For the object of belief itself is just this too, viz. a pure essential reality of its own peculiar consciousness; so that this consciousness does not put itself down for lost and negated in that object, but rather puts trust in it; and this just means that it finds itself there as this particular consciousness, finds itself therein to be self-consciousness. If I put my trust in any one, his certitude of himself is for me the certitude of myself; I know my self-existence in him, I know that he acknowledges it, and that it is for him both his purpose and his real nature. Trust, however, is belief, because its consciousness has a direct relation to its object, and thus sees at once that it is one with the object, and in the object.
Further, since what is object for me is something in which I know myself, I am at the same time in that object really in the form of another self -consciousness, i.e. one which has become in that object alienated from its own particular individuation, from its natural and contingent existence, but which partly continues therein to be self-consciousness, and partly is there an essential consciousness just like pure insight.
In the notion of insight there lies not merely this, that consciousness knows itself in the object it looks at, and finds itself directly there, without first quitting the thought element and then returning into itself; the notion implies as well that consciousness is aware of itself as being also the mediating process, aware of itself as active, as the agency of production. Through this it gets the thought of this unity of self as self and object.
This very consciousness is also belief. Obedience and action make a necessary moment, through which the 558 Phenomenology of Mind certainty of existence in Absolute Keality comes about. This action of belief does not indeed make it appear as if Absolute Reality is itself produced thereby. But the Absolute Reality for belief is essentially not the abstract reality that lies beyond the believing consciousness; it is the spirit of the religious communion, it is the unity of that abstract reality and self-consciousness. The action of the communion is an essential moment in bringing about that it is this spirit of the communion. That spirit is what it is by the productive activity of consciousness, or rather it does not exist without being produced by consciousness. For essential as this process of production is, it is as truly not the only basis of Absolute Reality; it is merely a moment. The Absolute Reality is at the same time self-complete and self-contained (an und fur sick selbst).
From the other side the notion of pure insight is seen to be something else than its own object; for just this negative character constitutes the object. Thus from the other side it also expresses the ultimate Reality of belief as something foreign to self-consciousness, something that is not bone of its bone, but is surreptitiously foisted on it like a changeling child. But here enlightenment is entirely foolish; belief discovers it to be a way of speaking which does not know what it is saying, and does not understand the facts of the case when it talks about priestly deception, and deluding the people. It speaks about this as if by means of some hocus-pocus of conjuring priestcraft there were foisted on consciousness as true Reality something that is absolutely foreign, and absolutely alien to it; and yet says all the while that this is an essential reality for consciousness, that The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 559 consciousness believes in it, trusts in it, and seeks to make it favourably disposed towards itself; i.e. that consciousness therein sees its pure ultimate Being just as much as its own particular and universal individuality, and creates by its own action this unity of itself with its essential reality. In other words, it directly declares that to be the very inmost nature of consciousness which it declares to be something alien to consciousness.
How, then, can it possibly speak about deception and delusion? By the fact that it directly expresses about belief the very opposite of what it asserts of belief, it ipso facto really reveals itself to be the transparent lie. How are deception and delusion to take place, where consciousness in its very truth has directly and immediately the certitude of itself, where it possesses itself in its object, since it just as much finds as produces itself there? The distinction no longer exists, even in words.
When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer, as a fact, had to be that the question is pointless, because it is impossible to deceive a people in this matter. Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have been disposed of in many an instance; many a one has stuck to it that a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things of sense and particular events have been credited for a time; but in the knowledge of that inmost reality where consciousness finds the direct certainty of its own self, the idea of delusion is entirely baseless.
Let us see further how belief finds enlightenment in the case of the different moments of its own con- 560 Phenomenology of Mind scious experience, to which the view just noted referred in the first instance only in a general way. These moments are pure thought, or, qua object, absolute Being per se (an und fur sick); then its relation, as a form of knowledge, to absolute Being, the ultimate basis of its belief; and finally its relation to absolute Being in its acts, i.e. its and " worship " service.* Just as pure insight has misconceived itself in belief as a whole and denied its own nature, we shall find it taking up in these moments, too, an attitude similarly perverted and distorted.
