Independent self-consciousness partly finds its essen- tial reality in the bare abstraction of Ego. On the other hand, when this abstract ego develops further and forms distinctions of its own, this differentiation does not become an objective inherently real content for that self-consciousness. Hence this self-consciousness does not become an ego which truly difierentiates itself in its abstract simpHcity, or one which remains identical with itself in this absolute differentiation. The re- pressed and subordinated type of consciousness, on the other hand, becomes, in the formative activity of work, an object to itself, in the sense that the form, given to the thing when shaped and moulded, is his object; he sees in the master, at the same time, self-existence as a real mode of consciousness. But the subservient consciousness as such finds these two moments fall apart — the moment of itself as independent object, and the moment of this object as a mode of conscious- ness, and so its own proper reality. Since, however, the form and the self -existence are for us, or objectively in themselves, one and the same, and since in the notion of independent consciousness the inherent reality is consciousness, the phase of inherent existence {Ansichsein) or thinghood, which received its shape and form through labour, is no other substance than con- sciousness. In this way, we have a new attitude or mode of consciousness brought about. We have now a consciousness, which takes itself to be infinitude, or one whose essential nature is pure process of conscious- ness. It is one which thinhs or is free self-consciousness. For thinking does not consist in being an abstract ego, but in being an ego which has, at the same time, the significance of inherently existing in itself; or which relates itself to objective reality in sucli a way that this signifies the self-existence of that consciousness for which it is an object. The object does not for thinking proceed by way of presentations or figures, but of notions, conceptions, i.e. of a differentiated reality or essence, which, being an immediate content of consciousness, is nothing distinct from it. What is presented, shaped and constructed, and existent as such, has the form of being something other than consciousness. A notion, however, is at the same time an existent, and this distinction, so far as it falls in consciousness itself, is its determinate content. But in that this content is, at the same time, a conceptually constituted, a compre- hended {hegriffener) content, consciousness remains immediately aware within itself of its unity with this determinate existent so distinguished; not as in the case of a presentation, where consciousness from the first has to take special note that this is the idea of the object; on the contrary, the notion is for me eo ipso and at once my notion. In thinking I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in touch with myself; and the object which for me is my essential reality, is in undivided unity my self-existence; and my procedure in dealing with notions is a process within myself.
It is essential, however, in this determination of the above attitude of self-consciousness to keep hold of the fact that this attitude is thinking consciousness in general, that its object is immediate unity of the self's im- phcit, inherent existence, and of its existence explicitly for self. The self-same consciousness which repels itself from itself, becomes aware of being an element existing in itself. But to itself it is this element to begin with 192 Phenomenology of Mind only as universal reality ia general, and not as this essential reality appears when developed in all the manifold details it contains, when the process of its being brings out all its fullness of content.
This freedom of self-consciousness, as is well known, has been called Stoicism, in so far as it has appeared as a phenomenon conscious of itself in the course of the history of man's spirit. Its principle is that con- sciousness is essentially that which thinks, is a thinking reahty, and that anything is really essential for con- sciousness, or is true and good, only when consciousness in dealing with it adopts the attitude of a thinking being.
The manifold, self-difierentiating expanse of hfe, with all its individuahsation and comphcation, is the object upon which desire and labour operate. This varied ac- tivity has now contracted itself into the simple distinction which is found in the pure process of thought. What has still essential reahty is not a distinction in the sense of a determinate thing, or in the shape of a con- sciousness of a determinate kind of natural existence, in the shape of a feehng, or again in the form of desire and its specific purpose, whether that purpose be set up by the consciousness desiring or by an extraneous consciousness. What has the more essential significance here is solely that distinction, which is a thought-con- stituted distinction, or which, when made, is not distin- guished from me. This consciousness in consequence takes a negative attitude towards the relation of lord- ship and bondage. Its action, in the case of the master, results in his not simply having his truth in and through the bondsman; and, in that of the bondsman, in not finding his truth in the will of his master and in service.
Stoicism 193 Stoicism 193 The essence of this consciousness is to be free, on the throne as well as in fetters, throughout all the depend- ence that attaches to its individual existence, and to maintain that stohd lifeless unconcern which persistently withdraws from the movement of existence, from effective activity as well as from passive endurance, into the simple essentiahty of thought. Stubbornness is that freedom which makes itself secure in a sohd singleness, and keeps vjithin the sphere of bondage. Stoicism, on the other hand, is the freedom which ever comes directly out of that sphere, and returns back into the pure universahty of thought. It is a freedom which can come on the scene as a general form of the world's spirit only in a time of universal fear and bondage, a time, too, when mental cultivation is universal, and has elevated culture to the level of thought.
