Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Dissemblance 637 It knows its morality as incomplete because it is affected by an opposing sensibility and nature, which partly perturb morahty as such, and partly give rise to a plurality of duties, by which, in concrete cases of real action, consciousness finds itself embarrassed. For each case is the concrete focus of many moral relations, just as an object of perception in general is a thing with many qualities.

And since a determinate duty is a purpose, it has a content ; its content is a part of the purpose, and so morality is not pure morahty. This latter, then, has its real existence in some other being. But such reality means nothing else than that morality is here self-complete, in itself and for itself — for itself, i.e. is morahty of a consciousness : in itself, i.e. has existence and actuality.

In that first incomplete consciousness, morality is not realised and carried out. It is there something immanent and implicit, in the sense of a mere thoughtelement ; for it is associated with nature and sensibility, with the actuality of [external] existence and conscious life, which constitutes its content ; and nature and sensibility are morally nothing.

In the second, morality is present as completed, and not in the form of an unreahsed thought-element. But this completion consists just in the fact that morality has reality in a consciousness, in the sense of free reality, objective existence in general, is not something empty, but filled out, full of content.

That is to say, the completion of morality is placed in this, that what a moment ago was characterised as morally nothing is found present in morahty and inherent in it. It is at one time to have validity simply and solely as the imrealised thought- element, a product of pure abstraction ; but, on the other hand, is just as

638 Phenomenology of Mind certainly to have in this form no vahdity at all : its true nature is to consist in being opposed to reality, detached altogether therefrom, and empty, and then again to consist in being actual reality.

The syncretism, or fusion, of these contradictions, which is expressed in extenso in the moral attitude of experience, collapses internally, since the distinction on which it rests — its distinction from something which must be thought and stated as a necessity, and is yet at the same time not essential — passes into one which does not any longer exist even in words.

What, at the end, is affirmed to be something with different aspects, both to be nothing and also real, is one and the very same — existence and reahty. And what is to be absolute only as something beyond actual existence and actual consciousness, and at the same time to be only in consciousness and so, qiwb beyond, nothing at all — this absolute is pure duty and the knowledge that pure duty is the essentially real.

The consciousness, which makes this distinction that is no distinction, which announces actuality to be at once what is nothing and what is real, pronounces pure morality to be both the ultimate truth and also to be devoid of all true realit}^, and expresses together in one and the same breath ideas which it formerly separated — such a consciousness itself proclaims that it is not in earnest with this characterisation and separation of the moments of self and inherent reality.

It shows, on the contrary, that, what it announces as absolute existence apart from consciousness, it really keeps enclosed wdthin the self of self-consciousness ; and that, what it gives out as something entirely in thought or absolutely inherent and implicit, it just for that reason takes to be something which has no truth at all.

Dissemblance 639 It becomes clear to consciousness that placing these moments apart from each other is mentally " displacing'" them, is a dissemblance, and it would be hypocrisy were it really to keep to this.

But, being pure moral self-consciousness, it flees from this discordance between what it represents and what constitutes its essential nature, flees from this untruth, which gives out as true what it holds to be untrue, and, turning away with abhorrence, it hastens back into itself.

The consciousness, which scorns such a moral idea of the world, is pure Conscience [Gewissen) : it is, in its inmost being, simply spirit consciously assured or " certain " {gewiss) of itself, spirit which acts directly in the light of this assurance, which acts conscientiously {gewissenhaft), without the intervention of those ideas, and finds its true nature in this direct immediacy.

While, however, this sphere of dissemblance is nothing else than the development of moral self-consciousness in its various moments and is consequently its reality, so too this self-consciousness, by returning into itself, will become, in its inmost nature, nothing else. This returning into itself, indeed, simply means that it has come to be conscious that its truth is a pretended truth, a mere pretence.

As returning into itself it had to be always giving out this pretended truth as its real truth, for it had to express and display itself as an objective idea ; but it had to know all the same that this is merely a dissemblance. It would consequently be, in point of fact, hypocrisy all the while, and its abhorrence of such dissemblance would be itself the first expression of hypocrisy.