previous modes of consciousness are abstractions from it : they are constituted by the fact that spirit analyses itself, distinguishes its moments, and halts at each individual mode in turn. The isolating of such moments pre- supposes spirit itself and requires spirit for its subsist- ence, in other words, this isolation of modes only exists within spirit, which is existence. Taken in isolation they appear as if they existed as they stand. But their advance and return upon their real ground and essential being showed that they are merely moments or vanishing quantities; and this essential being is precisely this move- ment and resolution of these moments. Here, where spirit, the reflection of these moments into itself, has
Sfirit 433
become established, our reflection may briefly recall them in this connexion : they were consciousness, self- consciousness, and reason. Spirit is thus Consciousness in general, which contains sense- experience, perception and understanding, so far as in analysing its own self it holds fast by the moment of being a reahty objective to itself, and by abstraction eUminates the fact that this reality is its own self objectified, its own self-existence. When again it holds fast by the other abstract moment produced by analysis, the fact that its object is its own self become objective to itself, is its self-existence, then it is Self -consciousness. But as immediate consciousness of its inherent and its exphcit being, of its immanent self and its objective self, as the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, it is that type of consciousness which has Reason : it is the consciousness which, as the word " have " indicates, has the object in a shape which is implicitly and inherently rational, or is cate- gorised, but in such a way that the object is not yet taken by the consciousness in question to have the value of a category. Spirit here is that consciousness from the immediately preceding consideration of which we have arrived at the present stage. Finally, when this reason, which spirit '' has," is seen by spirit to be reason which actually is, to be reason which is actual in spirit, and is its world, then spirit has come to its truth ; it is spirit, the essential nature of ethical life actually existent.
Spirit, so far as it is the immediate truth, is the ethical hfe of a nation : — the individual, which is a world. It has to advance to the consciousness of what it is immediately ; it has to abandon and transcend the beautiful simpHcity of ethical Hfe, and get to a
VOL. II,— C
434 Phenomenology of Mind
knowledge of itself by passing through a series of stages and forms. The distinction between these and those that have gone before consists in their being real spiritual individualities {Geister), actualities proper, and instead of being forms of consciousness, they are forms of a world.
The living ethical world is spirit in its truth. As it first comes to an abstract knowledge of its essential nature, ethical life {Sittlichkeit) is destroyed in the formal universahty of right or legahty {Recht). Spirit, being now sundered within itself, traces one of its worlds in the element of its objectivity as in a crass solid actuahty ; this is the realm of Culture and Civilisation ; while over against this in the element of thought is traced the world of BeHef or Faith, the realm of the Inner Life and Truth {Wesen). Both worlds, however, when in the grip of the notion — when grasped by spirit which, after this loss of self through self- diremption, penetrates itself, — are thrown into con- fusion and revolutionised through individual Insight {Einsicht), and the general diffusion of this attitude, known as the " Enhghtenment " {Aufklärung). And the realm which had thus been divided and expanded into the "present " and the "remote beyond,'' into^the "here" and the " yonder," turns back into self-consciousness. This self-consciousness, again, taking now the form of Morality (the inner moral Hfe) apprehends itself as the essential truth, and the real essence as its actual self : no longer puts its world and its ground and basis away outside itself, but lets everything fade into itself, and in the form of Conscience {Gewissen) is spirit sure and certain {gewiss) of itself.
The ethical world, the world rent asunder into the
Spirit 435
" here " and the " yonder," and the moral point of view (moralische Weltanschauung) are, then, individual forms of spirit [Geister) whose process and whose return into the self of spirit, a self simple and self-existent (fürsichseynd), will be developed. When these attain their goal and final result, the actual self-consciousness of Absolute Spirit will make its appearance.
Objective Spirit,* — The Ethical Order!
Spirit, in its ultimate simple truth, is consciousness, and breaks asunder its moments from one another. An act divides spirit into spiritual substance on the one side, and consciousness of the substance on the other ; and divides the substance as well as conscious- ness. The substance appears in the shape of a universal inner nature and purpose standing in contrast to itself qua particularised reality. The middle or mediating term, infinite in character, is self-consciousness, which, being imflicitly the unity of itself and that substance, becomes so, now, exphcitly {für sich), unites the universal inner nature and its particular realisation, raises the latter to the former and becomes ethical action : and, on the other hand, brings the former down to the latter and carries out the purpose, the substance presented merely in thought. In this way it brings to light the unity of its self and the substance, and produces this unity in the form of a "work" done, and thus as actual concrete fact {Wirklichkeit).
When consciousness breaks up into these elements, the simple substance has in part preserved the attitude of opposition to self-consciousness ; in part it thereby manifests in itself the very nature of consciousness, which consists in distinguishing its own content within
* Der wahre Geist. t Sittlichkeit.
436
Objective Sfirit 437
itself, — manifests a world articulated into separate areas. The substance is thus an ethical being split up into distinct elemental forms, a human and a divine law. In the same way, the self-conscious- ness appearing over against the substance assigns itself, in virtue of its inner nature, to one of these powers, and, qua involving knowledge, gets broken up into ignorance of what it is doing on the one hand, and knowledge of this on the other, a knowledge which for that reason proves a deception. It learns, therefore, through its own act at once the contradictory nature of those powers into which the imier substance divided it- self, and their mutual overthrow, as well as the contra- diction between its knowledge of the ethical character of its act and what is truly and essentially ethical, and so finds its own destruction. In point of fact, however, the ethical substance has by this process become actual concrete self-consciousness : in other words this parti- cular self has become self-sufficient and self-dependent (An und FürsicJiseyenden), but precisely thereby the ethical order has been overthrown and destroyed.
The Ethical World: Law Human and Divine: Man and Woman
[The first step in the analysis of spirit is to take spirit as a realised actual social order, immediately given as a historical fact, and present directly to the minds of the individuals composing it. This is social life as an estab- lished routine of human adjustments, where the natural characteristics and constitution of its moral individuals are absorbed and built into the single substance of the living social whole. It is spirit as an objectively embodied whole of essentially spiritual individuals, without any con- sciousness of opposition to one another or to the whole, and with an absolute unbroken sense of their own security and fulfilment within the substance of social mind. It is spirit at the level of naive acqui- escence in the law and order of conventional life.
But such a self-complete type of experience has various levels of realisation. It cannot exist except through the union of opposing elements ; and the central principle of all experience, self-consciousness, which assumes here such a concrete form, has abundant material on which to exercise its function of creating and uniting distinctions. The first level is determined by the fact that the substance of social life is consti- tuted out of the quasi-natural phenomena of human genus and species, of race and nationality, on the one hand, and the purely natural element of specialised individual sex on the other. These two aspects go together; the sex-relations of individuals maintain race and nationality, the nation lives in and through its sexually distinct individuals. The social order as an order is realised and maintained in the medium of these elements. The fact that this order is an order of universal mind gives it a perma- nence, an inviolability, an absoluteness, which are inseparable from it, so inseparable that the order is looked on as having its roots in the Absolute Mind, and as deriving its authority from it. The social order on this asj^ect consists of a divinely established and divinely sanctioned regime ; the gods are the guardians of the city, of the hearth and the home. On the other hand the expression of this order varies, and is enunciated from time to time in the history of a community. The order in this sense is made by man ; the law of the social order thus becomes a human law, determined by human conditions and human ends ; it is a round of conventions and customs. These two forms of order are inseparable in the life of a community, and they subsist together and side
438
Objective Spirit 439
by side at this level of social consciousness. They may lead to conflict in the life of the individual in the community, and have to be reconciled by force or otherwise ; and they become associated and connected with the fundamental diflferences of individuality above referred to.
The analysis of this level of social life constituted as above furnishes the argument of the following section.]
The Ethical World : Law Human and Divine : Man and Woman
The simple substance of spirit, being consciousness, divides itself into parts. In other words, just as con- sciousness of abstract sensuous existence passes over into perception, so does immediate certainty of real ethical existence ; and just as for sense perception bare " being " becomes a " thing " with many proper- ties, so for ethical perception a given act becomes a reality involving many ethical relations. For the former, again, the unnecessary plurahty of proper- ties concentrates itself into the form of an essential opposition between individual and universal ; and still more for the latter, which is consciousness puri- fied and substantial, the plurality of ethical moments is reduced to and assumes a twofold form, that of a law of individuality and a law of universality. Each of these areas or " masses " of the substance remains, how- ever, spirit in its entirety. If in sense-perception " things " have no other substantial reahty than the two determinations of individual and imiversal, these determinations express, in the present instance, merely the superficial opposition of both sides to one an- other.
Individuahty, in the case of the subject {Wesen) we are here considering, has the significance of self-con- sciousness in general, not of any particular consciousness we care to take. The ethical substance is, thus, in this
440
The Ethical World 441
determination actual concrete substance, Absolute Spirit realised in the pluraKty of distinct consciousnesses definitely existing. It [this spirit] is the community {Gemeinwesen) which, as we entered the stage of the practical embodiment of reason in general, came before us as the absolute and ultimate reahty, and which here comes objectively before itself in its true nature as a conscious ethical reahty {Wesen) and as the essential reahty, for that mode of conscious- ness we are now dealing with. It is spirit which is for itself, since it maintains itself by being reflected in the minds of the component individuals ; and which is in itself 01 substance, since it preserves them within itself. Qua actual substance, that spirit is a Nation ( Volk) ; qua concrete consciousness, it is the Citizens of a nation. This consciousness has its essential being in simple spirit, and is certain of itself in the actual reahsation of this spirit, in the entire nation ; it has its truth there directly, not therefore in something unreal, but in a spirit which exists and makes itself felt.
This spirit can be named Human Law, because it "-^3 has its being essentially in the form of self-con- scious actuahty. In the form of universahty, that spirit is law known to everybody, famihar and recog- nised, and is every-day present Customary Convention {Sitte) ; in the form of particularity it is the concrete certainty of itself in any and every individual ; and the certainty of itself as a single individuahty is that spirit in the form of Government. Its true and complete nature is seen in its authoritative vahdity openly and unmistakably manifested, an existence which takes the form of unconstrained independent objective fact,
442 Phenomenology of Mind
and is immediately apprehended with conscious cer- tainty in this form.
Over against this power and pubHcity of the ethical secular human order there appears, however, another power, the Divine Law. For the ethical power of the state, being the movement of self-conscious action, finds its opposition in the simple immediate essen- tial being of the moral order ; qua actual concrete universality, it is a force exerted against the indepen-
■^ dence of the individual ; and, qua actuality in general, *^ it finds inherent in that essential being something other than the power of the state.
We mentioned before that each of the opposite ways in which the ethical substance exists, contains that substance in its entirety, and contains all moments of its contents. If, then, the community is that sub- stance in the form of self-consciously reahsed action, the other side has the form of immediate or directly existent substance. The latter is thus, on the one hand, the inner principle (Begriff) or universal possibility of the ethical order in general, but, on the other hand, contains within it also the moment of self-consciousness. This moment which expresses the ethical order in this element of immediacy or mere being, which, in other words, is an immediate consciousness of self (both as regards its essence and its particular thisness) in an "other," — and hence, is a natural ethical community — this is the Family. The family, as the inner indwelhng principle of sociality operating in an unconscious way, stands opposed to its own actuahty when exphcitly con- scious ; as the basis of the actuahty of a nation, it stands in contrast to the nation itself ; as the immediate ethical
1U existence, it stands over against the ethical order
The Ethical World 443
which shapes and preserves itself by work for universal ends ; the Penates of the family stand in contrast to the universal spirit.
Although the ethical existence of the family has the character of immediacy, it is within itself an ethical entity, but not so far as it is the natural relation of its component members, or so far as their connexion is one immediately holding between individual concrete beings. For the ethical element is intrinsically universal, and this relation estabhshed by nature is essentially just as much a spiritual fact, and is only ethical by being spiritual. Let us see wherein its peculiar ethical char- acter consists.
In the first place, because the ethical element is the intrinsically universal element, the ethical relation between the members of the family is not that of senti- ment or the relationship of love. The ethical element in this case seems bound to be placed in the relation of the individual member of the family to the entire family as the real substance, so that the purpose of his action and the content of his actuality are taken from this substance, are derived solely from the family hfe. But the conscious purpose which dominates the action of this whole, so far as that purpose concerns that whole, is itself the individual member. The procuring and maintaining of power and wealth turn, in part, merely on needs and wants, and are a matter that has to do with desire ; in part, they become in their higher aspect something which is merely of mediate significance. This aspect does not fall within the family itself, but concerns what is truly universal, the community ; it acts rather in a negative way on the family, and consists in setting the individual outside the family, in subduing
444 Phenomenology of Mind
his merely natural existence and his mere particularity and so drawing him on towards virtue, towards living in and for the whole. The positive purpose peculiar to the family is the individual as such. Now in order that this relationship may be ethical, neither the individual who does an act nor he to whom the act refers, must show any trace of contingency such as obtains in rendering some particular help or service. The content of the ethical act must be substantial in character, or must be entire and universal ; hence it can only stand in relation to the entire individual, to the individual qua universal. And this, again, must not be taken as if it were merely in idea that an act of service furthered his entire happiness, whereas the service, taken as an immediate or concrete act, only does something particular in regard to him. Nor must we think that the service really takes him as its object, and deals with him as a whole, in a series of efforts, as if it were a process of education, and produces him as a kind of work, where apart from the purpose, which operates in a negative way on the family, the real act has merely a limited content. Finally, just as little should we take it that the service rendered is a help in time of need, by which in truth the entire individual is saved ; for it is itself an entirely casual act which can as well be as not be, the occasion of which is an ordinary actuality. The act, then, which embraces the entire existence of the blood rela- tion, does not concern the citizen, for he does not belong to the family, nor does it deal with one who is going to be a citizen and so will cease to have the significance of a mere particular individual : it has as its object and content this specific individual belonging to the family,
The Ethical World 445
takes him as a universal being, divested of his sensuous, or particular reality. The act no longer concerns the living but the dead, one who has passed through the long sequence of his broken and diversified existence and gathered up his being into its one completed embodiment, who has Hfted himself out of the unrest of a life of chance and change into the peace of simple universality. Because it is only as citizen that he is real and substantial, the individual, when not a citizen, and belonging to the family, is merely unreal insub- stantial shadow.
This condition of universality, which the individual as such reaches, is mere being, death ; it is the immediate issue of a natural process, and is not the action of a conscious mind. The duty of the member of a family is on that account to attach this aspect too, in order that this last phase of being also, (this universal being), may not belong to nature alone, and remain something irrational, but may be something actually done, and the right of consciousness be asserted in it. Or rather the significance of the act is that, because in truth the peace ^'^^ and universality of a self-conscious being does not belong to nature, the apparent claim which natm^e has made to act in this way, may be given up and the truth reinstated.
What nature did in the individuaFs case, concerns the aspect in which his process of becoming universal is manifested as the movement of an existent. It takes effect no doubt within the ethical community, and has this in view as its purpose : death is the fulfil- ment and final task which the individual as such under- takes on its behalf. But so far as he is essentially a particular individual, it is an accident that his death was connected directly with his labour for the universal
446 Phenomenology of Mind
whole, and was the outcome of his toil ; partly because if it was so, it is the natural course of the negativity of the individual qua existent, in which consciousness does not return into itself and become self-conscious; or, again, because, since the process of the existent con- sists in becoming cancelled and transcended and attaining the stage of independent self-existence, death is the aspect of diremption, where the self-existence, which is obtained, is something other than that being which entered on the process.
Because the ethical order is spirit in its immediate truth, those aspects into which its conscious life breaks up, fall also into this form of immediacy ; and the individual's particularity passes over into this abstract negativity, which, being in itself without consolation or reconcilement, must receive them essentially through a concrete and external act.
Blood-relationship therefore supplements the abstract natural process by adding to it the process of conscious- ness, by interrupting the work of nature, and rescuing the blood-relation from destruction ; or better, because destruction, the passing into mere being, is necessary, it takes upon itself the act of destruction.
Through this it comes about that the universal being, the sphere of death, is also something which has returned into itself, something self-existent ; the powerless bare particular unity is raised to universal individuahty. The dead individual, by his having detached and liberated his being from his action or his negative unity, is an empty particular, merely existing passively for some other, at the mercy of every lower irrational organic agency, and the [chemical, physical] forces of abstract material elements, both of which are now
The Ethical World 447
stronger than himself, the former on account of the hfe which they have, the latter on account of their negative nature.* The family keeps away from the dead this dishonouring of him by the desires of unconscious organic agencies and by abstract elements, puts its own action in place of theirs, and weds the relative to the bosom of the earth, the elemental individu- ahty that passes not away. Thereby the family makes the dead a member of a community t which prevails over and holds under control the powers of the particular material elements and the lower hving creatures, which sought to have their way with the dead and destroy him. This last duty thus accomphshes the complete divine law, or constitutes the positive ethical act towards the given individual. Every other relation towards him which does not remain at the level of love, but is ethical, belongs to human law, and has the nega- tive significance of hfting the individual above the con- finement within the natural community to which he belongs as a concrete individual. But, now, though human right has for its content and power the actual ethical substance consciously aware of itself, the entire nation, while divine right and law derive theirs from the particular individual who is beyond the actual, yet he is still not without power. His power lies in the abstract pure universal, the shadowy individual, which <^ft m.*Kt«uu^ seizes upon the individuahty that cuts itself loose from the element and constitutes the self-conscious reahty of the nation, and draws it back into the pure abstraction which is the essential nature of the shadowy individual, while at the same time the latter is its ultimate ground
* The description here refers to the process of bodily corruption. t i.e. the earth ?
448 Phenomenology of Mind
as well. How this power is made explicit in the nation itself will come out more fully as we proceed.
Now in the one law as in the other there are differences and stages. For since these laws involve the element of consciousness in both cases, distinction is developed
'i,Tit within themselves : and this is just what constitutes the peculiar process of their life. The consideration of these differences brings out the way they operate, and the kind of self-consciousness at work in both the uni- versal essential principles {Wesen) of the ethical world, as also their connection and transition into one an- other.
The community, the higher law whose validity is open to the Hght of day, makes its concrete activity felt in government; for in government it is an individual whole. Government is concrete actual spirit reflected into itself, the self pure and simple of the entire ethical substance. This simple force allows, indeed, the community to unfold and expand into its component members, and to give each part subsistence and self-existence of its own {Fiirsichseyn). Spirit finds in this way its realisation or its objective existence, and the family is the medium in which this
* "realisation takes effect. But spirit is at the same time the force of the whole, combining these parts again within the unity which negates them, giving them the feehng of their want of independence, and keep- ing them aware that their life only Hes in the whole. The community may thus, on the one hand, organise itself into the systems of property and of personal independence, of personal right and right in things ; and, on the other hand, articulate the various ways of working for what in the first instance are particular
The Ethical World 449
ends — those of gain and enjojnuent — into their own special guilds and associations, and may thus make them independent. The spirit of universal assem- blage and association is the single and simple prin- ciple, and the negative essential factor at work in the segregation and isolation of these systems. In order not to let them get rooted and settled in this isolation and thus break up the whole into fragments and let the common spirit evaporate, government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by War. By this means it confounds the order that has been estabhshed and arranged, and violates that right to independence, while the individuals, (who, being ab- sorbed therein, get adrift from the whole, striving after inviolable self-existence (Fürsichseyn) and personal security), are made, by the task thus imposed on them by government, to feel the power of their lord and master, death. By thus breaking up the form of fixed stability, spirit guards the ethical order from lif sinking into merely natural existence, preserves the self of which it is conscious, and raises that self to the level of freedom and its own powers. The negative essential being shows itself to be the might proper of the community and the force it has for self- maintenance. The community therefore finds the true principle and corroboration of its power in the inner nature of divine law, and in the kingdom of the nether world.
The divine law which holds sway in the family has also on its side distinctions within itself, the relations among which make up the Hving process of its reahsation. Amongst the three relationships, however, of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, the
VOL. II. D
450 Phenomenology of Mind
relationship of husband and wife is to begin with the primary and immediate form in which one conscious- ness recognises itself in another, and in which each finds reciprocal recognition. Being natural self-know- ledge, knowledge of self on the basis of nature, and not on that of ethical life, it merely represents and typifies in a figure the fife of spirit, and is not spirit itself actually reahsed. This figurative representation, however, gets its realisation in an other than it is. This relationship, therefore, finds itself realised not in itself as such, but in the child — an other, in whose coming into being that relationship consists, and with which it passes away. And this change from one generation onwards to another is permanent in and as the life of a nation.
The reverent devotion {Pietät) of husband and wife towards one another is thus mixed up with a natural relation and with feeling, and their relationship is not inherently self- complete ; similarly, too, the second rela- tionship, the reverent devotion of parents and children to one another. The devotion of parents towards their children is afiected and disturbed just by its being consciously realised in what is external to themselves (viz. the children), and by seeing them become some- thing on their own account without this returning to the parents : independent existence on the part of the children remains a foreign reality, a reality all their own. The devotion of children, again, towards their parents is conversely affected by their coming into being from, or having their essential nature in, what is external to themselves (viz. the parents) and passes away ; 3^ (J and by their attaining independent existence and a self-consciousness of their own solely through separation
The Ethical World 451
from the source whence they came — a separation in which the spring gets exhausted.
Both these relationships are constituted by and hold within the transience and the dissimilarity of the two sides, which are assigned to them.
An unmixed intransitive form of relationship, how- ever, holds between brother and sister. They are the same blood, which, however, in them has entered into a condition of stable equihbrium. They therefore stand in no such natural relation as husband and wife, they do not desire one another ; nor have they given to one another, nor received from one another, this independence of individual being ; they are free individuahties with respect to each other. The feminine element, therefore, in the form of the sister, premonises and foreshadows most completely the nature of ethical life {sittliches Wesen). She does not become conscious of it, and does not actuaUse it, because the law of the family is her inherent implicit inward nature, which does not he open to the dayhght of consciousness, but remains inner feeling and the divine element exempt from actuality. The feminine hfe is attached to these household divinities {Penates), and sees in them both her universal substance, and her particular individuahty, yet so views them that this relation of her particular being to them is at the same time not the natural one of pleasure.
As a daughter, the woman must now see her parents pass away with natural emotion and yet with ethical resignation, for it is only at the cost of this con- dition that she can come to that individual existence of which she is capable. She thus cannot see her independent existence positively attained in her relation
452 Phenomenology of Mind
to her parents. The relationships of mother and wife, however, are individuahsed partly in the form of some- thing natm:al, which brings pleasm:e ; partly in the form of something negative which finds simply its own evanescence in those relationships; partly again the individualisation is just on that account something contingent, which can be replaced by an other par- ticular individuahty. In a household of the ethical kind, a woman's relationships are not based on a reference to this particular husband, this particular child, but to a husband, to children in general, — not to f eehng, but to the universal. The distinction between her ethical life {Sittlichkeit), (while it determines her particu- lar existence and brings her pleasure), and that of her husband consists just in this, that it has always a directly imiversal significance for her, and is quite alien to the impulsive condition of mere particular desire. On the other hand, in the husband these two aspects get separated ; and since he possesses, as a citizen, the self-conscious power belonging to the universal life, the life of the social whole, he acquires thereby the rights of desire, and keeps himself at the same time in detachment from it. So far, then, as particularity is implicated in this relationship in the case of the wife, her ethical life is not purely ethical ; so far, however, as it is ethical, the particularity is a matter of indifference, and the wife is without the moment of knowing herself as this particular self in and through an other.
The brother, however, is in the eyes of the sister a being whose nature is unperturbed by desire and is ethically like her own ; her recognition in him is pure and unmixed with any sexual relation. The indifference
The Ethical World 453
characteristic of particular existence, and the ethical contingency thence arising, are, therefore, not present in this relationship ; instead, the moment of individual selfhood, recognising and being recognised, can here assert its right, because it is bound up with the balance and equihbrium resulting from their being of the same blood, and from their being related in a way that involves no mutual desire. The loss of a brother is thus irreparable to the sister, and her duty towards him is the highest.*
This relationship at the same time is the limit, at which the circumscribed life of the family is broken up, and passes beyond itself. The brother is the member of the family in whom its spirit becomes individuahsed, and enabled thereby to turn towards another sphere, towards what is other than and external to itself, and pass over into consciousness of universahty. The brother leaves this immediate, rudimentary, and, there- fore, strictly speaking, negative ethical life of the family, in order to acquire and produce the concrete ethical order which is conscious of itself.
He passes from the divine law, within whose realm he Hved, over to the human law. The sister, however, becomes, or the wife remains, director of the home and the preserver of the divine law. In this way both the sexes overcome their merely natural being, and become ethically significant, as diverse forms dividing between them the different aspects which the ethical substance possesses. Both these universal factors of --^ the ethical world have their specific individuahty in naturally distinct self-consciousnesses, for the reason that the spirit at work in the ethical order is the im-
* Cp. Antigone, 1. 910.
454 Phenomenology of Mind
mediate unity of the substance [of ethical Hfe] with self-consciousness — an immediacy which thus appears as the existence of a natural difference, at once as regards its aspect of reahty and of difference. It is that aspect which, in the notion of spiritual reahty, came to light as " original determinate nature," when we were dealing with the stage of " Individuahty which is real to itself." This moment loses the in- determinateness which it still has there, and the contin- gent diversity of " constitution " and " capacities." It is now the specific opposition of the two sexes, whose natural character acquires at the same time the signifi- cance of their respective ethical determinations.
The distinction of the sexes and of their ethical content remains all the same within the unity of the ethical substance, and its operation is just the constant process of that substance. The husband is sent forth by the spirit of the family into the life of the community, and finds there his self-conscious reality. Just as the family thereby finds in the community its universal substance and subsistence, conversely the community finds in the family the formal element of its own reaHsa- tion, and in the divine law its power and confirmation. Neither of the two is alone self-complete. Human law as a Hving and active principle proceeds from the divine, the law holding on earth from that of the nether world, the conscious from the unconscious, mediation from immediacy ; and returns too whence it came. The power of the nether world, on the other hand, finds its reahsation upon earth ; it comes through consciousness to have existence and efficacy.
The universal elements of the ethical hfe are thus the (ethical) substance qua universal, and that sub-
The Ethical World 455
stance qua particular consciousness. Their universal actuality is the nation and the family ; while they get their natural self, and their operative individuaHty, in man and woman. Here in this content of the ethical 333 world, we see attained those purposes which the previous insubstantial modes of conscious hfe set before them. What Reason apprehended only as an object, has become Self-consciousness, and what self-consciousness merely contained within it is here expHcit true reahty. What Observation knew, — an object given externally and picked up, and one in the constitution of which the sub- ject knowing had no share, — is here a given ethical con- dition, a custom f oirnd lying ready at hand, but a reality which is at the same time the deed and the product of the subject finding it. The individual who seeks the *' pleasure " of enjoying his particular individuaUty, finds it in the family hfe, and the " necessity "* in which that pleasure passes away is his own self-consciousness as a citizen of his nation. Or, again, it is knowing the ** law of his own heart "f as the law of all hearts, know- ing the consciousness of self to be the recognised and universal ordinance of society: it is "virtue," J which enjoys the fruits of its own sacrifice, which brings about what it sets out to do, viz. to bring the essential nature into the light of the actual present, — and its enjoyment lies in this universal hfe. Finally, consciousness of " fact as such " {der Sache selbst)^ gets satisfaction in the real substance, which contains and maintains in positive form the abstract aspects of that empty category. That substance finds a genuine content in the powers of the ethical order, a content that takes the place of those insubstantial commands which the " healthy
* Cp. p. 350 ff. + Cp. p. 357 ff. X Cp. p. 369 £f. § Cp. p. 387 ff.
456 Phenomenology of Mind
human reason "* wanted to give and to know : and in consequence thus gets a concrete inherently determinate standard for " testing/' not the laws, but what is done. The whole is a stable equihbrium of all the parts, and each part a spirit in its native element, a spirit which does not seek its satisfaction beyond itself, but has the satisfaction within itself for the reason that itself is in this balanced equipoise with the whole. This condition of stable equihbrium can, of course, only be Hving by inequahty arising within it, and being brought back again to equipoise by Righteousness and Justice. Justice, however, is neither an ahen principle {Wesen) holding somewhere remote from the present, nor the reahsation (unworthy of the name of justice) of mutual malice, treachery, ingratitude, etc., which, in the un- intelligent way of chance and accident, would fulfil the law by a kind of irrational connection with- out any controlhng idea, action by commission and omission, without any consciousness of what was involved. On the contrary, being justice in human law, it brings back to the whole, to the universal hfe of society, what has broken away separately from the harmony and equilibrium of the whole : — the indepen- dent classes and individuals. In this way justice is the government of the nation, and is its all-pervading essen- tial hfe in a consciously present individual form, and is the personal self-conscious will of all. , That justice, however, which restores to equihbrium the universal when getting the mastery over the par- ticular individual, is similarly the simple single spirit of the individual who has suffered wrong ; it is not broken up into the two elements, one who has suffered
* Cp. p. 412 tf.
The Ethical World 457
wrong and a far away remote reality (Wesen). The individual himself is the power of the " nether " world, and that reahty is his " fury/' wreaking vengeance upon him.^ For his individuahty, his blood, still Hves in the house, his substance has a lasting actuahty. The wrong, which can be brought upon the individual in the realm of the ethical world, consists merely in this, that a bare something by chance happens to him. The power which perpetrates on the conscious individual this wrong of making him into a mere thing, is " nature " ; it is the universality not of the commimity, but the abstract universahty of mere existence. And the particular individual, in wiping out the wrong suffered, turns not against the community — for he has not suffered at its hands — but against the latter. As we saw, those who consciously share the blood of the in- dividual remove this wrong in such a way, that what has happened becomes rather a work of their own doing, and hence bare existence, the last state, gets also to be something willed, and thus an object of gratification.
The ethical realm remains in this way permanently a world without blot or stain, a world untainted by any internal dissension. So, too, its process is an untroubled transition from one of its powers to the other, in such a way that each preserves and produces the other. We see it no doubt divided into two ultimate elements and their reahsation : but their opposition is rather the confirming and substantiation of one through the other ; ^3 / and where they directly come in contact and afiect each other as actual factors, their mediating common element straightway permeates and suffuses the one with the
* 'ITie reference here is to Orestes.
458 Phenomenology of Mind
other. The one extreme, universal spirit conscious of itself, becomes, through the individuaHty of man, linked together with its other extreme, its force and its element, with unconscious spirit. On the other hand, divine law is individuahsed, the unconscious spirit of the particular individual finds its existence, in woman, through the mediation of whom the spirit of the individual comes out of its unrealisedness into actuahty, out of the state of unknowing and un- known, and rises into the conscious realm of universal spirit. The union of man with woman constitutes the operative mediating agency for the whole, and con- stitutes the element which, while separated into the extremes of divine and human law, is, at the same time, their immediate union. This union, again, turns both those first mediate connections (Schlüsse) into one and the same synthesis, and unites into one process the twofold movement in opposite directions, — one from reality to unreahty, the downward movement of human law, organised into independent members, to the danger and trial of death, — the other, from un- reahty to reahty, the upward movement of the law of the nether world to the daylight of conscious existence. Of these movements the former falls to man, the latter to woman.
Ethical Action. Knowledge, Human and Divine. Guilt and Destiny.
[A fundamental condition of social order is that it is maintained by- action on the part of the individual members of a society ; action is a fundamental principle of distinction between individuals, is the way they make their contribution to social life, and is also the way by which the continuance of social life is ceaselessly broken and reconstituted. In a comprehensive sense therefore action is the principle by which distinction in unity is carried out in social life. The consideration of its significance is thus an essential problem for the analysis of social mind. Action must be considered at once with reference to individuality and also with refer- ence to those conceptions of social order as containing both " divine " and "human" law. In the following section, this analysis is undertaken.
The specific historical background of Hegel's thought in this section, and to some extent in the preceding section, is supplied by the social life of the Greek city state. The Greek city state has been taken as the type, so to say, of spiritual existence realised as a self-complete ethical order. But the social life of Greece is here in large measure read and interpreted in the light of the dramatisation of Greek ethical conceptions by the great Greek tragedians, especially Sophocles. This accounts for the re- peated reference to the purely dramatic conception of the " destiny" or the "pathic" element in the life of the individual whose spiritual existence is completely bound up with the established social order. It is in Greece that we find most fully realised the all-sulficiency of the state for the individual, which Hegel has here in view, a sufficiency which was at once the strength and beauty, as well as the pathos and weakness of Greek social life.
With this and the preceding section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Part II, "The Greek World."]
459
Ethical Action. Knowledge, Human and Divine. Guilt and Destiny.
In the form presented by the opposition of elements in the realm just dealt with, self-consciousness has not yet come to its rights as a particular individuality. Individuality there has, on one side, the sense of merely universal will, on the other, of consanguinity of the family. This particular individual has merely the signifi- cance of shadowy unreality. There is as yet no perform- ance of an act. The act, however, is the realised self. It breaks in upon the untroubled stable organisation and movement of the ethical world. What there appears as ordinance and harmony between both its constituent elements, each of which confirms and complements the other, becomes through the performing of an act a transition of opposites into one another, by which each proves to be the annihilation rather than the confirma- tion of its self and its opposite. It becomes the process of negation or destruction, the eternal necessity of awful destiny, which engulfs in the abyss of its bare identity divine and human law alike, as well as both the self- conscious factors in which these powers subsist ; and, to our view, passes over into the absolute self- existence of mere particular self-consciousness.
The basis from which this movement proceeds, and on which it takes effect, is the kingdom of the ethical order. But the activity at work in this process is self- consciousness. Being ethical consciousness, it is the
460
Ethical Action 461
pure and simple direction of activity towards the essential principle of the ethical Hfe — it is Duty. There is no caprice, and Hkewise no struggle, no indecision in it, since it has given up legislating and testing laws : the essential ethical principle is, for it, something immediate, unwavering, without contradiction. There is therefore neither the painful spectacle of find- ing itself in a colhsion between passion and duty, nor the comic spectacle of a collision between duty and duty — a colhsion, which so far as content goes is the same as that between passion and duty ; for passion can also be presented as a duty, because duty, when consciousness withdraws into itself and leaves its immediate essential substance {Wesenheit), comes to be the formal universal, into which one content fits equally well with another, as we found before. The colhsion of duties is, however, comical, because it brings out the contradiction inherent in the idea of an absolute standing opposed to another absolute, expresses some- thing absolute and then directly the annihilation of this so-called absolute or duty. The ethical conscious- ness, however, knows what it has to do ; and is decided, whether it is to belong to divine or human law. This directness which characterises its decision is something immanent and inherent (Ansichseyn), and hence has at the same time the significance of a natural condition 33>' of being, as we saw. Nature, not the accident of circumstances or choice, assigns one sex to one law, the other to the other law ; or conversely both the ethical powers themselves estabhsh their individual existence and actualisation in the two sexes.
Thus, then, because on the one side the ethical order consists essentially in this immediate directness
462 PJienomenology of Mind
of decision, and therefore only the one law is for con- sciousness the essential reality ; while, on the other side, the powers of the ethical order are actual in the self of conscious life, — in this way these forces acquire the significance of excluding one another and of being fU opposed to one another. They are explicit in self-
^j.^^, consciousness just as they were merely impHcit in the realm of the ethical order. The ethical consciousness, because it is decisively on the side of one of them, is essentially Character. There is not for it equal essentiality in both. The opposition therefore appears as an unfortunate collision of duty merely with reality, on which right has no hold. The ethical con- sciousness is qua self-consciousness in this opposition, and being so, it at once proceeds either to subdue by force this reahty opposing it to the law which it accepts, or to get round this reality by craft. Since it sees right only on its own side, and wrong on the other, so, of these two, that which belongs to divine law detects, on the other side, mere arbitrary fortuitous human violence, while what appertains to human law, finds in the other the obstinacy and disobedience of subjective self-sufficiency. For the commands of
teiA^ government have a universal sense and meaning open to the light of day ; the will of the other law, however, is the inner concealed meaning of the realm of darkness {unterirdisch), a meaning which appears expressed as the will of a particular being, and in contradicting the first is malicious offence.
There arises in this way in consciousness the opposi- tion between what is known and what is not known, just as, in the case of substance, there was an opposition between the conscious and the unconscious ; and the
Ethical Action 463
absolute right of ethical self-consciousness comes into 3$ 8 conflict with the divine right of the essential reahty. Self -consciousness, qua consciousness, takes the objective actuality, as such, to have essential being. Look- ing at its substance, however, it is the unity of itself and this opposite, and the ethical self-consciousness is consciousness of that substance : the object, qua opposed to self-consciousness, has, therefore, entirely lost the characteristic of having essential being by itself. Just as the spheres [of conscious life] where the object is merely a "thing" are long past and gone, so, too, are these spheres, where consciousness sets up and estabhshes something from out itself, and turns a particular moment into the essential reahty (Wesen). Against such one-sidedness actual concrete reahty has a power of its own ; it takes the side of truth against consciousness and shows consciousness itself what the truth is. The ethical consciousness, however, has drunk from the cup of the absolute substance, forgotten all the one-sidedness of isolating self-existence, all its purposes and pecuUar notions, and has, therefore, at the same time drowned in this Stygian stream all essentiality of nature and all the independence claimed by the objective reality. Its absolute right, therefore, when it acts in accordance with ethical law, is to find in this actuahsation nothing else than the fulfilment and performance of this law itself: and that the deed should manifest nothing but ethical action.
The ethical, being absolute essence and absolute power at once, cannot endure any perversion of its content. If it were merely absolute essence without power, it might undergo perversion at the hands of
464 Phenomenology of Mind
individuality. But this latter, being ethical conscious- ness, has renounced all perverting when it gave up its one-sided subjectivity (Fürsichseyn). Conversely, again, mere power might be perverted by the essential reality, if power were still a subjectivity of that kind. On account of this unity, individuahty is a pure form of the substance which is the content, and action consists in transition from thought over into reahty, merely as the process of an unreal opposition, whose moments have no special and particular content distinct from one another, and no essential nature of their own. The absolute right of ethical consciousness is, therefore, that the deed, the mode and form of its realisation, should be nothing else than it knows it to be.
But the essential ethical reahty has spht asunder into two laws, and consciousness, taking up an un- divided single attitude towards law, is assigned only to one. Just as this simple consciousness takes its stand on the absolute right that the essential reahty has appeared to it qua ethical as that reality inherently is, so, too, this essence insists on the right belonging to its reahty, i.e. the right of having a double form.* This right of the essential reahty does not, however, at the same time stand over against and opposed to self- consciousness, as if it were to be found anywhere else ; rather it is the essential nature of self-consciousness. Only there has it its existence and its power ; and its opposition is the act of self- consciousness itself. For the latter, just because it is a self to itself, and proceeds to act, lifts itself out of the state of simple immediacy, and itself sets up the division into two. By the act it gives up the specific character of the ethical hfe, that of
* viz. divine and human law.
Ethical Action 465
being pure and simple certainty of immediate truth, and sets up the division of itself into self as active and reahty over against it, and for it, therefore, negative. By the act it thus becomes Guilt. For the deed is its doing, and doing is its inmost nature. And the guilt acquires also the meaning of Crime ; for as simple ethical consciousness it has turned to and conformed itself to the one law, but turned away from the other, and thus has broken the latter by its deed.
Guilt is not an external indifferent entity {Wesen) with the double meaning, that the deed, as actually manifested to the light of day, may be an action of the guilty self, or may not be so, as if with the doing of it there could be connected something external and accidental that did not belong to it, from which point of view, therefore, the action would be innocent. Rather the act is itself this diremption, this affirming itself for itself, and estabhshing over against this an ahen external reahty. That such a result takes place is due to the deed itself, and is the ■si^c outcome of it. Hence, innocence is an attribute merely of the want of action {NicJit-thun), a state like the mere being of a stone, and one which is not even true of a child.
Looking at the content, however, the ethical act con- tains the element of wrongdoing, because it does not cancel and transcend the natural allotment of the two laws to the two sexes ; but rather, being an undivided attitude towards the law, keeps within the sphere of natural immediacy, and, qua acting, turns this one-sided- ness into guilt, by merely laying hold of one side of the essential reahty and taking up a negative relation towards the other, i.e. violating it. Where, in the general ethical life, guilt and crime, deeds and actions,
VOL. II.— E
466 Phenomenology of Mind
come in, will be more definitely brought out later. Meantime, so much is at once clear, that it is not this particular individual who acts and becomes guilty. For he, qua this particular self, is merely a shadowy reality ; he is merely qua universal self, and indi- viduality is purely the formal aspect of doing anything at all, while its content is the laws and customs which are determined for the individual, the laws and customs of his class or station. He is the substance qua genus, which by its determinateness becomes, no doubt, a species, but the specific form remains at the same time the generic universal. Self-consciousness within the life of a nation descends from the universal only down as far as specific particularity, but not as far as the single indi- viduality, which sets up an exclusive self, estabhshes in its action a reality negative to itself. On the contrary, the action of that self-consciousness rests on secure confidence in the whole, into which there enters nothing alien or foreign, neither fear nor hostility.
Ethical self-consciousness now comes to find in its deed the full explicit meaning of concrete real action as much when it followed divine law as when it followed human. The law manifest to it is, in the essential reality, bound up with its opposite ; the essential reality is the unity of both ; but the deed has merely carried out one as against the other. But being bound up with this other in the inner reality, the fulfil- 3i I ment of the one calls forth the other, in the shape of something which, having been violated and now become hostile, demands revenge — an attitude which the deed has made it take up. In the case of action, only one phase of the decision is in general in evidence. The decision, however, is inherently something negative,
Ethical Action 467
which plants an "other" in opposition to it, something foreign to the decision, which is clear knowledge. Actual reahty, therefore, keeps concealed within itself this other aspect ahen to clear knowledge, and does not show itself to consciousness as it fully and truly is {an und für sich). In the story of OEdipus the son does not see his own father in the person of the man who has insulted him and whom he strikes to death, nor his mother in the queen whom he makes his wife. In this way a hidden power shunning the light of day, waylays the ethical self-consciousness, a power which bursts forth after the deed is done, and seizes the doer in the act. For the completed deed is the removal of the opposition between the knowing self and the reality over against it. The ethical consciousness cannot disclaim the crime and its guilt. The deed consists in setting in motion what was unmoved, and in bringing out what in the first instance lay shut up as a mere possibiUty, and thereby finking on the unconscious to the conscious, the non-existent to the existent. In this truth, there- fore, the deed comes to the fight ; — it is something in which a conscious element is bound up with what is unconscious, what is pecufiarly one's own with what is alien and external : — it is an essential reality divided in sunder, whose other aspect consciousness discovers and also finds to be its own aspect, but as a power violated by its doing, and roused to hostifity against it. It may well be that the right, which kept itself in reserve, is not in its pecufiar form present to the con- sciousness of the doer, but is merely impficit, present in the subjective inward guilt of the decision and the action. But the ethical consciousness is more complete, its guilt purer, if it knows beforehand the
\.t fTAn*
468 Phenomenology of Mind
law and the power which it opposes, if it takes them to be sheer violence and wrong, to be a contingency in the ethical hfe, and wittingly, Hke Antigone, commits the crime. The deed when accomplished transforms its point of view : the very performance of it eo if so expresses that what is ethical has to be actual ; for the reahsation of the purpose is the very purpose of acting. Acting expresses precisely the unity of reaHty and the substance ; it expresses the fact that actuality is not an accident for the essential element, but that, in union with that element, is given to no right which is not true right. On account of this actuahty and on account of its deed ethical consciousness must acknowledge its opposite as its own actuality; it must acknowledge its guilt.
Because of our sufferings we acknowledge we have erred.*
To acknowledge this, is expressly to indicate that the severance between ethical purpose and actuahty has been done away ; it means the return to the ethical frame of mind, which knows that nothing counts but right. Thereby, however, the agent surrenders his character and the reality of his self, and has utterly collapsed. His being lies in belonging to his ethical law, as his substance ; in acknowledging an opposite, however, he has ceased to find his sub- stance in this law; and instead of reaUty this has become an unreality, a mere sentiment, a frame of mind. The substance no doubt appears as the "pathic " elementt in the individuahty, and the individuahty
* An adaptation from Antigone, 926.
t The element that so permeates his being as to constitute his con- trolling necessity and destiny.
Guilt and Destiny 469
appears as the factor which animates the substance, and hence stands above it. But the substance is a " pathic '' element which is at the same time his char- acter; the ethical individuahty is directly and in- herently one with this its universal, exists in it alone, and is incapable of surviving the destruction which this ethical power suffers at the hands of its opposite.
This individuality, however, has all the same the cer- tainty, that that individuahty, whose "pathic" ele- ment is this opposite power [the substance], suffers no more harm than it has inflicted. The opposition of the ethical powers to one another, and the process of the individuahties setting up these powers in life and action, have reached their true end merely in the fact that both sides undergo the same destruction. For neither of the powers has any advantage over the other that it should be a more essential moment of the substance common to both. The fact of their being equally and to the same degree essential, and subsisting 3z>.3 independently beside each other means their having no separate self ; in the act they have a self-nature, but a different self, — which contradicts the unity of the self and cancels their claim to independent right, and thus brings about their necessary destruction. Character, too, in part, looking at its " pathic " element, the substance, belongs to one alone ; in part, when we look at the aspect of knowledge, the one character Hke the other is divided into a conscious element and an un- conscious : and since each itself calls forth this opposi- tion, and the want of knowledge is by the act also its doing, each falls into the guilt which consumes it. The victory of one power and its character, and the defeat of the other side, would thus be merely the
470 Phenomenology of Mind
part and the incomplete work, which steadily advances till the equilibrium between the two is attained. It is in the equal suppression of both sides that absolute right is first accomphshed, and the ethical substance, as the negative force devouring both sides, in other words omnipotent and righteous Destiny, makes its appearance.
If both powers are taken according to their specific content and its individualisation, we have the scene presented of a contest between them as individuated. On its formal side, this is the struggle of the ethical order and of self-consciousness with unconscious nature and a contingency due to this nature. The latter has a right as against the former, because this is only objec- tive spirit, merely in immediate unity with its substance. On the side of content, the struggle is the rupture of divine and human law. The youth goes forth from the unconscious life of the family and becomes the in- dividuality of the community [i.e. Ruler]. But that he still shares the natural Hfe from which he has torn himself away, is seen in the fact that he emerges there- from only to find his claim afiected by the contingency that there are two brothers * who with equal right take possession of the community ; t the inequality due to the one having been born earlier and the other later, an inequahty which is a natural difference, has no importance for them when they enter the ethical life of society. But government, as the single soul, the self of the national spirit, does not admit of a duahty of in- dividuality ; and in contrast to the ethical necessity of this unity, nature appears as by accident providing
* Eteocles and Polynices : v. OMipus at Colonus. t viz. the throne of their Father ffidipus.
Guilt and Destiny 471
more than one. These two [brothers], therefore, become disunited ; and their equal right in regard to the power of the state is destructive to both, for they are equally wrong. Humanly considered, he has committed the crime who, not being in actual possession, seizes on the community, at the head of which the other stood. While again he has right on his side who knew how to seize the other merely qua particular individual, detached from the community, and banish him, while thus powerless, out of the community ; he has merely laid hands on the individual as such, not the community, not the essential nature of human right. The community, attacked and defended from a point of view which is merely particular, maintains itself ; and both brothers find their destruction reciprocally through one another. For individuality, which involves peril to the whole in the maintenance of its own self- existence (Fürsichseyn), has thrust its ovv^n self out of the community, and is disintegrated in its own nature. The community, however, will do honoiu: to the one who is found on its side ; the government, the re- established singleness of the self of the community, will punish by depriving of the last honour him who already proclaimed its devastation on the walls of the city. He who came to affront the highest spiritual form of conscious hfe, the spirit of the com- munity, must be stripped of the honour of his entire and complete nature, the honour due to the spirit of the departed.*
But if the universal thus lightly knocks off the highest point of its pyramid, and doubtless triumphs victoriously over the family, the rebellious principle
* V, Antigone.
472 Phenomenology of Mind
of individuation, it has thereby merely put itself into conflict with divine law, the self-conscious with the unconscious spirit. For the latter, this unconscious spirit, is the other essential power, and therefore the power undestroyed, but only insulted by the former. It finds, however, only a bloodless shade to lend it help towards actually carrying itself out in the face of that masterful and openly enunciated law. Being the law of weakness and of darkness, it therefore gives way, to begin with, before law which has force and pub- licity ; for the strength of the former is effective in the nether realm, not on earth and in the light of day. But the actual and concrete, which has taken away from what is inward its honour and its power, has thereby consumed its own real nature. The spirit which is manifest to the light of day has the roots of its power in the lower world : the certainty felt by a nation, a certainty of which it is sure and which makes itself assured, finds the truth of its oath binding all its members into one, solely in the mute unconscious substance of all, in the waters of forgetfulness. In consequence, the fulfilment of the pubhc spirit turns round into its opposite, and learns that its supreme right is supreme wrong, its victory rather its own defeat. The slain, whose right is injured, knows, therefore, how to find means of vengeance which are of the same reahty and strength as the power at whose hands it has suffered. These powers are other communities,* whose altars the dogs or birds defiled with the corpse of the dead, which is not raised into unconscious universality by being restored, as is its due, to the ultimate Individuum, the elemental
* Refers to the attack of Argos agaiust Thebes : v. Antigone.
Guilt and Destiny 473
earth, but instead has remained above ground in the sphere of reahty, and has now received, as the force of divine law, a self-conscious actual universaHty. They rise up in hostihty, and destroy the community which has dishonoured and destroyed its own power, the sacred claims, the " piety " of the family.
Represented in this way, the movement of human and divine law finds the expression of its necessity in indi- viduals, in whom the universal appears as a " pathic " element, and the activity of the movement as action of individuals, which gives the appearance of contingency to the necessity of the process. But individuality and its action constitute the principle of individuation in general, a principle which in its pure universality was called inner divine law. As a moment of the visible community it does not merely exhibit that unconscious activity of the nether world, its operation is not simply external in its existence ; it has an equally manifest visible existence and process, actual in the actual nation. Taken in this form, what was represented as a simple 3/, <^ process of the " pathic '' element as embodied in in- dividuals, assumes another look, and crime and the resulting ruin of the community assume the proper form of their existence.
Human law, then, in its universal mode of existence is the community, in its efficient operation in general is the manhood of the community, in its actual efficient operation is government. It has its being, its process, and its subsistence by consuming and absorbing into itself the separatist action of the household gods {Penates), the individualisation into insular independent families which are under the management of woman- kind, and by keeping them dissolved in the fluent
474 Phenomenology of Mind
continuum of its own nature. The family at the same time, however, is in general its element, the individual consciousness its universal operative basis. Since the community gets itself subsistence only by breaking in upon family happiness, and dissolving [individual] self-consciousness into the universal, it creates its enemy for itself within its own gates, creates it in what it suppresses, and what is at the same time essen- tial to it — womankind in general. Womankind — the everlasting irony in the life of the community — changes by intrigue the universal purpose of government into a private end, transforms its universal activity into a work of this or that specific individual, and perverts the universal property of the state into a possession and ornament for the family. Woman in this way turns to ridicule the grave wisdom of maturity, which, being dead to all particular aims, to private pleasure, personal satisfaction, and actual activity as well, thinks of, and is concerned for, merely what is imiversal ; she makes this wisdom the laughing-stock of raw and wanton youth, an object of derision and scorn, un- worthy of their enthusiasm. She asserts that it is everywhere the force of youth that really counts ; she upholds this as of primary significance ; extols a son as one who is the lord and master of the mother who has borne him ; a brother as one in whom the sister finds man on a level with herself ; a youth as one through whom the daughter, deprived of her dependence (on the family unity), acquires the satis- faction and the dignity of wifehood.
The community, however, can preserve itself only
by suppressing this spirit of individualism ; and because
-*^. . the latter is an essential element, the community like-
Guilt and Destiny 475
wise creates it as well, and creates it, too, by taking up the attitude of seeking to suppress it as a hostile principle. Nevertheless, since, by cutting itself off from the universal purpose, this hostile element is merely evil, and in itself of no account, it would be quite ineffective if the community did not recognise the force of youth, (manhood, which, while immature, still remains in the condition of particularity), as the force of the whole. For the community, the whole, is a nation, it is itself individuality, and really only is something for itself by other individualities being for it, by its excluding these from itself and knowing itself independent of them. The negative side of the com- munity, suppressing the isolation of individuals within its own bounds, but originating activity directed beyond those bounds, finds the weapons of its warfare in individ- uals. War is the spirit and form in which the essential moment of ethical substance, the absolute freedom of ethical self-consciousness from all and every kind of existence, is manifestly confirmed and reahsed. While, on the one hand, war makes the particular spheres of property and. personal independence, as well as the personality of the individual himself, feel the force of negation and destruction, on the other hand this engine of negation and destruction stands out as that which preserves the whole in security. The individual who provides pleasure to woman, the brave youth, the suppressed principle of ruin and destruction, comes now into prominence, and is the factor of primary significance and worth. It is now physical strength and what seems like the chance of fortune, that decide as to the existence of ethical Ufe and spiritual necessity. Because the existence of the ethical Hfe thus rests on
476 Phenomenology of Mind
physical strength and the chances of fortune, it is eo ipso settled that its overthrow has come. While only household gods, in the former case, gave way before and were absorbed in the national spirit, here the living individual embodiments of the national spirit fall by their own individuality and disappear in one universal community, whose bare universality is soulless and dead, and whose living activity is found in the particular individual qua particular. The ethical form and embodiment of the life of spirit has passed away, and another mode appears in its place.
This disappearance of the ethical substance and its transition into another mode are thus determined by the ethical consciousness being directed upon the law essentially in an immediate way. It lies in this char- acter of immediacy that nature at all enters into the acts which constitute- the ethical life. Its realisation simply reveals the contradiction and the germ of destruction, which lie hid within that very peace and beauty belonging to the gracious harmony and un- broken equihbrium of the ethical spirit. For the essence and meaning of this immediacy contains a contradiction : it is at once the unconscious peace of nature and the self-conscious unresting peace of spirit. On account of this " naturalness," the ethical life of a nation is, in general, a kind of individuality determined by, and therefore limited by, nature, and thus finds its dissolution in, and gives place to, another type of individuahty. This characteristic being given a positive existence, is a Hmitation, but at the same time is the negative element in general and the self of individuality. Since, however, this determinateness passes away, the life of spirit and this substance, conscious of itself
Guilt and Destiny 477
in all its component individuals, are lost. The determin- ate character comes forth and stands apart as a formal universality in the case of all the component in- dividuals, and no longer dwells within them as a living spirit; instead, the uniform solidarity of its individuaHty has burst into a plurahty of separate points.
The Condition of Right or Legal Status
[A further step in the realisation of the principle of coherent sociality is reached when the individual is invested with the universality of the social order by definite enactments of the controlling agency of the social whole. His contingency as an individual is removed by his being expressly treated as a focal unity of the whole order, whose very exist- ence is staked on maintaining him as a unit with a universal significance, and which stands or falls by maintaining him in this condition. The universal order is in this case no longer merely implicit, merely a matter of routine and custom ; it is openly and objectively expressed in and through each individual component of society. The form this takes is the diff"erentiation of the social substance into a totality of " persons," each and all invested with express universal, or legally acknowledged, signifi- cance. This is the sphere of legal personality, or of individuality consti- tuted by a system of Eights. It is a supreme achievement of social existence, and the highest attainment of coherent social experience. Hence the present section.
This is a condition or stage in every developed community. But the specific historical material for this section is derived from the law-consti- tuted social order of the Roman Empire, especially the Empire under the Antonines. Here, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the culmination of imperial rule and the " golden age " of law synchronised. The triumph of Roman imperial government and the perfecting of the system of Roman jurisprudence were accomplished during the same period of time, about A.D. 131-235. There is every reason to suppose that the two necessarily arose and fell together, and that the decline and disappearance of the Roman law-constituted state should thus prepare the way for a further achievement of the social spirit of humanity. Hence the historical justifi- cation for the transition to the next stage of social life, that of self- discordant spiritual existence.
With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Part III, especially the introduction to this part, and Sect. Ill, c. 1., "Rome under the Emperors."]
478
The Condition or Right or Legal Status
The general comprehensive unity, into which the living immediate unity of individuality and the ethical substance falls back, is the soulless (geistlos) community, which has ceased to be the un-selfconscious * substance of individuals, and in which they now, each in his separate individual existence, count as selves and substances with a being of their own. The universal being thus spht up into the atomic units of a sheer plurahty of individuals, this inoperative, hfeless spirit is a principle of equahty in which all count for as much as each, i.e. have the significance of Persons. What in the realm of the ethical life was called the hidden divine law has in fact come out of concealment to the light of actuahty. In the former the individual was, and was counted, actual merely as a blood relation, merely as sharing in the general -^Hi hfe of the family. Qua particular individual, he was the selfless departed spirit ; now, however, he has come out of his unreahty. Because tlie ethical sub- stance is only objective, "true," spirit, only imphes spirit, the individual on that account turns back to the im- mediate certainty of his own self ; he is that substance qua positive universal, but his actuality consists in being a negative universal self.
We saw the powers and forms of the ethical world sink in the bare necessity of mere Destiny. This
* Reading " selbstbewusstlose " (1st ed.). 479
480 Phenomenology of Mind
power of the ethical world is the substance turning itself back into its ultimate and simple nature. But that absolute being turning back into itself, that very- necessity of characterless Destiny, is nothing else than the Ego of self-consciousness.
This is taken henceforth as what is absolutely real, as the ultimate self-contained reaUty. To be so ac- knowledged is its substantiality ; but this is abstract universahty, because its content is this rigid self, not the self dissolved in the substance.
Personahty, then, has here risen out of the hfe and activity of the ethical substance. It is the con- dition in which the independence of consciousness has actual concrete validity. The unrealised abstract thought of such independence, which arises through renouncing actuality, was at an earlier stage before our notice in the form of " Stoical self-consciousness.'* Just as the latter was the outcome of "Lordship and Bondage,"* the mode in which self-consciousness exists immediately, — so personality is the outgrowth of the immediate life of spirit which is the universal controlHng will of all, as well as their dutiful obedience and submissive service. What in Stoicism was imphcit merely in an abstract way, is now an explicit con- crete world. Stoicism is nothing else than the mood of consciousness which reduces to its abstract form the principle of legal status, the principle of the sphere of right, — an independence devoid of the quahties of spirit {geistlos). By its flight from actuahty it attained merely the idea of independence : it is absolutely sub- jective, exists solely for itself, in that it does not hnk its being to anything that exists, but rather wants to
* V. p. 175 ff.
Legal Status 481
give up every kind of existence, and places its essential meaning in the unity of mere thinking. In the same manner, the " right " of a " person " is not linked on to a richer or more powerful existence of the individual qua -.^'i* individual, nor again connected with a universal living spirit, but, rather, is attached to the mere unit of its abstract reahty, or to that unit qua self-consciousness in general.
Now just as the abstract independence of Stoicism set forth the stages of its actuahsation, so, too, this last form of independence [Personahty] will recapitulate the pro- cess of the former mode. The former [Stoicism] passes over into the state of sceptical confusion, into a fickle instabihty of negation, which without adopting any per- manent form strays from one contingent mode of being and thinking to another, dissipates them indeed in absolute independence, but just as readily creates their independence once more. In fact, it is simply the contradiction of consciousness claiming to be at once independent and yet devoid of independence. In hke manner, the personal independence characteristic of the sphere of right is really a similar universal confusion and reciprocal dissolution of this kind. For what passes for the absolute essential reahty is self-consciousness in the sense of the bare empty unit of the person. As against this empty universahty, the substance has the form of what supphes the filhng and the content ; and this content is now left completely detached and dis- connected ; for the spirit, which kept it in subjection and held it in its unity, is no longer present. The empty unit of the person is, therefore, as regards its reahty, an accidental existence, a contingent insub- stantial process and activity that comes to no durable
VOL, II. — F
482 Phenomenology of Mind
subsistence. Just as was the case in Scepticism, the formahsm of "right" is, thus, by its very conception, without special content ; it finds at its hand the fact of " possession," a fact subsisting in multiphcity, and im- prints thereon the abstract universaHty, by which it is called " property," — the same sort of abstraction as Scepticism made use of. But while the reality so deter- mined is in Scepticism called a mere appearance, a mere semblance, and has merely a negative value, in the case of right it has a positive significance. The negative value in the former case consists in the real having the meaning of self qua thought, qua inherent universal; the positive significance in the latter case, however, consists in its being mine in the sense of the category, as something whose vahdity is admitted, re- cognised, and actual. Both are the same abstract uni- 3 5 ' versal. The actual content, the proper value of what is " mine " — whether it be an external possession, or again inner riches or poverty of mind and character — is not contained in this empty form and does not concern it. The content belongs, therefore, to a peculiar specific power, which is something different from the formal universal, is chance and caprice. Consciousness of right, therefore, in the course of the very process of making its claim good, finds that it loses its own reahty, discovers its complete lack of inherent substantiality, and that to describe an individual as a " person " is to use an expression of contempt.
