Preface 15 identity A==A, there is no such thing at all, for every- thing is there all one. To pit this single assertion, that " in the Absolute all is one," against the organised whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete development — to give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are black — that is the very naivete of vacuous knowledge.
The formahsm which has been deprecated and de- spised by recent philosophy, and which has arisen once more in philosophy itself, will not disappear from science, even though its inadequacy is known and felt, till the knowledge of absolute reality has become quite clear as to what its own true nature consists in. Having in mind that the general idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out, faciUtates the comprehension of this process, it is worth while to indicate here some rough idea of it, with the hope at the same time that this will give us the opportunity to set aside certain forms whose habitual presence is a hindrance in the way of speculative knowledge.
In my view — a view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify — everything de- pends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well. At the same time we must note that concrete substantiahty impli- cates and involves the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as the immediacy which is being, or immediacy qua object for knowledge. If the generation which heard God spoken of as the One Substance* was shocked and revolted by such a cha- racterisation of his nature, the reason lay partly in the * Spinoza.
16 Phenomenology of Mind instinctive feeling that in such a conception self- consciousness was simply submerged, and not preserved. But partly, again, the opposite position, which main- tains thinking to be merely subjective thinking, abstract universality as such, is exactly the same bare uni- formity, is undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality.* And even if, in the third place, thought combines with itself the being of substance, and conceives imme- diacy or intuition (AnscJiauung) as thinking, it is still a question whether this intellectual intuition does not fall back into that inert, abstract simphcity, and exhibit and expound reality itself in an unreal manner.f The Hving substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly reahsed and actual [wirhlicli) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its tran- sitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of spUtting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reahty is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of re- flecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an im- mediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end or its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.
The Ufe of God and divine intelhgence, then, can, * Kant and Fichte. t Schelling.
Preface 17 if we like, be spoken of as love disporting witli itself; but this idea falls into edification, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative. Per se the divine hfe is no doubt undisturbed identity and oneness with itself, which feels no anxiety over otherness and estrangement, and none over the surmounting of this estrangement. But this " per se " is abstract generality, where we abstract from its real nature, which consists in its being objective to itself, conscious of itself on its own account {fiir sich zu sein); and where consequently we neglect altogether the self-movement which is the formal character of its activity. If the form is declared to correspond to the essence, it is just for that reason a misunderstanding to suppose that knowledge can be content with the " per se," the essence, but can do without the form, that the absolute principle, or abso- lute intuition, makes the carrying out of the former, or the development of the latter, needless. Precisely because the form is as necessary to the essence as the essence to it, absolute reality must not be conceived of and expressed as essence alone, i.e. as immediate substance, or as pure self-intuition of the Divine, but as form also, and with the entire wealth of the developed form. Only then is it grasped and expressed as really actual.
The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, th?.t only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, aubject, or self -becoming, self-development. Should VOL. I.— C 18 Phenomenology oj Mind it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consider- ation wiU set this appearance of contradiction in its true hght. The. beginning, the principle, or the Abso- lute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal. If we say " all animals," that does not pass for zoology; for the same reason we see at once that the words absolute, divine, eternal, and so on do not express what is imphed in them; and only mere words hke these, in point of fact, express intuition as the immediate. Whatever is more than a word hke that, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a form of mediation, contains a process towards another state from which we must return once more. It is this process of mediation, however, that is rejected with horror, as if absolute knowledge were being sur- rendered when more is made of mediation than merely the assertion that it is nothing absolute, and does not exist in the Absolute.
This horrified rejection of mediation, however, arises as a fact from want of acquaintance with its nature, and with the nature of absolute knowledge itself. For mediating is nothing but self-identity working itself out through an active self-directed process; or, in other words, it is reflection into self, the aspect in which the ego is for itself, objective to itself. It is pure negativity, or, reduced to its utmost abstraction, the process of bare and simple becoming. The ego, or becoming in general, this process of mediating is, because of its being simple, just immediacy coming to be, and is immediacy itself. We misconceive therefore the nature of reason if we exclude reflection or medita- tion from ultimate truth, and do not take it to be a Preface 19 Preface 19 positive moment of tlie Absolute. It is reflection svhich constitutes truth the final result, and yet at bhe same time does away with the contrast between result and the process of arriving at it. For this process is hkewise simple, and therefore not distinct from the form of truth, which consists in appearing as simple in the result; it is indeed just this restoration and return to simplicity. While the embryo is cer- tainly, in itself, implicitly a human being, it is not so exphcitly, it does not take itself to be a human being [fUr sich); it is only the latter in the form of de- veloped and cultivated reason, which has made itself to be what it is implicitly. Its actual reality is first fomid here. But this result arrived at is itself simple immediacy; for it is self-conscious freedom, which is at one with itself, and has not set aside the opposition it involves and left it there, but has made its account with it and become reconciled to it.
