it implies and in which alone it can be free and feel itself at home. The struggle spirit goes through is thus the greatest in the whole range of its experience, for the opposition to be overcome is the profoundest that exists. Since its aim is to achieve the highest for itself, nothing sacred can be allowed to stand in its way. It will make any sacrifice, and, if necessary, produce the direst spiritual disaster, a spiritual "reign of terror," to accomplish its result.
The movement of spirit here analysed covers every form of the individual's "struggle for a substantial spiritual life." It embraces the " intellectual," " economic," " religious," and the " ethical " in the narrower sense of these terms; it embraces all that we mean by " culture " and " civilisation." Hence the various parts of the argument: — spiritual " discipline," "enlightenment," the pursuit of "wealth," "belief" and "superstition," " absolute freedom."
The process of spiritual life passed under critical review here is familiar to a greater or less extent in every age and every society. But the actual historical material present to the mind of the writer is derived from (1) the period of European history embracing the entrance of Christianity and Christian philosophy into European civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the intellectual, " humanistic," awakening of the Renaissance which led on to the ecclesiastical revolution known as the Reformation: (2) the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century, the so-called "Enlightenment" which preceded and culminated in the French Revolution, the supreme outburst of spiritual emancipation known in European history. These two periods, far removed as they are in time, have much in common. They embody principles of spiritual development fundamentally alike, and are therefore freely drawn upon in the analysis, regardless of historicity.
Much of Hegel's analysis of the first stage of this spiritual movement has also directly in view the character of Rameau in Diderot's dialogue Le neveu de Rameau. This remarkable work was written in 1760, but was first brought to the notice of the literary public by Goethe, who translated and published the work in 1805. It thus came into Hegel's hands while he was writing the Phenomenology: and this perhaps accounts for the repeated references to it in the argument. The term " self -estranged spirit" with which he heads this section occurs in Goethe's translation. Rameau is an extreme type of such a spirit.
With this section should be read Hegel's Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, § 3, c. 2; Pt. IV, § 2, c. 1, § 3, c. 1, 3: the History of Philosophy, Pt. 3, Introduction, and c. 2, " The French Philosophy and the German Enlightenment."]
SPIRIT IN SELF-ESTRANGEMENT — THE DISCIPLINE OF CULTURE The ethical substance preserved and kept opposition enclosed within its simple conscious life; and this consciousness was in immediate unity with its own essential nature. That nature has therefore the simple characteristic of something merely existing for the consciousness which is directed immediately upon it, and whose "custom" (Sitte) it is. Consciousness does not stand for a particular excluding self, nor does the substance mean for it an existence shut out from it, with which it would have to establish its identity only through estranging itself, and yet at the same time have to produce that estrangement. But that mind, whose self is absolutely insular, absolutely discrete, finds its content over against itself in the form of a reality that is just as impenetrable as itself, and the world here gets the characteristic of being something external, negative to self-consciousness. Yet this world is a spiritual reality, it is essentially the fusion of individuality with being. This its existence is the work of self-consciousness, but likewise an actuality immediately present and alien to it, which has a peculiar being of its own, and in which it does not know itself. This reality is the external element and the free content * of the sphere of legal right. But this external reality, which the master of the world Spirit in Self-estrangement 489 of legal right takes control of, is not merely this elementary irreducible entity casually lying before the self; it is his work, but not in a positive sense, rather negatively so. It preserves its existence by self-consciousness of its own accord relinquishing itself and giving up its essentiality, the condition which, in that waste and ruin which prevail in the sphere of right, the external force of the elements let loose seems to bring upon self-consciousness. These elements by themselves are sheer ruin and destruction, and cause their own overthrow. This overthrow, however, this their negative nature, is just the self; it is their subject, their action, and their process. Such process and activity again, through which the substance becomes actual, are the alienation of personality, for the immediate self, i.e. the self without estrangement and holding good as it stands, is without substantial content, and the sport of these raging elements. Its substance is thus just its relinquishment, and the relinquishment is the substance, i.e. the spiritual powers forming themselves into a coherent world, and thereby securing their subsistence.
