therefore, not to be reached as an actual fact; it is to be thought of merely as an absolute task or problem, i.e. one which remains a problem pure and simple. Nevertheless, its content has to be thought as some- 616 Phenomenology of Mind thing which unquestionably has to be, and must not remain a problem: whether we imagine the moral consciousness quite cancelled in the attainment of this goal, or not. Which of these exactly is the case, can- not very well be clearly distinguished in the dim dis- tance of infinitude, to which the attainment of the end has to be postponed, just because we cannot decide the point. We shall be, strictly speaking, bound to say that a definite idea on the matter ought to be of no interest and ought not to be sought for, because this leads to contradictions — the contradiction in speak- ing of an undertaking that at once ought to remain an undertaking and yet ought to be carried out, and the contradiction in speaking of a morality which is not consciousness, i.e. which is no longer actual. By adopting the view, however, that morality when com- pleted would contain a contradiction, the sacredness of moral truth would be seriously affected, and an unconditional duty would appear something unreal.
The first postulate was the harmony of morality and objective nature — the final purpose of the world: the other was the harmony of morality and will in its sen- Vgjuous form, in the form of impulse, etc. — the final purpose of self-consciousness as such. The former is the harmony in the form of implicit immanent exist- ence; the latter, the harmony in the form of explicit .self-existence. That, however, which connects these two extreme final purposes which are thought, and operates as their mediating ground, is the process of concrete action itself. They are harmonies whose moments in their abstract distinctiveness from each other have not yet become definitely objective: this takes place in concrete actuality, in which the aspects The Moral View of the World 617 appear in consciousness proper, each as the other of the other. The postulates arising by this means con- tain harmonies which are now completely realised and objective, whereas formerly they were merely separated into implicit and explicit, immanent and self-existent.
The moral consciousness, qua bare and simple know- ledge and willing of pure duty, is brought, by the process of acting upon an object opposed to that abstract simplicity, into relation with the manifold actuality which various cases present, and thereby assumes a moral attitude varied and manifold in character. Hence arise, on the side of content, the plurality of laws generally, and, on the side of form, the contradictory powers of intelligent knowing con- sciousness and of a being devoid of consciousness.
To begin with, as regards the plurality of duties, it is merely the aspect of pure or bare duty in them which in general appeals to the moral consciousness as being of significance: the many duties qua many are deter- minate and, therefore, are not, as such, anything sacred for the moral consciousness. At the same time, however, being necessary, in virtue of the very nature of action which implicates a manifold actuality, and hence manifold types of moral attitude, those many duties must be looked on as having a substantial existence and value. Furthermore, since they can only exist in a moral consciousness, they exist at the same time in another consciousness than that for which only pure duty qua bare duty is sacred and self-sufficient.
It is thus postulated that there is another conscious- ness which renders them sacred, or which knows them as duties and wills them so. The first maintains pure duty indifferent towards all specific content, and duty 618 Phenomenology of Mind consists merely in being thus indifferent towards it. The other, however, contains the equally essential re- lation to the process of action, and the necessity, there- fore, of determinate content: since duties for this other mean determinate duties, the content is thus, for it, just as essential as the form in virtue of which the content is a duty at all. This consciousness is, consequently, such that in it the universal and the particular are, through and through, one; its essential principle is thus the same as that of the harmony of morality and happiness. For this opposition between morality and happiness expresses in like manner the separation of the self-identical moral consciousness from that actuality which, qua manifold existence, opposes and conflicts with the simple nature of duty. While, how- ever, the first postulate expresses merely the objective existential harmony between morality and nature, because nature is therein the negative of self-conscious- ness, is the aspect of existence, this inherent harmony, on the other hand, is now affirmed essentially as a mode of consciousness. For existence now appears as the content of duty, as that in the determinate duty which gives it specific determinateness. The immanent harmony is thus the unity of elements which, qua simple ultimate elements, are essentially thought-created, and hence cannot exist except in a consciousness. This latter becomes now a master and ruler of the world, who brings about the harmony of morality and happi- ness, and at the same time sanctifies duties in their multiplicity. To sanctify these duties means this much, that the consciousness of pure duty cannot straightway and directly accept the determinate or specific duty as sacred; but because a specific duty, The Moral View of the World 610 owing to the nature of concrete action which is some- thing specific and definite, is all the same necessary, its necessity falls outside that consciousness and holds inside another consciousness, which thus mediates or connects determinate and pure duty, and is the reason why that specific duty also has validity.
