Forced back upon itself away from this unsubstan- tial world whose being is mere dissolution, spirit in its undivided unity is, when we consider its true meaning, at once the absolute movement, the ceaseless process of negating its appearance, as well as the essen- tial substance thereof satisfied within itself, and the positive stability of that appearance. But, bearing as they inherently do the characteristic of alienation, both these moments fall apart in the shape of a twofold consciousness. The former is pure Insight, the spiritual process concentrated and focussed in self-consciousness, a process which has over against it the consciousness of something positive, the form of objectivity or pre- sentation, and which directs itself upon this presented object. The proper and peculiar object of this insight is, however, merely pure ego.* The bare consciousness of the positive element, of unbroken self-identity, finds its object, on the other hand, in the inner reality as such.
Pure insight has, therefore, in the first instance, no content within it, because it exists for itself by negating everything in it; to belief, on the other hand, belongs the content, but without insight. While the former does not get away from self-consciousness, the latter to be sure has its content as well in the element of pure self -consciousness, but only in presentation, not in conceptions — in pure consciousness, not in pure self- consciousness. Belief is, as a fact, in this way pure * Kant: " Pure ego is the absolute unity of apperception."
Belief and Pure Insight 539 consciousness of the essential reality, i.e. of the bare and simple inner nature, and is thus thought — the primary factor in the nature of belief, which is generally overlooked.* The immediateness which characterises the presence of the essential reality within it is due to the fact that its object is essence, inner nature, i.e. pure thought, f This immediateness, however, so far as thinking enters consciousness, or pure conscious- ness enters into self-consciousness, maintains the signifi- cance of an objective being that lies beyond consciousness of self. It is because of the significance which imme- diacy and simplicity of pure thought thus retain in consciousness that the essential reality in the case of belief drops into being an objectively presented idea (Vorstellung), instead of being the content of thought, and comes to be looked at as a supersensible world, which is essentially an " other " for self-consciousness.
In the case of pure insight, on the other hand, the entrance of pure thought into consciousness has the opposite character: objectivity has the significance of a content that is merely negative, that cancels itself and returns into the self; that is to say, only the self is properly object to self, or, to put it otherwise, the object only has truth so far as it has the form of self.
As belief and pure insight fall in common within pure consciousness, they also in common involve the mind's return out of the concrete sphere of spiritual culture. There are three aspects, therefore, from which they show what they are. In one aspect each * " Belief is a kind of knowledge." — Encycl.: § 554. t Kant: " I am the essential reality when conscious of myself in pure thought.''
540 Phenomenology oj Mind is outside every relation, and has a being all its own; in another each takes up an attitude towards the concrete actual world standing in antithesis to pure consciousness; while in the third form each is related to the other inside pure consciousness.
In the case of belief the aspect of complete being, of being in-and-for-itself, is its absolute object, whose content and character we have already come to know. For it lies in the very notion of belief that this object is nothing else than the real world lifted into the uni- versality of pure consciousness. The articulation of this world, therefore, constitutes the organisation be- longing to pure universality also, except that the parts in the latter case do not alienate one another when spiritualised, but are complete realities all by themselves, are spirits* returned into themselves and self-contained.
The process of their transition from one into the other is, therefore, only for us [who are analysing the process] an alienation of the characteristic nature in which their distinction lies, and only for us, the observers, does it constitute a necessary series; for belief, however, their distinction is a static diversity, and their movement simply a historical fact.
To deal shortly with the external character of their form: as in the world of culture state-power or the good was primary, so here the first and foremost moment is Absolute Being, spirit absolutely self-con- tained, so far as it is simple eternal substance, f But in the process of realising its constitutive notion, which consists in being spirit, that substance passes over into * The " persons" of the "Trinity." t God transcendent, God as Substance.
Belief and Pure Insight 541 a form where it exists for an other; its self -identity becomes actual Absolute Being, actualised in self-sacri- fice; it becomes a self, but a self that is transitory and passes away.* Hence the third stage is the return of self thus alienated, the substance thus abased into its first primal simplicity of nature. Only when this is done is spirit presented and manifested as spirit, f These distinct ultimate Realities, when brought back by thought into self out of the flux of the actual world, are changeless, eternal spirits, whose being lies in think- ing the unity which they constitute. While thus torn away from self-consciousness, these Realities all the same lay hold on it; for if the Ultimate Reality were to be fixed and unmoved in the form of the first bare and simple substance, it would remain alien to self-consciousness. But the laying aside, the " empty- ing," of this substance, and afterwards its spirit, in- volves the element of concrete actuality, and thereby participates in the believing self-consciousness, or the believing attitude of consciousness belongs to the real world.
