action, in the other through failure to act at all, a result which is inevitable when there is mere talk about duty, for duty without deeds is altogether meaningless. The act of judging, however, has also to be looked at as a positive act of thought and has a positive con- tent: this aspect makes the contradiction present in the apprehending consciousness and its identity with the first consciousness still more complete. The active consciousness declares its specific deed to be its duty, and the consciousness that passes judgment cannot deny VOL. II. — S 674 Phenomenology of Mind V this; for duty as such is form void of all content and capable of any. In other words, concrete action, inher- ently implying diversity in its manysidedness, involves the universal aspect, which is that which is taken as duty, just as much as the particular, which constitutes the share and interest the individual has in the act. The consciousness expressing its judgment does not now stop at the former aspect of duty and rest content with the knowledge which the active agent has of this, viz. that this is its duty, the condition and the status of its reality. It holds on to the other aspect, diverts the act into the inner realm, and explains the act from selfish motives and from its inner intention, an inten- tion different from the act itself. As every act is capable of treatment in respect of its dutifulness, so, too, each can be considered from this other point of view of particularity; for as an act it is the actuality of an individual.
This process of judging, then, takes the act out of the sphere of its objective existence, and turns it back into that of the inner realm, into the form of specific and individual particularity. If the act carries glory with it, then the inner aspect is judged as love of fame. If it altogether fits in with the position and status of the individual, without going beyond this position, and is so constituted that the individuality in question does not have the position hanging on to it as an external appendage, but through itself supplies the content to this universality, and by that very process shows itself to be capable of a higher status — then the inner nature of the act is judged as ambition; and so on. Since, in the act in general, the individual who acts comes to see himself in objective form, or gets the feeling of his Evil and Forgiveness 675 own being in his objective existence and thus attains enjoyment, the judgment on the act finds the inner nature of it to be an impulse towards personal and private happiness, even though this happiness were to consist merely in inner moral vanity, the enjoyment of a sense of personal excellence, and in the foretaste and hope of a happiness to come.
No act can escape.being judged in such a way; for " duty for duty's sake," this bare purpose, is some- thing unreal. What reality it has lies in the deed of some individuality, and the action thereby has in it the aspect of particularity. No hero is a hero to his valet, not, however, because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is — the valet, with whom the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats, drinks, and dresses, who, in short, appears as a particular individual with certain personal wants and idiosyncrasies. In the same way, there is no act in which that process of judgment cannot oppose the particular aspect of the individuality to the universal aspect of the act, and set the valet of morality against the hero who does the act.* The consciousness, that so passes judgment, is in con- sequence itself base and mean, because it divides the act up, and brings out and holds on to its inherent in- consistency and self-discordance. It is, furthermore, hypocrisy, because it gives out this way of judging, not as another fashion of being wicked, but as the correct consciousness of the act; sets itself up, in its unreality, in this vanity of knowing well and better, far above the deeds it decries; and wants to find its mere words without deeds taken for an admirable kind of reality.
On this account, then, putting itself on a level with * Cp. with above Philosophy of History, Intro. (Eng. trans., p. 32 ff.)
676 Phenomenology of Mind the agent on whom it passes judgment, it is recognised by the latter as the same as himself. This latter does not merely find himself apprehended as something alien or external to, and unlike or discordant with that other: but rather finds the other in its peculiar constitutive character identical with himself. Seeing this similarity and giving this expression, he openly declares himself to the other, and expects in like manner that the other, having in point of fact put itself on the same level, will respond in the same terms on its side, will give voice to the likeness found within it, and that thus the state of mutual recognition will be brought about. His confes- sion is not an attitude of abasement or humiliation before the other, is not flinging himself away. For to give the matter expression in this way has not the one-sided character which would fix and establish his disparity with the other: on the contrary, it is solely because of seeing the likeness of the other to him that he gives himself utterance. In making his confession he announces, from his side, their common likeness, and does so for the reason that language is the existence of spirit as an immediate self. He thus expects that the other will make its own contribution to this manner of existence.
