a Pleasure and Necessity [The succeeding three sections discuss the procedure of one-sided subjective individualism, — the attempt to realise the individual and j'ct not transcend the particular individuality. The first thought of self-consciousness vi'hen it seeks to realise or objectify itself as a mere individual is to make the objective element return directly to itself and bring a sense of increase of its own individual being or private Pleasure. This is all its interest in the practical realisation of its purposes. But the realisation of purposes is an expression of the life of reason, and reason means universality and systematic connection of the content realised. Hence to seek solely private satisfaction or pleasure by a process which is inherently universal is a contradiction in terms. This contradiction the individual discovers in the shape of a sharp and painful contrast between its private feeling of individuation on the one hand and a network of uni^'ersal connections on the other — the contrast between " pleasure " and "necessity." Both fall within the individual's experience as a rational agent, and hence this necessity is his own necessity as much as the pleasure is his own pleasure. In the opposition between these factors there is no question as to which must triumph, and which must surrender.
This is the type of experience analysed in the following section. It is an experience that constantly recurs in the life-history of most if not all human beings at one stage or another in their development. The analysis contained in this section is indirectly a searching criticism of Hedonism in all its forms.]
Pleasuee and Necessity Self-consciousness, which, is aware of being the reahty, has its object within itself, but an object which, at first, is merely its own {fur sicli), and is not yet in actual existence. Existence stands opposed to it as a reality other than its own; and the aim of self-consciousness consists in carrying out what it is "for itself" so as to see itself as another independent being. This first purpose is to become conscious, in that other selfconsciousness, of itself as an individual, to turn this other into its own self. It has the assurance that this other already is essentially itself.
In so far as it has risen above the substance of ethical life and the quiescent state of thought, and attained its conscious independence, it has left behind the law of custom and of substantial existence, the kinds of knowledge acquired through observation, and the sphere of theory; these lie behind it as a gray shadow that is just vanishing. For this latter is rather a knowledge of something, the independent existence [Fursichseyn) and actuality of which are other than those of selfconsciousness. Instead of being the seemingly heavenborn spirit of universality in knowledge and action, wherein the feeling and enjoyment of being an individual are stilled, the earth-born spirit has made its way to this new level of seLf-consciousness, and holds that being alone as true reality which is the reality of individual consciousness.
Pleasure and Necessity 351 Intellect and science are despised, Those highest gifts possessed by men — The devil will now its master be, And it must be o'erthrown.* It plunges into life, and carries to its completion the pure individuality in which it appears. It does not so much make its own happiness as take it directly and enjoy it. The gray shades of science, laws and principles, which alone stand between it and its own reality, vanish like a lifeless mist that cannot support the living certainty of its reahty. It takes to itself life much as a ripe fruit is plucked, which comes to meet the hand that takes it. f Its action is only in one respect an act of Desire; it does not proceed to abolish the objective fact in its entirety, but merely concerns itself with the form of its otherness or objectivity, which is an unreal appearance; for it holds this to be inherently and imphcitly the same reahty as its own self. The sphere in which desire and its object subsist independently and indifferent towards each other is that of living existence; the enjoyment of desire cancels this existence, so far as concerns its being object of desire. But here this element, which gives to both separate and distinct actuality, is rather the category, a form of being which has essentially the character of a presentation. It is therefore the consciousness of independence — it may be natural consciousness, or the consciousness developed into a system of laws — which preserves individuals each for himself. This separation does not, in itself, hold for self-consciousness, which knows the other as its own proper self-hood. It attains therefore to the * Faust, t Cp. Spenser's Faerie Quecno, Bk. 2; Canto 12,.54.
352 Phenomenology of Mind enjoyment of Pleasure, to the consciousness of its actualisation in a consciousness which appears as independent, or to the intuition of the unity of both independent self-consciousnesses. It succeeds in its purpose, but only to learn there what the truth of that purpose is. It conceives itself as this individual self-existent {Fursich-seyn) being; but the actuahsation of this purpose is just the cancelling of the purpose. For it comes consciously to be, not object in the sense of a given particular individual, but rather as unity of its self and the other self-consciousness, consequently as cancelled and transcended individual, i.e. as imiversal.
