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§801 | Now in actual reality the knowing substance exists, is there earlier than its form, earlier than the shape of the notion. For the substance is the undeveloped inherent nature, the ground and notion in its inert simplicity, the state of inwardness or the self of spirit which is not yet there. What is there, what does exist, is in the shape of still unexpressed simplicity, the undeveloped immediate, or the object of imagining (Vorstellen) consciousness in general. Because knowledge (Erkennen) is a spiritual state of consciousness, which admits as real what essentially is only 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. The revelation which substance has in such a consciousness is, in fact, concealment; for the substance is here still self-less existence and nothing but certainty of self is revealed. To begin with, therefore, it is only the abstract moments that belong to self-consciousness concerning 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 consciousness 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 the whole comes into being. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole -- but not as comprehended conceptually -- is prior to the moments. Time is just the notion definitely existent, and presented to consciousness in the form of empty 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 apprehended only through intuition. When this notion grasps itself, it supersedes its time character, (conceptually) comprehends intuition, and is intuition comprehended and comprehending. Time therefore appears as spirit's destiny and necessity, where spirit is not yet complete within itself; it is the necessity compelling spirit to 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 realize and make manifest what is inherent, regarded as inward and immanent, to make manifest that which is at first within -- i.e. to vindicate it for spirit's certainty of self. | The social shapes that support and maintain this kind of knowing (the “substance” of knowing) are there long before the science of self-conscious life makes its appearance in history. There have been many adumbrations of this science long before it appears (which is just now, 1807). However, long before “cognition” (das Erkennen) has worked itself out, the deeper ties to the social substance are richer than the more abstract claims of “cognition” and are already there and are following the trajectory of their own concept until they are taken up in the fulfilled science of self-conscious life. Time is the intuited concept, so Hegel says. The intuition or “viewing” of time is the intuition of infinity that has not fully conceptualized itself and is the unity of the “opposition” of the discrete and the continuous. Conceptual thinking attempts an erasure of time insofar as it seeks timeless truths, but time is the destiny of incomplete spirit, so Hegel says. | In der Wirklichkeit ist nun die wissende Substanz früher da als die Form oder Begriffsgestalt derselben. Denn die Substanz ist das noch unentwickelte An-sich oder der Grund und Begriff in seiner noch unbewegten Einfachheit, also die Innerlichkeit oder das Selbst des Geistes, das noch nicht da ist. Was da ist, ist als das noch unentwickelte Einfache und Unmittelbare, oder der Gegenstand des vorstellenden Bewußtseins überhaupt. Das Erkennen, weil es das geistige Bewußtsein ist, dem, was an sich ist, nur insofern ist, als es Sein für das Selbst und Sein des Selbstes oder Begriff ist, hat aus diesem Grunde zuerst nur einen armen Gegenstand, gegen welchen die Substanz und deren Bewußtsein reicher ist. Die Offenbarkeit, die sie in diesem hat, ist in der Tat Verborgenheit, denn sie ist das noch selbstlose Sein, und offenbar ist sich nur die Gewißheit seiner selbst. Zuerst gehören dem Selbstbewußtsein daher von der Substanz nur die abstrakten Momente an; aber indem diese als die reinen Bewegungen sich selbst weitertreiben, bereichert es sich, bis es die ganze Substanz dem Bewußtsein entrissen, den ganzen Bau ihrer Wesenheiten in sich gesogen, und -- indem dieses negative Verhalten zur Gegenständlichkeit ebensosehr positiv, Setzen ist -- sie aus sich erzeugt und damit für das Bewußtsein zugleich wieder hergestellt hat. In dem Begriffe, der sich als Begriff weiß, treten hiemit die Momente früher auf als das erfüllte Ganze, dessen Werden die Bewegung jener Momente ist. In dem Bewußtsein dagegen ist das Ganze, aber unbegriffne, früher als die Momente. -- Die Zeit ist der Begriff selbst, der da ist und als leere Anschauung sich dem Bewußtsein vorstellt; deswegen erscheint der Geist notwendig in der Zeit, und er erscheint so lange in der Zeit, als er nicht seinen reinen Begriff erfaßt, das heißt, nicht die Zeit tilgt. Sie ist das äußere angeschaute vom Selbst nicht erfaßte reine Selbst, der nur angeschaute Begriff; indem dieser sich selbst erfaßt, hebt er seine Zeitform auf, begreift das Anschauen, und ist begriffnes und begreifendes Anschauen. -- Die Zeit erscheint daher als das Schicksal und die Notwendigkeit des Geistes, der nicht in sich vollendet ist, -- die Notwendigkeit, den Anteil, den das Selbstbewußtsein an dem Bewußtsein hat, zu bereichern, die Unmittelbarkeit des An-sich -- die Form, in der die Substanz im Bewußtsein ist -- in Bewegung zu setzen oder umgekehrt das An-sich als das Innerliche genommen, das, was erst innerlich ist, zu realisieren und zu offenbaren, d.h. es der Gewißheit seiner selbst zu vindizieren. |
