Hegel’s examination of Self-Consciousness as a means to truth, from a more theoretical perspective, begins with an examination of Stoicism as an approach to life. As in other forms of Self-Consciousness, the fundamental goal of the Stoic is to establish oneself as free, to establish the self as the ultimate reality. The key to this approach, as Hegel sees it, rests in the activity of thinking; through thought, Hegel explains, “I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in communion with myself, and the object, which is for me the essential being, is in undivided unity with myself” (#197). Theoretically, this approach seems to succeed. Through actively thinking, it seems, one can turn all of his energy inwards and essentially reject external objects, and through this rejection, emerge as a self that is entirely insular, purely self, and therefore wholly essential; or, as Hegel puts it, “Its principle is that consciousness is a being that thinks, and that consciousness holds something to be essentially important, or true and good only insofar as it thinks it to be such” (#198). Thus, by declaring himself the only judge of value, the Stoic claims himself to be of absolute value.
And yet, the Stoic’s approach seems suspicious to the phenomenological observer, for one cannot help but realize that the claim to independence is essentially an empty pronouncement, a “contentless thought” (#200). And indeed, Hegel challenges the Stoic’s self-proclaimed freedom when he argues, “Freedom in thought has only pure thought as its truth, a truth lacking the fullness of life. Hence freedom in thought, too, is only the Notion of freedom, not the living reality of freedom itself” (#200). Instead of achieving its desired “absolute negation” of the natural world, it has achieved only “incomplete negation… [and] withdrawn from existence only into itself” (#201).
According to Hegel, Skepticism follows naturally from Stoicism in that “skepticism is the realization of that of which Stoicism was only the Notion, and is the actual experience of what freedom of thought is” (#202). Essentially, Skepticism is a state in which the natural world is not rejected, but merely denied. The Skeptic does not withdraw into himself entirely and refuse to acknowledge the natural world; instead, for the Skeptic “the wholly unessential and nonindependent character of this ‘other’ becomes explicit for [it]; the abstract thought becomes concrete thinking which annihilates the being of the world… and comes to know itself in the many and varied forms of life as a real negativity” (#202). Thus we can see how Skepticism approaches the ultimate goal of the Stoic – i.e. to determine its essentiality through active negation of external objects’ reality – by acknowledging the natural world’s presence and experiencing its existence, and yet still denying its significance. In this way, the Stoic “procures for its own self the certainty of its freedom, generates the experience of that freedom, and thereby raises it to truth” (#204).
The very fact that the Skeptic does not refuse to experience the world, and indeed does experience the world, ultimately proves problematic for Skepticism as a theory. Hegel observes in the Skeptic a fundamental dialectic: he achieves pure self-consciousness through absolute negation, and yet he exists entirely contingently insofar as he does experience the empirical world. This produces in the Skeptic a “confused medley, the dizziness of a perpetually self-engendered disorder” as he struggles to reconcile the two opposing sides of his consciousness (#205). Even though he is able to negate the objects outside of himself through thought, he is fundamentally unable to negate that side of himself which perceives those empirical objects. The Skeptic scrambles “back and forth from the one extreme of self-identical self-consciousness to the other extreme of the contingent consciousness that is both bewildered and bewildering… It affirms the nullity of seeing, hearing, etc., yet it is itself seeing, hearing, etc.” (#205).
Skepticism fails to settle the internal contradiction between the two “I”s – the conscious individual that perceives the world, and the self-conscious individual that considers itself free of the world – due to what Hegel deems a “lack of thought” (#206). This lack of thought fails to recognize the fact that ultimately these two apparently contradictory selves, are “in fact one consciousness which contains within itself these two modes” (#206). Skepticism initially strives to maintain its desired status as purely self-conscious and therefore free; however, as it becomes more developed, as it begins to think about itself, it finally is forced to admit that it is also at the same time fundamentally an irreconcilable duality. Thus, for Hegel, Skepticism fails to achieve a condition of pure self-consciousness, but “from [it] emerges a new form of consciousness which brings together the two thoughts which Skepticism holds apart” (#206) – i.e. the Unhappy Consciousness.
What the phenomenological observer now sees in the Skeptic is in fact a “dual consciousness of itself, as self-liberating, unchangeable, and self-identical [i.e. purely self-conscious], and as self-bewildering and self-perverting [i.e. both self-conscious and conscious]” (#206). It is this “dual consciousness” that Hegel calls the Unhappy Consciousness. This consciousness is unhappy insofar as it is certain of its independence as purely self-conscious, self-determining, and free; and yet, at the very same time, it cannot escape the fact of its own duality, its knowledge that it is in fact not purely self-conscious. In this way, Hegel describes, consciousness itself is duplicated “within itself” and is, essentially, two distinct consciousnesses “now lodged in one [individual]” (#206).
