PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND PREFACE IN the case of a philosophical work it seems not onlysuperfluous, but, in view of the nature of the subject, even inappropriate and inexpedient to begin, as writers usually do, with a preface explaining the end the author had in mind, the circumstances which gave rise to the work, and the relation in which the writer takes it to stand to other treatises on the same subject, written by his predecessors or his contemporaries. For whatever it might be smtable to state about philosophy in a preface — say, an historical sketch of the main drift and point of view, the general content and results, a string of desultory assertions and assurances about truth — this cannot be accepted as the form and manner in which to expound philosophical truth.
Moreover, because philosophy has its being essentially in the element of universality, which encloses the particular within it, the end or final result seems, in the case of philosophy more than in that of other sciences, to have absolutely expressed the complete fact itself in its very nature, for which the mere process of bringing it to light would seem, properly speaking, to have no essential significance. On the other hand, in the general idea of e.g. anatomy — the knowledge of the VOL. I. — B I 2 Phenomenology of Mind parts of the body regarded as lifeless — we are quite sure we do not possess the objective concrete fact, the actual content of the science, but must, over and above, be concerned with particulars. Further, in the case of such a collection of items of knowledge, which has no real right to the name of science, any talk about purpose and such-like generalities is not commonly very different in manner from the descriptive and superficial way in which the contents of the science — these nerves and muscles, etc. — are themselves spoken of. In philosophy, on the other hand, it would at once be felt incongruous were such a method made use of and yet shown by philosophy itself to be incapable of grasping the truth.
In the same way too by determining the relation which a philosophical work professes to have to other treatises on the same subject, an extraneous interest is introduced, and obscurity is thrown over the point at issue in the knowledge of the truth. The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see the one or the other in any explanation about such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; Preface 3 Preface 3 they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes from the outset the Hfe of the whole. But contradiction in the case of a philosophical system is not usually conceived in this way; and again, the mind perceiving the contradiction does not commonly know how to reheve it or keep it free of onesidedness, or to recognise in what seems conflicting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments.
The demand for such explanations, as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake. Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing what a philosophical system is, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process 4 Phenomenology of Mind of arriving at it. The purpose by itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a bare activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realisation; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. Similarly, the distinctive difference of anything is rather the boundary, the limit, of the subject; it is found at that point where the matter stops, or it is what the matter is not. To trouble oneself in this fashion with the purpose and results, or again with the differences, the positions taken up and judgments passed by one thinker and another, is therefore an easier task than perhaps it seems. For instead of laying hold of the matter itself, a procedure of that kind is all the while away from the subject altogether. Instead of dwelling within it and becoming absorbed by it, knowledge of that sort is always grasping at something else; such knowledge, instead of keeping to the subject-matter and giving itself up to it, never gets away from itself. The easiest thing of all is to pass judgments on what has a sohd substantial content; it is more difficult to grasp it, and most of all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it.
The beginning of culture and of the struggle to get out of the imbroken immediacy of naive psychical Hfe has always to be made by acquiring knowledge of universal principles and points of view, by striving, 'J'in the first instance, to work up simply to the thought of the subject-matter in general, not forgetting at the same time to give reasons for supporting it or refuting it, to apprehend the concrete riches and fullness contained in its various determinate qualities, and to know Preface 5 how to furnish a coherent, orderly account of it and, a responsible judgment upon it. This beginning of mental cultivation will, however, very soon make way for the earnestness of actual life in all its fullness, which leads to a living experience of the subject-matter itself; and when, in addition, conceptual thought strenuously penetrates to the very depths of its meaning, such knowledge and style of judgment will be relegated to their due place in everyday thought and conversation.
The systematic development of truth in scientific form can alone be the true shape in which truth exists. To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science — that goal where it can lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledge — that is what I have set before me. The inner necessity that knowledge should be science Lies in its very nature; and the adequate and sufficient reason for this is simply and solely the systematic exposition of philosophy itself. The external necessity, however, so far as this is apprehended in a universal way, and apart from the accident of the personal element and the particular occasioning influences affecting the individual, is the same as the internal: it lies in the form and shape in which the process of time presents the existence of its moments. To show that the time has come to raise philosophy to the level of scientific system would, therefore, be the only true justification of the attempts which aim at proving that philosophy must assume this character; because the temporal process would thus bring out and lay bare the necessity of it, nay, more, would at the same time be carrying out that very aim itself.