In the concrete act, however, consciousness proceeds to work as this particular self, as completely individual: it directs its activity on actual reality as such, and takes this as its purpose, for it wants to perform something definite. " Duty in general " thus falls outside it and within another being, which is the consciousness and sacred lawgiver of pure duty. The consciousness which acts, just because it acts, accepts the other conscious- ness, that of bare duty, and admits its validity imme- diately; this pure duty is thus a content of another consciousness, and is only indirectly or in a mediate way sacred for the active consciousness, viz. in virtue of this other consciousness.
Because it is established in this manner that the validity, the bindingness, of duty as something wholly and absolutely sacred, falls outside the actual conscious- ness, this latter thereby stands altogether on one side as the incomplete moral consciousness. Just as, in regard to its knowledge, it is aware of itself as that whose knowledge and conviction are incomplete and con- tingent; in the same way, as regards its willing, it feels itself to be that whose purposes are affected with sensi- bility. On account of its " un worthiness," therefore, it cannot look on happiness as something necessary, but as a something contingent, and can only expect happi- ness as the result of " grace."
But though its actuality is incomplete, duty is still, so 620 Phenomenology of Mind far as its pure will and knowledge are concerned, held to be the essential truth. In principle, therefore, so far as the notion is opposed to actual reality, in other words, in thought, it is perfect. The absolute truth [duty] is, however, just this object of thought, and is something postulated beyond the actual. It is there- fore the thought in which the morally imperfect know- ledge and will are held to be perfect, and — since it takes this imperfection to have full weight — in which, consequently, happiness is meted out according to " worthiness," i.e. according to the " merit " ^ascribed.
This completes the meaning of the moral attitude. For in the conception of moral self-consciousness the two aspects, pure duty and actual reality, are affirmed of a single unity, and thereby the one, like the other, is put forward, not as something self-complete, but as a moment, or as cancelled and transcended. This be- comes consciously explicit in the last phase of the moral attitude or point of view. Consciousness, we there saw, places pure duty in another form of being than its own consciousness, i.e. it regards pure duty partly as some- thing ideally presented, partly as what does not by itself hold good — indeed, the non-moral is rather what is held to be perfect. In the same way it affirms itself to be that whose actuality, not being in conformity with duty, is transcended, and, qua, transcended, or in the presented idea of what is absolute [pure duty], no longer contradicts morality.
For the moral consciousness itself, however, its moral attitude does not mean that consciousness therein de- velops its own proper notion and makes this its object. It has no consciousness of this opposition either as regards the form or the content thereof; the elements The Moral View of the World 621 composing this opposition it does not relate and compare with one another, but goes forward on its own course of development, without being the connecting principle of those moments. For it is only aware of the essence pure and simple, i.e. the object so far as this is duty, so far as this is an abstract object of its pure consciousness qua pure knowledge — in other words, it is only aware of this object as itself. Its procedure is thus merely that of thinking, not conceiving, is by way of thoughts not notions. Consequently it does not yet find the object of its actual consciousness transparently clear to itself; it is not the absolute notion, which alone grasps otherness as such, its absolute opposite, as its very self. Its own reality, as well as all objective reality, no doubt is held to be something unessential; but its freedom is that of pure thought, in opposition to which, therefore, nature has likewise arisen as some- thing equally free. Because both are found in like manner within it — both the freedom which belongs to [external] being and the inclusion of this existence within con- sciousness— its object comes to be an existing object, which is at the same time merely a thought-product. In the last phase of its attitude or point of view, the content is essentially so constituted that its being has the character of something presented, an idea, and this union of being and thinking is expressed as what in fact it is, viz. — Presentation.