At this point, it is important to note that the existence of these two separate consciousnesses within one individual is “essential in the Notion of Spirit” insofar as we now have both a thesis (the consciousness aware of its own oneness) and an antithesis (the consciousness only able to see its own duality) waiting to be synthesized (#206). Hegel’s task is now one of describing how the individual can reconcile this internal dialectic and ultimately, in doing so, discover the “Notion of Spirit that has become a living Spirit, and has achieved an actual existence because it already possesses as a single undivided consciousness a dual nature” (#207). Ultimately, Hegel explains, the Unhappy Consciousness must realize that it is “the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, and itself is both, and [is also] the unity of both” (#207); however, at this point, the Unhappy Consciousness cannot understand how it could possibly be both and, furthermore, how both could ever be united. Thus, Hegel explains that, “to begin with, [the Unhappy Consciousness] is only the immediate unity of the two [consciousnesses within it]” (#208).
Because it cannot see itself to be the unity of both consciousnesses, and “because it is itself the consciousness of this contradiction” (#208), the Unhappy Consciousness declares itself to be only that consciousness of duality, and deems the other consciousness one foreign to itself: the Unchangeable. In other words, as the Unhappy Consciousness looks at its own condition, it essentially decides that it could not be the Unchangeable because it is still unhappy – the Unchangeable would be that unity which it still does not understand; thus, since it is not satisfied in the understanding of its unity, “it identifies itself with the changeable consciousness, and takes itself to be the unessential Being” (#208). But what is it really that these terms Changeable and Unchangeable mean? What do they represent and what are the implications of this representation for understanding Hegel’s ultimate reason for investigating the Unhappy Consciousness?
When Hegel begins his discussion of the Unchangeable and the Changeable, it appears that he is simply speaking about two different aspects of the individual self. However, as he gets further into his discussion of the relationship between the two, he begins to refer to the Unchangeable in a way that increasingly calls to mind God. Indeed, by substituting the word God for Unchangeable, one can understand Hegel’s descriptions of the Unhappy Consciousness to be directly linked to Christianity. With this connection in mind, one can see how Hegel’s investigation of the reconciliation between the individual and the Unchangeable is in fact an examination of how Christianity achieves that same goal of uniting the individual with God. Thus we can see that Hegel’s observations are essentially an examination of two aspects of Christianity: firstly, an analysis of the ways in which the individual relates to God, and secondly, an explanation of the process through which Christianity achieves its ultimate goal (i.e. “the reconciliation of the individual with the universal” #210).
Hegel concludes that there are three fundamental modes in which the Unhappy Consciousness relates itself to the Unchangeable. The first mode of relation that Hegel examines clearly refers to God. Hegel describes the Unhappy Consciousness as considering the Unchangeable to be “an alien Being who passes judgment on the particular individual” (#210); indeed, no one can deny that most people relate to God in an identical way. Obviously such a relationship, however, does not succeed in attaining any sort of reconciliation, for under such circumstances the consciousness is left only in “a struggle against an enemy, to vanquish whom is really to suffer defeat, where victory in one consciousness is really lost in its opposite” (#208). Thus Hegel moves on to the next relationship between man and God – one in which God appears as an incarnate form of the Universal.
The relationship between man and the incarnate Unchangeable (represented by Jesus Christ in Christianity), seemingly has the potential for a more successful connection between the individual and God, insofar as now “consciousness learns that individuality belongs to the Unchangeable itself” (#210). Logically it would seem that, as an individual, it would be easier for the Unhappy Consciousness to relate to an Unchangeable that is also an individual; however, Hegel explains that in actuality the incarnate form of God “confronts him [only] as an opaque sensuous unit with all the obstinacy of what is actual” (#212). Thus, Hegel ultimately concludes again that “the antithesis persists,” and “the hope of becoming one with it must remain a hope… for between the hope and it fulfillment there [now] stands precisely the absolute contingency or inflexible indifference which lies in the very assumption of definite form, which was [originally] the ground of hope” (#212). When one considers the situation it makes sense – would it not be easier for a person to become one with a spiritual force than with a physical individual? Thus, the Unhappy Consciousness comes to learn that its desired objective lies in considering the Unchangeable not as an alien or incarnate being; instead, as Hegel explains, it must ultimately “find its own self as this particular individual of the Unchangeable” (#210).