The free and unchecked power possessed by the content takes determinate shape in this way. The absolute plurahty of dispersed atomic personahties is, by the nature of this characteristic feature gathered at the same time into a single centre, alien to
Legal Status 483
them and just as devoid of the hfe of spirit (geistlos). That central point is, in one respect, Kke the atomic rigidity of their personaHty, a merely particular reahty ; but in contrast to their empty particularity, it has the significance of the entire content, and hence is taken to be the essential element; while again, in contrast to their pretended absolute, but inherently insubstantial, reahty, it is the universal power, and absolute actuahty. This " lord and master of the world '' takes himself in this way to be the absolute person, comprising at the same time all existence within himself, for whom there exists no higher type of spirit. He is a person : but the sole and single person who has chal- lenged, confronted, and conquered all. These all constitute and establish the triumphant universality of the one person ; for this particular, as such, is truly what it is only qua universal plurality of particular units : cut off from this plurality, the solitary and single self is, in fact, a powerless and unreal self. At the same time, it is the consciousness of the con- tent which is antithetically opposed to that universal personality. This content, however, when liberated from its negative power, means chaos of spiritual powers, which, when let loose as elemental independent agencies, break out into wild extravagances and excesses, and fall on one another in mad destruction. Their help- less self- consciousness is the powerless inoperative en- closure and the arena of their chaotic tumult. But this master and lord of the world, aware of his being the ^e'Z sum and substance of all actual powers, is the titanic self-consciousness, which takes itself to be the living God. Since, however, he exists merely qua formal self, which is unable to tame and subdue those powers, his
484 Phenomenology of Mind
procedure and his self- enjoyment are equally gigantic extravagance.*
The lord of the world becomes really conscious of what he is, — viz. the universal might of actuaUty, — by that power of destruction which he exercises against the contrasted selfhood of his subjects. For his power is not the spiritual union and concord in which the various persons might get to know their own self- consciousness. Eather they exist as persons separately for themselves, and all continuity with others is ex- cluded from the absolute punctual atomicity of their nature. They are, therefore, in a merely negative relation, a relation of exclusion both to one another and to him, who is their principle of connection or continuity. Qua this continuity, he is the essential being and content of their formal nature, — a content, however, foreign to them, and a being hostile in character, which abolishes just what they take to be their very essence, viz. bare subjectivity without any content, mere empty independent existence each on its own account. And, again, qua the continuity of their personality, he destroys this very personahty itself. Juridical personahty thus finds itself, rather, without any substance of its own, since content ahen to it is imposed on it and holds good within it, — and does so there, because such content is the reahty of that ty3)e of personality. On the other hand the passion for destroying and turning over everything on this unreal field gains for itself the consciousness of its complete supremacy. But this self is barren desolation, and
* Cp. with the above Hobbes' Leviathan. The historical reference liere is to the "apotheosis" of the Roman Emperors,
Legal Status 485
hence is merely beside itself, and is indeed the very abandonment and rejection of its own self-consciousness. Such, then, is the constitution of that aspect in which self-consciousness qua absolute being is actual. The consciousness, however, that is driven back into itself out of this actuality, thinks this its insub- stantiality, makes it an object of thought. Formerly we saw the stoical independence of pure thought pass through Scepticism and find its true issue in the "unhappy consciousness,'' — the truth about what constitutes its inherent and exphcit nature, its final reahty. If this knowledge appeared at that stage ;;■; merely as the one-sided view of a consciousness qua consciousness, here the actual truth of that view has made its appearance. The truth consists in the fact that this universal accepted objectivity of self-consciousness is reahty estranged from it. This objectivity is the ^ef:hn universal actuahty of the self; but this actuality is directly the perversion of the self as well — it is the loss of its essential being. The reality of the self that was not found in the ethical world, has been gained by its reverting into the " person." What in the case of the former was all harmony and union, comes now on the scene, no doubt in developed form, but self- estranged.
B
Spirit in Self-estrangement — The Discipline of
Culture
[The life of spirit as found in the social self-consciousneas has two fundamental factors, the universal spirit or social whole as such, and the individual member as such. The interrelation of these constitutes the spiritual existence of society. Each by itself is abstract, but the realisa- tion of complete spiritual life through and in each is absolutely essential for spiritual fulfilment. In the preceding analysis of spirit, one form of this process has been considered, the realisation of the objective social order in and through individuals. In the succeeding section, with its various subsections, the other process of securing the same general result is analysed : we have the movement by which, starting from the in- dividual spirit, the realisation of comj^lete spiritual existence is established. The former starts from the compact solidarity of the social substance, and results in the establishment of separate and individually complete legal personalities. The latter process starts from the rigidly exclusive unity of the individual self and issues in the establishment of a social order of absolutely universal and therefore absolutely free wills. Both processes are ^er se abstract, necessary though they are : hence, as we shall find, a further stage in the evolution of spirit has still to appear.
The process of spirit in this second stage assumes from the start a conscious contrast between the individual spirit and a universal spiritual whole, a contrast, which, while profound, the individual seeks to remove, because the universality of spiritual existence which he seeks to attain is implicitly involved in his very being as a spiritual entity. His spiritual life seems, to begin with, rent in twain, so complete is the sense of the opposition of these factors constituting his life. His true life, his objective embodiment, seems outside him altogether and yet is felt to be his own self. He seems " estranged " from his complete self, and the estrangement seems his own doing, becavise the substance from which he is cut oflf is felt to be his own. The contrast is the deepest that spirit can possibly experience, just because spirit is and knows itself to be self-contained and self -complete, " the only reality." The contrast can only be removed by effort and struggle, for the individual spirit has to create or recreate for itself and by its own activity a universal objective spiritual realm, which
486
Spirit in Self-estrangement 487
It implies and in which alone it can be free and feel itself at home. The struggle spirit goes through is thus the greatest in the whole range of its experience, for the opposition to be overcome is the profoundest that exists. Since its aim is to achieve the highest for itself, nothing sacred can be allowed to stand in its way. It will make any sacrifice, and, if necessary, produce the direst spiritual disaster, a spiritual "reign of terror," to accomplish its result.
The movement of spirit here analysed covers every form of the in- dividual's "struggle for a substantial spiritual life." It embraces the " intellectual," " economic," " religious," and the " ethical " in the narrower sense of these terms ; it embraces all that we mean by " culture " and " civilisation." Hence the various parts of the argument : — spiritual " dis- cipline," "enlightenment," the pursuit of "wealth," "belief" and "super- stition," " absolute freedom."
The process of spiritual life passed under critical review here is familiar to a greater or less extent in every age and every society. But the actual historical material present to the mind of the writer is derived from (1) the period of European history embracing the entrance of Christianity and Christian philosophy into European civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the intellectual, " humanistic," awakening of the Renaissance which led on to the ecclesiastical revolution known as the Reformation : (2) the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century, the so-called "Enlightenment" which preceded and culminated in the French Revolution, the supreme outburst of spiritual emancipation known in European history. These two periods, far removed as they are in time, have much in common. They embody principles of spiritual develop- ment fundamentally alike, and are therefore freely drawn upon in the analysis, regardless of historicity.
Much of Hegel's analysis of the first stage of this spiritual move- ment has also directly in view the character of Rameau in Diderot's dialogue Le neveu de Rameau. This remarkable work was written in 1760, but was first brought to the notice of the literary public by Goethe, who translated and published the work in 1805. It thus came into Hegel's hands while he was writing the Phenomenology : and this perhaps accounts for the repeated references to it in the argument. The term " self -estranged spirit" with which he heads this section occurs in Goethe's translation. Rameau is an extreme type of such a spirit.
With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, § 3, c. 2 ; Pt. IV, § 2, c. 1, § 3, c. 1, 3 : the History of Philosophy, Pt. 3, Introduction, and c. 2, " The French Philosophy and the German En- lightenment."]
Spirit in Self-estrangement — The Discipline of
Culture
The ethical substance preserved and kept opposition enclosed within its simple conscious life ; and this con- sciousness was in immediate unity with its own essential nature. That nature has therefore the simple characteristic of something merely existing for the consciousness which is directed immediately upon it, and whose "custom" {Sitte) it is. Con- sciousness does not stand for a particular excluding self, nor does the substance mean for it an existence shut out from it, with which it would have to establish its identity only through estranging itself, and yet at the same time have to produce that estrangement. But that mind, whose self is absolutely insular, absolutely discrete, finds its content over against itself in the form of a reahty that is just as impenetrable as itself, and the world here gets the characteristic of being some- thing external, negative to self-consciousness. Yet this world is a spiritual reality, it is essentially the fusion of individuahty with being. This its existence is the work of self-consciousness, but Hkewise an actuality immediately present and alien to it, which has a peculiar being of its own, and in which it does not know itself. This reality is the external element and the free content * of the sphere of legal right. But this external reality, which the master of the world
* V, p. 479 fr.
Spirit in Self-estrangement 489
of legal right takes control of, is not merely this ele- mentary irreducible entity casually lying before the self ; it is his work, but not in a positive sense, rather negatively so. It preserves its existence by self-con- sciousness of its own accord relinquishing itself and giving up its essentiality, the condition which, in that waste and ruin which prevail in the sphere of right, the external force of the elements let loose seems to bring upon self-consciousness. These elements by themselves are sheer ruin and destruction, and cause their own over- throw. This overthrow, however, this their negative nature, is just the self ; it is their subject, their action, and their process. Such process and activity again, through which the substance becomes actual, are the ahenation of personality, for the immediate self, i.e. the self without estrangement and holding good as it stands, is without substantial content, and the sport of these raging elements. Its substance is thus just its re- linquishment, and the relinquishment is the substance, i.e. the spiritual powers forming themselves into a coherent world, and thereby securing their subsistence.
The substance in this way is spirit, self-conscious unity of the self and the essential nature ; but both also take each other to mean and to imply ahenation. Spirit is consciousness of an objective reahty which exists independently on its own account. Over against this consciousness stands, however, that unity of the self with the essential nature, consciousness pure and simple over against actual consciousness. On the one side actual self-consciousness by its self-relinquishment passes over into the real world, and the latter back again into the former. On the other side, however, this very actuality, both person and objectivity, is can-
4Ö0 Phenomenology of Mind
.celled and superseded ; they are purely universal. This its alienation is pure consciousness, or the essential nature. The present has at once its opposite in its beyond, which consists in its thinking and its being thought; just as this again has its opposite in what is here in the present, which is its actuality alienated from it.
Spirit in this case, therefore, constructs not merely one world, but a twofold world, divided and self-opposed. The world of the ethical spirit is its own proper present ; and hence every power it possesses is found in this unity of the present, and, so far as each separates itself 2>^ from the other, each is still in equilibrium with the whole. Nothing has the significance of a negative of self-consciousness ; even the spirit of the departed is in the life-blood of his relative, is present in the self of the family, and the universal power of government is the will, the self of the nation. Here, however, what is present means merely objective actuality, which has its consciousness in the beyond ; each particular moment, as an essential entity, receives this, and thereby actuality from an other, and so far as it is actual, its essential being is something other than its own actuality. No- thing has a spirit self-established and indwelhng within it ; rather each is outside itself in what is ahen to it. The equihbrium of the whole is not the unity which abides by itself, nor its inwardly secured tranquillity, but rests on the alienation of its opposite. The whole is, therefore, like each particular moment, a self- estranged reality. It breaks up into two spheres : in one kingdom self-consciousness is actually both the self and its object, and in another we have the kingdom of pure consciousness, which, being beyond the former,
Spirit in Self-estrangement ' 491
has no actual present, but exists for Faith, is matter of BeHef. Now just as the ethical world passes from the separation of divine and human law, with its various forms, and its consciousness gets away from the division into knowledge and the absence of knowledge, and re- turns into the principle which is its destiny, into the self which is the power to destroy and negate this oppo- sition, so, too, both these kingdoms of self-alienated spirit will return into the self. But while the former was the first self, holding good directly, the particular person, ^tn^^ /r*^^ this second, which returns into itself from its self- ^*^^'^ relinquishment, will be the universal self, the conscious- ness grasping the conception ; and these spiritual worlds, all of whose moments insist on being a fixed reality and an unspiritual subsistence, will be dissolved in the Hght of pure Insight. This insight, being the self grasping itself, completes the stage of culture. It takes up nothing but the self, and everything as the self, i.e. it comprehends everything, extinguishes all objectiveness, 35% and converts everything implicit into something ex- phcit, everything which has a being in itself into what is for itself. When turned against behef, against faith, as the far-away region of inner being lying in the distant beyond, it is Enhghtenment {Aufklärung). This en- lightenment also terminates self-estrangement in this region whither spirit in self-alienation turns to seek its safety as to a region where it becomes conscious of a peace adequate to itself. Enlightenment upsets the household arrangements, which spirit carries out in the house of faith, by bringing in the goods and furnishings belonging to the world of the Here and Now, a world which that spirit cannot refuse to accept as its own property, for its conscious Hfe likewise belongs to that
492 Phenomenology of Mind
world. In this negative task pure insight reaHses itself at the same time, and brings to light its own proper object, the " unknowable absolute Being" and utihty.* Since in this way actuahty has lost all substantiahty, and there is nothing more implicit in it, the kingdom of faith, as also that of the real world, is overthrown ; and this revolution brings about absolute freedom, the stage at which the spirit formerly estranged has gone back completely into itself, leaves behind this sphere of culture, and passes over into another region, the land of the inner or subjective moral consciousness {moral- ischen BevMSstsein).
* Cp. Eighteenth century Deism and utilitarianism.
The World of Spirit in Self-estrangement
The sphere of spirit at this stage breaks up into two regions. The one is its real world, its self-estrangement, the other is constructed and set up in the ether of pure consciousness, and is exalted above the first. This second world, being constructed in opposition and contrast to that estrangement, is just on that account not free from it ; on the contrary, it is only another form of that very estrangement, which consists precisely in having a conscious existence in two sorts of worlds, and embraces both. Hence it is not self-consciousness of Absolute Being in and for itself, not Religion, which is here dealt with : it is Behef, Faith, in so far as faith is a flight from the actual world, and thus is not a self- complete experience {an und für sich). Such flight from the realm of the present is, therefore, directly in its very nature a dual state of mind. Pure consciousness is the sphere into which spirit rises : but it is not only the element of faith, but of the notion as well. Con- sequently both appear on the scene together at the same time, and the latter comes before us only in anti- thesis to the former.
493
a
Culture and its Sphere of Objective Eeality*
The spirit of this world is spiritual essence permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself to be directly- present as a self- existent particular, and has that essence as its objective actuality over against itself. But the existence of this world, as also the actuality of self- consciousness, depends on the process that self-con- sciousness divests itself of its personahty, by so doing creates its world, and treats it as something alien and external, of which it must now take possession. But the renunciation of its self-existence is itself the production of objective actuality, and in doing so, therefore, self-consciousness ipso facto makes itself master of this world.
To put the matter otherwise, self-consciousness is only something definite, it only has real existence, so far as it alienates itself from itself. By doing so, it puts itself in the position of something universal, and this its universality actualises it, establishes it objectively, makes it valid. This equahty of the self with all selves is, therefore, not the equahty that was found in the case of right ; self-consciousness does not here, as there, get immediate recognition and acknowledgment merely because it is ; on the contrary, its claim to be rests on
* It will be observed that " culture " embraces all means of self- development, "ideas" as well as material factors sucb as *' wealth,"
494
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 495
its having made itself, by that mediating process of self- alienation, conform to what is universal. The spiritless formal universality which characterises the sphere of right takes up every natural form of character as well as of existence, and sanctions and establishes them. The universality which holds good here, however, is one that has undergone development, and for that reason it is concrete and actual.
The means, then, whereby an individual gets objec- tive vaUdity and concrete actuahty here is the forma- tive process of Culture. The alienation on the part of spirit from its natural existence is here the indi- vidual's true and original nature, his very sub- stance. The rehnquishment of this natural state is, therefore, both his purpose and his mode of existence ; it is at the same time the mediating process, the transi- jf^ tion of the thought-constituted substance to concrete actuality, as well as, conversely, the transition of deter- minate individuahty to its essential constitution. This individuality moulds itself by culture to what it inherently is, and only by so doing is it then something fer se and possessed of concrete existence. The extent* of its culture is the measure of its reahty and its power. Although the self, qua this particular self, knows itself here to be real, yet its concrete reahsation consists solely in cancelhng and transcending the natural self. The original determinateness of its nature is, therefore, reduced to a matter of quantity, to a greater or less energy of will, a non-essential principle of distinc- tion. But purpose and content of the self belong to the universal substance alone, and can only be something universal. The specific particularity of
* Bacon's phrase, "Knowledge is power,"
496 Phenomenology of Mind
a given nature, which becomes purpose and content, is something powerless and unreal: it is a "kind of being " which exerts itself foolishly and in vain to attain embodiment : it is the contradiction of giving reality to the bare particular, while reality is, if so facto, something universal. If, therefore, individuality is falsely held to consist in particularity of nature and character, then the real world contains no individualities and characters ; individuals are all alike for one another ; the pretence {vermeint) of individuality in that case is precisely the mere presumptive {gemeint) existence which has no permanent place in this world where only renunciation of self and, therefore, only universality get actual reality. What is presumed or conjectured to be {Das Gemeinte) passes, therefore, simply for what it is, for a hind of being. "Kind" is not quite the same as Espece* " the most horrible of all nicknames, for it signifies mediocrity, and denotes the highest degree of contempt."! "A kind" and "to be good of its kind " are German expressions, which add an air of honesty to this meaning, as if it were not so badly meant and intended after all ; or which, indeed, do not yet involve a clear consciousness of what " kind " and what culture and reality are.
That which, in reference to the particular individual, 59 appears as his culture, is the essential moment of spiritual substance as such, viz. : the direct transition of its ideal, thought-constituted, universality into actual reality; or otherwise put, culture is the single soul of this substance, in virtue of which the essen-
* " Espece se dit de personnes auxquelles on ne trouve ni qualite ni merite. " — Littre.
t Diderot's Ramcaus Neffe.
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 497
tially inherent (AnsicJi) becomes something explicitly acknowledged, and assumes definite objective exist- ence. The process in which an individuahty cultivates itself is, therefore, ipso facto, the development of individuahty qua universal objective being; that is to say, it is the development of the actual world. This world, although it has come into being by means of individuahty, is in the eyes of self-con- sciousness something that is directly alienated and estranged, and, for self-consciousness, takes on the form of a fijxed, undisturbed reality. But at the same time self-consciousness is sure this is its own substance, and proceeds to take it under control. This power over its substance it acquires by culture, which, looked at from this aspect, appears as self-consciousness making itself conform to reahty, and doing so to the extent permitted by the energy of its original character and talents. What seems here to be the individual's power and force, bringing the substance under it, and thereby doing away with that substance, is the same thing as the actuahsation of the substance. For the power of the individual consists in conforming itself to that substance, i.e. in emptying itself of its own self, and thus estab- lishing itself as the objectively existing substance. Its culture and its own reality are, therefore, the process of making the substance itself actual and concrete.
The self is conscious of being actual only as trans- cended, as cancelled.* The self does not here constitute the unity of consciousness of self and object ; rather this object is negative as regards the self. By means of the self qua inner soul of the process, the substance is so moulded and worked up in its various moments,
* Cp. Hume's view of " personal identity," Treatise, pt. IV, c. 6. VOL. II. — G
498 Phenomenology of Mind
that one opposite puts life into the other, each opposite, by its aHenation from the other, gives the other stabiUty, and similarly gets stabihty from the other. At the same time, each moment has its own definite natm:e, in the sense of having an insuperable worth and signifi- cance ; and has a fixed reality as against the other. The process of thought fixes this distinction in the most general manner possible, by means of the absolute opposition of " good " and " bad,'' which are poles asunder, and can in no way become one and the same. 3£,^ But the very soul of what is thus fixed consists in its immediate transition to its opposite ; its existence lies really in transmuting each determinate element into its opposite ; and it is only this alienation that consti- tutes the essential nature and the preservation of the whole. We must now consider this process by which the moments are thus made actual and give each other life ; the alienation will be found to alienate itself, and the whole thereby will take all its contents back into the ultimate principle it implies {seinen Begriff).
At the outset we must deal with the substance pure and simple in its immediate aspect as an organisa- tion of its moments ; they exist there, but are inactive, their soul is wanting. We have here something like what we find in nature. Nature, we find, is resolved and spread out into separate and separable elements — air, water, fire, earth. Of these air is the unchanging factor, purely universal and transparent ; water, the reaUty that is for ever being dissolved and given up ; fire, its pervading active unity which is ever dissolving opposition into unity, as well as breaking up simple unity into opposite constituents: earth is the tightly compact knot of these separated factors, the subject
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 499
in which these reahties are, where their processes take effect, that which they start from and to which they return. In the same way the inner essential nature, the simple life of spirit that pervades self-conscious reality, is resolved, spread out into similar general areas or masses, spiritual masses in this case, and appears as a whole organised world. In the first area or mass it is the inherently universal spiritual being, self-identical ; in the second it is self-existent being, it has become inherently self-discordant, sacrificing itself, abandon- ing itself ; the third which takes the form of self- consciousness is subject, and possesses in its very nature the fiery force of dissolution. In the first case it is conscious of itself, as immanent and implicit, as existing per se ; in the second it finds independence, self-existence {Fürsichseyn) developed and carried out by means of the sacrifice of what is universal. But spirit itself is the self - containedness and self -com- pleteness of the whole, which splits up into substance qua constantly enduring and substance engaged in self- sacrifice, and which at the same time resumes substance again into its own unity ; a whole which is at once a flame of fire bursting out and consuming the substance, as well as the abiding form of the substance consumed. We can see that the areas of spiritual reahty here referred to correspond to the Community and the Family in the ethical world, without, however, possess- ing the native familiarity of spirit which the latter have. On the other hand, if destiny is ahen to this spirit, self-consciousness is and knows itself here to be the real power underlying them. We have now to consider these separate members
500 Phenomenology of Mind
of the whole, in the first instance as regards the way they are presented qua thoughts, qua essential inherent entities falling within pure consciousness, and also secondly as regards the way they appear as objective reahties in concrete conscious life.
In the prst form, the simplicity of content found in pure consciousness, the real is the Good, the self-identical, immediate, unchanging, and primal nature of every con- sciousness, the independent spiritual power inherent in its essence, alongside which the activity of the mere self-existent consciousness is only by-play. Its other is the passive spiritual being, the universal so far as it parts with its own claims, and lets individuals get in it the consciousness of their particular existence ; it is a state of nothingness, a being that is null and void, the Bad. This absolute break-up of the real into these disjecta membra is itself a permanent condition; while the first member is the foundation, starting- point, and result of individuals, which are there purely universal, the second member, on the other hand, is a being partly sacrificing itself for another, and, on that very account, is partly their incessant return to self qua individual, and their constant development of a separate being of their own.
But, secondly, these bare ideas of Good and Bad are similarly and immediately alienated from one another ; they are actual, and in actual consciousness appear as moments that are objective. In this sense the first state of being is the Power of the State, the second its Resources or Wealth. The state-power is the simple spiritual substance, as well as the achievement of all, the absolutely accomplished fact, wherein individuals find their essential nature expressed, and where their
Culture and its S flier e of Reality 501
particular existence is simply and solely a consciousness of their own universality. It is likewise the achieve- ment and simple result from which the sense of its having been their doing has vanished : it stands as the absolute basis of all their action, where all their action securely subsists. This simple pervading sub- stance of their life, owing to its thus determining their unalterable self -identity, has the nature of objective ''^a being, and hence only stands in relation to and exists for '' another." It is thus, if so facto, inherently the opposite of itself — Wealth or Resources. Although wealth is something passive, is nothingness, it is likewise a universal spiritual entity, the continu- ously created result of the labour and action of all, just as it is again dissipated into the enjoyment of all. In enjoyment each individuality no doubt becomes aware of self-existence, aware of itself as particular; but this enjoyment is itself the result of universal action, just as, reciprocally, wealth calls forth universal labour, and produces enjoyment for all. The actual has through and through the spiritual significance of being directly universal. Each individual doubtless thinks he is acting in his own interests when getting this enjoy- ment ; for this is the aspect in which he gets the sense of being something on his own account, and for that reason he does not take it to be something spiritual. Yet looked at even in external fashion, it becomes manifest that in his own enjoyment each gives enjoy- ment to all, in his own labour each works for all as well as for himself, and all for him. His self-existence is, therefore, inherently universal, and self-interest is merely a supposition that cannot get the length of making concrete and actual what it means or sup-
502 Phenomenology of Mind
poses, viz. to do something that is not to further the good of all.
Thus, then, in these two spiritual potencies self- consciousness finds its own substance, content, and purpose ; it has there a direct intuitive consciousness of its twofold nature ; in one it sees what it is inherently in itself, in the other what it is exphcitly for it- self. At the same time qua spirit, it is the negative unity, uniting the subsistence of these potencies with the separation of individuahty from the universal, or that of reality from the self. Dominion and wealth are, therefore, before the individual as objects he is aware of, i.e. as objects from which he knows himself to be detached and between which he thinks he can choose, or even decUne to choose altogether. In the form of this detached bare consciousness he stands over against the essential reality as one which is merely there for him. He then has the reality qua essential reahty within 3i3 itself. In this bare consciousness the moments of the substance are taken to be not state-power and wealth, but thoughts, the thoughts of Good and Bad. But further, self-consciousness is a relation of his pure consciousness to his actual consciousness, of what is thought to the objective being; it is essentially Judgment. What is Good and what is Bad has aheady been brought out in the case of the two aspects of actual reahty by determin- ing what the aspects primarily are; the one is state- power, the other wealth. But this first judgment, this first distinction of content, cannot be looked at as a "spiritual" judgment; for in that first judgment the one side has been characterised as only the inherently existing or positive, and the other side as only the explicit self- existent and negative. But qua
Culture and its S'phere of Reality 503
spiritual realities, each permeates both moments, per- vades both aspects; and thus their nature is not ex- hausted in those specific characteristics [positive and negative]. The self-consciousness that has to do with them is self-complete, is in itself and for itself. It must, therefore, relate itself to each in that twofold form in which they appear; and by so doing, this nature of theirs, which consists in being self-estranged determin- ations, will come to light.
Now self-consciousness takes that object to be good, and to exist per se, in which it finds itself ; and that to be bad when it finds the opposite of itself there. Goodness means its identity with objective reality, badness their disparity. At the same time what is for it good and bad, is per se good and bad ; because it is just that in which these two aspects — of being per se, and of being for it — are the same : it is the real indwelhng soul of the objective facts, and the judgment is the evidence of its power within them, a power which makes them into what they are in themselves. What they are when spirit is actively related to them, their identity or non-identity with spirit, — that is their real nature and the test of their true meaning, and not how they are identical or diverse taken immediately in them- selves apart from spirit, i.e. not their inherent being and self-existence in abstracto. The active relation of spirit to these moments, — which are first put forward as objects to it and thereafter pass by its action into what is essential and inherent — becomes at the same ^(,, time their reflection into themselves, in virtue of which they obtain actual spiritual existence, and their spiritual meaning comes to light. But as their first immediate characteristic is distinct from the relation of
504 Phenomenology of Mind
spirit to them, the third determinate moment — their own proper spirit — is also distinguished from the second moment. Their second inherent natm:e {Das zweite Ansich derselben) — their essentiahty which comes to Kght through the relation of spirit to them — must in the first instance turn out different from the immediate inherent nature ; for indeed this mediating process of spiritual activity puts in motion the im- mediate characteristic, and turns it into something else.
As a result of this process, the self-contained con- scious mind doubtless finds now in the Power of the State its reality pure and simple, and its subsistence ; but it does not find its individuality as such ; it finds its inherent and essential being, but not what it is for itself. Rather, it finds there its action qua individual action rejected and denied, and subdued into obedience. The individual thus recoils before this power and tiirns back into himself ; it is the reahty that suppresses him, and is the bad. For instead of being identical with him, that with which he is at one, it is something utterly in discordance with individuality. In contrast with this. Wealth and Riches are the good ; they tend to the general enjoyment, they are there simply to be disposed of, and they ensure for every one the conscious- ness of his particular self. Riches means in its very nature universal beneficence : if it refuses any benefit in a given case, and does not gratify every need, this is merely an accident which does not detract from its universal and necessary nature of imparting to every individual his share and being a thousand-handed benefactor.
These two judgments provide the ideas of goodness
Culture and its S'phere of Reality 505
and badness with a content which is the reverse of what they had for us. Self-consciousness has up till now, however, been related to its objects only incompletely, viz. only according to the criterion of the self-existent. But consciousness is also real in its inherent nature, and has Hkewise to take this aspect for its point of view and criterion, and by so doing round ofi completely the judgment of self-conscious spirit. According to this aspect state-power expresses its essential nature : the power of the state is in part the quiet insistence of law, in part government and prescription, which appoints and regulates the particular processes of universal action. The one is the substance pure and simple, the other its action which animates and sustains itself and all individuals. The individual thus finds therein his ground and nature expressed, organised, and exercised. As against this, the individual, by the enjoyment of riches, does not get to know his own imiversal nature : he only gets a transitory consciousness and enjoyment of himself qua particular and self- existing, and discovers his discordance, his want of harmony with his own essential nature. The conceptions good and bad thus receive here a content the opposite of which they had before.
These two ways of judging find each of them an identity and a disagreement. In the first case conscious- ness finds the power of the state out of agreement with it, and the enjoyment that came from wealth in accord with it ; while in the second case the reverse holds good. There is a twofold attainment of identity and a twofold form of disagreement : there is an opposite relation established towards both the essential reahties. We must pass judgment on these different
506 Phenomenology of Mind
ways of judging as such ; to this end we have to apply the criterion akeady brought forward. The conscious relation where identity or agreement is found, is, according to this standard, the good ; that where want of agreement obtains, the bad. These two types of relation must henceforth be regarded as modes or forms of conscious existence. Conscious life, through taking up a different kind of relation, thereby becomes itself characterised as different, comes to be itself good or bad. It is not simply distinct in virtue of the fact that it took as its constitutive principle either existence for itself, or mere being in itself ; for both are equally essential moments of its life : that dual way of judging, above discussed, presented those principles as separated, and contained, therefore, merely abstract ways of judging. Concrete actual conscious life has 31 fc within it both principles, and the distinction between them falls solely within its own nature, viz. inside the relation of itself to the real.
This relation takes opposite forms ; in the one there is an active attitude towards state-power and wealth as to something with which it is in accord, in the other it is related to these realities as to something with which it is at variance. A conscious Hfe which finds itself at one with them has the attribute of Nobility. In the case of the public authority of the state, it beholds what is in accord with itself, and sees that it has there its own nature pure and simple and the region for the exercise of its own powers, and takes up the position of open willing and obedient service in its interests, as well as that of inner reverence towards it. In the same way in the sphere of wealth, it sees that wealth secures for it the consciousness of self-existence, of
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 507
realising the other essential aspect of its nature : hence it looks upon wealth hkewise as something essential in relation to itself, acknowledges him from whence the enjoyment comes as a benefactor, and considers itself under a debt of obligation.
The conscious life involved in the other relation, again, that of disagreement, has the attribute of Baseness. It remains at variance with both those essential elements. It looks upon the authoritative power of the state as a chain, as something suppressing its separate existence for its own sake, and hence hates the ruler, obeys only with secret malice, and stands ever ready to burst out in rebelHon. It sees, too, in wealth, by which it attains to the enjoyment of its own independent existence, merely something discordant, or out of harmony with its permanent nature ; since through wealth it only gets a sense of its particular isolated existence and a con- sciousness of passing enjoyment, this type of mind loves wealth, but despises it, and, with the disappearance of enjoyment, of what is inherently evanescent, regards its relation to the man of wealth as having ceased too.
These relations now express, in the first instance, a judgment, the determinate characterisation of what both those facts [state-power and wealth] are as objects for consciousness ; not as yet what they are in their complete objective nature {an und für sich). The reflection which is presented in this judgment is partly at first for us [who are philosophising] an affirmation of the one characteristic along with the other, and hence is a simultaneous cancelling of both ; it is not yet the reflection of them for consciousness itself. Partly, again, they are at first immediate essential entities ; they have not become this nor is there in
5ÖÖ Phenomenology of Mind
them consciousness of self : that for which they are is not yet their animating principle : they are predicates which are not yet themselves subject. On account of this separation, the entirety of the spiritual process of judgment also breaks asunder into two existent modes of consciousness, each of which has a one-sided character. Now, just as at the outset the indifference of the two aspects in the process of self- estrangement — one of which was the inherent essential being of pure consciousness, viz. the determinate ideas of good and bad, the other their actual ex- istence in the form of state-power and wealth — passed to the stage of being related the one to the other, passed to the level of judgment ; in the same way this external relation must be raised to the level of their inner unity, must become a relation of thought to actual reality. In this way the spirit animating both the forms of judgment will make its appearance. This takes place when judgment passes into inference, becomes the mediating process in which the middle term necessitating and connecting both sides of the judgment is brought forward.
The noble type of consciousness, then, finds itself in the judgment related to state-power, in the sense that this power is indeed not a self as yet but at first is universal substance, in which however this form of mind feels its own essential nature to exist, is conscious of its own purpose and absolute content. By taking up a positive relation to this substance, it assumes a negative attitude towards its own special purposes, its par- ticular content and individual existence, and lets them disappear. This type of mind is the heroism of Service ; the virtue which sacrifices individual being
Culture and its Sfhere of Reality 509
to the universal, and thereby brings this into existence ; the type of personaUty which renounces possession and enjoyment, acts for the sake of the prevailing power, and becomes a concrete reality in this way.
Through this process the universal becomes united and bound up with existence in general, just as the individual consciousness makes itself by this renuncia- tion essentially universal. That from which this con- sciousness alienates itself by submitting to serve is its consciousness immersed in mere existence : but the being alienated from itself is the inherent nature. By thus shaping its life in accord with what is universal, it acquires a Reverence for itself, and gets reverence 3 6i> from others. The power of the state, however, which to start with was merely universal in thought, the inherent nature, becomes through this very process universal in fact, becomes actual power. It is actually so only in getting that actual obedience which it obtains through self -consciousness judging it to be the essential reality, and through the self being freely surrendered to it. The result of this action, binding the essential reahty and self indissolubly together, is to produce a twofold actuality, — a self that is truly actuahsed, and a state-power whose authority is accepted as true.
Owing to this alienation [implied in the idea of sacrifice] state-power, however, is not yet a self- consciousness that knows itself as state-power. It is merely the law of the state, its inherent prin- ciple, that is accepted ; the state-power has as yet no particular will. For as yet the self-consciousness rendering service has not ahenated its pure self- hood, and made it an animating influence in the exercise of state-power ; the serving attitude merely
610 Phenomenology of Mind
gives the state its bare being, sacrifices merely ^Ä./«'»,'^ its existence to the state, not its essential nature. This type of self-consciousness passes thus for some- thing that is in conformity with the essential nature, and is acknowledged and accepted because of its in- herent reality. The others find their essential nature operative in it, but not their independent existence — find their thinking, their pure consciousness fulfilled, but not their specific individuality. It has a value, therefore, in their thoughts, and is honoured accord- ingly. Such a type is the haughty vassal ; he is active in the interests of the state-power, so far as the latter is not a personal will [a monarch] but merely an essential will. His self-importance lies only in the honour thus acquired, only in the general opinion think- ing of his concern for the essential will, not in an indi- viduality gratefully thinking of his services ; for he has not helped this individuality [the monarch] to get inde- pendence. The language he would use, were he to occupy a direct relation to the personal will of the state-power, which thus far has not arisen, would take the form of " counsel " imparted in the interests of what is the best for all.
State-power has, therefore, still at this stage no will to meet the advice, and does not decide between the different opinions as to what is universally the best. It is not yet governmental control, and on that account 5 1 ^ is in truth not yet real state-power. Individual self- existence, the possession of an individual will that is not yet qua will surrendered, is the inner separa- tist spiritual principle of the various classes and stations, a spirit which keeps for its own behoof what suits itself best, in spite of its words about
Culture and its SfJiere of Reality 511
the universal best, and this clap-trap about what is universally the best tends to be made a substi- tute for action bringing it about. The sacrifice of existence, which takes place in the case of service, is indeed complete when it goes so far as death. But the constant danger of a death which the individual survives, leaves a specific kind of existence, and hence a particular self-reference still untouched ; and this makes the counsel imparted in the interests of the universally best ambiguous and open to suspicion ; it really means, in point of fact, retaining the claim to a private opinion of his own, and a separate individual will as against the power of the state. Its relation to the latter is, therefore, still one of discordance ; and it possesses the characteristic found in the case of the base type of consciousness — it is ever at the point of breaking out into rebellion.
This contradiction, which has to be got rid of, in this form of discordance and opposition between the independence of the individual conscious hfe and the universality belonging to state-authority, contains at the same time another aspect. That renunciation of existence, when it is complete, as it is in death, is one that does not revert to the conscious hfe that makes the sacrifice ; it simply is : this conscious hfe does not survive the renunciation and exist by itself as an objective fact {an und für sich), it merely passes away in the unreconciled opposition. That alone is true sacrifice of individuality, therefore, in which it gives itself up as completely as in the case of death, but all the while preserves itself in the renunciation. It comes thereby to be actually what it is implicitly, — the identical unity of self with its opposed self. In this way, by the
512 Phenomenology of Mind
inner withdrawn and separatist spiritual principle, the self as such, coming forward and abrogating itself, the state-power becomes if so facto raised into a proper self of its own ; without this aHenation of self the deeds of honour, the actions of the noble type of consciousness, and the counsels which its insight reveals, would con- tinue to maintain the ambiguous character which, as 2,yo we saw, kept that secret reserve of private intention and self-will, in spite of its overt pretensions.
This estrangement, however, takes place in Language, in words alone, and language assumes here its peculiar role. Both in the sphere of the general social order {Sittlichkeit), where language conveys laws and com- mands, and in the sphere of actual life, where it ap- pears as conveying advice, the content of what it expresses is the essential reality, and language is the form of that essential content. Here, however, it takes the form in which qua language it exists to be its con- tent, and possesses authority, qua spoken word ; it is the power of utterance qua utterance which, just in speaking, performs what has to be performed. For it is the existence of a pure self qua self ; in speech the particular self-existent self-consciousness comes as such into existence, so that its particular individuality is something for others. Ego qua this particular pure ego is non-existent otherwise ; in every other mode of expression it is absorbed in some concrete actuality, and appears in a shape from which it can withdraw ; it turns reflectively back into itself, away from its act, as well as from its physiognomic expression, and leaves such an incomplete existence, (in which there is always at once too much as well as too little), lying soul- less behind. Speech, however, contains this ego in its
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 513
purity ; it alone expresses I, qua self. Its existence in this case is, qua existence, a form of objectivity which has in it the true nature of existence. Ego is this particular ego, but at the same time universal ; its appearing is ipso facto and at once the alienation and disappear- ance of this particular ego, and in consequence its remaining all the while universal. The I, that ex- presses itself, is apprehended as an ego ; it is a kind of infection, in virtue of which it establishes at once a unity with those who are aware of it, a spark that kindles a imiversal consciousness of self. That it is perceived as a fact by others means eo ipso that its existence is itself dying away : this its otherness is taken back into itself ; and its existence hes just in this, that, qua self-conscious Now, as it exists, it has no subsistence and that it subsists just through its disappearance. This disappearance is, therefore, itself ipso facto its continuance ; it is its own cognition of itself, and its knowing itself as something that has passed into another self that has been perceived and 37/ apprehended and is universal.
Spirit maintains this form of reality here, because the extremes, too, whose unity spirit is, have directly the character of being reahties each on its own account. Their unity is disintegrated into rigid as- pects, each of which is an actual object for the other, and each is excluded from the other. The unity, therefore, appears in the role of a mediating term, which is excluded and distinguished from the separated reahty of the two sides ; it has, therefore, itself the actual character of something objective, apart, and distinguished from its aspects, and objective for them, i.e. the unity is an existent objective fact. J~-ciJz.'^ie^
VOL. II.— H
514 Phenomenology of Mind
The spiritual substance comes as such into existence only when it has been able to take as its aspects those self- consciousnesses, which know this pure self to be a reality claiming immediate validity, and therein immediately know, too, that they are such reahties merely through the process of alienation. Through that pure self the moments of substance get the transparency of a self-knowing category, and become clarified so far as to be moments of spirit ; through the mediating process spirit comes to exist in spiritual form. Spirit in this way is the mediating term, presupposing those extremes and produced through their existence ; but it is also the spiritual whole breaking out between them, which sunders its self into them, and creates each solely in virtue of that contact with the whole which belongs to its very principle. The fact that both extremes are from the start and in their very nature transcended and disintegrated brings out their unity; and this is the process which fuses both together, inter- changes their characteristic features, and binds them together, and does so in each extreme. This mediating process consequently actuahses the principle of each of the two extremes, or makes what each is inherently in itself its controlling and moving spirit.
Both extremes, the state-authority and the noble type of consciousness, are disintegrated by this latter. In state-power, the two sides are the abstract universal which is obeyed, and the individual will existing on its own account, which, however, does not yet belong to the universal itself. In nobility, the two sides are the obedience in giving up existence, or the inherent maintenance of self-respect and honour, and, on the other hand, a self which exists purely for its own sake
Culture and its S'phere of Reality 515
and whose self-existence is not yet done away with, the self-will that remains always in reserve. These two moments into which the extremes are refined, and which, therefore, find expression in language, are the abstract universal, which is called the "universal best," and the pure self which by rendering service abrogated the life of absorption in the manifold variety of existence. Both in principle are the same ; for pure self is just the abstract universal, and hence their unity acts as their mediating term. But the self is, to begin with, actual only in consciousness as one extreme, while the inherent nature {Ansich) is actuahsed in state-authority as the other extreme. That state-power not merely in the form of honour but in reality should be transferred to it, is lacking in the case of conscious- ness; while in the case of state-authority there is lacking the fact that it was obeyed not merely as a so-called universal best, but as will, in other words, as state-power which is the self regulating and de- ciding. The unity of the principle in which state- power still remains, and into which consciousness has been refined, becomes real in this mediating pro- cess, and this exists qua mediating term in the simple form of speech. All the same, the aspects of this unity are not yet present in the form of two selves as selves ; for state-power comes first to be inspired with active self-hood. This language is, therefore, not yet spiritual existence in the sense in which spirit com- pletely knows and expresses itself.
Nobihty of consciousness, because the extreme form of self, assumes the role of creating the language by which the separate factors related are formed into active spiritual wholes. The heroism of dumb service
516 Phenomenology of Mind
passes into the heroism of flattery. This reflection of service in express language constitutes the self- conscious self-disintegrating mediating term, and re- flects back into itself not only its own special extreme, but reflects the extreme of universal power back into this self too, and makes that power, which is at first implicit, into an independent self-existence, and gives it the individualistic form of self-consciousness. Through this process the indwelling spirit of this state-power 3y3 comes into existence — that of an unlimited monarch. It is unlimited ; the language, of flattery raises power into transparent, clearly-acknowledged univer- sality; this moment being the product of language, of transparent spiritualised existence, is a purified form of self-identity. It is a monarch; for flattering language likewise puts individualistic self-consciousness on its pinnacle; what conscious nobility abandons as regards this aspect of pure spiritual unity is the pure essential natiu-e of its thought, its ego itself. The naked particularity of its ego, which otherwise is only imagined, flattery brings out more definitely into relief as an actual existence, by giving the monarch a proper name. For it is in the name alone that the distinction of the individual from every one else is not imagined but is actually made by all. By having a name the individual passes for a pure individual not merely in his own consciousness of him- self, but in the consciousness of all. By its name, then, the monarch becomes absolutely detached from every one, exclusive and solitary, and in virtue of it is unique as an atom that cannot commute any part of its essential nature, and has nothing like itself. This name is thus its reflection into itself, or is the actual reality
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 517
which universal power has inherently within itself : through the name the power is the monarch.* Con- versely he, this particular individual, thereby knows himself, this individual self, to be universal power, knows that the nobles not only are ready and pre- pared for the service of the state-authority, but are grouped as an ornamental setting round the throne, and that they are for ever telHng him who sits thereon what he is.
The language of their professed praise is in this way the spirit that unites together the two extremes in the case of state-power itself. This language reflects in itself the abstract power and gives to it the moment peculiar to the other extreme, an isolated self of its own, willing and deciding on its own account, and consequently gives it self-conscious exist- ence. Or again, by that means this self-conscious particular being comes to be aware of itself for certain as the supreme authority. This power is the central focal self into which, through relinquishing their own inner certainty of self, the many separate centres of self- j7/^ hood are fused together into one.
Since, however, this proper spirit of state-power subsists by getting its realisation and its noiu'ishment from the homage of action and thought rendered by the nobility, it is a form of independence in internal self-estrangement. The noble, the extreme form of self-existence, keeps back the other extreme of actual universahty, and keeps it back for the universahty of thought which was relinquished. The power of the state has passed over to and fallen upon the noble. It falls to the noble primarily to make the state-
* Cp. " L'etat c'est moi. "
518 Phenomenology of Mind
authority truly effective : in his existence as a self on his own account, that authority ceases to be the inert being it appeared to be qua extreme of abstract and merely implicit reality.
Looked at "per se, state-power reflected back into itself, or becoming spiritual, means nothing else than that it has come to be a moment of self-conscious Hfe, i.e. is only by being sublated. Consequently it is now the real in the sense of something whose spiritual mean- ing lies in being sacrificed and squandered ; it exists in the sense of wealth. It continues, no doubt, to subsist at the same time as a form of reaHty over against wealth, into which in principle it is forever passing ; but it is a reality, whose inherent principle is this very process of passing over — owing to the service and the reverence rendered to it, and by which it arises — into its opposite, into the condi- tion of relinquishing its power. Thus from its point of view {Fürsich) the special and pecuhar self, which constitutes its will, becomes, by the self-abasement of the nobility, a universal that renounces itself, becomes completely an isolated particular, a mere accident, which is the prey of every stronger will. What remains to it of the universally acknowledged and incommunic- able independence is the empty name.
While, then, the nobility may adopt the attitude of something that can in a similar way stand related to the universal power, its true nature lies rather in retaining its own separateness of being when rendering its service, but, in what is properly the abnegation of its person- Z'l^ aUty, its true being Hes in actually cancelling and rending in pieces the universal substance. Its spirit is the attitude of thoroughgoing discordance (inequahty) :
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on one side it retains its own will in the honour it receives, on the other hand it gives up its will : in part it alienates its inner nature from itself, and arrives at the extreme of discordance with itself, in part it subdues the universal substance to itself, and puts this entirely at variance with itself. It is obvious that, as a result, its own specific nature, which kept it distinct from the so-called base type of mind, disappears, and with that this latter type of mind too. The base type has gained its end, that of subordinating universal power to self-centred isolation of self.
Endowed in this way with universal power, self- consciousness exists in the form of universal beneficence : or, from another point of view, universal power is wealth that again is itself an object for consciousness. For wealth is here taken to be the universal put in subjec- tion, which, however, through this first transcendence, is not yet absolutely returned into the self. Self has not as yet its self as such for object, but the universal essential reahty in a state of sublation. Since this object has first come into being, the relation of con- sciousness towards it is immediate, and consciousness has thus not yet set forth its want of congruity with this object : we have here the nobility preserving its own self-centred existence in the universal that has become non-essential, and hence acknowledging the object and feehng grateful to its benefactor.
Wealth has within it from the first the aspect of self- existence {Fürsichsein). It is not the self-less universal of state-power, or the unconstrained simphcity of the natural life of spirit ; it is state-power as holding its own by effort of will in opposition to a will that wants to get the mastery over it and get enjoyment out of it.
520 Phenomenology of Mind
But since wealth has merely the form of being essen- Äa* Vfo^»*^, tial, this one-sided self-existent Hfe, — which has no being in itself, which is rather the sublation of inherent being, — is the retm:n of the individual into himself to find no essential reaHty in his enjoyment. It thus itself 3rV> needs to be given animation ; and its reflective process of bringing this about consists in its becoming some- thing real in itself as well as for itself, instead of being merely for itself ; wealth, which is the sublated essential reality, has to become the essentially real. In this way it preserves its own spiritual principle in itself.
It will be sufficient here to describe the content of this process since we have already explained at length its form. Nobility, then, stands here in relation not to the object in the general sense of something essen- tial ; what is alien to it is self-existence itself. It finds itself face to face with its own self as such in a state of alienation, as an objective solid actuality which it has to take from the hands of another self-centred being, another equally fixed and solid entity. Its object is self-existence, i.e. its own being : but by being an object this is at the same time if so facto an alien reality, which is a self-centred being on its own account, has a will of its own ; i.e. it sees its self under the power of an alien will on which it depends for the concession of its self.
From each particular aspect self-consciousness can abstract, and for that reason, even when under an obligation to one of these aspects, retains the recognition and inherent validity of self-consciousness as an independent reality. Here, however, it finds that, as regards its own ego, its own proper and
Culture and its S'phere of Reality 521
peculiar actuality, it is outside itself and belongs to an other, finds its personality as such dependent on the chance personahty of another, on the accident of a moment, of an arbitrary caprice, or some other sort of irrelevant circumstance.
In the sphere of legal right, what lies in the power of the objective being appears as an incidental content, from which it is possible to make abstraction ; and the governing power possessed does not affect the self as such; rather this self is recognised. But here the self sees its self-certainty as such to be the most unreal thing of all, finds its pure personality to be absolutely without the character of personahty. The sense of its grati- tude is, therefore, a state in which it feels profoundly this condition of being utterly outcast, and feels also the deepest revolt as well. Since the pure ego sees itself outside self, and torn in sunder, everything that gives continuity and universahty, everything that bears the name of law, good, and right, is thereby torn to pieces at the same time, and goes to wreck and ruin : all identity and concord break up, for what holds sway is the purest discord and disunion, what was absolutely essential is absolutely unessential, what has a being on its own account has its being outside itself : the pure ego itself is absolutely disintegrated.
Thus since this consciousness receives back from the sphere of wealth the objective form of being a separate self-existence, and cancels that objective character, it is in principle not only, like the preced- ing reflexion, not completed, but is consciously un- satisfied : the reflexion, since the self receives itself as an objective fact, is the immediate contradiction that has taken root in the pure ego as such. Qua self, however.
522 Phenomenology of Mind
it at the same time ipso facto rises above this contradic- tion ; it is absolutely elastic, and again cancels this sublation of itself, repudiates this repudiation of itself, wherein its self-existence is made to be something alien to it, revolts against this acceptance of itself and in the very reception of itself is self-existent.
Since, then, the attitude of this type of consciousness is bound up with this condition of utter disintegration, the distinction constituting its spiritual nature — that of being nobility and opposed to baseness — falls away and both aspects are the same.
The spirit of well-doing that characterises the action of wealth may, fmther, be distinguished from that of the conscious life accepting the benefit it confers, and deserves special consideration.
The spirit animating wealth had an unreal insubstan- tial independence; wealth was something to be given up. By communicating what it has, however, it passes into something essential and inherent ; since it fulfils its nature in sacrificing itself, it cancels the aspect of par- ticularity, of merely seeking enjoyment for one's own particular self, and, being thus sublated qua particular, the type of spirit here is universahty or essentially real.
What it imparts, what it gives to others, is self- existence. It does not hand itself over, however, as a natural self- less object, as the frankly and freely offered condition of unconscious Ufe, but as self-conscious, as a reality keeping hold of itself : it is not Hke the power 3-7 g of an inorganic element which is felt by the conscious- ness receiving its force to be inherently transitory ; it is the power over self, a power aware that it is indepen- dent and voluntary, and knowing at the same time that what it dispenses becomes the self of some one else.
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 523
Wealth thus shares reprobation with its chentele ; but in place of revolt appears arrogance. For in one aspect it knows, as well as the self it benefits, that its self-existence is a matter of accident ; but itself is this accident in whose power personaHty is placed. In this mood of arrogance — which thinks it has secured through a dole an ahen ego -nature, and thereby brought its inmost being into submis- sion— it overlooks the secret rebellion of the other self : it overlooks the fact of all bonds being com- pletely cast aside, overlooks this pure disintegra- tion, in which, the self-identity of what exists for its own sake having become sheer internal discordance, all oneness and concord, all subsistence is rent asunder, and in which in consequence the thoughts and inten- tions of the benefactor are the first to be shattered. It stands directly in front of this abyss, cleaving it to the innermost, this bottomless pit, where every soHd base and stay have vanished : and in the depths it sees nothing but a common thing, a display of whims on its part, a chance result of its own caprice. Its spirit consists in quite unreal imagining, in being super- ficiality forsaken of all true spiritual import.
Just as self-consciousness had its own manner of speech in deahng with state-power, in other words, just as spirit took the form of expressly and actually mediat- ing between these two extremes, self-consciousness has also a mode of speech in dealing with wealth ; but still more when in revolt does it adopt a language of its own. The form of utterance which supphes wealth with the sense of its own essential significance, and thereby makes it master of itself, is likewise the language of flattery, but of ignoble flattery ; for what it gives
524 Phenomenology of Mind
out to be the essential reality, it knows to be a reality without an inherent nature of its own, to be something at the mercy of another. The language of flattery, however, as already remarked, is that of a one-sided spirit. To be sure its constituent elements are, on the one hand, a self moulded by service into a shape where 3//^ it is reduced to bare existence, and, on the other, the inherent reahty of the power dominating the self. Yet the bare principle, the pure conception, in which the mere self and the inherent reality (Ansich), that pure ego and this pure reality or thought, are one and the same thing — this conceptual unity of the two aspects between which the reciprocity takes effect, is not consciously felt when this language is used. The object is consciously still the inherent reality in opposition to the self; in other words, the object is not for consciousness at the same time its own proper self as such.
The language expressing the condition of disintegra- tion, wherein spiritual life is rent asunder, is, however, the perfect form of utterance for this entire stage of spiritual culture and development, the formative process of moulding self-consciousness (Bildung), and expresses the spirit in which it most truly exists. This self-con- sciousness, which finds befitting the rebelhon that repudiates its own repudiation, is eo ipso absolute self- identity in absolute disintegration, the pure activity of mediating pure self-consciousness with itself. It is the oneness expressed in the identical judgment, where one and the same personality is subject as well as predicate. But this identical judgment is at the same time the infinite judgment ; for this personality is absolutely split in two, and subject and predicate
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 525
are entities utterly indifferent one to the other, which have nothing to do with each other, with no necessary unity, so much so that each has the power of an in- dependent personahty of its own. What exists as a self on its own account has for its object its own self- existence, which is object in the sense of an absolute other, and yet at the same time directly in the form of itself — itself in the sense of an other, not as if this had an other content, for the content is the same self in the form of an absolute opposite, with an existence completely all its own and indifferent.
We have, then, here the spirit of this real world of formative culture, conscious of its own nature as it truly is, and conscious of its ultimate and essential principle [Begriff').
This type of spiritual life is the absolute and universal inversion of reality and thought, their entire estrange- ment the one from the other ; it is pure cultm'e. What is found out in this sphere is that neither the concrete reahties, state-power and wealth, nor their determin- ate conceptions, good and bad, nor the consciousness of good and bad (the consciousness that is noble and the consciousness that is base) possess real truth ; it -So is found that all these moments are inverted and trans- muted the one into the other, and each is the opposite of itself.
The universal power, which is the substance, since it gains a spiritual nature pecuHarly its own through the principle of individuality, accepts the possession of a self of its own merely as a name by which it is described, and, even in being actual power, is really so powerless as to have to sacrifice itself. But this self-less reahty given over to another, this
526 Phenomenology of Mind
self that is turned into a thing, is in fact the return of the reahty into itself ; it is a self- existence that is there for its own sake, the existential form of spirit.
The principles belonging to these reahties, the thoughts of good and bad, are similarly transmuted and reversed in this process; what is characterised as good is bad, and vice versa. The consciousness of each of these moments by itself, the conscious types judged as noble and base — these are rather in their real truth simi- larly the reverse of what these specific forms should be ; nobility is base and repudiated, just as what is repudiated as base turns round into the nobleness that characterises the most highly developed form of free self-conscious- ness.
Looked at formally, everji^hing is Hkewise in its external aspects the reverse of what it is internally for itself ; and again it is not really and in truth what it is for itself, but something else than it wants to be; self-existence on its own account is, strictly speaking, the loss of self, and ahenation of self is really self- preservation.
The state of things brought about here, then, is that all moments execute justice on one another all round, each is just as much in a condition of inherent alienation as it fancies itself in its opposite, and in this way reverses its nature.
Spirit truly objective, however, is just this unity of absolutely separate moments, and in fact comes into existence as the common ground, the mediating agency, just through the independent reality of these self-less extremes. Its very existence hes in universal talk and depreciatory judgment rending and tearing everything, before which all those moments are broken
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 527
up that are meant to signify something real and to stand for actual members of the whole, and which at the same time plays with itself this game of self-dis- solution. This judging and talking is, therefore, the .3,5 ; real truth, which cannot be got over, while it over- powers everything — it is that which in this real world is alone truly of importance. Each part of this world comes to find there its spirit expressed, or gets to be spoken of with spirit and finds said of it what it is.
The honest * soul takes each moment as a permanent and essential fact, and is an uncultivated unreflective condition, which does not think and does not know that it is just doing the very inverse. The distraught and disintegrated soul is, however, aware of inversion; it is, in fact, a condition of absolute inversion : the con- ceptual principle predominates there, brings together into a single unity the thoughts that lie far apart in the case of the honest soul, and the language clothing its meaning is, therefore, full of esfrit and wit {geistreich).
The content uttered by spirit and uttered about itself is, then, the inversion and perversion of all con- ceptions and realities, a universal deception of itself and of others. The shamelessness manifested in stating this deceit is just on that account the greatest truth. This style of speech is the madness of the musician " who piled and mixed up together some thirty airs, Itahan, French, tragic, comic, of all sorts and kinds ; now, in a deep undertone, he descended to the depths of hell, then, contracting his throat to a high, piping falsetto, he rent the vault of the skies, raving and soothing, haughtily
* V. p. 402 ff.
528 Phenomenology of Mind
imperious and mockingly j eering by turns. " * The placid soult that in simple honesty of heart takes the music of the good and true to consist in harmony of sound and uniformity of tone, i.e. in a melodious chord, regards this style of expression as a " fickle fantasy of wisdom and folly, a melee of so much skill and low cunning, composed of ideas as likely to be right as wrong, with as complete a perversion of sentiment, with as much consummate shamefulness in it, as abso- lute frankness, candour, and truth. It is not able to refrain from bringing out the sound of every note, and running up and down the whole gamut of feeling, from the depths of contempt and repudiation to the highest pitch of admiration and stirring emotion. 'isi. A vein of the ridiculous will be diffused through the latter, which takes away from their nature " ; the former will find in their very candour a strain of atoning reconcilement, will find in their shuddering depths the all-powerful qualities which give spirit a self.
If we consider, by way of contrast to the mode of utterance indulged in by this self-transparent distracted type of mind, the language adopted by that simple, placid consciousness of the good and the true, we find that it can only speak in monosyllables when face to face with the frank and self-conscious eloquence of the mind developed under the influence of culture ; for it can say nothing to the latter that the latter does not know and say. If it gets beyond speaking in monosyllables, then it says the same thing that the cultivated mind expresses, but in doing so commits,
* Diderot, Rameau's Neffc.
f The " philosopher " in Diderot's Dialogue.
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 529
in addition, the folly of imagining that it is saying something new, something different. Its very syllables, "disgraceful, " "base," are this folly already, for the other says them of itself. This latter type of mind perverts in its mode of utterance everything that sounds the same, because this self -sameness is merely an abstraction, but in its actual reality is intrinsically and inherently perversion. On the other hand, again, the unsophisti- cated mind takes under its protection the good and the noble (i.e. what retains its identity of meaning in being objectively expressed), and takes care of it in the only way here possible — that is to say, the good must not lose its value because it may be linked with what is bad or mingled with it, for to be thus associated with badness is its condition and necessity, and the wisdom of nature lies in this fact. Yet this unsophisticated mind, while it intended to contradict, has merely, in doing so, gathered into a trifling form the mean- ing of what spirit said, and put it in a manner which, by turning the opposite of noble and good into the necessary condition of noble and good, means, in an unthinking way, to state something else than that the so-called noble and good is by its very nature the reverse of itself, or that what is bad is, conversely, something excellent.
If the naive consciousness makes up for this barren, soulless idea by the concrete reahty of what is excellent, when it produces an example of what is excellent, whether in the form of a fictitious case or a true story, and thus shows it to be not an empty name, but an^^g 3 actual fact, then the universal reality of perverted action stands in sharp contrast to the entire real world, where that example constitutes merely something
VOL. U.— I
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quite isolated and particular, merely an esfece, a sort of thing. And to represent the existence of the good and the noble as an isolated particular anecdote, whether fictitious or true, is the bitterest thing that can be said about it.
