The Unhappy Consciousness

^'207' Hence, the Unhappy Consciousness (1) the Alienated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.

^'208' This unhappy consciousness is divided and at variance within itself.

This contradiction of its essential nature is felt to be a single consciousness. Whatever it has in the one consciousness the other has also.

Thus must be straightway driven out of each in turn, when it thinks it has therein attained to the victory and rest of unity.

Its true return into itself, or reconciliation with itself, will, however, display the notion of mind endowed with a life and existence of its own.

because it implicitly involves the fact that, while being an undivided consciousness, it is a double-consciousness.

It is itself the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, and itself is both, and the unity of both is also its own essence; but objectively and consciously it is not yet this essence itself — is not yet the unity of both.

Since, in the first instance, it is the immediate, the implicit unity of both, while for it they are not one and the same, but opposed, it takes one, namely, the simple unalterable, as essential, the other, the manifold and changeable as the unessential. For it, both are realities foreign to each other.

Itself, because consciousness of this contradiction, assumes the aspect of changeable consciousness and is to itself the unessential; but as consciousness of unchangeableness, of the ultimate essence, it must, at the same time, proceed to free itself from the unessential, i.e. to liberate itself from itself.

For though in its own view it is indeed only the changeable, and the unchangeable is foreign and extraneous to it, yet itself is simple, and therefore unchangeable consciousness, of which consequently it is conscious as its essence, but still in such wise that itself is again in its own regard not this essence.

The position, which it assigns to both, cannot, therefore, be an indifference of one to the other, i.e. cannot be an indifference of itself towards the unchangeable.

Rather it is immediately both itself; and the relation of both assumes for it the form of a relation of essence to the non-essential, so that this latter has to be cancelled; but since both are to it equally essential and are contradictory, it is only the conflicting contradictory process in which opposite does not come to rest in its own opposite, but produces itself therein afresh merely as an opposite.

^'209' Here then, there is a struggle against an enemy. Victory over this really means being worsted. The goal is really to lose it in the opposite.

Consciousness of life, of its existence and action, is merely pain and sorrow over this existence and activity.

In activity, consciousness finds only consciousness of its opposite as its essence — and of its own nothingness.

Elevating itself beyond this, it passes to the unchangeable. But this elevation is itself this same consciousness.

It is, therefore, immediately consciousness of the opposite, viz. of itself as single, individual, particular.

The unchangeable, which comes to consciousness, is in that very fact at the same time affected by particularity. It is only present with this latter.

Instead of particularity having been abolished in the consciousness of immutability, it only continues to appear there still.

^'210' In this process, however, consciousness experiences just this appearance of particularity in the unchangeable, and of the unchangeable in particularity.

Consciousness becomes aware of particularity in general in the immutable essence. At the same time, it there finds its own particularity.

For the truth of this process is precisely that the double consciousness is one and single.

This unity becomes a fact to it. But in the first instance, the unity is one in which the diversity of both factors is still the dominant feature.

Owing to this, consciousness has before it the threefold way in which particularity is connected with unchangeableness.

In one form it comes before itself as opposed to the unchangeable essence, and is thrown back to the beginning of that struggle, which is, from first to last, the principle constituting the entire situation.

At another time it finds the unchangeable appearing in the form of particularity; so that the latter is an embodiment of unchangeableness, into which, in consequence, the entire form of existence passes.

In the third case, it discovers itself to be this particular fact in the unchangeable.

The first unchangeable is taken to be merely the alien, external Being, (2) which passes sentence on particular existence; since the second unchangeable is a form or mode of particularity like itself (3), it, i.e. the consciousness, becomes in the third place spirit (Geist), has the joy of finding itself therein, and becomes aware within itself that its particularity has been reconciled with the universals. (4)

^'211' What is set forth here as a mode and relation of the unchangeable, came to light as the experience through which self-consciousness passes in its unhappy state of diremption.

This experience is now not its own onesided process. It is itself unchangeable consciousness. This latter consequently, is a particular consciousness as well.

The process is as much a process of that unchangeable consciousness, which makes its appearance there as certainly as the other.

For that movement is carried on in these moments: an unchangeable now opposed to the particular in general, then, being itself particular, opposed to the other particular, and finally at one with it.