The substance in this way is spirit, self-conscious unity of the self and the essential nature; but both also take each other to mean and to imply alienation. Spirit is consciousness of an objective reality which exists independently on its own account. Over against this consciousness stands, however, that unity of the self with the essential nature, consciousness pure and simple over against actual consciousness. On the one side actual self-consciousness by its self-relinquishment passes over into the real world, and the latter back again into the former. On the other side, however, this very actuality, both person and objectivity, is can- 490 Phenomenology of Mind celled and superseded; they are purely universal. This its alienation is pure consciousness, or the essential nature. The present has at once its opposite in its beyond, which consists in its thinking and its being thought; just as this again has its opposite in what is here in the present, which is its actuality alienated from it.
Spirit in this case, therefore, constructs not merely one world, but a twofold world, divided and self-opposed. The world of the ethical spirit is its own proper present; and hence every power it possesses is found in this unity of the present, and, so far as each separates itself from the other, each is still in equilibrium with the whole. Nothing has the significance of a negative of self-consciousness; even the spirit of the departed is in the life-blood of his relative, is present in the self of the family, and the universal power of government is the will, the self of the nation. Here, however, what is present means merely objective actuality, which has its consciousness in the beyond; each particular moment, as an essential entity, receives this, and thereby actuality from an other, and so far as it is actual, its essential being is something other than its own actuality. Nothing has a spirit self-established and indwelling within it; rather each is outside itself in what is alien to it. The equilibrium of the whole is not the unity which abides by itself, nor its inwardly secured tranquillity, but rests on the alienation of its opposite. The whole is, therefore, like each particular moment, a selfestranged reality. It breaks up into two spheres: in one kingdom self-consciousness is actually both the self and its object, and in another we have the kingdom of pure consciousness, which, being beyond the former, Spirit in Self-estrangement 491 has no actual present, but exists for Faith, is matter of Belief. Now just as the ethical world passes from the separation of divine and human law, with its various forms, and its consciousness gets away from the division into knowledge and the absence of knowledge, and returns into the principle which is its destiny, into the self which is the power to destroy and negate this opposition, so, too, both these kingdoms of self-alienated spirit will return into the self. But while the former was the first self, holding good directly, the particular person, this second, which returns into itself from its selfrelinquishment, will be the universal self, the consciousness grasping the conception; and these spiritual worlds, all of whose moments insist on being a fixed reality and an unspiritual subsistence, will be dissolved in the light of pure Insight. This insight, being the self grasping itself, completes the stage of culture. It takes up nothing but the self, and everything as the self, i.e. it comprehends everything, extinguishes all objectiveness, and converts everything implicit into something explicit, everything which has a being in itself into what is for itself. When turned against belief, against faith, as the far-away region of inner being lying in the distant beyond, it is Enlightenment (Aufklarung). This enlightenment also terminates self-estrangement in this region whither spirit in self-alienation turns to seek its safety as to a region where it becomes conscious of a peace adequate to itself. Enlightenment upsets the household arrangements, which spirit carries out in the house of faith, by bringing in the goods and furnishings belonging to the world of the Here and Now, a world which that spirit cannot refuse to accept as its own property, for its conscious life likewise belongs to that 492 Phenomenology of Mind world. In this negative task pure insight realises itself at the same time, and brings to light its own proper object, the ''unknowable absolute Being" and utility.* Since in this way actuality has lost all substantiality, and there is nothing more implicit in it, the kingdom of faith, as also that of the real world, is overthrown; and this revolution brings about absolute freedom, the stage at which the spirit formerly estranged has gone back completely into itself, leaves behind this sphere of culture, and passes over into another region, the land of the inner or subjective moral consciousness (moralischen Bewusstseiri).
* Cp. Eighteenth century Deism and utilitarianism.