When we look at the moral view of the world in such a way that this objective result is nothing else than the very principle or notion of moral self-conscious- ness which it makes objective to itself, there arises through this consciousness concerning the form of its origin another mode of exhibiting this view of the world.
622 Phenomenology of Mind The first stage, which forms the starting point, is the actual moral self-consciousness, or is the fact that there is such a self-consciousness at all. For the notion estab- lishes moral self-consciousness in the form that, for it, all reality in general has essential being only so far as such reality is in conformity with duty; and that notion establishes this essential element as knowledge, i.e. in .immediate unity with the actual self. This unity is thus itself actual, is a moral actual consciousness. The latter, now, qua consciousness, presents its content to itself as an object, viz. as the final purpose of the world, as the harmony of morality with all reality. Since, however, it represents this unity as object and is not yet the com- plete notion, which has the object as such in its grasp, this unity is taken to be something negative of or opposed to self-consciousness, i.e. the unity falls outside it, as something beyond its actual reality, but at the same time of such a nature as to be also existent, though merely thought of.
This self-consciousness, which, qua self-consciousness, is something other than the object, thus finds itself left with the want of harmony between the consciousness of duty and actual reality, a reality, too, which is its own. The proposition consequently now runs thus: "there is no morally complete actual self-consciousness"; and, since what is moral only is in the long run so far as it is complete, — for duty is the pure unadulterated ultimate element (Ansicli), and morality consists merely in conformity to this pure principle — the second pro- position runs: " there is no morally actual existence at all."
Since, however, in the third place, it is a self, it is inherently the unity of duty and actual reality. This The Moral View of the World 623 unity thus becomes its object, as completed morality — but as something beyond its actual reality, and yet a " beyond" which still ought to be real.
In this final stage and last expression of the synthetic unity of the two first propositions, the self-conscious reality, as well as duty, is only affirmed as a tran- scended or superseded moment. For neither of them is alone, neither is isolated; on the contrary, these factors, whose essential characteristic lies in being free from one another, are thus each in that unity no longer free from the other; each is transcended. Hence, as re- gards content, they become, as such, object, each of them holds good for the other; and, as regards form, they become such that this interchange on their part is, at the same time, merely in idea, is merely ideally presented. Or, again, the actually non-moral, because it is, at the same time, pure thought and elevated above its own actual reality, is in idea still moral, and is taken to be entirely sufficing. In this way the first proposition, that there is a moral self-consciousness, is reinstated, but bound up with the second that there is none; that is to say, there is one, but merely in idea. In other words, there is indeed none, but it is all the same allowed by some other consciousness to pass for one.
DISSEMBLANCE [The first stage fails as it stands to do complete justice to the full mean- ing of morality. Both elements in the spiritually complete individual are essential, and each has to be recognised. The universal must be objectified in nature ("external nature" and "sensibility"), and nature must be subjectivised in spirit. Another condition or stage of the moral con- sciousness, therefore, is found where the equality of value of the elements of the moral consciousness is admitted, without these elements being completely fused into a single and total attitude. The universal is realised in many ways and forms, and each is accepted in turn as the true moral reality. The mind passes from one to the other; when one is accepted the other is set aside. The moral consciousness tries, so to say, to hide from itself the endless diversity of its appearances, simply because it clings tenaciously to the idea that the inherent self -completeness of itself is a unity per se which can only admit diversity on sufferance. Formerly it eliminated all diversity by eliminating the source of diversity— nature. Here it is forced to admit diversity, and yet cannot give up the claim to be an abstract single unity independent of difference. Thus its condition here is a mixture of self-realisation and self -sophistication — a condition which Hegel characterises as " Dissemblance," and which borders upon and may pass into "Hypocrisy." Hegel regards this attitude as the inevitable outcome of the preceding.]
