Revealed Religion 797 This religious communion, however, has not yet achieved its complete self-consciousness. Its content, in general, is put before it in the form of an objec- tive pictorial idea; so that this disruption or opposi- tion* still attaches even to the actual spiritual character of the communion — to its return out of its presentative way of thinking; just as the element of pure thought itself was also hampered with that opposition. This spiritual communion, too, is not aware what it is; it is spiritual self-consciousness, which is not object to itself in this form, or does not develop into clear conscious- ness of itself. Eather, so far as it is consciousness, it has before it ideal presentations, those picture-thoughts which wrere considered.
We see self-consciousness at its last turning-point become inward to itself and attain to knowledge of its inner being, of its self-centredness. We see it relinquish and empty itself of its natural existence, and reach pure negativity. But the positive significance — viz. that this negativity, or pure inwardness of knowledge is just as much the self -identical Absolute Being: put otherwise, that Substance has here attained to being absolute self-consciousness — this is, for the devotional con- sciousness, an objective other, something external. It grasps this aspect — that the knowledge which becomes purely inward is inherently absolute simplicity, or Substance — as the idea of something which is not thus by its very conception, but as the act of satis- faction obtained from an other. In other words, it is not really aware as a fact that this depth of pure self is the power by which the abstract Ulti- mate Being is drawn down from its abstractness and * i.e. between spiritual consciousness and objective idea.
798 Phenomenology of Mind raised to the level of self by the strength and force of this pure devotion. The action of the self hence retains towards it this negative significance, because the relinquishment of itself on the part of substance is for the self an ultimate reality, something per se; the self does not at once grasp and comprehend it, or does not find it in its own action as such.
Since this unity of Ultimate Being and Self has been essentially and inherently brought about, consciousness, too, has this idea of its reconciliation, but in the form of an imaginative idea. It obtains satisfaction by attaching, in an external way, to its pure negativity the positive significance of the unity of itself with absolute Being. Its satisfaction thus itself remains hampered with the opposition of an external beyond. Its own peculiar reconciliation therefore enters its consciousness as something remote, something far away in the future, just as the reconciliation, which the other self achieved, appears as away in the distance of the past. Just as the individual god-man * has an implicit, a potential father and only an actual mother, in like manner we may say the universal god-man, the spiritual com- munion, has as its father its own proper action and knowledge, while its mother is eternal Love, which it merely feels, but does not behold as an actual immediate object present in its consciousness. Its reconciliation, therefore, is in its heart, but still with its conscious life sundered in twain and its actual reality shattered. What falls within its consciousness as the inherent and essential element, the aspect of pure mediation, is the reconciliation that lies beyond: while what appears as actually present in its consciousness, as the * The historical Christ.
Revealed Religion 799 aspect of immediacy and of existence, is the world which has yet to await transfiguration. The world is no doubt implicitly reconciled with the Divine Being; and that Being no doubt knows that it no longer regards the object as alienated from itself, but as one with itself in its Love. But for self-consciousness this immediate presence has not yet the form and shape of spiritual reality. Thus the spirit of the communion is, in its immediate consciousness, separated from its religious consciousness, which declares indeed that these two modes of consciousness implicitly and inherently are not separated, but this is an implicitness which is not realised, or has not yet become an absolute explicit self-existence as well.
(DD) VIII ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE* Spirit manifested in revealed religion has not as JL yet surmounted its attitude of consciousness as such; or, what is the same thing, its concrete self-con- sciousness is not at this stage the object it is aware of. Spirit as a whole and the moments distinguished in it fall within the sphere of presentative thinking, are presentations with the form of objectivity. The content of this presentational thought is Absolute Spirit. All that remains to be done now is to cancel and trans- cend this bare form; or better, because the form appertains to consciousness as such its true meaning must have come out in the shapes and modes conscious- ness has already assumed.
The surmounting of the object of consciousness in this way is not to be taken one-sidedly as meaning that the object shows itself returning into the self. It has a more definite and specific meaning: it means that the object as such presents itself to the self as a vanishing factor; and, furthermore, that the emptying, the relinquish- ment, of self-consciousness itself establishes thing- hood, and that this laying aside of self-consciousness * v. sup. p. 684. "Absolute Knowledge" is at once the consumma- tion of experience and, on the historical side, constructive philosophy: Absolute Knowledge 801 has not merely negative, but positive significance, a significance not merely for us or per se, but for self- consciousness itself. The negative of the object, its cancelling its own existence, gets, for self-consciousness, a positive significance; or, self-consciousness knows this nothingness of the object because on the one hand self-consciousness itself relinquishes itself; for in doing so it establishes itself as object, or, by reason of the indivisible unity characterising its self-existence, sets up the object as its self. On the other hand, there is also this other moment in the process, that self-consciousness has just as really cancelled and done away with this self-relinquishment and objectification, and has resumed them into itself, and is thus at home with itself in its otherness. This is the movement of consciousness, and in this process consciousness is the totality of its moments.