THE WORLD OP SPIRIT IN SELF-ESTRANGEMENT The sphere of spirit at this stage breaks up into two regions. The one is its real world, its self-estrangement, the other is constructed and set up in the ether of pure consciousness, and is exalted above the first. This second world, being constructed in opposition and contrast to that estrangement, is just on that account not free from it; on the contrary, it is only another form of that very estrangement, which consists precisely in having a conscious existence in two sorts of worlds, and embraces both. Hence it is not self-consciousness of Absolute Being in and for itself, not Religion, which is here dealt with: it is Belief, Faith, in so far as faith is a flight from the actual world, and thus is not a selfcomplete experience (an und fiir sick). Such flight from the realm of the present is, therefore, directly in its very nature a dual state of mind. Pure consciousness is the sphere into which spirit rises: but it is not only the element of faith, but of the notion as well. Consequently both appear on the scene together at the same time, and the latter comes before us only in antithesis to the former.
CULTUEE AND ITS SPHERE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY* The spirit of this world is spiritual essence permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself to be directly present as a self -existent particular, and has that essence as its objective actuality over against itself. But the existence of this world, as also the actuality of selfconsciousness, depends on the process that self-consciousness divests itself of its personality, by so doing creates its world, and treats it as something alien and external, of which it must now take possession. But the renunciation of its self-existence is itself the production of objective actuality, and in doing so, therefore, self-consciousness ipso facto makes itself master of this world.
To put the matter otherwise, self-consciousness is only something definite, it only has real existence, so far as it alienates itself from itself. By doing so, it puts itself in the position of something universal, and this its universality actualises it, establishes it objectively, makes it valid. This equality of the self with all selves is, therefore, not the equality that was found in the case of right; self-consciousness does not here, as there, get immediate recognition and acknowledgment merely because it is; on the contrary, its claim to be rests on * It will be observed that "culture" embraces all means of selfdevelopment, "ideas" as well as material factors such as "wealth," Culture and its Sphere of Reality 495 its having made itself, by that mediating process of selfalienation, conform to what is universal. The spiritless formal universality which characterises the sphere of right takes up every natural form of character as well as of existence, and sanctions and establishes them. The universality which holds good here, however, is one that has undergone development, and for that reason it is concrete and actual.
The means, then, whereby an individual gets objective validity and concrete actuality here is the formative process of Culture. The alienation on the part of spirit from its natural existence is here the individual's true and original nature, his very substance. The relinquishment of this natural state is, therefore, both his purpose and his mode of existence; it is at the same time the mediating process, the transition of the thought-constituted substance to concrete actuality, as well as, conversely, the transition of determinate individuality to its essential constitution. This individuality moulds itself by culture to what it inherently is, and only by so doing is it then something per se and possessed of concrete existence. The extent* of its culture is the measure of its reality and its power. Although the self, qua this particular self, knows itself here to be real, yet its concrete realisation consists solely in cancelling and transcending the natural self. The original determinateness of its nature is, therefore, reduced to a matter of quantity, to a greater or less energy of will, a ' non-essential principle of distinction. But purpose and content of the self belong to the universal substance alone, and can only be something universal. The specific particularity of * Bacon's phrase, " Knowledge is power," 496 Phenomenology of Mind a given nature, which becomes purpose and content, is something powerless and unreal: it is a "kind of being " which exerts itself foolishly and in vain to attain embodiment: it is the contradiction of giving reality to the bare particular, while reality is, ipso facto, something universal. If, therefore, individuality is falsely held to consist in particularity of nature and character, then the real world contains no individualities and characters; individuals are all alike for one another; the pretence (vermeint) of individuality in that case is precisely the mere presumptive (gemeint) existence which has no permanent place in this world where only renunciation of self and, therefore, only universality get actual reality. What is presumed or conjectured to be (Das Gemeinte) passes, therefore, simply for what it is, for a kind of being. "Kind" is not quite the same as Espece* "the most horrible of all nicknames, for it signifies mediocrity, and denotes the highest degree of contempt, "f "A kind" and "to be good of its kind " are German expressions, which add an air of honesty to this meaning, as if it were not so badly meant and intended after all; or which, indeed, do not yet involve a clear consciousness of what " kind " and what culture and reality are.
That which, in reference to the particular individual, appears as his culture, is the essential moment of spiritual substance as such, viz.: the direct transition of its ideal, thought-constituted, universality into actual reality; or otherwise put, culture is the single soul of this substance, in virtue of which the essen- * " Espece se dit de personues auxquelles on ne trouve ni qualite ni merite. " — Littre.