Pure insight assumes towards the absolute Reality of the believing mind a negative attitude. This Being is pure thought, and pure thought is established within itself as object or as the true Being; in the believing consciousness this immanent and essential reality of thought preserves at the same time for the self-existent consciousness the form of objectivity, but merely the empty form; it exists in the character of something consciously "presented." To pure insight, however, since it is pure consciousness in its aspect of self existing for itself, this other appears as something negative of self-consciousness. This might, again, be taken either as the pure essential reality of thought, or even as the being found in sense-experience, the object of sense-certainty. But since it is at the same time for the self, and this self, qua self which has an object, is an actual consciousness, for insight the peculiar object as such is an ordinary existing thing of sense. This its object appears before it when it examines the ideas found in belief. It condemns these ideas * Enlightenment attacks the object and the txi&is of belief, and the mode of worship.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 561 and in doing so condemns its own proper object. It really commits a wrong, however, against belief in so apprehending the object of belief as if it were its own ob j ec t. According to this account it states regarding belief that its absolute Being is a piece of stone, a block of wood, having eyes and seeing not, or again some bread-paste, which is obtained from gram grown on the field and transformed by men and set aside for that purpose; or in whatever other ways belief anthromorphoses absolute Being, making it objective and representable.
Enlightenment, proclaiming itself as the pure and true, here turns what is held to be eternal life and holy spirit into a concrete passing thing of sense, and contaminates it with the inherent nothingness of sense-experience— with an aspect and point of view which is not to be found at all in the worshipping attitude of belief, so that enlightenment simply calumniates it by speaking of such an aspect. What belief reveres is for belief assuredly neither stone nor wood, nor bread-dough, nor any other sort of thing of time and sense. If enlightenment thinks it worth while to say its object all the same is this as well) or even that belief is this in its inherent nature and in truth, then belief also knows that something which it is " as well," but for it this something lies outside its worship; on the other hand, however, belief does not in general look on such things as stones, etc., as having an inherent and essential being at all, the Absolute Reality of pure thought is for it alone something inherent.
The second moment is the relation of belief as a form of knowing consciousness to this ultimate Reality. As pure thinking consciousness belief has this Reality VOL. II.— L,, 562 Phenomenology of Mind immediately within itself. But pure consciousness is just as much a mediate relation of conscious certainty to truth, a relation constituting the basis of belief. For enlightenment this ground comes at the same time to be regarded as a chance knowledge of chance occurrences. The ground of knowledge, however, is the conscious universal, and in its ultimate meaning is absolute spirit, which in abstract pure consciousness, or thought as such, is merely absolute Being, but qua self-consciousness is the knowledge of itself. Pure insight sets up this conscious universal, self-knowing spirit pure and simple, likewise as a negative element for self-consciousness. Doubtless this insight is itself pure mediate thought, i.e.
thought mediating itself with itself, it is pure knowledge; but since it is pure insight, or pure knowledge, which does not yet know itself, i.e. for which as yet there is no awareness that it is this pure process of mediation, this process seems to insight, like everything else constituting it, to be something external, an other. When realising its inherent principle, then, it develops this moment essential to it; but that moment seems to it to belong to belief, and to be, in its character of an external other, a fortuitous knowledge of just such common historical actualities. It thus here charges religious belief with basing its certainty on some particular historical evidence, which, considered as historical evidence, would assuredly not even warrant that degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers. It further makes the imputation that the certainty in the case of religious belief rests on the accidental fact of the preservation of all this evidence: on the preservation of this evidence partly by means of paper, and partly The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 563 through the skill and honesty in transferring what is written from one paper to another, and lastly rests upon the accurate interpretation of the sense of dead words and letters. As a matter of fact, however, it never occurs to belief to make its certainty depend on such evidence and such fortuitous circumstances. Belief in its conscious assurance occupies a naive unsophisticated attitude towards its absolute object, knows it with a purity, which never mixes up letters, paper, or copyists with its consciousness of the Absolute Being, and does not make use of things of that sort to effect its union with the Absolute. On the contrary, this consciousness is the self-mediating, self-relating ground of its knowledge; it is spirit itself which bears witness of itself both in the inner heart of the individual consciousness, as well as through the presence everywhere and in all men of belief in it. If belief wants to appeal to historical evidences in order to get also that kind of foundation, or at least confirmation, for its content which enlightenment speaks of, and is really serious in thinking and acting as if that were an important matter, then it has eo ipso allowed itself to be corrupted and led astray by the insinuations of enlightenment; the efforts it makes to secure a basis or support in this way are merely indications that show how it has been affected and contaminated by enlightenment.
There still remains the third aspect, the active relation of consciousness to Absolute Being, its forms of service.* This action consists in cancelling the particularity of the individual, or the natural form of its selfexistence, whence arises its certainty of being pure self - consciousness, of being, as the result of its * The cult.
