acting should show itself to be ahve, or when thinking should grasp the hving world as a system of thought, there ought to he in thought itself a content to supply the sphere of the ego, in the former case with what is good, and, in the latter, true, in order that there should throughout be no other ingredient in what consciousness has to deal with, except the notion which is the real essence. But here, by the way in which the notion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplicity of things, the notion has no content in itself; the content is a datum, is given. Consciousness, no doubt, abohshes the content as an external, a foreign existent, by the fact that it thinks it, but the notion is a determinate notion, and this determinateness of the notion is the ahen element the notion contains within it. Stoicism, therefore, got embarrassed, when, as the expression went, it was asked for the criterion of truth in general, i.e. properly speaking, for a content of thought itself. To the question what is good and true, it responded by giving again the abstract, contentless thought; the true and good are to consist in reasonableness. But this self-identity of thought is simply once more pure form, in which nothing is determinate. The general terms true and good, wisdom and virtue, with which Stoicism has to stop short, are, therefore, in a general way, doubtless elevating; but seeing that they cannot actually and in fact reach any expanse of content, they soon begin to get wearisome.
This thinking consciousness, in the way in which it is thus constituted, as abstract freedom, is therefore only incomplete negation of otherness. Withdrawn from existence solely into itself, it has not there fully vindicated itself as the absolute negation of this existence. It holds Scepticism I95 the content indeed to be only thought, but in doing so also takes thought as a specific determinate thought, and at the same time the general character of the content.
Scepticism is the reahsation of that of which Stoicism is merely the notion, and is the actual experience of what freedom of thought is; it is in itself and essentially the negative, and must so exhibit itself. With the reflexion of self-consciousness into the simple, pure thought of itself, independent existence or permanent determinateness has, in contrast to that reflexion, dropped as a matter of fact out of the infinitude of thought. In Scepticism, the entire unessentiahty and unsubstantiaHty of this " other " becomes a reahty for consciousness. Thought becomes thinking which wholly annihilates the being of the world with its manifold determinateness, and the negativity of free self-consciousness comes to be, in the case of these manifold forms which hfe assumes, real negativity.
It is clear from the foregoing that, just as Stoicism answers to the notion of independent consciousness, which appeared as a relation of lordship and bondage. Scepticism, on its side, corresponds to its realisation, to the negative attitude towards otherness, to desire and labour. But if desire and work could not carry out for self-consciousness the process of negation, this polemical attitude towards the manifold substantiahty of things will, on the other hand, be successful, because it turns against them as a free self-consciousness, and one complete within itself beforehand; or, expressed more definitely, because it has inherent in itself thought or the principle of infinitude, where the independent elements in their distinction from one another are held to 196 Phenomenology of Mind be merely vanisliing quantities. The differences, which, in the pure thinking of self are only the abstraction of differences, become here the whole of the differences; and every differentiated existent becomes a difference of self-consciousness.
With this we get determined the action of Scepticism in general, as also its mode and nature. It shows the dialectic movement, which is sense-certainty, perception, and understanding. It shows, too, the unessentiahty of that which holds good in the relation of master and servant, and which for abstract thought itself passes as determinate. That relation involves, at the same time, a determinate situation, in which there are found even moral laws, as commands of the sovereign lord. The determinations in abstract thought, however, are scientific notions, into which formal contentless thought expands itself, attaching the notion, as a matter of fact in merely an external fashion, to the existence independent of it, and holding as valid only determinate notions, albeit they are still pure abstractions.
Dialectic as a negative process, taken immediately as it stands, appears to consciousness, in the first instance, as something at the mercy of which it is, and which does not exist through consciousness itself. In Scepticism, on the other hand, this negative process is a moment of self-consciousness, which does not simply find its truth and its reality vanish, without selfconsciousness knowing how, but rather which, in the certainty of its own freedom, itself lets this other, so claiming to be real, vanish. Self-consciousness here allows not only the objective as such to disappear before the negations of Scepticism, but also its own attitude and relation to the object, where the object is held Scepticism 197 Scepticism 197 to be objective and rendered 'valid — i.e. its attitude of perception as also its process of securing wliat is in danger of being lost, viz. sophistry with, its self-constituted and self-estabHsbed truth. By means of this self-conscious negation, self-consciousness procures for itself the certainty of its own freedom, brings about the experience of that freedom, and thereby raises it into the truth. What vanishes is what is determinate, the difference which, no matter what its nature or whence it comes, sets up to be fixed and unchangeable. The difference has nothing permanent in it, and must vanish before thought, because to be differentiated just means not to have being in itself, but to have its essential nature solely in an other. Thinking, however, is the insight into this character of what is differentiated; it is the negative function in its simple, ultimate form.