Consciousness, at the same time, had to take up a relation to the object in all its aspects and phases, and grasp its meaning from the point of view of each of them. This totality of its determinate characteristics makes the object per se and inherently a spiritual reality; and it becomes so in truth for consciousness, when the latter apprehends every individual one of them as self, i.e. when it takes up towards them the spiritual relationship just spoken of.
The object is, then, partly immediate existence, a thing in general — corresponding to immediate con- sciousness; partly an alteration of itself, its relatedness, (or existence-for-anotherand existence-for-self ))determin- ateness — corresponding to perception; partly essential being or in the form of a universal — corresponding to intelligence or understanding. The object as a whole is VOL. II.— 2 C 802 Phenomenology of Mind the mediated result [the conclusion] or the passing of universality into individuality through specification, as also the reverse process from individual to universal through cancelled individuality or specific determination. These three specific aspects, then, determine the ways in which consciousness must get to know the object in /the form of self. This knowledge of which we are speaking is, however, not knowledge in the sense of pure conceptual comprehension of the object; here this knowledge is to be taken as a developing process, has to be taken in its various moments and set forth in the manner appropriate to consciousness as such; and the moments of the notion proper, of pure and absolute knowledge, are to assume the form of modes or attitudes of consciousness. For that reason the object does not yet, when present in consciousness as such, appear as the inner essence of Spirit in the way this has just been expressed. The procedure conscious- ness adopts in regard to the object is not that of considering it either in this totality as such or in the pure conceptual form; it is partly that of a mode or attitude of consciousness in general, partly a multitude of such modes which we [who analyse the process] gather together, and in which the totality of the moments of the object and of the procedure of consciousness can be shown merely resolved into their separate elements.
To understand this method of grasping the object, where apprehension is a form or mode of consciousness, we have here only to recall the previous forms of con- sciousness which came before us earlier in the argument.
As regards the object, then, so far as it is immediate, an indifferent objective entity, we saw Reason, at the stage of "Observation," seeking and finding itself in Absolute Knowledge 803 this indifferent thing — i.e. we saw it conscious that its activity is there of an external sort, and at the same time conscious of the object merely as an immediate ob j ect. We saw, too, its specific character take expression at its highest stage in the infinite judgment: " the being of the ego is a thing." And, further, the ego is an immediate thing of sense. When ego is called a soul, it is indeed represented also as a thing, but a thing in the sense of something invisible, impalpable, etc., i.e. in fact not as an immediate entity, and not as that which is generally understood by a thing. That judgment, then, " ego is a thing " taken at first glance, has no spiritual content, or rather, is just the absence of spirituality. In its conception, however, it is in fact the most luminous and illuminating judgment; and this, its inner significance, which is not yet made evident, is what the two other moments to be considered express.
The thing is ego. In point of fact, thing is transcended in this infinite judgment. The thing is nothing in itself: it only has significance in a relation, only through the ego and its reference to the ego. This moment came before consciousness in pure insight and enlightenment. Things are simply and solely useful, profitable, and only to be considered from the point of view of their utility. The trained and cultivated self-consciousness, which has traversed the region of spirit in self-alienation, has, by giving up itself, produced the thing as its self; it retains itself, therefore, still in the thing, and knows the thing to have no independence, in other words knows that the thing has essentially and solely a relative existence. Or again — to give complete expression to the relationship, i.e. to what here alone constitutes the nature of the object — the thing stands for something that 804 Phenomenology of Mind is self-existent; sense-certainty, sense-experience, is an- nounced as absolute truth; but this self-existence is itself declared to be a moment which merely disappears, and passes into its opposite, into a being at the mercy of an " other."
But knowledge of the thing is not yet finished at this point. The thing must become known as self not merely in regard to the immediateness of its being and as regards specific determinateness, but also in the sense of essence or inner reality. This is found in the case of Moral Self -consciousness. This mode of experience thinks of its knowledge as the absolute essential element, knows no other objective being than pure will or pure knowledge. It is nothing but merely this will and this knowledge. Any other possesses merely non-essential being, i.e. being that has no inherent nature per se, but only its empty husk. In so far as the moral consciousness, in its view of the world, lets existence drop out of the self, it just as truly reclaims and takes this existence back again into the self. In the form of conscience, finally, it is no longer this incessant alterna- tion between the " placing " and the " displacing " [dis- sembling] of existence and self; it knows that its existence as such is this pure certainty of its own self; the objective element, into which qua acting it puts forth itself, is nothing else than pure knowledge of itself by itself.