§802 | For this reason it must be said that nothing is 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 belief, or whatever other expressions we care to employ. For experience just consists in this, that the content -- and the content is spirit -- in its inherent nature is substance and so object of consciousness. But this substance, which is spirit, is the development of itself explicitly to what it is inherently and implicitly; and only as this process of reflecting itself into itself is it essentially and in truth spirit. It is inherently the movement which is the process of knowledge -- the transforming of that inherent nature into explicitness, 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 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 self-distinction, it appears as a single whole, intuitively apprehended, over against its simple self-consciousness. And since that whole is what is distinguished, it is distinguished into the intuitively apprehended pure notion, Time, and the Content, the inherent, implicit, 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 expression in objective form is -- and is only when completed -- at the same time the reflexion of substance, the development of it into the self. Consequently, until and unless spirit inherently completes itself, completes itself as a world-spirit, it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious spirit. The content of religion, therefore, expresses earlier in time than (philosophical) science what spirit is; but this science alone is the perfect form in which spirit truly knows itself. | At this point, we can now conclude: nothing is known that is not in experience (Erfahrung)—that sense of “experience” in which we say, “We learn from experience that . . .” Hegel adds: “Nothing is known that is not available as felt truth.” The picture of knowing that leaves out “felt truth” is the one-sided picture of the knower as the disembodied universal knower, the “We” detached from all the particular “I’s.” The more adequate picture, which is “speculative,” holds both elements (I and We, singular and universal) together in one whole, where the tensions between the two are real, ineliminable, but not necessarily self-undermining. The better picture, Hegel says, is circular rather than purely linear. The “bad infinite” is represented as a straight line which, if one tried to follow it out, would have an unreachable endpoint. The “good” or “true” infinite is better pictured as circular: one can begin at a certain point, traverse the circle an infinite number of times but always arrive back at the point from which one started. If one starts with sensuous certainty and follows the book out until one arrives at the science of self-consciousness, one will realize that the “in itself” of sensuous certainty already established a trajectory in its concept that would lead one to the “science,” and having reached that “science,” one would realize that one would have to start with sensuous certainty to follow it out. As for the speculative truth about spirit, religion may get there first in history, “But it is science alone which is spirit’s true knowing of itself.” | Es muß aus diesem Grunde gesagt werden, daß nichts gewußt wird, was nicht in der Erfahrung ist, oder, wie dasselbe auch ausgedrückt wird, was nicht als gefühlte Wahrheit, als innerlich geoffenbartes Ewiges, als geglaubtes Heiliges, oder welche Ausdrücke sonst gebraucht werden, vorhanden ist. Denn die Erfahrung ist eben dies, daß der Inhalt -- und er ist der Geist -- an sich, Substanz und also Gegenstand des Bewußtseins ist. Diese Substanz aber, die der Geist ist, ist das Werden seiner zu dem, was er an sich ist; und erst als dies sich in sich reflektierende Werden ist er an sich in Wahrheit der Geist. Er ist an sich die Bewegung, die das Erkennen ist, -- die Verwandlung jenes An-sichs in das Für-sich, der Substanz in das Subjekt, des Gegenstands des Bewußtseins in Gegenstand des Selbstbewußtseins, d.h. in ebensosehr aufgehobnen Gegenstand, oder in den Begriff. Sie ist der in sich zurückgehende Kreis, der seinen Anfang voraussetzt und ihn nur im Ende erreicht. -- Insofern der Geist also notwendig dieses Unterscheiden in sich ist, tritt sein Ganzes angeschaut seinem einfachen Selbstbewußtsein gegenüber, und da also jenes das unterschiedene ist, so ist es unterschieden in seinen angeschauten reinen Begriff, in die Zeit, und in den Inhalt oder in das An-sich; die Substanz hat, als Subjekt, die erst innere Notwendigkeit an ihr, sich an ihr selbst als das darzustellen, was sie an sich ist, als Geist. Die vollendete gegenständliche Darstellung ist erst zugleich die Reflexion derselben oder das Werden derselben zum Selbst. -- Eh daher der Geist nicht an sich, nicht als Weltgeist sich vollendet, kann er nicht als selbstbewußter Geist seine Vollendung erreichen. Der Inhalt der Religion spricht darum früher in der Zeit, als die Wissenschaft, es aus, was der Geist ist, aber diese ist allein sein wahres Wissen von ihm selbst. |