Having settled upon the nature of the necessary mode of relation between the Unhappy Consciousness and the Unchangeable, Hegel moves on to investigate how this relationship between the individual and the spiritual God is accomplished. He concludes that there are three ways in which the Unhappy Consciousness strives to reconcile its own duality with the Unchangeable: “first, as pure consciousness; second as a particular individual who approaches the actual world in the forms of desire and work; and third, as consciousness that is aware of its own being-for-self” (#214).
Hegel’s description of the consciousness as searching for a connection to the Unchangeable through considering itself to be a pure consciousness is essentially a reiteration of the goal of all approaches from a Self-Conscious standpoint. In both Stoicism and Skepticism, the individual sought to declare his own self-consciousness to be the essential nature of reality (such a condition would be one of pure consciousness). As explained previously by Hegel, “the incarnate Unchangeable when it is an object for pure consciousness seems to be present in its own proper nature” (#215); however, as Hegel has also shown in his look at the Unhappy Consciousness, “this [pure consciousness], its own proper nature, has not yet come into existence” (#215). Thus, we know that the Unchangeable is that other consciousness which is aware of the individual as a unity, but the Unhappy Consciousness itself “does not know that its object, the Unchangeable… is its own self, is itself the individuality of consciousness” (#216).
Nevertheless, the Unhappy Consciousness is closer to its desired self-understanding than in either of its previous modes. Having “advanced beyond both [Stoicism and Skepticism],” the Unhappy Consciousness now exists in an “intermediate position where abstract thinking is in contact with the individuality of consciousness qua individuality” (#216). In this way, Hegel makes an important observation when he characterizes the Unhappy consciousness’s condition now to be a “movement towards thinking,” where pure thought is pure consciousness (#217). Now we can see in the Unhappy Consciousness more than a frustration at its own duality, but an “inward movement of the pure heart which feels itself, but itself as agonizingly self-divided, the movement of an infinite yearning which is certain that its essence is such a pure heart, a pure thinking which thinks of itself as a particular individuality” (#216). Put simply, the Unhappy Consciousness feels certain of its own individuality, knows that ultimately it is itself a pure consciousness, even in spite of the knowledge that it is a duality. Thus, Hegel explains, we can understand this condition as “a movement towards thinking, and so [as] devotion” (#217). Here, again, with his use of the word “devotion,” we can see an explicit reference to Christianity, and, consequently, we can relate more realistically to what exactly is going on in this individual. As devoted, we can now understand the Unhappy Consciousness to be making its first real attempt at incorporating pure thought into relation with God. Although Hegel characterizes the acts performed out of devotion as “no more than the chaotic jingling of bells, or a mist of warm incense, a musical thinking that does not get as far as the Notion” (#217), nevertheless, the individual is making forward progress toward uniting the two consciousnesses.
The next condition of the Unhappy Consciousness Hegel examines stems directly from that described above, and represents a more sophisticated and developed approach to God. Instead of a reaching for God in some “unattainable beyond” through ritualized actions (#217), consciousness begins to look more and more toward its immediate surroundings and takes a more active approach to the Unchangeable. The Consciousness, now a self-feeling consciousness, “comes to view its second relationship, that of desire and work in which [it] finds confirmation of that inner certainty of itself… by overcoming and enjoying the existence alien to it, viz. existence in the form of independent things” (#218). It is interesting to note Hegel’s return to the concepts of Desire and Work, which he investigated at length earlier in the book; and indeed, since he is reiterating a previous point, he does not take the time to explain the real implications of these two behaviors. To summarize: through desire, the consciousness seeks to establish its own pure consciousness by claiming that the essence of external objects is only his consciousness itself (originally this fails both because the object is consumed and a new object must be found, and because any satisfaction from consuming the object is only temporary). However, desire paired with work yields more sufficient results – through work, the consciousness finds that objects are no longer foreign threats to the consciousness’s self-sufficiency, but instead are a reflection of the consciousness’s active placement of the universal idea into the world. However, just as before, Hegel announces that even “The Unhappy Consciousness [still] merely finds itself desiring and working; it is not aware that to find itself active in this way implies that it is in fact certain of itself, and that its feeling of the alien existence is this self-feeling” (#218).