Now while this self-consciousness finds its essential reahty to be neither something other than itself, nor the pure abstraction of ego, but ego which has within it otherness — otherness in the sense of a thought-con- stituted distinction — so that this ego in its otherness is turned back directly into itself; yet this essential nature is, at the same time, only an abstract reahty. The freedom of seK-consciousness is indifferent towards natural existence, and has, therefore, let this latter go and remain free. The reflexion is thus duphcated. Freedom of thought takes only pure thought as its truth, and this lacks the concrete filhng of hfe. It is, therefore, merely the notion of freedom, not living freedom itseK; for it is, to begin with, only thinking in general that is its essence, the form as such, which has turned away from the independence of things and gone back into itself. Since, however, individuahty when VOL. I.— o 194 Phenomenology of Mind acting should show itself to be ahve, or when thinking should grasp the hving world as a system of thought, there ought to he in thought itself a content to supply the sphere of the ego, in the former case with what is good, and, in the latter, true, in order that there should throughout be no other ingredient in what consciousness has to deal with, except the notion which is the real essence. But here, by the way in which the notion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplicity of things, the notion has no content in itself; the content is a datum, is given. Consciousness, no doubt, abohshes the content as an external, a foreign existent, by the fact that it thinks it, but the notion is a determinate notion, and this determinateness of the notion is the ahen element the notion contains within it. Stoicism, therefore, got embarrassed, when, as the expression went, it was asked for the criterion of truth in general, i.e. properly speaking, for a content of thought itself. To the question what is good and true, it responded by giving again the abstract, contentless thought; the true and good are to consist in reasonableness. But this self-identity of thought is simply once more pure form, in which nothing is determinate. The general terms true and good, wisdom and virtue, with which Stoicism has to stop short, are, therefore, in a general way, doubtless elevating; but seeing that they cannot actually and in fact reach any expanse of content, they soon begin to get wearisome.
This thinking consciousness, in the way in which it is thus constituted, as abstract freedom, is therefore only incomplete negation of otherness. Withdrawn from ex- istence solely into itself, it has not there fully vindicated itself as the absolute negation of this existence. It holds Scepticism I95 the content indeed to be only thought, but in doing so also takes thought as a specific determinate thought, and at the same time the general character of the content.
Scepticism is the reahsation of that of which Stoicism is merely the notion, and is the actual experience of what freedom of thought is; it is in itself and essentially the negative, and must so exhibit itself. With the reflexion of self-consciousness into the simple, pure thought of itself, independent existence or permanent determinateness has, in contrast to that reflexion, dropped as a matter of fact out of the infinitude of thought. In Scepticism, the entire unessentiahty and unsubstantiaHty of this " other " becomes a reahty for consciousness. Thought becomes thinking which wholly annihilates the being of the world with its manifold determinateness, and the negativity of free self-consciousness comes to be, in the case of these manifold forms which hfe assumes, real negativity.
It is clear from the foregoing that, just as Stoicism answers to the notion of independent consciousness, which appeared as a relation of lordship and bondage. Scepticism, on its side, corresponds to its realisation, to the negative attitude towards otherness, to desire and labour. But if desire and work could not carry out for self-consciousness the process of negation, this polemical attitude towards the manifold substantiahty of things will, on the other hand, be successful, because it turns against them as a free self-consciousness, and one complete within itself beforehand; or, expressed more definitely, because it has inherent in itself thought or the principle of infinitude, where the independent ele- ments in their distinction from one another are held to 196 Phenomenology of Mind be merely vanisliing quantities. The differences, which, in the pure thinking of self are only the abstraction of differences, become here the whole of the differences; and every differentiated existent becomes a difference of self-consciousness.
With this we get determined the action of Scepticism in general, as also its mode and nature. It shows the dialectic movement, which is sense-certainty, perception, and understanding. It shows, too, the unessentiahty of that which holds good in the relation of master and servant, and which for abstract thought itself passes as determinate. That relation involves, at the same time, a determinate situation, in which there are found even moral laws, as commands of the sovereign lord. The determinations in abstract thought, however, are scientific notions, into which formal contentless thought expands itself, attaching the notion, as a matter of fact in merely an external fashion, to the existence inde- pendent of it, and holding as valid only determinate notions, albeit they are still pure abstractions.
Dialectic as a negative process, taken immediately as it stands, appears to consciousness, in the first instance, as something at the mercy of which it is, and which does not exist through consciousness itself. In Scepticism, on the other hand, this negative process is a moment of self-consciousness, which does not simply find its truth and its reality vanish, without self- consciousness knowing how, but rather which, in the certainty of its own freedom, itself lets this other, so claiming to be real, vanish. Self-consciousness here allows not only the objective as such to disappear before the negations of Scepticism, but also its own attitude and relation to the object, where the object is held Scepticism 197 Scepticism 197 to be objective and rendered 'valid — i.e. its attitude of perception as also its process of securing wliat is in danger of being lost, viz. sophistry with, its self-constituted and self-estabHsbed truth. By means of this self-conscious negation, self-consciousness procures for itself the certainty of its own freedom, brings about the experi- ence of that freedom, and thereby raises it into the truth. What vanishes is what is determinate, the difference which, no matter what its nature or whence it comes, sets up to be fixed and unchangeable. The difference has nothing permanent in it, and must vanish before thought, because to be differentiated just means not to have being in itself, but to have its essential nature solely in an other. Thinking, however, is the insight into this character of what is differentiated; it is the negative function in its simple, ultimate form.
