Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Spirit in Self-estrangement ' 491 has no actual present, but exists for Faith, is matter of BeHef.

Now just as the ethical world passes from the separation of divine and human law, with its various forms, and its consciousness gets away from the division into knowledge and the absence of knowledge, and returns into the principle which is its destiny, into the self which is the power to destroy and negate this opposition, so, too, both these kingdoms of self-alienated spirit will return into the self.

But while the former was the first self, holding good directly, the particular person, ^tn^^ /r*^^ this second, which returns into itself from its self- ^*^^'^ relinquishment, will be the universal self, the consciousness grasping the conception ; and these spiritual worlds, all of whose moments insist on being a fixed reality and an unspiritual subsistence, will be dissolved in the Hght of pure Insight.

This insight, being the self grasping itself, completes the stage of culture. It takes up nothing but the self, and everything as the self, i.e. it comprehends everything, extinguishes all objectiveness, 35% and converts everything implicit into something exphcit, everything which has a being in itself into what is for itself.

When turned against behef, against faith, as the far-away region of inner being lying in the distant beyond, it is Enhghtenment {Aufklärung). This enlightenment also terminates self-estrangement in this region whither spirit in self-alienation turns to seek its safety as to a region where it becomes conscious of a peace adequate to itself.

Enlightenment upsets the household arrangements, which spirit carries out in the house of faith, by bringing in the goods and furnishings belonging to the world of the Here and Now, a world which that spirit cannot refuse to accept as its own property, for its conscious Hfe likewise belongs to that

492 Phenomenology of Mind world.

In this negative task pure insight reaHses itself at the same time, and brings to light its own proper object, the " unknowable absolute Being" and utihty.* Since in this way actuahty has lost all substantiahty, and there is nothing more implicit in it, the kingdom of faith, as also that of the real world, is overthrown ; and this revolution brings about absolute freedom, the stage at which the spirit formerly estranged has gone back completely into itself, leaves behind this sphere of culture, and passes over into another region, the land of the inner or subjective moral consciousness {moralischen BevMSstsein). * Cp. Eighteenth century Deism and utilitarianism.

The World of Spirit in Self-estrangement The sphere of spirit at this stage breaks up into two regions. The one is its real world, its self-estrangement, the other is constructed and set up in the ether of pure consciousness, and is exalted above the first. This second world, being constructed in opposition and contrast to that estrangement, is just on that account not free from it ; on the contrary, it is only another form of that very estrangement, which consists precisely in having a conscious existence in two sorts of worlds, and embraces both. Hence it is not self-consciousness of Absolute Being in and for itself, not Religion, which is here dealt with : it is Behef, Faith, in so far as faith is a flight from the actual world, and thus is not a selfcomplete experience {an und für sich). Such flight from the realm of the present is, therefore, directly in its very nature a dual state of mind. Pure consciousness is the sphere into which spirit rises : but it is not only the element of faith, but of the notion as well. Consequently both appear on the scene together at the same time, and the latter comes before us only in antithesis to the former.

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