§803 | The process of carrying forward this form of knowledge of itself is the task which spirit accomplishes as actual History. The religious communion, in so far as it is at the outset the substance of Absolute Spirit, is the crude form of consciousness, which has an existence all the harsher and more barbaric the deeper is its inner spirit; and its inarticulate self has all the harder task in dealing with its essence, the content of its consciousness alien to itself. Not till it has surrendered the hope of cancelling that foreignness by an external, i.e. alien, method does it turn to itself, to its own peculiar 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 living present to be its own property; and so has taken the first step to descend from the ideal intelligible world, or rather to quicken the abstract element of the intelligible world 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.(2) When, in the first instance, it has thus itself expressed in an abstract way the immediate unity of thought and existence, of abstract Essential Reality 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 adequate to thought than “light” -- and in this way has revived again in thought the Substance of the Orient;(3) thereupon spirit at once recoils in horror from this abstract unity, from this self-less substantiality, and maintains as against it the principle of Individuality.(4) But after Spirit has externalized this principle in the process of its culture, has thereby made it an objective existence and established it throughout the whole of existence, has arrived at the idea of “Utility”(5) and in the sphere of absolute freedom has grasped existence as its Individual Will,(6) -- after these stages, spirit then brings to light the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses essential Reality in the form Ego=Ego.(7) This “Ego identical with Ego” is, however, the 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 Essential Reality 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 is the objective quiescence 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 immediate unity with self; in other words 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 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 Substance and be due to reflexion, a process which does not belong to Substance, because Substance would not be Subject, would not be conceived as Spirit, as reflecting 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 abyss 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.(8) | The actual movement of history, what is really moving history forward, is Geist’s pursuit of self-knowledge—to know what it means to be a self-conscious life. It also involves the twoness, the Zweiheit of the reconciliatory “Yes” of . This takes its actual shape at first in the religious community, but we shouldn’t romanticize that. The religious community is originally more harsh and barbaric, and the wars of religion have left a pile of corpses behind. It is now time, Hegel says, for Geist, as it were, to climb down out of the intellectual world (Kant’s term for the world of in principle unknowable noumena) and take a more existential turn. To do this, he rehearses again the movement leading to utility, absolute freedom, and morality, and once again, we’re reminded of his statement in the Preface that, “in my view, which must be justified by the exposition of the system itself, everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject” (§17). If we relied on substance alone—on the given social world and its mores and modes of inquiry—we would find no necessity in this conceptual development. However, what we now grasp is that in our time (1807 or thereabouts), substance and subject have come together. | Die Bewegung, die Form seines Wissens von sich hervorzutreiben, ist die Arbeit, die er als wirkliche Geschichte vollbringt. Die religiöse Gemeine, insofern sie zuerst die Substanz des absoluten Geistes ist, ist das rohe Bewußtsein, das ein um so barbarischeres und härteres Dasein hat, je tiefer sein innerer Geist ist, und sein dumpfes Selbst eine um so härtere Arbeit mit seinem Wesen, dem ihm fremden Inhalte seines Bewußtseins. Erst nachdem es die Hoffnung aufgegeben, auf eine äußerliche, d.h. fremde Weise das Fremdsein aufzuheben, wendet es sich, weil die aufgehobne fremde Weise die Rückkehr ins Selbstbewußtsein ist, an sich selbst, an seine eigne Welt und Gegenwart, entdeckt sie als sein Eigentum und hat somit den ersten Schritt getan, aus der Intellektualwelt herabzusteigen, oder vielmehr deren abstraktes Element mit dem wirklichen Selbst zu begeisten. Durch die Beobachtung einerseits findet es das Dasein als Gedanken und begreift dasselbe, und umgekehrt in seinem Denken das Dasein. Indem es so zunächst die unmittelbare Einheit des Denkens und Seins, des abstrakten Wesens und des Selbsts, selbst abstrakt ausgesprochen und das erste Lichtwesen reiner, nämlich als Einheit der Ausdehnung und des Seins -- denn Ausdehnung ist die dem reinen Denken gleichere Einfachheit, denn das Licht ist -- und hiemit im Gedanken die Substanz des Aufgangs wieder erweckt hat, schaudert der Geist zugleich von dieser abstrakten Einheit, von dieser selbstlosen Substantialität zurück, und behauptet die Individualität gegen sie. Erst aber nachdem er diese in der Bildung entäußert, dadurch sie zum Dasein gemacht und in allem Dasein sie durchgesetzt, -- zum Gedanken der Nützlichkeit gekommen, und in der absoluten Freiheit das Dasein als seinen Willen erfaßt, kehrt er somit den Gedanken seiner innersten Tiefe heraus, und spricht das Wesen als Ich = Ich aus.. Dies Ich = Ich ist aber die sich in sich selbst reflektierende Bewegung; denn indem diese Gleichheit als absolute