Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Morality 607 found in the consciousness of Duty. Since the content is thus subordinate, though absolutely essential to give even meaning to the idea and the " fulfilment " of duty, and since the universal is the supremely important fact, not merely is duty to be fulfilled for duty's sake, but the duty in question is pure duty. The " good will " is the purely universal will, and is the only will in the world from this point of view.

In the first section (a) Hegel analyses this phase of the moral life. The historical material the writer has in mind is a moral attitude which came into prominence at the time of the Romantic movement towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It found its philosophical expression in the moral theories of Kant and Fichte ; and Lessing may be taken as a typical representative in literature of the same attitude.]

Spirit in the Condition of being Certain of Itself : Morality The ethical order of the community found its consummation and its truth in the type of spirit existing in mere sohtude and separation within it — the individual self. This legal person, however, has its substance and its fulfilment outside that ethical order.

The process of the world of culture and belief does away with this abstraction of a mere person ; and by the completion of the process of estrangement, by reaching the extremity of abstraction, the self of spirit finds the substance become first the universal will, and finally its own possession. Here, then, knowledge seems at last to have become entirely at one with the truth at which it aims ; for its truth is this knowledge itself.

All opposition between the two sides has vanished, and that, too, not for us (who are tracing the process), not merely implicitly, but actually for self-consciousness itself. That is to say, knowledge has itself got the mastery over the opposition which consciousness had to face. This rests on the opposition between certainty of self and the object.

Now, however, the object for it is the certainty of self, knowledge : just as the certainty of itself as such has no longer ends of its own, is no longer conditioned and determinate, but is pure knowledge. Self-consciousness thus now takes the knowledge of itself to be the substance itself. This substance is, for it, at once immediate and absolutely mediated in one 608

Morality 609 indivisible unity. It is immediate — just in the way the " ethical " consciousness knows and itself does its duties, and is bound to the substance as to its own nature : but it is not character, just as that ethical consciousness, w^hich in virtue of its immediacy is a determinate type of spirit, belongs merely to one of the essential features of ethical life, and has the peculiarity of not being conscious explicit knowledge.

It is, again, absolute mediation, as involving the conscious processes of culture and behef ; for it is essentially the movement of the hfe of self to transcend the abstract form of immediate existence, and become consciously universal — and yet to do so neither by simply estranging and rending itself as well as reality, nor by i^ 'hS fleeing from it.

Rather, it is directly and immediately present in its very substance ; for this substance is its knowledge, it is the pure certainty of self become transparently visible. And just this very immediacy, which constitutes its actual reality, is the entire actuality; for the immediate is being, and qua pure immediacy, immediacy made transparent by thoroughgoing negation, this immediacy is pure being, is being in general, is all being.

Absolute essential Being is, therefore, not exhausted by the characteristic of being the simple essence of thought; it is all actuality, and this actuahty exists merely as knowledge. What consciousness did not know would have no sense and can be no power in its life. Into its self-conscious knowing will, all objectivity, the whole world, has withdrawn.

It is absolutely free in that it knows its freedom ; and just this very knowledge of its freedom is its substance, its puroose, its sole and only content. VOL. II.— O