6 Phenomenology of MmA When we state the true form of truth to be its scientific character — or, what is the same thing, when it is maintained that truth finds the medium of its existence in notions or conceptions alone — I know that this seems to contradict an idea with all its consequences which makes great pretensions and has gained widespread acceptance and conviction at the present time. A word of explanation concerning this contradiction seems, therefore, not out of place, even though at this stage it can amount to no more than a dogmatic assurance exactly like the view we are opposing. If, that is to say, truth exists merely in what, or rather exists merely as what, is called at one time intuition, at another immediate knowledge of the Absolute, religion, Being — not being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itself — from that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for systematic philosophical exposition. The Absolute would not be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited; it is not its conception, but the feeling of it and intuition of it that are to have the say and find expression.
If we consider the appearance of a claim hke this in its more general setting, and look at it from the level which the self-conscious mind at present occupies, we shall find that self-consciousness has got beyond the substantial fullness of life, which it used to carry on in the element of thought — beyond this naive immediacy of belief, beyond the satisfaction and security arising from the sense of certainty which conscious life possessed regarding its reconciliation with ultimate reality wherever present, whether inner or outer. Self-cPn- Preface 7 Preface 7 scious mind has not merely passed beyond that to the opposite extreme of insubstantial reflection of self into self, but beyond this too. It has not merely lost its essential and concrete hfe, it is also conscious of this loss and of the transitory finitude characteristic of its content. Turning away from the husks it has to feed on, and confessing that it lies in wickedness and sin, it reviles itself for so doing, and now desires from philosophy not so much to bring it to a knowledge of what it is, as to obtain once again through philosophy the restoration of that comfortably solid and substantial mode of existence it has lost. Philosophy is thus expected not so much to meet this want by opening up the compact solidity of substantial existence, and bringing this to the hght and level of self-consciousness — is not so much to get chaotic conscious life brought back to the orderly ways of thought, and the simple unity of the concept, as to run together what thought has divided asunder, suppress the notion with its distinctions, and restore the feeling of existence. What it wants from philosophy is not so much insight as edification. The beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, love — these are the bait required to awaken the desire to bite: not the notion, but ecstasy, not the march of cold necessity in the subject-matter, but ferment and enthusiasm— these are to be the ways by which the wealth of the concrete substance is to be stored and spread out to view.
With this demand there goes the strenuous effort, altnost perfervidly zealous in its activity, to rescue mankind from being sunken in what is sensuous, vulgar, and of fleeting importance, and to raise men's eyes to the stars; as if men had quite forgotten the 8 Phenomenology of Mind divine, and were on the verge of finding satisfaction, like worms, in mud and water. Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fitted out with endless wealth of thoughts and pictures. The significance of all that is, lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelhng in the present as it is here and now, the eye ghded away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that lies beyond. The mind's gaze had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fixed there; and it has needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only celestial reahties had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of things earthly, and to make attention to the immediate present as such, which was called Experience, of interest and of value. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of all this; man's mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like poAver to get them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little vsrhich can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss.
This easy contentment in receiving, or stinginess in giving, does not suit the character of science. The man who only seeks edification, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves after the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinity — he may look where he likes to find this: he will easily find for himself the means to get something he can rave over Preface. i) and puff himself up with. But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying.
' Still less must this kind of contentment, which holds sfcience in contempt, take upon itself to claim that raving obscurantism of this sort is something higher than science. These apocalyptic utterances pretend to occupy the very centre and the deepest depths; they look askance at all definiteness and preciseness {opo<;) of meaning; and they deliberately hold back from conceptual thinking and the constraining necessities of thought, as being the sort of reflection which, they say, can only feel at home in the sphere of finitude. But just as there is a breadth which is emptiness, there is a depth which is empty too: as we may have an extension of substance which overflows into finite multiplicity without the power of keeping the manifold together, in the same way we may have an insubstantial intensity which, keeping itself in as mere force without actual expression, is no better than superficiality. The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself when spending and giving out its substance. Moreover, when this unreflective emotional knowledge makes a pretext of having immersed its own very self in the depths of the absolute Being, and of philosophising in all hohness and truth, it hides from itself the fact that instead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for aU measurable precision and definiteness, simply confirms in its own case the fortuitous character of its content, and on the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds commit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting ■oil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all 10 Pkenowcnology of Mind understanding, they are thus God's beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. This is the reason, too, that in point of fact what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.