Sceptical self-consciousness thus discovers, in the flux and alternation of all that would stand secure in its presence, its own freedom, as given by and received from its own self. It is aware of being this arapa^la of self-thinking thought, the unalterable and genuine certainty of its self. This certainty does not arise as a result out of something extraneous and foreign which stowed away inside itself its whole complex develop- ment; a result which would thus leave behind the process by which it came to be. Kather consciousness itself is thoroughgoing dialectical restlessness, this m^lee of presentations derived from sense and thought, whose differences collapse into oneness, and whose identity is similarly again resolved and dissolved — for this identity is itself determinateness as contrasted with non-identity. This consciousness, however, as a matter 198 Phenomenology of Mind of fact, instead of being a self-same consciousness, is here neither more nor less than an absolutely fortuitous embroglio, the giddy whirl of a perpetually self-creating disorder. This is what it takes itself to be; for itself maintains and produces this self-impelhng confusion. Hence it even confesses the fact; it owns to being an entirely fortuitous individual con- sciousness— a consciousness which is empirical, which is directed upon what admittedly has no reahty for it, which obeys what, in its regard, has no essential being, which realises and does what it knows to have no truth. But while it passes in this manner for an individual, isolated, contingent, in fact animal life, and a lost self-consciousness, it also, on the contrary, again turns itself into universal self-sameness; for it is the negativity of all singleness and all difference. From this self-identity, or rather within its very self, it falls back once more into that contingency and con- fusion, for this very self-directed process of negation has to do solely with what is single and individual, and is occupied with what is fortuitous. This form of consciousness is, therefore, the aimless fickleness and instabihty of going to and fro, hither and thither, from one extreme of self-same self-consciousness, to the other of contingent, confused and confusing conscious- ness. It does not itself bring these two thoughts of itself together. It finds its freedom, at one time, in the form of elevation above all the whirling complexity and all the contingency of mere existence, and again, at anot_. time, likewise confesses to falhng back upon what is unessential, and to being taken up with that. It lets the unessential content in its thought vanish; but in that very act it is the consciousness of some- Scepticism 199 thing unessential. It announces absolute disappearance but the announcement is, and this consciousness is the evanescence expressly announced. It announces the nulhty of seeing, hearing, and so on, yet itself sees and hears. It proclaims the nothingness of essential ethical principles, and makes those very truths the sinews of its own conduct. Its deeds and its words behe each other continually; and itself, too, has the doubly contradictory consciousness of immutabihty and sameness, and of utter contingency and non-identity with itself. But it keeps asunder the poles of this contradiction within itself; and bears itself towards the contradiction as it does in its purely negative process in general. If sameness is shown to it, it points out unlikeness, non-identity; and when the latter, which it has expressly mentioned the moment before, is held up to it, it passes on to indicate sameness and identity. Its talk, in fact, is hke a squabble among self-willed children, one of whom says a when the other says B, and again B, when the other says a, and who, through being in contradiction with themselves, procure the joy of remaining in contradiction with one another. In Scepticism consciousness gets, in truth, to know itself as a consciousness containing contradiction within itself. From the experience of this proceeds a new attitude which brings the two thoughts together which Scepticism holds apart. The want of intelhgence which Scepticism manifests regarding itself is bound to vanish, because it is in fact one consciousness which possesses these two modes wjthin it. This new att',:le conse- quently is one which is aware of being the double consciousness of itself as self-hberating, unalterable, self-identical, and as utterly self-confounding, self- 200 Phenomenology of Mind perverting; and this new attitude is the consciousness of this contradiction within itself.
In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the bare and simple freedom of itself. In Scepticism, it reaUses itself, negates the other side of determinate existence, but, in so doing, really doubles itself, and is itself now a duaUty. In this way the dupUcation, which previously was divided between two individuals, the lord and the bondsman, is concentrated into one. Thus we have here that duahsing of self-consciousness within itself, which lies essentially in the notion of mind; but the tmity of the two elements is not yet present. Hence the Unhapfy Consciousness * the AUenated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.