Sceptical self-consciousness thus discovers, in the flux and alternation of all that would stand secure in its presence, its own freedom, as given by and received from its own self. It is aware of being this arapa^la of self-thinking thought, the unalterable and genuine certainty of its self. This certainty does not arise as a result out of something extraneous and foreign which stowed away inside itself its whole complex development; a result which would thus leave behind the process by which it came to be. Kather consciousness itself is thoroughgoing dialectical restlessness, this m^lee of presentations derived from sense and thought, whose differences collapse into oneness, and whose identity is similarly again resolved and dissolved — for this identity is itself determinateness as contrasted with non-identity. This consciousness, however, as a matter 198 Phenomenology of Mind of fact, instead of being a self-same consciousness, is here neither more nor less than an absolutely fortuitous embroglio, the giddy whirl of a perpetually self-creating disorder. This is what it takes itself to be; for itself maintains and produces this self-impelhng confusion. Hence it even confesses the fact; it owns to being an entirely fortuitous individual consciousness— a consciousness which is empirical, which is directed upon what admittedly has no reahty for it, which obeys what, in its regard, has no essential being, which realises and does what it knows to have no truth. But while it passes in this manner for an individual, isolated, contingent, in fact animal life, and a lost self-consciousness, it also, on the contrary, again turns itself into universal self-sameness; for it is the negativity of all singleness and all difference.
From this self-identity, or rather within its very self, it falls back once more into that contingency and confusion, for this very self-directed process of negation has to do solely with what is single and individual, and is occupied with what is fortuitous. This form of consciousness is, therefore, the aimless fickleness and instabihty of going to and fro, hither and thither, from one extreme of self-same self-consciousness, to the other of contingent, confused and confusing consciousness. It does not itself bring these two thoughts of itself together. It finds its freedom, at one time, in the form of elevation above all the whirling complexity and all the contingency of mere existence, and again, at anot_. time, likewise confesses to falhng back upon what is unessential, and to being taken up with that. It lets the unessential content in its thought vanish; but in that very act it is the consciousness of some- Scepticism 199 thing unessential. It announces absolute disappearance but the announcement is, and this consciousness is the evanescence expressly announced. It announces the nulhty of seeing, hearing, and so on, yet itself sees and hears. It proclaims the nothingness of essential ethical principles, and makes those very truths the sinews of its own conduct. Its deeds and its words behe each other continually; and itself, too, has the doubly contradictory consciousness of immutabihty and sameness, and of utter contingency and non-identity with itself. But it keeps asunder the poles of this contradiction within itself; and bears itself towards the contradiction as it does in its purely negative process in general. If sameness is shown to it, it points out unlikeness, non-identity; and when the latter, which it has expressly mentioned the moment before, is held up to it, it passes on to indicate sameness and identity. Its talk, in fact, is hke a squabble among self-willed children, one of whom says a when the other says B, and again B, when the other says a, and who, through being in contradiction with themselves, procure the joy of remaining in contradiction with one another.
In Scepticism consciousness gets, in truth, to know itself as a consciousness containing contradiction within itself. From the experience of this proceeds a new attitude which brings the two thoughts together which Scepticism holds apart. The want of intelhgence which Scepticism manifests regarding itself is bound to vanish, because it is in fact one consciousness which possesses these two modes wjthin it. This new att',:le consequently is one which is aware of being the double consciousness of itself as self-hberating, unalterable, self-identical, and as utterly self-confounding, self- 200 Phenomenology of Mind perverting; and this new attitude is the consciousness of this contradiction within itself.