Finally, should the naive mind require this entire sphere of perversion to be dissolved and broken up, it cannot ask the individual to withdraw out of it, for even Diogenes in his tub [with his pretence of withdrawal] is under the sway of that perversion ; and to ask this of the particular individual is to ask him to do pre- cisely what is taken to be bad, viz. to care for the self as particular. But if the demand to withdraw is directed at the universal individual, it cannot mean that reason must again give up the culture and development of spiritual conscious life which has been reached, that reason should let the extensive riches of its moments sink back into the naivete of natural emotion, and revert and approximate to the wild condition of the animal consciousness, which is also called the natural state of innocence. On the contrary, the demand for this dissolution when addressed to the spirit reahsed in culture can only mean that it must qua spirit return out of its confusion into itself, and win for itself a still higher level of conscious life.
In point of fact, however, spirit has already accom- plished this result. To be conscious of its own distraught and torn condition and to express itself accordingly, — this is to pour scornful laughter on its existence, on the confusion pervading the whole and on itself as well : it is at the same time this whole confusion dying away and yet apprehending itself to be doing so. This self-apprehending vanity of all reality and of every
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 531
definite principle reflects the real world into itself in a twofold form : — in the particular self of consciousness qua particular, and in the pure imiversahty of con- sciousness, in thought. According to the one aspect, mind thus come to itself has directed its gaze into the world of actual reahty, and makes that reality its own .'i^i^ purpose and its immediate content : from the other side, its gaze is in part turned solely on itself and against that world of reality, in part turned away from it towards heaven, and its object is the region beyond the world.
In respect of that return into self the vanity of all things is its own peculiar vanity, it is itself vain. It is self existing for its own sake, a self that knows not only how to sum up and chatter about everything, but with esprit and wit to hit off the contradiction that Hes in the heart of the all so solid seeming reality, and the fixed determinations which judgment sets up ; and that contradiction is their real truth. Looked at formally it finds everything estranged from itself, self-existence is cut off from essential being {Ansich), what is intended and the purpose are separated from real truth, and from both again existence for another, what is ostensibly put forward is cut ofi from the proper meaning, the real fact, the true intention.
It thus knows exactly how to put each moment in antithesis to every other, knows in short how to express correctly the perversion that dominates all of them : it knows better than each what each is, no matter how it is constituted. Since it apprehends what is substantial from the side of that disunion and contradiction of elements combined within its nature, but not from the side of this union itself, it under-
532 Phenomenology of Mind
stands very well how to pass judgment on this substantial reality, but has lost the capacity of truly grasping it.
This vanity needs at the same time the vanity of all things, in order to get from them consciousness of itself ; it therefore itself creates this vanity, and is the soul that supports it. State-power and wealth are the supreme purposes of its strenuous exertion, it is aware that through renunciation and sacrifice it is moulded into universal shape, that it attains universality, and in possessing universality finds general recognition and acceptance : state-power and wealth are the real and actually acknowledged sources of power. But its gain- ing acceptance thus is itself vain, and just by the fact that it gets the mastery over them it knows them to be not real by themselves, knows rather itself to be the power within them, and them to be vain and empty. That in possessing them it thus itself is able to stand apart from and outside them, — this is what it expresses in spirited languages ; and to express this is, therefore, 3 S b its supreme interest, and the true meaning of the whole process. In such utterance this self, — in the form of a pure self not associated with or bound by determina- tions derived either from reality or thought, — comes consciously to be a spiritual entity having a truly universal significance and value. It is the condition in which the nature of all relationships is rent asunder, and it is the conscious rending of them all. But only by self- consciousness being roused to revolt does it know its own peculiar torn and shattered condition ; and in its know- ing this it has if so facto risen above that condition. In that state of self-conscious vanity all substantial content comes to have a negative significance, which can no
Öulture and^its Sffiere of Reality 53ä
longer be taken in a positive sense. The positive object is merely the pure ego itself ; and the consciousness that is rent in sunder is inherently and essentially this pure self-identity of self-consciousness returned to itself.
Belief and Pure Insight*
The spiritual condition of self-alienation exists in the sphere of culture as a fact. But since this whole has become estranged from itself, there lies beyond this sphere the nonactual region of pure consciousness, of thought. Its content consists of what has been reduced piu:ely to thought, its absolute element is thinking. Since, however, thinking is in the first instance the element of this sphere, consciousness has merely these thoughts, but it does not as yet thinh them or does not know that they are thoughts : to consciousness they appear in the form of presentations, they are objects in the form of ideas. For it comes out of the sphere of actuality into that of pure consciousness, but is itself still to all intents and purposes in the sphere of actuahty with the determinateness that implies. The conscious state of being rent and torn to pieces is still essentially and inherently the self-identity of pure consciousness not as a fact that itself is aware of but only as presented to us who are considering its condition. It has thus not as yet completed within itself the process of rising above this condition, it is simply there ; and it still has within itself the opposite
* The contrast between these two elements is found both in the pre- Reformation period and in the eighteenth century period ; — in the latter the contrast assumes perhaps its acutest form.
534
Belief and Pure Insight 535
principle by which it is conditioned, without as yet having become master of that principle through a mediating process. Hence the essential content of its thought is not taken to be an essential object merely in the form of abstract immanence (Ansich), but in the form of a common object, an object that has merely been elevated into another element, without having lost the character of an object that is not constituted 3.3^? by thought.
It is essentially distinct from the immanent nature which constitutes the essential being of the stoic type of consciousness. The significant factor for Stoicism was merely the form of thought as such, which has any content foreign to it that is drawn from reahty. In the case of the consciousness just described, however, the form of thought is not the significant element. Similarly it is essentially distinct from the inherent principle of the virtuous type of conscious life ; here the essential fact stands, no doubt, in a relation to reahty ; it is the essence of reahty itself : but it is no more than an unreahsed essence of it. In the above type of consciousness the essence, although no doubt beyond reahty, stands all the same for an actual real essence. In the same way, the inherently right and good which reason as lawgiver estabhshes, and the universal operating when consciousness tests and examines laws — neither of these has the character of actual reahty.
Hence while pure thought fell within the sphere of spiritual culture as an aspect of the estrangement characteristic of this sphere, as the standard in fact for judging abstract good and abstract bad, it has become enriched, by having gone through the process
536 Phenomenology of Mind
of the whole, with the element of reahty and thereby with content. This reahty of its essential being, how- ever, is at the same time merely a reality of pure consciousness, not of concrete actual consciousness : it is no doubt lifted into the element of thought, but this concrete consciousness does not yet take it for a thought ; it is beyond the reality peculiar to this con- sciousness, for it means flight from the latter.
In the form in which Religion here appears — for it is religion obviously that we are speaking about — as the belief which belongs to the realm of culture, rehgion does not yet appear as it is truly and completely {an und für sich). It has already come before us in other phases, viz. as the un- happy consciousness, as a form of conscious process with no substantial content in it. So, too, in the case of the ethical substance, it appeared as a belief in the nether-world. But a consciousness of departed spirits is, strictly speaking, not belief, not the inner essence subsisting in the element of pure consciousness away beyond the actual : there the belief has itself an ' immediate existence in the present ; its element, its substance is the family.
But at the stage we are now considering, religion is in part the outcome of the substance, and is the pure consciousness of that substance ; in part this pure consciousness is alienated from its concrete actual consciousness, the essence from its existence. It is thus doubtless no longer the insubstantial process of con- sciousness ; but it has still the characteristic of opposi- tion to reality qua the given reality in general, and of opposition to the reality of self-consciousness in par- ticular. It is essentially therefore merely a belief.
Belief and Pure Insight 537
This pure consciousness of Absolute Being is a con- sciousness in alienation. Let us see more closely what is the characteristic of that whose other it is ; we can only consider it in connection with this other. In the first instance this pure consciousness seems to have over against it merely the world of actuality. But since its nature is to flee from this actuality, and thereby is characterised by opposition, it has this actuality inherent within its own being ; pure consciousness is, therefore, essentially in its very being self-alienated, and belief constitutes merely one side of it. The other side has already arisen too. For pure consciousness is reflexion out of the world of culture in such a way that the substantial content of this sphere, as also the separate fragments into which it falls, are shown to be what they inherently are, — essential modes of spiritual life, abso- lutely restless processes or determinate moments which are at once cancelled in their opposite. Their essential nature, bare consciousness, is thus the bare simplicity of absolute distinction, distinction which as it stands is no distinction. Consequently it is pure self-existence not of a particular self, but essentially universal self, whose being consists in a restless process invading and pervading the stable existence of actual fact. In it is found the certainty that knows itself at once to be the truth ; there we have pure thought in the sense of absolute notion with all its power of negativity, which annihilates every objective existence that would claim to stand over against consciousness, and turns it into a form of conscious existence.
This pure consciousness is at the same time simple and undifferentiated as well, just because its distinction is no distinction. Being this form of bare and simple
538 Phenomenology of Mind
reflexion into self, however, it is the element of beHef, in which spirit has the special feature of positive universality, of what is inherent and essential in contrast with that self-existence on the part of self-consciousness.
Forced back upon itself away from this unsubstan- tial world whose being is mere dissolution, spirit in its undivided unity is, when we consider its true meaning, at once the absolute movement, the ceaseless process of negating its appearance, as well as the essen- tial substance thereof satisfied within itself, and the positive stability of that appearance. But, bearing as they inherently do the characteristic of alienation, both these moments fall apart in the shape of a twofold consciousness. The former is pure Insight, the spiritual process concentrated and focussed in self- consciousness, a process which has over against it the consciousness of something positive, the form of objectivity or pre- sentation, and which directs itself upon this presented object. The proper and peculiar object of this insight is, however, merely pure ego.* The bare consciousness of the positive element, of unbroken self-identity, finds its object, on the other hand, in the inner reality as such.
Pure insight has, therefore, in the first instance, no content within it, because it exists for itself by negating everything in it ; to belief, on the other hand, belongs the content, but without insight. While the former does not get away from self-consciousness, the latter to be sure has its content as well in the element of pure self-consciousness, but only in presentation, not in conceptions — in pure consciousness, not in pure self- consciousness. Behef is, as a fact, in this way pure
* Kaut : " Pure ego is the absolute unity of apperception."
Belief and Pure Insight 539
consciousness of the essential reality, i.e. of tlie bare and simple inner nature, and is thus thought — the primary factor in the nature of beUef , which is generally overlooked.* The immediateness which characterises the presence of the essential reaHty within it is due to the fact that its object is essence, inner nature, i.e. pure thought, f This immediateness, however, so far as thinking enters consciousness, or pure conscious- ness enters into self-consciousness, maintains the signifi- cance of an objective being that lies beyond consciousness of self. It is because of the significance which imme- diacy and simplicity of pure thought thus retain in consciousness that the essential reality in the case of behef drops into being an objectively presented idea (Vorstellung), instead of being the content of thought, and comes to be looked at as a supersensible world, which is essentially an " other " for self-consciousness.
In the case of pure insight, on the other hand, the entrance of pure thought into consciousness has the opposite character : objectivity has the significance of a content that is merely negative, that cancels itself and returns into the self ; that is to say, only the self is properly object to self, or, to put it otherwise, the object only has truth so far as it has the form of self.
As behef and pure insight fall in common within pure consciousness, they also in common involve the mind's return out of the concrete sphere of spiritual culture. There are three aspects, therefore, from which they show what they are. In one aspect each
* " Belief is a kind of knowledge." — Encycl. : § 554. + Kant : " I am the essential realitj' when conscious of myself in pure thought.'
540 Phenomenology oj Mmd
is outside every relation, and has a being all its own ; in another each takes up an attitude towards the concrete actual world standing in antithesis to pure consciousness ; while in the third form each is related to the other inside pure consciousness.
In the case of belief the aspect of complete being, of being in-and-for-itself, is its absolute object, whose content and character we have already come to know. For it lies in the very notion of belief that this object is nothing else than the real world lifted into the uni- versality of pure consciousness. The articulation of this world, therefore, constitutes the organisation be- longing to pure universality also, except that the parts in the latter case do not alienate one another when spiritualised, but are complete realities all by themselves, are spirits* returned into themselves and self-contained.
The process of their transition from one into the other is, therefore, only for us [who are analysing the process] an ahenation of the characteristic nature in which their distinction lies, and only for us, the i<}» observers, does it constitute a necessary series; for belief, however, their distinction is a static diversity, and their movement simply a historical fact.
To deal shortly with the external character of their form : as in the world of culture state-power or the good was primary, so here the first and foremost moment is Absolute Being, spirit absolutely self-con- tained, so far as it is simple eternal substance.! But in the process of realising its constitutive notion, which consists in being spirit, that substance passes over into
* The ''persons" of the "Trinity.'' t God transcendent, God as Suhstance.
Belief and Pure Insight 541
a form where it exists for an other ; its self-identity becomes actual Absolute Being, actualised in self-sacri- fice ; it becomes a self, but a self that is transitory and passes away.* Hence the third stage is the return of self thus alienated, the substance thus abased into its first primal simplicity of nature. Only when this is done is spirit presented and manifested as spirit, f
These distinct ultimate Realities, when brought back by thought into self out of the flux of the actual world, are changeless, eternal spirits, whose being lies in think- ing the unity which they constitute. While thus torn away from self-consciousness, these Realities all the same lay hold on it; for if the Ultimate Reality were to be fixed and unmoved in the form of the first bare and simple substance, it would remain alien to self-consciousness. But the laying aside, the " empty- ing,"' of this substance, and afterwards its spirit, in- volves the element of concrete actuality, and thereby participates in the believing self-consciousness, or the believing attitude of consciousness belongs to the real world.
According to this second condition, the believing type of consciousness partly finds its actuality in the real world of culture, and constitutes its spirit and its existence, which have been described ; partly, how- ever, behef takes up an attitude of opposition to this its own actuality, looks on this as something vain, and is the process of cancelling and abohshing it. This process does not consist in the believing conscious- ness having ingenious views about the perverted condition of that reahty ; for it is bare and simple
* The God-man, Christ.
t God as Absolute Spirit and Subject.
542 Phenomenology of Mind
consciousness, which reckons esprit and wit as some- thing vain and empty, because this still has the real world for its purpose. On the contrary, in opposition to its placid realm of thought stands concrete actuahty as a soulless form of existence, which on that account
3 <] I has to be overcome in external fashion. This obedience through service and rewards, by cancelHng sense-know- ledge and action, brings out the consciousness of unity with the self-complete and self-existing Being, though not in the sense of an actual perceived unity. This service is merely the incessant process of producing the sense of unity, a process that never completely reaches its goal in the actual present. The religious communion no doubt does so, for it is universal self-consciousness. But for the individual self-consciousness the realm of pure thought necessarily remains something away beyond its sphere of reality ; or, again, since this remote region by the emptying, the *'kenosis," of the eternal Being, has entered the sphere of actuality, its
,<yu f^ ' actuality is sensuous, non-conceptual. But one sensuous actuahty is ever indifferent and external to another, and what hes beyond has thus only received the further character of remoteness in space and time. The essen- tial notion, however, — the concrete actuality of spirit directly present to itself — remains for belief an inner principle, which is all and effects all, but never itself comes to the light.
In the case of pure insight, however, the principle, the essential notion {Begriff), is alone the real ; and this third aspect of belief — that of being an object for pure insight — is the specific relation in which the notion here appears. Pure insight itself has similarly to be con- sidered partly by itself {an und für sich), partly in re-
Belief and Pure Insight 543
lation to the real world — so far as the real world is still present in positive shape, viz. in the form of a sense of vanity — and lastly in that relation to belief already mentioned.
We have already seen what pure insight by itself is. Belief is unperturbed pure consciousness of spirit as the ultimate Reality ; pure insight is the self-con- sciousness of spirit as the ultimately real ; it knows the essentially real, therefore, not qua essence but qua Absolute Self. Its aim thus is to cancel every other kind of independence which falls without self-conscious- ness, whether that be the independence of the actually objective or of the inherently real, and to mould it into conceptual form. It is not merely the certainty of self- conscious reason assured of being all truth ; it knows that it is so.
In the form, however, in which the notion of pure 2q% insight meets us first, it is not yet realised. As a phase of consciousness it appears in consequence as something contingent, as something isolated and par- ticular, and its inmost constitutive nature appears as some purpose that it has to carry out and reaHse. It has to begin with the intention of making pure insight universal, i.e. of making everything that is actual into a notion, and a notion for every self- consciousness.* The intention is pure, for its content is pure insight ; and this insight is similarly pure, for its content is merely the absolute notion, which finds no opposition in an object, and is not restricted in itself. In the unrestricted notion there are found at once both the aspects — that everything objective is
* " Kant's philosophy is the enlightenment adapted so as to become a philosophical method." — Hegel, W.W. 15, p. 502.
544 Phenomenology of Mind
to signify the self-existent, self-consciousness, and that this is to signify something universal, that pure insight is to be the property of all self-consciousnesses. This second feature of the intention is so far a result of culture, in that in culture the distinctions of objective spirit, the parts and express determinations of its world, have come to naught, as well as the distinctions, which appeared as originally determinate natures. Genius, talent, special capacities in general, belong to the world of actuality, in so far as this world contains still the aspect of being a herd of self-conscious individuals, where, in confusion and mutual violence, individuals cheat and struggle with one another over the contents of the real world.
The above distinctions doubtless have no place in it as genuine especes. Individuality neither is contented with unreal " fact," nor has special content and purposes of its own. It signifies merely something universally acknowledged and accepted, viz. cultivated and de- veloped ; and the question of distinction is reduced to a matter of less or more energy, a distinction of quantity, i.e. a non-essential distinction. This last difference, however, has come to nothing, by the fact that the distinction in the state where consciousness was com- pletely torn asunder, turned round into an absolutely qualitative distinction. What is there the other for the 3,0 J ego is merely the ego itself. In this infinite judgment all the one-sidedness and peculiarity of the original self-existing self is extinguished; the self knows itself qua pure self to be its own object ; and this absolute identity of both sides is the element of pure insight.
Pure insight, therefore, is the simple ultimate being undifferentiated within itself, and at the same time the
Belief and Pure Insight 545
universal achievement and production and a universal possession of all. In this simple spiritual substance self-consciousness gives itself and maintains for itself in every object the sense of this its own particularity or of action, just as conversely the individuality of self- consciousness is there identical with itself and universal. This pure insight is, then, the spirit that calls to every consciousness : be for yourself what you are essentially in yourself — rational.
VOL. II.— K
II
Enlightenment *
The peculiar object on which pure insight directs the active force of the notion is behef, this being a form of pure consciousness Hke itself and yet opposed to it in that element. But at the same time pure insight has a relation to the actual world, for, like belief, it is a return from the actual world into pure consciousness. We have first of all to see how its activity is constituted, as contrasted with the impure intentions and the per- verted forms of insight found in the actual world, t
We have touched already on the placid type of con- scious life, which stands in contrast to this turmoil of alternate self-dissolution and self-evolution ; it con- stitutes the aspect of pure insight and intention. This unperturbed consciousness, however, as we saw, has no special insight regarding the sphere of culture. The latter has itself rather the most painful feehng, and the truest insight about itself — the feeling that everything made secure crumbles to pieces, that every element of its existence is shattered to atoms, and every bone broken : moreover, it consciously expresses this feel- ing in words, pronounces judgment and gives luminous utterance concerning all aspects of its condition. Pure
* Enlightenment (Aufklärung) is the universalisation of the principle of " pure insight/' and hence is logically the outcome of the preceding analysis.
t Cf. pp. 5?5-33.
Enlightenment 547
insight, therefore, can have here no activity and content 3^i^ of its own, and thus can only take up the formal attitude of truly apprehending this ingenious insight proper to the world and the language it adopts. Since this language is a scattered and broken utterance and the pronouncement a fickle mood of the moment, which is again quickly forgotten, and is only known to be a whole by a third consciousness, this latter can be distinguished as pure insight only if it gathers those several scattered traces into a universal picture, and then makes them the insight of all.
By this simple means pure insight will resolve the confusion of this world. For we have found that the fragments and determinate conceptions and individu- ahties are not the essential nature of this actuality, but that it finds its substance and support alone in the spirit which exists qua judging and discussing, and that the interest of having a content for this ratiocination and parleying to deal with alone preserves the whole and the fragments into which it falls. In this language which insight adopts, its self-consciousness is still par- ticular, a self existing for its own sake ; but the empti- ness of its content is at the same time emptiness of the self knowing that content to be vain and empty. Now, since the consciousness placidly apprehending all these sparkling utterances of vanity makes a collection of the most striking and penetrating phrases, the soul that still preserves the whole, the vanity of witty criticism, goes to ruin with the other form of vanity, the previous vanity of existence. The collection shows most people a better wit, or at least shows every one a more varied wit than their own, and shows that better knowledge and judging in general are|some-
548 Phenomenology of Mind
thing universal and are now universally familiar. Thereby the single and only interest which was still found is done away with ; and individual light is resolved into universal insight.
Still, however, knowledge of essential reality stands secure above vain and empty knowledge; and pure insight, to begin with, appears in genuinely active form in so far as it enters into conflict with behef.
a
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition*
The various negative forms which consciousness adopts, the attitude of scepticism, and that of theoretical and practical idealism, are inferior attitudes compared with that of pure insight and the expansion of pure insight — enlightenment ; for pure insight is born of the substance of spirit, it knows the pure self of conscious- ness to be absolute, and enters into conflict with the pure consciousness of the Absolute Being of all reality.
Since belief and insight are the same pure conscious- ness, but in form are opposed, — the reality in the case of behef being a thought, not a notion, and hence some- thing absolutely opposed to self-consciousness, while the reality in the case of pure insight is the self — they are such that inter se the one is the absolute negative of the other.
As appearing the one against the other, all content falls to belief ; for in its unperturbed element of thought each moment obtains definite subsistence. Pure insight, however, is in the first instance without any content ; it involves rather the complete dis- appearance of content ; but by its negative attitude towards what it excludes it will make itself real and give itself a content.
* "We live in an age of enlightenment " (Kant). Cp. Hegel ^V W 15 introduction to " French Philosophy."
549
550 Phenomenology of Mind
It knows belief to be opposed to insight, opposed to reason and truth. Just as, for it, behef is in general a tissue of superstitious prejudices and errors; so it further sees the consciousness embracing all this content organised into a realm of error, in which false insight is the general sphere of consciousness, immediate, naively unperturbed, and inherently unreflective. Yet all the while this false insight does have within it the moment of self-reflection, the moment of self-con- sciousness, separated from its simple naivete, and keeps this reflection in the background as an insight remain- ing by itself, and as an evil intention by which that that former conscious state is befooled. That mental sphere is the victim of the deception of a Priesthood, which carries out its envious vanity, jealous of being S«^^ alone in possession of insight, and carries out its other selfish ends as well. At the same time this priesthood conspires with Despotism, which takes up the attitude of being the synthetic crude {begrifflos) unity of the real and this ideal kingdom — a singularly amorphous and inconsistent type of being, — and stands above the bad insight of the multitude, and the bad intention of the priests, and even combines both of these within itself. As the result of the stupidity and confusion produced amongst the people by the agency of priestly deception, despotism despises both and draws for itself the advantage of undisturbed control and the fulfilment of its desires, its humours, and its whims. Yet at the same time it is itself in this same state of murky insight, is equally superstition and error.
Enhghtenment does not attack these three forms of the enemy without distinction. For since its essential nature is pure insight, which is per se universal, its
The Struggle of EnligJitenment with Superstition 551
true relation to the other extreme is that in which it is concerned with the common and identical element in both. The aspect of individual existence isolating itself from the universal naive consciousness is the antithesis of it, and cannot be directly affected by it. The will of a deceiving priesthood and an oppressive despot is, therefore, not primarily the object on which it directs its activity ; its object is the insight that is without will and without individualised isolated self-existence, the notion (Begriff) of rational self-consciousness, which has its existence in the total mental sphere, but is not yet there in the fullness of its true meaning (Begriff). Since, however, pure insight rescues this genuinely honest form of insight, with its naive simphcity of nature, from prejudices and errors, it wrests from the hands of bad intention the effective reahsation of its powers of deception, for the exercise of which the incoherent and undeveloped (begrifßos) consciousness of the general sphere provides the basis and raw material, while isolated self-existence finds its substance in the simple consciousness as a whole.
The relation of pure insight to the naive conscious- ness of absolute Reahty has now a double aspect. On one side pure insight is inherently one and the same with it. On the other side, however, this naive conscious- ness lets absolute Reahty as well as its parts dispose " .? Y themselves at will in the simple element of its thought, and subsist there, and lets them hold only as its inherent nature and hence hold good in objective form. In this immanent being it disowns, however, independent exist- ence for its own sake. In so far as, according to the first aspect, this behef is for pure insight inherently and essentially pure self-consciousness, and has to
Bh2 Phenomenotogy of Mind
become so expressly^ merely for itself, pure insight finds in this constitutive notion of behef the element in which, instead of false insight, it realises itself.
Since, from this point of view, both are essentially the same, and the relation of pure insight takes effect through and in the same element, the communication between them is direct and immediate, and their give and take an unbroken interfusion. Whatever pins and bolts may be otherwise driven into consciousness, it is in itself this simplicity of nature in which everything is resolved, forgotten and unconstrained, and which, therefore, is absolutely amenable to the activity of the notion. The communication of pure insight is on that account comparable to a silent extension or the expan- sion, say, of vapour in the unresisting atmosphere. It is a penetrating infection, which did not previously make itself noticeable as something distinct from and opposed to the indifferent medium into which it insinuates its way, and hence cannot be averted. Only when the infec- tion has become widespread is that consciousness alive to it, which unconcernedly yielded to its influence. For what this consciousness received into itself was doubtless something simple, homogeneous, and uniform through- out it, but was at the same time the simplicity of self- reflected negativity, which later on also develops by its nature into something opposed, and thereby reminds consciousness of its previous state. This simple uni- formity is the notion, which is simple knowledge that knows both itself and its opposite, this opposite being, however, cancelled as opposite within the self-know- ledge of the notion. In the condition, therefore, in which consciousness becomes aware of pure insight, this insight is already widespread. The struggle with
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 553
it betrays the fact that the infection has done its work. The struggle is too late ; and every means taken merely makes the disease worse ; for the disease has seized the very marrow of spiritual life, viz. con- .?3 sciousness in its ultimate principle (Begriff), or its pure inmost nature itself. There is therefore no power left in conscious hfe to surmount the disease. Because it affects the very inmost being, whatever in- dividual expressions remain, are repressed and allowed to subside and the superficial symptoms are smothered. This is immensely to its advantage ; for it does not now squander its power in useless fashion, nor does it show itself unworthy of its true nature — which is the case when it breaks out into symptoms and par- ticular eruptions antithetic to the content of belief and the connexion of its external reahty. Rather, being now an invisible and unperceived spirit, it insinuates its way through and through the noble parts, and soon has got complete hold over all the vitals and members of the unconscious idol ; and then " some fine morning it gives its comrade a shove with the elbow, when, bash ! crash ! — and the idol is lying on the floor." * On some " fine morning," whose noon is not red with blood, if the infection has penetrated to every organ of spiritual life. It is then the memory alone that still preserves the dead form of the spirit's previous state, as a vanished history, vanished men know not how. And the new serpent of wisdom, raised on high before bending worshippers, has in this manner painlessly stripped off merely a shrivelled skin.
But this silent steady working of the loom of spirit in the inner region of its substance, f its own action
* Rameau's Neffe. t In the life of "feeling" and "emotion."
554 Phenomenology of Mind
hidden from itself, is merely one side of the realising of pure insight. Its expansion does not only consist in like going along with like ; and its realisation is not merely an unresisted expansion. The action of the principle of negation is at the same time essentially a developed process of self-distinction, which, being a conscious action, must set forth its moments in a definitely manifested expression, and must make its appearance in the form of sheer noise, and a violent struggle with an opposite as such.
We have, therefore, to see how pure insight and pure 2 J a, intention maintains its negative attitude towards that other which it finds standing opposed to it.
Pure insight and intention, operating negatively, can only be, — since its very principle is all essentiality and there is nothing outside it — the negative of itself. As insight, therefore, it passes into the negative of pure insight, it becomes untruth and unreason ; and as inten- tion it passes into the negative of pure intention, becomes a lie and sordid impurity of purpose.
It involves itself in this contradiction by the fact that it engages in a strife and thinks to do battle with some alien external other. It merely imagines this, for its nature as absolute negativity lies in having that otherness within its own self. The absolute notion is the category ; it is the principle that knowledge and the object of knowledge are the same. In consequence, what pure insight expresses as its other, what it pro- nounces to be an error or a lie, can be nothing else than its own self ; it can only condemn what itself is. What is not rational has no truth, or what is not comprehended through a notion, conceptually determined, is not. When reason thus speaks of some other than itself is, it
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 555
in fact speaks merely of itself ; it does not therein go beyond itself.
This struggle with the opposite, therefore, combines in its meaning the significance of being its own actualisa- tion. This consists just in the process of unfolding its moments and taking them back into itself. One part of this process is the making of the distinction in which the insight of reason opposes itself as object to itself ; so long as it remains in this condition, it is at variance with itself. Qua pure insight it is without any content ; the process of its realisation consists in itself becoming content to itself ; for no other can be made its content, because it is the category become self-conscious. But since this insight in the first instance thinks of the content as in its opposite, and knows the content merely as a content, and does not as yet think of it as its own self, pure insight misconceives itself in it. The complete attainment of insight, therefore, has the sense of a process of coming to know that content as its own, which was to begin with opposed to itself. Its result, however, will be thereby neither the re- estabhshment of the errors it has fought, nor merely its original notion, but an insight which knows the absolute negation of itself to be its own proper reality, to be its self, or an insight which is its self-understanding notion.
This feature of the struggle of enlightenment with errors, — that of fighting itself in them, and of condemn- ing that in them which it asserts, — this is something for us who observe the process, or is what enlightenment and its struggle are in themselves impHcitly. The first aspect of this struggle, however, — the contamination and defilement of enlightenment through its pure self-
556 Phenomenology of Mind
identity accepting the attitude and function of destruc- tive negation — this is how behef looks upon it; belief finds it simply lying unreason and malicious intent, just as enlightenment in the same way regards belief as error and prejudice.
As regards its content, it is in the first instance empty insight, whose content appears an external other to it. It meets this content, consequently, in the shape of something not yet its own, as some- thing that exists quite independent of it, and is found in belief.
Enlightenment, then, conceives its object in the first instance and generally in such a way as to take it as pure insight, and failing to recognise itself there, interprets it as error. In insight as such consciousness apprehends an object in such a manner that it becomes the inner being of conscious life, or becomes an object which consciousness permeates, in which consciousness maintains itself, keeps within itself, and is present to itself, and, by its thus being the process of that object, brings the object into being. It is precisely this which enlightenment rightly declares belief to be, when enlightenment says that the Absolute Reality professed by belief is a being that comes from belief's own consciousness, is its own thought, something produced from and by consciousness.* Enlightenment, consequently, interprets and declares it to be error, to be a made-up invention about the very same thing as enhghtenment itself is.
Enlightenment that seeks to teach behef this new wisdom does not, in doing so, tell it anything new.
* Cp. the view of God held by Fichte : also Feuerbach : — Wesen der Religion.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 557
For the object of belief itself is just this too, viz. a pure essential reality of its own peculiar consciousness ; so that this consciousness does not put itself down for lost and negated in that object, but rather puts trust in it ; and this just means that it finds itself there as this par- ua j ticular consciousness, finds itself therein to be self-con- sciousness. If I put my trust in any one, his certitude of himself is for me the certitude of myself; I know my self-existence in him, I know that he acknow- ledges it, and that it is for him both his purpose and his real nature. Trust, however, is belief, because its consciousness has a direct relation to its object, and thus sees at once that it is one with the object, and in the object.
Further, since what is object for me is something in which I know myself, I am at the same time in that object really in the form of another self-consciousness, i.e. one which has become in that object alienated from its own particular individuation, from its natural and contingent existence, but which partly continues therein to be self-consciousness, and partly is there an essential consciousness just like pure insight.
In the notion of insight there lies not merely this, that consciousness knows itself in the object it looks at, and finds itself directly there, without first quitting the thought element and then returning into itself ; the notion implies as well that consciousness is aware of itself as being also the mediating process, aware of itself as active, as the agency of production. Through this it gets the thought of this unity of self as self and object.
This very consciousness is also behef. Obedience and action make a necessary moment, through which the
558 Phenomenology of Mind
certainty of existence in Absolute Keality comes about. This action of belief does not indeed make it appear as if Absolute ReaKty is itself produced thereby. But the Absolute Reality for belief is essentially not the abstract reaUty that lies beyond the believing consciousness ; it is the spirit of the religious communion, it is the unity of that abstract reahty and self-consciousness. The action of the communion is an essential moment in bringing about that it is this spirit of the communion. That spirit is what it is by the productive activity of consciousness, or rather it does not exist without being produced by consciousness. For essential as this process of production is, it is as truly not the only basis of Absolute Reahty; it is merely a moment. The Absolute Reality is at the same time self-complete and self-contained {an und für sich selbst).
From the other side the notion of pure insight is seen to be something else than its own object ; for just this negative character constitutes the object. Thus from the other side it also expresses the ultimate Reality of belief as something foreign to self-consciousness, something that is not bone of its bone, but is surreptitiously foisted on it like a changeling child. But here enlightenment is entirely foolish ; belief discovers it to be a way of speaking which does not know what it is saying, and does not understand the facts of the case when it talks about priestly deception, and deluding the people. It speaks about this as if by means of some hocus-pocus of con- juring priestcraft there were foisted on consciousness as true Reahty something that is absolutely foreign, and absolutely alien to it ; and yet says all the while that this is an essential reality for consciousness, that
The Struggle of EnligJitefurtwnt vnth Superstition 559
consciousness believes in it, trusts in it, and seeks to make it favourably disposed towards itself ; i.e. that consciousness therein sees its pure ultimate Being just as much as its own particular and universal individuahty, and creates by its own action this unity of itself with its essential reality. In other words, it directly de- clares that to be the very inmost nature of conscious- ness which it declares to be something alien to con- sciousness.
How, then, can it possibly speak about deception and delusion ? By the fact that it directly expresses about belief the very opposite of what it asserts of beHef, it ipso facto really reveals itself to be the transparent lie. How are deception and delusion to take place, where consciousness in its very truth has directly and immediately the certitude of itself, where it possesses itself in its object, since it just as much finds as produces itself there ? The distinction no longer exists, even in words.
When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer, as a fact, had to be that the question is pointless, be- cause it is impossible to deceive a people in this matter. Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have been disposed of in many an instance ; many a one has stuck to it that a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things of sense and particular events have been credited for a time ; but in the knowledge of that inmost reaUty where consciousness finds the direct certainty of its own self, the idea of delusion is entirely baseless.
Let us see further how belief finds enlightenment in the case of the different moments of its own con-
560 Phenomenology oj Mind
scious experience, to which the view just noted referred in the first instance only in a general way. These moments are pm'e thought, or, qua object, absolute Being fer se {an und für sich) ; then its relation, as a form of knowledge, to absolute Being, the ulti- mate basis of its belief ; and finally its relation to abso- lute Being in its acts, i.e. its and " worship " service.* Just as pure insight has misconceived itself in belief as a whole and denied its own nature, we shall find it taking up in these moments, too, an attitude similarly perverted and distorted.
Pure insight assumes towards the absolute Reality of the believing mind a negative attitude. This Being is pure thought, and pure thought is established within itself as object or as the true Being; in the believing consciousness this immanent and essential reality of thought preserves at the same time for the self-existent consciousness the form of objectivity, but merely the empty form ; it exists in the character of something consciously "presented.'' To pure insight, however, since it is pure consciousness in its aspect of self existing for itself, this other appears as something negative of self-consciousness. This might, again, be taken either as the pure essential reality of thought, or even as the being found in sense-experience, the object of sense-certainty. But since it is at the same time for the self, and this self, qua self which has an object, is an actual consciousness, for insight the peculiar l^ih object as such is an ordinary existing thing of sense. This its object appears before it when it examines the ideas found in belief. It condemns these ideas
* Enlightenment attacks the object and the Urns of belief, and the mode of worship.
The Struggle of EnligUenment with Superstition 561
and in doing so condemns its own proper object. It really commits a wrong, however, against belief in so apprehending the object of belief as if it were its own object. According to this account it states regarding belief that its absolute Being is a piece of stone, a block of wood, having eyes and seeing not, or again some bread-paste, which is obtained from grain grown on the field and transformed by men and set aside for that purpose; or in whatever other ways belief anthro- morphoses absolute Being, making it objective and representable.
Enlightenment, proclaiming itself as the pure and true, here turns what is held to be eternal hfe and holy spirit into a concrete passing thing of sense, and contami- nates it with the inherent nothingness of sense- experi- ence— with an aspect and point of view which is not to be found at all in the worshipping attitude of belief, so that enhghtenment simply calumniates it by speak- ing of such an aspect. What behef reveres is for behef assuredly neither stone nor wood, nor bread-dough, nor any other sort of thing of time and sense. If enlighten- ment thinks it worth while to say its object all the same is this as well, or even that belief is this in its inherent nature and in truth, then behef also knows that some- thing which it is " as well," but for it this, something lies outside its worship ; on the other hand, however, belief does not in general look on such things as stones, etc., as having an inherent and essential being at all, the Absolute Reality of pure thought is for it alone something inherent.
The second moment is the relation of belief as a form of knowing consciousness to this ultimate Reality. As pure thinking consciousness belief has this Reality
VOL. II.— L.
562 Phenomenology of Mind
immediately within itself. But pm*e consciousness is just as much a mediate relation of conscious certainty to truth, a relation constituting the basis of belief. For enlightenment this ground comes at the same time to be regarded as a chance knowledge of chance occur- rences. The ground of knowledge, however, is the con- scious universal, and in its ultimate meaning is absolute spirit, which in abstract pure consciousness, or thought Lfti' as such, is merely absolute Being, but qua self -conscious- ness is the knowledge of itself. Pure insight sets up this conscious universal, self-knowing spirit pure and simple, likewise as a negative element for self-consciousness. Doubtless this insight is itself pure mediate thought, i.e. thought mediating itself with itself, it is pure know- ledge; but since it is pure insight, or pure knowledge, which does not yet know itself, i.e. for which as yet there is no awareness that it is this pure process of mediation, this process seems to insight, like everything else consti- tuting it, to be something external, an other. When realising its inherent principle, then, it develops this moment essential to it ; but that moment seems to it to belong to belief, and to be, in its character of an external other, a fortuitous knowledge of just such common historical actualities. It thus here charges religious belief with basing its certainty on some par- ticular historical evidence, which, considered as his- torical evidence, would assuredly not even warrant that degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers. It further makes the imputation that the certainty in the case of religious belief rests on the accidental fact of the preservation of all this evidence : on the preservation of this evidence partly by means of paper, and partly
The Struggle of Enlightenment ivith Superstition 563
through the skill and honesty in transferring what is written from one paper to another, and lastly rests upon the accurate interpretation of the sense of dead words and letters. As a matter of fact, however, it never occurs to belief to make its certainty depend on such evidence and such fortuitous circumstances. Belief in its conscious assurance occupies a naive unsophisticated attitude towards its absolute object, knows it with a purity, which never mixes up letters, paper, or copyists with its consciousness of the Absolute Being, and does not make use of things of that sort to effect its union with the Absolute. On the contrary, this consciousness is the self-mediating, self-relating ground of its know- ledge ; it is spirit itself which bears witness of itself both in the inner heart of the individual consciousness, as well as through the presence everywhere and in all men of belief in it. If belief wants to appeal to historical evidences in order to get also that kind of foundation, or at least confirmation, for its content which enlighten- ment speaks of, and is really serious in thinking and acting as if that were an important matter, then it has eo if so allowed itself to be corrupted and led astray by the insinuations of enlightenment ; the efforts it makes to secure a basis or support in this way are merely indications that show how it has been affected and contaminated by enlightenment.
There still remains the third aspect, the active re- lation of consciousness to Absolute Being, its forms of service.* This action consists in cancelling the particu- larity of the individual, or the natural form of its self- existence, whence arises its certainty of being pure self - consciousness, of being, as the result of its
* The cult.
V*)
564 Phenomenology of Mind
action, i.e. as a self-existing conscious individual, one with ultimate Reality.
Since in this action purposiveness and end get dis- tinguished, and pm*e insight likewise takes up a nega- tive attitude towards this action, and denies itself just as it did in the other moments, it must as regards purposiveness present the appearance of being stupid and unintelligent, since insight united with intention, accordance of end with means, appears to it as an other, as really the opposite of what insight is. As regards the end, however, it has to make badness, enjoyment, and possession, its purpose, and prove itself in consequence to be the impurest kind of intention, since pure intention, qua external, an other, is equally impure intention.
Accordingly we find that, so far as concerns pur- posiveness, enhghtenment thinks it foolish when the believing individual seeks to obtain the higher con- sciousness,— ^where there is no entanglement with natural enjoyment and pleasure, — by positively denying itself natural enjoyment and pleasure, and proving through its acts that it makes no denial of its contempt for them, but rather that the contempt is quite genuine.
In the same way enlightenment finds it foolish for consciousness to absolve itself of its characteristic of being absolutely individual, excluding all others, and possessing property of its own, by itself demitting its own property, for thereby it shows in reality that this isolation is not really serious. It shows rather that itself is something that can rise above the natural necessity of isolating itself and of denying, in this absolute isolation of its own individual existence, that the others are one and the same with itself.
The Struggle of Enlightetiment with Superstition 565
Pure insight finds both purposeless as well as wrong. It is purposeless to renounce a pleasure and give away a possession, in order to show oneself independent of pleasure and possession; hence, in the opposite case, insight will be obliged to proclaim the man a fool, who, in order to eat, employs the expedient of actually eating. Insight again thinks it wrong to deny one- self a meal, and give away butter and eggs not for money, nor money for butter and eggs, but just to give them away and get no return at all ; it understands a meal, or the possession of things of that sort, to be a self's proper object, an end of a self, and hence in fact understands itself to be a very impure intention which ascribes essential value to enjoyment and possessions of this kind. As pure insight it further maintains the necessity of rising above the condition of nature, above covetousness and its ways ; it only finds it foohsh and wrong that this supremacy should have to be demonstrated by action. In other words this pure intention is in reahty a deception, which pretends to and demands an inner elevation, but declares that it is superfluous, foohsh, and even wrong to be in earnest in the matter, to put this upHfting into concrete expression, into actual shape and form, and demonstrate its truth.
Pure insight thus denies itself both as pure insight, — for it abrogates directly purposive action, and as pure intention, — for it denies the intention of proving its independence of the ends of particular existence.
Thus, then, enhghtenment makes behef learn what it means. It takes on this appearance of being bad, because just by the fact of relation to an external other it gives itself a negative reahty, it presents itself as the opposite of itself. Pure insight and intention have to /^Dd
566 Phenomenology of Mind
adopt this relational attitude, however, for that is their actualisation.
This reahsation appeared, in the first instance, as a negative reality. Perhaps its positive reality is better constituted. Let us see how this stands.
When all prejudice and superstition have been banished, the question arises what next ? What is the truth enlightenment has diffused in their stead ? It has already given expression to this positive content in its process of exterminating error, for that alienation of itself is equally its positive reality.
In dealing with what for behef is Absolute Spirit, it interprets whatever sort of determination it discovers there as being wood, stone, etc., as particular concrete things of sense. Since in this way it conceives in general every characteristic, i.e. every content and filling, to be a finite fact, to be a human entity and a mental presentation, absolute Being on its view turns out to be a mere vacuum, to which can be attributed no characteristics, no predicates at all. In fact to marry such a vacuity with universal predicates would be essentially reprehensible; and it is just through such a union that the monstrosities of superstition have been produced. Reason, pure insight, is doubt- less not empty itself, since the negative of itself is present consciously to it, and is its content ; it is, on the contrary, rich in substance, but only in particu- larity and restrictions. The enlightened function of reason, of pure insight, consists in allowing nothing of that sort to appertain to Absolute Reality, nor attribut- ing anything of thatlkind to it : this function well knows how to put itself and the wealth of finitude in their place, and deal with the Absolute in a worthy manner.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 567
In contrast with this colourless empty ReaHty there stands, as a second aspect of the positive truth of enlightenment, the particularity in general of conscious Hfe and of all that is : — a particularity excluded from an absolute Being, and standing by itself as some- thing entirely self-contained. Consciousness, which in its very earliest expression is sense-certainty and mere " opining,"' here comes back, after the whole course of its experience, to this same point, and is once again a knowledge of what is pure negative of itself, a know- ledge of sense things, i.e. of existent entities which 4.,? 4, stand in indifference over against its own self-existence. But here it is not an immediate naive consciousness ; it has become to itself immediate. While at first the prey to every sort of entanglement, into which it is plunged by its gradually unfolding, and now led back to its first form by pure insight, it has arrived at this first state as the result and outcome of the process. This sense- certainty, resting as it does on an insight into the nothingness of all other forms of consciousness, and hence the nothingness of whatever is beyond sense- experience, — this sense-certainty is no longer a mere *' opining," it is rather absolute truth. This nothingness of everything that transcends sense is doubtless merely a negative proof of this truth. But no other is admis- sible or possible, for the positive truth of sense-experi- ence in itself is just the unmediated self-existence of the notion itself qua object and an object in the form of otherness — the positive truth is that it is absolutely certain to every consciousness that it is and that there are other real things outside it, and that in its naive existence it, as well as these things too, are in and for themselves or absolute.
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Lastly, the third moment of the truth of enhghten- ment is the relation of the particular entities to Abso- lute Being, is the relation of the first two moments to one another. Insight, qua pure insight of what is identical or unrestricted, also transcends the unhke or diverse, i.e. transcends finite reality, or transcends itself qua mere otherness. The " beyond " of this otherness it takes to be the void, to which it thus relates the facts of sense. In determining this relation both the terms do not enter the relation as its content ; for the one is the void, and thus a content is only to be had through the other, through sense reality. The form the relation assumes, however, to the determination of which the aspect of immanent and ultimate being {Ansich) contri- butes, can be shaped just as we please ; for the form is something inherently and essentially negative, and therefore something self-opposed, being as well as nothing, inherent and ultimate {Ansich) as well as ^ I If the opposite ; or, what is the same thing, the relation of actuahty to an inherent essential being qua something beyond, is as much a negating as a positing of that actuahty. Finite actualities can, therefore, properly speaking, be taken just in the way people have need of them. Sense facts are thus related now positively to the Absolute qua something ultimate {Ansich), and sense reahty is itself ultimate fer se ; the Absolute makes them, fosters and cherishes them. Then, again, they are related to it as an opposite, that is to their own non-being ; in this case they are not something ulti- mate, they have being only for an other. Whereas in the preceding mode of consciousness the conceptions involved in the opposition took shape as good and bad, in the case of pure insight they pass into the more
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 569
abstract forms of what is fer se (Ansich) and what is for an other being.
Both ways of deahng with the positive as well as the negative relation of finitude to what is ultimate (Ansich) are, however, equally necessary as a matter of fact, and everything is thus as much something per se (an sich) as it is something for an other : in other words everyt'hing is " useful."
Everything is now at the mercy of other things, lets itself now be used by others, and exists for them ; and then again it, so to say, gets up on its hind legs, fights shy of the other, exists for itself on its own account, and on its side uses the other too.
From this, as a result, man, being the thing conscious of this relation, derives his true nature and place. As he is immediately, man is good, qua natural conscious- ness per se, absolute qua individual, and all else exists for him : and further, — since the moments have the significance of universality for him qua self-conscious animal, — everything exists to pleasure and delight him, and, as he first comes from the hand of God, he walks the earth as in a garden planted for him. He is bound also to pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; he claims to have a use for it which distinguishes him from every other being, for, as it happens, his inherently good nature is so constituted that the superfluity of delight does it harm, or rather his particularity contains as a factor in its constitution a principle that goes beyond it ; his particularity can overreach itself and destroy itself. To prevent this, he finds reason a useful means for duly restraining this self-transcendence, or rather for pre- serving himself when he does go beyond determinate
570 Phenomenology of Mind
limits : for such is the force of consciousness. The enjoyment of this conscious and essentially universal being must, in manifold variety and duration, be itself universal and not something determinate. The prin- ciple of measure or proportion has, therefore, the deter- minate function of preventing pleasure in its variety and duration from being quite broken off: i.e. the "measure" is determined with respect to immodera- tion.
As everything is useful for man, man is likewise useful too, and his characteristic determination con- sists in making himself a member of the human herd, of use for the common good, and serviceable to all. The extent to which he looks after his own interests is the measure with which he must also serve the purpose of others, and so far as he serves their turn, he is taking care of himself : the one hand washes the other. But wherever he finds himself there he is in his right: he makes use of others and is himself made use of.
Different things are serviceable to one another in different ways. All things, however, have this recipro- city of utility by their very nature, by being related to the Absolute in the twofold manner, the one positive, whereby they have a being all their own, the other negative, and thereby exist for others. The relation to Absolute Reality, or Religion, is therefore of all forms of profitableness the most supremely profitable;* for it is profiting pure and simple ; it is that by which all things stand — by which they have a being all their own — and that by which all things fall — have an existence for something else.
BeUef, of course, finds this positive outcome of
* Cp, 1 Timothy iv. 8 : "Godliness is profitable unto all things."
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 571
enlightenment as much an abomination as its negative attitude towards behef. This enhghtened insight into absolute Eeahty, that sees nothing in it but just absolute Reality, the etre supreme, the great Void — this intention to find that everything in its imme- diate existence is inherently real {an sich) or good, and finally to find the relation of the particular con- j^/2 scious entity to the Absolute Being, Rehgion, ex- haustively summed up in the conception of profitableness — all this is for belief utterly and simply revolting. This special and peculiar wisdom of enlightenment necessarily seems at the same time to the believing mind to be sheer insipidity and the confession of insipidity ; because it consists in knowing nothing of absolute Being, or, what amounts to the same thing, in knowing this entirely accurate platitude regard- ing it, — that it is merely absolute Being, and, again, in knowing nothing but finitude, taking this, more- over, to be the truth, and thinking this knowledge about finitude qua truth to be the highest knowledge attainable.
Behef has a divine right as against enlightenment, the right of absolute self-identity or of pure thought; and it finds itself utterly wronged by enlighten- ment ; for enlightenment distorts all its moments, and makes them something quite different from what they are in it. Enlightenment, on the other hand, has merely a human right as against behef, and can only put in a human claim for its own truth ; for the wrong it commits is the right of disunion, of discordance, and consists in perverting and altering, a right that belongs to the nature of self -consciousness in opposi- tion to the simple ultimate essence or thought. But
572 Phenomenology of Mind
since the right of enhghtenment is the right of self- consciousness, it will not merely retain its own right, too, in such a way that two equally valid rights of spirit would be left standing in opposition to one another without either satisfying the claims of the other ; it will maintain the absolute right, because self-conscious- ness is the negative function of the notion {Begriff), a function which does not merely operate on its own account, but also gets control over its opposite. And because belief is a mode of consciousness, it will not be able to balk enlightenment of that right.
For enlightenment does not operate against the believing mind with special principles of its own, but with those which belief itself implies and contains. Enlightenment merely brings together and presents to belief its own thoughts, the thoughts that lie scattered and apart within belief, all unknown to it. Enlighten- ment merely reminds behef, when one of its own forms is present, of others it also has, but which it is always L ) 3 forgetting when the one is there. Enlightenment shows itself to belief to be pure insight, by the fact that it, in a given determinate moment, sees the whole, brings forward the opposite element standing in direct rela- tion to that moment and, converting the one into the other, brings out the principle operating negatively on both thoughts — the notion. It appears, therefore, to belief to be distortion and lies, because it shows up the other side in the moments of belief. Enlightenment seems, in consequence, directly to make something else out of them than they are in their own particu- larity ; but this other is equally essential, and in reality is to be found in the believing mind itself, only the latter does not think about it, but keeps it some-
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 573
where else. Hence neither is the result foreign to behef nor can belief reject its truth.
Enlightenment itself, however, which reminds behef of the opposite of its various separate moments, is just as little enlightened regarding its own nature. It takes up a purely negative attitude to belief, so far as it excludes its own content from its own pure activity and takes that content to be negative of itself. Consequently, neither in this negative, in the content of belief, does it recognise itself, nor, for this reason, does it bring to- gether the two thoughts, the one which it contributes and the one against which it brings the first. Since it does not know that what it condemns in the case of belief is directly its very own thought, it has its own being in the opposition of both moments, only one of which, — viz. in every case the one opposed to belief — it acknowledges, but cuts off the other from the first, just as belief does. Enlightenment, consequently, does not bring out the unity of both as their unity, i.e. the notion ; but the notion arises before it and comes to Hght of its own accord, in other words, enhghtenment finds the notion merely as something lying ready at hand. For in itself the process of realising pure insight is just this, that insight, whose essential nature is the notion, comes before itself to begin with in the shape of an abso- lute other, and repudiates itself (for the opposite of the notion is an absolute opposite), and then out of this otherness comes to itself or comes to its notion.
Enhghtenment, however, is merely this process, it i^/y is the activity of the notion in still unconscious form, an activity which no doubt comes to itself qua object, but takes this object for an external other, and does not even know the nature of the notion, i.e. does not know
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that it is the undifferentiated element which absolutely divides itself.
As against behef, then, insight is the power of the notion in so far as this is the active process of relating the moments lying apart from one another in belief ; a way of relating them in which the contradiction in them comes to light. Herein lies the absolute right of the power which insight exercises over behef ; but the actuality which it gives this power lies just in the fact that the beheving state of consciousness is itself the notion and thus itself recognises and accepts the opposite which insight produces and presents before it. Insight, therefore, has and retains right against belief, because it makes valid in belief what is necessary to belief itself, and what belief contains within it.
At fii-st enlightenment asserts the moment of the notion to be an act of consciousness ; it maintains in the face of belief that the absolute Reality belief accepts is a Reality of the believer's consciousness qua a self, or that this absolute Reality is produced through consciousness. To the beheving mind its absolute Being is just as it is in itself for the believer, at the same time not as a foreign thing, standing there no one knows how or whence it came there. The trust and confidence of behef con- sists just in finding itself in absolute Reality as a par- ticular personal consciousness, and its obedience and service consist in acting so as to bring out that Reality as its own Absolute. Enlightenment, strictly speaking, only reminds belief of this, if belief goes beyond the action of consciousness and gives expression to the ulti- mate natiire {Ansich) of absolute Being in abstracto.
But while enlightenment no doubt puts alongside the one-sidedness of belief the opposite moment, viz. : — the
TJie Struggle of Enlighteimient with Superstition 575
action of belief in contrast to being — and being is all belief thinks about here, — and yet does not itself in doing so bring those opposite thoughts together, en- lightenment isolates the pure moment of action, and declares that what belief takes to be fer se ultimate (Ansich) is merely a product of consciousness. The ://,s' isolated separate act opposed to this ultimate Being (Ansich) is, however, a contingent action, and, qua pre- sentative activity, is a creating of fictions, — presented figurative ideas that have no being in themselves. And this is how enUghtenment regards the content of belief.
Conversely, however, pure insight equally says the very opposite. Since insight lays stress on the moment of otherness which the notion contains, it declares the essential Reality for belief to be one which is not in any way due to consciousness, is away beyond consciousness, foreign to it, and un- known. To belief, too, that Reahty has the same character. On one side belief trusts in it, and gets, in doing so, the assurance of its own self, on the other side it is unsearchable in all its ways and unattainable in its being.
Further, enhghtenment maintains against the be- heving mind a right which the latter concedes, when enhghtenment treats the object of the behever's veneration as stone and wood, or, in short, some finite anthropomorphic feature. For, since this conscious- ness is divided within itself in having a 'beyond' remote from actuality and an immediate present embodiment of that remote beyond, there is also found in it, as a matter of fact, the view that sense-things have a value and significance in and for themselves {an und für sich). But belief does not bring together these two ideas of
576 Phenomenology of Mind
what is " in and for itself," viz. that at one time what is " in and for itself " is for beHef pure essential Reahty and at another time is an ordinary thing of sense. Even its own pure consciousness is affected by this last view ; for the distinctions of its supersensuous world, because dispensing with the notion, are a series of inde- pendent shapes and forms, and their activity is a happening, i.e. they exist merely in idea, merely as presentations, and have the characteristic of sense- existence.
Enlightenment on its side isolates actuality in the same way, treating it as a reality abandoned by spirit ; isolates specific determinateness as some fixed im- movable finite element, as if it were not a moment in the spiritual process of the real itself, were neither i^ ( 4 nothing, nor something with a being all its own, but something evanescent and transitory.
It is clear that the same is the case with regard to the ground of knowledge. The beheving mind recognises itself to be an accidental knowledge ; for in belief the mind adopts an attitude towards contingen- cies, and absolute Reality itself comes before belief in the form of a presented idea of ordinary actual fact. Consequently behef is also a kind of certainty which does not carry the truth within it, and it con- fesses itself to be an unsubstantial consciousness of this kind, far short of being well assured of itself and authentically secure. This moment, however, belief forgets in its immediate spiritual knowledge of absolute Reality.
Enhghtenment, however, which reminds beHef of all this, thinks again merely of the contingency of the knowledge and forgets the other — thinks only
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 577
of the mediating process which takes effect through an ahen third term, and does not think on that pro- cess wherein the immediate is itself the third term, through which it mediates itself with the other, viz. with itself.
Finally, on the view enlightenment takes of the action of belief, the rejection of enjoyment and posses- sions is looked upon as wrong and purposeless.
As to the wrong thus done, enlightenment preserves the harmony of the beheving attitude in this that behef acknowledges the actual reality of possessing property, keeping hold of it, and enjoying it. In in- sisting on its property, it behaves with all the more stubborn independence and exclusiveness, and in its enjoyment with all the more frank self-abandonment, since its rehgious act of giving up pleasure and property takes effect beyond the region of this actuahty, and purchases for it freedom to do as it hkes so far as that other sphere is concerned. This service, that consists in sacrificing natural impulses and enjoyments, in point of fact has no truth, owing to this opposition. The retention and the sacrifice subsist together side by side. The sacrifice is merely a "sign" which performs real sacrifice only as regards a small part, and hence in point of fact only representatively suggests sacri- fice.
As for purposiveness, enhghtenment finds it point- less and stupid to throw away a possession in order to feel and to prove oneself to be free from all possession, to renounce an enjoyment in order to think and de- monstrate that one is rid of all enjoyment. The be- lieving mind itself takes the absolute act for a universal one. Not only does the action of its absolute Reality
VOL. II.— M
578 Phenomenology of Mind
as its object appear something universal, but the individual consciousness, too, has to prove itself de- tached entirely and altogether from its sensuous nature. But throwing away a particular possession, giving up and disclaiming a particular enjoyment, is not acting universally in this way. And since in the action it is essentially the purpose, which is a universal, and the performance, which is a particular process, that had to stand in all their incompatibility before consciousness, that action shows itself to be of a kind in which consciousness has no share, and consequently this way of acting is seen to be too naive to be an action at all. It is too naive to fast in order to prove one- self quite indifferent to the pleasures of the table ; too naive to rid oneself, Hke Origen, of other bodily pleasure in order to show that pleasure is finished and done with. The act itself proves to be an external and a particular function. But desire is deeply rooted within the inner Kfe, and is a universal element ; its pleasure neither disappears with the instrument for getting pleasure nor by abstention from particular pleasures.
But enlightenment on its side here isolates the un- reahsed inwardness as against the concrete actuality ; just as in the case of the devotion and direct intuition of belief, enlightenment holds fast to the externality of things of sense as against the inward attitude of beHef. Enlightenment finds the main point in the intention, in the thought, and thereby finds no need for actually bringing about the Hberation from natural ends. On the contrary, this inner sphere is itself the formal element that has its concrete fulfilment in natm^al impulses, which are justified simply by the
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 579
fact that they fall within, that they belong to universal being, to nature.
Enlightenment, then, holds irresistible sway over beHef by the fact that the latter finds in its own constitution the very moments to which enlightenment uf9 gives significance and validity. Looking more closely at the action exerted by this force, its operation on belief seems to rend asunder the unity and happy harmony of trustfulness and immediate confidence, to pollute its spiritual life with lower thoughts drawn from the sphere of sense, to destroy the feeling of calm security in its attitude of submission by introducing the vanity of understanding, of self-will, and self-fulfil- ment. But in point of fact, enlightenment really brings to pass the abohtion of that state of unthinking, or rather uncomprehended (begrifflos) cleavage, which finds a place in the nature of belief. The believing mood weighs and measures by a twofold standard, it has two sorts of eyes and ears, uses two voices to express its meaning, it duplicates all ideas, without comparing and squaring the sense and meaning in the two forms used. Or we may say belief fives its Hfe amidst two sorts of perceptions, the one the percep- tions of thought which is asleep, purely uncritical and uncomprehending, the other those of waking conscious- ness living solely and simply in the world of sense ; and in each of them it manages to carry on a household all its own.
Enlightenment illuminates that world of heaven with ideas drawn from the world of sense, pointing out there this element of finitude which behef cannot deny or repudiate, because it is self-consciousness, and in being so is the unity to which both kinds of ideas
ifl^
580 Phenomenology of Mind
belong, and in which they do not fall apart from one another ; for they belong to the same indivisible simple self into which belief has passed, and which constitutes its life.
