The Unhappy Consciousness

^'223' The third stage in the movement of this consciousness which follows from the second, which is itself independent by its will and by its performance.

In the first situation, we had only a “notion” of actual consciousness, the inward emotion, which is not yet real in action and enjoyment. The second is this actualization, as an external express action and enjoyment.

With the return out of this stage, however, it is that which has got to know itself as a real and effective consciousness, or that whose truth consists in being in and for itself.

But herein the enemy is discovered in its special and most peculiar form. In the battle of emotion this individual consciousness has the sense of being merely a tune, an abstract moment.

In work and enjoyment. which are the realization of this unsubstantial existence, it can readily forget itself, and the consciousness of its own proper life found in this realization is overborne by grateful recognition, But this overthrow of its proper distinctiveness is in truth a return of consciousness into itself, and moreover into itself as the general reality.

^'224' This third attitude, wherein this genuine reality is one term, consists in so relating this reality to absolute universal Being, as to show it to be mere nothingness.(8) The course of this relation we have still to consider.

^'225' To begin with, as regards the contrasted relation of consciousness, in which its reality is taken to be immediately naught, its actual performance thus becomes a doing of nothing at all;

its enjoyment becomes a feeling of its own unhappiness. In consequence, activity and enjoyment lose all universal content and significance; for in that case they would have a substantiality of their own: and both withdraw into the state of particularity, to which consciousness is directed in order to cancel them.

Consciousness discovers itself as this concrete particular in the functions of animal life. These latter, instead of being performed unconsciously and naturally as something which, per se, is of no significance, and can acquire no importance and essential value for spirit, these latter, since it is in them that the enemy is seen in his proper and peculiar shape, are rather an object of strenuous concern and serious occupation, and become precisely the most important consideration.(9)

Since, however this enemy creates itself in its very defeat, consciousness, by giving the enemy a fixedness of being and of meaning, instead of getting rid of him, really never gets away from him and finds itself constantly defiled. And since, at the same time, this object of its exertions, instead of being something essential, is the very meanest, instead of being a universal, is the merest particular — we have here before us merely a personality confined within its narrow self and its petty activity, a personality brooding over itself, as unfortunate as it is pitiably destitute.

^'226' But all the same both of these, both the feeling of its misfortune and the poverty of its own action, are points of connection to which to attach the consciousness of its unity with the unchangeable.

For the attempted immediate destruction of its actual existence is affected through the thought of the unchangeable and takes place in this relation to the unchangeable. The mediate relation constitutes the essence of the negative process, in which this consciousness directs itself against its particularity of being, which, however, qua relation, is at the same time in itself positive, and will bring this its unity to light as an objective fact for this consciousness itself.

^'227' This mediate relation is consequently a connected inferential process (Schluss), in which particularity, establishing itself at first in opposition to the inherent essence, is bound together and united with this other term only through a third term. Through this middle term the one extreme, unchangeable consciousness, has a being for the unessential consciousness, in which, at the same time, is also involved that the latter likewise has a being for the former, solely through that middle term; and this middle term is thus one which presents both extremes to one another, and acts as the minister of each in turn in dealing with the other. This medium is itself a conscious being, for it is an action mediating consciousness as such; the content of this action is the destruction and annihilation, which consciousness has in view in dealing with its particularity.

^'228' In the middle term, then, this consciousness gets freed from action and enjoyment, in the sense of its own action and enjoyment.

It puts away from itself, qua self-existent extreme, the substance of its will, and throws on to the mediating term, or the ministering agency,(10) its own proper freedom of decision, and herewith the guilt of its own act. This mediator, being in direct communication with the unchangeable Being, renders service by advising what is just and right.

The act, since this follows upon obedience to a deliverance enunciated by another, ceases, as regards the performance or the willing of the act, to be the agent’s own proper deed. There is still left, however, to the subordinate consciousness, its objective aspect, namely, the fruit of its labour, and enjoyment. These, therefore, it casts away as well, and just as it disclaimed its own will, so it contemns such reality as it received in work and in enjoyment.

It renounces these, partly as being the accomplished truth of its self-conscious independence, when it seeks to do something quite foreign to itself, thinking and speaking what, for it, has no sense or meaning;(11) partly, too, as being external property — when it demits somewhat of the possession acquired through its toil. It also gives up the enjoyment it had — when with its fastings and its mortifications it once more absolutely denies itself that enjoyment.

^'229' Through these moments — the negative abandonment first of its own right and power of decision, then of its property and enjoyment, and finally the positive moment of carrying on what it does not understand-it deprives itself, completely and in truth, of the consciousness of inner and outer freedom, or reality in the sense of its own existence for itself.

It has the certainty of having in truth stripped itself of its Ego, and of having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a “thing,” into an objective external existence.

It could ensure its self-renunciation and self-abandonment solely by this real and vital sacrifice [of its self ]. For only thereby is the deception got rid of, which lies in inner acknowledgment of gratitude through heart, sentiment, and tongue — an acknowledgment which indeed disclaims all power of independent self-existence, and ascribes this power to a gift from above, but in this very disclaimer retains for itself its own proper and peculiar life, outwardly in the possession it does not resign, inwardly in the consciousness of the decision which itself has resolved upon and in the consciousness of its own self-constituted content, which it has not exchanged for a content coming from without and filling it with meaningless ideas and phrases.

^'230' But in the sacrifice actually accomplished. while consciousness has cancelled the action as its own act, it has also implicitly demitted and put off its unhappy condition.

Yet that this demission(12) has implicitly taken place, is effected by the other term of the logical process (Schluss) here involved, the term which is the inherent and ultimate reality, That sacrifice of the subordinate term, however, was at the same time not a onesided action; it involves the action of the other.

For giving up one’s own will is only in one aspect negative; in principle, or in itself, it is at the same time positive, positing and affirming the will as an other,. and, specifically, affirming the will as not a particular but universal.

This consciousness takes this positive significance of the negatively affirmed particular will to be the will of the other extreme, the will, which, because it is simply an “other” for consciousness, assumes the form of advice, or counsel, not through itself, but through the third term, the mediator. Hence its will certainly becomes, for consciousness, universal will, inherent and essential will, but is not itself in its own view this inherent reality.

The giving up of its own will as particular is not taken by it to be in principle the positive element of universal will. Similarly its surrender of possession and enjoyment has merely the same negative significance, and the universal which it thereby comes to find is, in its view, not its own doing proper.

This unity of objectivity and independent self-existence which lies in the notion of action, and which therefore comes for consciousness to be the essential reality and object — as this is not taken by consciousness to be the principle of its action, neither does it become an object for consciousness directly and through itself.

Rather, it makes the mediating minister express this still halting certainty, that its unhappy state is only implicitly the reverse, i.e. is only implicitly action bringing self-satisfaction in its act or blessed enjoyment; that its pitiable action too is only implicitly the reverse, namely, absolute action; that in principle action is only really action when it is the action of some particular individual.

But for its self, action and its own concrete action remain something miserable and insignificant, its enjoyment pain, and the sublation of these, positively considered, remains a mere “beyond.” But in this object, where it finds its own action and existence, qua this particular consciousness, to be inherently existence and action as such, there has arisen the idea of Reason, of the certainty that consciousness is, in its particularity, inherently and essentially absolute, or is all reality.