Culture and its Sphere of Reality 497 tially inherent (Ansich) becomes something explicitly acknowledged, and assumes definite objective existence. The process in which an individuality cultivates itself is, therefore, ipso facto, the development of individuality qua universal objective being; that is to say, it is the development of the actual world. This world, although it has come into being by means of individuality, is in the eyes of self-consciousness something that is directly alienated and estranged, and, for self-consciousness, takes on the form of a fixed, undisturbed reality. But at the same time self-consciousness is sure this is its own substance, and proceeds to take it under control. This power over its substance it acquires by culture, which, looked at from this aspect, appears as self-consciousness making itself conform to reality, and doing so to the extent permitted by the energy of its original character and talents. What seems here to be the individual's power and force, bringing the substance under it, and thereby doing away with that substance, is the same thing as the actualisation of the substance. For the power of the individual consists in conforming itself to that substance, i.e. in emptying itself of its own self, and thus establishing itself as the objectively existing substance. Its culture and its own reality are, therefore, the process of making the substance itself actual and concrete.
The self is conscious of being actual only as transcended, as cancelled.* The self does not here constitute the unity of consciousness of self and object; rather this object is negative as regards the self. By means of the self qua inner soul of the process, the substance is so moulded and worked up in its various moments, * Cp. Hume's view of " personal identity," Treatise, pt. IV, c. 6, VOL. II.— G 498 Phenomenology of Mind that one opposite puts life into the other, each opposite, by its alienation from the other, gives the other stability, and similarly gets stability from the other. At the same time, each moment has its own definite nature, in the sense of having an insuperable worth and significance; and has a fixed reality as against the other. The process of thought fixes this distinction in the most general manner possible, by means of the absolute opposition of " good " and " bad," which are poles asunder, and can in no way become one and the same. But the very soul of what is thus fixed consists in its immediate transition to its opposite; its existence lies really in transmuting each determinate element into its opposite; and it is only this alienation that constitutes the essential nature and the preservation of the whole. We must now consider this process by which the moments are thus made actual and give each other life; the alienation will be found to alienate itself, and the whole thereby will take all its contents back into the ultimate principle it implies (seinen Begriff).
At the outset we must deal with the substance pure and simple in its immediate aspect as an organisation of its moments; they exist there, but are inactive, their soul is wanting. We have here something like what we find in nature. Nature, we find, is resolved and spread out into separate and separable elements — air, water, fire, earth. Of these air is the unchanging factor, purely universal and transparent; water, the reality that is for ever being dissolved and given up; fire, its pervading active unity which is ever dissolving opposition into unity, as well as breaking up simple unity into opposite constituents: earth is the tightly compact knot of these separated factors, the subject Culture and its SpJiere of Reality 499 in which these realities are, where their processes take effect, that which they start from and to which they return. In the same way the inner essential nature, the simple life of spirit that pervades self-conscious reality, is resolved, spread out into similar general areas or masses, spiritual masses in this case, and appears as a whole organised world. In the first area or mass it is the inherently universal spiritual being, self-identical; in the second it is self-existent being, it has become inherently self-discordant, sacrificing itself, abandoning itself; the third which takes the form of selfconsciousness is subject, and possesses in its very nature the fiery force of dissolution. In the first case it is conscious of itself, as immanent and implicit, as existing per se; in the second it finds independence, self-existence (Fursichseyri) developed and carried out by means of the sacrifice of what is universal. But spirit itself is the self - containedness and self -completeness of the whole, which splits up into substance qua constantly enduring and substance engaged in selfsacrifice, and which at the same time resumes substance again into its own unity; a whole which is at once a flame of fire bursting out and consuming the substance, as well as the abiding form of the substance consumed.
We can see that the areas of spiritual reality here referred to correspond to the Community and the Family in the ethical world, without, however, possessing the native familiarity of spirit which the latter have. On the other hand, if destiny is alien to this spirit, self-consciousness is and knows itself here to be the real power underlying them.
We have now to consider these separate members 500 PJienomenology of Mind of the whole, in the first instance as regards the way they are presented qua thoughts, qua essential inherent entities falling within pure consciousness, and also secondly as regards the way they appear as objective realities in concrete conscious life.