The pleasure enjoyed has, indeed, the positive significance that the self has become aware of itself as objective self-consciousness: but the negative import is there as well — that of having cancelled itself. And since it took its reahsation in the former sense only, its experience comes consciously before it as contradiction, in which the acquired reahty of its individual existence finds itself destroyed by the negative element, which stands without reahty and without content over against the former, and yet is the force which consumes it. This negative element is nothing else than the notion of what this individuality inherently is. This individuality is, however, as yet the poorest form of self-reahsing mind; for it is still simply the abstraction of reason, or is the merely immediate unity of being-for-self and being-in-self {Fur-sich und Ansich-seyns), of expUcit and imphcit self. Its essential nature is only that of the abstract category. Still it has no longer the form of immediate simple heing as in the case of Observation, where it is abstract being, or, when affirmed as something ahen, is thinghood in general. Here in the case before Pleasure and Necessity 353 us there has entered into this thinghood self-existence {Fursichseyn) and mediation. It comes on the scene here, therefore, in the form of a circular process, whose content is the developed pure relation of simple ultimate elements. The actuahsation attained in the case of this individuahty consists, therefore, in nothing else than its having turned out this cycle of abstractions from the restricted confines of simple self-consciousness, and put them into the sphere and condition of selfexistence, where they appear spread out in detail as distinct objects.
The sort of object, then, that self-consciousness in its pleasurable enjoyment takes to be its true reahty, is the detailed expansion of those bare essential elements — of pure unity, of bare difference, and of their relation. Further than this the object, which individuahty finds to be its true nature, has no content. It is what is called Necessity. For Necessity, Fate, or the like, is just that about which we are unable to say what it is doing, what its definite laws and its positive content actually are, because it is the absolute pure notion itself, viewed as being, relation bare and simple, but imperturbable, irresistible, and immovable, whose work is merely the nothingness of individual existence. It is this firm unbending connexion, because the connecting factor consists in pure essentiahties or empty abstractions. Unity, Difference, and Relation are categories, each of which is nothing as it stands by itself, but only in its relation to its opposite, and they therefore cannot come apart from one another. They are by their own notion related to each other, for they are the pure notions themselves; and this absolute relation and bare abstract process constitute Necessity. The merely VOL. I.— 2 A 354 Phenomenology of Mind particular individuality, which has ia the first instance only the pure notion of reason for its content, instead of having escaped from dead theory and plunged into actual life, has thus only precipitated itself into consciousness of its own lifelessness, and finds its lot to be merely naked and alien necessity, lifeless actuahty.
The transition takes place from the form of oneness to that of universahty, from one absolute abstraction into the other; it proceeds from that purpose of pure exphcit existence-for-self, which has cast off fellowship and communion with others, into the sheer opposite — i.e. into equally abstract imphcit immanent existence — into mere being-in-itself. This appears consequently in such form that the individual is simply reduced to naught, and the utter atomicity of separate individual existence is pulverised on the equally hard but continuous actuahty.
Since it is qua consciousness the xmity of itself and its opposite, this transition is still a fact for it. Its purpose and its realisation as well as the contradiction of what constituted its essential nature, and what inherently that nature is — all this it is consciously aware of. It learns the double meaning which lies in what it does, when it sought to "take" and possess its life: it "took" hfe, but thereby rather laid hold on death.
This transition of its living being into hfeless necessity appears to it therefore a perversion which is mediated by no agency at all. The mediating factor would have to be that in which both sides would be one, where consciousness thus knew the one moment in the other, found its purpose and action in Fate, and its fate in its purpose and action, saw its own true nature in this ^Necessity. But, for consciousness the meaning of this unity Pleasure and Necessity 355 here is just pleasure itself, or siraple particular feeling; and the transition from the moment of this its purpose into the moment of its true nature is for it a mere leap into the opposite. For these moments are not contained and combined in feehng, but only in the bare pure self, which is a universal or thought. Consciousness, therefore, through the experience in which its truth ought to have come to light, has instead become to itself a dark riddle; the consequences of its deeds are to it not really its own deeds. What happens to it is found to be not the experience of what it inherently is; the transition is not a mere alteration in form of the same content and essential nature, presented now as content and true reality of consciousness, thereafter as object or intuitively perceived essence of itself. The abstract necessity thus gets the significance of the merely negativing uncomprehended power of universahty, on which individuaUty is broken in pieces.
