Phenomenology of Spirit — G. W. F. Hegel

670 Phenomenology of Mind or discordance of its particular individuality with, reference to another individual.

Its special peculiarity consists in the fact that the two elements constituting its consciousness — viz. the self and the inherent nature (Ansich) — are unequal in value and significance within it ; in being accepted as valid, they are so determined that certainty of self is the essential fact as against the inherent nature, or the universal, which is taken to be merely a moment.

Over against this internal determination there thus stands the element of existence, the universal consciousness ; and for this latter it is rather universality, duty, which is the essential fact, while individuality, which exists for itself and is opposed to the universal, has merely the value of a superseded moment.

The first consciousness is held to be Evil by the consciousness which thus stands by the fact of duty, because of the lack of congruity or identity of its internal subjective life with the universal ; and since at the same time the first consciousness declares its act to be identity with itself, to be duty and conscientiousness, it is held by that universal consciousness to be Hypocrisy.

The course taken by this opposition is, in the first instance, the formal reinstatement of the identity between what the evil consciousness is in its own nature and what it declares itself to be. It has to be made manifest that it is evil, and its objective existence thus made congruent with its real nature ; the hypocrisy must be unmasked.

This return of the disparity, present in hypocrisy, into the state of congruency or identity is not at once brought to pass by the mere fact that, as people usually say, hypocrisy just proves its reverence for duty and virtue through assuming the appearance of them, and using this as

Evil and Forgiveness 671 a mask to liide itself from its own consciousness no less than from another — as if, in this acknowledgment and recognition in itself of its opposite, 60 ipso congruency and agreement were implied and contained.

Yet even then it is just as truly done with .'- s s this recognition in words and is reflected into self ; and in the very fact of its using the inherent and essential reality merely as something which has a significance for another consciousness, there is really imphed its own contempt for that inherent principle, and the demonstration of the worthlessness of that reality for all.

For what lets itself be used as an external instrument shows itself to be a thing, which has within it no proper weight and worth of its own. Moreover, this congruency or identity, is not brought about either by the evil consciousness persisting onesidedly in its own state, or by the judgment of the universal consciousness.

If the former disclaims the consciousness of duty, and maintains that what the latter pronounces to be baseness, to be absolute discordance with universality, is an action according to inner law and conscience, then, in this onesided assurance of identity and concord, there still remains its want of agreement with the other, since this other universal consciousness certainly does not believe the assurance and does not acknowledge it.

In other words, since onesided insistence on one extreme destroys itself, evil would indeed thereby confess to being evil, but in so doing would at once cancel itself and cease to be hypocrisy, and so would not qua hypocrisy be unmasked. It confesses itself, in fact, to be evil by asserting that, while opposing what is recognised as universal, it is acting according to inner

672 Phenomenology of Mind law and conscience. For were this law and conscience not the law of its particularity and caprice, it would not be something inward, something private, but what is universally accepted and acknowledged. When, therefore, any one says he acts towards others from a law and conscience of his own, he is saying, in point of fact, that he is abusing and wronging them.

But actual conscience is not this insistence on a knowledge and a will which are opposed to what is universal ; the universal is the element of its existence, and its very language pronounces its action to be recognised duty. Just as little, when the universal consciousness emphasises and persists in its own judgment, does this unmask and dissipate hypocrisy.

When that universal consciousness stigmatises hypocrisy as bad, base, and so on, it appeals, in passing such a judgment, to its own law, just as the evil consciousness, on its side, does too. For the former law makes its appearance in opposition to the latter, and thereby is a particular law. It has, therefore, no antecedent claim over the other law; rather it legitimises this other law.

Hence the universal consciousness, by thus emulating the other, does precisely the opposite of what it means to do : for it shows that its so-called " true duty," which ought to be universally acknowledged, is something not acknowledged and recognised, and consequently it grants the other an equal right of independently existing on its own account.

This judgment [of universal consciousness], however, has, at the same time, another side to it, from which it leads the way to the dissolution of the opposition in question. Consciousness of the universal does not proceed, qua real and qua acting, to deal with the evil