Hegel's Philosophy of Mind Part 10

(a) Consciousness Proper(127).

(a) Sensuous consciousness.

-- 418. Consciousness is, first, _immediate_ consciousness, and its reference to the object accordingly the simple and underived certainty of it. The object similarly, being immediate, an existent, reflected in itself, is further characterised as immediately singular. This is sense-consciousness.

Consciousness-as a case of correlation-comprises only the categories belonging to the abstract ego or formal thinking; and these it treats as features of the object (-- 415). Sense-consciousness therefore is aware of the object as an existent, a something, an existing thing, a singular, and so on. It appears as wealthiest in matter, but as poorest in thought. That wealth of matter is made out of sensations: they are the _material_ of consciousness (-- 414), the substantial and qualitative, what the soul in its anthropological sphere is and finds _in itself_. This material the ego (the reflection of the soul in itself) separates from itself, and puts it first under the category of being. Spatial and temporal Singularness, _here_ and _now_ (the terms by which in the Phenomenology of the Mind (W.

II. p. 73), I described the object of sense-consciousness) strictly belongs to _intuition_. At present the object is at first to be viewed only in its correlation to _consciousness_, i.e. a something _external_ to it, and not yet as external on its own part, or as being beside and out of itself.

-- 419. The _sensible_ as somewhat becomes an _other_: the reflection in itself of this _somewhat_, the _thing_, has _many_ properties; and as a single (thing) in its immediacy has several _predicates_. The muchness of the sense-singular thus becomes a breadth-a variety of relations, reflectional attributes, and universalities. These are logical terms introduced by the thinking principle, i.e. in this case by the Ego, to describe the sensible. But the Ego as itself apparent sees in all this characterisation a change in the object; and self-consciousness, so construing the object, is sense-perception.

() Sense-perception(128).

-- 420. Consciousness, having pa.s.sed beyond the sensibility, wants to take the object in its truth, not as merely immediate, but as mediated, reflected in itself, and universal. Such an object is a combination of sense qualities with attributes of wider range by which thought defines concrete relations and connexions. Hence the ident.i.ty of consciousness with the object pa.s.ses from the abstract ident.i.ty of "I am sure" to the definite ident.i.ty of "I know, and am aware."

The particular grade of consciousness on which Kantism conceives the mind is perception: which is also the general point of view taken by ordinary consciousness, and more or less by the sciences. The sensuous cert.i.tudes of single apperceptions or observations form the starting-point: these are supposed to be elevated to truth, by being regarded in their bearings, reflected upon, and on the lines of definite categories turned at the same time into something necessary and universal, viz. _experiences_.

-- 421. This conjunction of individual and universal is admixture-the individual remains at the bottom hard and unaffected by the universal, to which however it is related. It is therefore a tissue of contradictions-between the single things of sense apperception, which form the alleged ground of general experience, and the universality which has a higher claim to be the essence and ground-between the individuality of a thing which, taken in its concrete content, const.i.tutes its independence and the various properties which, free from this negative link and from one another, are independent universal _matters_ (-- 123). This contradiction of the finite which runs through all forms of the logical spheres turns out most concrete, when the somewhat is defined as _object_ (-- 194 seqq.).

(?) The Intellect(129).

-- 422. The proximate _truth_ of perception is that it is the object which is an _appearance_, and that the object's reflection in self is on the contrary a self-subsistent inward and universal. The consciousness of such an object is _intellect_. This inward, as we called it, of the thing is on one hand the suppression of the multiplicity of the sensible, and, in that manner, an abstract ident.i.ty: on the other hand, however, it also for that reason contains the multiplicity, but as an interior "simple" difference, which remains self-identical in the vicissitudes of appearance. This simple difference is the realm of _the laws_ of the phenomena-a copy of the phenomenon, but brought to rest and universality.

-- 423. The law, at first stating the mutual dependence of universal, permanent terms, has, in so far as its distinction is the inward one, its necessity on its own part; the one of the terms, as not externally different from the other, lies immediately in the other. But in this manner the interior distinction is, what it is in truth, the distinction on its own part, or the distinction which is none. With this new form-characteristic, on the whole, consciousness _implicitly_ vanishes: for consciousness as such implies the reciprocal independence of subject and object. The ego in its judgment has an object which is not distinct from it,-it has itself. Consciousness has pa.s.sed into self-consciousness.