Negativität der absolute Unterschied ist, so steht die Sichselbstgleichheit des Ich diesem reinen Unterschiede gegenüber, der als der reine und zugleich dem sich wissenden Selbst gegenständliche, als die Zeit auszusprechen ist, so daß wie vorhin das Wesen als Einheit des Denkens und der Ausdehnung ausgesprochen wurde, es als Einheit des Denkens und der Zeit zu fassen wäre; aber der sich selbst überlaßne Unterschied, die ruhe- und haltlose Zeit fällt vielmehr in sich selbst zusammen; sie ist die gegenständliche Ruhe der Ausdehnung, diese aber ist die reine Gleichheit mit sich selbst, das Ich. -- Oder Ich ist nicht nur das Selbst, sondern es ist die Gleichheit des Selbsts mit sich; diese Gleichheit aber ist die vollkommne und unmittelbare Einheit mit sich selbst, oder dies Subjekt ist ebensosehr die Substanz. Die Substanz für sich allein wäre das inhaltsleere Anschauen oder das Anschauen eines Inhalts, der als bestimmter nur Akzidentalität hätte, und ohne Notwendigkeit wäre; die Substanz gälte nur insofern als das Absolute, als sie als die absolute Einheit gedacht oder angeschaut wäre, und aller Inhalt müßte nach seiner Verschiedenheit außer ihr in die Reflexion fallen, die ihr nicht angehört, weil sie nicht Subjekt, nicht das über sich und sich in sich Reflektierende oder nicht als Geist begriffen wäre. Wenn doch von einem Inhalte gesprochen werden sollte, so wäre es teils nur, um ihn in den leeren Abgrund des Absoluten zu werfen, teils aber wäre er äußerlich aus der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung aufgerafft; das Wissen schiene zu Dingen, dem Unterschiede von ihm selbst, und dem Unterschiede mannigfaltiger Dinge gekommen zu sein, ohne daß man begriffe, wie und woher |
§804 | Spirit, however, has shown itself to us to be neither the mere withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere absorption of self-consciousness into Substance and the nothingness of its (self-) distinction. Spirit is the movement of the self which empties (externalizes) itself of self and sinks itself within its own substance, and qua subject, both has gone 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 reflexion out of immediacy is the subject's process of distinction of itself from its substance, the notion in a process of self-diremption, the going-into-itself and the coming into being of the pure ego. Since this distinction is the pure action of Ego=Ego, the notion is the necessity for and the rising of existence, which has the substance for its essential nature and subsists on its own account. But this subsisting of existence for itself is the notion established in determinate form, and is thereby the notion's own inherent movement -- that of descending into the simple substance, which is only subject 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 substantiality and objectivity, as if it were afraid of relinquishing or externalizing itself. The power of spirit lies rather in remaining one with itself when giving up itself, and, because it is self-contained and self-subsistent, in establishing as mere moments its explicit self-existence as well as its implicit inherent nature. Nor again is Ego a tertium quid which casts distinctions back into the abyss 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 how what is distinguished is self-moved by its very nature and returns again into its own unity. | Geist is neither pure withdrawal into self nor pure absorption in substance. The “I” is not erased and absorbed into the “We” (as ethnic nationalisms tend to have it The true is the bacchanalian revel where not a member is sober, because, in isolating himself from the revel, each member is just as immediately dissolved into it.). Nor is the “We” just an additive sum, a heap, of individual “I’s” otherwise external to each other (as modern “individualisms” tend to have it). We are reminded again of | Der Geist aber hat sich uns gezeigt, weder nur das Zurückziehen des Selbstbewußtseins in seine reine Innerlichkeit zu sein, noch die bloße Versenkung desselben in die Substanz und das Nichtsein seines Unterschiedes, sondern diese Bewegung des Selbsts, das sich seiner selbst entäußert und sich in seine Substanz versenkt, und ebenso als Subjekt aus ihr in sich gegangen ist, und sie zum Gegenstande und Inhalte macht, als es diesen Unterschied der Gegenständlichkeit und des Inhalts aufhebt. Jene erste Reflexion aus der Unmittelbarkeit ist das sich Unterscheiden des Subjekts von seiner Substanz, oder der sich entzweiende Begriff, das In-sich-gehen und Werden des reinen Ich. Indem dieser Unterschied das reine Tun des Ich = Ich ist, ist der Begriff die Notwendigkeit und das Aufgehen des Daseins, das die Substanz zu seinem Wesen hat, und für sich besteht. Aber das Bestehen des Daseins für sich ist der in der Bestimmtheit gesetzte Begriff und dadurch ebenso seine Bewegung an ihm selbst, nieder in die einfache Substanz zu gehen, welche erst als diese Negativität und Bewegung Subjekt ist. -- Weder hat Ich sich in der Form des Selbstbewußtseins gegen die Form der Substantialität und Gegenständlichkeit festzuhalten, als ob es Angst vor seiner Entäußerung hätte; die Kraft des Geistes ist vielmehr, in seiner Entäußerung sich selbst gleich zu bleiben, und als das An- und Fürsichseiende, das Für-sich-sein ebensosehr nur als Moment zu setzen wie das An-sich-sein, -- noch ist es ein Drittes, das die Unterschiede in den Abgrund des Absoluten zurückwirft und ihre Gleichheit in demselben ausspricht, sondern das Wissen besteht vielmehr in dieser scheinbaren Untätigkeit, welche nur betrachtet, wie das Unterschiedne sich an ihm selbst bewegt und in seine Einheit zurückkehrt. |