But this consideration, so far as it is our affair, (5) is here out of place, for thus far we have only had to do with unchangeableness as unchangeableness of consciousness, which, for that reason, is not true immutability, but is still affected with an opposite; we have not had before us the unchangeable per se and by itself; we do not, therefore, know how this latter will conduct itself. What has here so far come to light is merely this that to consciousness, which is our object here, the determinations above indicated appear in the unchangeable.

^'202' This is why the unchangeable consciousness also preserves, in its very form and bearing, the character and fundamental features of diremption and separate self-existence, as against the particular consciousness.

For the latter it is thus altogether a contingency, a mere chance event, that the unchangeable receives the form of particularity; just as the particular consciousness merely happens to find itself opposed to the unchangeable, and therefore has this relation per naturam.

Finally, that it finds itself in the unchangeable appears to the particular consciousness to be brought about partly, no doubt, by itself, or to take place for the reason that itself is particular; but this union, both as regards its origin as well as in its being, appears partly also due to the unchangeable; and the opposition remains within. this unity itself.

Through the unchangeable assuming a definite form, the “beyond,” as a moment, has not only remained, but really is more securely established. For if the remote “beyond” seems indeed brought closer to the individual by this particular form of realization, on the other hand, it is henceforward fixedly opposed to the individual, a sensuous, impervious unit, with all the hard resistance of what is actual. The hope of becoming one therewith must remain a hope, i.e. without fulfilment, without present fruition; for between the hope and fulfilment there stands precisely the absolute contingency, or immovable indifference, which is involved in the very assumption of determinate shape and form, the basis and foundation of the hope. By the nature of this existent unit, through the particular reality it has assumed and adopted, it comes about of necessity that it becomes a thing of the past, something that has been somewhere far away, and absolutely remote it remains.

^'213' If, at the beginning, the bare notion of the sundered consciousness involved the characteristic of seeking to cancel it, qua particular consciousness, and become the unchangeable consciousness, the direction its effort henceforth takes is rather that of cancelling its relation to the pure unchangeable, without shape or embodied form, and of adopting only the relation to the unchangeable which has form and shape.

(6) For the oneness of the particular consciousness with the unchangeable is henceforth its object and the essential reality for it, just as in the mere notion of it the essential object was merely the formless abstract unchangeable: and the relation found in this absolute disruption, characteristic of its notion, is now what it has to turn away from. The external relation, however, primarily adopted to the formed and embodied unchangeable, as being an alien extraneous reality, must be transmuted and raised to that of complete and thoroughgoing fusion and identification.

^'214' The process through which the unessential consciousness strives to attain this oneness, is itself a triple process, in accordance with the threefold character of the relation which this consciousness takes up to its transcendent and remote reality embodied in specific form.

In one it is a pure consciousness; at another time a particular individual who takes up towards actuality the attitude characteristic of desire and labour; and in the third place it is a consciousness of its self-existence, its existence for itself. We have now to see how these three modes of its being are found and are constituted in that general relation.

^'215' In the first place, then, regarded as pure consciousness, the unchangeable embodied in definite historical form seems, since it is an object for pure consciousness, to be established as it is in its self-subsistent reality.

But this, its reality in and for itself, has not yet come to light, as we already remarked. Were it to be in consciousness as it is in itself and for itself, this would certainly have to come about not from the side of consciousness, but from the unchangeable.

But, this being so, its presence here is brought about through consciousness only in a one-sided way to begin with, and just for that reason is not found in a perfect and genuine form, but constantly weighted and encumbered with imperfection, with an opposite.

^'216' The “unhappy consciousness” does not possess this actual presence. But it has, at the same time, transcended pure thought, so far as this is the abstract thought of Stoicism, which turns away from particulars altogether, and again the merely restless thought of Scepticism — so far, in fact, as this is merely particularity in the sense of aimless contradiction and the restless process of contradictory thought.

It has gone beyond both of these. It brings and keeps together pure thought and particular existence, but has not yet risen to that level of thinking where the particularity of consciousness is harmoniously reconciled with pure though itself.

It rather stands midway, at the point where abstract thought comes in contact with the particularity of consciousness qua particularity.

Itself is this act of contact. It is the union of pure thought and individuality. This thinking individuality or pure thought also exists as object for it, and the unchangeable is essentially itself an individual existence.

But that this its object, the unchangeable, which assumes essentially the form of particularity, is its own self, the self which is particularity of consciousness-this is not established for it.