(b) Self-consciousness(130).

-- 424. _Self-consciousness_ is the truth of consciousness: the latter is a consequence of the former, all consciousness of an other object being as a matter of fact also self-consciousness. The object is my idea: I am aware of the object as mine; and thus in it I am aware of me. The formula of self-consciousness is I = I:-abstract freedom, pure "ideality." In so far it lacks "reality": for as it is its own object, there is strictly speaking no object, because there is no distinction between it and the object.

-- 425. Abstract self-consciousness is the first negation of consciousness, and for that reason it is burdened with an external object, or, nominally, with the negation of it. Thus it is at the same time the antecedent stage, consciousness: it is the contradiction of itself as self-consciousness and as consciousness. But the latter aspect and the negation in general is in I = I potentially suppressed; and hence as this cert.i.tude of self against the object it is the _impulse_ to realise its implicit nature, by giving its abstract self-awareness content and objectivity, and in the other direction to free itself from its sensuousness, to set aside the given objectivity and identify it with itself. The two processes are one and the same, the identification of its consciousness and self-consciousness.

(a) Appet.i.te or Instinctive Desire(131).

-- 426. Self-consciousness, in its immediacy, is a singular, and a desire (appet.i.te),-the contradiction implied in its abstraction which should yet be objective,-or in its immediacy which has the shape of an external object and should be subjective. The cert.i.tude of one's self, which issues from the suppression of mere consciousness, p.r.o.nounces the _object_ null: and the outlook of self-consciousness towards the object equally qualifies the abstract ideality of such self-consciousness as null.

-- 427. Self-consciousness, therefore, knows itself implicit in the object, which in this outlook is conformable to the appet.i.te. In the negation of the two one-sided moments by the ego's own activity, this ident.i.ty comes to be _for_ the ego. To this activity the object, which implicitly and for self-consciousness is self-less, can make no resistance: the dialectic, implicit in it, towards self-suppression exists in this case as that activity of the ego. Thus while the given object is rendered subjective, the subjectivity divests itself of its one-sidedness and becomes objective to itself.

-- 428. The product of this process is the fast conjunction of the ego with itself, its satisfaction realised, and itself made actual. On the external side it continues, in this return upon itself, primarily describable as an individual, and maintains itself as such; because its bearing upon the self-less object is purely negative, the latter, therefore, being merely consumed. Thus appet.i.te in its satisfaction is always destructive, and in its content selfish: and as the satisfaction has only happened in the individual (and that is transient) the appet.i.te is again generated in the very act of satisfaction.

-- 429. But on the inner side, or implicitly, the sense of self which the ego gets in the satisfaction does not remain in abstract self-concentration or in mere individuality; on the contrary,-as negation of _immediacy_ and individuality the result involves a character of universality and of the ident.i.ty of self-consciousness with its object.

The judgment or diremption of this self-consciousness is the consciousness of a "_free_" object, in which ego is aware of itself as an ego, which however is _also_ still outside it.

() Self-consciousness Recognitive(132).

-- 430. Here there is a self-consciousness for a self-consciousness, at first immediately as one of two things for another. In that other as ego I behold myself, and yet also an immediately existing object, another ego absolutely independent of me and opposed to me. (The suppression of the singleness of self-consciousness was only a first step in the suppression, and it merely led to the characterisation of it as _particular_.) This contradiction gives either self-consciousness the impulse to _show_ itself as a free self, and to exist as such for the other:-the process of _recognition_.

-- 431. The process is a battle. I cannot be aware of me as myself in another individual, so long as I see in that other an other and an immediate existence: and I am consequently bent upon the suppression of this immediacy of his. But in like measure _I_ cannot be recognised as immediate, except so far as I overcome the mere immediacy on my own part, and thus give existence to my freedom. But this immediacy is at the same time the corporeity of self-consciousness, in which as in its sign and tool the latter has its own _sense of self_, and its being _for others_, and the means for entering into relation with them.