According to this second condition, the believing type of consciousness partly finds its actuality in the real world of culture, and constitutes its spirit and its existence, which have been described; partly, how- ever, belief takes up an attitude of opposition to this its own actuality, looks on this as something vain, and is the process of cancelling and abolishing it. This process does not consist in the believing conscious- ness having ingenious views about the perverted condition of that reality; for it is bare and simple * The God-man, Christ.
t God as Absolute Spirit and Subject.
542 Phenomenology of Mind consciousness, which reckons esprit and wit as some- thing vain and empty, because this still has the real world for its purpose. On the contrary, in opposition to its placid realm of thought stands concrete actuality as a soulless form of existence, which on that account has to be overcome in external fashion. This obedience through service and rewards, by cancelling sense-know- ledge and action, brings out the consciousness of unity with the self -complete and self -existing Being, though not in the sense of an actual perceived unity. This service is merely the incessant process of producing the sense of unity, a process that never completely reaches its goal in the actual present. The religious communion no doubt does so, for it is universal self-consciousness. But for the individual self-consciousness the realm of pure thought necessarily remains something away beyond its sphere of reality; or, again, since this remote region by the emptying, the "kenosis," of the eternal Being, has entered the sphere of actuality, its actuality is sensuous, non-conceptual. But one sensuous actuality is ever indifferent and external to another, and what lies beyond has thus only received the further character of remoteness in space and time. The essen- tial notion, however, — the concrete actuality of spirit directly present to itself — remains for belief an inner principle, which is all and effects all, but never itself comes to the light.
In the case of pure insight, however, the principle, the essential notion (Begriff), is alone the real; and this third aspect of belief — that of being an object for pure insight — is the specific relation in which the notion here appears. Pure insight itself has similarly to be con- sidered partly by itself (an und fur sick), partly in re- Belief and Pure Insight 543 lation to the real world — so far as the real world is still present in positive shape, viz. in the form of a sense of vanity — and lastly in that relation to belief already mentioned.
We have already seen what pure insight by itself is. Belief is unperturbed pure consciousness of spirit as the ultimate Reality; pure insight is the self-con- sciousness of spirit as the ultimately real; it knows the essentially real, therefore, not qua essence but qua Absolute Self. Its aim thus is to cancel every other kind of independence which falls without self-conscious- ness, whether that be the independence of the actually objective or of the inherently real, and to mould it into conceptual form. It is not merely the certainty of self- conscious reason assured of being all truth; it knows that it is so.
In the form, however, in which the notion of pure insight meets us first, it is not yet realised. As a phase of consciousness it appears in consequence as something contingent, as something isolated and par- ticular, and its inmost constitutive nature appears as some purpose that it has to carry out and realise. It has to begin with the intention of making pure insight universal, i.e. of making everything that is actual into a notion, and a notion for every self- consciousness.* The intention is pure, for its content is pure insight; and this insight is similarly pure, for its content is merely the absolute notion, which finds no opposition in an object, and is not restricted in itself. In the unrestricted notion there are found at once both the aspects — that everything objective is * " Kant's philosophy is the enlightenment adapted so as to become a philosophical method." — Hegel, W.W. 15, p. 502.
544 Phenomenology of Mind to signify the self-existent, self-consciousness, and that this is to signify something universal, that pure insight is to be the property of all self-consciousnesses. This second feature of the intention is so far a result of culture, in that in culture the distinctions of objective spirit, the parts and express determinations of its world, have come to naught, as well as the distinctions, which appeared as originally determinate natures. Genius, talent, special capacities in general, belong to the world of actuality, in so far as this world contains still the aspect of being a herd of self-conscious individuals, where, in confusion and mutual violence, individuals cheat and struggle with one another over the contents of the real world.
The above distinctions doubtless have no place in it as genuine especes. Individuality neither is contented with unreal " fact," nor has special content and purposes of its own. It signifies merely something universally acknowledged and accepted, viz. cultivated and de- veloped; and the question of distinction is reduced to a matter of less or more energy, a distinction of quantity, i.e. a non-essential distinction. This last difference, however, has come to nothing, by the fact that the distinction in the state where consciousness was com- pletely torn asunder, turned round into an absolutely qualitative distinction. What is there the other for the ego is merely the ego itself. In this infinite judgment all the one-sidedness and peculiarity of the original self-existing self is extinguished; the self knows itself qua pure self to be its own object; and this absolute identity of both sides is the element of pure insight.
Pure insight, therefore, is the simple ultimate being undifferentiated within itself, and at the same time the Belief and Pure Insight 545 universal achievement and production and a universal possession of all. In this simple spiritual substance self-consciousness gives itself and maintains for itself in every object the sense of this its own particularity or of action, just as conversely the individuality of self- consciousness is there identical with itself and universal. This pure insight is, then, the spirit that calls to every consciousness: be for yourself what you are essentially in yourself — rational.