§805 | With absolute knowledge, then, Spirit has wound up the process of its embodiment, so far as the assumption of those various shapes or modes 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 (externalizes) itself; in other words, that content is the immediate unity of self-knowledge. The pure process of thus externalizing itself constitutes -- when we consider this process in its content -- the necessity of this content. The diversity of content is, qua determinate, due to relation, and is not inherent; and its restless activity consists in cancelling and superseding itself, or is negativity. Thus the necessity or diversity, like 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 life and is (Philosophical) Science.(9) The moments of its process are set forth therein no longer as determinate modes or shapes of consciousness, but -- since the distinction, which consciousness implies, 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 notions. While in the Phenomenology of Mind each moment is the distinction of knowledge and truth, and is the process in which that distinction is canceled and transcended, Absolute Knowledge does not contain this distinction and supersession of distinction. Rather, since each moment has the form of the notion, it unites the objective form of truth and the knowing self in an immediate unity. Each individual moment does not appear as the process of passing back and forward from consciousness or figurative (imaginative) thought to self-consciousness and conversely: on the contrary, the pure shape, liberated from the condition of being an appearance in mere consciousness, -- the pure notion with its further development, -- depends solely on its pure characteristic nature. Conversely, again, there corresponds to every abstract moment of Absolute Knowledge a mode in which mind as a whole makes its appearance. As the mind that actually exists is not richer than it,(10) so, too, mind in its actual content is not poorer. To know the pure notions of knowledge in the form in which they are modes or shapes of consciousness -- this constitutes the aspect of their reality, according to which their essential element, the notion, appearing there in its simple mediating activity as thinking, breaks up and separates the moments of this mediation and exhibits them to itself in accordance with their immanent opposition. | Geist has brought to a close the movement of giving shape to itself. At long last, “Spirit has won the pure element of its existence, the concept.” It is no longer representational thinking of itself, and it realizes that the additive conception of itself as a sum of different things otherwise indifferent to each other cannot be the full account of Geist. Now self-conscious life has a more explicitly conceptual, holistic grasp of itself. What had appeared as “shapes of consciousness” can now be understood somewhat metaphorically as the different concepts spirit forms of itself in its history. As such “concepts,” they can also now be grasped not as adventitious sums of different things but as manifesting a logic that is only now becoming clear. | In dem Wissen hat also der Geist die Bewegung seines Gestaltens beschlossen, insofern dasselbe mit dem unüberwundnen Unterschiede des Bewußtseins behaftet ist. Er hat das reine Element seines Daseins, den Begriff, gewonnen. Der Inhalt ist nach der Freiheit seines Seins das sich entäußernde Selbst, oder die unmittelbare Einheit des Sich-selbst-wissens. Die reine Bewegung dieser Entäußerung macht, sie am Inhalte betrachtet, die Notwendigkeit desselben aus. Der verschiedne Inhalt ist als bestimmter im Verhältnisse, nicht an sich, und seine Unruhe, sich selbst aufzuheben, oder die Negativität; also ist die Notwendigkeit oder Verschiedenheit, wie das freie Sein, ebenso das Selbst, und in dieser selbstischen Form, worin das Dasein unmittelbar Gedanke ist, ist der Inhalt Begriff. Indem also der Geist den Begriff gewonnen, entfaltet er das Dasein und Bewegung in diesem äther seines Lebens, und ist Wissenschaft. Die Momente seiner Bewegung stellen sich in ihr nicht mehr als bestimmte Gestalten des Bewußtseins dar, sondern indem der Unterschied desselben in das Selbst zurückgegangen, als bestimmte Begriffe, und als die organische in sich selbst gegründete Bewegung derselben. Wenn in der Phänomenologie des Geistes jedes Moment der Unterschied des Wissens und der Wahrheit und die Bewegung ist, in welcher er sich aufhebt, so enthält dagegen die Wissenschaft diesen Unterschied und dessen Aufheben nicht, sondern indem das Moment die Form des Begriffs hat, vereinigt es die gegenständliche Form der Wahrheit und des wissenden Selbsts in unmittelbarer Einheit. Das Moment tritt nicht als diese Bewegung auf, aus dem Bewußtsein oder der Vorstellung in das Selbstbewußtsein und umgekehrt herüber und hinüber zu gehen, sondern seine reine von seiner Erscheinung im Bewußtsein befreite Gestalt, der reine Begriff, und dessen Fortbewegung hängt allein an seiner reinen Bestimmtheit. Umgekehrt entspricht jedem abstrakten Momente der Wissenschaft eine Gestalt des erscheinenden Geistes überhaupt. Wie der daseiende Geist nicht reicher ist als sie, so ist er in seinem Inhalte auch nicht ärmer. Die reinen Begriffe der Wissenschaft in dieser Form von Gestalten des Bewußtseins zu erkennen, macht die Seite ihrer Realität aus, nach welcher ihr Wesen, der Begriff, der in ihr in seiner einfachen Vermittlung als Denken gesetzt ist, die Momente dieser Vermittlung auseinanderschlägt und nach dem innern Gegensatze sich darstellt. |
