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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 understands very well how to
pass judgment on this substantial reality, but has lost the capacity of truly grasping it.
I. THE WORLD OF SPIRIT IN SELF-ESTRANGEMENT 191
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
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 forms of power. But its gaining
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 witty
phrases; and to express this is, therefore, 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 determinations 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 knowing this it has ipso facto risen above that condition. In that state of
self-conscious vanity all substantial content comes to have a negative significance, which can no 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.
1. It will be observed that "culture" embraces all means of self-development, "ideas" as well as material
factors such as "wealth".
2. Bacon's phrase, "Knowledge is power".
3. "Esp ce se dit de personnes auxquelles on ne trouve ni qualite ni merite." - Littre.
4. Diderot's Rameau's Neffe.
5. Cp. Hume's view of "personal identity", Treatise, pt. IV, c. 6.
6. Cp. "L'etat c'est moi."
7. v. p. 524.
8. v. p. 432 ff.
9. Diderot, Rameau's Neffe.
10. The "philosopher" in Diderot's Dialogue.
b. BELIEF AND PURE INSIGHT(1)
THE spiritual condition of self-estrangement 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 realm of pure consciousness, of
thought. Its content consists of what has been reduced purely to thought, its absolute element is thinking.
Since, however, thinking is in the first instance the element of this world, consciousness has merely these
thoughts, but it does not as yet think 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 actuality
with the determinateness that implies. The conscious state of contrition and abasement 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
b. BELIEF AND PURE INSIGHT(1) 192
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
us who are considering its condition. It has thus not as yet completed within itself the process of spiritual
exaltation, it is simply there; and it still has within itself the opposite principle by which it is conditioned,
without as yet having become master of that principle through the 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 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 actuality. In the case of the consciousness just described, however, it
is not the form of thought which counts. 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 reality; it is the essence
of reality itself: but it is no more than an unrealized essence of it. In the above type of consciousness the
essence, although no doubt beyond reality, stands all the same for an actual real essence. In the same way, the
inherently right and good which reason as lawgiver establishes, and the universal operating--when
consciousness tests and examines laws--neither of these has the character of actual reality.
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 of the whole, with the element of reality and thereby with
content. This reality of its essential being, however, 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
consciousness, 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, religion does not yet appear as it is truly and completely (an und
fer sich). It has already come before us in other phases, viz. as the unhappy 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 the departed spirit is, strictly speaking, not belief, not the
inner essence subsisting in the element of pure consciousness away beyond the actual: there the belief its has
itself an immediate existence in the present; its element 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
consciousness; but it has still the characteristic of opposition to actuality qua this actuality in general, and of
opposition to the actuality of self-consciousness in particular. It is essentially, therefore, merely a belief.
This pure consciousness of Absolute Being is a consciousness in estrangement. Let us see more closely what
is the characteristic of that whose other it is; we can only consider it in connexion 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 characterized by opposition, it has this actuality inherent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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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 understands very well how to
pass judgment on this substantial reality, but has lost the capacity of truly grasping it.
I. THE WORLD OF SPIRIT IN SELF-ESTRANGEMENT 191
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
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 forms of power. But its gaining
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 witty
phrases; and to express this is, therefore, 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 determinations 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 knowing this it has ipso facto risen above that condition. In that state of
self-conscious vanity all substantial content comes to have a negative significance, which can no 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.
1. It will be observed that "culture" embraces all means of self-development, "ideas" as well as material
factors such as "wealth".
2. Bacon's phrase, "Knowledge is power".
3. "Esp ce se dit de personnes auxquelles on ne trouve ni qualite ni merite." - Littre.
4. Diderot's Rameau's Neffe.
5. Cp. Hume's view of "personal identity", Treatise, pt. IV, c. 6.
6. Cp. "L'etat c'est moi."
7. v. p. 524.
8. v. p. 432 ff.
9. Diderot, Rameau's Neffe.
10. The "philosopher" in Diderot's Dialogue.
b. BELIEF AND PURE INSIGHT(1)
THE spiritual condition of self-estrangement 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 realm of pure consciousness, of
thought. Its content consists of what has been reduced purely to thought, its absolute element is thinking.
Since, however, thinking is in the first instance the element of this world, consciousness has merely these
thoughts, but it does not as yet think 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 actuality
with the determinateness that implies. The conscious state of contrition and abasement 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
b. BELIEF AND PURE INSIGHT(1) 192
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
us who are considering its condition. It has thus not as yet completed within itself the process of spiritual
exaltation, it is simply there; and it still has within itself the opposite principle by which it is conditioned,
without as yet having become master of that principle through the 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 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 actuality. In the case of the consciousness just described, however, it
is not the form of thought which counts. 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 reality; it is the essence
of reality itself: but it is no more than an unrealized essence of it. In the above type of consciousness the
essence, although no doubt beyond reality, stands all the same for an actual real essence. In the same way, the
inherently right and good which reason as lawgiver establishes, and the universal operating--when
consciousness tests and examines laws--neither of these has the character of actual reality.
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 of the whole, with the element of reality and thereby with
content. This reality of its essential being, however, 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
consciousness, 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, religion does not yet appear as it is truly and completely (an und
fer sich). It has already come before us in other phases, viz. as the unhappy 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 the departed spirit is, strictly speaking, not belief, not the
inner essence subsisting in the element of pure consciousness away beyond the actual: there the belief its has
itself an immediate existence in the present; its element 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
consciousness; but it has still the characteristic of opposition to actuality qua this actuality in general, and of
opposition to the actuality of self-consciousness in particular. It is essentially, therefore, merely a belief.
This pure consciousness of Absolute Being is a consciousness in estrangement. Let us see more closely what
is the characteristic of that whose other it is; we can only consider it in connexion 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 characterized by opposition, it has this actuality inherent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]