The appearance of this mode of self-consciousness goes as far as this stage. The last moment of the existence of this mode is the thought of the loss it suffers at the hands of necessity, or the thought of itself as a being (Wesen) entirely ahen to itself. Self-consciousness in itself, however, has survived this loss; for this necessity or pure imiversahty is its own proper nature (Wesen). This reflection of consciousness into self, the knowledge that itself is necessity, is a new mode or attitude of consciousness.
The Law of the Heart, and the Frenzy OF Self-conceit [The following section is an analysis of the mood of moral Sentimentalism. It is a mood of all times and appears in many forms; but about Hegel's time it became prominent in the Romantic school and was frankly adopted as a practical attitude by certain of its representatives. Perhaps one of the most remarkable historic examples of sentimentalism was Rousseau, to whom so much in the Romantic movement may be traced. In the literature of Hegel's time, and indeed in all literature, no more perfect type of sentimentalism can be found than Goethe's Werther. With such instances as these in our minds the succeeding analysis requires neither explanation nor comment.]
The Law op the Heart, and the Frenzy OP Selp- conceit Necessity is for tMs new mode of consciousness what in truth self-consciousness finds necessity in its own case to be. In its new attitude self-consciousness regards itself as the necessary element. It knows that it has the universal, the law, immediately within itself, a law which, because of this characteristic of being immediately within consciousness as it is for itself, is called the Law of the Heart. This mode or attitude of consciousness is for itself, qua individual, essential reality as the former mode similarly was; but in the present case it is richer by the characteristic that this self-existence is taken as necessary or universal.
The law, therefore, which is primarily the law proper of self-consciousness, or a "heart" which however has in it a law, is the purpose which the self proceeds to reahse. It remains to be seen whether its realisation corresponds to its notion, and whether it will therein come to find this its law to be the essential ultimate fact.
Opposed to this " heart " stands a reahty. For in the " heart " the law is in the first place merely for itself; it is not yet actualised, and thus, too, is something other than what the notion is. This other is thereby characterised as a reahty which is the antithesis of what is to be reahsed, and consequently is the contradiction of the law and the individual. This reahty is thus on the one hand a law by which the particular individuality is 358 Phenomenology of Mind crushed and oppressed, a violent ordinance of the world which contradicts the law of the heart, and, on the other hand, a humanity suffering under that ordinance— a humanity which does not follow the law of the heart, but is subjected to an ahen necessity.
This reality, appearing in opposition to the present mode of consciousness, is, as is evident, nothing but the foregoing dixemption of individuality and its truth, a relation of gruesome necessity, under which the former is crushed. We, who trace the process, see the preceding movement, therefore, as in opposition to the new form, because the latter has essentiaUy arisen from it, and the moment whence the new form comes to the present stage is necessary for it. The new mode, however, looks on that moment as something lying at hand, something simply met with, since it has no consciousness of its origin, and takes its real essence to consist rather in being independent, in being for itself, or negatively disposed towards this positive, implicit, immanent content.
The aim and object of this individuahty is thus to cancel and transcend this necessity which contradicts the law of the heart, as also to do away with the suffering thereby arising. There is in consequence no longer here the frivohty of the former mode, which merely wanted some particular pleasure; it is the earnestness of a high purpose, which seeks its pleasure in displaying the excellence of its own true nature, and in bringing about the welfare of mankind. What it realises is itself the law, and its pleasure is at the same time universal, a pleasure which all hearts feel. To it both are inseparable; its pleasure is what conforms to the law and the realisation of the law of all mankind prepares the The Law of the Heart 359 way for its particular pleasure. For within its own self individuality and necessity are immediately and directly one; the law is a law of the heart. Individuahty is not yet removed from its place; and the unity of both has not been brought about by the process mediating that unity, has not yet been established by discipline. The reahsation of the inxmediate undisciplined nature passes for a display of excellence and for bringing about the well-being of mankind.