In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the bare and simple freedom of itself. In Scepticism, it reaUses itself, negates the other side of determinate existence, but, in so doing, really doubles itself, and is itself now a duaUty. In this way the dupUcation, which previously was divided between two individuals, the lord and the bondsman, is concentrated into one. Thus we have here that duahsing of self-consciousness within itself, which lies essentially in the notion of mind; but the tmity of the two elements is not yet present. Hence the Unhapfy Consciousness * the AUenated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.
This unhappy consciousness, divided and at variance within itself, must, because this contradiction of its essential nature is felt to be a single consciousness, always have in the one consciousness the other also; and thus must be straightway driven out of each in turn, when it thinks it has therein attained to the victory and rest of unity. Its true return into itself, or reconciliation with itself, will, however, exhibit the notion of mind endowed with a hfe and existence of its own, because it implicitly involves the fact that, qua single and undivided, it is a double consciousness. It is itself the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, ar itself is both, and the unity of both is p]&<j its owr^ * The term " unglijckliches Bewusstsein '' is designi;.'d as a summary expression for the following movement, there being no j'ecognised general term for this purpose, as in the case of "Stoicism." The term hardly seems fortunate: with the following analysis should be read Heo-el's Philosophy of History, part 4, sec. 2, c. 1 and 2. (F.ng. tr. pp. 380-415 and History of Philosophy, part 2., Introduction.
The UnTiappy Consciousness' 201 essence; but objectively and consciously it is not yet this essence itself — is not yet the unity of both.
Since, in the fixst instance, it is the immediate, the imphcit unity of both, while for it they are not one and the same, but opposed, it takes one, namely, the simple unalterable, as essential, the other, the manifold and changeable, as the rmessential. For it, both are reahties foreign to each other. Itself, because consciousness of this contradiction, assumes the aspect of changeable consciousness and is to itself the imessential; but as consciousness of unchangeableness, of the ultimate essence, it must, at the same time, proceed to free itself from the imessential, i.e. to liberate itself from itself. For though in its own view it is indeed only the changeable, and the unchangeable is foreign and extraneous to it, yet itself is simple, and therefore unchangeable consciousness, of which consequently it is conscious as its essence, but still in such wise that itself is again in its own regard not this essence. The position, which it assigns to both, cannot, therefore, be an indifference of one to the other, i.e. cannot be an indifference of itself towards the unchangeable. Rather it is immediately both itself; and the relation of both assumes for it the form of a relation of essence to the non-essential, so that this latter has to be cancelled; but since both are to it equally essential and are contradictory, it is only the conflicting contradictory process in which opposite does not come to rest in its own opposite, but produc?
itself therein afresh merely as an opposite.
Here, then, there is a struggle against an enemy, victory over whom really means being worsted, where to have attained one result is really to lose it in the opposite. Consciousness of life, of its existence and 202 Phenomenology of Mind action, is merely pain and sorrow over this existence and activity; for therein consciousness finds only consciousness of its opposite as its essence — and of its own nothingness. Elevating itself beyond this, it passes to the unchangeable. But this elevation is itself this same consciousness. It is, therefore, immediately consciousness of the opposite, viz. of itself as single, individual, particular. The unchangeable, which comes to consciousness, is in that very fact at the same time affected by particularity, and is only present with this latter. Instead of particularity having been abohshed in the consciousness of immutabihty, it only continues to appear there still.