What has been said may also be expressed by saying that reason is purposive activity. Extolling so-called nature at the expense of thought misunderstood, and more especially the rejection of external purposive- ness, have brought the idea of purpose in general into disrepute. AU the same, in the sense in which Aristotle, too, characterises nature as purposive activity, purpose is the inunediate, the midisturbed, the unmoved which is self-moving; as such it is subject. Its power of moving, taken abstractly, is its existence for itself, or pure negativity. The result is the same as the begin- ning solely because the beginning is purpose. Stated otherwise, what is actual and concrete is the same as its inner principle or notion simply because the immediate qua purpose contains within it the self, or 20 Phenomenology of Mind pure actuality. The realised purpose, or concrete actuality, is movement and process of development. But this very unrest is the self; and it is one and the same with that immediacy and simphcity character- istic of the beginning just for the reason thai it is the result, and has returned upon itself — while this latter again is just the self, and the self is self-referring and self-relating identity and simphcity.
When thinking of the Absolute as subject, men have made use of statements Uke ' God is the eternal,' the ' moral order of the world,' or ' love,' etc. In such propositions ultimate truth is just barely stated to be Subject, but not set forth as the process of reflectively mediating itself within itself. In a proposition of that kind we begin with the word God. By itself this is a meaningless sound, a mere name; the predicate says afterwards wliat it is, gives it content and meaning: the empty beginning becomes real knowledge only when we thus get to the end of the statement. So far as that goes, why not speak alone of the eternal, of the moral order of the world, etc., or, Hke the ancients, of pure conceptions such as being, the one, etc., i.e. of what gives the meaning without adding the mean- ingless sound at all? But this word just indicates that it is not a being or essence or universal in general that is put forward, but something reflected into self, a subject. Yet at the same time this acceptance of the Absolute as Subject is merely anticipated, not really affirmed. The subject is taken to be a fixed point, and to it as their support the predicates are attached, by a process falhng within the individual knowing about it, but not looked upon as belonging to the point of atta,chment itself; only by such a process, however, Preface 21 could the content be presented as subject. Constituted as it is, tbis process cannot belong to tbe subject; but when that point of support is fixed to start wdth, this process cannot be otherwise constituted, it can only be external. The anticipation that the Absolute is subject is therefore not merely not the realisation of this con- ception; it even makes reahsation impossible. For it makes out the notion to be a static point, while its actual reahty is self-movement, self-activity. «^ Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasise this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first prin- ciple. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character; and it is defective because it is merely the universal^ merely a principle, the beginning. If the refutation is com- plete and thorough, it is derived and developed from the nature of the principle itself, and not accomplished by bringing in from elsewhere other coimter assurances and chance fancies. It would be strictly the development of the principle, and thus the completion of its deficiency, were it not that it misunderstands its own purport by taking account solely of the negative aspect of what it seeks to do, and is not conscious of the positive char- acter of its process and result. The really positive working out of the beginning is at the same time just as much the very reverse, it is a negative attitude to- wards the principle we start from, negative, that is to 22 PJienomenology of Mind say, of its one-sided form, which consists in being primarily immediate, a mere purpose. It may there- fore be regarded as a refutation of what constitutes the basis of the system; but more correctly it should be looked at as a demonstration that the basis or principle of the system is in point of fact merely its beginning. " ^ That the truth is only realised in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist) — the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is the only Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself — it is externahty (otherness), and exists for self; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself — it is self-contained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once. This self-containedness, however, is first something known by us, it is imphcit in its nature {an sicli); it is Substance spiritual. It has to become self-contained for itself, on its own account; it must get knowledge of spirit, and must be consciousness of itself as spirit. This means, it must be presented to itself as an object, but at the same time straightway annul and transcend this objective form; it must be its own object in which it finds itself reflected. So far as its spiritual content is produced by its own activity, it is only we [the thinkers] who know spirit to be for itself, to be objective to itself; but in so far as spirit laiows itself to be for itself, then this self- production, the pure notion, is the sphere and element in which its objectification takes effect, and where it b Preface 23 gets its existential form. In tliis way it is in its exist- ence aware of itself as an object in which, its own self is reflected. Mind, which, when thus developed, knows itself to be mind, is science. Science is its realisation, and the kingdom it sets up for itself in its own native element. - A self having knowledge purely of itself in the absp- lute antithesis of itself, this pure ether as such, is the very soil where science flourishes, is knowledge in universal form. The beginning of philosophy pre- supposes or demands from consciousness that it should feel at home in this element. But this element only attains its perfect meaning and acquires transparency through the process of gradually developing it. It is pure spirituality as the universal which assumes the shape of simple immediacy; and this simple element, existing as such, is the soil of science, is thinking, and can be only in mind. Because this medium, this immediacy of mind, is the mind's substantial nature in general, it is the transfigured essence, re- flection which itself is simple, which is aware of itself as immediacy; it is being, which is reflection into itself. Science on its side requires the individual self-conscious- ness to have risen into this high ether, in order to be able to Hve with science, and in science, and really to feel ahve there. Conversely the individual has the right to demand that science shall hold the ladder to help him to get at least as far as this position, shall show him that he has in himself this ground to stand on.
