Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

586 Phenomenology of Mind time related to consciousness — that in the negative judgment the copula " is " also connects and holds together the two separated factors — it would come to see that this beyond, which the nature of an external existence implies, stands in a relation to consciousness, and that in so doing this means the same as what is called pure matter. The missing moment of the present would then be secured.

The other enlightenment starts from sense-existence ; it then abstracts from the sensuous relation of tasting, seeing, etc., and turns sense-existence into purely inherent being (Ansich), absolute matter, something neither felt nor tasted.

This being has in this way become the inner reality of pure consciousness, the ultimately simple without predicates ; it is the pure notion, qua notion whose being is in itself, or it is pure thought within itself.

This insight in its conscious activity does not go through the process of passing from being, which is purely being, to an opposite in thought, which is the same as mere being, or does not go from the pure positive to the opposite pure negative ; since the positive is really pure simply and solely through negation, while the negative qua pure is selfidentical and one within itself, and precisely on that account positive. ^^2, C)r again, these two have not come to the notion found in Descartes' metaphysics that in themselves being and thought are the same; they have not arrived at the thought that being, pure being, is not a concrete actual reality, but pure abstraction, and conversely that pure thought, self-identity or inner essence, is partly the negative of self-consciousness, and consequently is being, and partly, qua immediate simple entity, is

The Result of Enlightenment 587 likewise nothing else than being. Thought is thinghood, or thinghood is thought. The real essence is here divided asunder in such a way that, to begin with, it appertains to two specifically distinct modes of thinking.

In part, the real must hold distinction in itself ; in part, just by so doing, both ways of considering it merge into one ; for then the abstract moments, of pure being and the negative, by which their distinction is expressed, are united in the object with which these modes of treatment deal. The universal common to both is the abstraction of pure self-thinking, of pure quivering within the self.

This simple motion of rotating on its own axis is bound to resolve itself into separate moments, because it is itself only motion by distinguishing its own moments. This distinguishing of the moments leaves the unmoved [unity] behind as the empty shell of pure being, that is no longer actual thought, has no more life within it ; for qua distinction this process is all the content.

The process, which thus puts itself outside that unity thereby constitutes, however, the shifting change — a change that does not return into itself — of the moments of being-in-itself, of beingfor-another, and of being-for-self — actual reality in the way this is object for the concrete consciousness of pure insight — constitutes Utility.

Bad as utiHty may look to beHef or sentimentality or even to the abstraction that calls itself speculation, and takes to do with the ultimate, the inherent nature ; ^a^ J>w«i yet it is that in which pure insight finds its reahsation, and itself is the object for insight, an object which insight now no longer repudiates, and which, too, it t+Zlt does not put down as the void or the pm'e beyond. For

588 Phenomenology of Mind pure insight, as we saw, is the Uving notion itself, the self-same pure personality, distinguishing itself within itself in such a way that each of the distinguished elements is itself pure notion, i.e. is eo ipso not distinct ; it is simple undifferentiated pure self-consciousness, which is for itself as well as in itself within an immediate unity.

Its inherent being, its being in itself, is therefore not fixed and permanent, but at once ceases, in its distinction, to be something distinctive. A being of that kind, however, which is immediately without support and cannot stand of itself, has no being in itself, no inherent existence, it is essentially for something else, which is the power that consumes and absorbs it.

But this second moment, opposed to that first one, disappears immediately too, like the first ; or, rather, qua being merely for some other, it is the very process of disappearing, and is definitely affirmed as being that has turned back into itself, as being for itself. This simple being-for-self, however, qua self-identity, is rather an objective being, or is thereby for an other.

This nature of pure insight in thus unfolding and making explicit its moments, in other words insight qua object, finds expression in the useful, the profitable.

What is useful is a thing, something that subsists in itself ; this being in itself is at the same time only a pure moment : it is in consequence absolutely for something else, but is equally for an other merely as it is in itself : these opposite moments return into the indivisible unity of being-for-self.

While, however, the useful doubtless expresses the notion of pure insight, it is all the same not insight as such, but insight as conscious presentation, or as object for insight. It is merely the restless shifting change of those moments, of which