For the rest it is not difficult to see that our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of the age has broken with the world as it has hitherto existed, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. It is indeed never at rest, but carried along the stream of progress ever onward. But it is here as in the case of the birth of a child; after a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the first breath drawn — there is a break in the process, a quahtative change — and the child is born. In like manner the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, loosens one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to its fall is indicated only by symptoms here and there. Frivohty and again ennui, which are spreading in the established order of things, the undefined foreboding of something unknown — all these are hints foretelling that there is sometliing else approaching. This gradual crumbling to pieces, v/hicli did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world.
But this new world is perfectly realised just as little as the new-born child; and it is essential to bear this in mind. It comes on the stage to begin with in Preface 11 its immediacy, in its bare generality. A building is not finished when its foundation is laid; and just as little is the attainment of a general notion of a whole the whole itself. When we want to see an oak with all its vigour of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfied to be shown an acorn instead. In the same way science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not found complete in its initial stages. The beginning of the new spirit is the outcome of an extensive transformation of manifold forms of spiritual culture; it is the reward which comes after a chequered and devious course of development, and after much struggle and effort. It is a whole which, after running its course and laying bare all its content," returns again to itself; it is the resultant abstract notion of the whole. But the actual reahsation of this abstract whole is only found when those previous shapes and forms, which are now reduced to ideal moments of the whole, are developed anew again, but developed and shaped within this new medium, and with the meaning they have thereby acquired.
While the new world makes its first appearance merely in general outline, merely as a whole lying concealed and hidden within a bare abstraction, the wealth of the bygone life, on the other hand, is still consciously present in recollection. Consciousness misses in the new form the detailed expanse of content; but still more the developed expression of form by which distinctions are definitely determined and arranged in their precise relations. Without this last feature science has no general intelligibihty, and has the appearance of being an esoteric possession of a few individuals — an esoteric possession, because in the 12 Phenomenology of Mind first instance it is only the essential principle or notion of science, only its inner nature that is to be found; and a possession of few individuals, because, at its first appearance, its content is not elaborated and expanded in detail, and thus its existence is turned into something particular. Only what is perfectly determinate in form is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. Intelhgibility is the form in which science is offered to everyone, and is the open road to it made plain for all. To reach rational knowledge by our intelhgence is the just demand of the mind which comes to science. For intelligence, understanding (Ver stand), is thinking, pure activity of the self in general; and what is intelligible ( Verstdndige) is something from the first familiar and common to the scientific and unscientific mind alike, enabling the unscientific mind to enter the domain of science.
Science, at its commencement, when as yet it has neither got as far as detailed completeness nor perfection of form, is exposed to blame on that account. But to suppose this blame to attach to its essential nature would be as unjust, as it is inadmissible not to be ready to recognise the demand for that further development in fuller detail. In the contrast and opposition between these two aspects (the initial and the developed stages of science) seems to He the critical knot which scientific cultiixe at present struggles to loosen, and about which it is so far not very clear. One side parades the wealth of its material and the intelligibiUty of its ideas; the other pours contempt at any rate on the latter, and makes a parade of the immediate intuitive rationality and divine quality of Preface 13 its content. Although the first is reduced to silence, perhaps by the inner force of truth alone, perhaps, too, by the noisy bluster of the other side, and though having regard to the reason and nature of the case it did feel overborne, yet it does not therefore feel satisfied as regards those demands for greater development; for those demands are just, but still unfulfilled. Its silence is due only in part to the victory of the other side; it is half due to that weariness and indifference which are usually the consequence when expectations are being constantly awakened by promises which are not followed up by performance.
The other side * no doubt at times makes an easy enough matter of getting a vast expanse of content. They haul in a lot of material — already famihar and arranged in order; and since they are concerned more especially about what is exceptional, strange, and curious, they seem all the more to be in possession of the rest, which knowledge in its own way was finished and done with, as well as to have control over what was unregulated and disorderly. Hence everything appears brought within the compass of the Absolute Idea, which seems thus to be recognised in everything, and to have succeeded in becoming a system in extenso of scientific knowledge. But if we look more closely at this expanded system we find that it has not been reached by one and the same principle taking shape in diverse ways; it is the shapeless repetition of one and the same idea, which is apphed in an external fashion to different material, the wearisome reiteration of it keeping up the semblance of diversity. The Idea, which by itself is no doubt the truth, really never gets * Schelling and his school.
