Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

Conscience 661 act is not what is accepted and real ; what is acknowledged by others is, not the determinate element, not the inherent being, but solely and simply the self knowing itself as such. The element which gives permanence and stability is universal self-consciousness.

What enters this element cannot be the effect of the act : the latter does not last there, and maintains no permanence : only self-consciousness is what is recognised and gains concrete reality. Here again,* then, we see Language to be the form in which spirit finds existence.

Language is the way self-consciousness exists for others ; it is self-consciousness which is there irmnediately present as such, and in the form of this actual universal self-consciousness.

Language is self separating itself from itself, which comes objectively before itself as the pure ego identical with ego, which at once maintains itself in this objective form as this actual self, and at the same time fuses directly with others and is their self-consciousness. The self perceives itself at the same time that it is perceived by others : and this perceiving is just existence which has become a self.

The content, which language has here obtained, is no longer the self we found in the world of culture, perv^erted, perverting, and distraught. It is spirit which, having returned to itself, is certain of itself, certain in itself of its truth, of its own act of recognition, and of being recognised as this knowledge.

The language of U-Jk: the ethical spirit of society is law, and simple command and complaint, which is but a tear shed over necessity. Moral consciousness, on the other hand, remains dumb, shut up within its inner Ufe ; for self has no existence * v.p. 512 ff.

66Ö Phenomenology of Mind as yet in its case : rather existence and self there stand, in the first instance, in external relation to each other. Language, however, comes forward merely as the mediating element between independent self- consciousnesses recognised and acknowledged ; and the existent self means immediately universal recognition, means recognition in manifold ways and in this very manifoldness simple recognition.

What the language of conscience contains is the self knowing itself as essential reality. This alone is what that language expresses, and this expression is the true realisation of " doing " anything, and renders the act valid and acceptable. Consciousness expresses its conviction : in this conviction alone is the action duty : it holds good as duty, too, solely by the conviction being expressed.

For universal self-consciousness stands detached from the specific act which merely exists : the act qua existence means nothing to it : what it holds of importance is the conviction that the act is a duty ; and this appears concretely in language.

To realise the act means here not translating its content from the form of purpose, or subjectivity, into the form of abstract reality : it means translating it from the form of immediate certainty of self, which takes its knowledge, its self-existence, to be the essential fact, into the form of the assurance that consciousness is convinced of its duty, and, being conscience, knows of itself what duty is.

This assurance thus guarantees that it is convinced of its conviction being the essential fact. Whether the assurance, that it acts from conviction of duty, is true, whether that really is duty which is done — these questions or doubts have no meaning if

Conscience 663 directed against conscience. In the case of the question, whether the assurance is true, it would be assumed that the inner intention is different from the one put forward, i.e. that the wilhng of a particular self can if^/ be separated from duty, from the will of the universal and pure consciousness : the latter will would in that case be a matter of words, while the former would be strictly the real moving principle of the act.

But such a distinction between the universal consciousness and the particular self is precisely what has been cancelled, and the superseding of it constitutes conscience. Immediate knowledge on the part of self which is certain of itself is law and duty. Its intention, by being its own intention, is what is right. All that is required is that it should know this, and state its conviction that its knowledge and will are the right.

The expression of this assurance ipso facto cancels the form of its particularity. It recognises thereby the necessary universality of the self.

In that it calls itself conscience, it calls itself pure self-knowledge and pure abstract will, i.e. it calls itself a universal knowledge and will which acknowledges and recognises others, is hke them — for they are just this pure self-knowledge and will — and which is on that account also recognised by them.

In the willing of the self which is certain of itself, in this knowledge of the self as the essential reahty, Hes the essence of the right. When any one says, therefore, he is acting from conscience, he is saying what is true, for his conscience is the self which knows and wills. He must, however, necessarily say so, for this self has to be at the same time universal self. It is not universal in the content o f the act : for this content is per se indifferent on