564 Phenomenology of Mind action, i.e. as a self-existing conscious individual, one with ultimate Keality.
Since in this action purposiveness and end get distinguished, and pure insight likewise takes up a negative attitude towards this action, and denies itself just as it did in the other moments, it must as regards purposiveness present the appearance of being stupid and unintelligent, since insight united with intention, accordance of end with means, appears to it as an other, as really the opposite of what insight is. As regards the end, however, it has to make badness, enjoyment, and possession, its purpose, and prove itself in consequence to be the impurest kind of intention, since pure intention, qua external, an other, is equally impure intention.
Accordingly we find that, so far as concerns purposiveness, enlightenment thinks it foolish when the believing individual seeks to obtain the higher consciousness,— where there is no entanglement with natural enjoyment and pleasure, — by positively denying itself natural enjoyment and pleasure, and proving through its acts that it makes no denial of its contempt for them, but rather that the contempt is quite genuine.
In the same way enlightenment finds it foolish for consciousness to absolve itself of its characteristic of being absolutely individual, excluding all others, and possessing property of its own, by itself demitting its own property, for thereby it shows in reality that this isolation is not really serious. It shows rather that itself is something that can rise above the natural necessity of isolating itself and of denying, in this absolute isolation of its own individual existence, that the others are one and the same with itself.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 565 Pure insight finds both purposeless as well as wrong. It is purposeless to renounce a pleasure and give away a possession, in order to show oneself independent of pleasure and possession; hence, in the opposite case, insight will be obliged to proclaim the man a fool, who, in order to eat, employs the expedient of actually eating. Insight again thinks it wrong to deny oneself a meal, and give away butter and eggs not for money, nor money for butter and eggs, but just to give them away and get no return at all; it understands a meal, or the possession of things of that sort, to be a self's proper object, an end of a self, and hence in fact understands itself to be a very impure intention which ascribes essential value to enjoyment and possessions of this kind. As pure insight it further maintains the necessity of rising above the condition of nature, above covetousness and its ways; it only finds it foolish and wrong that this supremacy should have to be demonstrated by action. In other words this pure intention is in reality a deception, which pretends to and demands an inner elevation, but declares that it is superfluous, foolish, and even wrong to be in earnest in the matter, to put this uplifting into concrete expression, into actual shape and form, and demonstrate its truth.
Pure insight thus denies itself both as pure insight, — for it abrogates directly purposive action, and as pure intention, — for it denies the intention of proving its independence of the ends of particular existence.
Thus, then, enlightenment makes belief learn what it means. It takes on this appearance of being bad, because just by the fact of relation to an external other it gives itself a negative reality, it presents itself as the opposite of itself. Pure insight and intention have to 566 Phenomenology of Mind adopt this relational attitude, however, for that is their actualisation.
This realisation appeared, in the first instance, as a negative reality. Perhaps its positive reality is better constituted. Let us see how this stands.
When all prejudice and superstition have been banished, the question arises what next? What is the truth enlightenment has diffused in their stead? It has already given expression to this positive content in its process of exterminating error, for that alienation of itself is equally its positive reality.
In dealing with what for belief is Absolute Spirit, it interprets whatever sort of determination it discovers there as being wood, stone, etc., as particular concrete things of sense. Since in this way it conceives in general every characteristic, i.e. every content and filling, to be a finite fact, to be a human entity and a mental presentation, absolute Being on its view turns out to be a mere vacuum, to which can be attributed no characteristics, no predicates at all. In fact to marry such a vacuity with universal predicates would be essentially reprehensible; and it is just through such a union that the monstrosities of superstition have been produced. Reason, pure insight, is doubtless not empty itself, since the negative of itself is present consciously to it, and is its content; it is, on the contrary, rich in substance, but only in particularity and restrictions. The enlightened function of reason, of pure insight, consists in allowing nothing of that sort to appertain to Absolute Reality, nor attributing anything of that kind to it: this function well knows how to put itself and the wealth of finitude in their place, and deal with the Absolute in a worthy manner.
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 567 In contrast with this colourless empty Reality there stands, as a second aspect of the positive truth of enlightenment, the particularity in general of conscious life and of all that is: — a particularity excluded from an absolute Being, and standing by itself as something entirely self-contained. Consciousness, which in its very earliest expression is sense-certainty and mere " opining," here comes back, after the whole course of its experience, to this same point, and is once again a knowledge of what is pure negative of itself, a knowledge of sense things, i.e. of existent entities which stand in indifference over against its own self-existence. But here it is not an immediate naive consciousness; it has become to itself immediate. While at first the prey to every sort of entanglement, into which it is plunged by its gradually unfolding, and now led back to its first form by pure insight, it has arrived at this first state as the result and outcome of the process. This sensecertainty, resting as it does on an insight into the nothingness of all other forms of consciousness, and hence the nothingness of whatever is beyond senseexperience, — this sense-certainty is no longer a mere " opining," it is rather absolute truth. This nothingness of everything that transcends sense is doubtless merely a negative proof of this truth. But no other is admissible or possible, for the positive truth of sense-experience in itself is just the unmediated self-existence of the notion itself qua object and an object in the form of otherness — the positive truth is that it is absolutely certain to every consciousness that it is and that there are other real things outside it, and that in its naive existence it, as well as these things too, are in and for themselves or absolute.
