Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

c Revealed Religion * Through the Rehgion of Art spirit has passed from the form of Substance into that of Subject ; for art brings out its shape and form, and imbues it with the nature of action or estabhshes in it the selfconsciousness which merely disappears in the awesome substance and in the attitude of simple trust does not itself comprehend itself.

This incarnation in human form of the Divine Being begins with the statue, which has in it only the outward shape of the self, while the inner Hfe thereof, its activity, falls outside it.

In the case of the cult, however, both aspects have become one ; in the outcome of the religion of art this unity in being completely attained has at the same time also passed over to the extreme of self ; in the type of spirit, which becomes perfectly certain of itself in the individual existence of consciousness, all essential content is swallowed up and submerged.

The proposition, which gives this Hghthearted action expression, runs thus : " The Self is Absolute Being. The Being which was substance, and in which the self was the accidental element, has dropped to the level of a predicate ; and in this self-consciousness, over against which nothing appears in the form of objective Being, spirit has lost its aspect of consciousness.! * Cliristianity. t Which implies such opposition. 759

760 Phenoinenology of Mind This statement, " The Self is Absolute Being," belongs, as is evident on the face of it, to the nonreligious, the concrete actual spirit ; and we have to recall what the form thereof is which gives expression to it. This form will contain at once the movement of that spirit and its conversion, which lowers the self to the note of a predicate and raises substance into subject.

This we must understand to take place in such a way that the converse statement does not fer se, or for us, make substance into subject, or, what is the same thing, does not reinstate substance again so that the consciousness of spirit is carried back to its commencement in natural rehgion ; but rather in such a way that this conversion is brought about for and through self-consciousness itself.

Since this latter consciously gives itself up, it is preserved and maintained in thus rehnquishing itself, and remains the subject of the substance; but as being likewise se?/-rehnquished, it has at the same time the consciousness of this substance. In other words, since by thus offering itself up, it produces substance as subject, this subject remains its own very self.

If, then, taking the two propositions, in the first the subject merely disappears in substantiaHty, and in the second the substance is merely a predicate, and both sides are thus present in each with contrary inequality of value — the result hereby effected is that the union and transfusion of both natures [subject and substance] become apparent. In this union both, with equal value and worth, are at once essential and also merely moments.

Hence it is that spirit is equally consciousness of itself as its objective substance, as well as simple self-contained self-consciousness.

Revealed Religion 761 The religion of art belongs to the spirit animating the ethical sphere,* the spirit which we formerly saw sink and disappear in the condition of right, i.e. in the proposition : " The self as such, the abstract person, is absolute Being. In ethical hfe the self is absorbed in the spirit of its nation, it is universahty filled to the full.

Simple abstract individuality, however, rises out of this content, and its hghtheartedness clarifies and rarifies it till it becomes a " person " and attains the abstract universality of right.

Here the substantial reality of the ethical spirit is lost, the abstract insubstantial spirits of national individuals are gathered together into a pantheon; not into a pantheon represented in idea {Vorstellung), whose impotent form lets each alone to do as it hkes, but into the pantheon of abstract universahty, of pure thought, which disembodies them, and bestows on the spiritless self, on the individual person, complete existence on its own account.

But this self, through its being empty, has let the content go; this consciousness is Being merely within itself. Its own very existence, the legal recognition of the person, is an unfulfilled empty abstraction. It thus really possesses merely the thought of itself; in other words, as it there exists and knows itself as object, it is something imreal.

Consequently, it is merely stoic independence, the independence of thought ; and this finds, by passing through the process of scepticism, its ultimate truth in that form we called the " imhappy self -consciousness " — the soul of despair. This knows how the case stands with the actual claims to vahdity which the abstract [legal] person puts * The Roman State.