The law, again, which is opposed to the law of the heart is divided from the heart, and exists on its own account. Mankind, which is bound to it, does not live in the blissful unity of the law with the heart, but either lives in dismal separation and suffering, or at least in deprivation of the enjoyment of itself in obeying the law, and without the consciousness of its own excellence in overstepping it. Because that all-dominating diviae and human ordinance is divided from the heart it is regarded by the latter as a delusion, which ought to lose what it still possesses, namely, power and objectivity. It may, indeed, in its content agree by chance with the law of the heart, and then the latter can acquiesce in it. But, for the heart, it is not the bare conformity to law as such which constitutes the essential fact (Wesen), but the consciousness of itself which the "heart" thereby obtains, the fact that it has therein found satisfaction. Where the content of universal necessity, however, does not agree with the heart, necessity is also, as regards its content, nothing in itself, and must give way before the law of the heart.
The individual, then, fulfils, carries out the law of his heart. This law becomes a universal ordinance, and pleasure becomes a reality which, as it stands, conforms 360 Phenomenology of Mind to law. But in this realisation, the law has, in point of fact, escaped the individual; and thus there arises immediately only that relation which ought to be cancelled. The law of the heart ceases through its very reaUsation to be a law of the heart. For it thereby takes on the form of actually " being/' and is now universal power, which holds this particular " heart " to be a matter of iadiiierence; so that the individual, in establishing his own ordinance, no longer finds it to be his own. By reahsing his law he consequently brings about, not his law, but — since the reahsation is inherently and imphcitly his own, but exphcitly ahen and external — merely this: he gets involved and entangled in the actual ordinance, and, indeed, entangled in it, not merely as something ahen to himself but as a hostile, overpowering dominion.
By this act he takes his place in, or rather as, the general element of existent actuahty; and his act is, in his own regard, intended to have the value of a universal ordinance. But thereby he has let himself get detached from his own self; qua universality he hves, grows on his own account, and gets rid of individuahty. The individual who recognises universahty merely in the form of his own immediate self-subsistence {Fiirsichseyn) does not, therefore, find himself in this liberated and independent universality, while all the same he belongs to it, because the latter is his doing. This doing thus has the reverse significance; it contradicts the universal ordinance. For the individual's act is intended to be that of his individual heart, and not independent universal reality; and at the same time he has, in fact, recognised and acknowledged this latter, for the act has the import of setting up his essential The Law of the Heart 361 nature as free and independent reality, that is to say, of recognising reality to be his own essential being.
The individual has, by the very principle of his action, determined the more special manner in which actual universality, to which he has leagued himself, gets turned against him. His act, qua actuahty, belongs to the universal; its content, however, is his own individuahty, which, being this particular individuahty, wants to preserve itself in opposition to universahty. It is not any specific law whose estabhshment was in question; on the contrary, the immediate unity of the individual heart with universahty is the idea — raised to the dignity of a law and claiming to be vahd — that every heart must know its own self in what is universal law. But only the heart of this individual has estabhshed its reahty in his act, which, in his view, expresses his self-existence {Fursichseyn) or his pleasure. The act is intended to stand immediately for what is universal; that is to say, it is in truth something particular, and has merely the form of universahty: its particular content is, as such, to pass for universal. Hence others find in this content not the law of their heart fulfilled, but rather that of some one else; and even in view of the universal law, that each is to find his own heart in what is law, they turn against that reahty which he set up, just as he on his side turned against theirs. The individual therefore finds, as at first merely the rigid law, so now the hearts of men themselves opposed to his excellent intentions, and detesting them.
Because this type of consciousness finds universahty in the first place merely as immediate, and knows necessity as necessity of the heart, the nature of actuahsation and effective activity is to it unknown. This consciousness 362 Phenomenology of Mind is "unaware that effective realisation involves objective existence, and is in truth the inherently universal in which the particular life of consciousness, which commits itself to it in order to have being in the sense of an immediate individual hfe, is really submerged. Instead of obtaining this particular hfe of its own in that objective existence, it thus becomes estranged from itself. But that in which it does not know itself is no longer dead necessity, but necessity animated by universal individuality. It took this divine and human ordinance, which it discovered in operation, to be a dead reahty, wherein not only its own self — which claims the position of a particular individual, insists on being a particular " heart " with a life of its own and opposed to the universal — but those as well who fall within this reality had no consciousness of themselves. Now, however, it finds that reahty animated by the consciousness of all, and a law for all hearts. It learns through experience that the reahty in question is an ordinance infused and endowed with hfe, and learns this, indeed, just by the fact that it actualises the law of its own heart. For this means nothing else than that individuality becomes its own object in the form of universahty, without however knowing itself therein.