VOL. II. — K II ENLIGHTENMENT * The peculiar object on which pure insight directs the active force of the notion is belief, this being a form of pure consciousness like itself and yet opposed to it in that element. But at the same time pure insight has a relation to the actual world, for, like belief, it is a return from the actual world into pure consciousness. We have first of all to see how its activity is constituted, as contrasted with the impure intentions and the per- verted forms of insight found in the actual world, t We have touched already on the placid type of con- scious life, which stands in contrast to this turmoil of alternate self-dissolution and self-evolution; it con- stitutes the aspect of pure insight and intention. This unperturbed consciousness, however, as we saw, has no special insight regarding the sphere of culture. The latter has itself rather the most painful feeling, and the truest insight about itself — the feeling that everything made secure crumbles to pieces, that every element of its existence is shattered to atoms, and every bone broken: moreover, it consciously expresses this feel- ing in words, pronounces judgment and gives luminous utterance concerning all aspects of its condition. Pure * Enlightenment (Aufkl'drung) is the universalisation of the principle of " pure insight/' and hence is logically the outcome of the preceding analysis.
Enlightenment 547 insight, therefore, can have here no activity and content of its own, and thus can only take up the formal attitude of truly apprehending this ingenious insight proper to the world and the language it adopts. Since this language is a scattered and broken utterance and the pronouncement a fickle mood of the moment, which is again quickly forgotten, and is only known to be a whole by a third consciousness, this latter can be distinguished as pure insight only if it gathers those several scattered traces into a universal picture, and then makes them the insight of all.
By this simple means pure insight will resolve the confusion of this world. For we have found that the fragments and determinate conceptions and individu- alities are not the essential nature of this actuality, but that it finds its substance and support alone in the spirit which exists qua judging and discussing, and that the interest of having a content for this ratiocination and parleying to deal with alone preserves the whole and the fragments into which it falls. In this language which insight adopts, its self-consciousness is still par- ticular, a self existing for its own sake; but the empti- ness of its content is at the same time emptiness of the self knowing that content to be vain and empty. Now, since the consciousness placidly apprehending all these sparkling utterances of vanity makes a collection of the most striking and penetrating phrases, the soul that still preserves the whole, the vanity of witty criticism, goes to ruin with the other form of vanity, the previous vanity of existence. The collection shows most people a better wit, or at least shows every one a more varied wit than their own, and shows that better knowledge and judging in general are^some- 548 Phenomenology of Mind thing universal and are now universally familiar. Thereby the single and only interest which was still found is done away with; and individual light is resolved into universal insight.
Still, however, knowledge of essential reality stands secure above vain and empty knowledge; and pure insight, to begin with, appears in genuinely active form in so far as it enters into conflict with belief.
a THE STRUGGLE OP ENLIGHTENMENT WITH SUPERSTITION* The various negative forms which consciousness adopts, the attitude of scepticism, and that of theoretical and practical idealism, are inferior attitudes compared with that of pure insight and the expansion of pure insight — enlightenment; for pure insight is born of the substance of spirit, it knows the pure self of conscious- ness to be absolute, and enters into conflict with the pure consciousness of the Absolute Being of all reality.
Since belief and insight are the same pure conscious- ness, but in form are opposed, — the reality in the case of belief being a thought, not a notion, and hence some- thing absolutely opposed to self-consciousness, while the reality in the case of pure insight is the self — they are such that inter se the one is the absolute negative of the other.
As appearing the one against the other, all content falls to belief; for in its unperturbed element of thought each moment obtains definite subsistence. Pure insight, however, is in the first instance without any content; it involves rather the complete dis- appearance of content; but by its negative attitude towards what it excludes it will make itself real and give itself a content.
* "We live in an age of enlightenment " (Kant). Cp. Hegel W W 15 introduction to " French Philosophy."
550 Phenomenology of Mind It knows belief to be opposed to insight, opposed to reason and truth. Just as, for it, belief is in general a tissue of superstitious prejudices and errors; so it further sees the consciousness embracing all this content organised into a realm of error, in which false insight is the general sphere of consciousness, immediate, naively unperturbed, and inherently unreflective. Yet all the while this false insight does have within it the moment of self-reflection, the moment of self-con- sciousness, separated from its simple naivete, and keeps this reflection in the' background as an insight remain- ing by itself, and as an evil intention by which that that former conscious state is befooled. That mental sphere is the victim of the deception of a Priesthood, which carries out its envious vanity, jealous of being alone in possession of insight, and carries out its other selfish ends as well. At the same time this priesthood conspires with Despotism, which takes up the attitude of being the synthetic crude (begrifflos) unity of the real and this ideal kingdom — a singularly amorphous and inconsistent type of being, — and stands above the bad insight of the multitude, and the bad intention of the priests, and even combines both of these within itself. As the result of the stupidity and confusion produced amongst the people by the agency of priestly deception, despotism despises both and draws for itself the advantage of undisturbed control and the fulfilment of its desires, its humours, and its whims. Yet at the same time it is itself in this same state of murky insight, is equally superstition and error.