In this process, however, consciousness experiences just this appearance of particularity in the unchangeable, and of the unchangeable in particularity. Consciousness becomes aware of particularity in general in the immutable essence, and at the same time it there finds its own particularity. For the truth of this process is precisely that the double consciousness is one and single. This unity becomes a fact to it, but in the first instance the miity is one in which the diversity of both factors is still the dominant feature. Owing to this, consciousness has before it the threefold way in which particularity is connected with unchangeableness. In one form it comes before itself as opposed to the imchangeable essence, and is thrown back to the beginning of that struggle, which is, from first to last, the principle constituting the entire situation. At another time it finds the unchangeable appearing in the form of particularity; so that the latter is an embodiment of unchangeableness, into which, in consequence, the entire form of existence The Unhappy Consciousness 203 passes. In the third case, it discovers itself to be this particular fact in the unchangeable. The first unchangeable is taken to be merely the ahen, external Being,* which passes sentence on particular existence; since the second unchangeable is a form or mode of particularity like itself, f the unchangeable becomes in the third place spirit {Geist), has the joy of finding itself therein, and becomes aware within itself that its particularity has been reconciled with the universal. J What is set forth here as a mode and relation of the unchangeable, came to light as the experience through which self-consciousness passes in its unhappy state of diremption. This experience is now doubtless not its own onesided process; for it is itself unchangeable consciousness; and this latter, consequently, is a particular consciousness as well; and the process is as much a process of that unchangeable consciousness, which makes its appearance there as certainly as the other. For that movement is carried on in these moments: an unchangeable now opposed to the particular in general, then, being itself particular, opposed to the other particular, and finally at one with it. But this consideration, so far as it is our affair, § is here out of place, for thus far we have only had to do with imchangeableness as unchangeableness of consciousness, which, for that reason, is not true immutabihty, but is still affected with an opposite; we have not had before us the unchangeable per se and by itself; we do not, therefore, know how this latter will conduct itself. What has here so far come to hght is merely this, * God as Judge.
t Christ.
J The religious communion.
§.e. the philosophical observer 204 Phenomenology of Mind that to consciousness, whicli is our object here, the determinations above indicated appear in the unchangeable.
For this reason, then, the unchangeable consciousness also preserves, in its very form and bearing, the character and fundamental features of diremption and separate self-existence, as against the particular consciousness. For the latter it is thus altogether a contingency, a mere chance event, that the unchangeable receives the form of particularity; just as the particular consciousness merely happens to find itself opposed to the unchangeable, and therefore has this relation fer naturam.
Finally that it finds itself in the unchangeable appears to the particular consciousness to be brought about partly, no doubt, by itself, or to take place for the reason that itsel is particular; but this union, both as regards its origin as well as in its being, appears partly also due to the unchangeable; and the opposition remains within this unity itself. In point of fact, through the unchangeable assuming a definite form, the ' beyond,' as a moment, has not only remained, but really is more securely estabhshed. For if the remote ' beyond ' seems indeed brought closer to the individual by this particular form of realisation, on the other hand, it is henceforward fixedly opposed to the individual, a sensuous, impervious unit, with all the hard resistance of what is actual. The hope of becoming one therewith must remain a hope, i.e. without fulfilment, without present fruition; for between the hope and fulfilment there stands precisely the absolute contingency, or immovable indifference, which is involved in the very assumption of determinate shape and form, the basis and foundation of the hope. By The Unhappy Consciousness 205 the nature of this existent unit, through, the particular reahty it has assumed and adopted, it comes about of necessity that in course of time it becomes a thing of the past, something that has been somewhere far away, and absolutely remote it remains.
If, at the beginning, the bare notion of the sundered consciousness involved the characteristic of seeking to cancel it, qua particular consciousness, and become the unchangeable consciousness, the direction its effort henceforth takes is rather that of cancelHng its relation to the pure unchangeable, without shape or embodied form, and of adopting only the relation to the unchangeable which has form and shape.* For the oneness of the partictdar consciousness with the unchangeable is henceforth its object and the essential reahty for it, just as in the mere notion of it the es;ntial object was merely the formless abstract unchangeable: and the relation found in this absolute disruption, characteristic of its notion, is now what it has to turn away from. The external relation, however, primarily adopted to the formed and embodied imchangeable, as being an ahen extraneous reahty, must be transmuted and raised to that of complete and thoroughgoing fusion and identification.
The process through which the unessential consciousness strives to attain this oneness, is itself a triple process, in accordance with the threefold character of the relation which this consciousness takes up to its transcendent and remote reahty embodied in specific form. In one it is a pure consciousness; at another time a particular individual who takes up towards actuahty the attitude characteristic of desire and * The historic Christ as worshipped, e.g. in the mediaev-l church.
206 Phenomenology of Mind labour; and in the third place it is a consciousness of its self-existence, its existence for itself. We have now to see how these three modes of its being are found and are constituted in that general relation.