Thus, then, what the experience of this mode of selfconsciousness reveals as the truth, contradicts what this mode takes itself to be. What, however, it takes itself to be has for it the form of absolute universahty; and what is inunediately one with consciousness of self is the law of the heart. At the same time the stable living ordinance is likewise its own true nature and work; it produces nothing else but that; the latter is in direct, immediate union with self-consciousness.
The Frenzy of Self-conceit 363 In this way self-consciousness here has the characteristic of belonging to a twofold antithetic essence; it is inherently contradictory and torn to distraction in its inmost being. The law of " this individual heart " is only that wherein self-consciousness knows itself; but the universal and accepted ordinance has by actualising that law become Likewise its own essential nature and its own reality. What thus contradicts itself within its consciousness has for it in both cases the character of essence, and of being its own reahty.
When it gives expression to this moment of conscious destruction, and thereby expresses the result of its experience, it shows itself to be this inner perversion of itself, to be consciousness gone crazy, its own essence being at once not essence, its reahty directly unreality.
The madness here cannot be taken to mean that in general something unessential is regarded as essential, something unreal as real, so that what for one is essential or actual might not be so for another, and thus the consciousness of real and of unreal, or of essential and unessential, would fall apart. If something in point of fact is real and essential for consciousness in general, but for me is not so, then, in being conscious of its nothingness, I have, since I am consciousness in general, at the same time the consciousness of its reahty; and since they both are fixed and rooted within me, this is a union which is madness in general. In this state, however, there is only one object deranged for consciousness — not consciousness as such within itself and for itself. But in the result of the process of experience, which has here come about, consciousness is in its law aware of its self as this individual reahty; and at the same time, since precisely this same essential S64 Phenomenology of Mind fact, this same reality, is estranged from it, it is — qua self-consciousness, qua absolute reality — aware of its unreality. In other words, both aspects are held in their contradiction to be directly its essence, which is thus in its inmost being distracted.
The heart-throb for the welfare of mankind passes therefore into the rage of frantic self-conceit, into the fuiy of consciousness to preserve itself from destruction; and to do so by casting out of its hfe the perversion which it really is, and by straining to regard and to express that perversion as something else. The universal ordinance and law it, therefore, now speaks of as an utter distortion of the law of its heart and of its happiness, a perversion invented by fanatical priests, by riotous, revelling despots and their minions, who seek to indemnify themselves for their own degradation by degrading and oppressing in their turn — a distortion practised to the nameless misery of deluded mankind.
Consciousness in this its frenzy proclaims individuality to be deranging, mad, and perverted, but this is an alien and accidental individuality. It is the heart, however, or the particular consciousness immediately seeking to be universal, that is thus raving and perverted, and the outcome of its action is merely that this contradiction comes to its consciousness. For the truth in its view is the law of its heart, something merely intended, which has not outlasted as the permanent ordinance has done, but rather collapses when it comes face to face with this latter. This its law ought to have reahty: herein the law has for it the sense of reahty, is a valid ordinance, purpose and essential nature; but that reahty, that very law as vahd or- The Frenzy of Self-conceit 365" dinance, is at once and at the same time for it nothingness and void.
Similarly its own reahty proper, itself as particular consciousness, is in its view the essential truth. Its purpose, however, is to establish that particularity as existent. It thus prima facie and in the first instance takes its self qua not individual to be the truly real, or purpose in the sense of law, and hence precisely a universahty, which it is to be objectively as a conscious fact. This its notion comes by its own act to be its object. Its (individual) self is thus discovered to be unreal, and unreahty it finds out to be its reahty. It is thus not an accidental and alien individuahty, but just this particular " heart," in every respect inherently perverted and perverting.