Enlightenment does not attack these three forms of the enemy without distinction. For since its essential nature is pure insight, which is per se universal, its The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 55 1 true relation to the other extreme is that in which it is concerned with the common and identical element in both. The aspect of individual existence isolating itself from the universal naive consciousness is the antithesis of it, and cannot be directly affected by it. The will of a deceiving priesthood and an oppressive despot is, therefore, not primarily the object on which it directs its activity; its object is the insight that is without will and without individualised isolated self-existence, the notion (Begriff) of rational self-consciousness, which has its existence in the total mental sphere, but is not yet there in the fullness of its true meaning (Begriff). Since, however, pure insight rescues this genuinely honest form of insight, with its naive simplicity of nature, from prejudices and errors, it wrests from the hands of bad intention the effective realisation of its powers of deception, for the exercise of which the incoherent and undeveloped (begrifflos) consciousness of the general sphere provides the basis and raw material, while isolated self-existence finds its substance in the simple consciousness as a whole.
The relation of pure insight to the naive conscious- ness of absolute Reality has now a double aspect. On one side pure insight is inherently one and the same with it. On the other side, however, this naive conscious- ness lets absolute Reality as well as its parts dispose themselves at will in the simple element of its thought, and subsist there, and lets them hold only as its inherent nature and hence hold good in objective form. In this immanent being it disowns, however, independent exist- ence for its own sake. In so far as, according to the first aspect, this belief is for pure insight inherently and essentially pure self-consciousness, and has to 552 Phenomenology of Mind become so expressly] merely for itself, pure insight finds in this constitutive notion of belief the element in which, instead of false insight, it realises itself.
Since, from this point of view, both are essentially the same, and the relation of pure insight takes effect through and in the same element, the communication between them is direct and immediate, and their give and take an unbroken interfusion. Whatever pins and bolts may be otherwise driven into consciousness, it is in itself this simplicity of nature in which everything is resolved, forgotten and unconstrained, and which, therefore, is absolutely amenable to the activity of the notion. The communication of pure insight is on that account comparable to a silent extension or the expan- sion, say, of vapour in the unresisting atmosphere. It is a penetrating infection, which did not previously make itself noticeable as something distinct from and opposed to the indifferent medium into which it insinuates its way, and hence cannot be averted. Only when the infec- tion has become widespread is that consciousness alive to it, which unconcernedly yielded to its influence. For what this consciousness received into itself was doubtless something simple, homogeneous, and uniform through- out it, but was at the same time the simplicity of self- reflected negativity, which later on also develops by its nature into something opposed, and thereby reminds consciousness of its previous state. This simple uniformity is the notion, which is simple knowledge that knows both itself and its opposite, this opposite being, however, cancelled as opposite within the self-know- ledge of the notion. In the condition, therefore, in which consciousness becomes aware of pure insight, this insight is already widespread. The struggle with The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 553 it betrays the fact that the infection has done its work. The struggle is too late; and every means taken merely makes the disease worse; for the disease has seized the very marrow of spiritual life, viz. con- sciousness in its ultimate principle (Begriff), or its pure inmost nature itself. There is therefore no power left in conscious life to surmount the disease. Because it affects the very inmost being, whatever in- dividual expressions remain, are repressed and allowed to subside and the superficial symptoms are smothered. This is immensely to its advantage; for it does not now squander its power in useless fashion, nor does it show itself unworthy of its true nature — which is the case when it breaks out into symptoms and par- ticular eruptions antithetic to the content of belief and the connexion of its external reality. Rather, being now an invisible and unperceived spirit, it insinuates its way through and through the noble parts, and soon has got complete hold over all the vitals and members of the unconscious idol; and then " some fine morning it gives its comrade a shove with the elbow, when, bash! crash! — and the idol is lying on the floor/* * On some " fine morning/' whose noon is not red with blood, if the infection has penetrated to every organ of spiritual life. It is then the memory alone that still preserves the dead form of the spirit's previous state, as a vanished history, vanished men know not how. And the new serpent of wisdom, raised on high before bending worshippers, has in this manner painlessly stripped off merely a shrivelled skin.