Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Revealed Religion 777 self-complete, this reflexion into itself is at the same time the transition into another sphere of its being. Ideal presentation constitutes the middle term between pure thought and self-consciousness as such, and is merely one of the determinate forms. At the same time however, as has been shown, the character belonging to such presentation — that of being " synthetic connexion " — is spread over all these elements and is their common characteristic. The content itself, which we have to consider, has partly been met with already, as the idea or presentation of the " unhappy " and the " behevmg " types of consciousness. In the case of the " unhappy " despairing consciousness, however, the pecuKarity hes in the content being produced from consciousness and longingly desired, wherein the spirit can never be satiated nor find rest because the content is not yet its own content inherently and essentially, or in the sense of being its substance. In the case of the "beheving" consciousness, again, this content has been regarded as the impersonal Being of the World, as the essentially objective content of presentative thought — a pictorial thinking that seeks to escape the actual world altogether, and consequently has not the certainty of self-consciousness, a certainty which is cut of! from it, partly as being conceit of knowledge, partly as being pure insight. The consciousness of the rehgious communion, on the other hand, possesses the content as its substance, just as the content is the certainty the communion has of its own spiritual hfe. Spirit, represented at first as substance in the element of pure thought, is, thus, primarily the eternal Being, simple, self-identical, which does not, however, i-CL

778 Phenomenology of Mind have this abstract meaning of Being, but the meaning of Absolute Spirit. Yet spirit consists, not in being a meaning, not in being the inner, but in being the actual, the real. " Simple eternal Being " would, therefore, be spirit merely in empty phrase, if it stopped at ideational pictorial thought, and went no further than the expression of " simple eternal Being.

" Simple Being," however, because it is abstraction, is in point of fact the inherently negative, is indeed the negativity of reflective thought, or negativity as found in Being per se ; i.e. it is absolute distinction from itself, its pure process of becoming its other.

Qua essential Being, it is merely in itself, purely imphcit, or for us : but since this purity of form is just abstraction or negativity, it is for itself, it is the self, the notion. It is thus objective; and since presentational thinking apprehends and expresses as an event what has just been expressed as the necessity of the notion, it will be said that the eternal Being produces for itself an other.

But in this otherness it has hkewise, if so facto, returned into itself again; for the distinction is distinction in itself, i.e. the distinction is directly distinguished merely from itself, and is thus the unity returned into itself.

There are thus three moments to be distinguished : immanent absolute Being ; exphcit Self-existence, which is the antithesis, the express otherness, of Being, and for which that Being is object ; and Self -existence or Self-knowledge in that other, in that antithetic expression. The absolute Being beholds only itself in its Self -existence, in its objective otherness.

In thus emptying itself, in this kenosis, it is merely within itself : the independent Self-existence which excludes itself from absolute Being is the knowledge of

Revealed Religion 779 itself on the part of absolute Being.

It is the " Word," the Logos, which when spoken empties the speaker of himself, outwardises him, and leaves him behind emptied, but is at the same time immediately heard and understood, and only this act of hearing or perceiving himself is the actual existence of the " Word/' Hence, then, the distinctions which are set up are immediately resolved just as they are made, and are directly made just as they are resolved, and the truth and the reahty consist precisely in this self-closed circular process.

This movement within itself is what the absolute Being qita Spirit expresses. Absolute Being, when not grasped as Spirit, is merely an empty abstraction, just as spirit which is not grasped as a process in this way is merely an empty word. Since its moments are taken purely as moments, they are notions in restless activity, which are merely in being inherently their own opposite, and in finding their rest in the whole.

But the presentative pictorial thought of the rehgious communion is not this conceptual thinking ; it has the content without its necessity ; and instead of the form of the notion it brings into the realm of pure consciousness the natural relations of Father and Son.

Since it thus, even when thinking, proceeds by way of figurative ideas, absolute Being is indeed revealed to it, but the moments of this Being, owing to this [externally] synthetic presentational thinking, fall of themselves apart from one another, so that they are not related to each other through their own very notion, while, again, this figurative thinking retreats from the pure object it deals with, and takes up a merely external relation towards it.

The object is externally revealed to it from an ahen source, and in this thought of Spirit it does not find its own self, does