§806 | Absolute Knowledge contains within itself this necessity of relinquishing itself from 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 distinction that 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 knowledge of itself. | Geist can’t be satisfied with just knowing about this, reading it in a book. It must live it (have it as a felt truth). “Science contains within itself this necessity to relinquish itself of the form of the pure concept and to make the transition from the concept into consciousness.” But likewise, Geist can’t be content with just “living it.” It also has to know it. This is, moreover, not just a practical fact about us but part of the logic of a phenomenology of Geist about how the I and the We are distinguishable but not separable and part of why we must make the effort to go along this path in the first place. | Die Wissenschaft enthält in ihr selbst diese Notwendigkeit, der Form des reinen Begriffs sich zu entäußern, und den übergang des Begriffes ins Bewußtsein. Denn der sich selbst wissende Geist, eben darum, daß er seinen Begriff erfaßt, ist er die unmittelbare Gleichheit mit sich selbst, welche in ihrem Unterschiede die Gewißheit vom Unmittelbaren ist, oder das sinnliche Bewußtsein, -- der Anfang, von dem wir ausgegangen; dieses Entlassen seiner aus der Form seines Selbsts ist die höchste Freiheit und Sicherheit seines Wissens von sich. |
§807 | All the same, this relinquishment (externalization) of self is still incomplete. This process expresses the relation of the certainty of its self to the object, an object which, just by being in a relation, has not yet attained its full freedom. Knowledge is aware not only of itself, but also of the negative of itself, or its limit. Knowing its limit means knowing how to sacrifice itself. This sacrifice is the self-abandonment, in which Spirit sets forth, in the form of free fortuitous happening, its process of becoming Spirit, intuitively apprehending outside it its pure self as Time, and likewise its existence as Space.(11) This last form into which Spirit passes, Nature, is its living immediate process of development. Nature-Spirit divested of self (externalized) -- is, in its actual existence, nothing but this eternal process of abandoning its (Nature's) own independent subsistence, and the movement which reinstates Subject. | “Knowing is acquainted not only with itself, but also with the negative of itself, or its limit.” The limit, though, is not one side of a curtain, with Geist on one side and something else on the other side. As mentioned before, Wittgenstein said in the Preface to his Tractatus: “to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e., we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).” We can’t do that; we cannot think what cannot be thought. Instead, self-conscious life as a whole has to come to terms with the fact that it comes to be from out of nature and that it exists only insofar as all of us contingent beings also come to be. | Doch ist diese Entäußerung noch unvollkommen; sie drückt die Beziehung der Gewißheit seiner selbst auf den Gegenstand aus, der eben darin, daß er in der Beziehung ist, seine völlige Freiheit nicht gewonnen hat. Das Wissen kennt nicht nur sich, sondern auch das Negative seiner selbst, oder seine Grenze. Seine Grenze wissen heißt sich aufzuopfern wissen. Diese Aufopferung ist die Entäußerung, in welcher der Geist sein Werden zum Geiste, in der Form des freien zufälligen Geschehens darstellt, sein reines Selbst, als die Zeit außer ihm, und ebenso sein Sein als Raum anschauend. Dieses sein letzteres Werden, die Natur, ist sein lebendiges unmittelbares Werden; sie, der entäußerte Geist, ist in ihrem Dasein nichts als diese ewige Entäußerung ihres Bestehens und die Bewegung, die das Subjekt herstellt. |
§808 | The other aspect, however, in which Spirit comes into being, History, is the process of becoming in terms of knowledge, a conscious self-mediating process -- Spirit externalized and emptied into Time. But this form of abandonment is, similarly, the emptying of itself by itself; the negative is negative of itself. This way of becoming presents a slow procession and succession of spiritual shapes (Geistern), a gallery of pictures, each of which is endowed with the entire wealth of Spirit, and moves so slowly just for the reason that the self has to permeate and assimilate all this wealth of its substance. Since its accomplishment consists in Spirit knowing what it is, in fully comprehending its substance, this knowledge means its concentrating itself on itself (Insichgehen), a state in which Spirit leaves its external existence behind and gives its embodiment over to Recollection (Erinnerung). In thus concentrating itself on itself, Spirit is engulfed in the night of its own self-consciousness; its vanished existence is, however, conserved therein; and this superseded existence -- the previous state, but born anew from the womb of knowledge -- is the new stage of existence, a new world, and a new embodiment or mode of