Since, however, the directly universal individuahty is that condition of perversion, this universal ordinance, being the law of all hearts, and so of the perverted consciousness, is no less itself in its very nature the perverted element, as indeed raging frenzy declared. On the one hand this ordinance proves itself to be a law for all hearts, by the resistance which the law of one heart meets with from other individuals. The accepted and estabhshed laws are defended against the law of a single individual because they are not empty necessity, unconscious and dead, but have spiritual substance and universality, in which those in whom this spiritual substance is reahsed five as individuals, and are conscious of their own selves. Hence, even when they complain of this ordinance, as if it went contrary to their own inmost law, and maintain in opposition to it the claims of the " heart," in point of fact they inwardly cUng to it as being their essential nature; 366 Phenomenology of Mind and if they are deprived of this ordinance, or put themselves outside the range of its influence, they lose everything. Since, then, it is precisely in this that the reality and power of pubHc ordinance consist, the latter appears as the essence, self-identical and everywhere alive, and individuality appears as its form.
On the other hand, however, this ordinance is the sphere of perversion. For in that this ordinance is the law of all hearts, in that all individuals are immediately this universal, it is a reality which is only that of self-existing individuahty, i.e. of the heart. When consciousness therefore sets up the law of its heart, it finds itself resisted by others, and the latter in opposing it are doing nothing else but setting up in their turn and making valid their own law. The universal which comes out, therefore, is only a universal resistance and struggle of all against one another, in which each makes good his own individuahty, but at the same time does not come off successfully, because each individuahty meets with the same opposition, and each is reciprocally dissipated by the others. What appears as public ordinance is thus this state of war of each against all, in which every one for himself wrests what he can, executes evenhanded justice upon the individual hves of others, and estabhshes his own individual existence, which in its turn vanishes at the hands of others. We have here the Course of tJie World, the mere semblance of a constant regular trend, which is only a pretence of universahty, and whose content is rather the meaningless insubstantial sport of setting up individual beings as fixed and stable, and then dissipating them.
If we put both sides of the universal ordinance over against one another and consider them, we see that The Universal Ordinance 367 this later universaKty has for its content restless individuahty, which regards opinion or the merely particular as law, the real as unreal, and the unreal as real. That universahty is, however, at the same time the side of reahsation of the ordinance, for to it belongs the independent self-existence {Fursichseyn) of individuahty. The other side is the universal in the sense of stable passive essence; but, for that very reason, the universal is only something inner, which is not indeed absolutely non-existent, but still not an actual reality, and can itself only become actual by cancelKng the individuahty, that has presumed to claim actuahty. This type of consciousness, which becomes aware of itself in the law — in what is inherently true and good — not as particular, or individual, but only as essentially real, yet knows individuahty to be what is perverted and perverting, and hence feels bound to surrender and sacrifice particularity of consciousness — this type of consciousness is Virtue.
Virtue and the Course of the World [The mood of moral sentimentalism is reduced to coDfusion and contradiction: but the subjective individualism in which it is rooted is not yet eradicated. Individualism now takes refuge in another attitude which claims to do greater justice to the inherent universality of rational self-realisation, but yet clings to its particular individuality as an inalienable possession. It now tries to make the realisation of universal purposes in the shape of the Good depend solely on its own activity, the objective sphere in which the good is to be carried out being regarded as at once external to its ends, opposing its activity, and yet requiring these ends to be carried out in order to have any moral significance. Individualism looks on the good as its private perquisite, and makes a personal merit and glory out of its action in carrying out the good. This external realm is the " Course of the "World " which in itself is thought to contain no goodness, and which only gets a value if the good is realised in it. The world's course is thus to owe its goodness to the efforts of the individual A struggle ensues, for the situation is contradictory; and the issue of the struggle goes to prove that the individual is not the fans et origo boni, that goodness does not await his efforts, and that in fact the course of the world is at heart good, the soul of the world is righteous.
The attitude analysed here is that of abstract moral idealism, the mood of moral strenuousness, the mood that constantly seeks the improvement and perfectibility of mankind. It is found in many forms, but particularly wherever there is any strong enmity between the "ideal" life and the "life of the world."]
Virtue and the Course oe the World