These are the moments which compose the reconcilia- tion of spirit with its own consciousness proper. By themselves they are particular and separate; and it is their spiritual unity alone which furnishes the power for this reconciliation. The last of these moments is, however, necessarily this unity itself, and, as we see, Absolute Knowledge 805 binds them all in fact into itself. Spirit certain of itself in its objective existence takes as the element of its existence nothing else than this knowledge of self. The declaration that what it does it does in accordance with the convictions of duty — this statement is the warrant for its own action, and makes good its conduct.
Action is the first inherent division of the simple unity of the notion, and the return out of this division. This first movement turns round into the second, since the element of recognition is put forward as simple knowledge of duty in contrast to the distinction and diremption that He in action as such and, in this way, form a rigid reality confronting action. In pardon, however, we saw how this rigid fixity gave way and renounced its claims. Reality has here, qua immediate existence, no other significance for self-consciousness than that of being pure knowledge; similarly, qua determinate existence, or qua relation, what is self -opposed is a knowledge partly of this purely individual self, partly of knowledge qua universal. Herein it is established, at the same time, that the third moment, universality, or the essence, means for each of the two opposite factors merely knowledge. Finally they also cancel the empty opposition that still remains, and are the knowledge of ego as identical with ego: — this individual self which is immediately pure knowledge or universal.
This reconciliation of consciousness with self-con- sciousness thus proves to be brought about in a double- sided way; in the one case, in the religious mind, in the other case, in consciousness itself as such. They are distinguished inter se by the fact that the one is this reconciliation in the form of implicit immanence, the other in the form of explicit self-existence. As 806 Phenomenology of Mind we have considered them, they at the beginning fall apart. In the order in which the modes or types of consciousness came before us, consciousness has reached the individual moments of that order, and also their unification, long before ever religion gave its object the shape and mould of actual self-consciousness. The unification of both aspects is not yet brought to light; it is this that winds up this series of embodiments of spiritual life, for in it spirit gets to the point where it knows itself not only as it is inherently in itself, or in terms of its absolute content, nor only as it is objectively for itself in terms of its bare form devoid of content, or in terms of self-consciousness, but as it is in its self-com- pleteness, as it is inherently and explicitly, in itself and for itself.
This unification has, however, already taken place by implication, and has done so in religion, in the return of the objective presentation (Vorstellung) into self -con- sciousness, but not according to the proper form, for the religious aspect is the aspect of the essentially indepen- dent (Ansich) and stances in contrast to the process of self-consciousness. The unification therefore belongs to this other aspect, which by contrast is the aspect of re- flection into self, is that side which contains its self and its opposite, and contains [ them not only implicitly (an sick) or in a general way, but explicitly (fur sicli) or expressly developed and distinguished. The content, as well as the other aspect of self-conscious spirit, so far as it is the other aspect, have been brought to light and are here in their completeness: the unification still a-wanting is the simple unity of the notion. This notion is also already given with the aspect of self- consciousness; but as it previously came before us Absolute Knoivtedge 807 above, it, like all the other moments, has the form of being a particular mode or type of consciousness. It is that part of the embodiment of self-assured spirit which keeps within its essential principle and was called the " beautiful soul." That is to say, the " beautiful soul " is its own knowledge of itself in its pure transparent unity — self-consciousness, which knows this pure knowledge of pure inwardness to be spirit, is not merely intuition of the divine, but the self-intuition of God Himself.
Since this notion keeps itself fixedly opposed to its realisation, it is the one-sided form which we saw before disappear into thin air, but also take a positive ex- ternal embodiment and advance further. Through the process of realisation, this self-consciousness bereft of objective content ceases to hold fast by itself, the abstract determinateness of the notion over against its fulfilment is cancelled and done away with. Its self- consciousness attains the form of universality; and what remains is its true notion, the notion that has attained its realisation — the notion in its truth, i.e. in unity with its externalisation. It is knowledge of pure knowledge, not in the sense of an abstract essence such as duty is, but in the sense of an essential being which is this particular knowledge, this individual pure self-con- sciousness which is at the same time an object; for the object is the self -existing self.
This notion obtained its fulfilment partly from the acts performed by the spirit that is sure of itself, partly from religion. In the latter it obtained the absolute content qua content, or in the form of an ideal pre- sentation or of otherness for consciousness. On the other hand, in the first the form is just the self, for that mode contains the active practical spirit sure of 808 Phenomenology of Mind itself; the self accomplishes the life of Absolute Spirit. This mode, as we see, is that simple notion, which however gives up its eternal inner Being, takes upon itself objective existence, or acts. The power of diremp- tion or of coming forth out of its inwardness lies in the purity of the notion, for this purity is absolute abstrac- tion or negativity. In the same way the notion finds its element of reality, or the objective being it contains, in pure knowledge itself; for this knowledge is simple immediacy, which is being and existence as well as essence, the former negative thought, the latter positive thought. This existence, finally, is just as much that state of reflection into self which comes out of pure existence — both qua existence and qua duty — and this is the state of evil. This process of " going into self " constitutes the opposition lying in the notion, and is thus the appearance on the scene of pure knowledge of the essence, a knowledge giving rise to no action and no reality. But to make its appearance in this oppo- sition is to participate in it; pure knowledge of essence has inherently relinquished its simplicity, for it is the diremption or negativity which constitutes the notion. So far as this process of diremption is the process of becoming self-centred, it is the principle of evil: so far as it is the inherently essential, it is the principle of constant goodness.