In the first form, the simplicity of content found in pure consciousness, the real is the Good, the self-identical, immediate, unchanging, and primal nature of every consciousness, the independent spiritual power inherent in its essence, alongside which the activity of the mere self-existent consciousness is only by-play. Its other is the passive spiritual being, the universal so far as it parts with its own claims, and lets individuals get in it the consciousness of their particular existence; it is a state of nothingness, a being that is null and void, the Bad. This absolute break-up of the real into these disjecta membra is itself a permanent condition; while the first member is the foundation, startingpoint, and result of individuals, which are there purely universal, the second member, on the other hand, is a being partly sacrificing itself for another, and, on that very account, is partly their incessant return to self qua individual, and their constant development of a separate being of their own.
But, secondly, these bare ideas of Good and Bad are similarly and immediately alienated from one another; they are actual, and in actual consciousness appear as moments that are objective. In this sense the first state of being is the Power of the State, the second its Resources or Wealth. The state-power is the simple spiritual substance, as well as the achievement of all, the absolutely accomplished fact, wherein individuals find their essential nature expressed, and where their Culture and its Sphere of Reality 501 particular existence is simply and solely a consciousness of their own universality. It is likewise the achievement and simple result from which the sense of its having been their doing has vanished: it stands as the absolute basis of all their action, where all their action securely subsists. This simple pervading substance of their life, owing to its thus determining their unalterable self-identity, has the nature of objective being, and hence only stands in relation to and exists for '* another. " It is thus, ipso facto, inherently the opposite of itself — Wealth or Eesources. Although wealth is something passive, is nothingness, it is likewise a universal spiritual entity, the continuously created result of the labour and action of all, just as it is again dissipated into the enjoyment of all. In enjoyment each individuality no doubt becomes aware of self-existence, aware of itself as particular; but this enjoyment is itself the result of universal action, just as, reciprocally, wealth calls forth universal labour, and produces enjoyment for all. The actual has through and through the spiritual significance of being directly universal. Each individual doubtless thinks he is acting in his own interests when getting this enjoyment; for this is the aspect in which he gets the sense of being something on his own account, and for that reason he does not take it to be something spiritual.
Yet looked at even in external fashion, it becomes manifest that in his own enjoyment each gives enjoyment to all, in his own labour each works for all as well as for himself, and all for him. His self-existence is, therefore, inherently universal, and self-interest is merely a supposition that cannot get the length of making concrete and actual what it means or sup- 502 Phenomenology of Mind poses, viz. to do something that is not to further the good of all.
Thus, then, in these two spiritual potencies selfconsciousness finds its own substance, content, and purpose; it has there a direct intuitive consciousness of its twofold nature; in one it sees what it is inherently in itself, in the other what it is explicitly for itself. At the same time qua spirit, it is the negative unity, uniting the subsistence of these potencies with the separation of individuality from the universal, or that of reality from the self. Dominion and wealth are, therefore, before the individual as objects he is aware of, i.e. as objects from which he knows himself to be detached and between which he thinks he can choose, or even decline to choose altogether. In the form of this detached bare consciousness he stands over against the essential reality as one which is merely there for him.
He then has the reality qua essential reality within itself. In this bare consciousness the moments of the substance are taken to be not state-power and wealth, but thoughts, the thoughts of Good and Bad. But further, self-consciousness is a relation of his pure consciousness to his actual consciousness, of what is thought to the objective being; it is essentially Judgment. What is Good and what is Bad has already been brought out in the case of the two aspects of actual reality by determining what the aspects primarily are; the one is statepower, the other wealth. But this first judgment, this first distinction of content, cannot be looked at as a " spiritual " judgment; for in that first judgment the one side has been characterised as only the inherently existing or positive, and the other side as only the explicit self-existent and negative. But qua Culture and its Sphere of Reality 503 spiritual realities, each permeates both moments, pervades both aspects; and thus their nature is not exhausted in those specific characteristics [positive and negative]. The self-consciousness that has to do with them is self-complete, is in itself and for itself. It must, therefore, relate itself to each in that twofold form in which they appear; and by so doing, this nature of theirs, which consists in being self-estranged determinations, will come to light.