DISSEMBLANCE * In the moral attitude of experience we see, on one side, consciousness itself produce its object in a con- scious way. We find that neither does it pick up the object as something external, nor does the object come before it in an unconscious manner. Rather, conscious- ness throughout proceeds on a certain basis, and from this establishes the objective reality. It thus knows this objective element to be itself, for it is aware of itself as the active agent producing this object. It seems, in consequence, to attain here its peace and satisfaction, for this can only be found where it does not need to go any more beyond its object, because this object no longer goes beyond it. On the other side, however, it really puts the object away outside itself, as something beyond itself. But this latter self-contained entity is at the same time put there as something that is not detached from self-consciousness, but really there on behalf of and by means of it.
The moral attitude is, therefore, in fact nothing else than the developed expression of this fundamental con- tradiction in its various aspects. It is — to use a Kantian phrase which is here most appropriate — a " perfect * Verstellung: It is not possible to bring out exactly by an English word the verbal play involved in Hegel's interpretation of the state of mind here discussed. Hegel has, in the course of his analysis, used the mean- ing implied in the general term " stellen" to explain by contrast the ' specific nuance of the purely moral attitude conveyed by the term verstel/en.
626 Phenomenology of Mind nest" of inconsistencies and contradictions.* Conscious- ness, in developing this situation, proceeds by fixing definitely one moment, passing thence immediately over to another and doing away with the first. But, in the way it has now set up this second moment, it also " shifts " (verstelU) this again, and really makes the opposite the essential element. At the same time, it is conscious of its contradiction and of this displace- ment, for it passes from one moment, immediately in its relation to this very moment, right over to the oppo- site. Because a moment has for it no reality at all, it affirms that very moment as real: or, what comes to the same thing, in order to assert one moment as per se existent, it asserts the opposite as the per se existent. It thereby confesses that, as a matter of fact, it is in earnest about neither of them. The various moments of this fraudulent process we must look at more closely.
Let us allow the assumption, that there is an actual moral consciousness, to rest on its own basis in the first instance, because the assumption is not directly made with reference to something preceding; and let us turn to the harmony of morality and nature — the first postulate. It is to be immanent, not explicitly for actual conscious life, not really present; the present is rather simply the contradiction between the two. In the present, morality is taken to be something at hand, and actual reality to be so situated or " placed " that it is not in harmony with morality. The concrete moral consciousness, however, is active, consists in acting; that is what constitutes the actuality of its morality. In the very process of acting, * An expression used by Kant of the " cosmological proof/' »< Dissemblance 627 however, that " place " or semblance is immediately " displaced," is dissembled; for action is nothing else than the actualisation of the inner moral purpose, nothing but the production of an actuality constituted and determined by purpose; in other words, the pro- duction of the harmony of moral purpose and reality itself. At the same time the performance of the action is a conscious fact, it is the " presence " of this unity of reality and purpose; and because in the completed act consciousness realises itself as a given particular consciousness, or sees existence return into itself qua particular — and in this consists the nature of enjoyment — there is, eo ipso, also contained in the realisation of moral purpose that form of its realisation which is called enjoyment and happiness.
Action thus, as a fact, fulfils directly what it was asserted could not take place at all, fulfils what was to be merely a postulate, was to He merely " beyond." Consciousness, therefore, expresses through its deed that it is not in earnest in making the postulate, since the meaning of acting is really that it makes a present fact of what was not to be in the present. And, since the harmony is postulated for the sake of the action — for what is to become actual through action must be im- plicit, otherwise the actuality would not be possible — the connexion of action with the postulate is so con- stituted that, for the sake of the action, i.e. for the sake of Wie actual harmony of purpose and reality, this har- mony is put forward as not actual, as far away, as " beyond."