-- 432. The fight of recognition is a life and death struggle: either self-consciousness imperils the other's like, and incurs a like peril for its own-but only peril, for either is no less bent on maintaining his life, as the existence of his freedom. Thus the death of one, though by the abstract, therefore rude, negation of immediacy, it, from one point of view, solves the contradiction, is yet, from the essential point of view (i.e. the outward and visible recognition), a new contradiction (for that recognition is at the same time undone by the other's death) and a greater than the other.

-- 433. But because life is as requisite as liberty to the solution, the fight ends in the first instance as a one-sided negation with inequality.

While the one combatant prefers life, retains his single self-consciousness, but surrenders his claim for recognition, the other holds fast to his self-a.s.sertion and is recognised by the former as his superior. Thus arises the status of _master and slave_.

In the battle for recognition and the subjugation under a master, we see, on their phenomenal side, the emergence of man's social life and the commencement of political union. _Force_, which is the basis of this phenomenon, is not on that account a basis of right, but only the necessary and legitimate factor in the pa.s.sage from the state of self-consciousness sunk in appet.i.te and selfish isolation into the state of universal self-consciousness. Force, then, is the external or phenomenal commencement of states, not their underlying and essential principle.

-- 434. This status, in the first place, implies _common_ wants and common concern for their satisfaction,-for the means of mastery, the slave, must likewise be kept in life. In place of the rude destruction of the immediate object there ensues acquisition, preservation, and formation of it, as the instrumentality in which the two extremes of independence and non-independence are welded together. The form of universality thus arising in satisfying the want, creates a _permanent_ means and a provision which takes care for and secures the future.

-- 435. But secondly, when we look to the distinction of the two, the master beholds in the slave and his servitude the supremacy of his _single_ self-hood, and that by the suppression of immediate self-hood, a suppression, however, which falls on another. This other, the slave, however, in the service of the master, works off his individualist self-will, overcomes the inner immediacy of appet.i.te, and in this divestment of self and in "the fear of his lord" makes "the beginning of wisdom"-the pa.s.sage to universal self-consciousness.

(?) Universal Self-consciousness.

-- 436. Universal self-consciousness is the affirmative awareness of self in an other self: each self as a free individuality has his own "absolute"

independence, yet in virtue of the negation of its immediacy or appet.i.te without distinguis.h.i.+ng itself from that other. Each is thus universal self-conscious and objective; each has "real" universality in the shape of reciprocity, so far as each knows itself recognised in the other freeman, and is aware of this in so far as it recognises the other and knows him to be free.

This universal re-appearance of self-consciousness-the notion which is aware of itself in its objectivity as a subjectivity identical with itself and for that reason universal-is the form of consciousness which lies at the root of all true mental or spiritual life-in family, fatherland, state, and of all virtues, love, friends.h.i.+p, valour, honour, fame. But this appearance of the underlying essence may be severed from that essential, and be maintained apart in worthless honour, idle fame, &c.

-- 437. This unity of consciousness and self-consciousness implies in the first instance the individuals mutually throwing light upon each other.

But the difference between those who are thus identified is mere vague diversity-or rather it is a difference which is none. Hence its truth is the fully and really existent universality and objectivity of self-consciousness,-which is _Reason_.

Reason, as the _Idea_ (-- 213) as it here appears, is to be taken as meaning that the distinction between notion and reality which it unifies has the special aspect of a distinction between the self-concentrated notion or consciousness, and the object subsisting external and opposed to it.

(c) Reason(133).

-- 438. The essential and actual truth which reason is, lies in the simple ident.i.ty of the subjectivity of the notion, with its objectivity and universality. The universality of reason, therefore, whilst it signifies that the object, which was only given in consciousness _qua_ consciousness, is now itself universal, permeating and encompa.s.sing the ego, also signifies that the pure ego is the pure form which overlaps the object, and encompa.s.ses it without it.

-- 439. Self-consciousness, thus certified that its determinations are no less objective, or determinations of the very being of things, than they are its own thoughts, is Reason, which as such an ident.i.ty is not only the absolute _substance_, but the _truth_ that knows it. For truth here has, as its peculiar mode and immanent form, the self-centred pure notion, ego, the cert.i.tude of self as infinite universality. Truth, aware of what it is, is mind (spirit).