Spirit. Here it has to begin all over again at its immediacy,(12) as freshly as before, and thence rise once more to the measure 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 life, and this is the Absolute Notion. This revelation consequently means superseding its “depth”, is its “extension” or spatial embodiment, the negation of this inwardly self-centred (insichseiend) ego -- a negativity which is its self-relinquishment, its externalization, or its substance: and this revelation is also its temporal embodiment, in that this externalization in its very nature relinquishes (externalizes) itself, and so exists at once in its spatial extension” as well as in its “depth” or the self. The goal, which is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit knowing itself as Spirit, finds its pathway in the recollection of spiritual forms (Geister) as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organization of their spiritual kingdom. Their conservation, looked at from the side of their free existence appearing in the form of contingency, is History; looked at from the side of their intellectually comprehended organization, it is the Science of the ways in which knowledge appears.(13) Both together, or History (intellectually) comprehended (begriffen), form at once the recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone. Only The chalice of this realm of spirits Foams forth to God His own Infinitude(14) PREV | The other aspect of spirit’s coming to be: history. That can be seen as: “This coming-to-be exhibits a languid movement and succession of spirits, a gallery of pictures, of which each, endowed with the entire wealth of spirit, moves itself so slowly because the self has to take hold of and assimilate the whole of this wealth of its substance.” We might read this as a kind of aesthetic statement, as if we were walking through a museum of world history, viewing the gallery of pictures (say, of Greece), then moving into the next hall (Rome, with the curators putting little signs up on the wall telling us how long Rome existed and what we should be looking at). What would the last room be? A hall of mirrors? This is, I think, part of the sense here. There is, however, a more expansive conception of “pictures” at work here. A picture in this sense is an overall view of what ultimately counts and does not count, and what ultimately makes sense and does not make sense within a particular shape of consciousness. Each of these shapes of spirit presents such a picture, and on Hegel’s view, the picture is also not static. It’s a “moving picture” in which there are also various speaking roles for the people in it. How did that history look? Hegel says that spirit’s shapes appearing in the form of contingency is history. History didn’t have to go the way it went. History as a series of contingent events does not necessarily follow any logic. However, the retrospective account of these events reveals that despite the contingency, history does have a kind of logic to it. Despite its ups and downs, it has, seen retrospectively, taken the shape of self-conscious life coming to an awareness of what ultimately matters to it. As that history is conceptually grasped, it is erscheinende Wissen, phenomenal knowing, or knowing in appearance. The two together—phenomenal knowledge and Hegelian conceptual knowledge—form begriffne Geschichte (a term hard to render—kind of “concept-ized history”), and that forms the “the science of phenomenal knowing,” knowledge as it appears in the various strife-ridden worlds of self-conscious life. However, now that this task has been completed, this is a climb up to the Golgotha of spirit (its Calvary, the Schädelstätte, the place of skulls, where Jesus was crucified). Hegel then speaks of this as absolute Geist’s throne. If it had not made this journey of self-consummating skepticism along the path of despair (§78), it would, he says, be lifeless and alone. He then ends by misquoting lines from a poem by Schiller. Is it an accidental misquote or a deliberate one? And why end this book of philosophy with a line of poetry? The poem is from Schiller’s “Friendship” (“Die Freundschaft”). Here’s Hegel: Out of the chalice of this realm of spirits Foams forth to him his infinity aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit. Schiller’s original: Friendless was the great master of the world, He felt a lack—and so he created spirits, Blessed mirrors of his own blessedness! Already the highest being found no equal, From the chalice of the whole realm of souls Foams forth to him—infinity Freundlos war der große Weltenmeister, Fühlte Mangel—darum schuf er Geister, Sel’ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit! Fand das höchste Wesen schon kein gleiches. Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Seelenreiches Schäumt ihm—die Unendlichkeit. Hegel subtly changes Schiller’s own poem. He changes souls (Seelenreiches) into spirits (Geisterreiches) in the last two lines, even though it is spirits that the Weltenmeister has created. Hegel makes the whole definite (this) instead of just “the whole.” Schiller has infinity as such foaming up, but Hegel has “his” (maybe better rendered as “his own”) infinity—in both cases, it’s an image of sparkling wine foaming up out of a chalice into which it has been poured. Hegel also leaves out the dash mark before “[his] infinity.” In particular, the replacement of “infinity” (die Unendlichkeit) with “his [own] infinity” (seine Unendlichkeit) suggests that we can conceive of what it is for our self-consciousness to think of the infinite and for self-consciousness to be self-consciousness only in doing so. It is both that sense of one’s “own” infinity (as infinite in thought but not in time or extension) and also its history (or concept-ized history, begriffne Geschichte) that prevent it from being lifeless and alone. Without this rich history behind it and without its being a “phenomenology” of that life and history, the “science of self-consciousness” would decline into a merely formal enterprise (would be “lifeless”) and would have no real link to the rest of the form of life of which it is a part (would be “alone”). It would be a dry, dead (and “merely” academic) enterprise. We began with a consideration of indexicals, with an actual location in a “this,” and we end with a “this” (“this realm of spirits,” dieses Geisterreiches), that is, not just in any possible world, but the actual, human world. The phenomenology of spirit, of self-conscious life, has been an investigation of how the logic of shapes of consciousness and shapes of spirit are manifested in the lived experiences of people in a “form of life”—in Hegel’s sense of a Gestalt des Lebens. It has also brought forth the conceptual connections among those shapes themselves from out of the very investigation itself. It is a far more “existential” piece than Hegel was ever to write again. (There are more “existential” moments in the development of Hegel’s philosophy, but they are not part of the warp and woof of his books and lectures as they are in this book.) The last paragraph speaks of the way in which the lesson to be drawn from this is that now that the basic tensions inherent in the concepts of the unconditioned have been drawn in the course of this phenomenology, the issue “foams up” into a kind of indeterminate concept of where we go next. As we know, Hegel thought that was to be his Science of Logic, which was not to appear until several years later; he admitted in a letter to his friend, Niethammer, that he had at that time no real idea about what it would look like. That book was to answer the logical-metaphysical question of what were unconditional concepts and how they were to be related to each other. It was not to be a phenomenology but a piece of logic-as-metaphysics. Having worked out his systematic “scientific” introduction to his system, he spent the rest of his career working out just what that system was to be. | Die andere Seite aber seines Werdens, die Geschichte, ist das wissende sich vermittelnde Werden -- der an die Zeit entäußerte Geist; aber diese Entäußerung ist ebenso die Entäußerung ihrer selbst; das Negative ist das Negative seiner selbst. Dies Werden stellt eine träge Bewegung und Aufeinanderfolge von Geistern dar, eine Galerie von Bildern, deren jedes, mit dem vollständigen Reichtume des Geistes ausgestattet, eben darum sich so träge bewegt, weil das Selbst diesen ganzen Reichtum seiner Substanz zu durchdringen und zu verdauen hat. Indem seine Vollendung darin besteht, das, was er ist, seine Substanz, vollkommen zu wissen, so ist dies Wissen sein In-sich-gehen, in welchem er sein Dasein verläßt und seine Gestalt der Erinnerung übergibt. In seinem In-sich-gehen ist er in der Nacht seines Selbstbewußtseins versunken, sein verschwundnes Dasein aber ist in ihr aufbewahrt, und dies aufgehobne Dasein -- das vorige, aber aus dem Wissen neugeborne -- ist das neue Dasein, eine neue Welt und Geistesgestalt. In ihr hat er ebenso unbefangen von vornen bei ihrer Unmittelbarkeit anzufangen und sich von ihr auf wieder großzuziehen, als ob alles Vorhergehende für ihn verloren wäre und er aus der Erfahrung der frühern Geister nichts gelernt hätte. Aber die Er-Innerung hat sie aufbewahrt und ist das Innre und die in der Tat höhere Form der Substanz. Wenn also dieser Geist seine Bildung, von sich nur auszugehen scheinend, wieder von vornen anfängt, so ist es zugleich auf einer höhern Stufe, daß er anfängt. Das Geisterreich, das auf diese Weise sich in dem Dasein gebildet, macht eine Aufeinanderfolge aus, worin einer den andern ablöste und jeder das Reich der Welt von dem vorhergehenden übernahm. Ihr Ziel ist die Offenbarung der Tiefe, und diese ist der absolute Begriff, diese Offenbarung ist hiemit das Aufheben seiner Tiefe oder seine Ausdehnung, die Negativität dieses insichseienden Ich, welche seine Entäußerung oder Substanz ist, -- und seine Zeit, daß diese Entäußerung sich an ihr selbst entäußert und so in ihrer Ausdehnung ebenso in ihrer Tiefe, dem Selbst ist. Das Ziel, das absolute Wissen, oder der sich als Geist wissende Geist hat zu seinem Wege die Erinnerung der Geister, wie sie an ihnen selbst sind und die Organisation ihres Reiches vollbringen. Ihre Aufbewahrung nach der Seite ihres freien in der Form der Zufälligkeit erscheinenden Daseins ist die Geschichte, nach der Seite ihrer begriffnen Organisation aber die Wissenschaft des erscheinenden Wissens; beide zusammen, die begriffne Geschichte, bilden die Erinnerung und die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes, die Wirklichkeit, Wahrheit und Gewißheit seines Throns, ohne den er das leblose Einsame wäre; nur -- aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit. Table of Contents |
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