568 Phenomenology of Mind Lastly, the third moment of the truth of enlightenment is the relation of the particular entities to Absolute Being, is the relation of the first two moments to one another. Insight, qua pure insight of what is identical or unrestricted, also transcends the unlike or diverse, i.e. transcends finite reality, or transcends itself qua mere otherness. The " beyond " of this otherness it takes to be the void, to which it thus relates the facts of sense. In determining this relation both the terms do not enter the relation as its content; for the one is the void, and thus a content is only to be had through the other, through sense reality. The form the relation assumes, however, to the determination of which the aspect of immanent and ultimate being (Ansich) contributes, can be shaped just as we please; for the form is something inherently and essentially negative, and therefore something self-opposed, being as well as nothing, inherent and ultimate (Ansich) as well as the opposite; or, what is the same thing, the relation of actuality to an inherent essential being qua something beyond, is as much a negating as a positing of that actuality. Finite actualities can, therefore, properly speaking, be taken just in the way people have need of them. Sense facts are thus related now positively to the Absolute qua something ultimate (Ansich), and sense reality is itself ultimate per se; the Absolute makes them, fosters and cherishes them. Then, again, they are related to it as an opposite, that is to their own non-being; in this case they are not something ultimate, they have being only for an other. Whereas in the preceding mode of consciousness the conceptions involved in the opposition took shape as good and bad, in the case of pure insight they pass into the more The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 569 abstract forms of what is per se (Ansich) and what is for an other being.
Both ways of dealing with the positive as well as the negative relation of finitude to what is ultimate (Ansich) are, however, equally necessary as a matter of fact, and everything is thus as much something per se (an sick) as it is something for an other: in other words everything is " useful."
Everything is now at the mercy of other things, lets itself now be used by others, and exists for them; and then again it, so to say, gets up on its hind legs, fights shy of the other, exists for itself on its own account, and on its side uses the other too.
From this, as a result, man, being the thing conscious of this relation, derives his true nature and place. As he is immediately, man is good, qua natural consciousness per se, absolute qua individual, and all else exists for him: and further, — since the moments have the significance of universality for him qua self-conscious animal, — everything exists to pleasure and delight him, and, as he first comes from the hand of God, he walks the earth as in a garden planted for him. He is bound also to pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; he claims to have a use for it which distinguishes him from every other being, for, as it happens, his inherently good nature is so constituted that the superfluity of delight does it harm, or rather his particularity contains as a factor in its constitution a principle that goes beyond it; his particularity can overreach itself and destroy itself. To prevent this, he finds reason a useful means for duly restraining this self-transcendence, or rather for preserving himself when he does go beyond determinate 570 Phenomenology of Mind limits: for such is the force of consciousness. The enjoyment of this conscious and essentially universal being must, in manifold variety and duration, be itself universal and not something determinate. The principle of measure or proportion has, therefore, the determinate function of preventing pleasure in its variety and duration from being quite broken off: i.e. the "measure" is determined with respect to immoderation.
As everything is useful for man, man is likewise useful too, and his characteristic determination consists in making himself a member of the human herd, of use for the common good, and serviceable to all. The extent to which he looks after his own interests is the measure with which he must also serve the purpose of others, and so far as he serves their turn, he is taking care of himself: the one hand washes the other. But wherever he finds himself there he is in his right: he makes use of others and is himself made use of.
Different things are serviceable to one another in different ways. All things, however, have this reciprocity of utility by their very nature, by being related to the Absolute in the twofold manner, the one positive, whereby they have a being all their own, the other negative, and thereby exist for others. The relation to Absolute Keality, or Keligion, is therefore of all forms of profitableness the most supremely profitable;* for it is profiting pure and simple; it is that by which all things stand — by which they have a being all their own — and that by which all things fall — have an existence for something else.
Belief, of course, finds this positive outcome of * Cp. 1 Timothy iv. 8: "Godliness is profitable unto all things."
