This individuality, however, has all the same the cer- tainty, that that individuality, whose "pathic" ele- ment is this opposite power [the substance], suffers no more harm than it has inflicted. The opposition of the ethical powers to one another, and the process of the individualities setting up these powers in life and action, have reached their true end merely in the fact that both sides undergo the same destruction. For neither of the powers has any advantage over the other that it should be a more essential moment of the substance common to both. The fact of their being equally and to the same degree essential, and subsisting independently beside each other means their having no separate self; in the act they have a self-nature, but a different self, — which contradicts the unity of the self and cancels their claim to independent right, and thus brings about their necessary destruction. Character, too, in part, looking at its " pathic " element, the substance, belongs to one alone; in part, when we look at the aspect of knowledge, the one character like the other is divided into a conscious element and an un- conscious: and since each itself calls forth this opposi- tion, and the want of knowledge is by the act also its doing, each falls into the guilt which consumes it.
The victory of one power and its character, and the defeat of the other side, would thus be merely the 470 Phenomenology of Mind part and the incomplete work, which steadily advances till the equilibrium between the two is attained. It is in the equal suppression of both sides that absolute right is first accomplished, and the ethical substance, as the negative force devouring both sides, in other words omnipotent and righteous Destiny, makes its appearance.
If both powers are taken according to their specific content and its individualisation, we have the scene presented of a contest between them as individuated. On its formal side, this is the struggle of the ethical order and of self-consciousness with unconscious nature and a contingency due to this nature. The latter has a right as against the former, because this is only objec- tive spirit, merely in immediate unity with its substance. On the side of content, the struggle is the rupture of divine and human law. The youth goes forth from the unconscious life of the family and becomes the in- dividuality of the community [i.e. Ruler]. But that he still shares the natural life from which he has torn himself away, is seen in the fact that he emerges there- from only to find his claim affected by the contingency that there are two brothers * who with equal right take possession of the community; t the inequality due to the one having been born earlier and the other later, an inequality which is a natural difference, has no importance for them when they enter the ethical life of society. But government, as the single soul, the self of the national spirit, does not admit of a duality of in- dividuality; and in contrast to the ethical necessity of this unity, nature appears as by accident providing * Eteocles and Polynices: v. (Edipus at Colonus, t viz. the throne of their Father (Edipus.
Guilt and Destiny 471 more than one. These two [brothers], therefore, become disunited; and their equal right in regard to the power of the state is destructive to both, for they are equally wrong. Humanly considered, he has committed the crime who, not being in actual possession, seizes on the community, at the head of which the other stood. While again he has right on his side who knew how to seize the other merely qua particular individual, detached from the community, and banish him, while thus powerless, out of the community; he has merely laid hands on the individual as such, not the community, not the essential nature of human right. The community, attacked and defended from a point of view which is merely particular, maintains itself; and both brothers find their destruction reciprocally through one another. For individuality, which involves peril to the whole in the maintenance of its own self- existence (Fursichseyn), has thrust its own self out of the community, and is disintegrated in its own nature. The community, however, will do honour to the one who is found on its side; the government, the re- established singleness of the self of the community, will punish by depriving of the last honour him who already proclaimed its devastation on the walls of the city. He who came to affront the highest spiritual form of conscious life, the spirit of the com- munity, must be stripped of the honour of his entire and complete nature, the honour due to the spirit of the departed.* But if the universal thus lightly knocks off the highest point of its pyramid, and doubtless triumphs victoriously over the family, the rebellious principle * v. Antigone.