Belief has by this means lost the content which furnished its fiUing, and collapses into an inarticulate state where the spirit works and weaves within itself.* Belief is banished from its own kingdom ; this kingdom is sacked and plundered, since every distinction and expansion of it has rent the waking consciousness in its innermost nature, and claimed every one of its parts for earth, and returned them to the earth that owns them. Yet belief is not on that account satisfied, for this illumination has everywhere brought to light only what is individual, with the result that only insubstantial realities and finitude forsaken of spirit make any appeal to spirit.
Since belief is without content and cannot continue in this barren condition, or since, in getting beyond finitude, which is the sole content, it finds merely the empty void, it is a sheer longing : its truth is an empty beyond, for which there is no longer any appropriate content to be found, for everything is appropriated and connected in other ways.
BeHef in this manner has in fact become the same as enhghtenment — the conscious attitude of relating a finite that inherently exists to an unknown and un- knowable Absolute without predicates ; the difference is merely that the one is enhghtenment satisfied, while belief is enlightenment unsatisfied.! It will yet be
* i.e. the life of feeling.
t i.e. the contrast between belief and enlightenment becomes a con- trast inside enlightenment itself.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 581
seen whether enlightenment can continue in its state of satisfaction ; that longing of the troubled, be- shadowed spirit, mourning over the loss of its spiritual world, Hes in the background. Enhghtenment has on it this stain of unsatisfied longing : — in its empty- Absolute Being we find this in the form of the pure object; in passing beyond its individual nature to an unfulfilled beyond, the fleck appears as an act and a process; in the selflessness of what is "useful" it is seen in the form of an object fulfilled. Enhghtenment will remove this stain : by considering more closely the positive result which constitutes the truth in its case, we shall find that the stain is implicitly removed already.
The True Kesult of Enlightenment*
The spirit that sullenly works and weaves without further distinctions within itself has thus passed into itself away beyond consciousness, which, again, has arrived at clearness as to itself. The first moment of this clearness of mind is determined, in regard to its necessity and constitution, by the fact that pure insight, or insight that is imphcitly and fer se notion, actuahses itself ; it does so when it gives otherness or determinateness a place in its own nature. In this manner it is negative pure insight, i.e. the negation of the notion; this negation is equally pure; and here- with has arisen the pure and simple " thing,"' the Abso- lute Being, that has no further determination of any sort. If we define this more precisely, insight in the sense of absolute notion is a distinguishing of distinc- tions that are not so any longer, of abstractions or pure notions that no longer support themselves but find a fixed hold and a distinction only by means of the whole hfe of the process. This distinguishing of what is not distinguished consists just in the fact that the absolute notion makes itself its object, and as against that process asserts itself to be the essence. The essence hereby dispenses with the aspect wherein abstrac-
* The outcome is at once positive and negative — materialism and agnosticism : on the secular side, it is pure utilitarianism .
5S2
Tlie Result of Enlightenment 583
tions or distinctions are kept apart, and hence be- comes pure thought in the sense of a pure thing.
This, now, is just the dull, silent, unconscious working and weaving of the spirit at the loom of its own being, to which behef, as we saw, sank back when it lost all distinction in its content. And this is at the same time that movement of pure self-consciousness, in regard to which the essence is intended to be the absolutely exter- nal beyond. For, because this pure self-consciousness is a movement working with pure notions, with distinctions that are no distinctions, pure self- consciousness col- lapses in fact into that unconscious working and weaving of spirit, i.e. into pure feehng, or pm^e thing- hood.
The self-aHenated notion — for the notion still stands here at the level of such aHenation — does not, however, know this identical nature constituting both sides, — the movement of self-consciousness and its absolute Reahty, — does not know the identity of their nature, which, in point of fact gives them their very substance and sub- sistence. Since the notion is not aware of this insight, absolute Reahty has significance and value merely in the form of an objective beyond, while the consciousness making these distinctions, and in this w^ay keeping the ultimate reality outside itself, is treated as a finite consciousness.
Regarding that Absolute Being, enhghtenment itself falls out with itself in the same way as it did formerly with behef, and is divided between the views of two parties. One party proves itself to be victorious by the fact that it breaks up into two parties ; for in that fact it shows it possesses within it the principle it combats, and consequently shows it has abolished
584 Phenomenology of Mind
the one-sidedness with which it formerly made its appearance. The interest which was divided between it and the other, now falls entirely within it, and forgets the other, because that interest finds lying in it alone the opposition on which attention is directed. At the same time, however, the opposition has been lifted into the higher victorious element, where it is cleared 1^7» up and set forth. So that the schism that arises in one party, and seems a misfortune, demonstrates rather its good fortune.
The pure essence itself has in it no distinction ; con- sequently distinction is reached by two such pure essences being put forward for consciousness to be aware of, or by a twofold consciousness of the pure reality. The pure absolute essence is only in pure thought, or rather it is pure thought itself, and thus absolutely beyond the finite, beyond self-consciousness, and is merely the ultimate essence in a negative sense. But in this way it is just being, the negative of self- consciousness. Being negative of self-consciousness, it is also related to self-consciousness. It is external being, which, placed in relation to self-consciousness within which distinctions and determinations fall, pre- serves within it the distinctions, of being tasted, seen, and so on; and the relationship is that of sense- experience and perception.
Taking the point of departm-e from this sense- existence, into which that negative beyond necessarily passes, but abstracting from those various ways in which consciousness is related to sense-existence, there is left pure matter as that in which consciousness weaves and moves inarticulately within itself. In dealing with this, the essential point to note is that pure matter is
The Result of Enlightenment 585
merely what remains over when we abstract from seeing, feeling, tasting, etc., i.e. it is not what is seen, tasted, felt, and so on ; it is not matter that is seen, felt, or tasted, but colom-, a stone, salt, and so on. Matter is really a pm-e abstraction ; and, being so, we have here the pm'e essential natm'e of thought, or pure thought itself, as the Absolute without predicates, undetermined, having no distinctions within it.*
The one kind of enlightenment calls absolute Being that predicateless Absolute, which exists in thought beyond the actual consciousness from which this en- lightenment started ; the other calls it matter. If they were distinguished as Nature and Spirit or God, the unconscious inner working and weaving would have nothing of the wealth of developed Hfe required in order to be nature, while Spirit or God would have no self-distinguishing consciousness. Both, as we saw, are entirely the same notion ; the distinction Ues not in the objective fact, but purely in the diversity of starting-point adopted by the two thought-construc- tions, and in the fact that each keeps to a special point of view in the thought-process. If they rose above that, their thoughts would coincide, and they would find what to the one is, as it holds, a horror, and to the other a folly, is one and the same thing. For to the one, absolute Being, in its pure thought — or directly for pure consciousness — is outside finite con- sciousness, is the negative beyond of finite mind. If it would reflect that in part that simple immediacy of thought is nothing else than pure being, that in part, again, what is negative for consciousness is at the same
* Cp. Schopenhauer : " The absolute without predicates is just matter."
586 Phenomenology of Mind
time related to consciousness — that in the negative judgment the copula " is " also connects and holds together the two separated factors — it would come to see that this beyond, which the nature of an external existence implies, stands in a relation to consciousness, and that in so doing this means the same as what is called pure matter. The missing moment of the present would then be secured.
The other enlightenment starts from sense-existence ; it then abstracts from the sensuous relation of tasting, seeing, etc., and turns sense-existence into purely inherent being (Ansich), absolute matter, something neither felt nor tasted. This being has in this way become the inner reality of pure consciousness, the ultimately simple without predicates ; it is the pure notion, qua notion whose being is in itself, or it is pure thought within itself. This insight in its conscious activity does not go through the process of passing from being, which is purely being, to an opposite in thought, which is the same as mere being, or does not go from the pure positive to the opposite pure negative ; since the positive is really pure simply and solely through negation, while the negative qua pure is self- identical and one within itself, and precisely on that account positive. ^^2, C)r again, these two have not come to the notion found in Descartes' metaphysics that in themselves being and thought are the same; they have not arrived at the thought that being, pure being, is not a concrete actual reality, but pure abstraction, and conversely that pure thought, self-identity or inner essence, is partly the negative of self-consciousness, and consequently is being, and partly, qua immediate simple entity, is
The Result of Enlightenment 587
likewise nothing else than being. Thought is thing- hood, or thinghood is thought.
The real essence is here divided asunder in such a way that, to begin with, it appertains to two specifically distinct modes of thinking. In part, the real must hold distinction in itself ; in part, just by so doing, both ways of considering it merge into one ; for then the abstract moments, of pure being and the negative, by which their distinction is expressed, are united in the object with which these modes of treatment deal.
The universal common to both is the abstraction of pure self-thinking, of pure quivering within the self. This simple motion of rotating on its own axis is bound to resolve itself into separate moments, because it is itself only motion by distinguishing its own moments. This distinguishing of the moments leaves the unmoved [unity] behind as the empty shell of pure being, that is no longer actual thought, has no more life within it ; for qua distinction this process is all the content. The process, which thus puts itself outside that unity thereby constitutes, however, the shifting change — a change that does not return into itself — of the moments of being-in-itself, of being- for-another, and of being-for-self — actual reality in the way this is object for the concrete consciousness of pure insight — constitutes Utility.
Bad as utiHty may look to beHef or sentimentality or even to the abstraction that calls itself speculation, and takes to do with the ultimate, the inherent nature ; ^a^ J>w«i yet it is that in which pure insight finds its reahsation, and itself is the object for insight, an object which insight now no longer repudiates, and which, too, it t+Zlt does not put down as the void or the pm'e beyond. For
588 Phenomenology of Mind
pure insight, as we saw, is the Uving notion itself, the self-same pure personality, distinguishing itself within itself in such a way that each of the distinguished elements is itself pure notion, i.e. is eo ipso not distinct ; it is simple undifferentiated pure self-consciousness, which is for itself as well as in itself within an immediate unity. Its inherent being, its being in itself, is therefore not fixed and permanent, but at once ceases, in its distinction, to be something distinctive. A being of that kind, however, which is immediately without support and cannot stand of itself, has no being in itself, no inherent existence, it is essentially for something else, which is the power that consumes and absorbs it. But this second moment, opposed to that first one, dis- appears immediately too, like the first ; or, rather, qua being merely for some other, it is the very process of disappearing, and is definitely affirmed as being that has turned back into itself, as being for itself. This simple being-for-self, however, qua self-identity, is rather an objective being, or is thereby for an other.
This nature of pure insight in thus unfolding and making explicit its moments, in other words insight qua object, finds expression in the useful, the profitable. What is useful is a thing, something that subsists in itself ; this being in itself is at the same time only a pure moment : it is in consequence absolutely for something else, but is equally for an other merely as it is in itself : these opposite moments return into the indivisible unity of being-for-self. While, however, the useful doubtless expresses the notion of pure insight, it is all the same not insight as such, but insight as conscious presentation, or as object for insight. It is merely the restless shifting change of those moments, of which
The Result of Enlightenment 589
one is indeed being returned into itself, but merely as being for itself, i.e. as abstract moment, appearing on one side over against the others. The useful itself does not consist in the negative fact of having these moments in their opposition at the same time undivided in one and the same respect, of having them as a form of thought yer se in the way they are qua pure insight. The moment of being-for-self is doubtless a phase of i^s^f usefulness, but not in the sense that it swamps the other moments, heing-per-se and being-for-another ; if so, it would be the whole self. In dealing with the useful, pure insight thus takes as object its own pecuhar notion in the pm^e moments constituting its nature; it is the consciousness of this metaphysical principle, but not yet its conceptual comprehension, it has not yet itself got to the unity of being and notion. Because the useful still appears before insight in the form of an object, insight has a world, not indeed any longer a world all by itself and self-contained, but still a world all the same, which it distinguishes from itself. Only, since the opposites have come forth on the summit of the notion, the next step will be for them to collide with one another and for enhghtenment to experience the fruits of their deeds.
When we look at the object reached in relation to this entire sphere of spiritual life, we found the actual world of culture summed up in the vanity of self- consciousness — in independent self-existence, whose content is drawn from the confusion characteristic of culture, and which is still the individual notion, not yet the self-conscious {für sich) universal notion. Keturned into itself, however, that (individual) notion is pure insight — pure consciousness qua pure self or
590 Phenomenology of Mind
negativity, just as belief, too, is pure consciousness, qua pure thought or positivity. Behef finds in that self the moment that makes it complete; — but, perishing through being thus completed, it is in pure insight that we now see both moments as absolute Being, which is purely thought-constituted or is a negative entity, and as matter, which is the positive entity.
This completion still lacks that actual reality of self- consciousness, which belongs to the vain and empty type of consciousness — the world out of which thought raised itself up to itself. What is thus wanting is reached in the aspect of utility so far as pure insight secures positive objectivity there; pure insight is thereby a concrete actual consciousness satisfied within itself. This objectivity now constitutes its world, and is become the final and true outcome of the entire previous world, ideal as well as real. The first world of spirit is the expansive realm of spirit's self-dispersed existence and of certainty of self in separate individual shapes and forms : just as nature disperses its life in an endless multiphcity of forms and shapes, without the generic principle of all the forms being present therein. The second world contains the generic principle, and is the realm of the ultimate inherent nature {Ansichseyns) or the essential truth, over against that individual certainty. The third world, however, that of the profitable or the useful, is the truth which is certainty of self as well. The realm of the truth of behef lacks the principle of concrete actuality, or of certainty of self in the sense of this individual self. But, again, concrete actuahty, or certainty of self qua this individual, lacks the ultimate inherent nature {AnsicJi). In the object of pure insight both worlds are united. The useful
The Result of Enlightenment 591
is the object so far as self-consciousness sees through it and individual certainty of self finds its enjoyment (its self-existence) in it; self-consciousness sees into it in this manner, and this insight contains the true essence of the object (which consists in being something perme- able to sight, something seen through, in other words, in being for an other). This insight is thus itself true knowledge ; and self-consciousness directly finds in this attitude universal certainty of itself as well, has its pure consciousness in this attitude, in which truth as well as immediateness and actuality are united. Both worlds are reconciled and heaven is transplanted to the earth below.
Ill
Absolute Freedom and Tereor*
Consciousness has found its notion in the principle of utiHty. But that notion is partly an object still, partly, for that very reason, still a purpose, of which consciousness does not yet find itself to be immediately possessed, utility or profitableness is still a predicate of the object, not a subject, not its immediate and sole i,i "• actuahty. It is the same thing that appeared before when we found that self-existence (being-for-self) had not yet shown itself to be the substance of the remaining moments, a process by which the useful would be primarily nothing else than the self of consciousness and this latter thereby in its possession.
This resumption of the form of objectivity which characterises the useful has, however, already taken effect implicitly, and as the outcome of this immanent internal revolution there comes to light the actual revolution of concrete actuahty, the new mode of conscious life — absolute freedom.
This is so because in point of fact there is here no more than an empty semblance of objectivity separating self-consciousness from actual possession. For, in part, all the worth and permanence of the various specific members of the organisation of the world of actuahty and belief have as a whole returned into this simple
* Refers primarily to the regime under the French revolutionaries.
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Absolute Freedom and Terror 593
determination, which is their ground and their indwell- ing spirit : in part, however, this determinate element has nothing pecuharly its own left for itself, it is instead pure metaphysic, pure notion or knowledge of self- consciousness. That is to say, from the inherent and specific nature of the useful qua object consciousness learns that its inherent nature, its being-in-itself, is essentially a being for another ; mere being 'per se, since it is self -less, is ultimately and in truth a passive entity, or something that is for another self. The object, however, is present to consciousness in this abstract form of purely immanent being, of pure being-in-itself ; for consciousness is the activity of pure insight, the separate moments of which take the pure form of notions.
Self- existence, being-for-self, however, into which being for another returns, in other words the self, is not a self of what is called object, a self all its own and different from the ego : for consciousness qua pure insight is not an individual self, over against which the object, in the sense of having a self all its own, could stand, but the pure notion, the gazing of the self into self, the hteral and absolute seeing itself doubled. The certainty of itself is the universal subject, and its notion knowing itself is the essential being of all reahty. If the useful was merely the shifting change of the moments, without Lf is returning into its own proper unity, and was hence still an object for knowledge to deal with, then it ceases to be this now. For knowing is itself the process and movement of those abstract moments ; it is the univer- sal self, the self of itself as well as of the object, and, being imiversal, is the unity of this process, a unity that returns into itself.
VOL. II.— N
594 Phenomenology of Mind
This brings on the scene spirit in the form of absolute freedom. It is the mode of self-consciousness which clearly comprehends that in its certainty of self hes the essence of all the component spiritual parts of the concrete sensible as well as of the supersensible world, or, conversely, that essential being and concrete actu- ality consist in the knowledge consciousness has of itself.
It is conscious of its pure personahty and with that of all spiritual reahty ; and all reahty is solely spiritu- ality ; the world is for it absolutely its own will, and this will is universal will. And further, this will is not the empty thought of will, which is constituted by giving a silent assent, or an assent through a representa- tive, a mere symbol of wilhng ; it is a concretely em- bodied universal will, the will of all individuals as such. For will is in itself the consciousness of personality, of every single one ; and it has to be as this true concrete actual will, as self-conscious essential being of each and every personality, so that each single and undivided does everything, and what appears as done by the whole is at once and consciously the deed of every single individual.
This undivided substance of absolute freedom puts itself on the throne of the world, without any power being able to offer effectual resistance. For since in very truth consciousness is alone the element which furnishes spiritual beings or powers with their sub- stance, their entire system, which is organised and maintained through division into separate spheres and distinct wholes, has collapsed into a single whole, when once the individual consciousness conceives the object as having no other nature than that of self-conscious-
Absolute Freedom and Terror 595
ness itself, or conceives it to be absolutely the notion. What made the notion an existential object was the distinguishing it into separate and separately subsist- ing areas or groups ; when, however, the object becomes a notion there is nothing fixedly subsisting left in it; negativity permeates and pervades all its moments. It exists in such a way that each individual conscious- ness rises out of the sphere assigned to it, finds no longer its inmost natiu-e and function in this isolated area, but grasps itself as the notion of will, grasps all the various groupings as the essential expression of this will, and is in consequence only able to realise itself in a work which is a work of the whole. In this absolute freedom all social ranks or classes, which are the component spiritual factors into which the whole is difierentiated, are effaced and annulled ; the individual consciousness that belonged to any such group and exercised its will and found its fulfilment there, has re- moved the barriers confining it ; its purpose is the universal purpose, its language universal law, its work universal achievement.
The object and the element distinguished have here lost the meaning of utility, of profitableness, which was a predicate of all real being; consciousness does not commence its process with the object as a sort of ahen element after dealing with which it then and only then returns into itself ; the object it is aware of is conscious- ness itself. The opposition thus consists solely in the distinction of individual and imiversal consciousness. But the individual itself is directly on its own view that which had merely the semblance of opposition ; it is universal consciousness and will. The ulterior beyond that lies remote from this its actual reaHty,
596 Phenomenology of Mind
hovers over the corpse of the vanished and departed independence of what is real or beheved to be, and hovers there merely as an exhalation of stale gas, of the empty etre supreme.
By doing away with the various distinct spiritual groups, and the restricted and confined fife of individuals, as well as both its worlds, there thus remains merely the process of the universal self-consciousness within itself as an interaction of its content, a reciprocal interaction between its universal form and personal consciousness. 43./^ The universal will goes into itself, is subjecti vised, and becomes individual will, to which the universal law and universal work stand opposed. But this individual con- sciousness is equally and immediately conscious of itself as universal will; it is fully aware that its own objective content is a law given by that will, a work performed by that will ; in exercising and carrying out its activity, in creating objectivity, it is thus doing nothing individual, but executing laws and functions of the state.
This process is consequently the interaction of con- sciousness with itself, in which it lets nothing break away and assume the shape of a detached object standing over against it. It follows from this, that it cannot arrive at a positive accomplishment of anything, either in the way of universal operations in language or in actual reahty, either in the shape of laws and universal regulations of conscious freedom, or of deeds and works of active freedom.
The accomplished result at which this freedom, that gives itself consciousness, might manage to arrive, would consist in the fact that such freedom qua universal substance made itself into an object and an abiding
Absolute Freedom and Terror 59*7
existence. This objective otherness would there be the differentiation which enabled it to divide itself into stable spiritual groups and into separate fragments or members. These wholes or spheres would partly be the thought-constituted factors of a power that is differ- entiated into legislative, judicial and executive ; but partly they would be the substantial elements we found in the real world of spiritual culture; and, since the content of universal action would be more closely taken note of, they would be the particular areas or spheres of labour, which are further distinguished as specific social ranks or classes. Universal freedom, which would have differentiated itself in this manner into its various parts, and by the very fact of doing so would have made itself an existing substance, would thereby be free from par- ticular individualities, and could apportion the plurality of individuals to its several parts.
The activity and being of personahty would, however, find itself by this process confined to a branch of the whole, to one kind of action and existence ; when placed in the element of existence, personality would bear the j^9>/ meaning of a determinate personality ; it would cease to be in reality universal self-consciousness. Neither by the idea of submission to self-imposed laws, addressed in part to universal self-consciousness, nor by its being represented when legislation and universal action take place, does self-consciousness here let itself be mistaken about the actual truth, that itself lays down the law and itself accomplishes a universal and not a particular task. For in the case where the self is merely repre- sented and ideally presented (vorgestellt), there it is not actual : where it is by proxy, it is not. *
* The essential principle of anarchy.
598 Phenomenology of Mind
Just as tlie individual self-consciousness does not find itself in this universal work of absolute freedom qua existing substance, as little does it find itself in the deeds proper and specific individual acts of will performed by this substance. For the universal to pass into a deed, it must gather itself into the single unity of individuahty, and put an individual consciousness in the forefront ; for universal will is an actual concrete will only in a self that is single and one. Thereby, however, all other in- dividuals are excluded from the entirety of this deed, and have only a restricted share in it, so that the deed would not be a deed of real universal self-consciousness.
Universal freedom can thus produce neither a positive achievement nor a deed ; there is left for it only nega- tive action ; it is merely the rage and fury of dis- appearance and destruction.
But the highest reality of all and the reality most of all opposed to absolute freedom, or rather the sole object it is yet to become aware of, is the freedom and singleness of actual self-consciousness itself. For that universaHty which does not let itself attain the reahty of organic differentiation, and whose purpose is to maintain itself in unbroken continuity, distinguishes itself within itself all the while, because it is process or consciousness in general. Moreover on account of its own peculiar abstraction, it divides itself into extremes equally 2.7^^ abstract, into the cold unbending bare universality, and the hard discrete absolute rigidity and stubborn atomic singleness of actual self-consciousness. Now that it is done with exterminating and destroying express organisation, and subsists on its own behalf, this is its sole object, an object that has no other content left, no other possession, existence and external exten-
Absolute Freedom and Terror 599
sion, but is merely this knowledge of itself as absolutely- pure and detached individual self. The point at which the object can be laid hold of and understood is solely its abstract existence in general.
The relation, then, of these two, since they exist for themselves indivisibly and absolutely and thus cannot arrange for a common part to act as a means for con- necting them, is pure negation entirely devoid of media- tion, the negation, moreover, of the individual as a factor existing within the universal. The sole and only work and deed accomplished by universal freedom is therefore death — a death that achieves nothing, embraces nothing within its grasp ; for what is negated is the unachieved, unfulfilled punctual entity of the absolutely free self. It is thus the most cold-blooded mean and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water.
In this single expressionless syllable consists the wisdom of the government, the intelhgence of the general will, when carrying out and executing its plans. The government is itself nothing but the self-established focus, the individual embodiment of the general will. Government, a power to will and perform proceeding from a single centre, wills and performs at the same time a determinate order and action. In doing so it, on the one hand, excludes other individuals from a share in its deed, and, on the other, thereby constitutes itself a form of government which is a specifically determinate will and eo ipso opposed to the universal will. By no manner of means, therefore, can it put itself forward as anything but a faction. The victorious faction only is called the government ; and just in that it is a faction lies the direct necessity of its overthrow ;
600 Phenomenology of Mind
and its being government makes it, conversely, into a faction and hence guilty. When the universal will holds to this concrete action of the government and holds this to be a crime which the government has committed against the universal will, then the government on its side has nothing tangible and external left whereby to estabhsh and show the guilt of the will opposing itself to it ; for what thus stands opposed to it as concrete actual uni- versal will is merely unreal abstract will, bare intention. Being suspected, therefore, takes the place, or has the significance and effect, of being guilty ; and the external reaction against this reality that lies in bare inward intention, consists in the fatuous barren destruction of this particular existent self, in whose case there is nothing else to take away but its mere existence.
In this its characteristically peculiar performance, absolute freedom becomes objective to itself, and self-consciousness finds out what this freedom is. In itself it is just this abstract self -consciousness, which destroys all distinction and all fixedness of distinction within itself. It is object to itself in this shape ; the terror of death is the direct apprehension (Anschauung) of this its negative nature. This its reahty, however, finds absolute free self-conscious- ness quite different from what its own notion of itself was, viz. that the universal will is merely the positive substance of personality, and that this latter knows itself in it only positively, knows itself preserved there. Eather for this self -consciousness, which qua pure insight completely separates its positive and negative nature — separates the unpredicated Absolute qua pure thought and qua pure matter — the absolute transition from the one to the other is found here present within
Absolute Freedom and Terror 601
its reality. The universal will, qua absolutely positive concrete self-consciousness — because it is this self-con- scious actuality raised to the level of pure thought or abstract matter — turns round into the negative entity, and shows itself at the same time to be what cancels and does away with self- thinking or self - conscious- ness.
Absolute freedom qua pure self-identity of universal will thus carries with it negation; but in doing so contains distinction in general, and develops this again as concrete actual difference. For pure negativity finds Z^3 ^ in the self-identical universal will the element of sub- sistence, or the substance in which its moments get their reahsation ; it has the matter which it can turn into the specific nature of the substance ; and in so far as this substance has manifested itself to be the negative element for the individual consciousness, the organisation of the spiritual groups or " masses" of the substance, to which the plurality of conscious individuals is assigned, thus takes shape and form once more. These individuals, who felt the fear of death, their absolute lord and master, submit to negation and distinction once more, arrange themselves into groups, and return to a restricted and apportioned task, but thereby to their substantial reality.
Out of this tumult spirit would be thrown back upon its starting-point, the ethical world and the real world of spiritual culture, which would thus have been merely refreshed and rejuvenated by the fear of the lord, that has again entered their hearts. Spirit would have anew to traverse and continually repeat this cycle of necessity, if only complete interpenetra- tion of self-consciousness and the substance were
602 Phenomenology of Mind
the final result. In such an interpenetration self-con- sciousness might seek to experience the force of its universal nature operating negatively upon it, would try to know and find itself not as this particular self- consciousness but only as universal, and hence, too, would be able to endure the objective reahty of uni- versal spirit, a reality, excluding self-consciousness qua particular.
But this is not the form the final result assumes. For in absolute freedom there was no reciprocal interaction either between an external world and consciousness, which is absorbed in manifold existence or sets itself determinate purposes and ideas, or between consciousness and an external objective world, be it a world of reality or of thought. What that freedom contained was the world absolutely in the form of consciousness, as a universal will, and, along with that, self-consciousness gathered out of all the dispersion and manifoldness of existence or all the manifold ends and judgments of mind, and concentrated into the bare and simple self. The form of culture, which it attains in interaction with that essential nature, is, therefore, the grandest and the last, is that of seeing its pure and simple reality immediately disappear and pass away into empty nothingness.* In the sphere of culture itself it does not get the length of viewing its negation or ahenation in this form of pure abstraction ; its negation is nega- tion with a filling and a content — either honour and wealth, which it gains in the place of the self that it has alienated from itself ; or the language of esfrit and insight, which the distraught consciousness acquires ; or, again, the negation is the heaven of belief or the element
* Kant's "thing in itself" t
Absolute Freedom and Terror 603
of utility belonging to the stage of enlightenment. All these determinate elements disappear with the disaster and ruin that overtake the self in the state of absolute freedom ; * its negation is meaningless death, sheer horror of the negative which has nothing positive in it, nothing that gives a filling.
At the same time, however, this negation in its actual manifestation is not something ahen and external. It is neither that universal background of necessity in which the moral world is swamped, nor the particular accident of private possession, the whims and humours of the owner, on which the distraught consciousness finds itself dependent ; it is universal will, which in this its last abstraction has nothing positive, and hence can give nothing in return for the sacrifice. But just on that account this will is in unmediated oneness with self-consciousness, it is the pure positive because it is the pure negative ; and that meaningless death, the insubstantial, vacuous negativity of self, in its inner constitutive principle, turns round into abso- lute positivity. For consciousness, the immediate unity of itself with universal will, its demand to see and find itself as a determinate particular focus in the universal will, is changed and converted into the absolutely oppo- site experience. What it loses there, is abstract being, the immediate existence of that insubstantial focus ; and this vanished immediacy is the universal will as such which it now, knows itself to be, so far as it is superseded and cancelled immediacy, so far as it is pure knowledge or pure will. By this means it knows that will to be itself, and knows itself to be essential reality ; but not as the immediate essence, not will as revolutionary
* In the sense of abstract autonomy.
604 Phenomenology of Mind
government or anarchy struggling to establish an anar- chical constitution, nor itself as a centre of this faction or the opposite : the universal will is its pure knowing and willing, and it is universal will qua this pure knowledge and volition. It does not lose itself there, for pure knowledge and volition is it qua atomic point of con- sciousness. It is thus the interaction of pure knowledge with itself ; pure knowledge qua essential reahty is universal will, while this essence is simply and solely pure knowledge. Self-consciousness is thus pure know- ledge of essential reality in the sense of piu:e knowledge. Fiu:thermore, qua particular self it is merely the form of the subject or concrete real action, a form which by it is known as form. In the same way objective reality, " being," is for it absolutely self-less form ; for that objective reality would be what is not known : this knowledge, however, knows knowledge to be the essen- tial fact.
Absolute freedom has thus squared and balanced the opposition of universal and particular will with its own nature. The self-alienated type of mind, driven to the acme of its opposition, where pure volition and the purely vohtional agent are still kept distinct, reduces that opposition to a transparent form, and therein finds itself.
Just as the realm of the real and actual world passes over into that of belief and insight, absolute freedom leaves its self-destructive sphere of reality, and passes over into another land of self-conscious spirit, where in this unreality freedom is taken to be and is accepted as the truth. In the thought of this truth spirit refreshes and revives itself (so far as spirit is thought and remains so), and knows this being which self-
Absolute Freedom and Terror 605
consciousness involves [viz. thought] to be the complete and entire essence of everything. The new form and mode of experience that now arises is that of the Moral Life of Spirit.
G
Spirit in the Condition of being Certain of Itself :
Morality
[The following section deals with the final and highest stage in the life of finite spiritual experience as realised in the concrete form of a historical society. Here the substance of the social order is the real content of the self-conscious individual : that substance has become subjectified ; we have therefore a -self-contained spiritual subject. The discordance in- volved in the sphere of culture and enlightenment is overcome by the self knowing and realising itself as a completely universal self-determin- ing free will, its world within itself, and its self its own world. Each reflects the whole (the totality of social life) in itself so perfectly that what it does is transparently the doing of the whole as much as its own doing. Such a sphere of spiritual existence is Morality, the all-sufficient spiritual order of the finite spirit as an individual. The meaning assigned to " morality " here is that expressed by Kant when he says that morality is "the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, i.e. to possible universal legislation through maxims of the will." In other words, all the universality constituting the interrelations of finite spirits in a society are epitomised in the soul of the acting individual, who can thus quite legitimately, look upon itself as the self-regulating source of all universal conditions of action.
It is inevitable that such a concrete mode of experience should have various aspects and should pass through various stages in the process of fully realising its nature. The individual may lay exclusive stress on the self-completeness which he possesses through being the source and origin of his own laws. His self -legislative function, just because it carries with it the sense of universality, may appear so supremely important that all the actual detail of his life comes to be treated as external, indifferent, and contingent. This detail no doubt is essential to give body and substance to his spiritual individuality, but the universality of his will so far tran- scends each and every detail of content as to seem by itself the sole and all-sufficient reality of his being. The content of his life only enters into consideration as an element to be regulated and made to conform to the universal : the relation so constituted between content and universal is
606
Morality 607
found in the consciousness of Duty. Since the content is thus subor- dinate, though absolutely essential to give even meaning to the idea and the " fulfilment " of duty, and since the universal is the supremely im- portant fact, not merely is duty to be fulfilled for duty's sake, but the duty in question is pure duty. The " good will " is the purely universal will, and is the only will in the world from this point of view.
In the first section (a) Hegel analyses this phase of the moral life.
The historical material the writer has in mind is a moral attitude which came into prominence at the time of the Romantic movement towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It found its philosophical expression in the moral theories of Kant and Fichte ; and Lessing may be taken as a typical representative in literature of the same attitude.]
Spirit in the Condition of being Certain of Itself :
Morality
The ethical order of the community found its con- summation and its truth in the type of spirit existing in mere sohtude and separation within it — the individual self. This legal person, however, has its substance and its fulfilment outside that ethical order. The process of the world of culture and belief does away with this abstraction of a mere person ; and by the completion of the process of estrangement, by reaching the ex- tremity of abstraction, the self of spirit finds the sub- stance become first the universal will, and finally its own possession. Here, then, knowledge seems at last to have become entirely at one with the truth at which it aims ; for its truth is this knowledge itself. All opposition between the two sides has vanished, and that, too, not for us (who are tracing the process), not merely implicitly, but actually for self-consciousness itself. That is to say, knowledge has itself got the mastery over the opposition which consciousness had to face. This rests on the opposition between certainty of self and the object. Now, however, the object for it is the certainty of self, knowledge : just as the cer- tainty of itself as such has no longer ends of its own, is no longer conditioned and determinate, but is pure knowledge.
Self-consciousness thus now takes the knowledge of itself to be the substance itself. This substance is, for it, at once immediate and absolutely mediated in one
608
Morality 609
indivisible unity. It is immediate — just in the way the " ethical " consciousness knows and itself does its duties, and is bound to the substance as to its own nature : but it is not character, just as that ethical consciousness, w^hich in virtue of its immediacy is a determinate type of spirit, belongs merely to one of the essential features of ethical life, and has the peculiarity of not being conscious explicit know- ledge. It is, again, absolute mediation, as involving the conscious processes of culture and behef ; for it is essen- tially the movement of the hfe of self to transcend the abstract form of immediate existence, and become con- sciously universal — and yet to do so neither by simply estranging and rending itself as well as reality, nor by i^ 'hS fleeing from it. Rather, it is directly and immediately present in its very substance ; for this substance is its knowledge, it is the pure certainty of self become trans- parently visible. And just this very immediacy, which constitutes its actual reality, is the entire actuality; for the immediate is being, and qua pure immediacy, immediacy made transparent by thoroughgoing nega- tion, this immediacy is pure being, is being in general, is all being.
Absolute essential Being is, therefore, not exhausted by the characteristic of being the simple essence of thought; it is all actuality, and this actuahty exists merely as knowledge. What consciousness did not know would have no sense and can be no power in its life. Into its self-conscious knowing will, all objectivity, the whole world, has withdrawn. It is absolutely free in that it knows its freedom ; and just this very knowledge of its freedom is its substance, its puroose, its sole and only content.
VOL. II.— O
a
The Moral View of the World
Self-consciousness knows and accepts duty as the Absolute. It is bound by that alone, and this sub- stance is its own conscious life pure and simple ; duty cannot, for it, take on the form of something alien and external. When thus shut up and confined within itself, however, moral self-consciousness is not yet affirmed and looked at as consciousness* The object is immediate knowledge, and, being thus permeated purely by the self, is not object. But, this knowledge being essentially mediation and negativity, there is im- plied in its very conception relation to some otherness ; and thus it is consciousness. This other, because duty constitutes its sole essential purpose and objective con- tent, is a reality completely devoid of significance for consciousness. But again because this consciousness is so entirely confined within itself, it takes up towards this otherness a perfectly free and detached attitude ; and the existence of this other is, therefore, an exis- tence completely set free from self-consciousness, and in like manner relating itself merely to itself. The freer self-consciousness becomes, the freer also is the negative object of its consciousness. The object is thus a complete world within itself, with an individuality of
* i.e. there is not the opposition of an object to subject which con- sciousness requires.
6io
The Moral View of the World 611
its own, an independent whole of laws peculiar to it- self, as well as an independent procedure and an un- fettered active realisation of those laws. It is alto- gether a nature, a nature whose laws and also whose action belong to itself as a being which is not dis- turbed about the moral self-consciousness, just as the latter is not troubled about it.
Starting with a specific character of this sort, there is formed and established a moral outlook or point of view which consists in a process of relating the im- plicit aspect of morality {moralisches Ansichseyn) and the explicit aspect {moralisches Fürsichseyn). This relation presupposes both thorough reciprocal indifference and specific independence as between nature and moral purposes and activity ; and also, on the other side, a conscious sense of duty as the sole essential fact, and of nature as entirely devoid of independence and essential significance of its own. The point of view or attitude of the moral life consists in the development of these moments, which are involved in this relation of such entirely antithetic and contradictory presuppo- sitions.
To begin with, then, the moral consciousness in general is presupposed. It takes duty to be the essen- tial reality : itself is actual and active, and in its actuality and action fulfils duty. But this moral con- sciousness, at the same time, finds before it the assumed freedom of nature : it learns by experience that nature is not concerned about giving consciousness a sense of the unity of its reality with that of nature, and hence discovers that nature may let it become happy, but perhaps also may not. The non-moral consciousness on the other hand finds, by chance perhaps, its realisa-
612 Phenomenology of Mind
tion where the moral consciousness sees merely an occa- sion for acting, but does not see itself enjoying through its action the success of performance and the satisfaction of achievement. It therefore finds reason for bewaihng a situation where there is no correspondence between itself and existence, and lamenting the injustice which confines it to having its object merely in the form of pure duty but refuses to let it see this object and itself actually realised. ^i,,c. The moral consciousness cannot renounce happiness and drop this element out of its absolute purpose. The purpose, which is expressed as duty pure and simple, essentially implies retention of individual self- consciousness and maintenance of its claims. Individual conviction and knowledge thereof constituted a funda- mental element in morality. This element in the objecti- fied purpose, in duty fulfilled, is the particular conscious- ness seeing itself as actually realised. In other words, this moment is that of enjoyment, which thus lies in the very principle of morahty, not indeed of morality in the sense of immediate feeling and sentiment, but in the principle of the actualisation of morality. Owing to this, however, enjoyment is also involved in moral sentiment, for morality seeks, not to remain sentiment as opposed to action, but to act or realise itself. Thus the purpose, expressed as a whole along with the con- sciousness of its elements or moments, is that duty fulfilled shall be both a purely moral act and a real- ised individuality, and that nature, the aspect of par- ticularity in contrast with abstract purpose, shall be one with this purpose.
While experience must necessarily bring to light the disharmony between the two aspects, seeing that nature
The Moral View of the World 613
is detached and apart, nevertheless duty is alone the es- sential fact and nature by contrast is devoid of self- hood. That purpose in its entirety, which the harmony of the two constitutes, contains within it actuality itself. It is, at the same time, the thought of actuality. The harmony of morality and nature, or — seeing that nature is taken account of merely so far as consciousness finds out natm'e's imity with it — the harmony of morality and happiness, is thought of as necessarily existing ; it is 'postulated. For to postulate or demand means that something is thought to he which is not yet actual, — a necessity affecting, not the conception qua conception, but existence. But the requirement or necessity is at the same time essentially a relation through the conception. The existence demanded thus belongs, not to something present in the mind of some chance individual con- sciousness, but is implied in the very notion of moraUty ^^^ / itself, whose true content is the unity of pure with individual consciousness. It falls to the individual consciousness to see that this unity is, for it, an actu- ality : — ^happiness as regards the content of the purpose, and existence in general as regards its form. The ex- istence thus demanded — the unity of both — is there- fore not a wish, nor, looked at qua purpose, is it of such a kind as to be still uncertain of attainment ; the purpose is rather a demand of reason, or an imme- diate certainty and presupposition of reason.
The first experience above referred to and this postu- late are not the only experience and postulate ; a whole round of postulates comes to light. For nature is not merely this completely detached external mode in which, as a bare pure object, consciousness has to reahse its purpose. Consciousness is per se essentially
614 Phenomenology of Mind
something for which this other detached reaUty exists, i.e. it is itself something contingent and natural. This nature, which is properly its own, is sensibility, which, taking the form of volition, in the shape of Impulses and IncHnations, has by itself a determinate essential being of its own, i.e. has specific particular purposes, and thus is opposed to abstract will with its pure purpose. In contrast with this opposition, however, pure conscious- ness rather takes the relation of sensibility to it, the absolute unity of sensibility with it, to be the essential fact. Both of these, pure thought and sensibility, are essentially and inherently one consciousness, and pure thought is just that for which and in which this pure unity exists ; but for it qiui consciousness the opposition between itself and its impulses holds. In this conflict between reason and sensibility, the essen- tial thing for reason is that the conflict should be re- solved, and that the unity of both should come out as a result : not the original unity which consisted in both the opposites being in one individual, but a unity which arises out of the known opposition of the two. So attained, such a unity is then the actual morality ; for in it is contained the opposition through which the self is a consciousness, or first becomes concrete and in actual fact self, and at the same time universal. In other words, we find there expressed that process of mediation which, as we see, is essential to morality.
Since, of the two factors in opposition, sensibility is otherness out and out, is the negative, while, on the other hand, pure thought of duty is the ultimate essence which cannot possibly be surrendered in any respect, it seems as if the unity produced can be brought about only by doing away with sensibility. But since
Tlie Moral View of the World 615
sensibility is itself a moment of this process of pro- ducing the unity, is the aspect of actuality, we have, in the first instance, to be content to express the unity in this form — sensibihty should be in conformity with morahty.
This unity is hkewise a postulated existence ; it is not there as a fact ; for what is there is consciousness, or the opposition of sensibility and pure consciousness. All the same, the unity is not a something per se like the first postulate, in which free external nature constitutes an aspect and the harmony of nature with moral consciousness in consequence falls outside the latter. Rather, nature is here that which lies within consciousness ; and we have here to deal with morahty (Moralität) as such, with a harmony which is the active self's very own. Consciousness has, therefore, of itself to bring about this harmonious unity, and " to be always making progress in morality." The completion of this result, however, is pushed away into the remote infinite, because if it actually entered the life of consciousness as an actual fact, the moral consciousness would be done away with. For morahty is only moral consciousness qua negative force; sen- sibility has merely a negative significance for the con- sciousness of pure duty, it is something merely " not in conformity with "' duty. By attaining that harmonj^ however, morality qua consciousness, i.e. its actuality, passes away, just as in the moral consciousness or actuahty its harmony vanishes. The completion is, therefore, not to be reached as an actual fact ; it is to be thought of merely as an absolute task or problem, i.e. one which remains a problem pure and simple. Nevertheless, its content has to be thought as some-
616 Phenomenology of Mind
A 1,3 thing which unquestionably has to be, and must not remain a problem : whether we imagine the moral consciousness quite cancelled in the attainment of this goal, or not. Which of these exactly is the case, can- not very well be clearly distinguished in the dim dis- tance of infinitude, to which the attainment of the end has to be postponed, just because we cannot decide the point. We shall be, strictly speaking, bomid to say that a definite idea on the matter ought to be of no interest and ought not to be sought for, because this leads to contradictions — the contradiction in speak- ing of an undertaking that at once ought to remain an undertaking and yet ought to be carried out, and the contradiction in speaking of a morality which is not consciousness, i.e. which is no longer actual. By adopting the view, however, that morality when com- pleted would contain a contradiction, the sacredness of moral truth would be seriously affected, and an unconditional duty would appear something unreal.
The first postulate was the harmony of morality and objective nature — the final piu-pose of the world : the other was the harmony of morality and will in its sen- suous form, in the form of impulse, etc. — the final purpose of self-consciousness as such. The former is the harmony in the form of implicit immanent exist- ence ; the latter, the harmony in the form of explicit self-existence. That, however, which connects these two extreme final purposes which are thought, and operates as their mediating ground, is the process of concrete action itself. They are harmonies whose moments in their abstract distinctiveness from each other have not yet become definitely objective : this takes placG in concrete actuality, in which the aspects
The Moral View of the World 617
appear in consciousness proper, each as the other of the other. The postulates arising by this means con- tain harmonies which are now completely realised and objective, whereas formerly they were merely separated into implicit and explicit, immanent and self-existent.
The moral consciousness, qyxi bare and simple know- ledge and willing of pure duty, is brought, by the process of acting upon an object opposed to that abstract simplicity, into relation with the manifold actuality which various cases present, and thereby assumes a moral attitude varied and manifold in character. Hence arise, on the side of content, the plurality of laws generally, and, on the side of form, the contradictory powers of intelHgent knowing con- z^ x^ ^ sciousness and of a being devoid of consciousness.
To begin with, as regards the plurahty of duties, it is merely the aspect of pure or bare duty in them which in general appeals to the moral consciousness as being of significance : the many duties qua many are deter- minate and, therefore, are not, as such, anything sacred for the moral consciousness. At the same time, however, being necessary, in virtue of the very nature of action which implicates a manifold actuality, and hence manifold types of moral attitude, those many duties must be looked on as having a substantial existence and value. Furthermore, since they can only exist in a moral consciousness, they exist at the same time in another consciousness than that for which only pure duty qua bare duty is sacred and self-sufficient.
It is thus postulated that there is another conscious- ness which renders them sacred, or which knows them as duties and wills them so. The first maintains pure duty indifferent towards all specific content, and duty
618 Phenomenology of Mind
consists merely in being thus indifferent towards it. The other, however, contains the equally essential re- lation to the process of action, and the necessity, there- fore, of determinate content : since duties for this other mean determinate duties, the content is thus, for it, just as essential as the form in virtue of which the content is a duty at all. This consciousness is, consequently, such that in it the universal and the particular are, through and through, one ; its essential principle is thus the same as that of the harmony of morality and happiness. For this opposition between morality and happiness expresses in hke manner the separation of the self-identical moral consciousness from that actuality which, qua manifold existence, opposes and conflicts with the simple nature of duty. While, how- ever, the first postulate expresses merely the objective existential harmony between morahty and nature, because nature is therein the negative of self-conscious- ness, is the aspect of existence, this inherent harmony, on the other hand, is now affirmed essentially as a mode of consciousness. For existence now appears as the content of duty, as that in the determinate duty i^i^y which gives it specific determinateness. The immanent harmony is thus the unity of elements which, qua simple ultimate elements, are essentially thought-created, and hence cannot exist except in a consciousness. This latter becomes now a master and ruler of the world, who brings about the harmony of morahty and happi- ness, and at the same time sanctifies duties in their multiplicity. To sanctify these duties means this much, that the consciousness of pure duty cannot straightway and directly accept the determinate or specific duty as sacred ; but because a specific duty.
The Moral View of the World 619
owing to the nature of concrete action which is some- thing specific and definite, is all the same necessary, its necessity falls outside that consciousness and holds inside another consciousness, which thus mediates or connects determinate and pure duty, and is the reason why that specific duty also has validity.
In the concrete act, however, consciousness proceeds to work as this particular self, as completely individual : it directs its activity on actual reality as such, and takes this as its pm^pose, for it wants to perform something definite. " Duty in general " thus falls outside it and within another being, which is the consciousness and sacred lawgiver of pure duty. The consciousness which acts, just because it acts, accepts the other conscious- ness, that of bare duty, and admits its validity imme- diately ; this pure duty is thus a content of another consciousness, and is only indirectly or in a mediate way sacred for the active consciousness, viz. in virtue of this other consciousness.
Because it is established in this manner that the validity, the bindingness, of duty as something wholly and absolutely sacred, falls outside the actual conscious- ness, this latter thereby stands altogether on one side as the incomplete moral consciousness. Just as, in regard to its knowledge, it is aware of itself as that whose knowledge and conviction are incomplete and con- tingent ; in the same way, as regards its willing, it feels itself to be that whose purposes are affected with sensi- bihty. On account of its " un worthiness," therefore, it cannot look on happiness as something necessary, but as a something contingent, and can only expect happi- ness as the result of " grace."
But though its actuahty is incomplete, duty is still, so
620 Phenomenology of Mind
far as its pure will and knowledge are concerned, held If-ii. k to be the essential truth. In principle, therefore, so far as the notion is opposed to actual reality, in other words, in thought, it is perfect. The absolute truth [duty] is, however, just this object of thought, and is something postulated beyond the actual. It is there- fore the thought in which the morally imperfect know- ledge and will are held to be perfect, and — since it takes this imperfection to have full weight — in which, consequently, happiness is meted out according to "worthiness," i.e. according to the "merit" ascribed.
This completes the meaning of the moral attitude. For in the conception of moral self-consciousness the two aspects, pure duty and actual reahty, are affirmed of a single unity, and thereby the one, like the other, is put forward, not as something self-complete, but as a moment, or as cancelled and transcended. This be- comes consciously explicit in the last phase of the moral attitude or point of view. Consciousness, we there saw, places pure duty in another form of being than its own consciousness, i.e. it regards pure duty partly as some- thing ideally presented, partly as what does not by itself hold good — indeed, the non-moral is rather what is held to be perfect. In the same way it affirms itself to be that whose actuality, not being in conformity with duty, is transcended, and, qua transcended, or in the presented idea of what is absolute [pure duty], no longer contradicts morality.
For the moral consciousness itself, however, its moral attitude does not mean that consciousness therein de- velops its own proper notion and makes this its object. It has no consciousness of this opposition either as regards the form or the content thereof ; the elements
The Moral View of the World 621
composing this opposition it does not relate and compare with one another, but goes forward on its own com'se of development, without being the connecting principle of those moments. For it is only aware of the essence pure and simple, i.e. the object so far as this is duty, so far as this is an abstract object of its pure consciousness qua pure knowledge — in other words, it is only aware of this object as itself. Its procedure is thus merely that of thinking, not conceiving, is by way of thoughts not notions. Consequently it does not yet find the object of its actual consciousness transparently clear to itself ; it is not the absolute notion, which alone grasps otherness as such, its absolute opposite, as its very self. Its own reality, as well as all objective reality, no doubt is held to be something unessential ; but its freedom is that of pure thought, in opposition to which, therefore, nature has likewise arisen as some- thing equally free. Because both are found in like manner within it — both the freedom which belongs to [external] being and the inclusion of this existence within con- sciousness— its object conies to be an existing object, which is at the same time merely a thought-product. In the last phase of its attitude or point of view, the content is essentially so constituted that its being has the character of something presented, an idea, and this union of being and thinking is expressed as what in fact it is, viz. — Presentation.
When we look at the moral view of the world in such a way that this objective result is nothing else than the very principle or notion of moral self-conscious- ness which it makes objective to itself, there arises through this consciousness concerning the form of its origin another mode of exhibiting this view of the world.
622 Phenomenology of Mind
The fijst stage, which forms the starting point, is the actual moral self-consciousness, or is the fact that there is such a self-consciousness at all. For the notion estab- lishes moral self-consciousness in the form that, for it, all reality in general has essential being only so far as such reality is in conformity with duty; and that notion estabhshes this essential element as knowledge, i.e. in immediate unity with the actual self. This unity is thus itself actual, is a moral actual consciousness. The latter, now, qua consciousness, presents its content to itself as an object, viz. as the final purpose of the world, as the harmony of morality with all reality. Since, however, it represents this unity as object and is not yet the com- plete notion, which has the object as such in its grasp, this unity is taken to be something negative of or opposed to self -consciousness, i.e. the unity falls outside l^ Iß it, as something beyond its actual reality, but at the same time of such a nature as to be also existent, though merely thought of.
This self-consciousness, which, qua self-consciousness, is something other than the object, thus finds itself left with the want of harmony between the consciousness of duty and actual reality, a reality, too, which is its own. The proposition consequently now runs thus: "there is no morally complete actual self-consciousness"; and, since what is moral only is in the long run so far as it is complete, — for duty is the pure unadulterated ultimate element [Ansicli), and morality consists merely in conformity to this pure principle — the second pro- position runs : " there is no morally actual existence at all."
Since, however, in the third place, it is a self, it is inherently the unity of duty and actual reality. This
The Moral View of the World 623
unity thus becomes its object, as completed m^orality — but as something beyond its actual reality, and yet a " beyond " which still ought to be real.
In this final stage and last expression of the sjnithetic unity of the two first propositions, the self-conscious reality, as well as duty, is only affirmed as a tran- scended or superseded moment. For neither of them is alone, neither is isolated ; on the contrary, these factors, whose essential characteristic lies in being free from one another, are thus each in that unity no longer free from the other ; each is transcended. Hence, as re- gards content, they become, as such, object, each of them holds good for the other; and, as regards form, they become such that this interchange on their part is, at the same time, merely in idea, is merely ideally presented. Or, again, the actually non-moral, because it is, at the same time, pure thought and elevated above its own actual reality, is in idea still moral, and is taken to be entirely sufficing. In this way the first proposition, that there is a moral self-consciousness, is reinstated, but bound up with the second that there is none ; that is to say, there is one, but merely in idea. In other words, there is indeed none, but it is all the same allowed by some other consciousness to pass for one.
h
Dissemblance
[The first stage fails as it stands to do complete justice to the full mean- ing of morality. Both elements in the spiritually complete individual are essential, and each has to be recognised. The universal must be objectified in nature ("external nature" and "sensibility"), and nature must be subjectivised in spirit. Another condition or stage of the moral con- sciousness, therefore, is found where the equality of value of the' elements of the moral consciousness is admitted, without these elements being completely fused into a single and total attitude. The universal is realised in many ways and forms, and each is accepted in turn as the true moral reality. The mind passes from one to the other ; when one is accejited the other is set aside. The moral consciousness tries, so to say, to hide from itself the endless diversity of its appearances, simply because it clings tenaciously to the idea that the inherent self-completeness of itself is a unity 2^er se which can only admit diversity on sufferance. Formerly it eliminated all diversity by eliminating the source of diversity — nature. Here it is forced to admit diversity, and yet cannot give up the claim to be an abstract single unity independent of dift'erence. Thus its condition here is a mixture of self-realisation and self -sophistication — a condition which Hegel characterises as "Dissemblance," and which borders upon and may pass into " Hypocrisy." Hegel regards this attitude as the inevitable outcome of the preceding.]
624
Dissemblance *
In the moral attitude of experience we see, on one side, consciousness itself produce its object in a con- scious way. We find that neither does it pick up the object as something external, nor does the object come before it in an unconscious manner. Rather, conscious- ness throughout proceeds on a certain basis, and from this establishes the objective reality. It thus knows this objective element to be itself, for it is aware of itself as the active agent producing this object. It seems, in consequence, to attain here its peace and satisfaction, for this can only be found where it does not need to go any more beyond its object, because this object no longer goes beyond it. On the other side, however, it really puts the object away outside itself, as something beyond itself. But this latter self-contained entity is at the same time put there as something that is not detached from self-consciousness, but really there on behalf of and by means of it.
The moral attitude is, therefore, in fact nothing else than the developed expression of this fundamental con- tradiction in its various aspects. It is — ^to use a Kantian phrase which is here most appropriate — a "perfect
* Verstellung : It is not possible to bring out exactly by an English word the verbal play involved in Hegel's interpretation of the state of mind here discussed. Hegel has, in the course of his analysis, used the mean- ing implied in the general term "stellen" to explain by contrast the specific nuance of the purely moral attitude conveyed by the term verstellen.
VOL. II.— p 625
V^^7
626 Phenomenology of Mind
nest'' of inconsistencies and contradictions.* Conscious- ness, in developing this situation, proceeds by fixing definitely one moment, passing thence immediately over to another and doing away with the first. But, in the way it has now set up this second moment, it also " shifts '' {verstellt) this again, and really makes the opposite the essential element. At the same time, it is conscious of its contradiction and of this displace- ment, for it passes from one moment, immediately in its relation to this very moment, right over to the oppo- site. Because a moment has for it no reality at all, it affirms that very moment as real : or, what comes to the same thing, in order to assert one moment as per se existent, it asserts the opposite as the per se existent. It thereby confesses that, as a matter of fact, ^s Ö it is in earnest about neither of them. The various moments of this fraudulent process we must look at more closely.
Let us allow the assumption, that there is an actual moral consciousness, to rest on its own basis in the first instance, because the assumption is not directly made with reference to something preceding ; and let us turn to the harmony of morahty and nature — the first postulate. It is to be immanent, not explicitly for actual conscious life, not really present ; the present is rather simply the contradiction between the two. In the present, morality is taken to be something at hand, and actual realitv to be so situated or " placed '" that it is not in harmony with morality. The concrete moral consciousness, however, is active, consists in acting ; that is what constitutes the actuality of its morahty. In the very process of acting,
* An expression used by Kant of the " cosmological proof."
Dissemblance 627
however, that " place " or semblance is immediately " displaced/' is dissembled ; for action is nothing else than the actualisation of the inner moral pm:pose, nothing but the production of an actuality constituted and determined by purpose ; in other words, the pro- duction of the harmony of moral purpose and reality itself. At the same time the performance of the action is a conscious fact, it is the " presence " of this unity of reality and purpose ; and because in the completed act consciousness realises itself as a given particular consciousness, or sees existence return into itself qua particular — and in this consists the nature of enjoyment — there is, eo ipso, also contained in the realisation of moral purpose that form of its realisation which is called enjoyment and happiness.
Action thus, as a fact, fulfils directly what it was asserted could not take place at all, fulfils what was to be merely a postulate, was to lie merely " beyond." Consciousness, therefore, expresses through its deed that it is not in earnest in making the postulate, since the meaning of acting is really that it makes a present fact of what was not to be in the present. And, since the harmony is postulated for the sake of the action — for what is to become actual through action must be im- pUcit, otherwise the actuality would not be possible — the connexion of action with the postulate is so con- stituted that, for the sake of the action, i.e. for the sake of the actual harmony of purpose and reality, this har- mony is put forward as not actual, as far away, as " beyond."
Since action does take place, the want of adaptation between purpose and reality is thus in general not taken seriously. Action itself, on the other hand, does seem
U iT /
628 Phenomenology of Mind
to be taken seriously. But, as a matter of fact, the actual deed done is the action of a particular conscious- ness, and so is itself merely something particular, and the result contingent. The end of reason, however, being the all-comprehensive universal end, is nothing short of the entire world — a final purpose which goes far beyond the content of this particular act, and therefore is to be placed altogether above anything actually done. Because the universal best ought to be carried out, nothing good is done. In point of fact, however, the nothingness of actual action and the reality of the entire purpose alone, which are here up- held— these are on all hands again " shifted " or dis- sembled. The moral act is not something contingent and restricted ; its essential nature hes in pure duty. This pure duty constitutes the sole entire purpose ; and the act, whatever may be the limitation of the content, being the actualisation of that purpose, is the accom- plishment of the entire absolute purpose. Or, if again we take the reality in the sense of nature, which has laws of its own and stands over against pure duty, and take it in such a way that duty cannot realise its law within nature, then, since duty as such is the essential element, we are, when acting, not in fact concerned about the accomplishment of pure duty which is the whole pur- pose ; for the accompHshment would then rather have as its end not pure duty, but the opposite, viz. reahty. But there is again a " shifting " from the position that it is not reality with which we have to do. For, by the very notion of moral action, pure duty is essentially an iy { active consciousness. Action thus ought certainly to take place, absolute duty ought to be expressed in the whole of nature, and " moral law " to become " natural law."
Dissemblance 629
If, then, we allow this highest good to stand for the essentially real, consciousness is not altogether in earnest with moraUty. For, in this highest good, nature has not a different law from what morality has. Moral action itself, in consequence, drops, for action takes place only under the assumption of a negative or op- posing element which is to be cancelled by means of the act. But if nature conforms to the moral law, then undoubtedly this moral law would be violated by acting, by cancelling what already exists.
On that mode of interpretation, then, there has arisen as the essential situation one which renders moral action superfluous and in which moral action does not take place at all. Hence the postulate of the harmony between morahty and reality — a harmony involved in the very notion of moral action, which means bringing the two into agreement — finds on this view, too, an ex- pression which takes the form : — " because moral action is the absolute purpose, the absolute purpose is — that moral action do not take place at all."
If we put these moments together, through which con- sciousness has gone on presenting its ideas of its moral life, we see that it cancels each one again in its opposite. It starts from the position that, for it, morality and reahty do not make a harmony ; but it is not in earnest with that, for in the moral act it is conscious of the presence of this harmony. But neither is it in earnest with this action, since the action is something par- ticular ; while it has such a high purpose, the highest good. This, however, is once more merely a dissem- blance of the actual fact, for thereby all action and all morahty would fall to the ground. In other words, it is not strictly in earnest with moral action ; on the con-
630 Phenomenology of Mind
trary, it really feels that, what is most to be wished for, the absolutely desirable, is that the highest good were carried out and moral action superfluous.