But the admission on the part of the one who is wicked, " I am so," is not followed by a reply making a similar confession. This was not what that way" of judging meant at all: far from it! It repels this community of nature, and is the " hardhearted- ness," which keeps to itself and rejects all continuity with the other. By so doing the scene is changed. The one who made the confession sees himself thrust off, and takes the other to be in the wrong when he refuses to Evil and Forgiveness 677 let his own inner nature go forth in the objective shape of an express utterance, opposes and contrasts the beauty of his own soul with the wicked individual, and opposes to the confession of the penitent the stiff- necked attitude of the self-consistent equable character, and the rigid silence of one who keeps himself to himself and refuses to throw himself away for some one else. Here we find asserted the highest pitch of revolt to which a spirit certain of itself can reach. For it beholds itself, qua this bare self-knowledge, in another conscious being, and in such a way that the external form of this other is not an unessential " thing," as in the case of an object of wealth, but thought; knowledge itself is what is opposed to it. It is this absolutely unbroken continuity of pure knowledge which refuses to establish communication with an other, which had, ipso facto, by making its confession, renounced separate isolated self-existence, had affirmed its particularity to be cancelled, and thereby estab- lished itself as continuous with the other, i.e. estab- lished itself as universal. The other, however, retains in its own case and reserves to itself its uncom- municative, isolated independence: in the case of the individual making the confession it retains just the very thing which that individual has already cast away. It thereby proves itself to be a form of consciousness which has forsaken and denies the very nature of spirit; for it does not understand that spirit, in the absolute certainty of itself, is master and lord over every deed, and over all reality, and can reject and cast them off and make them as if they had never been. At the same time, it does not see the contradiction it is committing in not allowing a rejection, which has been 678 Phenomenology of Mind made in express language, to pass for genuine rejection, while itself has the certainty of its own spiritual life, not in a concrete real act, but in its inner nature, and finds the objective existence of this inner being in the mere utterance of its own judgment. It is thus its own self which checks that other's return from the act to the spiritual objectivity of spoken utterance, and to spiritual identity and agreement, and by its stiffness produces the discordance and dissimilarity which still remain.
Now, so far as the spirit which is certain of itself, in the form of a " beautiful soul," does not possess the faculty of relinquishing the self-absorbed uncommunicative know- ledge of itself, it cannot attain to any identity with the consciousness that is repulsed, and so cannot suc- ceed in seeing the unity of its self in another life, cannot reach objective existence. The equality comes about, therefore, merely in a negative way, as a state of being devoid of spiritual character. The "beautiful soul/' then, has no concrete reality; it subsists in the contra- diction between its pure self and the necessity felt by this self to externalise itself and turn into something actual; it exists in the immediacy of this rooted and fixed opposition, an immediacy which alone is the middle term mediating and reconciling an opposition which has arisen to its pure abstraction, and is pure being or empty nothingness. Thus the " beautiful soul," being conscious of this contradiction in its unreconciled immediacy, is unhinged, disordered, and runs to mad- ness, passes away in yearning, and is consumed in pining inanition.* Thereby it gives up, as a fa,ct, its * This was the actual fate of Novalis, the " St. John of Romanticism " (d. 1801, set. 29). Cp. Hegel's remarks on Novalis WW X., 1, p. 201: Evil and Forgiveness 679 stubborn insistence on its own isolated self-existence, but only to bring forth the soulless, spiritless unity of abstract being.