In the first place, then, regarded as pure consciousness, the unchangeable embodied in definite historical form, seems, since it is an object for pure consciousness, to be established as it is in its self-subsistent reality But this, its reahty in and for itself, has not yet come to light, as we already remarked. Were it to be in consciousness as it is in itself and for itself, this would certainly have to come about not from the side of consciousness, but from the unchangeable. But, this being so, its presence here is brought about through consciousness only in a onesided way to begin with, and just for that reason is not found in a perfect and genuine form, but constantly weighted and encumbered with imperfection, with an opposite.
But although the " unhappy consciousness " does not possess this actual presence, it has, at the same time, transcended pure thought, so far as this is the abstract thought of Stoicism, Avhich turns away from particulars altogether, and again the merely restless thought of Scepticism — so far, in fact, as this is merely particularity in the sense of aimless contradiction and the restless process of contradictory thought. It has gone beyond both of these; it brings and keeps together pure thought and particular existence, but has not yet risen to that level of thinking where the particularity of consciousness is harmoniously reconciled with pure thought itself. It rather stands midway, at the point where abstract thought comes in contact with the particularity of consciousness qua The Unhappy Consciousness 207 particularity. Itself is this act of contact; it is the union of pure thought and particularity. Moreover, this thinking individuahty, or pure thought, exists for it, and for it too the unchangeable is essentially a particular existence. But that this its object, the unchangeable, which assumes essentially the form of particularity, is its own self, the self which is particularity of consciousness — this is not established for it.
In this first condition, consequently, in which we treat it as piue consciousness, it takes up towards its object an attitude which is not that of thought; but rather (since it is indeed in itself pure thinking particularity and its object is just this pure thought, but pure thought is not their relation to one another as such), it, so to say, merely gives itself up to thought, devotes itself to thinking {geht an das Denken hin), and is the state of Devotion (Andacht). Its thinking as such is no more than the passing clang of ringing bells, or a cloud of warm incense, a kind of thinking in terms of music, that does not get the length of notions, which would be the sole, immanent objective mode of thought. This boundless pure inward feeling comes to have indeed its object; but this object does not make its appearance in conceptual form, and therefore comes on the scene as something external and foreign. Hence we have here the inward movement of pure emotion {Gemuth) which feels itself, but feels itself in the bitterness of soul-diremption. It is the movement of an infinite Yearning, which is assured that its nature is a pure emotion of this kind, a pure thought which thinks itself as particularity — a yearning that is certain of being known and recognised by this object, for the very reason that this object thinks 208 Phenomenology of Mind itself as particularity. At the same time, however, this nature is the miattainable ' beyond ' which, in being seized, escapes or rather has already escaped. The ' beyond ' has aheady escaped, for it is in part the unchangeable, thinking itself as particularity, and consciousness, therefore, attains itself therein immediately, — attains itself, but as something opposed to the unchangeable; instead of grasping the real nature, consciousness merely feels, and has fallen back upon itself. Since, in thus attaining itself, consciousness cannot prevent itself from being this opposite, it has merely laid hold of what is unessential instead of having seized true reahty. Thus, just as, on one side, when striving to find itself in the essentially real, it only lays hold of its own divided state of existence, so, too, on the other side, it cannot grasp that other [the essence] as particular or as concrete. That " other " cannot be foimd where it is sought; for it is meant to be just a " beyond," that which can not be found.
When looked for as particular it is not a universal, a thought-constituted particularity, not notion, but particular in the sense of an object, or a concrete actual, an object of immediate sense-consciousness, of sense certainty; and for that reason it is one which has disappeared^ Consciousness, therefore, can only come upon the grave of its own hfe. But since this is itself an actuahty, and since it is contrary to the nature of actuahty to afford a lasting possession, the presence even of that tomb is merely the source of trouble, toil, and struggle, a fight which must be lost.* But since consciousness has found out by experience that the grave of its actual imchangeable Being has no concrete * Cp. The Crusades.
The Unhappy Consciousness 209 actuality, that the vanished particularity qua vanished is not true particularity, it will give up looking for the unchangeable particular existence as something actual, or will cease trying to hold on to what has thus vanished. Only so is it capable of finding particularity in a true form, a form that is imiversal.