472 Phenomenology of Mind of individuation, it has thereby merely put itself into conflict with divine law, the self-conscious with the unconscious spirit. For the latter, this unconscious spirit, is the other essential power, and therefore the power undestroyed, but only insulted by the former. It finds, however, only a bloodless shade to lend it help towards actually carrying itself out in the face of that masterful and openly enunciated law. Being the law of weakness and of darkness, it therefore gives way, to begin with, before law which has force and pub- licity; for the strength of the former is effective in the nether realm, not on earth and in the light of day. But the actual and concrete, which has taken away from what is inward its honour and its power, has thereby consumed its own real nature. The spirit which is manifest to the light of day has the roots of its power in the lower world: the certainty felt by a nation, a certainty of which it is sure and which makes itself assured, finds the truth of its oath binding all its members into one, solely in the mute unconscious substance of all, in the waters of forgetfulness. In consequence, the fulfilment of the public spirit turns round into its opposite, and learns that its supreme right is supreme wrong, its victory rather its own defeat. The slain, whose right is injured, knows, therefore, how to find means of vengeance which are of the same reality and strength as the power at whose hands it has suffered. These powers are other communities,* whose altars the dogs or birds defiled with the corpse of the dead, which is not raised into unconscious universality by being restored, as is its due, to the ultimate individuum, the elemental * Refers to the attack of Argos against Thebes: v. Antigone.
Guilt and Destiny 473 earth, but instead has remained above ground in the sphere of reality, and has now received, as the force of divine law, a self-conscious actual universality. They rise up in hostility, and destroy the community which has dishonoured and destroyed its own power, the sacred claims, the " piety " of the family.
Eepresented in this way, the movement of human and divine law finds the expression of its necessity in indi- viduals, in whom the universal appears as a " pathic " element, and the activity of the movement as action of individuals, which gives the appearance of contingency to the necessity of the process. But individuality and its action constitute the principle of individuation in general, a principle which in its pure universality was called inner divine law. As a moment of the visible community it does not merely exhibit that unconscious activity of the nether world, its operation is not simply external in its existence; it has an equally manifest visible existence and process, actual in the actual nation. Taken in this form, what was represented as a simple process of the " pathic " element as embodied in in- dividuals, assumes another look, and crime and the resulting ruin of the community assume the proper form of their existence.
Human law, then, in its universal mode of existence is the community, in its efficient operation in general is the manhood of the community, in its actual efficient operation is government. It has its being, its process, and its subsistence by consuming and absorbing into itself the separatist action of the household gods (Penates), the individualisation into insular independent families which are under the management of woman- land, and by keeping them dissolved in the fluent 474 Phenomenology of Mind continuum of its own nature. The family at the same time, however, is in general its element, the individual consciousness its universal operative basis. Since the community gets itself subsistence only by breaking in upon family happiness, and dissolving [individual] self-consciousness into the universal, it creates its enemy tor itself within its own gates, creates it in what it suppresses, and what is at the same time essen- tial to it — womankind in general. Womankind — the everlasting irony in the life of the community — changes by intrigue the universal purpose of government into a private end, transforms its universal activity into a work of this or that specific individual, and perverts the universal property of the state into a possession and ornament for the family. Woman in this way turns to ridicule the grave wisdom of maturity, which, being dead to all particular aims, to private pleasure, personal satisfaction, and actual activity as well, thinks of, and is concerned for, merely what is universal; she makes this wisdom the laughing-stock of raw and wanton youth, an object of derision and scorn, un- worthy of their enthusiasm. She asserts that it is everywhere the force of youth that really counts; she upholds this as of primary significance; extols a son as one who is the lord and master of the mother who has borne him; a brother as one in whom the sister finds man on a level with herself; a youth as one through whom the daughter, deprived of her dependence (on the family unity), acquires the satis- faction and the dignity of wifehood.