The true, that is to say the self-conscious and actual, balance or adjustment of the two sides is necessitated by, and already contained in the foregoing. Break- ing the hard heart and raising it to the level of uni- versality is the same process which appeared in the case of the consciousness that expressly made its confession. The wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scars behind. The deed is not something imperish- able; the spirit takes it back into itself; and the aspect of particularity present in it, whether in the form of an intention or of an existential negativity and limitation, immediately passes away. The process of actually realising self, the form of its act, is merely a moment of the whole; and the same is true of the knowledge functioning through judgment, and estab- lishing and maintaining the distinction between the particular and universal aspects of action. The evil con- sciousness, spoken of, definitely yields up and relin- quishes itself, or sets itself down as a moment, being drawn into the way of express confession by seeing itself in another. This other, however, must have its onesided, unaccepted, and unacknowledged judgment broken down, just as the former has to abandon its onesided unacknowledged existence in a state of particularity and isolation. And as the former displays the power of spirit over its reality, so this other must manifest the power of spirit over its constitutive and determinate notion.
The latter, however, renounces thought that divides and separates, and the rigid imperviousness of uncom- 680 Phenomenology of Mind municative self-existence, for the reason that, in point of fact, it sees itself in the first. That which, in this way, abandons its reality and makes itself into a superseded particular "this" (Diesen), shows itself thereby to be, in fact, universal. It turns away from its external reality back into itself as inner essence; and there the universal consciousness thus knows and finds itself.
The forgiveness it extends to the first is the renuncia- tion of self, of its unreal being, since it identifies this unreal nature and that other element of real action, and recognises what was called bad — a determination assigned to action by thought — to be good; or rather it lets go and gives up this distinction of determinate thought with its self -determining isolated judgment, just as the other foregoes determining the act in isolation and for its own private behoof. The word of reconciliation is the objectively existent spirit, which sees and imme- diately apprehends the pure knowledge of itself qua universal being in its opposite, in the pure knowledge of itself qua absolutely self-confined single individual — a reciprocal recognition which is Absolute Spirit.
Absolute Spirit enters existence merely at the cul- minating point at which its pure knowledge about itself is the opposition and interchange with itself. Know- ing that its pure knowledge is the abstract essential reality, Absolute Spirit is this knowing duty in absolute opposition to the knowledge which knows itself, qua absolute singleness of self, to be the essentially real. The former is the pure continuity of the universal, which knows the individuality, that thinks itself the real, to be inherently null and naught, to be evil. The latter, again, is absolute discreteness, which thinks Evil and Forgiveness 681 itself absolute in its pure oneness, and thinks the universal is the unreal which exists only for others. Both aspects are refined and clarified to this degree of purity, where there is no self- less existence left, no nega- tive of consciousness in either of them, where, instead, the one element of " duty " is the self -identical character of its self-knowledge, and the other element of "evil" equally has its purpose in its own inner being and its reality in its own mode of utterance. The content of this utterance is the substance that gives it subsistence; the utterance is the assurance and asseveration of the certainty of spirit within its own self.
These spirits, both certain of themselves, have each no other purpose than its own pure self, and no other reality and existence than just this pure self. But they are still different, and the difference is absolute, because holding within this element of the pure notion. The difference is absolute, too, not merely for its [tracing the experience], but for the notions themselves which stand in this opposition. For while these notions are indeed determinate and specific relatively to one another, they are at the same time in themselves universal, so that they compass the whole range of the self; and this self can have no other content than this its own deter- minate constitution, which neither transcends the self nor is more restricted than it. For the one aspect, the absolutely universal, is pure self-knowledge as well as the other, the absolute discreteness of single individuality, and both are merely this pure self-knowledge. Both determinate aspects, then, are cognitive pure notions which know qua notions, whose very constitution con- sists in immediately knowing, or, in other words, whose relationship and opposition is the Ego. Because of this 682 Phenomenology of Mind they are for one another these absolutely opposed elements; it is what is completely inner that has in this way come into opposition to itself and entered objective existence; they constitute pure knowledge, which, owing to this opposition, takes the form of consciousness. But as yet it is not self -consciousness. It obtains this actuali- sation in the course of the process through which this opposition passes. For this opposition is really itself the indiscrete continuity and identity of ego = ego; and each by itself inherently cancels itself just through the contradiction in its pure universality, which, while implying continuity and identity, at the same time still resists its identity with the other, and separates itself from it. Through this relinquishment of separate self- hood, the knowledge, which in its existence is in a state of diremption, returns into the unity of the self; it is the concrete actual Ego, universal knowledge of self in its absolute opposite, in the knowledge which is internal to and within the self, and which, because of the very purity of its separate subjective existence, is itself completely universal. The reconciling affirmation, the " yes," with which both egos desist from their existence in opposition, is the existence of the ego expanded into a duality, an ego which remains therein one and iden- tical with itself, and possesses the certainty of itself in its complete relinquishment and its opposite: it is God appearing in the midst of those who know them- selves in the form of pure knowledge.