His right rests on his absolute independence, which he knows he possesses in every type and phase of know- ledge; for in every phase, whether recognised by science or not, and whatever be the content, his right as an 24 Phenomenology of Mind individual is the absolute and final form, i.e. lie is the immediate certainty of self, and thereby is uncon- ditioned being, were this expression preferred. If the position taken up by consciousness, that of knowing about objective things as opposed to itself, and about itself as opposed to them, is held by science to be the very opposite of this position: if, when in knowing it keeps within itself and never gets beyond itself, science holds this state to be rather the loss of mind altogether — on the other hand the element in which science consists is looked at by consciousness as a remote and distant region, in which consciousness is no longer in possession of itself. Each of these two sides takes the other to be the perversion of the truth. For the naive con- sciousness to give itself up completely and straight away to science is to make an attempt, induced by some unkno-wm influence, all at once to walk on its head. The compulsion to take up this attitude and move about in this position, is a constraining force it is urged to fall in with, without ever being prepared for it and with no apparent necessity for doing so. Let science be fcr se what it likes, in its relation to naive immediate self-conscious life it presents the appearance of being a reversal of the latter; or, again, because naive self-consciousness finds the principle of its reahty in the certainty of itself, science bears the character of unreality, since consciousness ' for itself ' is a state quite outside of science. Science has for that reason to combine that other element of self-certainty with its own, or rather to show that the other element belongs to itself, and how it does so. When devoid of that sort of reality, science is merely the content of mind qua something imphcit or potential {an sich); Preface 25 purpose whicli at the start is no more than something internal; not spirit, but at first merely spiritual sub- stance. This impHcit moment (AnsicJi) has to find external expression, and become objective on its own account. This means nothing else than that this moment has to establish self-consciousness as one with itself.
It is this process by which science in general comes about, this gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology of Mind.* Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage, is without the essential nature of mind, is^ sense-consciousness. To get the length of genuine knowledge, or produce the element where science is found — the pure conception of science itself — a long and laborious journey must be undertaken. This pro- cess towards science, as regards the content it will bring to light and the forms it will assume in the course of its progress, will not be what is primarily imagined by leading the unscientific consciousness up to the level of science: it will be something different, too, from establishing and laying the foundations of science; and anyway something else than the sort of ecstatic enthusiasm which starts straight of! with absolute knowledge, as if shot out of a pistol, and makes short work of other points of view simply by explaining that it is to take no notice of them.
The task of conducting the individual mind from its unscientific standpoint to that of science had to be taken in its general sense; we had to contemplate the formative development (Bildung) of the universal * " Being the first part of the System of Science " (first edition; omitted in later edition).
26 Phenomenology of Mind [or general] individual, of self-conscious spirit. As to the relation between these two [the particular and general individual], every moment, as it gains concrete form and its own proper shape and appearance, finds a place in the life of the universal individual. The particular individual is incomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, one de- terminate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only in blurred outline. In that mind which stands higher than another the lower concrete form of existence has sunk into an obscure moment; what was once substantial objective fact {die Sache selhst) is now only a single trace: its definite shape has been veiled, and become simply a piece of shading. The indi- vidual, whose substance is mind at the higher level, passes through these past forms, much in the way that one who takes up a higher science goes through those preparatory forms of Imowledge, which he has long made his own, in order to call up their content before him; he brings back the recollection of them without stopping to fix his interest upon them. The particular individual, so far as content is concerned, has also to go through the stages through which the general mind has passed, but as shapes once assumed by mind and now laid aside, as stages of a road which has been worked over and levelled out. Hence it is that, in the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture deUneated in faint outhne. This by- gone mode of existence has already become an acquired Preface 27 possession of the general mind, wliicli constitutes the substance of the individual, and, by thus appearing externally to him, furnishes his inorganic nature. In this respect culture or development of mind (Bildung), regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what hes at his hand ready for him, in making its inorganic nature organic to himself, and taking possession of it for himself. Looked at, how- -ever, from the side of universal mind qua general spiritual substance, culture means nothing else than that this substance gives itself its own self -consciousness, brings about its own taherent process and its own re- flection into self.