From this result consciousness must go on still fur- IfS ther in its contradictory procedure, and must of neces- sity again dissemble the aboKtion of moral action. Morality is the inherently essential (Ansich) ; in order that it may have place, the final end of the world cannot be carried out ; rather, the moral conscious- ness must exist for itself, and must find lying before it a nature opposing it. But it miist per se be completed. This leads to the second postulate of the harmony of itself and sensibility, the " nature " imme- diately within it. Moral self-consciousness sets up its purpose as pure purpose, as independent of inclinations and impulses, so that this bare purpose has abolished within itself the ends of sensibility. But this cancel- ling of the element of sense is no sooner set up than it is again dissembled. The moral consciousness acts, it brings its purpose into reality ; and self- conscious sensibility, which should be done away with, is precisely the mediating element between pure con- sciousness and reality — is the instrument used by the former for the realisation of itself, or is the organ of what is called impulse, inclination. It is thus not really in earnest in cancelling inclinations and impulses, for these are just self-consciousness making itself actual. Moreover, they ought not to be sup- pressed, but merely to be in conformity with reason. They, are, too, in conformity with it ; for moral action is nothing else than self-realising consciousness — con- sciousness taking on the form of an impulse, i.e. it is immediately the realised, actually present harmony
Dis semblance 631
of impulse and morality. But, in point of fact, the impulse is not only this empty conscious form, which might possibly have within itself a spring of action other than the impulse in question, and be driven on by that. For sensibility is a kind of nature, which con- tains within itself its own laws and springs of action : consequently, morality cannot seriously mean to be the inciting motive {Triebfeder) for impulses (Triebe), the angle of inclination for incUnations. For, since these latter have their own fixed character and pecuHar con- tent, the consciousness, to which they were to conform, would rather be in conformity with thein — a conformity which moral self-consciousness dechnes to adopt. The i^fi^ harmony between the two is thus merely implicit and postulated.
In moral action the reaHsed or present harmony of morahty and sensibihty was set up at one moment, and at the next is " displaced." The harmony is in a misty distance beyond consciousness, where there is nothing more to be accurately distinguished or grasped ; for, to grasp this unity, which we have just tried to do, has proved impossible.
In this merely immanent or implicit harmony, how- ever, consciousness gives up itself altogether. This im- manent state is its moral completion, where the struggle of morality and sensibihty has ceased, and the latter is in conformity to the former in a way which cannot be made out. On that account, this completion is again merely a dissemblance of the actual case ; for in point of fact morality would be really giving up itself in that completion, because it is only consciousness of absolute purpose qua pure and simple purpose, i.e. in opposition to all other purposes. Morahty is both the
632 Phenomenology of Mind
activity of this pure purpose, and at the same time the consciousness of rising above sensibility, of being mixed up with sensibihty and of opposing and strugghng with it. That this moral completion is not taken seri- ously is directly expressed by consciousness in the fact that it shifts this completion away into infinity, i.e. asserts that the completion is never completed.
Thus it is really only the middle state of being incom- plete that is admitted to have any value : a state never- theless which at least ought to be one of progress to- wards completion. Yet it cannot be so ; for advancing in morality would mean approaching its annihilation and disappearance. For the goal would be the nothingness above mentioned, the abolition of morality and con- sciousness itself : but to come ever nearer and nearer to nothing means to decrease. Besides, " advancing " would, in general, in the same way as " decreasing," introduce distinctions of quantity into morahty: but tliese are quite inadmissible in such a sphere. In morality qua mode of consciousness which takes the i/t ' ethical end to be pure duty, we cannot think at all of difference, least of all of the superficial difference of quantity : there is only one virtue, only one pure duty, only one morality.
Since, then, it is not moral completion that is taken seriously, but rather the middle state, i.e., as just ex- plained, the condition of no morality, we thus come by another way back to the content of the first postu- late. For we cannot perceive how happiness is to be demanded for this moral consciousness on the ground of its worthiness to be happy. It is well aware of its not being complete, and cannot, therefore, in point of fact, demand happiness as a desert, as something of
Dissemblance 633
which it is worthy. It can ask happiness to be given merely as an act of free grace, i.e. it can only ask for happiness as such, and as a substantive element by it- self ; it cannot expect it except as the result of chance and caprice, not because there is any absolute reason of the above sort. The condition of non-morahty herein expresses just what it is — that it is concerned, not about morality, but about happiness alone, with- out reference to morality.
By this second aspect of the moral point of view, the assertion of the first aspect, wherein disharmony be- tween morality and happiness is presupposed, is also cancelled. One may pretend to have found by experience that in the actual present the man who is moral often fares badly, while the man who is not, often comes off happily. Yet the middle state of incomplete morality, the condition which has proved to be the essential one, shows clearly that this perception that morality fares badly, this experience which ought to be but is not, is merely a dissemblance of the real facts of the case. For, since morality is not completed, i.e. since morality in point of fact is not, what can there be in experience that morality should fare badly ?
Since, at the same time, it has come out that the point at issue concerns happiness alone, it is manifest that, in making the judgment, '' the man who has no morality comes oft" well," there was no intention to convey thereby that there is something \vrong in such a case. The designation of an individual as one devoid of morality necessarily falls to the ground, when morality in general is incomplete ; such a characterisation rests, indeed, on pure caprice. Hence the sense and content of that judgment of experience is simply this, that
634 Phenomenology of Mind
happiness as such should not have fallen to some who got it, i.e. the judgment is an expression of envy, which is assuming the covering cloak of morality. The reason, however, why we think good luck, as we call it, should fall to the lot of others is good friendship, which un- grudgingly grants and wishes them, and wishes itself too, this favour, this accident of good fortune.
Morality, then, in the moral consciousness, is not completed. This is what is now established. But its essence consists in being merely what is complete, and so pure morality : incomplete morality is, therefore, impure, in other words, is Immorality. Morality it- self thus exists in another being than the actual con- crete consciousness. This other is a holy moral legis- lator.
Morality which is not completed in consciousness, the morality which is the reason for making those postulates, means, in the first instance, that morality, when it is set up as actual in consciousness, stands in relation to something else, to an existence, and thus itself preserves and implies otherness or distinction, whence arises a manifold plurality of moral commands. The moral self-consciousness at the same time, however, looks on these many duties as unessential ; for it is concerned with merely the one pure duty, and this plurality of duties, so far as they are determinate duties, have no true reahty for self-consciousness. They can thus have their real truth accepted only in another consciousness, and are (what they are not for the actual moral self-consciousness) sacred through a holy law- giver.
But this, too, is again merely a dissembling of the actual fact. For moral self -consciousness is to itself
Dissemblance 635
the absolute, and duty is simply and solely what if knows to be duty. It, however, recognises only pure duty as duty : what is not sacred in its view is not in itself sacred at all, and what is not per se sacred cannot be rendered so by some being that is sacred. Moral consciousness, further, is not really serious in allowing something to be made sacred by another consciousness than its own. For, only that is without qualification sacred in its eyes which is made sacred through its own action, and is sacred within it. It is thus just as little in earnest in treating this other being as a holy being ; for this would mean that, within it, something was to attain an essential significance, which, for the moral consciousness, i.e. in itself, has none.
If the sacred being was postulated, in order that duty might have binding validity within the moral con- sciousness, not qua pure duty, but as a plurality of specific duties, then this must again be dissembled and the other being must be solely sacred in so far as only pure duty has binding validity within the moral consciousness. Pure duty has also, in point of fact, validity and bindingness only in another being, not in the moral consciousness. Although, within the latter, pure morahty seems alone to hold good, still this must be put right in another form, for it is, at the same time, a natural consciousness. Morality is, in it, affected and conditioned by sensibihty, and thus is not by itself self-contained, but a contingent result of free will; in it, however, qua pure will, morality is a con- tingency of knowledge. Taken by itself, therefore, morality is in another being, is self- complete only in another reality than the actual moral consciousness.
This other being, then, is here absolutely complete
636 Phenomenology of Mind
morality, because in its case morality does not stand in relation to nature and sensibility. Yet the reality of pure duty lies in its actualisation in nature and sensibility. The moral consciousness accounts for its incompleteness by the fact that morality, in its case, has a positive rela- tion to nature and sensibility, since it holds an essential moment of morality to be that morality should have simply and solely a negative relation towards nature and sensibility. The pure moral being, on the other hand, because far above the struggle with nature and sense, does not stand in a negative relation to them. Thus, in point of fact, the positive relation to them alone remains in its case, i.e. there remains just what a moment ago passed for the incomplete, for what was not moral. Pure morahty, however, entirely cut oft" from actual reality so as likewise to be even without positive relation to reality, would be a blank unreal abstraction, where the very notion of morality, which consists in thinking of pure duty and in willing and doing, would be absolutely done away with. This other being, so purely and entirely moral, is again, therefore, a mere dissemblance of the actual fact, and has to be given up.
In this purely moral being, however, the moments of the contradiction, in which this synthetic ideational process is carried on, come closer together. So, like- wise, do the opposites taken up alternately, now this and also that, and also the other, opposites which are allowed to follow one after the other, with one opposite constantly set aside by another, yet without these ideas ever being brought together. So close do they come, that consciousness here has to give up its moral view of the world and retreat within itself.
Dissemblance 637
It knows its morality as incomplete because it is affected by an opposing sensibility and nature, which partly perturb morahty as such, and partly give rise to a plurality of duties, by which, in concrete cases of real action, consciousness finds itself embarrassed. For each case is the concrete focus of many moral relations, just as an object of perception in general is a thing with many qualities. And since a determinate duty is a purpose, it has a content ; its content is a part of the purpose, and so morality is not pure morahty. This latter, then, has its real existence in some other being. But such reality means nothing else than that morality is here self-complete, in itself and for itself — for itself, i.e. is morahty of a con- sciousness : in itself, i.e. has existence and actuality.
In that first incomplete consciousness, morality is not realised and carried out. It is there something immanent and implicit, in the sense of a mere thought- element ; for it is associated with nature and sensi- bility, with the actuality of [external] existence and conscious life, which constitutes its content ; and nature and sensibility are morally nothing. In the second, morality is present as completed, and not in the form of an unreahsed thought-element. But this completion consists just in the fact that morality has reality in a consciousness, in the sense of free reality, objective exist- ence in general, is not something empty, but filled out, full of content. That is to say, the completion of morality is placed in this, that what a moment ago was character- ised as morally nothing is found present in morahty and inherent in it. It is at one time to have validity simply and solely as the imrealised thought- element, a product of pure abstraction ; but, on the other hand, is just as
638 Phenomenology of Mind
certainly to have in this form no vahdity at all : its true nature is to consist in being opposed to reality, detached altogether therefrom, and empty, and then again to consist in being actual reality.
The syncretism, or fusion, of these contradictions, which is expressed in extenso in the moral attitude of experience, collapses internally, since the distinction on which it rests — its distinction from something which must be thought and stated as a necessity, and is yet at the same time not essential — passes into one which does not any longer exist even in words. What, at the end, is affirmed to be something with different aspects, both to be nothing and also real, is one and the very same — existence and reahty. And what is to be absolute only as something beyond actual existence and actual con- sciousness, and at the same time to be only in conscious- ness and so, qiwb beyond, nothing at all — this absolute is pure duty and the knowledge that pure duty is the essen- tially real. The consciousness, which makes this distinc- tion that is no distinction, which announces actuality to be at once what is nothing and what is real, pronounces pure morality to be both the ultimate truth and also to be devoid of all true realit}^, and expresses together in one and the same breath ideas which it formerly separated — such a consciousness itself proclaims that it is not in earnest with this characterisation and separation of the moments of self and inherent reality. It shows, on the contrary, that, what it announces as absolute existence apart from consciousness, it really keeps enclosed wdthin the self of self-consciousness ; and that, what it gives out as something entirely in thought or abso- lutely inherent and implicit, it just for that reason takes to be something which has no truth at all.
Dissemblance 639
It becomes clear to consciousness that placing these moments apart from each other is mentally " dis- placing'" them, is a dissemblance, and it would be hypocrisy were it really to keep to this. But, being pure moral self-consciousness, it flees from this discord- ance between what it represents and what constitutes its essential nature, flees from this untruth, which gives out as true what it holds to be untrue, and, turning away with abhorrence, it hastens back into itself. The consciousness, which scorns such a moral idea of the world, is pure Conscience [Gewissen) : it is, in its inmost being, simply spirit consciously assured or " certain " {gewiss) of itself, spirit which acts directly in the light of this assurance, which acts conscientiously {gewissen- haft), without the intervention of those ideas, and finds its true nature in this direct immediacy.
While, however, this sphere of dissemblance is nothing else than the development of moral self-consciousness in its various moments and is consequently its reality, so too this self-consciousness, by returning into itself, will become, in its inmost nature, nothing else. This returning into itself, indeed, simply means that it has come to be conscious that its truth is a pretended truth, a mere pretence. As returning into itself it had to be always giving out this pretended truth as its real truth, for it had to express and display itself as an objective idea ; but it had to know all the same that this is merely a dissemblance. It would consequently be, in point of fact, hypocrisy all the while, and its abhorrence of such dissemblance would be itself the first expression of hypocrisy.
Conscience: the "Beautiful Soul": Evil and THE Forgiveness of it
[The oiie-sidedness of each of the preceding stages is removed when the moral consciousness assumes the attitude of Conscience. Here the indi- vidual is at once self-legislating and yet sure of the unity and self- completeness of its own will in the midst of all diversity of moral content. The immediacy involved in the idea of a "self-legislating" will appears in the perceptual directness of the action of conscience : it " sees " what is right and does the right without hesitation. But it is not an abstract *' faculty " of willing independent of the varied content of the individual's moral experience. The universality of the individual permeates and per- vades all the content of his being, and makes him a concrete moral individuality, at home with himself in the smallest detail as well as in the larger issues of his self-complete sj^iritual existence. Conscience, as Butler Bays, is a ' system ' or ' constitution,' analogous in the case of the indi- vidual to the objectified system of the state and its institutions. The self-deception of the second one-sided phase of moral experience seems also to have no place in Conscience, for Conscience is the transparent and self- revealing unity in all the content of moral individuality. Only on this condition can it be absolutely confident and certain of itself in all its functions, and this certainty of itself is the inalienable characteristic of conscience. It thinks it cannot be deceived about itself, can neither delude itself nor others, but freely realises all that it professes to be and professes to be all that it realises. It is thus the supreme achievement of finite spiritual existence ; but it has no meaning apart from the existence of finite spirit in the form of society.
Its very conditions, however, give rise to delusion and deception of another kind. For, so complete is its world and its life that it may attempt to cut itself off from the concrete substance of actual society which alone makes possible the existence of conscience. It then tries to cultivate goodness in solitary isolation from the actual social whole. This is the attitude of the " beautiful soul," a type of spiritual life cultivated by the " Moravians," and familiar during the Romantic movement. Novalis is the best-known example ; the classical interpretation of the mood was
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given in Goethe's Meisters Lehrjahre, Bk. 6. It has the self-confidence and individual inspiration of Conscience, but frankly rejects the con- crete objectivity which secures for Conscience liberation from mere sub- jectivity. The very rejection of objectivity is the only achievement of the " beautiful soul," and is held to be the greatest triumph of its self- conscious freedom. It flees from concrete moral action, and luxuriates in a state of self-hypnotised inactivity. Still it takes up this attitude in the interests of " pure goodness," and hence in withdrawing from the lowly deeds of the daily moral life it indulges all the more in the self- cloistered cult of the beauty of holiness. It is moral individualism turned into mystic self-absorption. Hegel's analysis brings out that this type of spirit is in principle as it was in fact the direct ally of moral evil. For
(1) its refusal to act means indift'erence to all action, good and bad alike, and the rejection of the demands of duty is precisely immorality :
(2) its self-closed isolation destroys the very principle of true morality, universality of will, recognition and acknowledgment by others of the claims of the individual will.
But this extremity of finite spiritual experience is the opportunity of Absolute Spirit. The attitude of this mystical moral individuality is indirectly an indication of the finitude of the moral point of view and therefore of its failure to supply the absolute self-completeness which spirit requires. The very consciousness by finite spirit of its inherent incompleteness is implicitly a consciousness of the Absolute Spirit. The consciousness of Absolute Spirit is the attitude of experience known as Religion.]
VOL. II.
Conscience : the " Beautiful Soul '' : Evil and THE Forgiveness of it
The antinomy in the moral view of the world — viz. that there is a moral consciousness and that there is none, or that the validity, the bindingness, of duty has its ground beyond consciousness, and conversely only takes effect in consciousness — these contradictory elements had been combined in the idea, in which the non-moral consciousness is to pass for moral, its contingent know- ledge and will to be accepted as fully sufficing, and happiness to be its lot as a matter of grace. Moral self- consciousness took this self-contradictory idea not upon itself, but transferred it to another being. But this putting outside itself of what it must think as neces- sary is as much a contradiction in form as the other was in content. But that which appears as contra- dictory, and that in the division and again dissolution of which hes the round of activity peculiar to the moral attitude, are inherently the same : for pure duty qua pure knowledge is nothing else than the self of consciousness, and the self of consciousness is existence and actuahty ; and, in the same way, what is to be beyond actual consciousness is nothing else than pure thought, is, in fact, the self. Because this is so, self- consciousness, for us or fer se, passes back into itself, and becomes aware that that being is its self, in which the actual is at once pure knowledge and pure duty.
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It takes itself to be absolutely valid in its contingency, to be that which knows its immediate particular existence as pure knowledge and action, as the true objective reality and harmony.
This self of Conscience, the phase of spiritual Hfe immediately certain of itself as absolute truth and objective being, is the third type of spiritual self. It is the outcome of the third sphere of the spiritual world,* and may be shortly contrasted with the two former types of self.
The totality or actuality which is revealed as the final result of the ethical world, the world of the social order, is the self of a Person, ethical personality : its existence hes in its being recognised and acknowledged. As the person is the self devoid of substance, its exist- ence is abstract reahty too. The person has a definite standing, and that directly and unconditionally : its self is the point in the sphere of its existence which is immediately at rest. That point is not torn away from its universality ; the two [the particular focus and its universaHty] are therefore not in a relational process with regard to one another : the universal is in it without distinction, and is neither the content of the self, nor is the self filled by itself.
The second self is the final truth and outcome of a world of culture, is spirit that has recovered itself after and through disruption, is absolute freedom. In this self, the former immediate unity of individual exist- ence and universaHty finds its elements separated from one another. The universal, which remains at the same time a purely spiritual entity, the state of recognition or
* Viz. Morality, the first being the Ethical Order of .Society, the secoud the sphere of Culture.
644 Phenomenology of Mind
universal will and universal knowledge — the universal is object and content of the self, and its universal actual- ity. But the universal has not there the form of exist- ence detached from the self : in this mode of self it therefore gets no filling, no positive content, no world.
Moral self-consciousness, indeed, lets its universal aspect get detached, so that this aspect becomes a nature of its own ; and at the same time it retains this universality within itself in a superseded form. But it is merely a game of dissembling ; it constantly inter- changes these two characteristics. In the form of Con- science, with its certainty of itself, it first finds the content to fill the former emptiness of duty as well as the emptiness of right and the empty universal will. And because this certainty of self is at the same time immediacy, it finds in conscience definite existence.
Having reached this level of its truth, moral self- consciousness then leaves, or rather supersedes, this state of internal division and self-separation, whence arose dissimulation — the separation of its inherent being from the self, of pure duty, qua pure purpose, from reality qua a nature and a sensibility opposed to mere purpose. It is, when thus returned into itself, con- crete moral spirit, which does not make for itself a bare abstract standard out of the consciousness of pure duty, a standard to be set up against actual conscious life ; on the contrary, pure duty, as also the sensuous nature opposed to pure duty, are superseded moments. This mode of spirit, in its immediate unity, is a moral being making itself actual, and an act is immediately a con- crete embodiment of morality.
Given a case of action ; it is an objective reality for the knowing mind. The latter, qua conscience, knows
Conscience 645
it in a direct concrete manner ; and at the same time it is merely as conscience knows it to be. When know- ledge is something other than its object, it is contingent in character. Spirit, however, which is sure of its self, is not at all an accidental knowledge of that kind, is not a way of producing inside its own being ideas from which reahty is divorced. On the contrary ; since the separation between what is essential or inherent and self has been given up, a case of moral action falls, just as it is fer se, directly within immediate conscious certainty, the sensible [feeling] form of knowledge, and it merely is per se as it is in this form of knowledge.
Action, then, qua realisation, is in this way the pm'e form of will — the bare conversion of reahty, in the sense of a given case, into a reahty that is performed and done, the conversion of the bare state of objective knowledge into one of knowledge about reahty as some- thing produced and brought about by consciousness. Just as sensuous certainty is directly taken up, or rather converted, into the essential hfe and substance of spirit, this other transformation is also simple and unmediated, a transition made thi'ough pure conception without changing the content, the content being con- ditioned by some interest on the part of the conscious- ness knowing it.
Further, conscience does not break up the circum- stances of the case into a variety of duties. It does not operate as the positive general medium, in which the manifold duties, each for itself, would keep their substan- tial existence imdisturbed. If it did so, either no action could take place at all, because of each concrete case in general containing opposition, and, in the specific case of morality, opposition of duties, — and hence there would
646 Phenomenology of Mind
always be one side inj ured, one duty violated, when the act took definite shape: or else, if action did take place, the violation of one of the conflicting duties would be the actual result brought about. Conscience is rather the negative single unity, it is the absolute self, which does away with this variety of substantial moral constituents. It is simple action in accordance with duty, action which does not fulfil this or that duty, but knows and does what is concretely right. It is, therefore, in general, and for the first time in moral experience, moral action as action, and into this the previous stage of mere consciousness of morality with- out action has passed.
The concrete shape which the act takes may be l^ii^ analysed by a conscious process of distinction into a variety of properties, i.e. in this case into a variety of moral relationships ; and these may either be each expressly held to be absolute (as each must be if it is to be duty) or, again, subjected to comparison and criticism. In the simple moral action arising from conscience, duties are shed so promiscuously that the isolated independence of all these separate entities is immediately destroyed, and the process of critically considering and worrying about what our duty is finds no place at all in the unshaken certainty of conscience.
Just as little, again, do we find in conscience that fluctuating uncertainty of mind, which puts now so- called " pure " morality away from itself, assigning it to some other holy being, and takes itself to be unholy, and then again, on the other hand, puts this moral purity within itself, and places in that other the con- nexion of the sensuous with the moral element.
It renounces all these semblances and dissem-
Conscience 647
blances {Stellungen und Verstellungen) characteristic of the moral point of view, when it gives up think- ing that there is a contradiction between duty and actual reality. According to this latter state of mind, I act morally when I am conscious of performing merely pure duty and nothing else but that : i.e. in fact, when I do not act. When, however, I really act, I am conscious of an "other," of a reality which is there before me, and one which I want to bring about ; I have a definite end and fulfil a definite duty. There is some- thing else therein than the pure duty, which alone was supposed to be kept in view.
Conscience, on the other hand, is the sense that, when the moral consciousness declares pure duty to be the essence of its action, this bare purpose is a dissemblance of the actual fact. For the real fact is that bare duty consists in the empty abstraction of pure thought, and finds its reality and content solely in some definite actual existence, an actuality which is actuality of consciousness itself — not of consciousness in the sense of a thought-entity, but as an individual. Conscience, i.;bf for its own part, finds its truth to He in the direct cer- tainty regarding itself. This immediate concrete cer- tainty of itself is true reality. Looking at this certainty from the point of view of the opposition which con- sciousness involves, its own immediate particularity constitutes the content of moral action ; and the form of moral action is just this very self as a pure process, viz. as the process of knowing, in other words, is private individual conviction.
Looking more closely at the unity and the significance of the moments of this stage, we find that moral consciousness conceived itself merely in the form of
648 Phenomenology of Mind
the inherent principle, or as ultimate essence ; qua conscience, however, it lays hold of its expUcit indi- vidual self-existence (Filrsichseyn), or its self. The contradiction involved in the moral point of view is resolved, i.e. the distinction, which lay at the basis of its pecuhar attitude, proves to be no distinction, and melts into the process of pure negativity. This process of negativity is, however, just the self : a single simple self which is at once pure knowledge and knowledge of itself as this individual conscious hfe. This self constitutes, therefore, the content of what formerly was the empty essence ; for it is something actual and concrete, which no longer has the significance of being a nature alien to the ultimate essence, a nature inde- pendent and with laws of its own. As the negative element, it introduces distinction into the pure essence, a definite content, and one, too, which has a value in its own right as it stands.
Further, this self is, qua pure self-identical knowledge, the universal without quahfication, so that just this knowledge, being its very own knowledge, being con- viction, constitutes duty. Duty is no longer the uni- versal appearing over against and opposed to the self ; duty is known to have in this condition of separation and opposition no validity. It is now the law, which exists for the sake of the self, and not the self for the sake of the law. The law and duty, however, have for that reason not only the significance of existing on their own account, but also of being inherent and essential ; for this knowledge is, in virtue of its identity with itself, just what is inherently essen- tial. This inherent being gets also separated in con- sciousness from that direct and immediate unity with
Conscience 649
self-existence : so contrasted and opposed, it is objective being, it is being for something else.
Duty itself now, qua duty deserted by the self, is known and thought to be merely a moment ; it has ceased to mean absolute being, it has become de- graded to something which is not a self, does not exist on its own account, and is thus what exists for some- thing else. But this existing-for-something-else remains just for that reason an essential moment, because self, qrm consciousness, constitutes and establishes the opposition between existence-for-self and existence- for-another ; and now duty essentially means some- thing immediately actual, and is no longer a mere abstract consciousness of duty.
This existence for something else is, then, the in- herently essential substance distinguished from the self. Conscience has not given up pure duty, the abstract imphcit essence : pure duty is the essential moment of relating itself, qua universahty, to others. Conscience is the common element of distinct self-con- sciousnesses ; and this is the substance in which the act secures subsistence and reality, the moment enabling recognition by others to take place. The moral self- consciousness does not possess this moment of recog- nition, of pure consciousness which has definite exist- ence; and on that account really does not "act" at all, does not effectually actualise anything. Its inher- ent nature is for it either the abstract unreal essence, or else existence in the form of a reaUty which has no spiritual character. The actual reality of conscience, however, is one which is a self, i.e. an existence conscious of itself, the spiritual element of being recognised. Doing something is, therefore, merely the translation
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of its particular content into that objective element where it is universal and is recognised, and this very fact, that the content is recognised, makes the deed an actuality. The action is recognised and thereby real, because the actual reality is immediately bound up with conviction or knowledge ; or, in other words, knowledge of its purpose is immediately and at once ^ i '} the element of existence, universal recognition. For the essence of the act, duty, consists in the conviction conscience has about it. This conviction is just the inherent principle itself ; it is inherently universal self- consciousness — in other words, is recognition and hence reality. The result achieved under conviction of duty is therefore directly one which has substantial solid ex- istence. Thus, we hear nothing more there about good intention not coming to anything definite, or about the good man faring badly. What is known as duty is carried out completely and becomes an actual fact, just because what is dutiful is the universal for all self- consciousnesses, that which is recognised, acknow- ledged, and thus objectively is. Taken separately and alone, however, without the content of self, this duty is existence-for-another, the transparent element, which has merely the significance of an unsubstantial ultimate factor in general.
If we look back on the sphere where in general spiritual reality made its appearance, we find that the principle involved was that the utterance of individuality is the absolutely real, the ultimately self-sufficing. But the shape which, in the first in- stance, gave expression to this notion, was the " honest consciousness " * which was occupied and
* v.p. 402 ff.
Conscience 651
concerned with abstract " fact itself." This " fact itself " was there a predicate. In conscience, however, it is for the first time a Subject, which has put all aspects of consciousness in it, and for which all these moments, substantiality in general, external existence, and essence of thought, are contained in this cer- tainty of itself. The " fact itself " has substantiality in general in the ethical order {Sittlichkeit), external existence in culture, self-knowing essence of thought in morality ; and in conscience it is the Subject, which knows these moments within itself. While the " honest consciousness " is for ever grasping merely the bare and empty " fact itself," conscience, on the other hand, secures the " fact itself " in its fullness, a fullness which conscience of itself supplies. Conscience has this power through its knowing the moments of con- i^g sciousness as moments, and controlling them because it is their negative essential principle.
When conscience is considered in relation to the particular features of the opposition which appears in action, and when we consider its consciousness regard- ing the nature of those features, its attitude towards the reality of the particular case where action takes efiect is, in the first instance, that of knowledge. So far as the aspect of universality is present in such knowledge, it is the business of conscientious action, qua knowledge, to compass the reality before it in an unrestricted exhaustive manner, and thus get to know exactly the circumstances of the case, and give them due consideration. This knowledge, however, since it is aware of rmiversahty as a moment, is in consequence a kind of knowledge of these circum- stances which is conscious all the while of not embracing
652 Phenomenology/ of Mind
them, is conscious of not being conscientious in its pro- cedure. The genuinely universal and pure relation of knowledge would be one towards something not op- posed, a relation to itself. But action through the oppo- sition essentially implied in action is related to what negates consciousness, to a reality existing per se. Con- trasted with the simple nature of pure consciousness, the absolute other, externality, multiplicity per se, is a sheer plurality of circumstances which breaks up in- definitely and spreads in all directions — backwards in their conditions, sidewards in their associations, for- wards in their consequences.
The conscientious mind is aware of this state of affairs and of its relation thereto, and knows it is not acquainted to the full and complete extent required with the case in which its action takes effect, and knows that its pretence of conscientiously weighing and considering all the circumstances is futile. This acquaintance with and consideration of all the circumstances, however, are not entirely absent : but they are merely present as a moment, as something which is only for others : and the conscientious mind holds its incomplete know- ledge to be sufficient and complete, merely because it is its own knowledge.
In a similar way is constituted the process in connection with the universality of the essential principle, the universality by which the content is characterised when determined through pure cou- i^ta sciousness. Conscience, when it goes on to act, takes up a relation to the various sides of the case. The case breaks up into separate elements, and the relation of pure consciousness towards it does the same : whereby the multiplicity characteristic of the case
Conscience 653
becomes a multiplicity of duties. Conscience knows that it has to select and decide amongst them ; for none of them specifically, in its content, is an absolute duty ; only duty pure and simple is so. But this abstract entity has, in its realisation, come to denote self-conscious ego. Spirit certain of itself is at rest within itself in the form of conscience, and its real universaUty, its duty, Hes in its bare conviction con- cerning duty. This bare conviction as such is as empty as pure duty, pure in the sense that nothing within it, no definite content, is duty. Action, however, has to take place, the individual must determine to do some- thing or other ; and spirit which is certain of itself, in which the inherent principle has attained the sig- nificance of self-conscious ego, knows it has this deter- mination, this specific content, within the immediate certainty of its own self. This certainty, being a determination and a content, is " natural '' conscious- ness, i.e. the various impulses and inchnations.
Conscience admits no content as absolute for it, be- cause it is absolute negativity of all that is definite. It determines from itself alone. The circle of the self, however, within which determinateness as such falls, is so-called " sensibility " : in order to get a content out of the immediate certainty of self, there is no other means to be found except sensibility.
Everything that in previous modes of experience was presented as good or bad, law and right, is something other than immediate certainty of self ; it is a uni- versal, which is now a relative entity, an existence-for- another. Or, looked at otherwise, it is an object which, while connecting and relating consciousness with itself, comes between consciousness and its own proper truth,
654 Phenomenology of Mind
and instead of that object being the immediacy of con- sciousness, it rather cuts consciousness off from itself.
For conscience, however, certainty of self is the pure, direct, and immediate truth : and this truth is i^ y^ thus its immediate certainty of self presented as content ; i.e. its truth is altogether the caprice of the individual, and the accidental content of his uncon- scious natural existence [his sensibility].
This content at the same time passes for essential moral reality, for duty. For pure duty, as was found when testing and examining laws,* is utterly indifferent to every content, and gets along with any. Here it has at the same time the essential form of self-existence, of existing on its own account : and this form of individual conviction is nothing else than the sense of the empti- ness of pure duty, and the consciousness that this is merely a moment, that its substantial independence is a predicate v/hich finds its subject in the individual, whose caprice gives pure duty content, can connect every content with this form, and attach its feeling of conscientiousness to any content.
An individual increases his property in a certain way. It is a duty that each should see to the maintenance of himself and family, and no less ensure the possibility of his being serviceable to his neighbours and of doing good to those standing in need. The individual is aware that this is a duty, for this content is directly contained in the certainty he has of himself. He perceives, further, that he fulfils this particular duty in this par- ticular case. Other people possibly consider the specific way he adopts as fraud : they hold by other sides of the concrete case presented, while he holds firmly to
* v.p. 418 if.
Conscience 655
this particular side of it by the fact of his being conscious that the increase of property is a pure and absolute duty.
In the same way there is fulfilled by the individual, as a duty, what other people call violence and wrong- doing— the duty of asserting one's independence against others : and, again, the duty of preserving one's hfe, and maintaining the possibility of being useful to one's neighbours. Others call this cowardice, but what they call courage really violates both these duties. But cowardice cannot be so stupid and thoughtless as not to know that the maintenance of life and the possibility of being useful to others are duties — so inept as not to be convinced of the dutifulness of its action, and not to know that dutifulness consists in knowledge. Otherwise it would commit the absurdity of being without morality. Since morahty hes in the consciousness of having fulfilled one's duty, this will not be lacking when the action is what is called cowardice any more than when it is what is called courage. As the abstraction called " duty " is capable of every content, it is quite equal to this latter content. The agent acting knows what he does to be duty, and since he knows this, and conviction as to duty is just dutifulness, he is thus recognised and acknowledged by others. The act thereby becomes accepted as vahd and has actual existence.
It is of no avail to object to this freedom — which puts one kind of content as well as any other into this uni- versal inert receptacle of pure duty and pure know- ledge— by asserting that another content ought to have been put there. For whatever the content be, each content has upon it the stain of determinateness from
656 Phenomenology of Mind
which pure knowledge is free, which pure knowledge can disregard just as readily as it can take up every determinateness in turn. Every content, through its being determinate, stands on the same footing with every other, even though it seems to have precisely the character that the particularity in the content is cancelled. It may well seem — since in concrete cases duty breaks regularly into opposition, and, by doing so, sunders the opposites particularity and univer- sality— that the duty, whose content is the universal as such, contains on that account, i'pso facto, the nature of pure duty, and that thus form and content are here entirely in accord. On this view, it might seem that, e.g., acting for the universal good, for what is the best for all, is to be preferred to acting for what is the best for the individual. But this universal duty is in its entirety what is present as self-contained actual sub- stance, in the form of [established] law and right, and holds good independently of the individual's knowledge and conviction and immediate interest. It is thus precisely that against the form of which morality as a whole is directed. As regards its content, however, even this is determinate in character, in so far as the " universally best " is opposed to the " individual best." Consequently, its law is one from which conscience knows itself to be absolutely free, and it gives itself the absolute privilege to add and pare, to neglect as well as fulfil it.
Then, again, the above distinction of duty towards the individual and duty towards the universal is not something fixed and final, when we look at the nature of the opposition in question. On the contrary, what the individual does for himself is to the advantage of the
Conscience 657
universal as well. The more he looks after his own good, not only is there the greater possibility of his use- fulness to others : his very reality consists merely in his Uving and existing in connection with others. His individual enjoyment means ultimately and essentially putting what is his own at the disposal of others, and helping them to secure their enjoyment. In ful- filling duty to individuals, and hence duty to self, duty to the general thus also gets fulfilled. Weighing, con- sidering, comparing duties, should this appear here, would take the line of calculating the advantage which the general would get from any given action. But there can be no such process ; partly because morality would thereby be handed over to the inevitable contingency characteristic of mere " insight " ; partly because it is precisely the nature of conscience to have done with all this calculating and weighing of duties, and to decide directly from itself without reasons of any kind.
In this way, then, conscience acts and maintains itself in the unity of its essential being and its objective existence for itself, in the unity of pure thought and individuality : it is spirit certain of itself, which inherently possesses its own truth, within itself, in its knowledge, a knowledge in the sense of know- ledge of its duty. It maintains its being therein by the fact that the positive element in the act, the content as well as form of duty and the knowledge of duty, belong to the self, to the certainty of itself. What, however, seeks to come before the self with an inherent being of its own is held to be not truly real, merely a transcended element, only a moment. Consequently, it is not universal knowledge in general
VOL. II.— R
658 Phenomenology of Mind
that has a vakie, but what is known of the circum- stances. It puts into duty, which is the universal im- manent essence, the content which it derives from its natural individuality ; for the content is one that is present in its own being. This content, in virtue of the universal medium wherein it exists, becomes the duty which it carries out, and empty bare duty is, through this very fact, affirmed to be something tran- scended, a moment. This content is its emptiness, transcended and cancelled, i.e. is the fulfilhng of pure duty.
But at the same time conscience is detached from every possible content. It absolves itself from every specific duty, which would try to pass for a law. In the strength of its certainty of itself, it has the majesty of absolute self-sufficiency, of absolute avrdpKeia, to bind or to loose. This self-determination is at once, therefore, absolute conformity to duty. Duty is the knowledge itself ; this pure and simple selfhood, how- ever, is the immanent principle and essence ; for this inherent principle is pure self-identity, and self-identity lies in this consciousness.
This pure knowledge is immediately objective, is existence-for-another ; for, qua pure self-identity, it is immediacy, it is objective being. This being, however, is at the same time pure universality, the selfhood of all : in other words, action is acknowledged, and hence actual. This being forms the element by which con- science directly stands on a footing of equality with every self-consciousness ; and this relation means not an abstract impersonal law, but the self of conscience.
In that this right which conscience does is at the same time, however, a fact for others, a disparity seems
Conscience 659
to affect conscience. The duty which it fulfils is a determinate content; that content is, no doubt, the self of consciousness, and so its knowledge of itself, its identity with its self. But when fulfilled, when planted in the general element of existence, this identity is no longer knowledge, no longer this process of dis- tinction which directly and at the same time does away with its distinctions. Rather, in the sphere of exist- ence, distinction is set up as subsistent, and the act is a i^y/^ determinate specific one, not identical with the element of everybody's self-consciousness, and hence not neces- sarily acknowledged and recognised. Both aspects, conscience qua acting, and the general consciousness acknowledging this act to be duty, stand equally loose from the specific character belonging to this deed. On account of this freedom and detachment, the relation of the two within the common medium of their connec- tion is rather a relationship of complete disparity — as a result of which, the consciousness doing and owning the act finds itself in complete uncertainty regarding the spirit which does the act and is " certain of itself." This spirit acts and places in existence a particular determinate characteristic ; others hold to this existence, as its truth, and are therein certain of this spirit ; it has therein expressed what it takes to be its duty. But it is detached and free from any specific duty ; it has, therefore, left the point where other people think it actually to be ; and this very medium of existence and duty as inherently existing are held by it to be merely transitory moments. What it thus places before them, it also " displaces " again, or rather has, eo ipso, immediately " displaced." For its reahty is, for it, not the duty and determinate content thus
660 Phenomenology of Mind
put forward, but rather is the reahty which it has in its absolute certainty of itself.
The other self-consciousnesses do not know, then, whether this particular conscience is morally good or is wicked ; or, rather, not merely can they not know this conscience, but they must take it to be also wicked. For just as it stands loose to the determinate content of duty, and detached from duty as inherently existing, so do they likewise. What is placed before them, they themselves know how to " displace "' or dissemble : it is something expressing merely the self of another individual, not their own : they do not merely know themselves to be detached and free from it, but have to resolve and dissipate it within their own conscious- ness, reduce it to nothingness by judgments and explanations in order to preserve their own self.
But the act of conscience is not merely this deter- mination of existence, a determinate content forsaken by the pure self. What ought to be binding as duty and KMi get recognised as such, only is so through knowledge and conviction as to its being duty, by knowledge of self in the deed done. WTien the deed ceases to have in it this element of self, it ceases to be what is alone its essential nature. Its existence, if deserted by this consciousness of self, would be an ordinary reality, and the act would appear to us a way of fulfilling one's plea- sure and desire. What ought to exist has here essen- tiality only by its being known to be individuality giving itself expression. And its being thus known is the fact acknowledged and recognised by others, and is that which as such ought to have existence.
The self enters existence as self. The spirit which is certain of itself exists as such for others ; its immediate
Conscience 661
act is not what is accepted and real ; what is acknow- ledged by others is, not the determinate element, not the inherent being, but solely and simply the self know- ing itself as such. The element which gives perma- nence and stability is universal self-consciousness. What enters this element cannot be the effect of the act : the latter does not last there, and maintains no permanence : only self-consciousness is what is recognised and gains concrete reality.
Here again,* then, we see Language to be the form in which spirit finds existence. Language is the way self-consciousness exists for others ; it is self-conscious- ness which is there irmnediately present as such, and in the form of this actual universal self-consciousness. Language is self separating itself from itself, which comes objectively before itself as the pure ego identical with ego, which at once maintains itself in this objective form as this actual self, and at the same time fuses directly with others and is their self-consciousness. The self perceives itself at the same time that it is perceived by others : and this perceiving is just existence which has become a self.
The content, which language has here obtained, is no longer the self we found in the world of culture, perv^erted, perverting, and distraught. It is spirit which, having returned to itself, is certain of itself, certain in itself of its truth, of its own act of recognition, and of being recognised as this knowledge. The language of U-Jk: the ethical spirit of society is law, and simple command and complaint, which is but a tear shed over necessity. Moral consciousness, on the other hand, remains dumb, shut up within its inner Ufe ; for self has no existence
* v.p. 512 ff.
66Ö Phenomenology of Mind
as yet in its case : rather existence and self there stand, in the first instance, in external relation to each other. Language, however, comes forward merely as the mediating element between independent self- conscious- nesses recognised and acknowledged ; and the existent self means immediately universal recognition, means recognition in manifold ways and in this very mani- foldness simple recognition. What the language of conscience contains is the self knowing itself as essential reality. This alone is what that language expresses, and this expression is the true realisation of " doing " anything, and renders the act valid and acceptable. Consciousness expresses its convic- tion : in this conviction alone is the action duty : it holds good as duty, too, solely by the conviction being expressed. For universal self-consciousness stands detached from the specific act which merely exists : the act qua existence means nothing to it : what it holds of importance is the conviction that the act is a duty ; and this appears concretely in language.
To realise the act means here not translating its content from the form of purpose, or subjectivity, into the form of abstract reality : it means translating it from the form of immediate certainty of self, which takes its knowledge, its self-existence, to be the essential fact, into the form of the assurance that consciousness is convinced of its duty, and, being conscience, knows of itself what duty is. This assurance thus guarantees that it is convinced of its conviction being the essential fact.
Whether the assurance, that it acts from conviction of duty, is true, whether that really is duty which is done — these questions or doubts have no meaning if
Conscience 663
directed against conscience. In the case of the ques- tion, whether the assurance is true, it would be assumed that the inner intention is different from the one put forward, i.e. that the wilhng of a particular self can if^/ be separated from duty, from the will of the universal and pure consciousness : the latter will would in that case be a matter of words, while the former would be strictly the real moving principle of the act. But such a distinction between the universal consciousness and the particular self is precisely what has been cancelled, and the superseding of it constitutes conscience. Im- mediate knowledge on the part of self which is certain of itself is law and duty. Its intention, by being its own intention, is what is right. All that is required is that it should know this, and state its conviction that its knowledge and will are the right. The expression of this assurance ipso facto cancels the form of its par- ticularity. It recognises thereby the necessary univer- sality of the self. In that it calls itself conscience, it calls itself pure self-knowledge and pure abstract will, i.e. it calls itself a universal knowledge and will which acknowledges and recognises others, is hke them — for they are just this pure self-knowledge and will — and which is on that account also recognised by them. In the willing of the self which is certain of itself, in this knowledge of the self as the essential reahty, Hes the essence of the right.
When any one says, therefore, he is acting from conscience, he is saying what is true, for his conscience is the self which knows and wills. He must, however, necessarily say so, for this self has to be at the same time universal self. It is not universal in the content o f the act : for this content is per se indifferent on
664 Plienomenologij of Mind
account of its being specific and determinate. The universality lies in the form of the act. It is this form which is to be affirmed as real : the form is the self, which as such is actual in language, pronounces itself to be the truth, and just by so doing acknowledges all other selves, and is recognised by them.
Conscience, then, in its majestic sublimity above any specific law and every content of duty, puts whatever content there is into its knowledge and willing. It i^yg becomes moral genius and originality, which takes the inner voice of its immediate knowledge to be a voice divine ; and since in such knowledge it directly knows existence as well, it is divine creative power, which contains living force in its very conception. It is in itself, too, divine worship), " service of God," for its action consists in beholding this its own proper divinity.
This solitary worship, this " service of God " in soli- tude of soul, is at the same time essentially " service of God " in public, on the part of a religious community ; and pure inward self-knowledge and perception of self pass to being a moment of consciousness.* To behold itself is to exist objectively, and this objective element is the utterance of its knowledge and will in a universal way. Through such expression the self becomes estab- lished and accepted, and the act becomes an effective deed, a deed carrying out a definite result. What gives reality and subsistence to its deed is universal self- consciousness. When, however, conscience finds expres- sion, this puts the certainty of itself in the form of pure self and thereby as universal self. Others let the act
* i.e. into a state which implies distinction and opposition of subject and object.
The "Beautiful Soul" 665
hold as valid, owing to the explicit terms in which the self is thus expressed and acknowledged to be the essential reality. The spirit and the substance of their community are, thus, the mutual assurance of their conscientiousness, of their good intentions, the rejoicing over this reciprocal purity of purpose, the quickening and refreshment received from the glorious privilege of knowing and of getting expression, of fostering and cherishing a state so altogether excellent and desirable.
So far as this sphere of conscience still distinguishes its abstract consciousness from its self-consciousness, its hfe is merely hid in God. God is indeed imme- diately present to its mind and heart, to its self. But what is revealed, its actual consciousness and the mediating process of this consciousness, is, to it, some- thing other than that hidden inner life and the imme- diacy of God's presence. But, with the completion of conscience, the distinction between its abstract con- sciousness and its self- consciousness is done away. It knows that the abstract consciousness is just this self, this individual self-existence which is certain of itself : that the very difference between the terms is abolished in the immediateness of the relation of the self to the ultimate Being, which, when placed outside the self, is the abstract essence, and a Being concealed from it. For a relation is mediate when the terms related are not one and the same, but each is a different term for the other, and is one only with the other in some third term: an immediate relation, however, means, in fact, nothing else than the unity of the terms. Having risen above the meaningless position of holding these distinctions, which are not distinctions at all, to be still such, consciousness knows the immediateness of
666 Phenomenology of Mind
the presence of ultimate Being within it to be the unity of that Being and its self : it thus knows itself to be the living inherent reality, and takes its knowledge to be Religion, which, qua knowedge viewed as an object or knowledge with an objective existence, is the utter- ance of the religious communion regarding its own spirit.
We see then, here, self-consciousness withdrawn into the inmost retreats of its being, with all externality, as such, gone and vanished from it — returned into the intuition of ego as altogether identical with ego, an intuition where this ego is all that is essential, and all that exists. It is absorbed in this conception of itself ; for it is driven to the extreme limit of its extreme positions, and in such a way that the moments distinguished, moments through which it is real or still consciousness, are not merely for us these bare ex- tremes ; rather what it is for itself, and what, to it, is inherent, and what is, for it, existence — all these moments evaporate into abstractions. They have no longer stability, no substantial existence for this phase of consciousness. Everything, that was hitherto for consciousness essential, has reverted into these abstrac- tions. When clarified to this degree of transparency, consciousness exists in its poorest form, and the poverty, constituting its sole and only possession, is itself a process of disappearance. This absolute cer- tainty into which the substance has been resolved is absolute untruth, which collapses within itself ; it is absolute self -consciousness, in which consciousness [with its relation of self and object] is submerged and goes under.
Looking at this absorption and disappearance from
The "Beautiful Soul" 667
within, the inherent and essential substance is, for consciousness, knowledge in the sense of its knowledge. Being consciousness, it is split up into the opposition between itself and the object, which is, for it, the essentially real. But this very object is what is perfectly transparent, is its self ; and its consciousness is merely knowledge concerning itself. All life and all spiritual truth have returned into this self, and have lost their difference from the ego. The moments of conscious- ness are therefore these extreme abstractions, of which none holds its ground, but each loses itself in the other and produces it. We have here the process of the " unhappy soul," * in restless change with self ; in the present case, however, this is a conscious ex- perience going on inside itself, fully conscious of being the notion of reason, while the " unhappy soul " above spoken of was only reason implicitly. The absolute certainty of self thus finds itself qua consciousness, converted directly into a dying sound, a mere objectifi- cation of its subjectivity or self -existence. But this world so created is the utterance of its own voice, which in hke manner it has directly heard, and the echo of which only returns to it. This return does not therefore mean that the self is there in its true reahty {an und für sich) : for the real is, for it, not an inherent being, is no per se, but its very self. Just as httle has consciousness itself existence, for the objective aspect does not succeed in becoming something negative of the actual self, in the same way as this self does not reach complete actuality. It lacks force to externahse itself, the power to make itself a thing, and endure existence. It hves in dread of staining the radiance of its inner being by action and
* v.p. 200 ff.
668 Phenomenology of Mind
existence. And to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with actuaUty, and steadfastly per- severes in a state of self-willed impotence to renounce a self which is pared away to the last point of abstraction, and to give itself substantial existence, or, in other words, to transform its thought into being, and commit itself to absolute distinction [that between thought and being]. The hollow object, which it produces, now fills it, therefore, with the feehng of emptiness. Its activity consists in yearning ; it merely loses itself in becoming an unsubstantial shadowy object, and, rising ;+?/ above this loss and falling back on itself, finds itself merely as lost. In this transparent purity of its moments it becomes a sorrow-laden " beautiful soul,'' as it is called ; its light dims and dies within it, and it vanishes as a shapeless vapour dissolving into thin air.*
This silent fusion of the pithless unsubstantial ele- ments of evaporated life has, however, still to be taken in the other sense of the reality of conscience, and in the way its process actually appears. Conscience has to be considered as acting. The objective moment in this phase of consciousness took above the determinate form of universal consciousness. The knowing of self is, qua this particular self, different from another self. Language in which all reciprocally recognise and acknowledge each other as acting conscientiously — this general equality breaks up into the inequahty of each individual existing for himself ; each conscious- ness turns from its universahty back into itself, each is just as much reflected absolutely into itself as it is universal. By this means there necessarily comes about
* Cf. Hegel's remarks on Jacolii's conception of the " beautiful soul " : WWX., 1, p. .303.
Evil and Forgiveness 669
the opposition of individuality to other individuals and to the universal. And this relation and its proce- dure we have to consider.
Or, again, this universahty and duty have the abso- lutely opposite significance ; they signify determinate individuality, exempting itself from what is universal, individuality which looks on pure duty as universality that has appeared merely on the surface and is turned on its outside : " duty is merely a matter of words," and passes for that whose being is for something else. Conscience, which in the first instance takes up merely a negative attitude towards duty, qua a given determinate duty, feels itself detached from it. But since conscience fills empty duty with a determinate con- tent drawn from its own self, it is positively aware of the fact that it, qua this particular self, makes its own content. Its pure self, as it is empty knowledge, is without content and without definiteness. The content which it supphes to that knowledge is drawn from its own self, quu this determinate self, is drawn from itself as a natural individuality. In speaking of the conscientiousness of its action, it is doubtless aware of its pure self, but in the purpose of its action — a purpose which brings in a concrete content — it is conscious of itself as this particular individual, and is conscious of the opposition between what it is for itself and what it is for others, of the opposition of univer- sality or duty and its state of being reflected into self away from the universal.
While in this way the opposition, into which con- science passes when it acts, finds expression in its inner Hfe, the opposition is at the same time disparity on its outer side, in the sphere of existence — the disparity
670 Phenomenology of Mind
or discordance of its particular individuality with, reference to another individual. Its special peculiarity consists in the fact that the two elements constituting its consciousness — viz. the self and the inherent nature (Ansich) — are unequal in value and significance within it ; in being accepted as valid, they are so determined that certainty of self is the essential fact as against the inherent nature, or the universal, which is taken to be merely a moment. Over against this internal determina- tion there thus stands the element of existence, the universal consciousness ; and for this latter it is rather universality, duty, which is the essential fact, while individuality, which exists for itself and is opposed to the universal, has merely the value of a superseded moment. The first consciousness is held to be Evil by the consciousness which thus stands by the fact of duty, because of the lack of congruity or identity of its internal subjective life with the universal ; and since at the same time the first consciousness declares its act to be identity with itself, to be duty and conscientiousness, it is held by that universal consciousness to be Hypocrisy.
The course taken by this opposition is, in the first instance, the formal reinstatement of the identity be- tween what the evil consciousness is in its own nature and what it declares itself to be. It has to be made manifest that it is evil, and its objective existence thus made congruent with its real nature ; the hypocrisy must be unmasked. This return of the disparity, present in hypocrisy, into the state of congruency or identity is not at once brought to pass by the mere fact that, as people usually say, hypocrisy just proves its reverence for duty and virtue through assuming the appearance of them, and using this as
Evil and Forgiveness 671
a mask to liide itself from its own consciousness no less than from another — as if, in this acknow- ledgment and recognition in itself of its opposite, 60 ipso congruency and agreement were implied and contained. Yet even then it is just as truly done with .'- s s this recognition in words and is reflected into self ; and in the very fact of its using the inherent and essential reality merely as something which has a significance for another consciousness, there is really imphed its own contempt for that inherent principle, and the demonstration of the worthlessness of that reality for all. For what lets itself be used as an external instrument shows itself to be a thing, which has within it no proper weight and worth of its own.
Moreover, this congruency or identity, is not brought about either by the evil consciousness per- sisting onesidedly in its own state, or by the judgment of the universal consciousness. If the former disclaims the consciousness of duty, and maintains that what the latter pronounces to be baseness, to be absolute discordance with universality, is an action according to inner law and conscience, then, in this onesided assurance of identity and concord, there still remains its want of agreement with the other, since this other universal consciousness certainly does not believe the assurance and does not acknowledge it. In other words, since onesided insistence on one extreme destroys itself, evil would indeed thereby confess to being evil, but in so doing would at once cancel itself and cease to be hypocrisy, and so would not qua hypocrisy be unmasked. It confesses itself, in fact, to be evil by asserting that, while opposing what is recognised as universal, it is acting according to inner
672 Phenomenology of Mind
law and conscience. For were this law and conscience not the law of its particularity and caprice, it would not be something inward, something private, but what is universally accepted and acknowledged. When, therefore, any one says he acts towards others from a law and conscience of his own, he is saying, in point of fact, that he is abusing and wronging them. But actual conscience is not this insistence on a knowledge and a will which are opposed to what is universal ; the univer- sal is the element of its existence, and its very language pronounces its action to be recognised duty.
Just as little, when the universal consciousness emphasises and persists in its own judgment, does this unmask and dissipate hypocrisy. When that universal consciousness stigmatises hypocrisy as bad, base, and so on, it appeals, in passing such a judgment, to its own law, just as the evil consciousness, on its side, does too. For the former law makes its appearance in opposition to the latter, and thereby is a particular law. It has, therefore, no antecedent claim over the other law; rather it legitimises this other law. Hence the universal consciousness, by thus emulating the other, does precisely the opposite of what it means to do : for it shows that its so-called " true duty," which ought to be universally acknowledged, is something not acknowledged and recognised, and consequently it grants the other an equal right of independently exist- ing on its own account.
This judgment [of universal consciousness], however, has, at the same time, another side to it, from which it leads the way to the dissolution of the opposition in question. Consciousness of the universal does not proceed, qua real and qua acting, to deal with the evil
Evil and Forgiveness 673
consciousness ; for this latter, rather, is the real. In opposing the latter, it is a consciousness which is not entangled in the opposition of particular and universal involved in action. It stays within the universahty of thought, takes up the attitude of an apprehending intelligence, and its first act is merely that of judgment. Through this judgment it now places itself, as was just observed, alongside the first consciousness, and the latter, through this identity, this hkeness, between them, comes to see itself in this other consciousness. For in the attitude of apprehension consciousness of duty is passive. Thereby it is in contradiction with itself as the absolute will of duty, as the self that determines absolutely from itself. It may well preserve itself in its purity, for it does not act ; it is hypocrisy, which wants to see the fact of judging taken for the actual deed, and instead of proving its uprightness and honesty by acts does so by expressing fine sentiments. It is thus constituted entirely in the same way as that against which the reproach is made of putting its phrases in place of duty. In both cases alike the aspect of reality is distinct from the express statements — in the one case owing to the selfish purpose of the action, in the other through failure to act at all, a result which is inevitable when there is mere talk about duty, for duty without deeds is altogether meaningless. The act of judging, however, has also to be looked at as a positive act of thought and has a positive con- tent : this aspect makes the contradiction present in the apprehending consciousness and its identity with the first consciousness still more complete. The active consciousness declares its specific deed to be its duty, and the consciousness that passes judgment cannot deny
VOL. II.— S
i^ -r i-
674 Phenomenology of Mind
this ; for duty as such is form void of all content and capable of any. In other words, concrete action, ii^her- ently implying diversity in its manysidedness, involves the universal aspect, which is that which is taken as duty, just as much as the particular, which constitutes the share and interest the individual has in the act. The consciousness expressing its judgment does not now stop at the former aspect of duty and rest content with the knowledge which the active agent has of this, viz. that this is its duty, the condition and the status of its reahty. It holds on to the other aspect, diverts the act into the inner realm, and explains the act from selfish motives and from its inner intention, an inten- tion different from the act itself. As every act is capable of treatment in respect of its dutifulness, so, too, each can be considered from this other point of view of particularity ; for as an act it is the actuality of an individual.
This process of judging, then, takes the act out of the sphere of its objective existence, and turns it back into that of the inner realm, into the form of specific and individual particularity. If the act carries glory with it, then the inner aspect is judged as love of fame. If it altogether fits in with the position and status of the individual, without going beyond this position, and is so constituted that the individuality in question does not have the position hanging on to it as an external appendage, but through itself supplies the content to this universality, and by that very process shows itself to be capable of a higher status — then the inner nature of the act is judged as ambition ; and so on. Since, in the act in general, the individual who acts comes to see himself in objective form, or gets the feeling of his
Evil and Forgiveness 675
own being in his objective existence and thus attains enjoyment, the judgment on the act finds the inner nature of it to be an impulse towards personal and private happiness, even though this happiness were to consist merely in inner moral vanity, the enjoyment of a sense of personal excellence, and in the foretaste and hope of a happiness to come.
No act can escape being judged in such a way ; for " duty for duty's sake," this bare purpose, is some- thing unreal. What reality it has hes in the deed of some individuality, and the action thereby has in it the aspect of particularity. No hero is a hero to his valet, not, however, because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is — the valet, with whom the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats, drinks, and dresses, who, in short, appears as a particular individual with certain personal wants and idiosyncrasies. In the same way, there is no act in which that process of judgment cannot oppose the particular aspect of the individuality to the universal aspect of the act, and set the valet of morahty against the hero who does the act.*
The consciousness, that so passes judgment, is in con- sequence itself base and mean, because it divides the act up, and brings out and holds on to its inherent in- consistency and self-discordance. It is, furthermore, hypocrisy, because it gives out this way of judging, not as another fashion of being wicked, but as the correct consciousness of the act ; sets itself up, in its unreality, in this vanity of knowing well and better, far above the deeds it decries ; and wants to find its mere words without deeds taken for an admirable kind of reahty.
On this account, then, putting itself on a level with
* Cp. with above Philosophy of History, Intro. (Eng. trans., p. 32 ff.)
676 Phenomenology of Mind
the agent on whom it passes judgment, it is recognised by the latter as the same as himself. This latter does not merely find himself apprehended as something alien or external to, and unlike or discordant with that other : but rather finds the other in its peculiar constitutive }^^', character identical with himself. Seeing this similarity and giving this expression, he openly declares himself to the other, and expects in like manner that the other, having in point of fact put itself on the same level, will respond in the same terms on its side, will give voice to the likeness found within it, and that thus the state of mutual recognition will be brought about. His confes- sion is not an attitude of abasement or humiliation before the other, is not flinging himself away. For to give the matter expression in this way has not the one-sided character which would fix and establish his disparity with the other : on the contrary, it is solely because of seeing the likeness of the other to him that he gives himself utterance. In making his confession he announces, from his side, their common likeness, and does so for the reason that language is the existence of spirit as an immediate self. He thus expects that the other will make its own contribution to this manner of existence.
