Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Dissemblance * In the moral attitude of experience we see, on one side, consciousness itself produce its object in a conscious way. We find that neither does it pick up the object as something external, nor does the object come before it in an unconscious manner. Rather, consciousness throughout proceeds on a certain basis, and from this establishes the objective reality. It thus knows this objective element to be itself, for it is aware of itself as the active agent producing this object. It seems, in consequence, to attain here its peace and satisfaction, for this can only be found where it does not need to go any more beyond its object, because this object no longer goes beyond it. On the other side, however, it really puts the object away outside itself, as something beyond itself. But this latter self-contained entity is at the same time put there as something that is not detached from self-consciousness, but really there on behalf of and by means of it. The moral attitude is, therefore, in fact nothing else than the developed expression of this fundamental contradiction in its various aspects. It is — ^to use a Kantian phrase which is here most appropriate — a "perfect * Verstellung : It is not possible to bring out exactly by an English word the verbal play involved in Hegel's interpretation of the state of mind here discussed. Hegel has, in the course of his analysis, used the meaning implied in the general term "stellen" to explain by contrast the specific nuance of the purely moral attitude conveyed by the term verstellen. VOL. II.— p 625

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626 Phenomenology of Mind nest'' of inconsistencies and contradictions.* Consciousness, in developing this situation, proceeds by fixing definitely one moment, passing thence immediately over to another and doing away with the first. But, in the way it has now set up this second moment, it also " shifts '' {verstellt) this again, and really makes the opposite the essential element.

At the same time, it is conscious of its contradiction and of this displacement, for it passes from one moment, immediately in its relation to this very moment, right over to the opposite. Because a moment has for it no reality at all, it affirms that very moment as real : or, what comes to the same thing, in order to assert one moment as per se existent, it asserts the opposite as the per se existent.

It thereby confesses that, as a matter of fact, ^s Ö it is in earnest about neither of them. The various moments of this fraudulent process we must look at more closely.

Let us allow the assumption, that there is an actual moral consciousness, to rest on its own basis in the first instance, because the assumption is not directly made with reference to something preceding ; and let us turn to the harmony of morahty and nature — the first postulate. It is to be immanent, not explicitly for actual conscious life, not really present ; the present is rather simply the contradiction between the two.

In the present, morality is taken to be something at hand, and actual realitv to be so situated or " placed '" that it is not in harmony with morality. The concrete moral consciousness, however, is active, consists in acting ; that is what constitutes the actuality of its morahty. In the very process of acting, * An expression used by Kant of the " cosmological proof."

Dissemblance 627 however, that " place " or semblance is immediately " displaced/' is dissembled ; for action is nothing else than the actualisation of the inner moral pm:pose, nothing but the production of an actuality constituted and determined by purpose ; in other words, the production of the harmony of moral purpose and reality itself. At the same time the performance of the action is a conscious fact, it is the " presence " of this unity of reality and purpose ; and because in the completed act consciousness realises itself as a given particular consciousness, or sees existence return into itself qua particular — and in this consists the nature of enjoyment — there is, eo ipso, also contained in the realisation of moral purpose that form of its realisation which is called enjoyment and happiness. Action thus, as a fact, fulfils directly what it was asserted could not take place at all, fulfils what was to be merely a postulate, was to lie merely " beyond." Consciousness, therefore, expresses through its deed that it is not in earnest in making the postulate, since the meaning of acting is really that it makes a present fact of what was not to be in the present. And, since the harmony is postulated for the sake of the action — for what is to become actual through action must be impUcit, otherwise the actuality would not be possible — the connexion of action with the postulate is so constituted that, for the sake of the action, i.e. for the sake of the actual harmony of purpose and reality, this harmony is put forward as not actual, as far away, as " beyond." Since action does take place, the want of adaptation between purpose and reality is thus in general not taken seriously. Action itself, on the other hand, does seem

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