Now what in the first instance takes place implicitly and inherently is at once objectively for consciousness, and is duplicated as well — is both for consciousness and is its self-existence or its own proper action. The same thing that is already inherently established, thus repeats itself now as knowledge thereof on the part of consciousness and as conscious action. Each finds the other lay aside the independence of character with which each appears confronting the other. This waiving of independence is the same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the notion as constituted implicitly the beginning; but it is now its own act of renuncia- tion, just as the notion renounced is its own notion. That implicit nature of the beginning is in truth as much mediated, because it is negativity; it now establishes itself as it is in its truth; and the negative element exists as a determinate quality which each has for the other, and is inherently and essentially self- cancelling, self-transcending. The one of the two parts of the opposition is the disparity between existence within itself in its individuality and universality; the other, disparity between its abstract universality and the self. The former lets its self-existence perish, and relinquishes itself, makes confession; the latter renounces the rigidity of its abstract universality, and thereby puts away its lifeless self and its inert universality; so that the former is completed through the moment of universality, which is the essence, and the latter through universality, which is self. By this process of action spirit has come to light in the form of pure universality of knowledge, which is self-consciousness as self-con- sciousness, which is simple unity of knowledge. It is through action that spirit is spirit so as definitely to exist; it raises its existence into the sphere of thought and hence into absolute opposition, and returns out of it through and within this very opposition.
Thus, then, what was in the case of religion objective content, or a way of ideally presenting an other, is here the action proper of the self. The notion is the connect- ing principle securing that the content is the action 810 Phenomenology of Mind proper of the self. For this notion is, as we see, the knowledge that the action of the self within itself is all that is essential and all existence, the knowledge of this Subject as Substance and of the Substance as this knowledge of its action. What we have done here, in addition, is simply to gather together the particular moments, each of which in principle exhibits the life of spirit in its entirety, and again to fix and secure the notion in the form of the notion, whose content was disclosed in those moments and had already pre- sented itself in the form of a mode or type of con- sciousness.
This last embodiment of spirit — spirit which at once gives its complete and true content the form of self, and thereby realises its notion, and in doing so remains within its own notion — this is Absolute Know- ledge. It is spirit knowing itself in the form of spirit, it is conceptual comprehensive knowledge through notions. Truth is here not merely in itself absolutely identical with certainty; it has also the typical form of certainty of self, or in its existence — i.e. for spirit knowing it — it is in the form of knowledge of itself. Truth is the content, which in the case of religion is not as yet at one with its certainty. This identifica- tion, however, is secured when the content has received the form and character of self. By this means, what constitutes the very essence, viz. the notion, comes to have the nature of existence, i.e. assumes the form of what is objective to consciousness. Spirit, appearing before consciousness in this element of existence, or, what is here the same thing, produced by it in this element, is systematic Science.
The nature, moments, and process of this type of Absolute Knowledge 811 knowledge have then come about in such a way that this knowledge is pure self-existence of self-consciousness.
It is ego, which is this concrete ego and no other, and at the same time, from its very, nature, is mediated, or sublated universal ego. It has a content, which it distinguishes from itself; for it is pure negativity, or self-diremption; it is consciousness. This content in its distinction is itself the ego, for it is the process of super- seding itself, or the same pure negativity which consti- tutes ego. Ego is in it, qua distinguished, reflected into itself; only then is the content conceptualy compre- hended (begriffen) when ego in its otherness is still at home with itself. More precisely stated, this content is nothing else than the very process just spoken of; for the content is the spirit which traverses the whole range of its own being, and does this for itself qua spirit, by the fact that it possesses the form of the notion in its objectivity.
As to the actual existence of this notion, science does not appear in time and in reality till spirit has arrived at this stage of being conscious regarding itself. Qua spirit which knows what it is, it did not exist before, and is not to be found at all till after the completion of the task of mastering and overcoming the imperfection of its form — the task of procuring for its consciousness and making itself aware of the shape of its inmost essence, and in this manner squaring its self-conscious- ness with its consciousness. Spirit in and for itself, spirit in its self-contained reality, is, when distinguished into its separate moments, self-existent knowledge, conceptual comprehension in general, which as such has not yet reached the substance, or is not in itself absolute knowledge.
Phenomenology of Mind