But the admission on the part of the one who is wicked, " I am so,'' is not followed by a reply making a similar confession. This was not what that way of judging meant at all: far from it! It repels this community of nature, and is the " hardhearted- ness," which keeps to itself and rejects all continuity with the other. By so doing the scene is changed. The one who made the confession sees himself thrust off, and takes the other to be in the wrong when he refuses to
Evil and Forgiveness 677
let his own inner nature go forth in the objective shape of an express utterance, opposes and contrasts the beauty of his own soul with the wicked individual, and opposes to the confession of the penitent the stiff- necked attitude of the self-consistent equable character, and the rigid silence of one who keeps himself to himself and refuses to throw himself away for some one else. Here we find asserted the highest pitch of revolt to which a spirit certain of itself can reach. For it beholds itself, qua this bare self-knowledge, in another conscious being, and in such a way that the external form of this other is not an unessential " thing," as in the case of an object of wealth, but thought ; knowledge itself is what is opposed to it. It is this absolutely unbroken continuity of pure knowledge which refuses to estabUsh communication with an other, which had, ipso facto, by making its confession, ^/S^P renounced separate isolated self-existence, had affirmed its particularity to be cancelled, and thereby estab- lished itself as continuous with the other, i.e. estab- lished itself as universal. The other, however, retains in its own case and reserves to itself its uncom- mimicative, isolated independence : in the case of the individual making the confession it retains just the very thing which that individual has already cast away. It thereby proves itself to be a form of consciousness which has forsaken and denies the very nature of spirit ; for it does not understand that spirit, in the absolute certainty of itself, is master and lord over every deed, and over all reality, and can reject and cast them off and make them as if they had never been. At the same time, it does not see the contradiction it is committing in not allowing a rejection, which has been
678 Phenomenology of Mind
made in express language, to pass for genuine rejection, while itself has the certainty of its own spiritual life, not in a concrete real act, but in its inner nature, and finds the objective existence of this inner being in the mere utterance of its own judgment. It is thus its own self which checks that other's return from the act to the spiritual objectivity of spoken utterance, and to spiritual identity and agreement, and by its stiffness produces the discordance and dissimilarity which still remain.
Now, so far as the spirit which is certain of itself, in the form of a " beautiful soul," does not possess the faculty of relinquishing the self-absorbed uncommunicative know- ledge of itself, it cannot attain to any identity with the consciousness that is repulsed, and so cannot suc- ceed in seeing the unity of its self in another Hfe, cannot reach objective existence. The equality comes about, therefore, merely in a negative way, as a state of being devoid of spiritual character. The "beautiful soul," then, has no concrete reality ; it subsists in the contra- diction between its pure self and the necessity felt by this self to externalise itself and turn into something actual; it exists in the immediacy of this rooted and fixed opposition, an immediacy which alone is the middle term mediating and reconciling an opposition which has arisen to its pure abstraction, and is pure being or empty nothingness. Thus the " beautiful soul," being conscious of this contradiction in its unreconciled immediacy, is unhinged, disordered, and runs to mad- ness, passes away in yearning, and is consumed in pining inanition.* Thereby it gives up, as a fact, its
* This was the actual fate of Novalis, the " 8t. John of Romanticism " (d. 1801, jBt. 29). Cp. Hegel's remarks on Novalis WW X., 1, p. 201 : XVI., p. 500.
Evil and Forgiveness 679
stubborn insistence on its own isolated self-existence, but only to bring forth the soulless, spiritless unity of abstract being.
The true, that is to say the self-conscious and actual, balance or adjustment of the two sides is necessitated by, and already contained in the foregoing. Break- ing the hard heart and raising it to the level of uni- versality is the same process which appeared in the case of the consciousness that expressly made its confession. The wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scars behind. The deed is not something imperish- able ; the spirit takes it back into itself ; and the aspect of particularity present in it, whether in the form of an intention or of an existential negativity and limitation, immediately passes away. The process of actually reahsing self, the form of its act, is merely a moment of the whole ; and the same is true of the knowledge fimctioning through judgment, and estab- hshing and maintaining the distinction between the particular and universal aspects of action. The evil con- sciousness, spoken of, definitely yields up and rehn- quishes itself, or sets itself down as a moment, being drawn into the way of express confession by seeing itself in another. This other, however, must have its onesided, unaccepted, and unacknowledged judgment broken down, just as the former has to abandon its onesided unacknowledged existence in a state of par- ticularity and isolation. And as the former displays the power of spirit over its reality, so this other must manifest the power of spirit over its constitutive and determinate notion.
The latter, however, renounces thought that divides and separates, and the rigid imperviousness of uncom-
680 Phenomenology of Mind
municative self-existence, for the reason that, in point of fact, it sees itself in the first. That which, in this way, abandons its reality and makes itself into a superseded particular "this" {Diesen), shows itself thereby to be, in fact, universal. It turns away from its external reality back into itself as inner essence ; and there the universal consciousness thus knows and finds itself.
The forgiveness it extends to the first is the renuncia- tion of self, of its unreal being, since it identifies this j^qcj unreal nature and that other element of real action, and recognises what was called bad — a determination assigned to action by thought — to be good ; or rather it lets go and gives up this distinction of determinate thought with its self -determining isolated judgment, just as the other foregoes determining the act in isolation and for its own private behoof. The word of reconciliation is the objectively existent spirit, which sees and imme- diately apprehends the pure knowledge of itself qua universal being in its opposite, in the pure knowledge of itself qua absolutely self-confined single individual — a reciprocal recognition which is Absolute Spirit.
Absolute Spirit enters existence merely at the cul- minating point at which its pure knowledge about itself is the opposition and interchange" with itself. Know- ing that its pure knowledge is the abstract essential reality, Absolute Spirit is this knowing duty in absolute opposition to the knowledge which knows itself, qua absolute singleness of self, to be the essentially real. The former is the pure continuity of the universal, which knows the individuality, that thinks itself the real, to be inherently null and naught, to be evil. The latter, again, is absolute discreteness, which thinks
Evil and Forgiveness 681
itself absolute in its pure oneness, and thinks the universal is the unreal which exists only for others. Both aspects are refined and clarified to this degree of purity, where there is no self-less existence left, no nega- tive of consciousness in either of them, where, instead, the one element of " duty " is the self -identical character of its self-knowledge, and the other element of "evil" equally has its purpose in its own inner being and its reality in its own mode of utterance. The content of this utterance is the substance that gives it subsistence ; the utterance is the assurance and asseveration of the certainty of spirit within its own self.
These spirits, both certain of themselves, have each no other purpose than its own pure self, and no other reality and existence than just this pure self. But they are still different, and the difference is absolute, because holding within this element of the pure notion. The difference is absolute, too, not merely for us [tracing the experience], but for the notions themselves which stand in this opposition. For while these notions are indeed 1/ determinate and specific relatively to one another, they are at the same time in themselves universal, so that they compass the whole range of the self ; and this self can have no other content than this its own deter- minate constitution* which neither transcends the self nor is more restricted than it. For the one aspect, the absolutely universal, is pure self-knowledge as well as the other, the absolute discreteness of single individuality, and both are merely this pure self-knowledge. Both determinate aspects, then, are cognitive pure notions which know qua notions, whose very constitution con- sists in immediately knowing, or, in other words, whose relationship and opposition is the Ego. Because of this
682 Phenomenology of Mind
they are for one another these absolutely opposed elements ; it is what is completely inner that has in this way come into opposition to itself and entered objective existence ; they constitute pure knowledge, which, owing to this opposition, takes the form of consciousness. But as yet it is not self -consciousness. It obtains this actuali- sation in the course of the process through which this opposition passes. For this opposition is really itself the indiscrete continuity and identity of ego = ego ; and each by itself inherently cancels itself just through the contradiction in its pure universality, which, while implying continuity and identity, at the same time still resists its identity with the other, and separates itself from it. Through this rehnquishment of separate self- hood, the knowledge, which in its existence is in a state of diremption, returns into the unity of the self ; it is the concrete actual Ego, universal knowledge of self in its absolute opposite, in the knowledge which is internal to and within the self, and which, because of the very purity of its separate subjective existence, is itself completely universal. The reconcihng affirmation, the " yes,'' with which both egos desist from their existence in opposition, is the existence of the ego expanded into a duality, an ego which remains therein one and iden- tical with itself, and possesses the certainty of itself in its complete relinquishment and its opposite : it is God appearing in the midst of those who know them- selves in the form of pure knowledge.
(CC) RELIGION
[The appearance of Absolute Spirit as a principle constituting on its own account a distinctive stage of experience is at once a demand of the preceding development and a condition of making experience self- complete. Finite or socialised spiritual existence is at its best incapable of establishing the truth that " Spirit is the only reality " ; for the more finite spirit approximates to the state of claiming to be self-contained the more is it dependent on universal self-consciousness. A trans-finite or Absolute Spiritual Being as such is thus necessary to realise and sustain the fullness of meaning which finite spirit possesses. Moreover, if " the truth is the whole," and only so is truth self-complete and self-explaining, and, if reality is essentially spiritual — then experience only finds its complete meaning realised in the principle of Absolute Spirit. Hence the final stage of the Phenomenology of experience is the appearance therein of Absolute Spirit. Moreover, Absolute Spirit, in its own distinctive existence, could only appear at the end of the process of experience, for the whole of that process is required to reveal and to constitute the substance of which the Absolute consists. But the pecu- liarity of the stage now reached is that here the Absolute operates in its undivided totality to form a definite type of experience ; or, in the language of the text, we have the Absolute here " conscious of its self." No doubt, in all the previous stages, "consciousness," "self-consciousness," " reason," " spirit," the Absolute has been implied as a limiting principle, at once substantiating and determining the boundaries of each stage : hence each stage had an Absolute of its own, the character of which was derived in each case from the peculiarity of the stage in question. Now, however, we have the Absolute by itself, in its single self-completeness, as the sole formative factor of a certain type of experience.
The Absolute, then, in its own self-complete reality appears as the constitutive principle of experience. The experience here is the self- consciousness of Absolute Spirit ; it appears to itself in all its objects. Since all the modes of finitude hitherto considered (consciousness, self- consciousness, etc.) are embraced in its single totality, it may use each and all of these various modes as the media through and in which to appear,
683
684 Phenomenology of Mind
When it appears in and through these modes of fiuitude we have the attitude of Religion. Since these modes, as we saw, differ, the religious attitude differs ; and accordingly we have various types or forms of religion.
Each of these forms, in and through which the Absolute appears, is circumscribed in its nature and process ; each is fer se inadequate to the revelation of complete absolute self-consciousness : hence the variety of religions is necessitated by and is indirectly due to the failure of any one type and the inadequacy of every single type to reveal the Absolute com- pletely. A form of appearance or self-manifestation of the Absolute is therefore demanded which will reveal Absolute Spirit adequately to itself as it essentially is in itself. Here it will know itself, so to say, face to face, and with perfect completeness. This form is Ahsohde Knowledge- Hence Religion and Absolute Knowledge are the final stages in the argument of the Phenomenology. The former is dealt with in the im- mediately succeeding section (VII) and its various subsections ; the latter forms the subject of the concluding section (VIII) of the work.]
VII
Religion in General ^02
IN the forms of experience hitherto dealt with — which are distinguished broadly as Consciousness, Self-consciousness, Reason, and Spirit — Religion also, the consciousness of Absolute Being in general, has no doubt made its appearance. But that was from the point of view of consciousness, when it has the Absolute Being for its object. Absolute Being, however, in its own distinctive nature, the Self-consciousness of Spirit, has not appeared in those forms.
Even at the plane of Consciousness, viz. when this takes the shape of " Understanding," there is a con- sciousness of the supersensuous, of the inner being of objective existence. But the supersensible, the eternal, or whatever we care to call it, is devoid of selfhood. It is merely, to begin with, something uni- versal, which is a long way still from being spirit knowing itself as spirit.
Then there was Self-consciousness, which came to its final shape in the " bereft soul," the " unhappy consciousness " ; that was merely the pain and sorrow of spirit wresthng to get itself out into objectivity once more, but not succeeding. The unity of individual self-consciousness with its unchangeable Being, which is what this stage arrives at, remains, in consequence, a " beyond," something afar off.
685
686 Phenomenology of Mind
The immediate existence of Reason (which we found arising out of that state of sorrow), and the special shapes which reason assumes, have no form of rehgion, because self-consciousness in the case of reason knows itself or looks for itself in the direct and immediate present.
On the other hand, in the world of the Ethical Order, we met with a type of rehgion, the religion of the nether world. This is belief in the fearful and un- known darkness of Fate, and in the Eumenides of the spirit of the departed : the former being pure negation taking the form of universahty, the latter the same negation but in the form of particularity. Absolute Being is, then, in the latter shape no doubt the self and is present, as there is no other way for the self to he except present. But the particular self is this particular ghostly shade, which keeps the universal element, Fate, separated from itself. It is indeed a shade, a ghost, a cancelled and superseded particular, and so a universal self. But that negative meaning has not yet turned round into this latter positive significance, and hence the self, so cancelled and transcended, still directly means at the same time this particular being, this insubstantial reahty. Fate, however, without self remains the darkness of night devoid of consciousness, which never comes to draw distinctions within itself, and never attains the clear- ness of self-knowledge.
This behef in a necessity that produces nothing- ness, this belief in the nether world, becomes behef in Heaven, because the self which has departed must be united with its universal nature, must unfold what it contains in terms of this universahty, and thus
Religion 687
become clear to itself. This kingdom of belief, how- ever, we saw unfold its content merely in the element of reflective thought {Denken), without bringing out the true notion (Begriff) ; and we saw it, on that ac- count, perish in its final fate, viz. in the religion of enlightenment. Here in this type of rehgion, the super- sensible beyond, which we found in " understanding,'' is reinstated again, but in such a way that self-conscious- ness rests and feels satisfied in the mundane present, not in the " beyond," and thinks of the supersensible beyond, void and empty, unknowable, and devoid of all terrors, neither as a self nor as power and might.
In the religion of Morahty it is at last reinstated that Absolute Reahty is a positive content ; but that content is bound up with the negativity characteristic of the enlightenment. The content is an objective being, which is at the same time taken back into the self, and remains there enclosed, and is a content with internal distinctions, while its parts are just as imme- diately negated as they are posited. The final destiny, however, which absorbs this contradictory process, is the self conscious of itself as the controlhng necessity {Schicksal) of what is essential and actual.
Spirit knowing its self is in religion primarily and im- mediately its own pure self-consciousness. Those modes of it above considered — " objective spirit," " spirit estranged from itself " and " spirit certain of its self " — together constitute what it is in its condition of consciousness, the state in which, being objectively opposed to its own world, it does not therein apprehend and consciously possess itself. But in Conscience it brings itself as well as its objective world as a whole
688 Phenomenology of Mind
into subjection, as also its idea * and its various specific conceptions ; t and is now self-consciousness at home with itself. Here spirit, represented as an object, has the significance for itself of being Universal Spirit, which contains within itself all that is ultimate and essential and all that is concrete and actual ; yet is not in the form of freely subsisting actuality, or of the detached independence of external nature. It has a shape, no doubt, the form of objective being, in that it is object of its own consciousness ; but because this being is put forward in rehgion with the essential character of being self-consciousness, the form or shape assumed is one perfectly transparent to itself ; and the reahty spirit contains is enclosed in it, or transcended in it, just in the same way as when we speak of " all reality " ; its reality is universal reahty in the sense of a product of thought.
Since, then, in rehgion, the pecuhar characteristic of what is properly consciousness of spirit does not have the form of detached and external otherness, the existence of spirit is distinct from its self-conscious- ness, and its actual reahty proper falls outside rehgion. There is no doubt one spirit in both, but its conscious- ness does not embrace both together ; and rehgion appears as a part of existence, of acting, and of striving, whose other part is the hfe hved within its own actual world. As we now know that spirit in its own world and spirit conscious of itself as spirit, i.e. spirit in the I cfi, sphere of rehgion, are the same, the completion of rehgion consists in the two forms becoming identical with one another : not merely in its reahty being grasped and embraced by rehgion, but conversely — it, as spirit
* Vorstellung. t Begriff.
Religion 689
conscious of itself, becomes actual to itself, and real object of its own consciousness.
So far as spirit in religion presents itself to itself, it is indeed consciousness, and the reality enclosed within it is the shape and garment in which it clothes its idea of itself. The reahty, however, does not in this presentation get proper justice done to it, that is to say, it does not get to be an independent and free objective existence and not merely a garment. And conversely, because that reality lacks within itself its completion, it is a determinate shape or form, which does not attain to what it ought to reveal, viz. spirit conscious of itself. That its form might express spirit itself, the form would have to be nothing else than spirit, and spirit would have to appear to itself, or to be actual, as it is in its own essential being. Only thereby, too, would be attained — what may seem to demand the opposite — that the object of its consciousness has, at the same time, the form of free and independent reality. But only spirit which is object to itself in the shape of Absolute Spirit, is as much aware of being a free and independent reality as it remains therein conscious of itself.
Since in the first instance self-consciousness and con- sciousness simply, rehgion, and spirit as it is externally in its world, or the objective existence of spirit, are distinct, the latter consists in the totahty of spirit, so far as its moments are separated from each other and each is set forth by itself. These moments, however, are consciousness, self -consciousness, reason, and spirit — spirit, that is, qua immediate spirit, which is not yet consciousness of spirit. Its totality, taken all together, constitutes the mundane existence of spirit as a whole ;
VOL. II.— T
690 Phenomenology of Mind
spirit as such contains the previous separate embodi- ments in the form of universal determinations of its own being, in those moments just named. Rehgion Lc,0> presupposes that these have completely run their course, and is their simple totahty, their absolute Self and soul.
* The course which these traverse is, moreover, in relation to rehgion, not to be pictured as a temporal sequence. It is only spirit in its entirety that is in time, and the shapes assumed, which are specific embodiments of the whole of spirit as such, present themselves in a sequence one after the other. For it is only the whole which properly has reality, and hence the form of pure freedom relatively to any- thing else, the form which takes expression as time. But the moments of the whole, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, have, because they are moments, no existence separate from one another.
Just as spirit was distinct from its moments, we have further, in the third place, to distinguish from these moments their specific individuated char- acter. Each of those moments, in itself, we saw broke up again in a process of development all its own, and took various shapes and forms : as e.g. in the case of consciousness, sensuous certainty and perception were distinct phases. These latter aspects fall apart in time from one another, and belong to a specific particular whole. For spirit descends from its universality to assume an individual form through specification, by determination. This deter- mination, or mediate element, is consciousness, self-
* The two following paragraphs form a break in the analysis, and may be regarded as an explanatory note.
Feligion 691
consciousness, and so on. Now the forms assumed by these moments constitute individuahty. Hence these exhibit and reveal spirit in its individuahty or con- crete reahty, and are distinguished in time from one another, though in such a way that the succeeding re- tains within it the preceding.
While, therefore, rehgion is the completion of the life of spirit, its final and complete expression, into which, as being their ground, its individual moments, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, return and have returned, they, at the same time, together constitute the objectively existing reahsation of spirit in its totality ; as such spirit is real only as the moving process of these aspects which it possesses, a process of distinguishing them and returning back into itself. In the process of these universal moments is con- tained the development of religion generally. Since, however, each of these attributes was set forth and presented, not only in the way it in general determines itself, but as it is in and for itself, i.e. as, within its own being, running its course as a distinct whole — there has thus arisen not merely the development of rehgion generally ; those independently complete processes pur- sued by the individual phases and stages of spirit contain at the same time the determinate forms of rehgion itself. Spirit in its entirety, spirit in rehgion, is once more the process from its immediacy to the attainment of a knowledge of what it imphcitly or immediately is ; and is the process of attaining the state where the shape and form, in which it appears as an object for its own consciousness, will be perfectly identical with and adequate to its essential nature, and where it will behold itself as it is.
692 Phenomenology of Mind
In this development of religion, then, spirit itself as- sumes definite forms, which constitute the distinctions involved in this process : and at the same time a deter- minate or specific form of rehgion has hkewise an actual spirit of a specific character. Thus, if consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit belong to self- knowing spirit in general, in a similar way the specific shapes, which self-knowing spirit assumes, appropriate and adopt the distinctive forms which were specially developed in the case of each of the stages — con- sciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit. The determinate shape, assumed in a given case by re- ligion, appropriates, from among the forms belonging to each of its moments, the one adapted to it, and makes this its actual spirit. This one determinate attitude of* rehgion pervades and permeates all aspects of its actual existence, and stamps them with this common feature.
In this way the arrangement now assumed by the forms and shapes which have thus far appeared, is different from the way they appeared in their own order. On this point we may note shortly at the out- set what is of chief importance. In the series we con- sidered, each moment, exhaustively elaborating its entire content, evolved and formed itself into a single whole within its own peculiar principle. And knowledge was the inner depth, or the spirit, wherein the elements, having no subsistence of their own, possessed their substance. This substance, however, has now at length made its appearance ; it is the deep hfe of spirit certain of itself ; it does not allow the principle be- longing to each individual form to get isolated, and become a whole within itself : rather it collects all
Religion 693
these moments into its own content, keeps them to- gether, and advances within this total wealth of its concrete actual spirit ; while all its particular moments take into themselves and receive together in common the hke determinate character of the whole. This spirit certain of itself and the process it goes through — this is their true reahty, the independent self -subsistence, which belongs to each individually.
Thus while the previous linear series in its advance marked the retrogressive steps in it by knots, but thence went forward again in one hnear stretch, it is now, as it were, broken at these knots, these universal moments, and radiates into many hnes, which, being bound together into a single bimdle, combine at the same time symmetrically, so that the similar distmctions, in which each separately took shape within its own sphere, meet together.
For the rest, it is self-evident from the whole argu- ment, how this co-ordination of universal directions, just mentioned, is to be understood; so that it be- comes superfluous to remark that these distinctions are to be taken to mean essentially and only moments of the process of development, not parts. In the case of actual concrete spirit they are attributes of its substance ; in rehgion, on the other hand, they are only predicates of the subject. In the same way, indeed, all forms in general are, in themselves or for us, contained in spirit and contained in every spirit. But the main point of importance, in deahng with its reahty, is solely what determinate character it has in its consciousness, in which specific character it has expressed its self, or in what shape it knows its essential nature.
'/■-• 7
694 Phenomenology of Mind
The distinction made between actual spirit and that same spirit which knows itself as spirit, or between itself qua consciousness and qua self-consciousness, is transcended and done away with in the case where spirit knows itself in its real truth. Its consciousness and its self-consciousness have come to terms. But, as rehgion is here to begin with and immediately, this distinction has not yet reverted to spirit. It is merely the conception, the principle, of rehgion that is es- tablished at first. In this the essential element is self-consciousness, which is conscious of being all truth, and which contains all reality within that truth. This self-consciousness, being consciousness [and so aware of an object], has itself for its object. Spirit, which knows itself in the first instance immediately, is thus to itself spirit in the form of immediacy ; and the specific character of the shape in which it appears to itself is that of pure simple being. This being, this bare existence, has indeed a filhng drawn neither from sensation or manifold matter, nor from any other one-sided elements, purposes, and determinations ; its filling is solely spirit, and is known by itself to be all truth and reality. Such filling is in this first form not in agreement or identity with its own shape ; spirit qua ultimate Reality is not in accord with its consciousness. It is actual only as Absolute Spirit, when it is also to itself in its truth as it is in its certainty of itself, or, when the extremes, into which spirit quu conscious- ness falls, exist for one another in spiritual shape. The embodiment adopted by spirit quxi object of its own consciousness, remains filled by the certainty of spirit, and this self-certainty constitutes its substance. Through this content, the degrading of the object to
Religion 695
bare objectivity, to the form of something that negates self-consciousness, disappears. The immediate unity of spirit with itself is the fundamental basis, or pure consciousness, inside which consciousness breaks up into its constituent elements [viz. an object with subject over against it]. In this way, shut up within its pure self-consciousness, spirit does not exist in religion as the creator of a nature in general; rather what it produces in the course of this process are its forms and shapes qita spirits, which together constitute all that it can reveal when it is completely manifested. And this process itself is the development of its perfect and com- plete actuality through the individual aspects thereof, i.e. through its imperfect modes of realisation.
The first reaHsation of spirit is just the principle and notion of rehgion itself — rehgion as immediate and thus Natural Rehgion. Here spirit knows itself as its object in a " natural '' or immediate shape. The second reahsation, is, however, necessarily that of r^o» knowing itself in the shape of transcended and super- seded natural existence, i.e. in the form of self. This is the Rehgion of Art or productive activity. For the shape it adopts is raised to the form of self through the productive activity of consciousness, by which this consciousness beholds in its object its own action, i.e. sees the self. The third reahsation, finally, cancels the one-sidedness of the first two : the self is as much an immediate self as the immediacy is a self. If spirit in the first is in the form of consciousness, and in the second in that of self-consciousness, it is in the third in the form of the unity of both ; it has then the shape of what is completely self-contained {An-und Fürsichseyns) ; and since it is thus presented as it
696 Pheno?nenology of Mind
is in and for itself, this is the sphere of Revealed Re- ligion. Although spirit, however, here reaches its true shape, the very shape assumed and the conscious presentation are an aspect and phase still unsurmounted ; and from this spirit has to pass over into the hfe of the Notion, in order therein completely to resolve the form of objectivity, in the notion, which embraces within itself this its own opposite.
It is then that spirit has grasped its own principle, the notion of itself, as so far only we [who analyse spirit] have grasped it ; and its form, the element of its existence, since this form is the notion, is then spirit itself.
Natural Religion
[The arrangement of the analysis of Religion and the divisions into the various subsections are, as indicated in the jDreceding note (p. 683), determined by the general development of experience. That development is from the immediate through mediation to the fusion of immediacy and mediation. The stages of the development of experience are Consciousness, Self-consciousness, Reason, the latter leading to its highest level — finite Spiritual existence. The development of Religion follows these various ways in which objects are given in experience, and the three chief divisions of Religion are determined accordingly : Natural Religion is religion at the level of Consciousness; Art, Religion at the level of Self-conscious- ness ; Revealed Religion is Religion at the level of Reason and Spirit. Each of these is again subdivided, and the subdivision follows more or less closely the various subdivisions of these three ultimate levels of ex- perience— Consciousness, Thus, in Natural Religion, we have Religion at the level of Sense-certainty — " Light " : Religion at the level of Percep- tion— " Life " : and Religion at the level of Understanding— the reciprocal relation constituted by the " play of forces " appears as the relation of the " Artificer " to his own product.
The general principle is not worked out in detail, with the same obviousness, in the case of the other two primary types of Religion — Art and Revealed Religion. But the same general method of development is pursued in these cases.
The historical material befoi'e the mind of the writer is, as might be expected, the various religions which have historically appeared amongst mankind. These religions are treated, however, as illustrations of prin- ciples dominating the religious consciousness in general, rather than as merely historical phenomena.
With the succeeding argument should be read Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, Part II, Sections I and II, and Part III.]
697
Natural Keligion*
Spirit knowing spirit is consciousness of itself ; and is to itself in the form of objectivity. It is ; and is at the same time self -existence {Fürsichsein). It is for self ; it is the aspect of self-consciousness, and is so in contrast to the aspect of its consciousness, the aspect by which it relates itself to itself as object. In its consciousness there is the opposition and in consequence the specificity of the form in which it appears to itself and knows itself. It is with this specificity that we have alone to do in considering rehgion ; for its essential unspecified principle, its abstract notion, has akeady come to light. The distinction of consciousness and self-consciousness, however, falls at the same time within this notion. The form or shape of rehgion does not contain the existence of spirit in the sense of its being nature detached and free from thought, nor in the sense of its being thought detached from existence. The shape assumed by rehgion is existence contained and preserved in thought, as well as a thought-content which is consciously existent.
It is by the determinate character of this form, in which spirit knows itself, that one rehgion is dis- tinguished from another. But we have at the same time to note that the systematic exposition of this knowledge about itself, in terms of this particular specific character, does not as a fact exhaust the whole
* Primarily Oriental religion.
69S
Natural Religion 699
meaning of a given actual religion. The series of different religions, which will come before us, just as much sets forth again merely the different aspects of a single rehgion, and indeed of every particular rehgion, and the ideas, the conscious processes, which seem to mark off one concrete religion from another, make their appearance in each. All the same the diversity must also be looked at as a diversity of rehgion. For while spirit hves in the distinction of its consciousness and its self-consciousness, the process it goes through finds its goal in the transcendence of this fundamental distinction and in giving the form of self-consciousness to the given shape which is object of consciousness. This distinction, however, is not eo ipso transcended by the fact that the shapes, which that consciousness contains, have also the element of self in them, and that God is represented as self -consciousness. The consciously presented self is not the actual concrete self. In order that this, hke every other more specific determination of the form, may in truth belong to this form, it has partly to be put into this form by the action of self- consciousness, and partly the lower determination must show itself to be cancelled and transcended and com- prehended by the higher. For what is consciously presented (Vorgstellt) only ceases to be something " presented " and ahen, external, to its knowledge, by the self having produced it, and so viewing the deter- mination of the object as its own determination, and hence seeing itself in that object. By this operation, the lower determination [that of being something " pre- sented "] has at once vanished ; for doing anything is a oo^ negative process which is carried through at the expense of something else. So far as that lower determination
700 Phenomenology of Mind
still continues to appear, it has withdrawn into what is without any essential significance : just as, on the other hand, where the lower still predominates, while the higher is also present, the one co-exists in a self-less way alongside of the other. While, therefore, the various ideas falling within a particular rehgion no doubt exhibit the whole course its forms take, the character of each is determined by the particular unity of consciousness and self-consciousness ; that is to say, by the fact that self-consciousness has taken into itself the determination belonging to the object of consciousness, has, by its own action, made that determination altogether its own, and Imows it to be the essential one as compared with the others.
The truth of behef in a given determination of the rehgious spirit shows itself in this, that the actual spirit is constituted after the same manner as the form in which spirit beholds itself in rehgion ; thus e.g. the in- carnation of God, which is found in Eastern rehgion, has no truth, because the concrete actual spirit of this re- ligion is without the reconcihation this principle imphes.
It is not in place here to return from the totahty of specific determinations back to the particular deter- mination, and show in what shape the plenitude of all the others is contained within it and within its par- ticular form of religion. The higher form, when put back under a lower, is deprived of its significance for self-conscious spirit, belongs to spirit merely in a super- ficial way, and is for it at the level of a presentation. The higher form has to be considered in its own peculiar significance, and dealt with where it is the principle of a particular religion, and is certified and approved by its actual spirit.
a
God as Light*
Spirit, as the absolute Being, which is self-conscious- ness— or the self-conscious absolute Being, which is all truth and knows all reality as itself — is, to begin with, merely its notion and principle in contrast to the reahty which it acquires in the process of its con- scious activity. And this conception is, as contrasted with the clear dayhght of that explicit development, the darkness and night of its inner hfe ; in contrast to the existence of its various moments as independent forms and shapes, this notion is the creative secret of its birth. This secret has its revelation within itself ; for existence has its necessary place in this notion, because this notion is spirit knowing itself, and thus possesses in its own nature the moment of being con- sciousness and of presenting itself objectively. We have here the pure ego, which, in externalising itself, in seeing itself qua universal object, has the certainty of self ; in other words, this object is, for the ego, the fusion of all thought and all reahty.
When the first and immediate cleavage is made within self-knowing Absolute Spirit, its form assumes that character which belongs to immediate consciousness or to sense-certainty. It beholds itself in the form of being ; but not being in the sense of what is without
* Parsee religion. 701
702 Phenomenology of Mind
spirit, containing only the contingent qualities of sensa- tion— the kind of being that belongs solely to sense- certainty. Its being is filled with the content of spirit. It also includes within it the form which we found in the case of immediate self-consciousness, the form of lord and master,* with reference to the self-consciousness of spirit which retreats from its object.
This being, having as its content the notion of spirit, is, then, the mode of spirit in relation simply to itself — the form of having no special form at all. In virtue of this characteristic, this mode is the pure all-containing, all-suffusing Light of the East, which preserves itself in its formless indeterminate substanti- ality. Its counterpart, its otherness, is the equally simple negative — Darkness. The processes of its own self-abandonment, its creations in the unresisting element of its counterpart, are bursts of Light. At the same time in their ultimate simpHcity they are its way of becoming something for itself, its return from its objective existence, streams of fire consuming its embodiment. The distinction, which it gives itself, no doubt thrives abundantly on the substance of existence, and grows into and assumes the diverse forms of nature. But the essential simplicity of its thought rambles and roves about inconstant and inconsistent, enlarges 5^ i^ its boimds to measureless extent, and its beauty heightened to splendour is lost in its subhmity.f
The content, which this state of mere being involves, its perceptive activity, is, therefore, an unreal by- play on this substance which merely rises, without descending into itself to become subject and secure
* Term applied iu e.g. Judaism and Mohammedanism, t Cp. Philos. ofRelig., W.W., XI, 403, 404, 411.
God as Light 703
firmly its distinctions through the self. Its deter- minations are merely attributes, which do not succeed in attaining independence ; they remain merely names of the One, called by many names. This One is clothed with the manifold powers of existence and with the shapes of reahty, as with a soulless, selfless ornament ; they are merely messengers of its mighty power,* claiming no will of their own, visions of its glory, voices in its praise.
This revel of heaving lifef must, however, assume the character of distinctive self-existence, and give enduring subsistence to its fleeting forms. Immediate being, in which it places itself over against its own consciousness, is itself the negative destructive agency which dissolves its distinctions. It is thus in truth the Self ; and spirit therefore passes on to Imow itself in the form of self. Pure Light scatters its simphcity as an infinity of separate forms, and presents itself as an offering to self-existence, that the individual may have sustainment in its substance.
* Angels. t Cp. Ency., § 389.
Plants and Animals as Objects of Religion*
Self-conscious spirit, passing away from abstract, formless Essence and going into itself — or, in other words, having raised its immediacy to the level of Self — makes its simple unity assume the character of a manifold of self-existing entities, and is the E-eligion of spiritual Sense-Perception. Here spirit breaks up into an innumerable plurahty of weaker and stronger, richer and poorer spirits. This Pantheism, which, to begin with, consists in the quiescent stability of these spiritual atoms, passes into a process of active internal hostility. The innocence, which characterises the flower and plant religions, and which is merely the selfless idea of Self, gives way to the seriousness of strugghng warring life, to the guilt of animal religions ; the quiescence and impotence of merely contemplative individuahty pass into the destructive violence of separate self-existence.
It is of no avail to have removed the hfelessness of abstraction from the things of perception, and to have raised them to the level of reahties of spiritual perception : the animation of this spiritual kingdom has death in the heart of it, owing to the fact of deter- minateness and the inherent negativity, which invades and trenches upon their innocent and harmless indiffer- ence to one another. Owing to this determinateness
* Primarily religions of India.
704
Plants and Animals as Objects of Religion 705
and negativity, the dispersion of passive plant-forms into manifold entities becomes a hostile process, in which the hatred stirred up by their independent self- existence rages and consumes.
The actual self-consciousness at work in this dis- persed and disintegrated spirit, takes the form of a multitude of individuahsed mutually-antipathetic folk- spirits, who fight and hate each other to the death, and consciously accept certain specific forms of animals as their essential reality, their god * : for they are nothing else than spirits of animals, their animal hfe separate and cut ofi from one another, and with no universahty consciously present in them.
The characteristic of purely negative independent self-existence, however, consumes itself in this active hatred towards one another ; and through this pro- cess, involved in its very principle, spirit enters into another shape. Independent self-existence can- celled and abohshed is the form of the object, a form which is produced by the self, or rather is the self produced, the self-consuming self, i.e. the self that becomes a " thing." The agent at work, therefore, retains the upper hand over these animal spirits merely tearing each other to pieces ; and his action is not merely negative, but composed and creative. The consciousness of spirit is, thus, now the process which is above and beyond the immediate inherent [universal] nature, as well as transcends the abstract self-existence in isolation. Since the imphcit inherent nature is relegated, through opposition, to the level of a specific character, it is no longer the proper form of Absolute Spirit, but a reahty which its consciousness
* Sacred animals in Indian religion, VOL. II.— U
706 Phenomenology of Mind
finds lying over against itself as an ordinary existing fact and cancels; at the same time this consciousness is not merely this negative cancelling self-existent being, but produces its own objective idea of itself, — self- existence put forth in the form of an object. This c- ^ process of production is, all the same, not yet perfect production ; it is a conditioned activity, the forming of a given material.
The Artificer*
Spirit, then, here takes the form of the artificer, and its action, when producing itself as object, but without having as yet grasped the thought of itself, is an instinctive kind of working, hke bees building their cells.
The first form, because immediate, has the abstract character of " understanding," and the work accom- phshed is not yet in itself endued with spirit. The crystals of Pyramids and Obehsks, simple combinations of straight fines with even surfaces and equal relations of parts in which incommensurability of curvature is set aside — these are the works produced in strict geo- metrical form by this artificer. Owing to the purely abstract intelfigible nature of the form, it is not in itself the true significance of the form ; it is not the spiritual self. Thus, either the works produced only receive spirit into them as an alien, departed spirit, one that has forsaken its hving suffusion and permeation with reahty, and, being itself dead, enters into these fifeless crystals ; or they take up an external relation to spirit as something which is itself external and not there as spirit — they are related to it as to the orient Light, which throws its significance on them.
The separation of elements from which spirit as
* Egyptian religions. 707
708 Phenomenology of Mind
artificer starts — the separation of the impHcit essential nature, which becomes the material it works upon, and independent self-existence, which is the aspect of self-consciousness at work — this division has become objective in the result achieved. Its further endeavour has to be directed to cancelhng and doing away with this separation of soul and body ; it must strive to clothe and give embodied shape to soul per se, and endow the body with soul. The two aspects, since they are brought closer to one another, bear towards each other, in this condition, the character of ideally presented spirit and of enveloping shell. Spirit's oneness with itself contains this opposition of indi- viduahty and universality. Since the aspects of the work produced become closer by performance of it, there comes about thereby at the same time the other fact, that the work gets nearer to the self-consciousness performing it, and that the latter attains in the work knowledge of itself as it truly is. In this way, however, the work merely constitutes to begin with the abstract side of the activity of spirit, which does not yet per- ceive the content of this activity within itself but in its work, which is a "thing.'' The artificer as such, spirit in its entirety, has not yet appeared ; the artificer is still the inner, hidden reahty, which qua entire is present only as broken up into active self-consciousness and the object it has produced.
The surrounding habitation, external reahty, which to begin with is raised merely to the abstract form of the understanding, is worked up by the artificer and made into a more animated form. The artificer em- ploys plant life for this purpose, which is no longer sacred, as in the previous case of inactive impotent
The Artificer 709
pantheism ; rather, the artificer, who holds himself to be the self-existent reahty, takes that plant Hfe as something to be used and degrades it to an ex- ternal aspect, to the level of an ornament. But it is not turned to use without some alteration : for the worker producing the self-conscious form destroys at the same time the transitoriness, inherently characteristic of the immediate existence of this hfe, and brings its organic forms nearer to the more exact and more uni- versal forms of thought. The organic form, which, left to itself, grows and thrives in particularity, being on its side subjugated by the form of thought, elevates in turn these straight-lined and level shapes into more animated roundedness — a blending which becomes the root of free architecture.*
This dwelhng, (the aspect of the universal element or inorganic nature of spirits), also includes within it now a form of individuality, which brings nearer to actuahty the spirit that was formerly separated from existence and external or internal thereto, and thus makes the work to accord more with active self-con- sciousness. The worker lays hold, first of all, on the form of self-existence in general, on the forms of animal life. That he is no longer directly aware of himself in animal hfe, he shows by the fact that in reference to sToa this he constitutes himself the productive force, and knows himself in it as being his own work, whereby the productive force at the same time is one which is super- seded and becomes the hieroglyphic symbol of another meaning, the hieroglyph of a thought. Hence also this force is no longer solely and entirely used by the worker, but becomes blended with the shape embody-
* The Egyptian columns and architecture.
710 Phenomenology of Mind
ing thought, with the human form.* Still, the work lacks the form and existence where self as self appears : it also fails to express in its very nature that it includes within itself an inner meaning ; it lacks language, the element in which the sense and meaning contained are actually present. The work done, therefore, even when quite purified of the animal aspect, and bearing the form and shape of self-consciousness alone, is still the silent soundless form, which needs the rays of the rising sun in order to have a sound which, when produced by light, is even then merely noise and not speech, shows merely an outer self, not the inner self.f
Contrasted with this outer self of the form and shape, stands the other form, which indicates that it has in it an inner being. Nature, turning back into its essen- tial being, degrades its multiplicity of life, ever individuahsing itself and confounding itself in its own process, to the level of an external encasing shell, which is the covering for the inner being. And still this inner being is primarily mere darkness, the un- moved, the black formless stone. 1:
Both representations contain inwardness and ex- istence— the two moments of spirit : and both kinds of manifestation contain both moments at once in a relation of opposition, the self both as inward and as outward. Both have to be imited. The soul of the statue in human form does not yet come out of the inner being, is not yet speech, objective existence of self which is inherently internal,— and the inner being of multiform existence is still without voice or sound,
* The representations of the gods with forms half animal, half hmnan.
t The statues of Memnon.
X The Black Stone of Mecca : a fetish still worshipped by the faithful.
The Artificer "711
still draws no distinctions within itself, and is still separated from its outer being, to which all distinctions belong. The artificer, therefore, combines both by blending the forms of nature and self-consciousness ; and these ambiguous beings, a riddle to themselves — the conscious strugghng with what has no consciousness, the simple inner with the multiform outer, the darkness of thought mated with clearness of expression — these break out into the language of a wisdom that is darkly deep and difficult to understand.*
With the production of this work, the instinctive method of working ceases, which, in contrast to self- consciousness, produced a work devoid of consciousness, For here the activity of the artificer, which constitutes self-consciousness, comes face to face with an inner being equally self-conscious and giving itself ex- pression. He has therein raised himself by his work up to the point where his conscious hfe breaks asunder, where spirit greets spirit. In this unity of self-conscious spirit with itself, so far as it is aware of being embodi- ment and object of its own consciousness, its blending and minghng with the unconscious condition of im- mediate forms of nature become purified. These monsters in form and shape, word and deed, are resolved and dissolved into a shape which is spiritual — an outer which has entered into itself, an inner which ex- presses itself out of itself and in itself, — they pass into thought, which brings forth itself, preserves the shape and form suited to thought, and is transparent exist- ence. Spirit is Artist.
* Sphinxes
B
Religion in the Form of Art*
Spirit has raised the shape in which it is object for its own consciousness into the form of conscious- ness itself ; and spirit sets such a form before itself. The artificer has given up the external synthesising activity, that blending of the heterogeneous forms of thought and nature. When the shape has gained the form of self-conscious activity, the artificer has become a spiritual workman.
If we next ask, what the actual spirit is, which finds in the religion of art the consciousness of its Absolute, it turns out that this is the ethical or objective spirit. £-10 This spirit is not merely the universal substance of all individuals ; but when this substance is said to have, as an objective fact for actual consciousness, the form of consciousness, this amounts to saying that the substance, which is individuahsed, is known by the individuals within it as their proper essence and their own achievement. It is for them neither the Light of the World, in whose unity the self-existence of self-consciousness is contained only negatively, only transitorily, and beholds the lord and master of its reahty ; nor is it the restless waste and destruction of hostile nations ; nor their subjection to " casts," which together constitute the semblance of organisation
* Greek religion. 712
Religion in the Form of Art 713
of a completed whole, where, however, the universal freedom of the individuals concerned is wanting. Rather this spirit is a free nation, in which custom and order constitute the common substance of all, whose reahty and existence each and every one knows to be his own will and his own deed.
The rehgion of the ethical spirit, however, raises it above its actual reahsation, and is the return from its objectivity into pure knowledge of itself. Since an ethically constituted nation hves in direct unity with its own substance, and does not contain the principle of pure individuahsm of self-consciousness, the rehgion characteristic of its sphere first appears in com- plete form in severance from its stable security. For the reahty of the ethical substance rests partly on its quiet unchangeableness as contrasted with the absolute process of self-consciousness ; and con- sequently on the fact that this self-consciousness has not yet left its serene hfe of customary convention and its confident security therein, and gone into itself. Partly, again, that reahty rests on its organisation into a plurahty of rights and duties, as also on its organised distribution into groups of stations and classes, each with its particular way of acting which co-operates to form the whole ; and hence rests on the fact that the individual is contented with the hmitation of his existence, and has not yet grasped the unrestricted thought of his free self. But that serene immediate confidence in the substance of this ethical Hfe returns to trust in self and to certainty of self ; and the plurahty of rights and duties, as well as the restricted particular Sji action this involves, is the same dialectic process in the sphere of the ethical hfe as the plurahty of " things "
714 Phenomenology of Mind
and their various " qualities " — a process which only comes to rest and stabihty in the simphcity of spirit certain of self.
The complete fulfilment of the ethical Hfe in free self-consciousness, and the destined consummation (Schicksal) of the ethical world, are therefore found when individuality has entered into itself ; the condition is one of absolute levity on the part of the ethical spirit ; it has dissipated and resolved into itself all the firmly estabhshed distinctions constituting its own stabihty, and the separate components of its own articulated organisation, and, being perfectly sure of itself, has attained to boundless cheerfulness of heart and the freest enjoyment of itself. This simple certainty of spirit within itself has a double meaning ; it is quiet stabihty and solid truth, as well as absolute unrest, and the disappearance of the ethical order. It turns round, however, into the latter ; for the truth of the ethical spirit hes primarily just in this substantial objectivity and trust, in which the self does not think of itself as free individual, and where the self, therefore, in this inner subjectivity, in becoming a free self, falls to the ground. Since then its trust is broken, and the sub- stance of the nation cracked, spirit, which was the connecting medium of the unstable extremes, has now come forward as an extreme — that of self-consciousness taking itself to be essential and ultimate. This is spirit certain within itself, which mourns over the loss of its world, and now produces out of the abstraction of self its own essential being, raised far above actual reaHty.
At such an epoch art in absolute form* comes on the scene. At the earher stage it is instinctive in its
* The religion of pure beauty.
Religion in the Form of Art 715
operation ; being absorbed and steeped in existence, it works out of and works into this element ; it does not find its substance in the free Hfe of an ethical order, and hence, too, the self operating does not consist of free spiritual activity.
Later on, spirit goes beyond art in order to gain its higher manifestation, viz. that of being not merely the substance born and produced out of the self, but of being in its manifestation object of this self ; it seeks at that higher level not merely to bring forth itself out of its own notion, but to have its very notion as its form, so that the notion and the work of art pro- s'12. duced may know each other reciprocally as one and the same.*
Since, then, the ethical substance has withdrawn from its objective existence into its bare self -conscious- ness, this is the aspect of the notion, or the activity with which spirit brings itself forward as object. It is pure form, because the individual in ethical obedience and service has so worked off every unconscious existence and every fixed determination, as the sub- stance has itseK become this fluid and undifferentiated entity. This form is the night in which the substance was betrayed, and made itself subject. It is out of this night of pure certainty of self that the ethical spirit rises again in a shape freed from nature and its own immediate existence.
The existence of the pure notion into which spirit has fled from its bodily shape, is an individual, which spirit selects as the vessel for its sorrow. Spirit acts in this individual as his universal and his power, from which he suffers violence, as his element of " Pathos,"
* This paragraph may be regarded as an interpolated note.
716 Phenomenology of Mind
by having given himself over to which his self- consciousness loses freedom. But that positive power belonging to the universal is overcome by the pure self of the individual, the negative power. This pure activity, conscious of its inahenable force, wrestles with the unembodied essential being. Becoming its master, this negative activity has turned the element of pathos into its own material, and given itself its content ; and this unity comes out as a work, universal spirit individualised and consciously presented.
a
The Abstract Work of Art
The first work of art is, because immediate, abstract and particular. On its own side it has to move away from this immediate and objective phase towards self- consciousness, while, on the other side, the latter for itself endeavours in the '' cult " to do away with the distinction, which it at first gave itself in contrast to its own spirit, and by so doing to produce a work of art inherently endowed with Ufe.
The first way in which the artistic spirit keeps as far as possible removed from each other its form and its active consciousness, is immediate in character — the form assumed is there as a " thing " in general. It breaks up into the distinction of particularity, which contains the form of the self, and universality, which represents the inorganic elements in reference to the form adopted, and is its environment and habitation. This shape assumed obtains its pure form, the form belonging to spirit, by the whole being raised into the sphere of the pure notion. It is not the crystal, belong- ing as we saw to the level of understanding, a form which housed and covered a hfeless element, or is shone upon externally by a soul. Nor, again, is it that com- minghng of the forms of nature and thought, which first arose in connection with plants, thought's activity here being still an imitation. Rather the notion strips off
717
718 Phenomenology of Mind
the remnant of root, branches and leaves, still chnging to the forms, purifies the forms and makes them into figures in which the crystal's straight hues and surfaces are raised into incommensurable relations, so that the animation of the organic is taken up into the abstract form of understanding, and, at the same time, its essential nature — incommensurabiUty — is preserved for understanding.
The indwelling god, however, is the black stone extracted from the animal encasement,* and suffused with the light of consciousness. The human form strips off the animal character with which it was mixed up. The animal form is for the god merely an accidental vestment ; the animal appears alongside its true form,t and has no longer a value on its own account, but has sunk into being a significant sign of something else, has become a mere symbol. By that very fact, the form assumed by the god in itself casts off even the need for the natural conditions of animal existence, and hints at the internal arrangements of organic hfe melted down into the surface of the form, and pertaining only to this surface.
The essential being of the god, however, is the unity of the universal existence of nature and of self-conscious spirit which in its actuahty appears confronting the former. At the same time, being in the first instance a particular form, its existence is one of the elements of nature, just as its self-conscious actuahty is a par- ticular national spirit. 1: But the former is, in this unity, that element reflected back into spirit, nature made transparent by thoughts and united with self-
* V. anp., p. 710. t e.g. the eagle as tlie "bird of Zeus."
I e.g. Athene.
The Abstract Work of Art 719
conscious life. The form of the gods retains, therefore, within it its nature-element as something transcended, as a shadowy, obscure memory. The utter chaos and confused struggle amongst the elements existing free and detached from each other, the non-ethical dis- ordered realm of Titans, is vanquished and banished to the outskirts of self-transparent reahty, to the cloudy boundaries of the world which finds itself in the sphere of spirit and is at peace. These ancient gods, first-born children of the union of Light with Darkness, Heaven, Earth, Ocean, Sun, earth's aimless typhonic Fire, and so on, are supplanted by forms and shapes, which do but darkly recall those earlier titans, and which are no longer things of nature, but spirits clarified by the ethical hfe of self-conscious nations.
This simple form has thus destroyed within itself restless endless individuation, the individuation both in the hfe of nature, which operates with necessity only qua universal essence, but is contingent in its actual existence and process ; and also in the hfe of a nation, which is scattered and broken into parti- cular spheres of action and into individual centres of self-consciousness, and has an existence mani- fold in action and meaning. All this individuation the simphcity of this form has abolished, and brought together into an individuality at peace with itself. Hence the condition of unrest stands contrasted with this form ; confronting quiescent individuahty, the essential reahty, stands self-consciousness, which, being its source and origin, has nothing left over for itself except to be pure activity. What belongs to the sub- stance, the artist gave entirely along with his work ; to himself, however, as a specific individuahty there
720 Phenomenology of Mind
belongs in his work no reality. He could only have conferred completeness on it by reUnquishing his particular nature, divesting himself of his own being, and rising to the abstraction of pure action.
With the first and immediate act of production, the separation of the work and his self-conscious activity is not yet healed again. The work is, therefore, not by itself really a spiritual entity ; it is a whole only when its process of coming to be is taken along with it. The obvious and common element in the case of a work of art, that it is produced in consciousness and is made by the hand of man, is the aspect of the notion existing qua notion, and standing in contrast to the work produced. And if this notion, qua the artist or spectator, is unselfish enough to declare the work of art to be fer se absolutely spiritual, and to forget himself quxi agent or onlooker, then, as against this, the notion of spirit has to be insisted on ; spirit cannot dispense with the moment of being conscious of itself. This moment, however, stands in contrast to the work, because spirit, in this its primary dis- ruption, gives the two sides their abstract and specific- ally contrasted characteristics of " doing " something and of being a " thing " ; and their return to the unity they started from has not yet come about.
The artist finds out, then, in his work, that he did not produce a reahty Hke himself. No doubt there comes back to him from his work a consciousness in the sense that a wondering multitude honours it as the spirit, which is their own true nature. But this way of animating or spirituahsing his work, since it renders him his self-consciousness merely in the form of ad- miration, is rather a confession that the work is not
The Abstract Work of Art 721
animated in the same manner as the artist. Since the work comes back to him in the form of gladness in general, he does not find in it the pain of his self-disciphne and the pain of production, nor the exertion and strain of his own toil. People may, moreover, judge the work, or bring him offerings and gifts, or endue it with their consciousness in whatever way they Hke — if they with their knowledge set them- selves over it, he knows how much more his act is than what they understand and say ; if they put themselves beneath it, and recognise in it their own dominating essential reahty, he knows himself as the master of this. The work of art hence requires another element for its existence ; God requires another way of going forth than this, in which, out of the depths of his creative night, he drops into the opposite, into ex- ternahty, to the character of a " thing " with no self- consciousness. This higher element is that of Language — a way of existing which is directly self-conscious existence. When individual self-consciousness exists in that way, it is at the same time directly a form of universal contagion ; complete isolation of indepen- dent self-existent selves is at once fluent continuity and universally communicated unity of the many selves ; it is the soul existing as soul. The god, then, which takes language as its medium of em- bodiment, is the work of art inherently spirituahsed, endowed with a soul, a work which directly in its existence contains the pure activity which was apart from and in contrast to the god when existing as a " thing." In other words, self-consciousness, when its essential being becomes objective, remains in direct relation with itself. It is, when thus at home with
VOL. II.— X
722 Phenomenology of Mind
itself in its essential nature, pure thought or devotion, whose inwardness gets at the same time express ex- istence in the Hymn. The hymn keeps within it the individuality of self-consciousness, and this in- dividual character is at the same time perceived to be there universal. Devotion, kindled in every one, is a spiritual stream which in all the manifold self-con- scious units is conscious of itself as one and the same function in all ahke and a simple state of being. Spirit, being this universal self-consciousness of every one, holds in a single unity its pure inwardness as well as its objective existence for others and the independent self-existence of the individual units.
This kind of language is distinct from another way God speaks, which is not that of universal self- consciousness. The Oracle, both in the case of the god of the religions of art as well as of the pre- ceding religions, is the necessary and the first form of divine utterance. For its very principle imphes that God is at once the essence of nature and of spirit, and hence has not merely natural but spiritual existence as well. In so far as this moment is imphed primarily in its principle and is not yet reahsed in rehgion, the language used is, for the religious self- consciousness, the speech of an alien and external self-consciousness. The self-consciousness which re- ^ '7 mains ahen and foreign to its religious communion, is not yet there in the way its essential principle re- quires it should be. The self is simple self-existence, and thereby is altogether universal self-existence ; that self, however, which is cut off from the self-con- sciousness of the communion, is primarily a mere par- ticular self.
The Abstract Work of Art 723
The content of this its own pecuUar and individual form of speech is suppKed from the general determinate character which the Absolute Spirit as such adopts in its rehgion. Thus the universal spirit of the East, which has not yet particularised its existence, utters about the Absolute equally simple, abstract, and universal statements, whose substantial content is subhme in the simpHcity of its truth, but at the same time appears, because of this universality, trivial to the self-consciousness developing further.
The further developed self, which advances to being distinctively for itself, rises above the pure " pathos " of [unconscious] substance, gets the mastery over the objectivity of the principle of Light in Eastern rehgion, and knows that simplicity of abstract truth to be the inherent reahty {das AnsicJiseyende) which does not possess the form of contingent existence through an utterance of an ahen self, but is the sure and unwritten law of the gods, a law that " Hves for ever, and no man knows what time it came."
As the universal truth, revealed by the " Light " of the world, has here returned into what is within or what is beneath, and has thus got rid of the form of contingent appearance; so too, on the other hand, in the rehgion of art, because God's form or shape has taken on consciousness and hence particularity in general, the pecuHar utterance of God, who is the spirit of an ethically constituted nation, is the Oracle, which knows its special circumstances and situation, and announces what is serviceable to its interests. Reflective thought, however, satisfies itself as to the universal truths enunciated, because these are known as the essential imphcit reahty of the nation's hfe ;
724 Phenomenology of Mind
and the utterance of them is thus for such reflection no longer a strange and ahen speech, but is its very- own. Just as that wise man of old * searched in his own thought for what was worthy and good, but left it to his " Daimon " to find out and decide the petty contingent content of what he wanted to know — whether it was good for him to keep company with SiS this or that person, or good for one of his friends to go on a journey, and such like unimportant things ; in the same way the universal consciousness draws the knowledge about the contingent from birds, or trees, or fermenting earth, the steam from which deprives the self-conscious mind of its powers of discrimination. For what is accidental is something imdiscerned, un- discriminated, and extraneous; and hence the ethical consciousness lets itself, as if by a throw of the dice, settle the matter in a manner that is similarly undis- criminating and extraneous. If the individual, by his understanding, determines on a certain course, and selects, after consideration, what is useful for him, it is the specific nature of his particular character which is the ground of this self-determination. This basis is just what is contingent ; and that knowledge which his understanding supplies as to what is useful for the individual, is hence just such a knowledge as that of " oracles " or of the " lot " ; only that he who questions the oracle or lot, thereby shows the ethical sentiment of indifference to what is accidental, while the former, on the contrary, treats the inherently contingent as an essential concern of his thought and knowledge. Higher than both, however, is to make careful reflection the oracle for contingent action, but yet to recognise that
* Socrates.
The Abstract Work of Art 725
this very act reflected on is something contingent, be- cause it refers to what is opportune and has a relation to what is particular.
The true self-conscious existence, which spirit receives in the form of speech, which is not the utterance of extraneous and so accidental, i.e. not universal, self- consciousness, is the work of art which we met with before. It stands in contrast to the statue, which has the character of a " thing." As the statue is ex- istence in a state of rest, the other is existence in a state of transience. In the case of the former, objectivity is set free and dispenses \vith the iromediate presence of the self proper ; in the latter, on the other hand, objectivity is too much bound up with the self, attains insufiiciently to definite embodiment, and is, Hke time, no longer there just as soon as it is there.
The rehgious Cult constitutes the process of the two - sides — a process in which the divine embodiment in ' motion within the pure feehng-element of self-con- sciousness and its embodiment at rest in the element of thinghood, reciprocally abandon the different character each possesses, and the unity, which is the underlying principle of their being, becomes an existing fact. Here in the Cult, the self gives itself a consciousness of the Divine Being descending from its remoteness into it, and this Divine Being, which was formerly the unreal and merely objective, thereby receives the proper actuahty of self-consciousness.
This principle of the Cult is essentially contained and present already in the flow of the melody of the Hymn. These hymns of devotion are the way the self obtains immediate pure satisfaction through and within itself. It is the soul purified, which, in the
726 Phenomenology of Mind
purity it thus attains, is immediately and only absolute Being, and is one with absolute Being. The soul, because of its abstract character, is not consciousness distinguishing its object from itself, and is thus merely the night of its existence and the place prepared for its form. The abstract Cult, therefore, raises the self into being this pure divine element. The soul brings about the attainment of this purity in a conscious way. Still it is not yet the self, which has descended to the depths of its being, and knows itself as evil. It is something that merely is, a soul, which cleanses its exterior with the washing of water, and robes it in white, while its innermost traverses the path set before itself of labour, punishment, and reward, the way of spiritual discipline, of altogether rehnquishing its par- ticularity—the road by which it reaches the mansions and the fellowship of the blest.
This ceremonial cult is, in its first form, merely in secret, i.e. is merely a performance accomplished sub- jectively in idea, and unrealised. It has to become a real act, for an unreal act is a contradiction in terms. Consciousness proper, thereby, rises to the level of its pure self-consciousness. The essential Being has in it the significance of a free object ; through the actual cult this object turns back to the self; and in so far as, in pure consciousness, it has the significance of absolute isii} Being dwelling in its purity beyond actual reality, this Being descends, through this mediating process of the cult, from its universahty into individual form, and thus combines and unites with actual reahty.
The way the two sides make their appearance in the act is of such a character that the self-conscious aspect, so far as it is actual consciousness, finds the absolute
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Being manifesting itself as actual nature. On the one hand, nature belongs to self - consciousness as its possession and property, and stands for what has no existence fer se. On the other hand, nature is its proper immediate reahty and particularity, which is equally regarded as not truly real and essential, and is abrogated. At the same time, that external nature has the opposite significance for its pure consciousness — viz. the significance of being the in- herently real, for which the self sacrifices its own [relative] unreahty, just as, conversely, the self sacrifices the imessential aspect of nature to itself. The act is thereby a spiritual movement, because it is this double- sided process of cancelling the abstraction of absolute Being (in the way devotion determines the object), and making it something concrete and actual, and, on the other hand, of cancelhng the actual (in the way the agent determines the object and the self acting), and raising it into universahty.