At this point it is prudent to step back and inquire as to why Hegel has come so far with his phenomenological examination only to return to previously covered topics. Were those previous conditions the same as what Hegel is now describing, only lacking in full detail? Has our individual reverted to a previous condition? Clearly this is not the case. Instead, the Unhappy Consciousness has evolved far beyond a merely self-conscious being of desire and work, and far beyond a mere stoic and skeptic. Instead, having transcended the contentless pure thinking of the stoic, and having surpassed the frustration of its own duality in Skepticism, the Unhappy Consciousness is now an individual both approaching pure thought and consciously striving for the Unchangeable. As such, the Unhappy Consciousness has reached a level of abstraction through which it is able to find in desire and work not frustration, but “actual satisfaction” insofar as it “reflects this activity back into the other extreme, which is thus exhibited as a pure universal… which is the essence both of the self-dividing extremes as they at first appeared, and of their interchanging relationship with itself” (#222, #221). Yet what is the Unhappy Consciousness’s next decision? Still unable to recognize its own pure individuality, and still unable claim credit for its own satisfaction, the Unhappy Consciousness “gives thanks… i.e. denies itself the satisfaction of being conscious of its independence, and assigns the essence of its action not to itself but to the beyond” (#222).
Nevertheless, the Unhappy consciousness has undoubtedly made progress from the Stoic or the Skeptic. Hegel explains the Unhappy Consciousness’s professed appreciation in such a way that indeed, the Unhappy Consciousness turns out to be the closest we have come yet to finding an individual reconciled with the Unchangeable: “its giving of thanks, in which it acknowledges the other extreme [i.e. God] as the essential Being and counts itself nothing, is its own act which counterbalances the action of the other extreme, and meets the self-sacrificing beneficence with a like action” (#222). In other words, through expressing appreciation, the Unhappy Consciousness asserts itself to be capable of asserting itself as an individual, even to the Unchangeable; in terms of Christianity, one can see how a sincere giving of thanks to God for enjoyment in the empirical world, is an assertion of communion or mutual recognition between the individual and the Divine. God is no longer some distant force, but an accessible companion who has offered enjoyment and earns for himself a respectful acknowledgement – acknowledgement which the individual now feels capable of offering. In this way, the Unhappy Consciousness to a certain extent has placed itself on if not the same level, then a very near one to that of the Unchangeable, and “does not let itself be deceived by its own seeming renunciation, for the truth of the matter is that it has not renounced itself [at all]” (#222); in this way, “consciousness has experienced itself as actual and effective, or knows that it is in truth in and for itself” (#223).
One can here again witness in the Unhappy Consciousness an active negation. As observed in the Skeptic, active negation of the external world is the only way to approach pure self-consciousness; however, by negating the world through an expression of appreciation, the Unhappy Consciousness now does achieves this negation in a more complete and non-contradictory way than the Skeptic. As Hegel summarizes, “In work and enjoyment… it can directly forget itself, and the consciousness of its own particular role in this realization is cancelled out by the act of thankful acknowledgement. But this canceling-out is in truth a return of consciousness into itself… as the actuality which it knows to be true” (#224). Thus, having now “proved itself to be independent, by its will and deed” (#223), the Unhappy Consciousness approaches its definitive mode of relation to God where “this true actuality is one of the terms [in] the relation of that actuality, as a nothingness, to the universal Being” (#224).
Having successfully negated its entire experience of the world even more completely then in Skepticism, the Unhappy Consciousness has undergone a fundamental shift in its self-awareness. Now knowing all empirical reality to be a nothingness, the Unhappy Consciousness’s “actual doing thus becomes a doing of nothing, its enjoyment a feeling of its wretchedness” (#225). As one can see in members of Christianity, such a feeling of wretchedness stems from a feeling that nothing done in the world has actual significance, for there is some existence of more ultimate importance – i.e. the spiritual world, or Heaven. With this unavoidably in mind, “work and enjoyment lose all universal content and significance… Both withdraw into their mere particularity… [and] Consciousness is aware of itself as this actual individual in the animal functions” (#225). Having negated all empirical existence through appreciation, the Unhappy Consciousness now finds the world to be without meaning; as such, every “animal function,” every action like eating, drinking, sleeping – or, most explicit in Christianity, fornicating – appear as an “enemy,” a threat to one’s own pure individuality insofar as they represent “the merest particular” (#225). Thus we initially see the Unhappy Consciousness as “a personality brooding over itself, as wretched as it is impoverished” (#225).