14 PJienomenology of Mind any farther than just where it began, as long as the development of it consists in nothing else than such a repetition of the same formula. If the knowing subject carries round everywhere the one inert abstract form, taking up in external fashion whatever material comes his way, and dipping it into this element, then this comes about as near to fulfilhng what is wanted — viz. a selforigination of the wealth of detail, and a self- determining distinction of shapes and forms — as any chance fancies about the content in question. It is rather a monotonous formalism, which only comes by distinction in the matter it has to deal with, because this is already prepared and well known.
This monotonousness and abstract universality are maintained to be the Absolute. This formalism insists that to be dissatisfied therewith argues an incapacity to grasp the standpoint of the Absolute, and keep a firm hold on it. If it was once the case that the bare possibihty of thinking of something in some other fashion was sufficient to refute a given idea, and the naked possibihty, the bare general thought, possessed and passed for the entire substantive value of actual knowledge; we find here similarly all the value ascribed to the general idea in this bare form without concrete reahsation; and we see here, too, the style and method of speculative contemplation identified with dissipating and resolving what is determinate and distinct, or rather with hurling it down, without more ado and without any justification, into the abyss of vacuity. To consider any specific fact as it is in the Absolute, consists here in nothing else than saying about it that, while it is now doubtless spoken of as something specific, yet in the Absolute, in the abstract Preface 15 identity A==A, there is no such thing at all, for everything is there all one. To pit this single assertion, that " in the Absolute all is one," against the organised whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete development — to give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are black — that is the very naivete of vacuous knowledge.
The formahsm which has been deprecated and despised by recent philosophy, and which has arisen once more in philosophy itself, will not disappear from science, even though its inadequacy is known and felt, till the knowledge of absolute reality has become quite clear as to what its own true nature consists in. Having in mind that the general idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out, faciUtates the comprehension of this process, it is worth while to indicate here some rough idea of it, with the hope at the same time that this will give us the opportunity to set aside certain forms whose habitual presence is a hindrance in the way of speculative knowledge.
In my view — a view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify — everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well. At the same time we must note that concrete substantiahty implicates and involves the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as the immediacy which is being, or immediacy qua object for knowledge. If the generation which heard God spoken of as the One Substance* was shocked and revolted by such a characterisation of his nature, the reason lay partly in the * Spinoza.
16 Phenomenology of Mind instinctive feeling that in such a conception selfconsciousness was simply submerged, and not preserved. But partly, again, the opposite position, which maintains thinking to be merely subjective thinking, abstract universality as such, is exactly the same bare uniformity, is undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality.* And even if, in the third place, thought combines with itself the being of substance, and conceives immediacy or intuition (AnscJiauung) as thinking, it is still a question whether this intellectual intuition does not fall back into that inert, abstract simphcity, and exhibit and expound reality itself in an unreal manner.f The Hving substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly reahsed and actual [wirhlicli) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of spUtting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reahty is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end or its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.
The Ufe of God and divine intelhgence, then, can, * Kant and Fichte. t Schelling.
Preface 17 if we like, be spoken of as love disporting witli itself; but this idea falls into edification, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative. Per se the divine hfe is no doubt undisturbed identity and oneness with itself, which feels no anxiety over otherness and estrangement, and none over the surmounting of this estrangement. But this " per se " is abstract generality, where we abstract from its real nature, which consists in its being objective to itself, conscious of itself on its own account {fiir sich zu sein); and where consequently we neglect altogether the self-movement which is the formal character of its activity. If the form is declared to correspond to the essence, it is just for that reason a misunderstanding to suppose that knowledge can be content with the " per se," the essence, but can do without the form, that the absolute principle, or absolute intuition, makes the carrying out of the former, or the development of the latter, needless. Precisely because the form is as necessary to the essence as the essence to it, absolute reality must not be conceived of and expressed as essence alone, i.e. as immediate substance, or as pure self-intuition of the Divine, but as form also, and with the entire wealth of the developed form. Only then is it grasped and expressed as really actual.
The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, th?.t only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, aubject, or self -becoming, self-development. Should VOL. I.— C 18 Phenomenology oj Mind it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consideration wiU set this appearance of contradiction in its true hght. The. beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal. If we say " all animals," that does not pass for zoology; for the same reason we see at once that the words absolute, divine, eternal, and so on do not express what is imphed in them; and only mere words hke these, in point of fact, express intuition as the immediate. Whatever is more than a word hke that, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a form of mediation, contains a process towards another state from which we must return once more. It is this process of mediation, however, that is rejected with horror, as if absolute knowledge were being surrendered when more is made of mediation than merely the assertion that it is nothing absolute, and does not exist in the Absolute.