The practice of the rehgious Cult begins, therefore, with the pure and simple " offering up " or " sur- render " of a possession, which the owner apparently considers quite useless for himself and spills on the ground or lets rise up in smoke. By so doing he re- nounces before the ultimate Being of his pure conscious- ness all possession and right of property and enjoyment thereof ; renounces personahty and the reversion of his action to his self ; and instead, reflects the act into the universal, into the absolute Being rather than into himself. Conversely, however, the objective ultimate Being too is annihilated in that very pro- cess. The animal offered up is the sjanbol of a god ; the fruits consumed are the actual hving Ceres and
728 Phenomenology of Mind
Bacchus. In the former die the powers of the upper law [the Olympians] which has blood and actual Hfe, in the latter the powers of the lower law [the Furies] which possesses in bloodless form secret and crafty- power. £1) The sacrifice of the divine substance, so far as it is
active, belongs to the side of self-consciousness. That this concrete act may be possible, the absolute Being must have from the start implicitly sacrificed itself. This it has done in the fact that it has given itself definite existence, and made itself an individual animal and fruit of the earth. The self actively sacrificing demonstrates in actual existence, and sets before its own conscious- ness, this already implicitly completed self-renunciation on the part of absolute Being ; and replaces that im- mediate reahty, which absolute Being has, by the higher, viz. that of the self making the sacrifice. For the unity which has arisen, and which is the outcome of transcending the particularity and separation of the two sides, is not merely negative destructive fate, but has a positive significance. It is merely for the abstract Being of the netherworld that the sacrifice offered to it is wholly surrendered and devoted ; and, in consequence, it is only for that Being that the reflection of personal possession and individual self-existence back into the Universal is marked distinct from the self as such. At the same time, however, this is only a trifling part ; and the other act of sacrifice is merely the destruction of what cannot be used, and is really the preparation of the offered substance for a meal, the feast that cheats the act out of its negative significance. The person making the offering at that first sacrifice re- serves the greatest share for his own enjoyment ;
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and reserves from the latter sacrifice what is useful for the same purpose. This enjoyment is the negative power which supersedes the absolute Being as well as the unity ; and this enjoyment is, at the same time, the positive actual reahty in which the objective existence of absolute Being is transmuted into self-conscious existence, and the self has consciousness of its unity with its Absolute.
This cult, for the rest, is indeed an actual act, although its meaning hes for the most part only in devotion. What pertains to devotion is not objectively produced, just as the result when confined to the feeling of enjoy- ment* is robbed of its external existence. The Cult, therefore, goes further, and replaces this defect, in the first instance by giving its devotion an objective subsist- ence, since the cult is the common task — or the indi- vidual task for each and all to do — which produces for the honour and glory of God a House for Him i'ii to dwell in and adornment for His presence. By so doing the external objectivity of statuary is partly cancelled ; for by thus dedicating his gifts and his labours the worker makes God well disposed to- wards him and looks on his self as attached and apper- taining to God. Furthermore, this course of action is not the individual labour of the artist ; this particu- larity is dissolved in universahty. But it is not only the honour of God which is brought about, and the blessing of His countenance and favour is not only shed in idea and imagination on the worker ; the work has also a meaning the reverse of the first which was that of self-renunciation and of honour done to what is alien and external. The Halls and Dwellings
* i.e. at the feast.
730 Phenomenology of Mind
of God are for the use of man, the treasures preserved there are in time of need his own ; the honour which God enjoys in his decorative adornment, is the honour and glory of a refined artistic and high-spirited nation. At the festival season, the people adorn their own dwellings, their own garments, and their establish- ments too with the furnishings of elegance and grace. In this manner they receive a return for their gifts from a responsive and grateful God ; and receive the proofs of His favour — wherewith the nation became bound to the God because of the work done for Him — not as a hope and a deferred realisation, but rather, in testifying to His honour and in presenting gifts, the nation finds directly and at once the enjoyment of its own wealth and adornment.
The Living Work of Art
That nation which approaches its god in the cult of the rehgion of art is an ethically constituted nation, knowing its State and the acts of the State to be the will and the achievement of its own activity. This universal spirit, confronting the self-conscious nation, is consequently not the " Light " of the world, which, being selfless, does not contain the certainty of the individual selves, but is only their universal ultimate Being and the dominating imperious power, wherein they disappear. The rehgious cult of this simple un- embodied ultimate Being gives back, therefore, to its votaries in the main merely this: that they are the ^2.3 nation of their god. It secures for them merely their stable subsistence, and their bare substance as a whole ; it does not secure for them their actual self ; this is indeed rejected. For they revere their god as the empty profound, not as spirit. The cult, however, of the rehgion of art, on the other hand, dispenses with that abstract simphcity of the absolute Being, and therefore with its " profundity." But that Bemg, which is directly at one with the self, is inherently spirit and comprehending truth, although not yet known exphcitly, in other words it does not know the " depths " of its nature. Because this Absolute, then, imphes self, consciousness finds itself at home with it
731
732 Phenomenology of Mind
when it appears ; and, in the cult, this consciousness receives not merely the general title to its own sub- sistence, but also its self-conscious existence within it : just as, conversely, in a despised and outcast nation whose mere substance is acknowledged, the absolute Being has not a selfless reality, but in the nation whose self is acknowledged as living in its substance.
From the ceremonial cult, then, self-consciousness that is at peace and satisfied in its ultimate Being turns away, as also does the god that has entered into self-consciousness as into its place of habitation. This place is, by itself, the night of mere " substance," or its pure individuality ; but no longer the strained and striving individuality of the artist, which has not yet reconciled itself with its essential Being that gradually becomes objective ; it is substance satisfied, having its "pathos'' within it and in want of nothing, because it comes back from mere intuition, from objectivity which is overcome and superseded.
This " pathos " is, by itself, the Being of the Orient,* a Being, however, which has now "set" and disappeared within itself, and has its own "setting,'' self-consciousness, within it, and so contains existence and reahty.
It has here traversed the process of its actuahsation. Descending from its pure essentiality and becoming an objective force of nature and the expressions of this force, it is an existence relative to an other, an objective existence for the self by which it is consumed. The silent inner being of selfless nature attains in its fruits the stage where nature, duly prepared and digested, jjiu.f is offered as material for the life which has a self. In
* Tlie " Light " of the world.
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its being useful for food and drink it reaches its highest perfection. For therein it is the possibihty of a higher existence, and comes in touch with spiritual existence. In its metamorphosis the spirit of the earth has de- veloped and become partly a silently energising sub- stance, partly spiritual ferment ; in the first case it is the feminine principle, the nursing mother, in the other the mascuhne principle, the self-driving force of self- conscious existence.
In this enjoyment, then, that orient "Light" of the world is discovered for what it really is : Enjojnnent is the Mystery of its being. For mysticism is not concealment of a secret, or ignorance ; it consists in the self knowing itself to be one with absolute Being, and in this latter, therefore, becoming revealed. Only the self is revealed to itself ; or what is manifest is so merely in the immediate certainty of itself. But it is just in such certainty that simple absolute Being has been placed by the cult. As a thing that can be used, it has not only existence which is seen, felt, smelt, tasted ; it is also object of desire, and, by actually being enjoyed, it becomes one with the self, and thereby disclosed completely to this self, and made manifest.
When we say of anything, " it is manifest to reason, to the heart," it is in point of fact still secret, for it still lacks the actual certainty of immediate existence, both the certainty regarding what is objective, and the certainty of enjoyment, a certainty which in rehgion, however, is not only immediate and unreflecting, but at the same time fully cognitive certainty of self.
What has thus been, through the cult, revealed to self-conscious spirit within itself, is simple absolute
734 Phenomenology of Mind
Being ; and this lias been revealed partly as the process of passing out of its dark night of concealment up to the level of consciousness, to be there its silently nurturing substance ; partly, however, as the process of losing itself again in nether darkness, in the self, and of waiting above merely with the silent yearning of mother- hood. The more conspicuous moving impulse, however, is the variously named " Light '' of the East and its tumult of heaving hfe, which, having hkewise desisted r-, ^ from its abstract state of being, has first embodied itself in objective existence in the fruits of the earth,* and then, surrendering itself to self-consciousness,| attained there to its proper reahsation ; and now it curvets and careers about in the guise of a crowd of excited, fervid women, the unrestrained revel of nature in self-conscious form.J
Still, however, it is only Absolute Spirit in the sense of this simple abstract Being, not as spirit fer se, that is discovered to consciousness : i.e. it is merely im- mediate spirit, the spirit of nature. Its self-conscious life is therefore merely the mystery of the Bread and the Wine, of Ceres and Bacchus, not of the other, the strictly higher, gods [of Olympus], whose individuahty includes, as an essential moment, self-consciousness as such. Spirit has not yet qua self-conscious spirit offered itself up to it, and the mystery of bread and wine is not yet the mystery of flesh and blood.
This unstable divine revel must come to rest as an object, and the enthusiasm, which did not reach consciousness, must produce a work which confronts
* As found in the mysteries of Demeter.
t As found in the mysteries of Bacchus and Dionysus.
I Tlie Maenads ; cp. Euripides, Bacchae.
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it as the statue stands over against the enthusiasm of the artist in the previous case, — a work too that is equally complete and finished, yet not as an inherently lifeless but as a hving self. Such a cult is the Festival which man makes in his own honour, though not im- parting to a cult of that kind the significance of the Absolute Being; for it is the ultimate Being that is first revealed to him, not yet Spirit — not such a Being as essentially takes on human form. But this cult provides the basis for this revelation, and lays out its moments individually and separately. Thus we here get the abstract moment of the living em- bodiment of ultimate Being, just as formerly we had the unity of both in the state of unconstrained emo- tional fervency. In the place of the statue man thus puts himself as the form elaborated and moulded for perfectly free movement, just as the statue is the perfectly free state of quiescence. If every individual knows how to play the part at least of a torchbearer, one of them comes prominently forward who is the very embodiment of the movement, the smooth elabora- tion, the fluent energy and force of all the members. He is a Hvely and hving work of art, which matches strength with its beauty ; and to him is given, as a reward for his force and energy, the adornment, with which the statue was decorated [in the former type of religion], and the honour of being, amongst his own nation, instead of a god in stone, the highest bodily representation of what the essential Being of the nation is.
In both the representations, which have just come before us, there is present the unity of self-consciousness and spiritual Being ; but they still lack their due balance
736 Phenomenology of Mind
and equilibrium. In the case of the bacchic * revelhng enthusiasm the self is beside itself ; in bodily beauty of form it is spiritual Being that is outside itself. The gloominess of consciousness in the one case and its Avild stammering utterance, must be taken up into the transparent existence of the latter ; and the clear but spiritless form of the latter, into the emotional inward- ness of the former. The perfect element in which the inwardness is as external as the externality is inward, is once again Language. But it is neither the language of the oracle, entirely contingent in its content and alto- gether individual in character ; nor is it the 'emotional hymn sung in praise of a merely individual god ; nor is it the meaningless stammer of delirious bacchantic revelry. It has attained to its clear and universal content and meaning. Its content is clear, for the artificer has passed out of the previous state of entirely insubstantial enthusiasm, and worked himself into a definite shape, which is his own proper existence, per- meated through all its movements by self-conscious soul, and is that of his contemporaries. Its content is universal, for in this festival, which is to the honour of man, there vanishes the onesidedness pecuhar to figures represented in statues, which merely contain a national spirit, a determinate character of the godhead. The finely built warrior is indeed the honour and glory of his particular nation; but he is a physical or cor- poreal individuality in which are sunk out of sight the expanse and depth of meaning, the seriousness of sig- nificance, and the inner character of the spirit which underhes the particular mode of fife, the cravings, the needs and the customs of his nation. In re-
* As distinct from the worship of Apollo.
The Living Worh of Art 737
linquishing all this for complete corporeal embodi- ment, spirit has laid aside the particular impressions, the special tones and chords of that nature which it, as the actual spirit of the nation, includes. Its nation, therefore, is no longer conscious in this spirit of its special particular character, but rather of having laid this aside, and of the universahty of its human existence.
VOL. II.
The Spiritual Work of Art
The national spirits, which find their being in the form of some particular animal, coalesce into one single spirit.* Thus it is that the separate artistically beau- tiful national spirits combine to form a Pantheon, the element and habitation of which is Language. Pure intuition of self in the sense of universal human nature takes, when the national or tribal spirit is actuahsed, this form : the national spirit combines with the others (which together with it constitute, through nature and natural conditions, one people), in a common undertaking, and for this task builds up a collective nation, and, with that, a collective heaven. This universahty, to which spirit attains in its existence, is, nevertheless, merely this first imiversaUty, which, to begin with, starts from the individuahty of ethical life, has not yet overcome its immediacy, has not yet built up a single state out of these separate national elements. The ethical life of an actual national spirit rests partly on the simple confiding trust of individuals in the whole of their nation, partly in the direct share which all, in spite of differences of position, take in the decisions and acts of its government. In the union, not in the first instance to secure a permanent order but merely for a common act, that freedom of participation
* V. sup., A., b. 738
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on the part of each and all is for the nonce set aside. This first community of hfe is, therefore, an assemblage of individuahties rather than the dominion and control of abstract thought, which would rob the individuals of their self-conscious share in the will and act of the whole.
The assembly of national spirits constitutes a circle of forms and shapes, which now embraces the whole of natm'e, as well as the whole ethical world. They are too under the supreme command rather than the supreme Szs dominion of one. By themselves, they are the universal substances embodying what the self-conscious essential reahty inherently is and does. This, however, con- stitutes the moving force, and, in the first instance, at least the centre, with which those universal entities are concerned, and which, to begin with, seems to unite in a merely accidental way all that they variously accomphsh. But it is the return of the divine Being to self-consciousness which already contains the reason that self-consciousness forms the centre for those divine forces, and conceals their essential unity in the first instance under the guise of a friendly external relation between both worlds.
The same universahty, which belongs to this content, has necessarily also that form of consciousness in which the content appears. It is no longer the concrete acts and deeds of the cult; it is an action which is not indeed raised as yet to the level of the notion, but only to that of ideas, the synthetic connection of self- conscious and external existence. The element in which these presented ideas exist, language, is the earHest language, the Epic as such, which contains the universal content, at any rate universal in the sense
740 Phenomenology of Mind
of completeness of the world presented, though not in the sense of universahty of thought. The Minstrel is the individual and actual spirit from whom, as a subject of this world, it is produced, and by whom it is borne. His " pathos " is not the deafening powers of nature, but Mnemosyne, Recollection, a gradually evolved inwardness, the memory of an essential mode of being once directly present. He is the organ and instrument whose content is passing away ; it is not his own self which is of any account, but his muse, his universal song. What, however, is present in fact, has the form of an inferential process, where the one extreme of universality, the world of gods, is connected with individuahty, the minstrel, through the middle term of particularity. The middle term is the nation in its heroes, who are individual men like the minstrel, but only ideally presented, and thereby at the same time universal hke the free extreme of universahty, the gods.
In this Epic, then, what is inherently established in the cult, the relation of the divine to the human, is set forth and displayed as a whole to consciousness. The content is an ''act"* of the essential Being con- scious of itself. Acting disturbs the peace of the sub- stance, and awakens the essential Being ; and by so doing its simple unity is divided into parts, and opened up into the manifold world of natural powers and ethical forces. The act is the violation of the peaceful earth; it is the trench which, vivified by the blood of the hving, calls forth the spirits of the departed, who are thirsting for Hfe, and who receive it in the action of self-consciousness.t There are two
* A " drama.'' t The Epic exorcises the dead past ; v. Odyssey, XI.
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sides to the business the universal activity is concerned to accompHsh : the side of the self — in virtue of which it is brought about by a collection of actual nations with the prominent individuahties at the head of them ; and the side of the universal — in virtue of which it is brought about by their substantial forces. The re- lation of the two, however, took formerly the character of being the synthetic connection of universal and individual, i.e. of being the process of ideal presentation. On this specific character depends the judgment re- garding this world.
The relation of the two is, by this means, a com- minghng of both, which illogically divides the unity of the action, and in a needless fashion throws the act from one side over to the other. The universal powers assume the form of individual beings, and thus have in them the principle from which action comes ; when they effect anything, therefore, this seems to pro- ceed as entirely from them and to be as free as in the case of men. Hence both gods and men have done one and the same thing. The seriousness with which those divine powers go to work is ridiculously unnecessary, since they are in point of fact the moving force of the individuahties engaged in the acts; while the strain and toil of the latter again is an equally use- less effort, since the former direct and manage every- thing. Over-zealous mortal creatures, who are as nothing, are at the same time the mighty self that brings into subjection universal beings, violates the gods, and procures for them actual reahty and an in- terest in acting. Just as, conversely, these powerless gods, these impotent universal beings, which procure their sustenance from the gifts of men and, through 5S^
742 Phenomenology of Mind
men, first get something to do, are the natural inner principle and the substance of all events, as also the ethical material, and the " pathos " of action. If their cosmic natures first get reahty and a sphere of effectual operation through the free self of individuahty, it is also the case that they are the imiversal, which withdraws from and avoids this connection, remains unrestricted and unconstrained in its own character, and, by the inexhaustible elasticity of its unity, extinguishes the atomic singleness of the individual acting and his various aspects, preserves itself in its purity, and dis- solves all that is individual in the current of its own continuity.
Just as the gods fall into this contradictory relation with the antithetic nature having the form of self, in the same way their miiversality comes into conflict with their own specific character and the relation in which it stands to others. They are the eternal and resplendent individuals, who exist in their own calm, and are removed from the changes of time and the influence of alien forces. But they are at the same time determinate elements, particular gods, and thus stand in relation to others. But that relation to others, which, in virtue of the opposition it involves, is one of strife, is a comic self-forgetfulness of their eternal nature. The determinateness they possess is rooted in the divine subsistence, and, in its specific hmitation, has the independence of the whole individuahty ; owing to this, their characters at once lose the sharpness of their distinctive peculiarity, and in their ambiguity blend together.
One purpose of their activity and their activity itself, being directed against an " other " and so against
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an Invincible divine force, are a contingent and futile piece of bravado, which passes away at once, and trans- forms the pretence of seriousness in the act into a harmless, self-confident piece of sport with no result and no issue. If, however, in the nature of their divinity, the negative element, the specific determinateness of that nature, appears merely as the arbitrariness of their activity, and as the contradiction between the purpose and result, and if that independent self-confi- dence outweighs and overbalances the element of deter- minateness, then, by that very fact, the pure force of negativity confronts and opposes their nature, and more- over with a power to which it must finally submit, and over which it can in no way prevail. They are the uni- irj / versal, and the positive, as against the individual self of mortals, which cannot hold out against their power and might. But the universal self, for that reason, hovers over these mortal selves, and over this whole world of ideal presentation to which the entire content belongs ; and is for them the empty form of bare Necessity, not determined conceptually — a mere event to which they stand related selfless and sorrowing, for these deter- minate natures do not find themselves in this purely formal necessity.
This necessity, however, is the unity of the notion, a unity dominating and controlhng the contradic- tory independent subsistence of the individual moments, a unity in which the inconsistency and fortuitousness of their action is coherently regulated, and the spor- tive character of their acts receives its serious value in those moments themselves. The content of the world of ideal presentation carries on its process in the midst unrestrained and detached by itself, gathering
744 Phenomenology of Minä
round tlie individuality of some hero, who, however, feels the strength and splendour of his life broken, and mourns the early death he sees ahead of him. For the actual individuality, firmly fixed in itself, is isolated and excluded to the utmost point, and severed into its elements, which have not yet found each other and united. The one individual element, the abstract unreal moment, is necessity which takes no share in the hfe of the mediating term just as httle as does the other, the concrete real individual element, the minstrel, who keeps himself outside it, and disappears in what he ideally presents. Both extremes must get nearer the content ; the one, necessity, has to get filled with it, the other, the language of the minstrel, must have a share in it. And the content formerly left to itself must preserve in it the certainty and the fixed character of the negative.
This higher language, that of Tragedy, gathers and keeps more closely together the dispersed and disin- tegrated moments of the inner essential world and the world of action. The substance of the divine falls apart, in accordance with the nature of the notion, into its shapes and forms, and their movement is hkewise in conformity with that notion. In regard to form, the lan- guage here ceases to be narrative, in virtue of the fact that it enters into the content, just as the content ceases to be merely one that is ideally presented. The hero is himself the spokesman, and the representation given brings before the audience — who are also spec- tators— self-conscious human beings, who know their own rights and purposes, the power and the will be- longing to their specific nature, and who know how to state them. They are artists who do not express with
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unconscious naivete and naturalness the merely ex- ternal aspect of what they begin and what they decide upon, as is the case in the language accompanying ordinary action in actual hfe ; they make the very inner being external, they prove the righteousness of their action, and the "pathos" controlling them is soberly asserted and definitely expressed in its universal individuahty, free from all accident of circumstance and the particular pecuHarities of personahties. Lastly, it is in actual human beings that these characters get existence, human beings who impersonate heroes, and represent them in actual speech, not in the form of a narrative, but speaking in their own person. Just as it is essential for a statue to be made by human hands, so is the actor essential to his mask — not as an external condition, from which, artistically considered, we have to abstract ; or so far as abstraction must certainly be made, we thereby state just that art does not yet contain in it the true and proper self.
The general ground, on which the movement of these shapes produced from the notion takes place, is the con- sciousness of the first form of language, where the content is ideally presented, and its detail spread out without reference to self. It is the commonalty in general, whose wisdom finds utterance in the Chorus of the Elders ; in the powerlessness of this chorus the generahty finds its representative, because the common people itself compose merely the positive and passive material for the individuahty of the government confronting it. Lacking the power to negate and oppose, it is unable to hold together and keep within boimds the riches and varied fullness of divine life; it allows each individual moment to go ofi its own v/ay.
*746 Phenomenology of Mind
and in its hymns of honour and reverence praises each individual moment as an independent god, now this god and now again another. Where, however, it detects the seriousness of the notion, and perceives how the notion proceeds to deal with these forms, shattering them as it goes along; and where it comes to see how badly its praised and honoured gods come off when they venture on the ground where the notion holds sway; — there it is not itself the negative power actively setting to work, but keeps itself within the abstract selfless thought of such power, confines itself to the consciousness of alien and external destiny, and produces the empty wish to tranquillize, and feeble ineffective talk intended to appease. In its terror before the higher powers, which are the immediate arms of the substance ; in its terror before their struggle with one another, and before the simple and uniform action of that necessity, which crushes them as well as the living beings bound up with them ; in its compassion for these living beings, whom it knows at once to be the same with itself — it is conscious of nothing but ineffective horror of this whole process, conscious of equally helpless pity, and, in fine, the mere empty peace of surrender to necessity, whose work is apprehended neither as the necessary act of character, nor as the action of the absolute Being within itself.
Spirit does not appear in its dissociated multiplicity on the plane of this spectacular consciousness, the in- different ground, as it were, of presentation; it comes on the scene in the simple diremption of the notion. Its substance manifests itself, therefore, merely torn asunder into its two extreme powers. These elementary universal beings are, at the same time, self-conscious individu-
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alities — heroes who put their conscious hfe into one of these powers, find therein determinateness of cha- racter, and procure their effective activity and reahty. This universal individuahsation descends again, as will be remembered, to the immediate reahty of existence proper, and is presented before a crowd of spectators, who find in the chorus their image and counterpart, or rather their own thought giving itself expression.
The content and movement of spirit, which is object CSj:, to itself here, have been already considered as the nature and reahsation of the substance of ethical life. In its form of rehgion spirit attains to consciousness about itself, or reveals itself to its consciousness in its purer form and its simpler mode of embodiment. If, then, the ethical substance by its very principle broke up, as re- gards its content, into two powers — which were defined as divine and human law, law of the nether world and law of the upper world, the one the family, the other state sovereignty, the first bearing the impress and character of woman, the other that of man — in the same way, the previously multiform circle of gods, with its wavering and unsteady characteristics, con- fines itself to these powers, which owing to this feature are brought closer to individuality proper. For the previous dispersion of the whole into manifold abstract forces, which appear hypostatised, is the dissolution of the subject which comprehends them merely as moments in its self ; and individuality is therefore only the superficial form of those entities. Conversely, a further distinction of characters than that just named is to be imputed to contingent and inherently external personahty.
At the same time, the essential nature [in the case of
748 Phenomenology of Mind
ethical substance] gets divided in its form, i.e. with re- spect to knowledge. Spirit when acting, appears, qua consciousness, over against the object on which its activity is directed, and which, in consequence, is deter- mined as the negative of the knowing agent. The agent finds himself thereby in the opposition of knowing and not knowing. He takes his purpose from his own character, and knows it to be essential ethical fact ; but owing to the determinateness of his character, he knows merely the one power of substance ; the other remains for him concealed and out of sight. The objectively present reality, therefore, is one thing in itself, and another for consciousness. The higher and lower right come to signify in this connection the power that knows and reveals itself to consciousness, and the power conceahng itself and lurking in the background. The one is the aspect of light, the god of the Oracle, who as regards ir i S" its natural aspect [Light] has sprung from the all- illuminating Sun, knows all and reveals all, Phoebus and Zeus, who is his Father. But the commands of this truth-speaking god, and his proclamations of what is, are really deceptive and fallacious. For this know- ledge is, in its very principle, directly not knowledge, because consciousness in acting is inherently this opposition. He,* who had the power to unlock the riddle of the sphinx, and he too who trusted with childlike confidence,! are, therefore, both sent to destruction through what the god reveals to them. The priestess, through whose mouth the gracious god speaks, J is in nothing different from the equivocal sisters of fate,§ who drive their victim to crime by
* Oedipus. t Oi'este.s.
X lu the Delphic Oracle. ^ The witches in '^ Macbeth."
The Spiritual Work of Art 749
their promises, and who, by the double-tongued, equivocal character of what they give out as a certainty, deceive the King when he rehes upon the manifest and obvious meaning of what they say. There is a type of consciousness that is purer than the latter* which believes in witches, and more discriminating, more thorough and more solid than the former which puts its trust in the priestess and the gracious god. This type of consciousness, t therefore, lets his revenge tarry for the revelation which the spirit of his father makes regarding the crime that did him to death, and institutes other proofs in addition — for the reason that the spirit giving the revelation might possibly be the devil.
This mistrust has good grounds, because the knowing consciousness takes its stand on the opposition between certainty of itself on the one hand, and the objective essential reahty on the other. Ethical rightness, which insists that actuaHty is nothing "per se in opposi- tion to absolute law, finds out that its knowledge is onesided, its law merely a law of its own character, and that it has laid hold of merely one of the powers of the substance. The act itself is this inversion of what is subjectively known into its opposite, into objective existence, turns round what is right from the point of view of character and knowledge into the right of the very opposite with which the former is bound up in the essential nature of the substance — turns it into the " Furies " who embody the right of the other power and character awakened into hostility. The lower right sits with Zeus enthroned, and enjoys equal respect and homage with the god revealed and known.
To these three supernatural Beings the world of the
* Macbeth. t Hamlet.
750 Phenomenology of Mind
gods of the chorus is hmited and restricted by the act- ing individuaUty. The one is the substance, the power presiding over the hearth and home and the spirit worshipped by the family, as well as the universal power dominating state and government. Since this distinction belongs to the substance as such, it is, when ideally presented, not individualised as two distinct forms [of the substance], but has in actual reaUty the two persons of its characters. On the other hand, the distinction between knowing and not knowing falls within each of the actual self-consciousnesses ; and only in abstraction, in the element of universahty, does it get divided into two individual shapes. For the self of the hero only exists as a whole consciousness, and hence includes essentially the whole of the distinction be- longing to the form; but its substance is determinate, and only one side of the content distinguished belongs to him. Hence both sides of consciousness, which have in concrete reahty no separate individuality pecuharly their own, receive, when ideally represented, each its own particular form : the one that of the god revealed, the other that of the Furies keeping themselves con- cealed. In part both enjoy equal honour, while again, the form assumed by the substance, Zeus, is the ne- cessity of the relation of the two to one another. The substance is the relation [1] that knowledge is for itself, but finds its truth in what is simple; [2] that the distinction, through and in which actual consciousness exists, has its basis in that inner being which destroys it; [3] that the clear conscious assurance of certainty has its confirmation in forgetfulness.
Consciousness disclosed this opposition by action, through doing something. Acting in accordance with
The Spiritual Work of Art 751
the knowledge revealed, it finds out the deceptiveness of that knowledge, and being committed, in view of the inner meaning, to one of the attributes of substance, it did violence to the other and thereby gave the latter right as against itself. When following that god who knows and reveals himself, it really seized hold of what is not revealed, and repents of having trusted the knowledge, whose equivocal character (since this is its ^"sjy very nature) had to come also before it, and admoni- tion thereanent to be found. The frenzy of the priestess, the inhuman shape of the witches, the voices of trees and birds, dreams, and so on, are not ways in which truth appears; they are admonitory signs of decep- tion, of want of discernment, of the individual and accidental character of knowledge. Or, what comes to the same thing, the opposite power, which consciousness has violated, is present as express law and authentic right, whether law of the family or law of the state ; while consciousness, on the other hand, pursued its own proper knowledge, and hid from itself what was revealed. The truth, however, of the opposing powers of content and consciousness is the final result, that both are equally right, and, hence, in their opposition (which comes about through action) are equally wrong. The process of action proves their imity in the mutual over- throw of both powers and the self-conscious characters. The reconcihation of the opposition with itself is the Lethe of the netherworld in the form of Death — or the Lethe of the upper world in the form of absolution, not from guilt (for consciousness cannot deny its guilt, because the act was done), but from the crime, and of the atoning consolation and peace of soul which absolution gives. Both are forgetfulness, the disappearance of the
752 Phenomenology of Mind
reality and action of the powers of the substance, its com- ponent individuahties, and of the powers of the abstract thought of good and evil. For none of them by itself is the real essence ; this consists in the undisturbed calm of the whole within itself, the immovable unity of Fate, the quiescent existence and hence want of activity and vitahty in the family and government, and the equal honour and consequent indifferent unreality of Apollo and the Furies, and the return of their spiritual life and activity into Zeus solely and simply.
This destiny completes the depopulation of Heaven — of that imthinking mixture of individuality and ultimate Being — a blending whereby the action of this absolute Being appears as something incoherent, 5' 3 , inconsistent, contingent, unworthy of itself ; for in- dividuahty, when attaching in a merely superficial way to absolute Being, is unessential. The expulsion of such unreal insubstantial ideas, which was demanded by the philosophers of antiquity, thus already has its beginning in tragedy in general, through the fact that the division of the substance is controlled by the notion, and hence individuality is the essential individuahty, and the specific determinations are absolute characters. The self-consciousness represented in tragedy knows and acknowledges on that account only one highest power, Zeus. This Zeus is known and acknowledged only as the power of the state or of the hearth and home, and, in the opposition falhng inside knowledge, merely as the Father of the particular knowledge assum- ing a definite shape ; he is the Zeus acknowledged in the taking of oaths, the Zeus of the Furies, the Zeus of what is universal, of the inner being dwelhng in concealment. The further moments taken from the
The Spiritual Work of Art 753
notion {Begriff) and dispersed in the form of ideal presentation {Vorstellung), moments which the chorus permits to hold good one after the other, are, on the other hand, not the " pathos " of the hero ; they sink to the level of passions in the hero — to the level of acci- dental, insubstantial moments, which the impersonal chorus no doubt praises, but which are not capable of constituting the character of heroes, nor of being expressed and regarded by them as their real nature.
But, further, the persons of the divine Being itself, as well as the characters of its substance, coalesce into the simphcity of what is devoid of consciousness. This necessity has, in contrast to self-consciousness, the char- acteristic of being the negative power of all the forms that appear, a power in which they do not recognise themselves, but perish therein. The self appears as merely allotted amongst the different characters, and not as the mediating factor of the process. But self -con- sciousness, the simple certainty of self, is in point of fact the negative power, the unity of Zeus, the unity of the substantial essence and abstract necessity ; it is the spiritual unity into which everything returns. Because actual self-consciousness is still distinguished from the substance and Fate, it is partly the chorus, or rather the crowd looking on, whom this movement of the divine Ufe fills with fear as being something ahen and strange, or in whom this movement, as something closely touching themselves, produces merely the emo- tion of passive pity. Partly again, so far as conscious- ness co-operates and belongs to the various characters, this alhance is of an external kind, is a hypocrisy — because the true union, that of self, fate, and substance, is not yet present. The hero, who appears before the
VOL. IL— z
754 Phenomenology of Mind
onlookers, breaks up into his mask and the actor, into the person of the play and the actual self.
The self-consciousness of the heroes must step forth from its mask and be represented as knowing itself to be the fate both of the gods of the chorus and of the absolute powers themselves, and as being no longer separated from the chorus, the universal consciousness.
Comedy has, then, first of all, the aspect that actual self-consciousness represents itself as the Fate of the gods. These elemental Beings are, qua universal moments, no definite self, and are not actual. They are, indeed, endowed with the form of individuahty, but this is in their case merely put on, and does not really and truly suit them. The actual self has no such abstract moment as its substance and content. The subject, therefore, is raised above such a moment, as it would be above a particular property, and when clothed with this mask gives utterance to the irony of such a property trying to be something on its own account. The pretentious claims of the universal abstract nature are shown up and discovered in the actual self ; it is seen to be caught and held in a con- crete reahty, and lets the mask drop, just when it wants to be something right. The self, appearing here in its significance as something actual, plays with the mask which it once puts on, in order to be its own person; but it breaks away from this seeming and pretence just as quickly again, and comes out in its own naked- ness and usual character, which it shows not to be distinct from the proper self, the actor, nor again from the onlooker, i" 1^ ^ This general dissolution, which the formally em- bodied essential nature as a whole undergoes when it
The Spiritual Work of Art 755
assumes individuaKty, becomes in its content more serious, and hence more petulant and bitter, in so far as the content possesses its more serious and necessary- meaning. The divine substance combines the meaning of natural and ethical essentiahty.
As regards the natural element, actual self-conscious- ness shows, in the very fact of applying elements of nature for its adornment, for its abode and so on, and again in feasting on its own offering, that itself is the Fate to which the secret is disclosed, no matter what its position with regard to the independent substanti- aHty of nature. In the mystery of the bread and wine it makes its very own this self-subsistence of nature together with the significance of inner reaUty ; and in Comedy it is conscious of the irony lurking in this meaning.
So far, again, as this meaning contains the essence of ethical reahty, it is partly the nation in its two aspects of the state, or Demos proper, and individual family hfe ; partly, however, it is self-conscious pure knowledge, or rational thought of the universal. Demos, the general mass, which knows itself as master and governor, and is also aware of being the insight and intelhgence which demand respect, exerts com- pulsion and is befooled through the particularity of its actual hfe, and exhibits the ludicrous contrast between its own opinion of itself and its immediate existence, between its necessity and contingency, its universahty and its vulgarity. If the principle of its individual existence, cut off from the universal, breaks out in the proper form of actual reahty and openly usurps and administers the commonwealth, to which it is a secret harm and detriment, then immediately there
756 Phenomenology of Mind
is disclosed the contrast between the universal in the sense of an abstract theory, and that with which practice is concerned ; there stands exposed the entire emancipation of the ends and aims of the mere in- dividual from all universal order, and the scorn the mere individual shows for such order.*
Rational thinking removes contingency of form and shape from the divine Being ; and, in opposition to the uncritical wisdom of the chorus — a wisdom, giving utterance to all sorts of ethical maxims and stamping with vahdity and authority a multitude of laws and specific conceptions of duty and of right — rational thought lifts these into the simple Ideas of the Beautiful and the Good. The process of this abstraction is the consciousness of the dialectic in- volved in these maxims and laws themselves, and hence the consciousness of the disappearance of that absolute validity with which they previously appeared. Since the contingent character and superficial individuahty which mere presentation lent to the divine Beings, vanish, they are left, as regards their natural aspect, with merely the nakedness of their immediate existence ; they are Clouds, t a passing vapour, like those presenta- tions. Having passed in accordance with their essential character, as determined by thought, into the simple thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good, these latter submit to being filled with every kind of content. The force of dialectic knowledge % puts determinate laws and maxims of action at the mercy of the pleasure and levity of youth, led astray therewith, and gives weapons
* cp. Cleon in Aristophanes, Knights. t cp. Aristophanes, Clouds. X The age of the Sophists.
The Spiritual Work of Art 757
of deception into the hands of sohcitous and apprehen- sive old age, restricted in its interests to the individual details of Hfe. The pure thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good thus display a comic spectacle : — through their being set free from opinion, which contains both their determinateness in the sense of content and also their absolute determinateness, the firm hold of con- sciousness upon them, they become empty, and, on that very account, the sport of the private opinion and caprice of any chance individuahty.
Here, then, the Fate, formerly without conscious- ness, consisting in mere rest and forgetfulness, and separated from self-consciousness, is united with self- consciousness. The individual * self is the negative force through which and in which the gods, as also their moments, (nature as existent fact and the thoughts of their determinate characters), pass away and disappear. At the same time, the individual self is not the mere vacuity of disappearance, but preserves itself in this very nothingness, holds to itself and is the sole and only reahty. The rehgion of art is ful- filled and consummated in it, and is come fuH circle. Through the fact that it is the individual conscious- ness in its certainty of self which is shown to be SLf'L this absolute power, this latter has lost the form of something ideally presented {vorgestellt), separated from and ahen to consciousness in general — as were the statue and also the hving embodiment of beauty or the content of the Epic and the powers and persons of Tragedy. Nor again is the unity the uncon- scious unity of the cult and the mysteries; rather the self proper of the actor coincides with the part
* In comedy.
758 Phenomenology of Mind
he impersonates, just as the onlooker is perfectly at home in what is represented before him, and sees himself playing in the drama before him. What this self-consciousness beholds is that that, which assumes the form of essentiality as against self-consciousness, is resolved and dissolved within its thought, its existence and action, and is quite at its mercy. It is the return of everything universal into certainty of self, a cer- tainty which, in consequence, is this complete loss of fear of everything strange and ahen, and complete loss of substantial reahty on the part of what is ahen and external. Such certainty is a state of spiritual good health and of self-abandonment thereto, on the part of consciousness, in a way that, outside this kind of comedy, is not to be found anywhere.*
* Cp. Hegel's Aesthetik, W S\., X., 3, 560.
c
Revealed Religion *
Through the Rehgion of Art spirit has passed from the form of Substance into that of Subject ; for art brings out its shape and form, and imbues it with the nature of action or estabhshes in it the self- consciousness which merely disappears in the awe- some substance and in the attitude of simple trust does not itself comprehend itself. This incarnation in human form of the Divine Being begins with the statue, which has in it only the outward shape of the self, while the inner Hfe thereof, its activity, falls outside it. In the case of the cult, however, both aspects have become one ; in the outcome of the re- ligion of art this unity in being completely attained has at the same time also passed over to the extreme of self ; in the type of spirit, which becomes perfectly certain of itself in the individual existence of con- sciousness, all essential content is swallowed up and submerged. The proposition, which gives this Hght- hearted action expression, runs thus : " The Self is Absolute Being." The Being which was substance, and in which the self was the accidental element, has dropped to the level of a predicate ; and in this self-consciousness, over against which nothing appears in the form of objec- tive Being, spirit has lost its aspect of consciousness.!
* Cliristianity. t Which implies such opposition.
759
760 Phenoinenology of Mind
This statement, " The Self is Absolute Being," belongs, as is evident on the face of it, to the non- religious, the concrete actual spirit ; and we have to recall what the form thereof is which gives expression to it. This form will contain at once the movement of that spirit and its conversion, which lowers the self to the note of a predicate and raises substance into subject. This we must understand to take place in such a way that the converse statement does not fer se, or for us, make substance into subject, or, what is the same thing, does not reinstate substance again so that the consciousness of spirit is carried back to its commencement in natural rehgion ; but rather in such a way that this conversion is brought about for and through self-consciousness itself. Since this latter consciously gives itself up, it is preserved and maintained in thus rehnquishing itself, and remains the subject of the substance; but as being likewise se?/-rehnquished, it has at the same time the con- sciousness of this substance. In other words, since by thus offering itself up, it produces substance as subject, this subject remains its own very self. If, then, taking the two propositions, in the first the subject merely disappears in substantiaHty, and in the second the substance is merely a predicate, and both sides are thus present in each with contrary inequality of value — the result hereby effected is that the union and transfusion of both natures [subject and sub- stance] become apparent. In this union both, with equal value and worth, are at once essential and also merely moments. Hence it is that spirit is equally consciousness of itself as its objective substance, as well as simple self-contained self-consciousness.
Revealed Religion 761
The religion of art belongs to the spirit animating the ethical sphere,* the spirit which we formerly saw sink and disappear in the condition of right, i.e. in the proposition : " The self as such, the abstract person, is absolute Being." In ethical hfe the self is absorbed in the spirit of its nation, it is universahty filled to the full. Simple abstract individuality, however, rises out of this content, and its hghtheartedness clarifies and rarifies it till it becomes a " person " and attains the abstract universality of right. Here the substantial reality of the ethical spirit is lost, the abstract insub- stantial spirits of national individuals are gathered together into a pantheon; not into a pantheon repre- sented in idea {Vorstellung), whose impotent form lets each alone to do as it hkes, but into the pantheon of abstract universahty, of pure thought, which disem- bodies them, and bestows on the spiritless self, on the individual person, complete existence on its own ac- count.
But this self, through its being empty, has let the content go; this consciousness is Being merely with- in itself. Its own very existence, the legal recognition of the person, is an unfulfilled empty abstraction. It thus really possesses merely the thought of itself; in other words, as it there exists and knows itself as object, it is something imreal. Consequently, it is merely stoic independence, the independence of thought ; and this finds, by passing through the process of scepticism, its ultimate truth in that form we called the " imhappy self -consciousness " — the soul of despair.
This knows how the case stands with the actual claims to vahdity which the abstract [legal] person puts
* The Roman State.
762 Phenomenology of Mind
forward, as also with the vahdity of these claims in pure thought [in Stoicism]. It knows that a vindica- tion of such claims means really being altogether lost ; it is just this loss become conscious of itself, and is the surrender and rehnquishment of its knowledge about itself. We see that this " unhappy consciousness " con- stitutes the counterpart and the complement of the per- fectly happy consciousness, that of comedy. All divine reahty goes back into this latter type of consciousness ; it means, in other words, the complete rehnquishment and emptying of substance. The former, on the con- trary, is conversely the tragic fate that befalls certainty of self which aims at being absolute, at being self- sufficient. It is consciousness of the loss of everything of significance in this certainty of itself, and of the loss even of this knowledge or certainty of self — the loss of tr^ [" its substance as well as of self ; it is the bitter pain which finds expression in the cruel words, " God is dead."*
In the condition of right or law, then, the ethical world has vanished, and its type of rehgion has passed away in the mood of Comedy. The " un- happy consciousness " the soul of despair, is just the knowledge of all this loss. It has lost both the worth and dignity it attached to its immediate personahty [as a legal person] as well as that attaching to its per- sonality when reflected in the medium of thought [in the case of Stoicism]. Trust in the eternal laws of the Gods is silenced, just as the oracles are dumb, whose work it was to know what was right in particular cases. The statues set up are now corpses in stone whence the animating soul has flown, while the hymns
* From a hymn of Luther.
Revealed Religion 763
of praise are words from which all beUef has gone. The tables of the gods are bereft of spiritual food and drink, and from his games and festivals man no more receives the joyful sense of his unity with the divine Being. The works of the muse lack the force and energy of the spirit which derived the certainty and assurance of itself just from the crushing ruin of gods and men. They are themselves now just what they are for us — beautiful fruit broken of! the tree ; a kindly fate has passed on those works to us, as a maiden might offer such fruit off a tree. It is not their actual hfe as they exist, that is given us, not the tree that bore them, not the earth, and the elements, which constituted their substance, nor the climate that determined their constitutive character, nor the change of seasons which controlled the process of their growth. So too it is not their living world that Fate preserves and gives us with those works of ancient art, not the spring and summer of that ethical hfe in which they bloomed and ripened, but the veiled remembrance alone of all this reahty. Our action, therefore, when we enjoy them is not that of worship, through which our conscious hfe might attain its complete truth and be satisfied to the full : our action is external ; it consists in wiping off some drop of rain or speck of dust from these fruits, and in place of the inner elements composing the reahty of the ethical hfe, a reahty that environed, created and inspired these works, we erect in prohx detail the scaffolding of the dead elements of their outward existence, — language, historical circumstances, etc. All this we do, not in order to enter into their Si^. 4 very life, but only to represent them ideally or pic- torially {vorstellen) within om"selves. But just as the
7G4 Phenomenology of Mind
maiden who hands us the plucked fruits is more than the nature which presented them in the first instance — the nature which provided all their detailed conditions and elements, tree, air, hght and so on — since in a higher way she gathers all this together into the hght of her self-conscious eye, and her gesture in offering the gifts ; so too the spirit of the fate, which presents us with those works of art, is more than the ethical life reahsed in that nation. For it is the inwardising in us, in the form of conscious memory {Er-innerung), of the spirit which in them was manifested in an outward external way ; — it is the spirit of the tragic fate which collects all those individual gods and at- tributes of the substance into the one Pantheon, into the spirit which is itself conscious of itself as spirit.
All the conditions for its production are present, and this totahty of its conditions constitutes the de- velopment of it, its notion, or the inherent produc- tion of it. The cycle of the creations of art embraces in its scope all forms in which the absolute sub- stance rehnqiiishes itself. The absolute substance is in the form of individuahty as a thing ; as an object existing for sense experience ; as mere language, or the process of that form whose existence does not get away from the self, and is a purely evanescent object ; as immediate imity with universal self-con- sciousness when inspired with enthusiasm ; as mediated unity when performing the acts of the cult ; as corporeal embodiment of the self in a form of beauty ; and j&nally as existence lifted into ideal representation {Vorstellung) and the expansion of this existence into a world which at length gathers its content together into universahty, a universal which
Revealed Religion 765
is at the same time pure certainty and assurance of itself. These forms, and, on the other side, the world of personaHty and legal right, the wild and desert waste of content with its constituent elements set free and detached, as also the thought- constituted personality of Stoicism, and the unresting disquiet of Scepticism — these compose the periphery of the circle of shapes and forms, which attend, an expectant and eager throng, round the birthplace of spirit as it becomes self-consciousness. Their centre is the yearn- ing agony of the mihappy despairing self-consciousness, a pain which permeates all of them, and is the com- mon birthpang at its production, — the simpHcity of the pure notion, which contains those forms as its moments.
Spirit, here, has in it two sides, which are above re- presented as the two converse statements : one is this, that substance empties itself of itself, and becomes self- consciousness ; the other is the converse, that self- consciousness empties itself of itself and makes itself into the form of " thing," or makes itself universal self. Both sides have in this way met each other, and, in consequence, their true union has arisen. The relinquishment or " kenosis " on the part of the substance, its becoming self-consciousness, expresses the transition into the opposite, the unconscious transition of necessity, in other words, that it is implicitly self-consciousness. Conversely, the emptying of self-consciousness expresses this, that imphcitly it is Universal Being, or — because the self is pure self- existence, which is at home with itself in its opposite — that the substance is self-consciousness exphcitly for the self, and, just on that account, is spirit. Of this spirit,
766 Phenomenology of Mind
which has left the form of substance behind, and enters existence in the shape of self-consciousness, we may say, therefore — if we wish to use terms drawn from the process of natural generation — that it has a real mother but a potential or an imphcit father. For actual reahty, or self-consciousness, and implicit being in the sense of substance, are its two moments ; and by the reciprocity of their kenosis, each rehnquishing or " emptying " itself of itself and becoming the other, spirit thus comes into existence as their unity.
In so far as self-consciousness in a one-sided way grasps only its oivn rehnquishment, although its object is thus for it at once both existence and self and it knows all existence to be spiritual in nature, yet true spirit has not become thereby objective for it. For, so far, being in general or substance, would not necessarily from its side be also emptied of itself, and SL become self -consciousness. In that case, then, all exist- ence is spiritual reality merely from the standpoint of consciousness, not inherently in itself. Spirit in this way has merely a fictitious or imaginary existence.* This fanciful imagination is fantastic extravagance of mind, which introduces into nature as well as history, the world and the mythical ideas of early reHgions, another inner esoteric meaning different from what they, on the face of them, bear directly to consciousness, and, in particular, in the case of reH- gions, another meaning than the self-consciousness, whose religions they were, could find and admit to be there. But this meaning is one that is borrowed, a garment, which does not cover the nakedness of the outer appearance, and secures no belief and respect ;
* As in neo-Platonism.
Revealed Religion 767
it is no more than murky darkness and a peculiar crazy twist of consciousness.
If then this meaning of the objective is not to be bare fancy and imagination, it must be inherent and essential {an sich), i.e. must at once arise in consciousness as springing from the very notion, and must come forward in its necessity. It is thus that self-knowing spirit has arisen ; it has arisen by means of its necessary process through the knowledge of immediate consciousness, i.e. of consciousness of the immediately existing ob- ject. This notion, which, being immediate, had also, for consciousness, the form of immediacy, has, in the second place, taken on the form of self-conscious- ness essentially and inherently, i.e. by just the same necessity of the notion by which being or immediacy, the abstract object of sense-consciousness, renounces itself and becomes, for consciousness. Ego. The immediate entity (Ansich), or objectively existent necessity, is, how- ever, different from the subjective thinking entity, or the knowledge of necessity — a distinction which, at the same time, does not he outside the notion, for the simple unity of the notion is itself immediate being. The notion is at once what empties or rehnquishes itself, or the exphcit unfolding of directly apprehended [ange- schaut) necessity, and is also at home with itself in that necessity, knows it and comprehends it. The immediate ^"i^q inherent nature of spirit, which takes on the form of self-consciousness, means nothing else than that the concrete actual ivorld-sfirit has reached this knowledge of itself. It is then too that this knowledge first enters its consciousness, and enters it as truth. How that came about has already been explained.
That Absolute Spirit has taken on the form of self-
768 Phenomenology of Mind
consciousness inherently and necessarily, and has done so too as a conscious fact — this position appears now as the behef of the world, the behef that spirit exists in fact as a definite self-consciousness, i.e. as an actual human being, that spirit is an object for immediate experience, that the beheving mind sees, feels, and hears this divinity.* Taken thus it is not an imagination, not a fancy ; it is actual in the behever. Consciousness in that case does not set out from its own inner hfe, does not start from thought, and enclose the thought of God along with existence; rather it sets out from im- mediate present existence, and finds God there.
The moment of immediate existence is present as an element in the notion, and present in such a way that the rehgious spirit, on the return of all ultimate reahty into consciousness, has become simple positive self, just as the actual spirit as such, in the case of the " unhappy consciousness," was just this simple self-conscious nega- tivity. The self of the definitely existent spirit has in that way the form of complete immediacy. It is neither set up as something thought, or imaginatively repre- sented, nor as something produced, as is the case with the immediate self both in natural rehgion, and in rehgion as art. Rather, this concrete God is beheld sensuously and immediately as a self, as a real indi- vidual human being ; only so is it a self-consciousness.
This incarnation of the Divine Being, its having essentially and directly the form of self-consciousness, is the simple content of Absolute Rehgion. Here the Divine Being is known as spirit ; this rehgion is the Divine Being's consciousness concerning itself that it is Spirit. For spirit is knowledge of itself in
* e.g. in Christianity.
Revealed Religion 769
its state of self-relinquishment, the absolute Reality, which is the process of retaining its harmony and identity with itself in its otherness. This, however, is Substance, so far as in its accidents substance at the same time turns back into itself ; and does so, not as being indifferent towards something unessential and, con- sequently, finding itself in some ahen element, but as being there within itself, i.e. so far as it is subject or self.
In this form of rehgion the Divine Being is, on that account, revealed. Its being revealed obviously consists in this, that what it is, is consciously known. It is, however, known just in its being known as spirit, as a Being which is essentially self-consciousness.
There is something in the object always concealed from consciousness when the object is for consciousness an " other," something alien and extraneous, and when consciousness does not laiow the object as its self. This concealment, this secrecy, ceases when the Absolute Being qua spirit is object of consciousness. For here in its relation to consciousness the object is in the form of self ; i.e. consciousness at once and immediately knows itself there, or is manifest, revealed, to itself in the object. Itself is manifest to itself merely in its own certainty of self; the object it has is the self; self, how- ever, is nothing ahen and extraneous, but inseparable unity with itself, the immediate universal. It is the pure notion, pure thought, or self-existence, being-for-self, which is immediately being, and, therewith, being-for- another, and, qua this being-for-another, is immedi- ately tm'ned back into itself and is at home with itself {bei sich). It is thus the truly and solely revealed. The Good, the Righteous, the Holy, Creator of Heaven
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and Earth, etc. — all these are predicates of a subject, universal moments, which have their hold on this central point, and only are when consciousness goes back into thought.
As long as it is tJiey that are known, their ground and essential being, the Subject itself is not yet revealed ; and in the same way the specific determinations of the universal are not this universal itself. The Subject itself, and consequently this pure universal too, is, however, revealed as self ; for this self is just this inner being reflected into itself, the inner being which is immediately given and is the proper certainty of that [other] self, for 511 which it is object. To be in its notion that which reveals and is revealed — this is, then, the true form of spirit ; and moreover, this form, its notion, is alone its very essence and its substance. Spirit is known as self-consciousness, and to this self-consciousness it is directly revealed, for it is this self-consciousness itself. The divine nature is the same as the human, and it is this unity which is intuitively apprehended {angeschaut).
Here, then, we fiiid as a fact consciousness, or the general form in which Being is aware of Being — the shape which Being adopts — to be identical with its self- consciousness. This shape is itself a self-consciousness ; it is thus at the same time an existent object; and this existence possesses equally directly the significance of pure thought, of Absolute Being.
The absolute Being existing as a concrete actual self- consciousness, seems to have descended from its eternal pure simphcity ; but in fact it has, in so doing, attained for the first time its highest nature, its supreme reach of being. For when the notion of Being has reached its simple purity of nature, it is then both the absolute
Revealed Beligion 771
abstraction, which is pure thought and hence the pure singleness of self, and immediacy or objective being, on account of its pure simphcity.
What is called sense-consciousness is also just this pure abstraction ; it is this kind of thought for which being is the immediate. The lowest is thus at the same time the highest ; the revelation which has appeared entirely on the surface is just therein the deepest that can be made. That the Supreme Being is seen, heard, etc., as an existent self-consciousness, — this is, in very truth, the cuhnination and consummation of its notion. And through this consummation, the Divine Being is given to sense, exists immediately, in its character as Divine Being.
This immediate existence is at the same time not solely and simply immediate consciousness ; it is re- ligious consciousness. This immediacy means not only an existent self-consciousness, but also the purely thought-constituted or Absolute Being; and these meanings are inseparable. What we [the philosophers] are conscious of in our conception, — that objective ^rsx, being is ultimate essence, — is the same as what the rehgious consciousness is aware of. This unity of being and essence, of thought which is immediately exist- ence, is immediate knowledge on the part of this re- hgious consciousness just as it is the inner thought or the mediated reflective knowledge of this consciousness. For this unity of being and thought is self-consciousness and actually exists; in other words, the thought-con- stituted unity has at the same time this concrete shape and form of what it is. God, then, is here revealed, as He is ; He actually exists as He is in Himself ; He is real as Spirit. God is attainable in pure speculative know-
772 Phenomenology of Mind
ledge alone, and only is in that knowledge, and is merely that knowledge itself, for He is spirit ; and this specula- tive knowledge is the knowledge furnished by revealed religion. That knowledge knows God to be thought, or pure Essence ; and knows this thought as actual being and as real existence, and existence as the nega- tivity, the reflexion, of itself, hence as Self, a particular " this," and a universal self. It is just this that revealed rehgion knows.
The hopes and expectations of preceding ages pressed forward to, and were solely directed towards this revela- tion, the vision of what Absolute Being is, and the dis- covery of themselves therein. This joy, the joy of seeing itself in Absolute Benig, becomes reahsed in self-con- sciousness, and seizes the whole world. For the Absolute is Spirit, it is the simple movement of those pure abstract moments, which expresses just this — that Ultimate Reahty is then eo ipso known as Spirit when it is seen and beheld as immediate self-consciousness.
This conception of spirit knowing itself to be spirit, is still the immediate notion ; it is not yet developed. The ultimate Being is spirit ; in other words, it has appeared, it is revealed. This first revelation is itself immediate ; but the immediacy is likewise thought, or pure mediation, and must therefore exhibit and set forth this moment in the sphere of immediacy as such.
Looking at this more precisely, spirit, when self- consciousness is immediate, is a particular '' this '' ; it is an individual self-consciousness set up in contrast to the universal self-consciousness. It is a one, a repelHng and excluding unit, which appears to that consciousness, for which it exists, in the impervious form of a sensuous other, an unreduced opposite in the sphere of sense.
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This other does not yet know spirit to be its own ; in other words, spirit, in its form as an individual self, does not yet exist as equally universal self, as all self. Or again, the shape it assumes has not as yet the form of the notion, i.e. of the universal self, of the self which in its immediate actual reahty is at once transcended, is thought, universahty, without losing its reahty in this universahty.
The prehminary and similarly immediate form of this universahty is, however, not at once the form of thought itself, of the notion as notion ; it is the universahty of actual reahty, it is the " allness," the collective totahty, of the selves, and is the elevation of existence into the sphere of presentative or figurative thought {Vorstel- lung) ; just as in general, to take a concrete example, the " this " of sense, when transcended, is first of all the "thing" of "perception," and is not yet the "universal" of ''miderstanding."
This individual human being, then, which Absolute Being is revealed to be, goes through in its own case as an individual the process found in sense existence. He is the immediately present God ; in consequence His being passes over into His having been. Consciousness, for which God is thus sensuously present, ceases to see Him, to hear Him : it has seen Him, it has heard Him. And it is by the mere fact that it has seen and heard Him, that it first becomes itself spiritual consciousness* ; or, in other words. He has now arisen in the hfe of Spirit, as He formerly rose before consciousness as an object existing in the sphere of sense. For, a conscious- ness which sees and hears Him by sense, is one which is
* cp. " He that has seen me has seen the Father " (John xiv.). " If I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you " {ibid. xvi.).
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itself merely an immediate consciousness, which has not cancelled and transcended the disparateness of objec- tivity, has not withdrawn it into pure thought, but accepts this objectively presented individual, and not itself, as spirit. In the disappearance of the immediate existence of what is known to be Absolute Being, im- mediacy preserves its negative moment. Spirit remains the immediate self of actual reahty, but in the form of the universal self-consciousness of a rehgious com- munion,* a self-consciousness which rests in its own proper substance, just as in it this substance is uni- versal subject : it is not the individual subject by iTi, himself, but the individual along with the consciousness of the communion, and what he is for this communion is the complete whole of the individual spirit.
The terms " past " and " distance " are, however, merely the imperfect form in which the immediateness gets mediated or made universal ; this is merely dipped superficially in the element of thought, is kept there as a sensuous mode of immediacy, and not made one with the nature of thought itself. It is hfted out of sense merely into the region of ideation, of pictorial presentation ; for this is the synthetic [external] con- nexion of sensuous immediacy and its universahty or thought.
Imaginative presentation constitutes the characteristic form in which spirit is conscious of itself in this rehgious communion. This form is not yet the self-consciousness of spirit which has reached its notion as notion ; the mediating process is still incomplete. In this connexion of being and thought, then, there is a defect ; spiritual
* " Lo, I am with you alvvay even to the end of the world " (Matt, xxviii. ; also xviii. 20).
Revealed Religion 175
life is still cumbered with an unreconciled diremption into a '* hither " and a " yonder/' a " here " and a " beyond." The content is the true content ; but all its moments, when placed in the element of mere presentation, have the character, not of being conceptually comprehended, but of appearing as completely independent aspects, externally related to one another.
*In order that the true content may also preserve its true form when before consciousness, the latter must necessarily pass to a higher plane of mental develop- ment, where the Absolute Substance is not intuitively apprehended but conceptually comprehended and where consciousness is for itself brought to the level of its self -consciousness ; — in the way this has already taken place objectively or for us [who have analysed the pro- cess of experience].
We have to consider this content as it exists in its consciousness. Absolute Spirit is content ; that is how it exists in the form of its truth. But its truth consists not merely in being the substance or the inherent reahty of the rehgious communion ; nor again in coming out of this inwardness into the objectivity of per- ceptual and presentational thought; but in becoming concrete actual self, reflecting itself into self, and being Subject. This, then, is the process which Spirit r5 5' reahses in its communion ; this is its life. What this self -revealing spirit is in and by itself, is therefore not brought out by the rich and full content of its hfe being, so to say, untwined and reduced to its original and primitive strands, to the ideas, for instance, presented before the minds of the first imperfect rehgious com- munion, or even to what the actual human being
* This paragraph is explanatory.
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[incarnating the Divine Spirit] * has spoken. This reversion to the primitive and elementary is based on the instinct to get at the notion and ultimate principle ; but it confuses the origin, in the sense of the immediate existence of the first historical appearance, with the pure simphcity of the notion. By thus impoverishing the hfe of spirit, by clearing away the idea of the communion and its action with regard to its idea, there arises, therefore, not the notion, but bare exter- nahty and particularity, merely the historical manner in which spirit once upon a time appeared, the soulless recollection of an ideally presented historical figure and its past.j
Spirit is content of its consciousness to begin with in the form of pure substance ; in other words, it is content of its pure consciousness. This element of thought is the process of descending into existence, the sphere of particularity. The middle term between these two is their synthetic connexion, the consciousness of passing into otherness, the process of ideal presentation as such. The third stage is the return from representation in idea and from that otherness ; in other words, it is the ele- ment of self-consciousness itself.