The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 571 enlightenment as much an abomination as its negative attitude towards belief. This enlightened insight into absolute Reality, that sees nothing in it but just absolute Reality, the etre supreme, the great Void — this intention to find that everything in its immediate existence is inherently real (an sich) or good, and finally to find the relation of the particular conscious entity to the Absolute Being, Religion, exhaustively summed up in the conception of profitableness — all this is for belief utterly and simply revolting. This special and peculiar wisdom of enlightenment necessarily seems at the same time to the believing mind to be sheer insipidity and the confession of insipidity; because it consists in knowing nothing of absolute Being, or, what amounts to the same thing, in knowing this entirely accurate platitude regarding it, — that it is merely absolute Being, and, again, in knowing nothing but finitude, taking this, moreover, to be the truth, and thinking this knowledge about finitude qua truth to be the highest knowledge attainable.
Belief has a divine right as against enlightenment, the right of absolute self-identity or of pure thought; and it finds itself utterly wronged by enlightenment; for enlightenment distorts all its moments, and makes them something quite different from what they are in it. Enlightenment, on the other hand, has merely a human right as against belief, and can only put in a human claim for its own truth; for the wrong it commits is the right of disunion, of discordance, and consists in perverting and altering, a right that belongs to the nature of self-consciousness in opposition to the simple ultimate essence or thought. But 572 Phenomenology of Mind since the right of enlightenment is the right of selfconsciousness, it will not merely retain its own right, too, in such a way that two equally valid rights of spirit would be left standing in opposition to one another without either satisfying the claims of the other; it will maintain the absolute right, because self-consciousness is the negative function of the notion (Begriff), a function which does not merely operate on its own account, but also gets control over its opposite. And because belief is a mode of consciousness, it will not be able to balk enlightenment of that right.
For enlightenment does not operate against the believing mind with special principles of its own, but with those which belief itself implies and contains. Enlightenment merely brings together and presents to belief its own thoughts, the thoughts that lie scattered and apart within belief, all unknown to it. Enlightenment merely reminds belief, when one of its own forms is present, of others it also has, but which it is always forgetting when the one is there. Enlightenment shows itself to belief to be pure insight, by the fact that it, in a given determinate moment, sees the whole, brings forward the opposite element standing in direct relation to that moment and, converting the one into the other, brings out the principle operating negatively on both thoughts — the notion. It appears, therefore, to belief to be distortion and lies, because it shows up the other side in the moments of belief. Enlightenment seems, in consequence, directly to make something else out of them than they are in their own particularity; but this other is equally essential, and in reality is to be found in the believing mind itself, only the latter does not think about it, but keeps it some- The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition 573 where else. Hence neither is the result foreign to belief nor can belief reject its truth.
Enlightenment itself, however, which reminds belief of the opposite of its various separate moments, is just as little enlightened regarding its own nature. It takes up a purely negative attitude to belief, so far as it excludes its own content from its own pure activity and takes that content to be negative of itself. Consequently, neither in this negative, in the content of belief, does it recognise itself, nor, for this reason, does it bring together the two thoughts, the one which it contributes and the one against which it brings the first. Since it does not know that what it condemns in the case of belief is directly its very own thought, it has its own being in the opposition of both moments, only one of which, — viz. in every case the one opposed to belief — it acknowledges, but cuts off the other from the first, just as belief does. Enlightenment, consequently, does not bring out the unity of both as their unity, i.e. the notion; but the notion arises before it and comes to light of its own accord, in other words, enlightenment finds the notion merely as something lying ready at hand. For in itself the process of realising pure insight is just this, that insight, whose essential nature is the notion, comes before itself to begin with in the shape of an absolute other, and repudiates itself (for the opposite of the notion is an absolute opposite), and then out of this otherness comes to itself or comes to its notion.
Enlightenment, however, is merely this process, it is the activity of the notion in still unconscious form, an activity which no doubt comes to itself qua object, but takes this object for an external other, and does not even know the nature of the notion, i.e. does not know 574 Phenomenology of Mind that it is the undifferentiated element which absolutely divides itself.
As against belief, then, insight is the power of the notion in so far as this is the active process of relating the moments lying apart from one another in belief; a way of relating them in which the contradiction in them comes to light. Herein lies the absolute right of the power which insight exercises over belief; but the actuality which it gives this power lies just in the fact that the believing state of consciousness is itself the notion and thus itself recognises and accepts the opposite which insight produces and presents before it. Insight, therefore, has and retains right against belief, because it makes valid in belief what is necessary to belief itself, and what belief contains within it.