The community, however, can preserve itself only by suppressing this spirit of individualism; and because the latter is an essential element, the community like- Guilt and Destiny 475 wise creates it as well, and creates it, too, by taking up the attitude of seeking to suppress it as a hostile principle. Nevertheless, since, by cutting itself off from the universal purpose, this hostile element is merely evil, and in itself of no account, it would be quite ineffective if the community did not recognise the force of youth, (manhood, which, while immature, still remains in the condition of particularity), as the force of the whole. For the community, the whole, is a nation, it is itself individuality, and really only is something for itself by other individualities being for it, by its excluding these from itself and knowing itself independent of them. The negative side of the com- munity, suppressing the isolation of individuals within its own bounds, but originating activity directed beyond those bounds, finds the weapons of its warfare in individ- uals. War is the spirit and form in which the essential moment of ethical substance, the absolute freedom of ethical self-consciousness from all and every kind of existence, is manifestly confirmed and realised. While, on the one hand, war makes the particular spheres of property and personal independence, as well as the personality of the individual himself, feel the force of negation and destruction, on the other hand this engine of negation and destruction stands out as that which preserves the whole in security. The individual who provides pleasure to woman, the brave youth, the suppressed principle of ruin and destruction, comes now into prominence, and is the factor of primary significance and worth. It is now physical strength and what seems like the chance of fortune, that decide as to the existence of ethical life and spiritual necessity. Because the existence of the ethical life thus rests on 476 Phenomenology of Mind physical strength and the chances of fortune, it is eo ipso settled that its overthrow has come. While only household gods, in the former case, gave way before and were absorbed in the national spirit, here the living individual embodiments of the national spirit fall by their own individuality and disappear in one universal community, whose bare universality is soulless and dead, and whose living activity is found in the particular individual qua particular. The ethical form and embodiment of the life of spirit has passed away, and another mode appears in its place.
This disappearance of the ethical substance and its transition into another mode are thus determined by the ethical consciousness being directed upon the law essentially in an immediate way. It lies in this char- acter of immediacy that nature at all enters into the acts which constitute the ethical h'fe. Its realisation simply reveals the contradiction and the germ of destruction, which He hid within that very peace and beauty belonging to the gracious harmony and un- broken equilibrium of the ethical spirit. For the essence and meaning of this immediacy contains a contradiction: it is at once the unconscious peace of nature and the self-conscious unresting peace of spirit. On account of this " naturalness," the ethical life of a nation is, in general, a kind of individuality determined by, and therefore limited by, nature, and thus finds its dissolution in, and gives place to, another type of individuality. This characteristic being given a positive existence, is a limitation, but at the same time is the negative element in general and the self of individuality. Since, however, this determinateness passes away, the life of spirit and this substance, conscious of itself Guilt and Destiny 477 in all its component individuals, are lost. The determin- ate character comes forth and stands apart as a formal universality in the case of all the component in- dividuals, and no longer dwells within them as a living spirit; instead, the uniform solidarity of its individuality has burst into a plurality of separate points.
THE CONDITION OF RIGHT OR LEGAL STATUS [A further step in the realisation of the principle of coherent sociality is reached when the individual is invested with the universality of the social order by definite enactments of the controlling agency of the social whole. His contingency as an individual is removed by his being expressly treated as a focal unity of the whole order, whose very exist- ence is staked on maintaining him as a unit with a universal significance, and which stands or falls by maintaining him in this condition. The universal order is in this case no longer merely implicit, merely a matter of routine and custom; it is openly and objectively expressed in and through each individual component of society. The form this takes is the differentiation of the social substance into a totality of " persons," each and all invested with express universal, or legally acknowledged, signifi- cance. This is the sphere of legal personality, or of individuality consti- tuted by a system of Rights. It is a supreme achievement of social existence, and the highest attainment of coherent social experience. Hence the present section.
This is a condition or stage in every developed community. But the specific historical material for this section is derived from the law-consti- tuted social order of the Roman Empire, especially the Empire under the Antonines. Here, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the culmination of imperial rule and the " golden age " of law synchronised. The triumph of Roman imperial government and the perfecting of the system of Roman jurisprudence were accomplished during the same period of time, about A.D. 131-235. There is every reason to suppose that the two necessarily arose and fell together, and that the decline and disappearance of the Roman law-constituted state should thus prepare the way for a further achievement of the social spirit of humanity. Hence the historical justifi- cation for the transition to the next stage of social life, that of self- discordant spiritual existence.