Since action does take place, the want of adaptation between purpose and reality is thus in general not taken seriously. Action itself, on the other hand, does seem 628 Phenomenology of Mind to be taken seriously. But, as a matter of fact, the actual deed done is the action of a particular conscious- ness, and so is itself merely something particular, and the result contingent. The end of reason, however, being the all-comprehensive universal end, is nothing short of the entire world — a final purpose which goes far beyond the content of this particular act, and therefore is to be placed altogether above anything actually done. Because the universal best ought to be carried out, nothing good is done. In point of fact, however, the nothingness of actual action and the reality of the entire purpose alone, which are here up- held— these are on all hands again " shifted " or dis- sembled. The moral act is not something contingent and restricted; its essential nature lies in pure duty. This pure duty constitutes the sole entire purpose; and the act, whatever may be the limitation of the content, being the actualisation of that purpose, is the accom- plishment of the entire absolute purpose. Or, if again we take the reality in the sense of nature, which has laws of its own and stands over against pure duty, and take it in such a way that duty cannot realise its law within nature, then, since duty as such is the essential element, we are, when acting, not in fact concerned about the accomplishment of pure duty which is the whole pur- pose; for the accomplishment would then rather have as its end not pure duty, but the opposite, viz. reality. But there is again a " shifting " from the position that it is not reality with which we have to do. For, by the very notion of moral action, pure duty is essentially an active consciousness. Action thus ought certainly to take place, absolute duty ought to be expressed in the whole of nature, and " moral law " to become " natural law."
Dissemblance If, then, we allow this highest good to stand for the essentially real, consciousness is not altogether in earnest with morality. For, in this highest good, nature has not a different law from what morality has. Moral action itself, in consequence, drops, for action takes place only under the assumption of a negative or op- posing element which is to be cancelled by means of the act. But if nature conforms to the moral law, then undoubtedly this moral law would be violated by acting, by cancelling what already exists.
On that mode of interpretation, then, there has arisen as the essential situation one which renders moral action superfluous and in which moral action does not take place at all. Hence the postulate of the harmony between morality and reality — a harmony involved in the very notion of moral action, which means bringing the two into agreement — finds on this view, too, an ex- pression which takes the form: — " because moral action is the absolute purpose, the absolute purpose is — that moral action do not take place at all."
If we put these moments together, through which con- sciousness has gone on presenting its ideas of its moral life, we see that it cancels each one again in its opposite. It starts from the position that, for it, morality and reality do not make a harmony; but it is not in earnest with that, for in the moral act it is conscious of the presence of this harmony. But neither is it in earnest with this action, since the action is something par- ticular; while it has such a high purpose, the highest good. This, however, is once more merely a dissem- blance of the actual fact, for thereby all action and all morality would fall to the ground. In other words, it is not strictly in earnest with moral action; on the con- 630 Phenomenology of Mind trary, it really feels that, what is most to be wished for, the absolutely desirable, is that the highest good were carried out and moral action superfluous.
From this result consciousness must go on still fur- ther in its contradictory procedure, and must of neces- sity again dissemble the abolition of moral action. Morality is the inherently essential (Ansicli); in order that it may have place, the final end of the world cannot be carried out; rather, the moral conscious- ness must exist for itself, and must find lying before it a nature opposing it. But it must 'per se be completed. This leads to the second postulate of the harmony of itself and sensibility, the " nature " imme- diately within it. Moral self-consciousness sets up its purpose as pure purpose, as independent of inclinations and impulses, so that this bare purpose has abolished within itself the ends of sensibility. But this cancel- ling of the element of sense is no sooner set up than it is again dissembled. The moral consciousness acts, it brings its purpose into reality; and self- conscious sensibility, which should be done away with, is precisely the mediating element between pure con- sciousness and reality — is the instrument used by the former for the realisation of itself, or is the organ of what is called impulse, inclination. It is thus not really in earnest in cancelling inclinations and impulses, for these are just self-consciousness making