This unhappy consciousness, divided and at variance within itself, must, because this contradiction of its essential nature is felt to be a single conscious- ness, always have in the one consciousness the other also; and thus must be straightway driven out of each in turn, when it thinks it has therein attained to the victory and rest of unity. Its true return into itself, or reconciliation with itself, will, however, exhibit the notion of mind endowed with a hfe and existence of its own, because it implicitly involves the fact that, qua single and undivided, it is a double consciousness. It is itself the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, ar itself is both, and the unity of both is p]&<j its owr^ * The term " unglijckliches Bewusstsein '' is designi;.'d as a summary expression for the following movement, there being no j'ecognised general term for this purpose, as in the case of "Stoicism." The term hardly seems fortunate: with the following analysis should be read Heo-el's Philosophy of History, part 4, sec. 2, c. 1 and 2. (F.ng. tr. pp. 380-415 and History of Philosophy, part 2., Introduction.
The UnTiappy Consciousness' 201 essence; but objectively and consciously it is not yet this essence itself — is not yet the unity of both.
Since, in the fixst instance, it is the immediate, the imphcit unity of both, while for it they are not one and the same, but opposed, it takes one, namely, the simple unalterable, as essential, the other, the manifold and changeable, as the rmessential. For it, both are reahties foreign to each other. Itself, because consciousness of this contradiction, assumes the aspect of changeable consciousness and is to itself the imessential; but as consciousness of unchangeableness, of the ultimate essence, it must, at the same time, proceed to free itself from the imessential, i.e. to liberate itself from itself. For though in its own view it is indeed only the change- able, and the unchangeable is foreign and extraneous to it, yet itself is simple, and therefore unchangeable consciousness, of which consequently it is conscious as its essence, but still in such wise that itself is again in its own regard not this essence. The position, which it assigns to both, cannot, therefore, be an indifference of one to the other, i.e. cannot be an indifference of itself towards the unchangeable. Rather it is immedi- ately both itself; and the relation of both assumes for it the form of a relation of essence to the non-essential, so that this latter has to be cancelled; but since both are to it equally essential and are contradictory, it is only the conflicting contradictory process in which opposite does not come to rest in its own opposite, but produc? itself therein afresh merely as an opposite.
Here, then, there is a struggle against an enemy, victory over whom really means being worsted, where to have attained one result is really to lose it in the opposite. Consciousness of life, of its existence and 202 Phenomenology of Mind action, is merely pain and sorrow over this existence and activity; for therein consciousness finds only con- sciousness of its opposite as its essence — and of its own nothingness. Elevating itself beyond this, it passes to the unchangeable. But this elevation is itself this same consciousness. It is, therefore, immediately conscious- ness of the opposite, viz. of itself as single, individual, particular. The unchangeable, which comes to con- sciousness, is in that very fact at the same time affected by particularity, and is only present with this latter. Instead of particularity having been abohshed in the consciousness of immutabihty, it only continues to appear there still.
In this process, however, consciousness experiences just this appearance of particularity in the unchange- able, and of the unchangeable in particularity. Con- sciousness becomes aware of particularity in general in the immutable essence, and at the same time it there finds its own particularity. For the truth of this process is precisely that the double consciousness is one and single. This unity becomes a fact to it, but in the first instance the miity is one in which the diversity of both factors is still the dominant feature. Owing to this, consciousness has before it the threefold way in which particularity is connected with unchangeable- ness. In one form it comes before itself as opposed to the imchangeable essence, and is thrown back to the beginning of that struggle, which is, from first to last, the principle constituting the entire situation. At another time it finds the unchange- able appearing in the form of particularity; so that the latter is an embodiment of unchangeableness, into which, in consequence, the entire form of existence The Unhappy Consciousness 203 passes. In the third case, it discovers itself to be this particular fact in the unchangeable. The first un- changeable is taken to be merely the ahen, external Being,* which passes sentence on particular existence; since the second unchangeable is a form or mode of particularity like itself, f the unchangeable becomes in the third place spirit {Geist), has the joy of finding itself therein, and becomes aware within itself that its particularity has been reconciled with the universal. J What is set forth here as a mode and relation of the unchangeable, came to light as the experience through which self-consciousness passes in its unhappy state of diremption. This experience is now doubtless not its own onesided process; for it is itself unchangeable con- sciousness; and this latter, consequently, is a particu- lar consciousness as well; and the process is as much a process of that unchangeable consciousness, which makes its appearance there as certainly as the other. For that movement is carried on in these moments: an unchangeable now opposed to the particular in general, then, being itself particular, opposed to the other particular, and finally at one with it. But this consideration, so far as it is our affair, § is here out of place, for thus far we have only had to do with im- changeableness as unchangeableness of consciousness, which, for that reason, is not true immutabihty, but is still affected with an opposite; we have not had before us the unchangeable per se and by itself; we do not, therefore, know how this latter will conduct itself. What has here so far come to hght is merely this, * God as Judge.
t Christ.
J The religious communion.
§.e. the philosophical observer 204 Phenomenology of Mind