With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Part III, especially the introduction to this part, and Sect. Ill, c. 1., "Rome under the Emperors."]
THE CONDITION OF RIGHT OR LEGAL STATUS The general comprehensive unity, into which the living immediate unity of individuality and the ethical substance falls back, is the soulless (geistlos) community, which has ceased to be the un-self conscious * substance of individuals, and in which they now, each in his separate individual existence, count as selves and substances with a being of their own. The universal being thus split up into the atomic units of a sheer plurality of individuals, this inoperative, lifeless spirit is a "principle of equality in which all count for as much as each, i.e. have the significance of Persons. What in the realm of the ethical life was called the hidden divine law has in fact come out of concealment to the light of actuality. In the former the individual was, and was counted, actual merely as a blood relation, merely as sharing in the general life of the family. Qua particular individual, he was the selfless departed spirit; now, however, he has come out of his unreality. Because the ethical sub- stance is only objective, "true," spirit, only implies spirit, the individual on that account turns back to the im- mediate certainty of his own self; he is that substance qua positive universal, but his actuality consists in being a negative universal self.
We saw the powers and forms of the ethical world sink in the bare necessity of mere Destiny. This 480 Phenomenology of Mind power of the ethical world is the substance turning itself back into its ultimate and simple nature. But that absolute being turning back into itself, that very necessity of characterless Destiny, is nothing else than the Ego of self-consciousness.
This is taken henceforth as what is absolutely real, as the ultimate self-contained reality. To be so ac- knowledged is its substantiality; but this is abstract universality, because its content is this rigid self, not the self dissolved in the substance.
Personality, then, has here risen out of the life and activity of the ethical substance. It is the con- dition in which the independence of consciousness has actual concrete validity. The unrealised abstract thought of such independence, which arises through renouncing actuality, was at an earlier stage before our notice in the form of " Stoical self-consciousness." Just as the latter was the outcome of "Lordship and Bondage/3* the mode in which self-consciousness exists immediately, — so personality is the outgrowth of the immediate life of spirit which is the universal controlling will of all, as well as their dutiful obedience and submissive service. What in Stoicism was implicit merely in an abstract way, is now an explicit con- crete world. Stoicism is nothing else than the mood of consciousness which reduces to its abstract form the principle of legal status, the principle of the sphere of right, — an independence devoid of the qualities of spirit (geistlos). By its flight from actuality it attained merely the idea of independence: it is absolutely sub- jective, exists solely for itself, in that it does not link its being to anything that exists, but rather wants to Legal Status 481 Legal Status 481 give up every kind of existence, and places its essential meaning in the unity of mere thinking. In the same manner, the " right " of a " person " is not linked on to a richer or more powerful existence of the individual qua individual, nor again connected with a universal living spirit, but, rather, is attached to the mere unit of its abstract reality, or to that unit qua self-consciousness in general.
Now just as the abstract independence of Stoicism set forth the stages of its actualisation, so, too, this last form of independence [Personality] will recapitulate the pro- cess of the former mode. The former [Stoicism] passes over into the state of sceptical confusion, into a fickle instability of negation, which without adopting any per- manent form strays from one contingent mode of being and thinking to another, dissipates them indeed in absolute independence, but just as readily creates their independence once more. In fact, it is simply the contradiction of consciousness claiming to be at once independent and yet devoid of independence. In like manner, the personal independence characteristic of the sphere of right is really a similar universal confusion and reciprocal dissolution of this kind. For what passes for the absolute essential reality is self-consciousness in the sense of the bare empty unit of the person. As against this empty universality, the substance has the form of what supplies the filling and the content; and this content is now left completely detached and dis- connected; for the spirit, which kept it in subjection and held it in its unity, is no longer present. The empty unit of the person is, therefore, as regards its reality, an accidental existence, a contingent insub- stantial process and activity that comes to no durable