And yet, the Unhappy Consciousness has also reached a level beyond mere wallowing in frustration, as we have seen above; it is again able to abstract from its apparent failures and find solace in the thought of the Unchangeable: “to both of these moments, the feeling of its wretchedness and the poverty of its actions, is linked the consciousness of its unity with the Unchangeable. For the attempted direct destruction of what it actually is is mediated by the thought of the Unchangeable, and takes place in relation to it” (#226). The idea of mediation is essential to the ultimate unity of the Unchangeable and the individual, as Hegel explains, “the mediated relation constitutes the essence of the negative movement in which consciousness turns against its particular individuality, but which, qua relation, is in itself positive, and will bring consciousness itself to an awareness of its unity with the Unchangeable” (#226). Thus, Hegel concludes, “the mediated relation is thus a syllogism in which individuality, initially fixed in its antithesis to the in-itself, is united with this other extreme only through a third term” (#227).
Here Hegel finally arrives at the way in which the thesis and antithesis are ultimately synthesized and combined to reveal the “Notion of Spirit that has become a living Spirit, and has achieved an actual existence” (#206). Only through a third party, a separate “conscious Being [the mediator]” (#227), which “presents the two extremes to one another, and ministers to each in its dealings with the other” (#227), can the individual and Unchangeable be united (in Christianity, the priest is the one to assume this role of mediator between man and God). Hegel makes it clear that the mediator provides a necessary function that the individual could never perform by himself, that of detaching itself from its worldly existence: “In the mediator, then, this consciousness frees itself from action and enjoyment so far as they are regarded as its own. As a separate, independent extreme, it rejects the essence of its will, and casts upon the mediator its own freedom of decision, and herewith the responsibility of its action” (#228). In this way, the individual’s action “ceases, as regards the doing or the willing of it” (#228), to be its own; the feelings of wretchedness and poverty once elicited by worldly enjoyment evaporate, for all responsibility has been assumed by the priest. Put differently, the individual gains innocence, freedom from the corruption or sin associated with its unavoidable “animal actions.”
Furthermore, under the mediator’s “advice on what is right” (#228), the individual becomes an ascetic as it goes on to renounce even “the objective aspect, viz. the fruit of is labour, and its enjoyment” (#228). Thus, we are left with an individual who has rejected not only any responsibility for his actions, but even the contents of those actions; as Hegel puts it, “Through these moments of surrender… it truly and completely deprives itself of the consciousness of inner and outer freedom, of the actuality in which consciousness exists for itself. It has the certainty… of having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a Thing, into an objective existence” (#229).
Hegel takes a special effort, however, to emphasize the fact that this sacrifice made by the individual, the surrendering of his will, was “not a one-sided action, but contained within itself the action of the other” (#230). This is an essential concept to the synthesis of individual and God, for it proves the unity of the two – “the surrender of one’s own will is only from one aspect negative; in principle, however… its is at the same time positive, viz. the positing of will as the will of an ‘other,’ and specifically of will, not as a particular, but as a universal will” (#230). Thus we can see how by following the advice of the mediator, who is in a “direct relationship with the unchangeable Being” (#228), the individual comes to embody the will of the Unchangeable. Were it not for the mediator, the individual would have no way of determining this universal will, but by being told what to do, he can effect its completion.
Thus we see the Unhappy Consciousness as an embodiment of the Unchangeable, and Hegel has revealed to us the unity of individual and God through the mediating priest. But has Hegel truly revealed the highest stage of unity between the individual and the Unchangeable? Without a doubt he has shown us one way that the individual can reconcile himself with the Unchangeable, but is there potentially more left to be accomplished? As he approaches the end of his section on Self-Consciousness, Hegel announces that there is still more to be investigated in terms of discovering the ultimate nature of reality: “For consciousness, its will does indeed become universal and essential will, but consciousness itself does not take itself to be this essential will. The surrender of its own will, as a particular will, is not taken by it to be in principle the positive aspect of universal will… [it] is not regarded as its own doing” (#230).
At this point, Hegel seems to be saying that even still the individual has not come to the full realization that it is itself the universal will, but instead only considers itself to be an embodiment of that will – instead, “it lets the mediating minister express this certainty… that its misery is only in principle the reverse … But for itself, action and its own actual doing remain pitiable, its enjoyment remains pain, and the overcoming of these in a positive sense remains a beyond” (#230). As such, we now see the individual as merely dependent, as believing not in God, but only in what the priest claims of God. Could this be Hegel’s ideal? Certainly not. However, as in every previous case, Hegel explains that we have learned something essential: the direction of our next inquiry. In this case, Hegel announces that, “there has [now] arisen for consciousness the idea of Reason, of the certainty that, in its particular individuality, it has being absolutely in itself, or is all reality” (#230). And so Hegel enters his final section entitled “Reason.”
5/9/08
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