(CO) RELIGION [The appearance of Absolute Spirit as a principle constituting on its own account a distinctive stage of experience is at once a demand of the preceding development and a condition of making experience self- complete. Finite or socialised spiritual existence is at its best incapable of establishing the truth that " Spirit is the only reality "; for the more finite spirit approximates to the state of claiming to be self-contained the more is it dependent on universal self-consciousness. A trans-finite or Absolute Spiritual Being as such is thus necessary to realise and sustain the fullness of meaning which finite spirit possesses. Moreover, if " the truth is the whole," and only so is truth self-complete and self -explaining, and, if reality is essentially spiritual — then experience only finds its complete meaning realised in the principle of Absolute Spirit. Hence the final stage of the Phenomenology of experience is the appearance therein of Absolute Spirit. Moreover, Absolute Spirit, in its own distinctive existence, could only appear at the end of the process of experience, for the whole of that process is required to reveal and to constitute the substance of which the Absolute consists. But the pecu- liarity of the stage now reached is that here the Absolute operates in its undivided totality to form a definite type of experience; or, in the language of the text, we have the Absolute here " conscious of its self." No doubt, in all the previous stages, "consciousness," "self-consciousness," " reason," " spirit," the Absolute has been implied as a limiting principle, at once substantiating and determining the boundaries of each stage: hence each stage had an Absolute of its own, the character of which was derived in each case from the peculiarity of the stage in question. Now, however, we have the Absolute by itself, in its single self-completeness, as the sole formative factor of a certain type of experience.
The Absolute, then, in its own self-complete reality appears as the constitutive principle of experience. The experience here is the self- consciousness of Absolute Spirit; it appears to itself in all its objects. Since all the modes of finitude hitherto considered (consciousness, self- consciousness, etc.) are embraced in its single totality, it may use each and all of these various modes as the media through and in which to appear.
684 Phenomenology of Mind When it appears in and through these modes of finitude we have the attitude of Religion. Since these modes, as we saw, differ, the religious attitude differs; and accordingly we have various types or forms of religion.
Each of these forms, in and through which the Absolute appears, is circumscribed in its nature and process; each is per se inadequate to the revelation of complete absolute self-consciousness: hence the variety of religions is necessitated by and is indirectly due to the failure of any one type and the inadequacy of every single type to reveal the Absolute com- pletely. A form of appearance or self-manifestation of the Absolute is therefore demanded which will reveal Absolute Spirit adequately to itself as it essentially is in itself. Here it will know itself, so to say, face to face, and with perfect completeness. This form is Absolute Knowledge- Hence Religion and Absolute Knowledge are the final stages in the argument of the Phenomenology. The former is dealt with in the im- mediately succeeding section (VII) and its various subsections; the latter forms the subject of the concluding section (VIII) of the work.]
VII RELIGION IN GENERAL IN the forms of experience hitherto dealt with — which are distinguished broadly as Consciousness, Self-consciousness, Reason, and Spirit — Religion also, the consciousness of Absolute Being in general, has no doubt made its appearance. But that was from the point of view of consciousness, when it has the Absolute Being for its object. Absolute Being, however, in its own distinctive nature, the Self-consciousness of Spirit, has not appeared in those forms.
