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process of performing; and this experience, which seems as if it must be the truth, contradicts that notion of
the act. Still, if we look at the content of this experience taken in its completeness, that content is seen to be
the transitory work. What persists is not the transitoriness; rather this is itself actual and is bound up with the
work, and vanishes with it; the negative falls away along with the positive whose negation it is.
The very notion of substantially and inherently real individuality contains within it this transience of
transitoriness (Verschwinden des Verschwindens). For that wherein the work disappears, or what disappears
in the work, is the objective reality; and this same reality was to give experience, as it was called, its
supremacy over the notion which individuality has about itself. Objective reality, however, is a moment
which itself has no longer independent truth in this mode of consciousness; it (i.e. the truth) consists solely in
the unity of this consciousness with action, and the true work is only that unity of action and existence, of
willing and performance. Because of the certainty fundamental to its actions, consciousness takes the actual
reality opposed to that conscious certainty to be something which itself is only for consciousness. The
opposition cannot any longer occur for consciousness in this form of its self-existence in contrast to reality,
when consciousness is self-consciousness returned into itself and with all opposition gone. On the contrary,
the opposition and the negativity manifested in the case of work then affect not only the content of the work
or the content of consciousness as well, but the reality as such, and hence affect the opposition present merely
in virtue of that reality and in it, and the disappearance of the work. In this way consciousness turns from its
transitory work back upon itself, and asserts its own notion and its certainty to be what is permanent and
abiding, as opposed to the experience of the fortuitousness of action. In point of fact it comes to know its
essential principle or notion, in which the reality is only a moment, something for consciousness, not
something in and for itself; it finds that reality to be a passing moment, of significance therefore merely as
being in general, whose universality is one and the same with action. This unity, this identity is the true work;
it is the real intent, the fact of the matter (die Sache selbst), which asserts itself at all costs and is felt to be the
lasting element, independent of "fact" which is the accident of an individual action as such, the accident of
circumstances, means, and actuality.
The main concern (die Sache selbst) stands opposed to these moments only so far as they claim to have a
value in isolation, but is essentially their unity, because identifying, fusing, actuality with individuality. It is,
too, an action, and, qua action, pure action in general, and thereby just as much action of this individual; and
this action, because still appertaining to the individual in opposition to actuality, has the sense of a purpose.
Similarly it is the transition from this specific character to the opposite: and finally it is a reality which is
present objectively for consciousness. The main intent thus expresses the essential spiritual substance in
which all these moments as independently valid are cancelled and transcended and so hold good only as
SELF-CONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALS ASSOCIATED AS A COMMUNITY OF ANIMALS AND THE DECEPTI
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THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
universal; and in which the certainty consciousness has regarding itself is a "fact"--a real object before
consciousness, an object born of self-consciousness as its own, without ceasing to be a free independent
object in the proper sense. The "thing", found at the stage of sense-certainty and perception, now gets its
significance through self-consciousness, and through it alone. On this rests the distinction between a thing
(Ding) and a fact (Sache). A process is gone through here corresponding to what we find in the case of
sense-experience and perception.
Self-consciousness, then, has attained its true conception of itself when this stage of the real intent is
reached; it is the interpenetration of individuality and objectivity: an interpenetration which has become
objective. In it self-consciousness has arrived at a consciousness of its own substance. At the same time, as
we find self-consciousness here, it is a consciousness of its substance which has just arisen, and hence is
immediate; and this is the specific way in which we find spirit at the present stage: it has not yet reached its
truly real substance. The objectified intent takes in this immediate consciousness the form of bare and simple
essence (einfachen Wesen), which being universal, contains all its various moments in itself and belongs to
them, but, again, is also indifferent towards them taken as specific moments, and is independent by itself ;
and, as this free and objective simple abstract "fact", passes for the essentially real (Wesen). The various
moments of the original determinateness, the moments of the "fact" of this particular individual, his purpose,
means, action, and actual reality, are, on the one hand, particular moments for this consciousness, which it
can abandon and give up for the objectified intent; on the other hand, however, they all have this object as
their essential nature, but only in such a way that it, being their abstract universal, can find itself in each of
these different moments and be their predicate. The objectified intent is not yet subject; but those moments
stand for subject, because they belong to the aspect of individualness, while the object in mind is only at this
stage bare universality. It is the genus which finds itself in all these moments as species of itself, and is
equally independent of them.
Consciousness is called "honest", when it has on the one hand attained this idealization (Idealismus), which
objectified intent expresses, and on the other possesses the truth in it qua this formal universality.
Consciousness when so characterized is solely concerned with intended object, and hence occupies itself with
its various moments or species. And when it does not reach this fact in one of these moments, does not find
the real intent in one meaning, it just on that account lays hold of the fact in another; and consequently always
really secures that satisfaction which should belong to this mode of consciousness by its very nature (seinem
Begriffe nach). However things turn out, it achieves and secures the objectified intent, for the latter, being
this universal genus of those moments, is the predicate of all.
Should it not bring a purpose into reality, it has at least willed the purpose, i.e. turns purpose qua purpose,
mere doing which does nothing, into the real intent, and can therefore maintain and feel consoled that at least
there has always been something attempted, something done. Since the universal contains within it even the
negative or the transitoriness, this too, the self-annihilation of the work, is itself its doing. It has stimulated
others towards this, and still finds satisfaction in the disappearance of its reality, just as bad boys enjoy a
personal pleasure in getting their ears boxed because they are the cause of its being done. Or, again, suppose
it has not so much as tried to carry out the real intent and done nothing at all, then it has not cared; the
objectified intent is for it just the unity of its decision with reality; it asserts that the reality would be nothing
else than its own wish in the matter (sein Magen). Finally, suppose something of interest has come its way
entirely without its help, then for it this reality is the real intent just by the interest which it finds therein,
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