Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

816 Phenomenology of Mind self-less substance, and maintains as against it the principle of subjective Individuality.* But after spirit has rehnquished this principle and brought it under the ordeal of culture, has thereby made it an objective existence and established it throughout the whole of existence, has arrived at the idea of " Utility "t and in the sphere of absolute freedom has found the key to existence to be Individual Will, J— after these stages spirit then brings to hght the thought that lies in its inmost depths, and expresses ultimate Reahty in the form Ego = Ego. § This "Ego identical with Ego" is, however, an inward, self-reflecting process ; for since this identity qua absolute negativity is absolute distinction, the selfidentity of the Ego stands in contrast to this absolute distinction, which — being pure distinction and at the same time objective to the self that knows itself — has to be expressed as Time.

In this way, just as formerly ultimate Reahty was expressed as unity of thought and extension, it would here be interpreted as unity of thought and time. But distinction left to itself, unresting, unhalting time, really collapses upon itself ; it !^S( is the objective quiescence, the stable continuity of extension ; while this latter is pure identity with self — is Ego. Again, Ego is not merely self, it is identity of self with itself.

This identity, however, is complete and immediate unity with self ; in other v^^ords this Subject is just as much Substance. Substance by itself alone would be void and empty Intuition {Anschauen), or the intuition of a content which qua specific would * Leibnitz. t Tlie principle of the "Aufklärung.'' I Kant. § Fichte.

Absolute Knowledge 817 have merely a contingent character and would be devoid of necessity.

Substance would only stand for the Absolute in so far as Substance was thought of or " intuited " as absolute unity ; and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside the Substance and be due to reflection, a process which does not belong to Substance, because Substance would not be Subject, would not be conceived as Spirit, as reflecting about self and reflecting itself into self.

If, nevertheless, a content were to be spoken of, then on the one hand, it would only exist in order to be thrown into the empty abysm of the Absolute, while on the other it would be picked up in external fashion from sense perception.

Knowledge would appear to have come by things, by what is distinct from knowledge itself, and to have got at the distinctions between the endless variety of things, without any one understanding how or where all this came from.* Spirit, however, has shown itself to be neither the mere withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere absorption of self- consciousness into blank Substance devoid of all distinctions.

Spirit is the movement of the self which empties itself of self and sinks itself within its own substance, and qua subject, both goes out of that substance into itself, making its substance an object and a content, and also supersedes this distinction of objectivity and content.

That first reflection out of immediacy is the subject's distinction of self from its substance, the notion in a state of self-diremption, the subjectification of the self, and the coming of the pure ego into being. Since this distinction is the action pure and simple of Ego = Ego, * Schelling. VOL. 11.-2 D

818 Phenomenology of Mind the notion is the necessity for and the uprising of existence, which has the substance for its essential nature and subsists on its own account.

But this 5-5»^ subsisting of existence for itself is the notion estabhshed and reahsed in determinate form, and is thereby the notion's own inherent movement — that of descending into the bare and simple substance, which is only subject by being this negativity and going through this process.

Ego has not to take its stand on the form of selfconsciousness in opposition to the form of substantiahty and objectivity, as if it were afraid of emptying itself and becoming objective. The power of spirit Ues rather in remaining one with itself when giving up itself, and, because it is self-contained and self-subsistent, in estabhshing as mere moments its explicit self-existence as well as its imphcit inherent nature.

Nor again is Ego a tertium quid which casts distinctions back into the abysm of the Absolute, and declares them all to mean the same there. On the contrary, true knowledge lies rather in the seeming inactivity which merely watches and considers how the element distinguished proceeds, how it is self-moved by its very nature and returns again into its own unity. With absolute knowledge, then.

Spirit has wound up the process of its various forms and modes, so far as in assuming these various shapes and forms it is affected with the insurmountable distinction which consciousness implies [i.e. the distinction of consciousness from its object or content]. Spirit has attained the pure element of its existence, the notion.

The content is, in view of the freedom of its own existence, the self that empties and gives up itself to objectivity ; in other words, that