These three movements constitute the Hfe of spirit. Its resolution into separate parts, when it enters the form of presentation, consists in its taking on a deter- minate mode of being ; this determinateness, however, is nothing but one of its moments. Its detailed process thus consists in spreading its nature over its various moments, entering every one, each being an element in its composition : and since each of these spheres is
* e.g. Christ.
t '1 lie lite and work of the historical Jesus.
Revealed Religion 777
self-complete, this reflexion into itself is at the same time the transition into another sphere of its being. Ideal presentation constitutes the middle term between pure thought and self-consciousness as such, and is merely one of the determinate forms. At the same time however, as has been shown, the character belonging to such presentation — that of being " synthetic con- nexion " — is spread over all these elements and is their common characteristic.
The content itself, which we have to consider, has partly been met with already, as the idea or presenta- tion of the " unhappy " and the " behevmg " types of consciousness. In the case of the " unhappy " despairing consciousness, however, the pecuKarity hes in the con- tent being produced from consciousness and longingly desired, wherein the spirit can never be satiated nor find rest because the content is not yet its own content inherently and essentially, or in the sense of being its substance. In the case of the "beheving" conscious- ness, again, this content has been regarded as the im- personal Being of the World, as the essentially objective content of presentative thought — a pictorial thinking that seeks to escape the actual world altogether, and consequently has not the certainty of self-consciousness, a certainty which is cut of! from it, partly as being conceit of knowledge, partly as being pure insight. The consciousness of the rehgious communion, on the other hand, possesses the content as its substance, just as the content is the certainty the communion has of its own spiritual hfe.
Spirit, represented at first as substance in the ele- ment of pure thought, is, thus, primarily the eternal Being, simple, self-identical, which does not, however,
i-CL
778 Phenomenology of Mind
have this abstract meaning of Being, but the meaning of Absolute Spirit. Yet spirit consists, not in being a mean- ing, not in being the inner, but in being the actual, the real. " Simple eternal Being " would, therefore, be spirit merely in empty phrase, if it stopped at ideational pic- torial thought, and went no further than the expression of " simple eternal Being." " Simple Being," however, because it is abstraction, is in point of fact the inherently negative, is indeed the negativity of reflective thought, or negativity as found in Being per se ; i.e. it is absolute distinction from itself, its pure process of becoming its other. Qua essential Being, it is merely in itself, purely imphcit, or for us : but since this purity of form is just abstraction or negativity, it is for itself, it is the self, the notion. It is thus objective; and since pre- sentational thinking apprehends and expresses as an event what has just been expressed as the necessity of the notion, it will be said that the eternal Being pro- duces for itself an other. But in this otherness it has hkewise, if so facto, returned into itself again; for the distinction is distinction in itself, i.e. the distinction is directly distinguished merely from itself, and is thus the unity returned into itself.
There are thus three moments to be distinguished : immanent absolute Being ; exphcit Self-existence, which is the antithesis, the express otherness, of Being, and for which that Being is object ; and Self -existence or Self-knowledge in that other, in that antithetic expression. The absolute Being beholds only itself in its Self -existence, in its objective otherness. In thus emptying itself, in this kenosis, it is merely within itself : the independent Self-existence which excludes itself from absolute Being is the knowledge of
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itself on the part of absolute Being. It is the " Word," the Logos, which when spoken empties the speaker of himself, outwardises him, and leaves him behind emptied, but is at the same time immediately heard and under- stood, and only this act of hearing or perceiving himself is the actual existence of the " Word/' Hence, then, the distinctions which are set up are immediately resolved just as they are made, and are directly made just as they are resolved, and the truth and the reahty consist precisely in this self-closed circular process.
This movement within itself is what the absolute Being qita Spirit expresses. Absolute Being, when not grasped as Spirit, is merely an empty abstraction, just as spirit which is not grasped as a process in this way is merely an empty word. Since its moments are taken purely as moments, they are notions in restless activity, which are merely in being inherently their own opposite, and in finding their rest in the whole. But the pre- sentative pictorial thought of the rehgious communion is not this conceptual thinking ; it has the content without its necessity ; and instead of the form of the notion it brings into the realm of pure consciousness the natural relations of Father and Son. Since it thus, even when thinking, proceeds by way of figurative ideas, abso- lute Being is indeed revealed to it, but the moments of this Being, owing to this [externally] synthetic presenta- tional thinking, fall of themselves apart from one another, so that they are not related to each other through their own very notion, while, again, this figurative thinking retreats from the pure object it deals with, and takes up a merely external relation towards it. The object is externally revealed to it from an ahen source, and in this thought of Spirit it does not find its own self, does
780 Phenomenology of Mind
not recognise the nature of pure self -consciousness. In so far as the form of presentative thinking and that way of thinking by means of relationships derived from nature have to be transcended, and especially the method of taking the moments of the process, in which the hfe of Spirit consists, as isolated fixed immovable substances or subjects, instead of transient moments — this trans- cendence is to be looked at as a compulsion on the part of the notion, in the way we formerly pointed out when deahng with another aspect.* But since it is only an instinct, it mistakes its own real character, rejects the content along with the form, and, what comes to the same thing, degrades the content into a historical imaginative idea and an heirloom handed down by tradition. In this way there is retained and preserved only what is purely external to the sphere of behef, and hence a Hfeless entity devoid of knowledge ; while the inner element in belief has passed away, because this would be the notion knowing itself as notion.
The Absolute Spirit, ideally presented in pure ultimate Being, is indeed not the abstract pure Being ; rather, just by the fact that this is merely a moment in the Hfe of Spirit, it is lowered to the level of con- stituent element. The representation of Spirit in this element, however, has inherently the same defect, as regards form, which ultimate Being as such has. Ulti- mate Being is abstraction, and, therefore, the negative of its simpHcity, is an other : in the same way, Spirit in the element of ultimate Being is the form of simple imity, which, on that account, is essentially and at the same time a process of turning to otherness. Or, what is the same thing, the relation of the eternal
* V. p. 775.
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Being to its self -existence, its objective existence for Itself, is that of pure thought, a directly simple relation. In this simple beholding of itself in the Other, otherness is not as such set up independently ; it is distinction in the way distinction, in pure thought, is immediately no distinction — a recognition of Love, where lover and beloved are not in their very being opposed to each other at all. Spirit, which is expressed in the element of pure thought, is essentially just this : not to be merely in that element, but to be concrete, actual ; for otherness, i.e. cancelhng and superseding pure conception, thought- constituted conception, hes in the very notion of Spirit.
The element of pure thought, because it is an abstract element, is itself rather the other of its own simphcity, and hence passes over into ideal presentation proper — the element where the moments of the pure notion at once preserve a substantial existence in opposition to each other and are subjects as well, which do not exist for a third thing in indifference towards each other, but being reflected into themselves, break away from one another, and stand confronting each other.
Merely eternal, or abstract Spirit, then, becomes an other to itself : it enters existence, and, in the first instance, enters immediate existence. It creates a World. This "Creation"' is the word which pictorial presen- tative thought uses to convey the absolute movement which the notion itself goes through ; or to express the fact that the absolutely simple or pure thought, because it is abstract thought, is really the negative, and hence opposed to itself, the other of itself ; or because, to state the same in another way, what is put forward as ultimate Being is simple immediacy, bare objective existence, but qua immediacy or existence, is without
782 Phenomenology of Mind
Self, and, lacking thus inwardness, is passive, or has a relative existence, exists for another. This relative existence is at the same time a world. Spirit, in the character of existing for another, is the midisturbed separate subsistence of those moments formerly enclosed within pure thought, is, therefore, the dissolution of their simple universaHty, and their dispersion into their own particularity.
The world, however, is not merely Spirit thus thrown ■^"** out and scattered in all its plenitude with an external order imposed on it ; for since Spirit is essentially simple Self, this self is Hkewise present therein. It is objectively existent spirit which is individual self, that has con- sciousness and distinguishes itself as other, as world, from itself. In the way this individual self is thus immediately estabhshed at first, it is not yet conscious of being Spirit ; it thus does not exist as Spirit ; it may be called " innocent," but not strictly " good." In order that in fact it may be self and Spirit, it has first to become objectively an other to itself, in the same way that the Eternal being manifests itself as the process of being self-identical in its otherness. Since this spirit is determined as only immediately existing, or dispersed in the diverse multiphcity of its conscious life, its becoming "other" means that knowledge is centred on itself, concentrates itself upon its subjective content. Immediate existence turns into thought, or merely sense-consciousness turns round into conscious- ness of thought; and, moreover, because that thought has come from immediacy or is conditioned thought, it is not pure knowledge, but thought which contains other- ness, and is, thus, the self-opposed thought of good and evil. Man is pictorially represented by the rehgious
Revealed Religion 783
mind in this way : it happened once as an event, with no necessity about it, that he lost the form of harmonious unity with himself by plucking the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and was driven from the state of conscious innocence, from Paradise, from the garden with all its creatures, and from nature offering its bounties without man's toil.
Since this self-centredness on the part of the existent consciousness directly gives rise to disharmony with itself, Evil appears as the first actual expression of the self-centred consciousness. And because the thoughts of good and evil are utterly opposed, and this opposition is not yet broken down, this consciousness is essentially and merely evil. At the same time, however, owing to just this very opposition, there is present also the good con- sciousness opposing the one that is evil, and again their relation to each other. In so far as immediate existence turns round into thought, and self-absorption, self- centredness, is just thought, while again the transi- tion to otherness on the part of Being is thereby more precisely determined, — the fact of becoming evil can be removed .further backwards away out of the actually existing world and transferred to the very earhest realm of thought. It may thus be said that it was the very first-born Son of Light [Lucifer] who, by becoming self-centred, fell, but that in his place another was at once created. Such a form of expression as " fallen," belonging merely to figurative thought, and not to the notion, just hke the term " Son," once more transmutes and lowers the moments of the notion to the level of imaginative thought, or, in other words, drags pictures and presentations into the realm of thought.
784 Phenomenology of Mind
In the same way, it is matter of indifference to co- ordinate a multiplicity of other angehe shapes and forms with the simple thought of otherness in the Being of the Eternal, and transfer to them that condition of self- centredness. This co-ordination must, all the same, win approval, for the reason that, through it, this moment of otherness does express diversity, as it should do : not indeed as plurahty in general, but as determinate diversity, so that one part is the Son, that which is simple and knows itself to be ultimate Being, while the other part involves the abandonment, the emptying, of self-existence, and merely hves to praise that Being. To this part may then also be assigned the resumption once again of the self-existence relinquished, and that " self-centredness " characteristic of evil. In so far as this condition of otherness falls into two parts. Spirit might, as regards its moments, be more exactly expressed numerically as a Quaternity, a four in one, or (because the multiphcity breaks up itself again into two parts, viz. one part which has remained good, the other which has become evil), might be expressed as a Quinity.
Counting the moments, however, can be regarded as altogether useless, since, for one thing, what is dis- tinguished is itself just as truly one and single — viz. the thought of distinction which is only one thought — as the thought is this element distinguished, the second over against the first. For another thing it is use- less to count, because the thought which grasps the many in one has to be dissolved out of its universahty and must be distinguished into more than three or four distinct components. This universahty appears, in contrast to the absolute determinateness of the abstract
Revealed Religion 785
unit — the principle of number — as indeterminateness in relation to number as such ; so that we can only speak in this connexion of numbers in general, i.e. not of a specific number of distinctions. Hence, in general, it is here quite superfluous to think of number and counting, just as, in other connexions, the bare difference of magnitude and multitude says nothing at all and falls outside conceptual thought.
Good and Evil were the specific distinctions of thought which we found. Since their opposition is not yet broken down, and they are represented as essential reahties of thought, each of them independent by itself, man is the self with no essential reahty of his own and the mere ground which keeps them together, and on which they exist and war with one another. But these universal powers of good and evil belong all the same to the self, or the self is their actuahsing principle. From this point of view it thus comes about that, as evil is nothing else than the natural existence of spirit be- coming self-absorbed and self-centred, conversely, good enters into actual reahty and appears as an objectively existing self-consciousness. The idea of the transition of the Divine Being into otherness is in general merely indicated and hinted at when Spirit is interpreted in terms of pure thought ; for figurative thinking this idea here comes nearer its reahsation : the reahsation is taken to consist in the Divine Being " humbhng '' It- self, and renouncing its abstract nature and unreality. The other aspect, that of evil, is taken by imagination as an event extraneous and ahen to the Divine Being : to grasp evil in the Divine Being as the wrath of God — that is the supreme effort, the severest strain, of which figurative thought, wresthng with its own Hmita-
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786 Phenomenology of Mind
tions, is capable, an effort which, since it dispenses with the notion, remains a fruitless struggle.
The ahenation of the Divine Nature is thus set up in its double- sided form : the self of Spirit, and its simple thought, are the two moments whose absolute unity is V Q, '2 Spirit itself. Its ahenation with itself consists in the two falhng apart from each other, and in the one having an unequal value as against the other. This disparateness is, therefore, twofold in character, and two connections arise, which have in common the moments just given. In the one, the Divine Being stands for what is essential, while natural existence and the self are unessential and are to be cancelled. In the other, on the contrary, it is self-existence which passes for what is essential and the Divine pure and simple for unessential. Their mediating, though empty ground is existence in general, the bare community of their two moments.
The dissolution of this opposition does not take effect through the struggle between the two elements, which are represented as separate and independent Beings. Just in virtue of their independence each must inherently, through its own notion, dissolve itself in itself. The struggle takes place first in that quarter where both cease to be this mixture of thought and independent existence, and confront each other merely as thoughts. For in that case, being determinate notions, they essentially exist merely in the relation of opposi- tion; qua independent, on the other hand, they have their essential nature outside opposition; their move- ment is thus free, self-determined, and pecuhar to themselves. Just as the movement, then, of both is inherently movement because it has to be regarded in themselves, it is set going only by that element of
Revealed Religion 787
the two which has the character of being inherently- essential as contrasted with the other. This is repre- sented as a spontaneous action ; but the necessity for its self-abandonment hes in the notion that what is inherently essential, and gets this specific character merely through opposition, has just on that account no real independent subsistence. Therefore that ele- ment which has for its essence, not independent self- existence, but simple being, is what empties and abandons itself, gives itself unto death, and so reconciles Absolute Being with its own self. For in this process it manifests itself as spirit: the abstract Being is estranged from itself, it has natural existence and actual individual reahty. This its otherness, or its being sensuously present, is taken back again by the second process of self-abandonment, of becoming "other," and is affirmed as superseded, as universal. Thereby the Divine Being has come to itself in the sphere of the sensu- ous present; the immediate existence of actual reahty has ceased to be something ahen or external to the Divine, by being sublated, by its becoming universal : this death of immediacy is therefore its rising anew as Spirit. When the self-conscious Being cancels and transcends its immediate present, it is universal self- consciousness. This notion of the transcended in- dividual self which is Absolute Being, immediately expresses therefore the estabHshment of a commimion which, while hitherto having its abode in the sphere of pictorial presentation, now returns into itself as the Self : and Spirit thus passes from the second element consti- tuting it, — figurative presentation — and goes over to the third — self -consciousness as such.
If we further consider the kind of procedure that pre-
788 Phenomenology of Mind
sentative thinking adopts as it goes along, we find in the first place the expression that the Divine Being "puts on'' human nature. Here it is eo ipso asserted that imphcitly and inherently the two are not separate : just as in the statement, that the Divine Being from the beginning empties Itself of Itself, that its objective existence is self-absorbed, centres in Itself and becomes evil, it is not asserted but imphed that 'per se this evil existence is not something alien to the Divine nature. Absolute Being would be merely an empty name if in very truth there were any other being external to it, if there were an absolute " fall " from it. The aspect of self-centredness, self-absorption, really constitutes the essential moment of the self of Spirit.
That this self-centredness, whence primarily comes its reahty, belongs to the Divine Being — while this is for us a notion, and so as far as it is a notion, — appears to presentative thinking as an inconceivable historical fact. The inherent and essential nature assumes for figurative thought the form of a bare objective fact external and indifferent to God. The thought, however, that those apparently mutually repugnant moments, absolute Being and self-existent Self, are not inseparable, comes also before this figurative way of thinking (since it does possess the real content), but that thought appears afterwards, in the form that the Divine Being empties Itself of Itself and is made flesh. This figurative idea, which in this way is still immediate and hence not spiritual, i.e. it takes the human form assumed by the Divine to be merely in the first instance a particular form, not yet a universal form — becomes spiritual for this consciousness in the process whereby God, who has assumed shape and form, surrenders again His external, His immediate
ReDealed Religion 789
existence, and returns to His inner Being. The Divine Being is then Spirit when it is reflected into itself.
The reconcihation of the Divine Being with its antithesis as a whole, and, specifically, with the thought of this other — evil — is thus presented here in a figurative way. When this reconciliation is expressed conceptu- ally, by saying it consists in the fact that evil is inherently the same as what goodness is, or again that the Divine Being is the same as natm^e in its entire extent, just as nature separated from God is simply nothingness, — then this must be looked at as an un- spiritual mode of expression which is bound to give rise to misunderstandings. When evil is the same as goodness, then evil is just not evil nor goodness good ; on the contrary, both are really done away with — evil in general, self-centred self-existence, and goodness, self- less simple abstraction. Since in this way they are both expressed in terms of their notion, the unity of the two is at once apparent ; for self-centred self-existence is simple knowledge ; and what is self-less simple abstrac- tion is as much pure self-existence centred within itself. Hence, if it must be said that good and evil in their conception, i.e., so far as they are 7iot good and evil, are the same, just as certainly it must be said that they are not the same, but absolutely different ; for simple self- existence, or again pure knowledge, is equally pure negativity or per se absolute distinction. It is only these two propositions that make the whole com- plete; and when the first is asserted and asseverated, it must be met and opposed by insisting on the other with immovable obstinacy. Since both are equally right, they are both equally wrong, and their wrong consists in taking such abstract forms as " the same "
790 Phenomenology of Mind
and " not the same," " identity " and " non-identity," to be something true, fixed, real, and in resting on them. Neither the one nor the other has truth ; their truth is just their movement, the process in which simple sameness is abstraction and thus absolute distinction, while this again, being distinction per se, is distinguished from itself and so is self-identity. Precisely this is what we have in the case of the sameness of the Divine Being and Nature in general and human nature in particular : the former is Nature so far as it is not essen- tially Being; Nature is divine in its essential Being. But it is in Spirit that we find both abstract aspects affirmed as they truly are, viz. as cancelled and pre- served at once : and this way of affirming them cannot be expressed by the judgment, by the soulless word " is," the copula of the judgment. In the same way Nature is nothing outside its essential Being [God] ; but this nothing itself is all the same ; it is absolute abstrac- tion, pure thought or self-centredness, and with its moment of opposition to spiritual unity it is the principle of Evil. The difficulty people find in these conceptions is due solely to sticking to the term " is," and forgetting the character of thought, where the moments as much are as they are not, — are the process which is Spirit. It is this spiritual unity, — unity where the distinctions are merely in the form of moments, or are transcended and maintained — which became known to presentative thinking in that atoning reconcihation spoken of above. And since this unity is the universahty of self-consciousness, self-consciousness has ceased to be figurative or pictorial in its thinking; the process has turned back into it.
Spirit thus takes up its position in the third element,
Revealed Religion 791
in universal self-consciousness : Spirit is its own com- munity. The movement of this community being that of self-consciousness, which distinguishes itself from its figurative idea, consists in explicitly bringing out what has impHcitly become estabhshed. The dead Divine Man, or Human God, is implicitly universal self- consciousness ; he has to become explicitly so for this self - consciousness. Or, since this self - consciousness constitutes one side of the opposition involved in ideal presentation, viz. the side of evil, which takes natural existence and individual self-existence to be the essential reality — this aspect, which is presented as independent, and not yet as a moment, has, on account of its independence, to raise itself in and for itself, to the level of Spirit ; it has to reveal the process of Spirit in this aspect.
This particular self-consciousness is Spirit in natural form, natural spirit : self has to withdraw from this natural existence and enter into itself, become self- centred ; that means, it has to become evil. But this aspect is already per se evil : entering into itself consists, therefore, in persuading itself that natural existence is what is evil. By presentational picture- thinking the world is supposed actually to become evil and be evil as an actual fact, and the atoning reconcilement of the Absolute Being is viewed as an actual existent phenomenon. By self-consciousness as such, however, this figurative presentation of the truth, as regards its form, is considered to be merely a moment that is already superseded and transcended ; for the self is the principle of negation, and hence knowledge — a knowledge which is a pure act of con- sciousness within itself. Tliis moment of the nega-
5-1
792 Phenomenology of Mind
tive must in like manner find expression as regards the content. Since, that is to say, the Absolute Being is inherently and from the start reconciled with itself and is a spiritual unity, in which the parts constituting the presentation are sublated, are moments, what we find is that each element of the presentation receives here the opposite significance to that which it had before. By this means each meaning finds its completion in the other, and the content is then and thereby a spiritual content. Since the specific determinateness of each is just as much its opposite, unity in otherness — spiritual reahty — is achieved and completed : just as formerly we saw opposite meanings combined and united objectively, or in themselves, and even the abstract forms of " the same " and " not- the- same," " identity " and " non- identity " cancelled one another and were transcended. If, then, from the point of view of figurative thought, the natural self-consciousness rooted and fixed in itself was the real evil, that process of becoming fixed in itself is in the sphere of self-consciousness, the knowledge of evil as something that per se belongs to existence. This knowledge is certainly a process of becoming evil, but merely of the thought of evil, and is therefore recog- nised as the first moment of reconcihation. For, being a return into self out of the immediacy of nature which is specifically the principle of evil, it is a forsaking of that immediacy, and a dying to sin. It is not natural exist- ence as such that consciousness forsakes, but natural existence that is at the same time known to be evil. The immediate process of fixing itself within itself, of becoming self-centred, is just as much a mediate process : it presupposes itself, i.e. is its own ground and principle : the reason for fixing itself in self is
Revealed Religion 793
because nature has fer se already done so. On account of evil man must be turned back into himself, but evil is itself the process of doing so, of "fixing himself in self." This first movement is just on that account itself merely immediate, is its bare and simple notion, because it is the same as what its ground or reason is. The movement, or the process of passing into otherness, must therefore come out afterwards in its own more pecuhar form.
Beside this immediacy, then, the mediation of ideal presentation is necessary. Imphcitly and essentially, the knowledge of nature as the untrue inadequate ex- pression of spirit's existence, and this universahty of self which has thereby arisen within the life of the self — these constitute the reconciHation of spirit with itself. This impHcit state is apprehended by the self-conscious- ness that does not think conceptually, in the form of an objective existence, and as something presented to it figuratively. Conceptual comprehension {Begreifen), therefore, does not mean for it a grasping {Ergreifen) of this conception {Begriff) which knows natural existence when cancelled and transcended to be universal and thus reconciled with itself ; but rather a laying hold of that ideal presentation, the imaginative idea ( Vorstellung) that the Divine Being is reconciled with its existence through an event, — the event of God's emptying Himself of Him- self, relinquishing His Divine Being, through His factual Incarnation and His Death. The laying hold of this idea now expresses more specifically what was formerly called in figurative thinking spiritual resurrection, or the ^t process by which God's individual self- consciousness * becomes the universal, becomes the rehgious communion.
* Tlie Christ.
794 Phenomenology of Mind
The death of the Divine Man, qua death, is abstract negativity, the immediate result of the process which terminates only in the universahty belonging to nature. In spiritual self-consciousness death loses its natural significance ; it passes into its true principle or con- ception, the conception just mentioned. Death then ceases to signify what it means directly — the non- existence of this particular individual — and becomes transformed and transfigured into the universahty of spirit, which lives in its own communion, dies there daily, and daily rises again.
That which belongs to the sphere of pictorial thought — viz., that Absolute Spirit, qua individual or rather qua particular, embodies and presents in its objective exist- ence the nature of spirit — is thus here transferred to self- consciousness itself, to the sphere where knowledge main- tains itself in its otherness, in its opposite. This self-con- sciousness does not therefore really die, as the particular person * is represented to have really died ; its particu- larity succumbs and expires in its universality, i.e. in its knowledge, which is true Being reconcihng itself with itself. That primary and prior element of presentative thinking is thus here set forth as transcended, has, in other words, returned into the self, into its notion. What was in the former merely an existent entity has come to assume the form of Subject. By that very fact the first element too, pure thought and the spirit eternal therein, are no longer away beyond and outside the mind thinking pictorially nor beyond the self ; rather the return of the whole into itself consists just in con- taining all moments within itself. When the death of the mediator is laid hold of by the self, brought
* Christ.
Revealed Religion 795
within its grasp, this means the sublation and trans- cendence of his factuahty, of his particular independent existence : this particular self-existence has become universal self -consciousness.
On the other side, the universal, just because of this, is self-consciousness, and the pure or abstract unreal Spirit of bare thought has become concrete and actual. Th,e death of the mediator is death not merely of his natural aspect, of his particular self-existence : what dies is not merely the outer encasement, which, being stripped of true Being, is eo ipso dead, but also the abstraction of the Divine Being. For the mediator, as long as his death has not yet accomphshed the reconciha- tion, is something one-sided, which takes as true Being the simple abstract element of thought, not concrete reality. This one-sided extreme of self has not yet equal worth and value with ultimate Being ; the self first gets this as Spirit. When the mediator as imaginatively presented dies, his death imphes at the same time the death of the mere abstraction of Divine Being, which is not yet affirmed as a self. That death is the bitterness and pain of the " unhappy consciousness," when it feels that God himself is dead. This harsh utterance is the expression of inmost self-knowledge which has self bare and simple for its content ; it is the return of con- sciousness into the depth of darkness where Ego is no- thing but bare identity of Ego, a darkness distinguishing and knowing nothing more outside it. This feehng thus means, in point of fact, the loss of the Substance and of its objective existence over against consciousness. But at the same time it is the pure subjectivity of Substance, the pure certainty and inner assurance of itself, which it lacked when it was object or immediacy, pure ultimate
796 Phenomenology of Mind
Being. This knowledge is thus the process of spirituaHsa- tion, whereby Substance becomes Subject, by which its abstraction and hfelessness have expired, and Substance therefore has become concrete and real, simple universal self-consciousness.
In this way, then, Spirit is Spirit knowing its own self. It knows itself ; that, which is for it object, exists, or, in other words, its objectively presented idea is the true absolute content. As we saw, the content expresses just Spirit itself. It is at the same time not merely content of self -consciousness, and not merely object for self-consciousness ; it is also concrete actual Spirit. It is this by the fact of its passing through and realising the three elements of its nature : this movement through the content of its whole self in this way con- stitutes its actual reality. What moves itself, that is Spirit; it is the subject of the movement, and it is likewise the moving process itself, or the substance through which the subject makes its way. We saw how the notion of spirit arose when we entered the ^-,, sphere of religion : it was the process of self-assured spirit, which forgives and pardons evil, and in so doing puts aside its own simplicity of nature and rigid un- changeableness : it was, to state it otherwise, the process, in which what is absolutely in opposition recognises itself as the same as its opposite, and this knowledge breaks out into the "yea, yea" with which one extreme meets the other. The religious conscious- ness, to which the Absolute Being is revealed, sees this notion, and does away with the distinction of its self from what it beholds ; and as it is Subject, so it is also Substance ; and is thus itself Spirit just because and in so far as it is this process.
Revealed Religion 797
This religious communion, however, has not yet achieved its complete self-consciousness. Its content, in general, is put before it in the form of an objec- tive pictorial idea; so that this disruption or opposi- tion* still attaches even to the actual spiritual character of the communion — to its return out of its presentative way of thinking; just as the element of pure thought itself was also hampered with that opposition. This spiritual communion, too, is not aware what it is ; it is spiritual self-consciousness, which is not object to itself in this form, or does not develop into clear conscious- ness of itself. Rather, so far as it is consciousness, it has before it ideal presentations, those picture-thoughts which were considered.
We see self-consciousness at its last turning-point become inward to itself and attain to knowledge of its inner being, of its self-centredness. We see it relinquish and empty itself of its natural existence, and reach pure negativity. But the positive significance — viz. that this negativity, or pure inwardness of knowledge is just as much the self -identical Absolute Being : put otherwise, that Substance has here attained to being absolute self-consciousness — this is, for the devotional con- sciousness, an objective other, something external. It grasps this aspect — that the knowledge which becomes purely inward is inherently absolute simphcity, or Substance — as the idea of something which is not thus by its very conception, but as the act of satis- faction obtained from an other. In other words, it is not really aware as a fact that this depth of pure self is the power by which the abstract Ulti- mate Being is drawn down from its abstractness and
* i.e. between spiritual consciousness and objective idea.
r-i
798 Phenomenology of Mind
raised to the level of self by the strength and force of this pure devotion. The action of the self hence retains towards it this negative significance, because the relinquishment of itself on the part of substance is for the self an ultimate reality, something fer se ; the self does not at once grasp and comprehend it, or does not find it in its own action as such.
Since this unity of Ultimate Being and Self has been essentially and inherently brought about, consciousness, too, has this idea of its reconcihation, but in the form of an imaginative idea. It obtains satisfaction by attaching, in an external way, to its pure negativity the positive significance of the unity of itself with absolute Being. Its satisfaction thus itself remains hampered with the opposition of an external beyond. Its own peculiar reconcihation therefore enters its consciousness as something remote, something far away in the future, just as the reconcihation, which the other self achieved, appears as away in the distance of the past. Just as the individual god-man * has an imphcit, a potential father and only an actual mother, in Hke manner we may say the universal god-man, the spiritual com- munion, has as its father its own proper action and knowledge, while its mother is eternal Love, which it merely feels, but does not behold as an actual immediate object present in its consciousness. Its reconcihation, therefore, is in its heart, but still with its conscious life sundered in twain and its actual reahty shattered. What falls within its consciousness as the inherent and essential element, the aspect of pure mediation, is the reconciliation that lies beyond : while what appears as actually present in its consciousness, a.s the
* The historical Christ.
Revealed Religion 799
aspect of immediacy and of existence, is the world which has yet to await transfiguration. The world is no doubt implicitly reconciled with the Divine Being ; and that Being no doubt knows that it no longer regards the object as ahenated from itself, but as one with itself in its Love. But for self-consciousness this immediate presence has not yet the form and shape of spiritual reahty. Thus the spirit of the communion is, in its immediate consciousness, separated from its rehgious consciousness, which declares indeed that these two modes of consciousness imphcitly and inherently are not separated, but this is an implicitness which is not reahsed, or has not yet become an absolute explicit self-existence as well.
(DD)
VIII
ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE*
THE Spirit manifested in revealed religion has not as yet surmounted its attitude of consciousness as such ; or, what is the same thing, its concrete self-con- sciousness is not at this stage the object it is aware of. Spirit as a whole and the moments distinguished in it fall within the sphere of presentative thinking, are presentations with the form of objectivity. The content of this presentational thought is Absolute Spirit. All that remains to be done now is to cancel and trans- cend this bare form ; or better, because the form appertains to consciousness as such its true meaning must have come out in the shapes and modes conscious- ness has already assumed.
The surmounting of the object of consciousness in this way is not to be taken one-sidedly as meaning that the object shows itself returning into the self. It has a more definite and specific meaning: it means that the object as such presents itself to the self as a vanishing factor ; and, furthermore, that the emptying, the relinquish- ment, of self-consciousness itself establishes thing- hood, and that this laying aside of self-consciousness
* V. sup. p. 684. "Absolute Knowledge" is at once the consumma- tion of experience and, on the historical side, constructive philosophy: V. infra, p. 816 if.
800
Absolute Knowledge 801
has not merely negative, but positive significance, a significance not merely for us or fer se, but for self- consciousness itself. The negative of the object, its cancelhng its own existence, gets, for self-consciousness, a positive significance ; or, self-consciousness knows this nothingness of the object because on the one hand self-consciousness itself relinquishes itself ; for in doing so it establishes itself as object, or, by reason of the indivisible unity characterising its self-existence, sets up the object as its self. On the other hand, there is also this other moment in the process, that self-consciousness r/^" has just as really cancelled and done away with this self -relinquishment and objectification, and has resumed them into itself, and is thus at home with itself in its otherness. This is the movement of consciousness, and in this process consciousness is the totahty of its moments.
Consciousness, at the same time, had to take up a relation to the object in all its aspects and phases, and grasp its meaning from the point of view of each of them. This totahty of its determinate characteristics makes the object per se and inherently a spiritual reahty; and it becomes so in truth for consciousness, when the latter apprehends every individual one of them as self, i.e. when it takes up towards them the spiritual relationship just spoken of.
The object is, then, partly immediate existence, a thing in general — corresponding to immediate con- sciousness ; partly an alteration of itself, its relatedness, (or existence-for-anotherand existence-for-self),c?e^ermm- ateness — corresponding to perception ; partly essential being or in the form of a universal — corresponding to intelhgence or understanding. The object as a whole is
VOL. 11.— 2 c
802 Phenomenology of Mind
the mediated result [the conclusion] or the passing of universality into individuality through specification, as also the reverse process from individual to universal through cancelled individuality or specific determination. These three specific aspects, then, determine the ways in which consciousness must get to know the object in the form of self. This knowledge of which we are speaking is, however, not knowledge in the sense of pure conceptual comprehension of the object; here this knowledge is to be taken as a developing process, has to be taken in its various moments and set forth in the manner appropriate to consciousness as such ; and the moments of the notion proper, of pure and absolute knowledge, are to assume the form of modes or attitudes of consciousness. For that reason the object does not yet, when present in consciousness as such, appear as the inner essence of Spirit in the way this has just been expressed. The procedure conscious- ness adopts in regard to the object is not that of considering it either in this totality as such or in the pure conceptual form ; it is partly that of a mode or attitude of consciousness in general, partly a multitude of such modes which we [who analyse the process] gather together, and in which the totality of the moments of the object and of the procedure of consciousness can be shown merely resolved into their separate elements. To understand this method of grasping the object, where apprehension is a form or mode of consciousness, we have here only to recall the previous forms of con- sciousness which came before us earlier in the argument. As regards the object, then, so far as it is immediate, an indifferent objective entity, we saw Reason, at the stage of "Observation,"' seeking and finding itself in
Absolute Knowledge 803
this indifferent thing — i.e. we saw it conscious that its activity is there of an external sort, and at the same time conscious of the object merely as an immediate ob j ect. We saw, too , its specific character take expression at its highest stage in the infinite judgment : " the being of the ego is a thing." And, further, the ego is an immediate thing of sense. When ego is called a soul, it is indeed represented also as a thing, but a thing in the sense of something invisible, impalpable, etc., i.e. in fact not as an immediate entity, and not as that which is generally understood by a thing. That judgment, then, *' ego is a thing " taken at first glance, has no spiritual content, or rather, is just the absence of spirituahty. In its conception, however, it is in fact the most luminous and illuminating judgment ; and this, its inner significance, which is not yet made evident, is what the two other moments to be considered express.
The thing is ego. In point of fact, thing is transcended in this infinite judgment. The thing is nothing in itself ; it only has significance in a relation, only through the ego and its reference to the ego. This moment came before consciousness in pure insight and enhghtenment. Things are simply and solely useful, profitable, and only to be considered from the point of view of their utihty. The trained and cultivated self-consciousness, which has traversed the region of spirit in self-alienation, has, by giving up itself, produced the thing as its self ; it retains itself, therefore, still in the thing, and knows the thing to have no independence, in other words knows that the thing has essentially and solely a relative existence. Or again — to give complete expression to the relationship, i.e. to what here alone constitutes the nature of the object — the thing stands lor something that
804 Phenomenology of Mind
is self-existent ; sense-certainty, sense-experience, is an- nounced as absolute truth; but this self-existence is itself declared to be a moment which merely disappears, and passes into its opposite, into a being at the mercy of an " other."
But knowledge of the thing is not yet finished at this point. The thing must become known as self not merely in regard to the immediateness of its being and as regards specific determinateness, but also in the sense of essence or inner reahty. This is found in the case of Moral Self-consciousness. This mode of experience ^ thinks of its knowledge as the absolute essential element, 'knows no other objective being than pure will or pure knowledge. It is nothing but merely this will and this knowledge. Any other possesses merely non-essential being, i.e. being that has no inherent nature fer se, but only its empty husk. In so far as the moral consciousness, in its view of the world, lets existence drop out of the self, it just as truly reclaims and takes this existence back again into the self. In the form of conscience, finally, it is no longer this incessant alterna- tion between the " placing " and the "displacing"' [dis- sembling] of existence and self ; it knows that its existence as such is this pure certainty of its own self ; the objective element, into which qua acting it puts forth itself, is nothing else than pure knowledge of itself by itself.
These are the moments which compose the reconciha- tion of spirit with its own consciousness proper. By themselves they are particular and separate ; and it is their spiritual unity alone which furnishes the power for this reconciliation. The last of these moments is, however, necessarily this unity itself, and, as we see,
AbsoliUe Knowledge 805
binds them all in fact into itself. Spirit certain of itself in its objective existence takes as the element of its existence nothing else than this knowledge of self. The declaration that what it does it does in accordance with the convictions of duty — this statement is the warrant for its own action, and makes good its conduct. 5" y^p
Action is the first inherent division of the simple unity of the notion, and the return out of this division. This first movement turns round into the second, since the element of recognition is put forward as simple knowledge of duty in contrast to the distinction and diremption that he in action as such and, in this way, form a rigid reality confronting action. In pardon, however, we saw how this rigid fixity gave way and renounced its claims. Reahty has here, qua immediate existence, no other significance for self-consciousness than that of being pure knowledge ; similarly, qua determinate existence, or qua relation, what is self-opposed is a knowledge partly of this purely individual self, partly of knowledge qua universal. Herein it is estabhshed, at the same time, that the third moment, universality, or the essence, means for each of the two opposite factors merely knowledge. Finally they also cancel the empty opposition that still remains, and are the knowledge of ego as identical with ego : — ^this individual self which is iromediately pure knowledge or universal.
This reconcihation of consciousness with self-con- sciousness thus proves to be brought about in a double- sided way ; in the one case, in the religious mind, in the other case, in consciousness itself as such. They are distinguished inter se by the fact that the one is this reconcihation in the form of imphcit immanence, the other in the form of exphcit self-existence. As
806 Phenomenology of Mind
we have considered them, they at the beginning fall apart. In the order in which the modes or types of consciousness came before us, consciousness has reached the individual moments of that order, and also their unification, long before ever religion gave its object the shape and mould of actual self-consciousness. The unification of both aspects is not yet brought to light ; it is this that winds up this series of embodiments of .-». spiritual life, for in it spirit gets to the point where it knows itself not only as it is inherently in itself, or in terms of its absolute content, nor only as it is objectively for itself in terms of its bare form devoid of content, or in terms of self-consciousness, but as it is in its self-com- pleteness, as it is inherently and explicitly, in itself and for itself.
This unification has, however, already taken place by implication, and has done so in religion, in the return of the objective presentation (Vorstellung) into self-con- sciousness, but not according to the proper form, for the religious aspect is the aspect of the esset it:' ally indepen- dent [Ansich) and stands in contrast to the process of \ self-consciousness. The unification therefore belongs to this other aspect, which by contrast is the aspect of re- flection into self, is that side which contains its self and its opposite, and contains them not only implicitly [an sich) or in a general way, but explicitly {für sich) or expressly developed and distinguished. The content, as well as the other aspect of self-conscious spirit, so far as it is the other aspect, have been brought to light and are here in their completeness : the unification still a-wanting is the simple unity of the notion. This notion is also already given with the aspect of self- consciousness ; but as it previously came before us
Absolute Knowledge 807
above, it, like all the other moments, has the form of being a particular mode or type of consciousness. It is that part of the embodiment of self-assured spirit which keeps within its essential principle and was called the *' beautiful soul." That is to say, the " beautiful soul " is its own knowledge of itself in its pure transparent unity — self-consciousness, which knows this pure knowledge of pure inwardness to be spirit, is not merely intuition of the divine, but the self-intuition of God Himself.
Since this notion keeps itself fixedly opposed to its reaHsation, it is the one-sided form which we saw before disappear into thin air, but also take a positive ex- ternal embodiment and advance further. Through the process of realisation, this self-consciousness bereft of objective content ceases to hold fast by itself, the abstract determinateness of the notion over against its fulfilment is cancelled and done away with. Its self- consciousness attains the form of universahty ; and what remains is its true notion, the notion that has attained its reahsation — the notion in its truth, i.e. in unity with its externalisation. It is knowledge of pure knowledge, not in the sense of an abstract essence such as duty is, but in the sense of an essential being which is this particular knowledge, this individual pure self-con- sciousness which is at the same time an object ; for the object is the self -existing self.
This notion obtained its fulfilment partly from the acts performed by the spirit that is sure of itself, partly from rehgion. In the latter it obtained the absolute content qua content, or in the form of an ideal pre- sentation or of otherness for consciousness. On the other hand, in the first the form is just the self, for that mode contains the active practical spirit sure of
re
80S Phenomenology of Mind
itself ; the self accomplishes the life of Absolute Spirit. This mode, as we see, is that simple notion, which however gives up its eternal inner Being, takes upon itself objective existence, or acts. The power of diremp- tion or of coming forth out of its inwardness lies in the purity of the notion, for this purity is absolute abstrac- tion or negativity. In the same way the notion finds its element of reality, or the objective being it contains, in pure knowledge itself ; for this knowledge is simple immediacy, which is being and existence as well as essence, the former negative thought, the latter positive thought. This existence, finally, is just as much that state of reflection into self which comes out of pure existence — both qua existence and qua duty — and this is the state of evil. This process of " going into self '" constitutes the opposition lying in the notion, and is thus the appearance on the scene of pure knowledge of the essence, a knowledge giving rise to no action and no reahty. But to make its appearance in this oppo- sition is to participate in it ; pure knowledge of essence has inherently relinquished its simpHcity, for it is the diremption or negativity which constitutes the notion. So far as this process of diremption is the process of becoming self-centred, it is the principle of evil : so far as it is the inherently essential, it is the principle of constant goodness.
Now what in the first instance takes place impUcitly and inherently is at once objectively for consciousness, and is duphcated as well — is both for consciousness and is its self-existence or its own proper action. The same thing that is already inherently estabhshed, thus repeats itself now as knowledge thereof on the part of consciousness and as conscious action. Each finds
Absolute Knowledge 809
the other lay aside the independence of character with which each appears confronting the other. This waiving of independence is the same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the notion as constituted imphcitly the beginning ; but it is now its own act of renuncia- tion, just as the notion renounced is its own notion. That imphcit nature of the beginning is in truth as much mediated, because it is negativity; it now estabhshes itself as it is in its truth ; and the negative element exists as a determinate quahty which each has for the other, and is inherently and essentially self- cancelHng, self-transcending. The one of the two parts I of the opposition is the disparity between existence within itself in its individuahty and universahty ; the other, disparity between its abstract universahty and ■the self. The former lets its self- existence perish, and rehnquishes itself, makes confession ; the latter renounces the rigidity of its abstract universality, and thereby puts away its hfeless self and its inert universahty ; so that the former is completed through the moment of universahty, which is the essence, and the latter through universahty, which is self. By this process of action spirit has come to hght in the form of pure imiversahty of knowledge, which is self-consciousness as self-con- sciousness, which is simple unity of knowledge. It is through action that spirit is spirit so as definitely to exist ; it raises its existence into the sphere of thought and hence into absolute opposition, and returns out of it through and within this very opposition.
Thus, then, what was in the case of rehgion objective content, or a way of ideally presenting an other, is here the action proper of the self. The notion is the connect- ing principle securing that the content is the action
810 Phenomenology of Mind
proper of the self. For this notion is, as we see, the knowledge that the action of the self within itself is all that is essential and all existence, the knowledge of this S'S: Subject as Substance and of the Substance as this knowledge of its action. What we have done here, in addition, is simply to gather together the particular moments, each of which in principle exhibits the life of spirit in its entirety, and again to fix and secure the notion in the form of the notion, whose content was disclosed in those moments and had already pre- sented itself in the form of a mode or type of con- sciousness.
This last embodiment of spirit — spirit which at once gives its complete and true content the form of self, and thereby realises its notion, and in doing so remains within its own notion — this is Absolute Know- ledge. It is spirit knowing itself in the form of spirit, it is conceptual comprehensive knowledge through notions. Truth is here not merely in itself absolutely identical with certainty ; it has also the typical form of certainty of self, or in its existence — i.e. for spirit knowing it — it is in the form of knowledge of itself. Truth is the content, which in the case of religion is not as yet at one with its certainty. This identifica- tion, however, is secured when the content has received the form and character of self. By this means, what constitutes the very essence, viz. the notion, comes to have the nature of existence, i.e. assumes the form of what is objective to consciousness. Spirit, appearing before consciousness in this element of existence, or, what is here the same thing, produced by it in this element, is systematic Science.
The nature, moments, and process of this type of
Absolute Knowledge 811
knowledge have then come about in such a way that this knowledge is pure self-existence of self-consciousness.
It is ego, which is this concrete ego and no other, and at the same time, from its very nature, is mediated, or sublated universal ego. It has a content, which it distinguishes from itself ; for it is pure negativity, or self-diremption ; it is consciousness. This content in its distinction is itself the ego, for it is the process of super- .fdPj seding itself, or the same pure negativity which consti- tutes ego. Ego is in it, qua distinguished, reflected into itself; only then is the content conceptualy compre- hended (begriffen) when ego in its otherness is still at home with itself. More precisely stated, this content is nothing else than the very process just spoken of; for the content is the spirit which traverses the whole range of its own being, and does this for itself qua spirit, by the fact that it possesses the form of the notion in its objectivity.
As to the actual existence of this notion, science does not appear in time and in reahty till spirit has arrived at this stage of being conscious regarding itself. Qu^ spirit which knows what it is, it did not exist before, and is not to be found at all till after the completion of the task of mastering and overcoming the imperfection of its form — the task of procuring for its consciousness and making itself aware of the shape of its inmost essence, and in this manner squaring its self-conscious- ness with its consciousness. Spirit in and for itself, spirit in its self-contained reahty, is, when distinguished into its separate moments, self-existent knowledge, conceptual comprehension in general, which as such has not yet reached the substance, or is not in itself absolute knowledge.
812 Phenomenology of Mind
Now in actual reality the knowing substance is arrived at earlier than its form, earher than the form of the notion. For the substance is the undeveloped inherent nature, the fundamental notion in its inert simphcity, the state of inwardness or the self of spirit not yet objectivified. What is there, what does exist, is in the shape of unexpressed simplicity, the un- developed immediate, or the object of presentative consciousness in general. Because knowledge {Erkennen) is a spiritual state of consciousness, which is only aware of what imphcitly and inherently is so far as this is a being for the self and a being of the self or a notion — knowledge has on this account merely a barren object to begin with, in contrast to which the substance and the consciousness of this substance are richer in content. Revelation in such a case is, in fact, concealment ; for 5'*e the substance is here still self -less existence and nothing but certainty of self is manifest or revealed to it. To begin with, therefore, it is only the abstract moments that fall to self-consciousness when dealing with the substance. But since these moments are pure activities and must move forward by their very nature, self- consciousness enriches itself till it has torn from con- sciousness the entire substance, and absorbed into itself the entire structure of the substance with all its constituent elements. Since this negative attitude towards objectivity is positive as well, establishes and fixes the content, it goes on till it has produced these elements out of itself and thereby reinstated them once more as objects of consciousness. In the notion, knowing itself as notion, the moments thus make their appearance prior to the whole in its complete fulfilment ; the movement of these moments is the process by which
Absolute Knowledge 813
the whole comes into being. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole — but not as comprehended con- ceptually— is prior to the moments.
Time is just the notion definitely existent, and pre- sented to consciousness in the form of empty pure intuition. Hence spirit necessarily appears in time, and it appears in time so long as it does not grasp its pure notion, i.e. so long as it does not annul time. Time is the pure self in external form, apprehended in intuition, and not grasped and understood by the self, it is the notion directly apprehended through intuition. When this notion grasps itself, it supersedes the time character, conceptually comprehends intuition, and is intuition comprehended and comprehending through conceptions. Time therefore appears as spirit's destiny and necessity, where spirit is not yet complete within itself ; it is the necessity compelling spirit to increase and enrich the share self-consciousness has in consciousness, to put into motion the immediacy of the inherent nature (which is the form in which the substance is present in consciousness) ; or, conversely, to reahse and make manifest what is inherent, regarded as inward and immanent, to make manifest that which is at first within — i.e. to vindicate and secure for it the certainty of self.
For this reason it must be said that nothing is con- sciously known which does not fall within experience, or (as it is also expressed) which is not felt to be true, which is not given as an inwardly revealed eternal verity, as a sacred object of behef, or whatever other expressions we care to employ. For experience just S'd'i" consists in this, that the content — and the content is spirit — in its inherent nature is substance and so object
814 Phenomenology of Mind
of consciousness. But this substance in which spirit consists, is the development of itself exphcitly to what it is inherently and imphcitly ; and only by this process of reflecting itself into itself is it then essentially and in truth spirit. It is inherently the movement which constitutes the process of knowledge — the transforming of that imphcit inherent nature into explicitness and objectivity, of Substance into Subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is at the same time superseded and transcended — in other words, into the notion. This transforming process is a cycle that returns into itself, a cycle that presupposes its beginning, and reaches its beginning only at the end. So far as spirit, then, is of necessity this process of self-distinction, it appears as a single whole, intuitively apprehended, over against its simple self-consciousness. And since that whole is the aspect distinguished, it is distinguished into the intuitively apprehended pure notion, Time, and the content, the inherent imphcit nature. Substance, qua subject, involves the necessity, at first an inner necessity, to set forth in itself what it inherently is, to show itself to be spirit. The completed systematic expression in objective form becomes, then, at the same time the re- flection of substance, the development of it into a self or subject. Consequently, until and unless spirit is inherently completed, completed as a world-spirit, it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious spirit. The content of rehgion therefore expresses earher in time than speculative science what spirit is ; but science alone is the perfer3t form in which spirit truly knows itself. The process of carrying forward this form of know-
Absolute Knowledge 815
ledge of itself constitutes the task which spirit accom- plishes in the concrete actual shape of History. The rehgious communion, in so far as it is at the outset the substance of Absolute Spirit, is the crude form of con- sciousness, which has an existence all the harsher and more barbaric the deeper is its inner spirit ; and its inarticulate stohd self has all the harder task in deahng with its essence, the unconceived content ahen to its consciousness. Not till it has surrendered the hope of s'^u cancelHng that foreignness by an external, i.e. alien ^S method, does it turn to itself, to its own pecuhar world in the actual present. It turns thither because to supersede that alien method means returning into self-consciousness. It thus discovers this world in the Kving present to be its own property ; and so has taken the first step to descend from the ideal in- telHgible world, the world of the intellect, or rather to endue the abstract element of the intellect with concrete self -hood. Through " observation," on the one hand, it finds existence in the shape of thought, and comprehends existence ; and, conversely, it finds in its thought existence.* When, in the first in- stance, it has thus itself expressed in an abstract way the immediate unity of thought and existence, of abstract Being and Self ; and when it has expressed the primal principle of "Light'' in a purer form, viz. as unity of extension and existence — for " existence "is an ultimate simple term more akin to thought than " Light " — and in this way has revived again in thought the Substance of the Orient,! the Absolute Substance of Eastern Rehgions ; thereupon spirit at once recoils in horror from this abstract unity, from this
* Descartes. t Spinoza.
816 Phenomenology of Mind
self-less substance, and maintains as against it the principle of subjective Individuality.* But after spirit has rehnquished this principle and brought it under the ordeal of culture, has thereby made it an objective existence and established it throughout the whole of existence, has arrived at the idea of " Utility "t and in the sphere of absolute freedom has found the key to existence to be Individual Will, J— after these stages spirit then brings to hght the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses ultimate Reahty in the form Ego = Ego. §
This "Ego identical with Ego" is, however, an inward, self-reflecting process ; for since this identity qua absolute negativity is absolute distinction, the self- identity of the Ego stands in contrast to this absolute distinction, which — being pure distinction and at the same time objective to the self that knows itself — has to be expressed as Time. In this way, just as formerly ultimate Reahty was expressed as unity of thought and extension, it would here be interpreted as unity of thought and time. But distinction left to itself, unresting, unhalting time, really collapses upon itself ; it !^S( is the objective quiescence, the stable continuity of extension ; while this latter is pure identity with self — is Ego.
Again, Ego is not merely self, it is identity of self with itself. This identity, however, is complete and im- mediate unity with self ; in other v^^ords this Subject is just as much Substance. Substance by itself alone would be void and empty Intuition {Anschauen), or the intuition of a content which qua specific would
* Leibnitz. t Tlie principle of the "Aufklärung.''
I Kant. § Fichte.
Absolute Knowledge 817
have merely a contingent character and would be devoid of necessity. Substance would only stand for the Absolute in so far as Substance was thought of or " intuited " as absolute unity ; and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside the Sub- stance and be due to reflection, a process which does not belong to Substance, because Substance would not be Subject, would not be conceived as Spirit, as re- flecting about self and reflecting itself into self. If, nevertheless, a content were to be spoken of, then on the one hand, it would only exist in order to be thrown into the empty abysm of the Absolute, while on the other it would be picked up in external fashion from sense perception. Knowledge would appear to have come by things, by what is distinct from knowledge itself, and to have got at the distinctions between the endless variety of things, without any one understanding how or where all this came from.*
Spirit, however, has shown itself to be neither the mere withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere absorption of self- conscious- ness into blank Substance devoid of all distinctions. Spirit is the movement of the self which empties itself of self and sinks itself within its own substance, and qua subject, both goes out of that substance into itself, making its substance an object and a content, and also supersedes this distinction of objectivity and content. That first reflection out of immediacy is the subject's distinction of self from its substance, the notion in a state of self-diremption, the subjectification of the self, and the coming of the pure ego into being. Since this distinction is the action pure and simple of Ego = Ego,
* Schelling. VOL. 11.-2 D
818 Phenomenology of Mind
the notion is the necessity for and the uprising of existence, which has the substance for its essential nature and subsists on its own account. But this 5-5»^ subsisting of existence for itself is the notion estabhshed and reahsed in determinate form, and is thereby the notion's own inherent movement — that of descending into the bare and simple substance, which is only sub- ject by being this negativity and going through this process.
Ego has not to take its stand on the form of self- consciousness in opposition to the form of substantiahty and objectivity, as if it were afraid of emptying itself and becoming objective. The power of spirit Ues rather in remaining one with itself when giving up itself, and, because it is self-contained and self-subsistent, in estabhshing as mere moments its explicit self-existence as well as its imphcit inherent nature. Nor again is Ego a tertium quid which casts distinctions back into the abysm of the Absolute, and declares them all to mean the same there. On the contrary, true knowledge lies rather in the seeming inactivity which merely watches and considers how the element distinguished proceeds, how it is self-moved by its very nature and returns again into its own unity.
With absolute knowledge, then. Spirit has wound up the process of its various forms and modes, so far as in assuming these various shapes and forms it is affected with the insurmountable distinction which consciousness implies [i.e. the distinction of consciousness from its object or content]. Spirit has attained the pure element of its existence, the notion. The content is, in view of the freedom of its own existence, the self that empties and gives up itself to objectivity ; in other words, that
Absolute Knowledge 819
content is the immediate unity of self-knowledge. The pure process of thus rehnquishing itself to externahty constitutes — when we consider this process in its bearing on the content — the necessity of this content. The diversity of content is, qua determinate and specific, due to relation, and is not inherent ; it is its restless activity of cancelhng and superseding itself, or its negativity. Thus the necessity or diversity, hke its free existence, is the self too ; and in this self-form, in which existence is immediately thought, the content is a notion. Seeing, then, that Spirit has attained the notion, it unfolds its existence and develops its processes in this ether of its hfe and is Systematic Science. The moments of its process are set forth in Science no longer as determinate modes or forms of consciousness, but — since the distinction, which con- sciousness imphes, has reverted to and has become a distinction within the self — as determinate notions, and as the organic self-explaining and self-constituted process of these conceptions. While in the Phenomen- ology of Mind each moment is the distinction of know- ledge and truth, and the process in which that distinction is cancelled and transcended, on the other hand System- atic Science does not contain this distinction and supersession of distinction. Kather, since each moment has the form of the notion, it unites the objective form of truth and the knowing self in an immediate unity. In Science the individual moment does not appear as the process of passing back and forward from consciousness or presentation to self-consciousness and conversely : there the pure form, hberated from the condition of being an appearance in mere consciousness, — the pure notion with its further development, depends solely and purely
820 PJienomenology of Mind
on its characteristic and specific nature. Conversely, again, there corresponds to every abstract moment of absolute Science a form or mode in which mind as a whole makes it appearance. As the mind that actually exists and historically appears is not richer than Science, so, too, mind in its actual content is not poorer. To know the pure notions of Science in the form in which they are modes or types of consciousness — this consti- tutes the aspect of their reality, in which its essential element, the notion, appearing there in its simple mediating activity as thinking, breaks up and separ- ates the moments of this mediation, and exhibits its content by reference to the internal and immanent opposition of its elements.
Science contains within itself this necessity of re- hnquishing and divesting itself of the form of the pure notion, and necessarily involves the transition of the notion into consciousness. For Spirit that knows itself is, just for the reason that it grasps its own notion, immediate identity with itself ; and this, in the distinc- tion it implies, is the certainty of what is immediate or is sense-consciousness — the beginning from which we started. This process of releasing itself from the form of its self is the highest freedom and security of its know- ledge of itself.
All the same, this rehnquishment of self and aban- donment to externahty are still incomplete. This process expresses the relation of the certainty of its self to the object, an object which, just by being in relation, has not yet attained its full freedom.. Systematic knowledge is aware not only of itself, but also of the negative of itself, or its hmit. Knowing its hmit means knowing how
Absolute Knowledge 821
to sacrifice itself. This sacrifice is the emptying of self, the self-abandonment, in which Spirit sets forth, in the form of free and miconstrained fortuitous con- tingency, its process of becoming Spirit, intuitively apprehending outside it its pure self as Time, and Hke- wise its existence as Space.* This last form into which Spirit passes, Nature, is its hving immediate process of development. Natm^e — Spirit divested of self and given over to externaUty — is, in its actual existence, nothing but this eternal process of abandoning its own indepen- dent subsistence, and the movement which reinstates Subject.
The other aspect, however, in which Spirit comes into being, History, is process in terms of knowledge, a con- scious self-mediating process — Spirit given over to and emptied into Time. But this form of abandonment is, similarly, an emptying of itself by itself.; the negative is negative of itself. This way of becoming presents a tardy procession and succession of spiritual shapes and forms, a gallery of pictures, each of which is endowed with the entire wealth of Spirit, and moves so tardily just for the reason that the self has to permeate and assimilate all this wealth of its substance. Since its accomphshment consists in Spirit knowing what it is, in fully comprehending its substance, this knowledge means its subjectification, a state in which Spirit leaves its external existence behind and gives itself over to the attitude of Recollection [Erinnerumj). In this subjectifi- cation. Spirit is engulfed in the darkness and night of its own self-consciousness ; its vanished existence is, however, conserved therein; and this superseded ex- istence— the previous state, but born anew from the
* Cp. Ency. §244 ; also Nuturphilos., lutrod.
822 Phenomenology of Mind
womb of knowledge — is the new stage of existence, a new world, and a new type and mode of Spirit. Here it has to begin all over again at its immediacy,* as freshly as before, and thence rise once more to the measm:e of its stature, as if, for it, all that preceded were lost, and as if it had learned nothing from the experience of the spirits that preceded. But re-collection {Er- innerung) has conserved that experience, and is the inner being, and, in fact, the higher form of the substance. While, then, this phase of Spirit begins all over again its formative development, apparently starting solely from itself, yet at the same time it commences at a higher level. The realm of spirits developed in this way, and assuming definite shape in existence, constitutes a succession, where one detaches and sets loose the other, and each takes over from its predecessor the empire of the spiritual world. The goal of the process is the revelation of the depth of spiritual hfe, and this is the Absolute Notion. This revelation consequently means superseding its " depth," is its " extension '' or spatial embodiment, the negation of this subjectivity of the ego — a negativity which is its self-rehnquishment, its externahsation, or its substance : and this revelation is also its temporal embodiment, in that this external- isation in its very nature relinquishes, externahses itself, and so exists at once in its spatial " extension " as well as in its " depth " or the self. The goal, vv^iich is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit knowing itself as Spirit, finds its pathway in the recollection of spiritual forms as they are in themselves and as they accomphsh the organisation of their spiritual kingdom. Their conservation, looked
* Cp. Aristotle, Mctap., KYtlh, " Movement can neither come into being, nor cease to be ; nor can time come into being or cease to be."
Absolute Knowledge 823
at from the side of their free phenomenal existence in the sphere of contingency, is History ; looked at from the side of their conceptually comprehended organisation, it is the Science of phenomenal knowledge, of the ways in which knowledge appears.* Both together, or History comprehended conceptually, form at once the recollection and the golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reahty, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were hfeless, sohtary, and alone. Only
This" chalice of God's plenitude Yields foaming His Infinitude, f
* "Phenomenology."
t Adaptation of Schiller's Die Freundschaft ad fin. ; cp. also Schiller's Philos. Briefe, " 6^0«."
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD, PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
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