Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Spirit in Self-estrangement — The Discipline of Culture The ethical substance preserved and kept opposition enclosed within its simple conscious life ; and this consciousness was in immediate unity with its own essential nature. That nature has therefore the simple characteristic of something merely existing for the consciousness which is directed immediately upon it, and whose "custom" {Sitte) it is.

Consciousness does not stand for a particular excluding self, nor does the substance mean for it an existence shut out from it, with which it would have to establish its identity only through estranging itself, and yet at the same time have to produce that estrangement.

But that mind, whose self is absolutely insular, absolutely discrete, finds its content over against itself in the form of a reahty that is just as impenetrable as itself, and the world here gets the characteristic of being something external, negative to self-consciousness. Yet this world is a spiritual reality, it is essentially the fusion of individuahty with being.

This its existence is the work of self-consciousness, but Hkewise an actuality immediately present and alien to it, which has a peculiar being of its own, and in which it does not know itself. This reality is the external element and the free content * of the sphere of legal right. But this external reality, which the master of the world * V, p. 479 fr.

Spirit in Self-estrangement 489 of legal right takes control of, is not merely this elementary irreducible entity casually lying before the self ; it is his work, but not in a positive sense, rather negatively so.

It preserves its existence by self-consciousness of its own accord relinquishing itself and giving up its essentiality, the condition which, in that waste and ruin which prevail in the sphere of right, the external force of the elements let loose seems to bring upon self-consciousness. These elements by themselves are sheer ruin and destruction, and cause their own overthrow.

This overthrow, however, this their negative nature, is just the self ; it is their subject, their action, and their process. Such process and activity again, through which the substance becomes actual, are the ahenation of personality, for the immediate self, i.e. the self without estrangement and holding good as it stands, is without substantial content, and the sport of these raging elements.

Its substance is thus just its relinquishment, and the relinquishment is the substance, i.e. the spiritual powers forming themselves into a coherent world, and thereby securing their subsistence. The substance in this way is spirit, self-conscious unity of the self and the essential nature ; but both also take each other to mean and to imply ahenation. Spirit is consciousness of an objective reahty which exists independently on its own account.

Over against this consciousness stands, however, that unity of the self with the essential nature, consciousness pure and simple over against actual consciousness. On the one side actual self-consciousness by its self-relinquishment passes over into the real world, and the latter back again into the former. On the other side, however, this very actuality, both person and objectivity, is can-

4Ö0 Phenomenology of Mind .celled and superseded ; they are purely universal. This its alienation is pure consciousness, or the essential nature. The present has at once its opposite in its beyond, which consists in its thinking and its being thought; just as this again has its opposite in what is here in the present, which is its actuality alienated from it.

Spirit in this case, therefore, constructs not merely one world, but a twofold world, divided and self-opposed. The world of the ethical spirit is its own proper present ; and hence every power it possesses is found in this unity of the present, and, so far as each separates itself 2>^ from the other, each is still in equilibrium with the whole.

Nothing has the significance of a negative of self-consciousness ; even the spirit of the departed is in the life-blood of his relative, is present in the self of the family, and the universal power of government is the will, the self of the nation.

Here, however, what is present means merely objective actuality, which has its consciousness in the beyond ; each particular moment, as an essential entity, receives this, and thereby actuality from an other, and so far as it is actual, its essential being is something other than its own actuality. Nothing has a spirit self-established and indwelhng within it ; rather each is outside itself in what is ahen to it.

The equihbrium of the whole is not the unity which abides by itself, nor its inwardly secured tranquillity, but rests on the alienation of its opposite. The whole is, therefore, like each particular moment, a selfestranged reality. It breaks up into two spheres : in one kingdom self-consciousness is actually both the self and its object, and in another we have the kingdom of pure consciousness, which, being beyond the former,