Hegel The Phemenology of Mind

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moral point of view, when it gives up thinking that there is a contradiction between duty and actual reality.
According to this latter state of mind, I act morally when I am conscious of performing merely pure duty and
nothing else but that: i.e. in fact, when I do not act. When, however, I really act, I am conscious of an "other",
of a reality which is there before me, and one which I want to bring about; I have a definite end and fulfil a
definite duty. There is something else therein than the pure duty, which alone was supposed to be kept in
view.
Conscience, on the other hand, is the sense that, when the moral consciousness declares pure duty to be the
essence of its action, this pure purpose is a dissemblance of the actual fact. For the real fact is that pure duty
consists in the empty abstraction of pure thought, and finds its reality and content solely in some definite
actual existence, an actuality which is actuality of consciousness itself--not of consciousness in the sense of
a thought-entity, but as an individual. Conscience for its own part, finds its truth to lie in the direct certainty
of itself. This immediate concrete certainty of itself is the real essence. Looking at this certainty from the
point of view of the opposition which consciousness involves, the agent's own immediate individuality
constitutes the content of moral action; and the form of moral action is just this very self as a pure process,
viz. as the process of knowing, in other words, is private individual conviction.
Looking more closely at the unity and the significance of the moments of this stage, we find that moral
consciousness conceived itself merely in the form of the inherent principle, or as ultimate essence; qua
conscience, however, it lays hold of its explicit individual self-existence (Fersichseyn), or its self. The
contradiction involved in the moral point of view is resolved, i.e. the distinction, which lay at the basis of its
peculiar attitude, proves to be no distinction, and melts into the process of pure negativity. This process of
negativity is, however, just the self: a single simple self which is at once pure knowledge and knowledge of
itself as this individual conscious life. This self constitutes, therefore, the content of what formerly was the
empty essence; for it is something actual and concrete, which no longer has the significance of being a nature
alien to the ultimate essence, a nature independent and with laws of its own. As the negative element, it
introduces distinction into the pure essence, a definite content, and one, too, which has a value in its own
right as it stands.
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Further, this self is, qua pure self -identical knowledge, the universal without qualification, so that just this
knowledge, being its very own knowledge, being conviction, constitutes duty. Duty is no longer the universal
appearing over against and opposed to the self; duty is known to have in this condition of separation no
validity. It is now the law which exists for the sake of the self, and not the law for the sake of which the self
exists. The law and duty, however, have for that reason not only the significance of existing on their own
account, but also of being inherent and essential; for this knowledge is, in virtue of its identity with itself, just
what is inherently essential. This inherent being gets also separated in consciousness from that direct and
immediate unity with self-existence: so contrasted and opposed, it is objective being, it is being for
something else.
Duty itself now, qua duty deserted by the self, is known to be merely a moment; it has ceased to mean
absolute being, it has become degraded to something which is not a self, does not exist on its own account,
and is thus what exists for something else. But this existing-for-something-else remains an essential
moment just for the reason that self, qua consciousness, constitutes and establishes the opposition between
existence-for-self and existence-for-another; and now duty essentially means something immediately
actual, and is no longer a mere abstract pure consciousness.
This existence for something else is, then, the inherently essential substance distinguished from the self.
Conscience has not given up pure duty, the abstract implicit essence: pure duty is the essential moment of
relating itself, qua universality, to others. Conscience is the common element of distinct
self-consciousnesses; and this is the substance in which the act secures subsistence and reality, the moment
of being recognized by others. The moral self-consciousness does not possess this moment of recognition, of
pure consciousness which has definite existence; and on that account really does not "act" at all, does not
effectually actualize anything. Its inherent nature is for it either the abstract unreal essence, or else existence
in the form of a reality which has no spiritual character. The actual reality of conscience, however, is one
which is a self, i.e. an existence conscious of itself, the spiritual element of being recognized. Doing
something is, therefore, merely the translation of its individual content into that objective element where it is
universal and is recognized, and this very fact, that the content is recognized, makes the deed an actuality.
The action is recognized and thereby real, because the actual reality is immediately bound up with conviction
or knowledge; or, in other words, knowledge of one's purpose is immediately and at once the element of
existence, is universal recognition. For the essence of the act, duty, consists in the conviction conscience has
about it. This conviction is just the inherent principle itself; it is inherently universal self-consciousness--in
other words, is recognition and hence reality. The result achieved under conviction of duty is therefore
directly one which has substantial solid existence. Thus, we hear nothing more there about good intention not
coming to anything definite, or about the good man faring badly. What is known as duty is carried out
completely and becomes an actual fact, just because what is dutiful is the universal for all self
-consciousnesses, that which is recognized, acknowledged, and thus objectively is. Taken separately and
alone, however, without the content of self, this duty is existence-for-another, the transparent element,
which has merely the significance of an unsubstantial essential factor in general.
If we look back on the sphere where spiritual reality first made its appearance, we find that the principle
involved was that the utterance of individuality is the absolutely real, the ultimately substantial. But the shape
which, in the first instance, gave expression to this principle, was the "honest consciousness"(2) which was
occupied and concerned with abstract "fact itself". This "fact itself" was there a predicate. In conscience,
however, it is for the first time a Subject, which has affirmed within it all aspects of consciousness, and for
which all these moments, substantiality in general, external existence, and essence of thought, are contained
in this certainty of itself. The "fact itself" has substantiality in general in the ethical order (Sittlichkeit),
external existence in culture, self -knowing essence of thought in morality; and in conscience it is the
Subject, which knows these moments within itself. While the "honest consciousness" is for ever grasping
merely the bare and empty "fact itself", conscience, on the other hand, secures the "fact itself " in its fullness,
a fullness which conscience of itself supplies. Conscience has this power through its knowing the moments of
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consciousness as moments, and controlling them because it is their negative essential principle. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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