Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Ill Absolute Freedom and Tereor* Consciousness has found its notion in the principle of utiHty. But that notion is partly an object still, partly, for that very reason, still a purpose, of which consciousness does not yet find itself to be immediately possessed, utility or profitableness is still a predicate of the object, not a subject, not its immediate and sole i,i "• actuahty.

It is the same thing that appeared before when we found that self-existence (being-for-self) had not yet shown itself to be the substance of the remaining moments, a process by which the useful would be primarily nothing else than the self of consciousness and this latter thereby in its possession.

This resumption of the form of objectivity which characterises the useful has, however, already taken effect implicitly, and as the outcome of this immanent internal revolution there comes to light the actual revolution of concrete actuahty, the new mode of conscious life — absolute freedom. This is so because in point of fact there is here no more than an empty semblance of objectivity separating self-consciousness from actual possession.

For, in part, all the worth and permanence of the various specific members of the organisation of the world of actuahty and belief have as a whole returned into this simple * Refers primarily to the regime under the French revolutionaries. 592

Absolute Freedom and Terror 593 determination, which is their ground and their indwelling spirit : in part, however, this determinate element has nothing pecuharly its own left for itself, it is instead pure metaphysic, pure notion or knowledge of selfconsciousness.

That is to say, from the inherent and specific nature of the useful qua object consciousness learns that its inherent nature, its being-in-itself, is essentially a being for another ; mere being 'per se, since it is self -less, is ultimately and in truth a passive entity, or something that is for another self.

The object, however, is present to consciousness in this abstract form of purely immanent being, of pure being-in-itself ; for consciousness is the activity of pure insight, the separate moments of which take the pure form of notions.

Self- existence, being-for-self, however, into which being for another returns, in other words the self, is not a self of what is called object, a self all its own and different from the ego : for consciousness qua pure insight is not an individual self, over against which the object, in the sense of having a self all its own, could stand, but the pure notion, the gazing of the self into self, the hteral and absolute seeing itself doubled.

The certainty of itself is the universal subject, and its notion knowing itself is the essential being of all reahty. If the useful was merely the shifting change of the moments, without Lf is returning into its own proper unity, and was hence still an object for knowledge to deal with, then it ceases to be this now.

For knowing is itself the process and movement of those abstract moments ; it is the universal self, the self of itself as well as of the object, and, being imiversal, is the unity of this process, a unity that returns into itself. VOL. II.— N

594 Phenomenology of Mind This brings on the scene spirit in the form of absolute freedom. It is the mode of self-consciousness which clearly comprehends that in its certainty of self hes the essence of all the component spiritual parts of the concrete sensible as well as of the supersensible world, or, conversely, that essential being and concrete actuality consist in the knowledge consciousness has of itself.

It is conscious of its pure personahty and with that of all spiritual reahty ; and all reahty is solely spirituality ; the world is for it absolutely its own will, and this will is universal will. And further, this will is not the empty thought of will, which is constituted by giving a silent assent, or an assent through a representative, a mere symbol of wilhng ; it is a concretely embodied universal will, the will of all individuals as such.

For will is in itself the consciousness of personality, of every single one ; and it has to be as this true concrete actual will, as self-conscious essential being of each and every personality, so that each single and undivided does everything, and what appears as done by the whole is at once and consciously the deed of every single individual.

This undivided substance of absolute freedom puts itself on the throne of the world, without any power being able to offer effectual resistance.

For since in very truth consciousness is alone the element which furnishes spiritual beings or powers with their substance, their entire system, which is organised and maintained through division into separate spheres and distinct wholes, has collapsed into a single whole, when once the individual consciousness conceives the object as having no other nature than that of self-conscious-