Even at the plane of Consciousness, viz. when this takes the shape of " Understanding/' there is a con- sciousness of the supersensuous, of the inner being of objective existence. But the supersensible, the eternal, or whatever we care to call it, is devoid of selfhood. It is merely, to begin with, something uni- versal, which is a long way still from being spirit knowing itself as spirit.
Then there was Self-consciousness, which came to its final shape in the " bereft soul," the " unhappy consciousness "; that was merely the pain and sorrow of spirit wrestling to get itself out into objectivity once more, but not succeeding. The unity of individual self-consciousness with its unchangeable Being, which is what this stage arrives at, remains, in consequence, a " beyond," something afar off.
686 Phenomenology of Mind The immediate existence of Reason (which we found arising out of that state of sorrow), and the special shapes which reason assumes, have no form of religion, because self-consciousness in the case of reason knows itself or looks for itself in the direct and immediate present.
On the other hand, in the world of the Ethical Order, we met with a type of religion, the religion of the nether world. This is belief in the fearful and un- known darkness of Fate, and in the Eumenides of the spirit of the departed: the former being pure negation taking the form of universality, the latter the same negation but in the form of particularity. Absolute Being is, then, in the latter shape no doubt the self and is present, as there is no other way for the self to be except present. But the particular self is this particular ghostly shade, which keeps the universal element, Fate, separated from itself. It is indeed a shade, a ghost, a cancelled and superseded particular, and so a universal self. But that negative meaning has not yet turned round into this latter positive significance, and hence the self, so cancelled and transcended, still directly means at the same time this particular being, this insubstantial reality. Fate, however, without self remains the darkness of night devoid of consciousness, which never comes to draw distinctions within itself, and never attains the clear- ness of self-knowledge.
This belief in a necessity that produces nothing- ness, this belief in the nether world, becomes belief in Heaven, because the self which has departed must be united with its universal nature, must unfold what it contains in terms of this universality, and thus Religion 687 become clear to itself. This kingdom of belief, how- ever, we saw unfold its content merely in the element of reflective thought (Denkeri), without bringing out the true notion (Begriff); and we saw it, on that ac- count, perish in its final fate, viz. in the religion of enlightenment. Here in this type of religion, the super- sensible beyond, which we found in " understanding/' is reinstated again, but in such a way that self-conscious- ness rests and feels satisfied in the mundane present, not in the " beyond," and thinks of the supersensible beyond, void and empty, unknowable, and devoid of all terrors, neither as a self nor as power and might.
In the religion of Morality it is at last reinstated that Absolute Reality is a positive content; but that content is bound up with the negativity characteristic of the enlightenment. The content is an objective being, which is at the same time taken back into the self, and remains there enclosed, and is a content with internal distinctions, while its parts are just as imme- diately negated as they are posited. The final destiny, however, which absorbs this contradictory process, is the self conscious of itself as the controlling necessity (Schicksal) of what is essential and actual.
Spirit knowing its self is in religion primarily and im- mediately its own pure self-consciousness. Those modes of it above considered— " objective spirit," " spirit estranged from itself " and " spirit certain of its self ': — together constitute what it is in its condition of consciousness, the state in which, being objectively opposed to its own world, it does not therein apprehend and consciously possess itself. But in Conscience it brings itself as well as its objective world as a whole 688 Phenomenology of Mind into subjection, as also its idea * and its various specific conceptions; f and is now self-consciousness at home with itself. Here spirit, represented as an object, has the significance for itself of being Universal Spirit, which contains within itself all that is ultimate and essential and all that is concrete and actual; yet is not in the form of freely subsisting actuality, or of the detached independence of external nature. It has a shape, no doubt, the form of objective being, in that it is object of its own consciousness; but because this being is put forward in religion with the essential character of being self-consciousness, the form or shape assumed is one perfectly transparent to itself; and the reality spirit contains is enclosed in it, or transcended in it, just in the same way as when we speak of " all reality "; its reality is universal reality in the sense of a product of thought.