This is one dense tome. Hegel is not an easy read. In fact, this is one of the first books of philosophy which might have made me even more confused after reading it. Hegel speaks in riddles and contradictions. Nonetheless, he does make you think. Through thesis and antithesis you reach synthesis, hopefully. Hegel begins by discussing the senses. “Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge…. Sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge…. But, in the event, this very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing [Sache].” Hegel next relates the idea of truth to that of consciousness. “A perpetual alternation of determining what is true, and then setting aside this determining, constitutes, strictly speaking, the steady everyday life and activity of perceptual consciousness, a consciousness which fancies itself to be moving in the realm of truth.” Consciousness interacts with the world of objects, but is separate from it. “To the extent, then, that consciousness is independent, so too is its object, but only implicitly. Self-consciousness which is simply for itself and directly characterizes its object as a negative element, or is primarily desire, will therefore, on the contrary, learn through experience that the object is independent.” Consciousness is not devoid of reason, but reason transforms the process. “Consciousness observes; i.e. Reason wants to find and to have itself as existent object, as an object that is actually and sensuously present. The consciousness that observes in this way means, and indeed says, that it wants to learn, not about itself but, on the contrary, about the essence of things qua things…. Reason, therefore, in its observational activity, approaches things in the belief that it truly apprehends them as sensuous things opposite to the ‘I’ ; but what it actually does, contradicts this belief, for it apprehends them intellectually, it transforms their sensuous being into Notions…. Hence transforms thought into the form of being, or being into the form of thought; it maintains, in fact, that it is only as Notion that things have truth.”
Hegel circles back to the role of the individual. “Individuality is what its world is, the world that is its own. Individuality is itself the cycle of its action in which it has exhibited itself as an actual world…. The individual exists in and for himself: he is for himself or is a free activity…. In his own self, therefore there emerges the antithesis, this duality of being the movement of consciousness, and the fixed being of an appearing actuality…. This being, the body of the specific individuality, is the latter’s original aspect.” However, the individual is not the unit of reference that Hegel deems most useful. “It is in fact in the life of a people or nation that the Notion of self-conscious Reason’s actualization—of beholding, in the independence of the ‘other’, complete unity with it, or having for my object the free thinghood of an ‘other’ which confronts me and is the negative of myself, as my own being-for-myself—that the Notion has its complete reality…. The labour of the individual for his own needs is just as much a satisfaction of the needs of others as of his own…. The whole becomes, as a whole, his own work, for which he sacrifices himself and precisely in so doing receives back from it his self…. This universal Substance, speaks its universal language in the customs and laws of its nation. But this existent unchangeable essence is the expression of the very individuality which seems opposed to it; the laws proclaim what each individual is and does; the individual knows them not only as his universal objective thinghood, but equally knows himself in them, or knows them as particularized in his own individuality, and in each of his fellow citizens. In the universal Spirit, therefore, each has only the certainty of himself, of finding in the actual world nothing but himself; he is as certain of the others as he is of himself.”
For Hegel, the role of Spirit is paramount. “As substance, Spirit is unshaken righteous self-identity; but as being-for-self it is a fragmented being, self-sacrificing and benevolent, in which each accomplishes his own work, rends asunder the universal being, and takes from it his own share…. Spirit is thus self-supporting, absolute, real being. All previous shapes of consciousness are abstract forms of it. They result from Spirit analysing itself, distinguishing its moments, and dwelling for a while with each…. Spirit, then is consciousness in general which embraces sense-certainty, perception, and the Understanding, in so far as in self-analysis Spirit holds fast to the moment of being an objectively existent actuality to itself, and ignores the fact that this actuality is its own being-for-self…. Spirit is consciousness that has Reason…. Spirit is the ethical life of a nation in so far as it is the immediate truth—the individual that is a world…. The living ethical world is Spirit in its truth.” It is only through his culture that the individual life derives any meaning. “It is therefore through culture that the individual acquires standing and actuality…. This individuality moulds itself by culture into what it intrinsically is, and only by so doing is it an intrinsic being that has an actual existence; the measure of its culture is the measure of its actuality and power…. Culture is the simple soul of the substance by means of which, what is implicit in the substance, acquires an acknowledged, real existence.”
Again, Hegel returns to the role of the individual consciousness. “Just as, in regard to its knowledge, it knows itself then as a consciousness whose knowledge and conviction are imperfect and contingent; similarly, in regard to its willing, it knows itself as a consciousness whose purposes are affected with sensuousness. On account of its unworthiness, therefore, it cannot look on happiness as necessary, but as something contingent, and can expect it only as a gift of Grace…. But though its actuality is imperfect, all the same its pure will and knowledge hold duty to be what is essential…. Consciousness starts from the idea that, for it, morality and reality do not harmonize…. Moral self-consciousness asserts that its purpose is pure, is independent of inclinations and impulses, which implies that it has eliminated within itself sensuous purposes. But this alleged elimination of the element of sense it dissembles again. It acts, brings its purpose into actual existence, and the self-conscious sense-nature which is supposed to be eliminated is precisely this middle term or mediating element between pure consciousness and actual existence…. Moral self-consciousness is not, therefore, in earnest with the elimination of inclinations and impulses, for it is just these that are the self-realizing self-consciousness. But also they ought not to be suppressed, but only to be in conformity with Reason.”
Hegel concludes by returning to the nature of Spirit. “This Spirit is the free nation in which hallowed custom constitutes the substance of all, whose actuality and existence each and everyone knows to be his own will and deed.” Spirit is always above the Self; or, rather, envelops the Self. “Spirit is this movement of the Self which empties itself of itself and sinks itself into its substance, and also, as Subject, has gone out of that substance into itself, making the substance into an object and a content at the same time as it cancels this difference between objectivity and content…. Whereas in the phenomenology of Spirit each moment is the difference of knowledge and Truth, and is the movement in which that difference is cancelled, Science on the other hand does not contain this difference and the cancelling of it…. Just as Spirit in its existence is not richer than Science, so too it is not poorer either in content…. The self-knowing Spirit knows not only itself but also the negative of itself, or its limit; to know one’s limit is to know how to sacrifice oneself. This sacrifice is the externalization in which Spirit displays the process of its becoming Spirit in the form of free contingent happening, intuiting its pure Self as Time outside of it, and equally its Being as Space…. But the other side of its Becoming, History, is a conscious, self-mediating process—Spirit emptied out into Time…. The goal, Absolute Knowing, or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit, has for its path the recollection the Spirits as they are in themselves as they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their preservation, regarded from the side of their free existence appearing in the form of contingency, is History; but regarded from the side of their [philosophically] comprehended organization, it is the Science of Knowing in the sphere of appearance [phenomenology].”
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