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definite. "Duty in general" thus falls outside it and within another being, which is a consciousness and the
sacred lawgiver of pure duty. The consciousness which acts, just because it acts, accepts the other
consciousness, that of pure duty, and admits its validity immediately; this pure duty is thus a content of
another consciousness, and is only indirectly or in a mediate way sacred for the active consciousness, viz. in
virtue of this other consciousness.
Because it is established in this manner that the validity, the bindingness, of duty as something wholly and
absolutely sacred, falls outside the actual consciousness, this latter thereby stands altogether on one side as
the incomplete moral consciousness. Just as, in regard to its knowledge, it is aware of itself as that whose
knowledge and conviction are incomplete and contingent; in the same way, as regards its willing, it feels
itself to be that whose purposes are affected with sensibility. On account of its "unworthiness", therefore, it
cannot look on happiness as something necessary, but as a something contingent, and can only expect
happiness as the result of "grace".
But though its actuality is incomplete, duty is still, so far as its pure will and knowledge are concerned, held
to be the essential truth. In principle, therefore, so far as the notion is opposed to actual reality, in other
words, in thought, it is perfect. The absolute Being [God] is, however, just this object of thought, and is
something postulated beyond the actual. It is therefore the thought in which the morally imperfect knowledge
and will are held to be perfect; and the Absolute, since it takes this imperfection to have full weight,
distributes happiness according to "worthiness", i.e. according to the "merit" ascribed to the imperfect
consciousness.
This completes the meaning of the moral attitude. For in the conception of moral self-consciousness the two
aspects, pure duty and actual reality, are affirmed of a single unity, and thereby the one, like the other, is put
forward, not as something self-complete, but as a moment, or as cancelled and transcended. This becomes
consciously explicit in the last phase of the moral attitude or point of view. Consciousness, we there saw,
places pure duty in another form of being than its own consciousness, i.e. it regards pure duty partly as
something ideally presented, partly as what does not by itself hold good--indeed, the non-moral is rather
what is held to be perfect. In the same way it affirms itself to be that whose actuality, not being in conformity
with duty, is transcended, and, qua transcended, or in the idea of the Absolute [God's view], no longer
contradicts morality.
For the moral consciousness itself, however, its moral attitude does not mean that consciousness therein
develops its own proper notion and makes this its object. It has no consciousness of this opposition either as
regards the form or the content thereof; the elements composing this opposition it does not relate and
compare with one another, but goes forward on its own course of development, without being the connecting
principle of those moments. For it is only aware of the essence pure and simple, i.e. the object so far as this is
duty, so far as this is an abstract object of its pure consciousness--in other words, it is only aware of this
object as pure knowledge or as itself. Its procedure is thus merely that of thinking, not conceiving, is by way
of thoughts not notions. Consequently it does not yet find the object of its actual consciousness transparently
clear to itself; it is not the absolute notion, which alone grasps otherness as such, its absolute opposite, as its
very self. Its own reality, as well as all objective reality, no doubt is held to be something unessential; but its
freedom is that of pure thought, in opposition to which, therefore, nature has likewise arisen as something
SELF-ASSURED SPIRIT: MORALITY 223
 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
equally free. Because both are found in like manner within it-both the freedom which belongs to [external]
being and the inclusion of this existence within consciousness--its object comes to be an existing object,
which is at the same time merely a thought-product. In the last phase of its attitude or point of view, the
content is essentially so affirmed that its being has the character of something presented, and this union of
being and thinking is expressed as what in fact it is, viz.-Imagining (Vorstellen).
When we look at the moral view of the world and see that this objective condition is nothing else than the
very principle or notion of moral self-consciousness which it makes objective to itself, there arises through
this consciousness concerning the form of its origin another mode of exhibiting this view of the world.
The first stage, which forms the starting-point, is the actual moral self-consciousness, or is the fact that there
is such a self-consciousness at all. For the notion establishes moral self-consciousness in the form that, for it,
all reality in general has essential being only so far as such reality is in conformity with duty; and that notion
establishes this essential element as knowledge, i.e. in immediate unity with the actual self. This unity is thus
itself actual, is a moral actual consciousness. The latter, now, qua consciousness, pictures its content to itself
as an object, viz. as the final purpose of the world, as the harmony of morality with all reality. Since,
however, it pictures this unity as object and is not yet the complete notion, which has mastery over the object
as such, this unity is taken to be something negative of self-consciousness, i.e. the unity falls outside it, as
something beyond its actual reality, but at the same time of such a nature as to be also existent, though merely
thought of.
This self-consciousness, which, qua self-consciousness, is something other than the object, thus finds itself
left with the want of harmony between the consciousness of duty and actual reality, and indeed its own
reality. The proposition consequently now runs thus: "there is no morally complete actual
self-consciousness"; and, since what is moral only is at all so far as it is complete,--for duty is the pure
unadulterated ultimate element (Ansich), and morality consists merely in conformity to this pure
principle--the second proposition runs: "there is no actual existence which is moral".
Since, however, in the third place, it is a self, it is inherently the unity of duty and actual reality. This unity
thus becomes its object, as completed morality--but as something beyond its actual reality, and yet a
"beyond" which still ought to be real.
In this final goal or aim of the synthetic unity of the two first propositions, the self-conscious actuality, as
well as duty, is only affirmed as a transcended or superseded moment. For neither of them is alone, neither is
isolated; on the contrary, these factors, whose essential characteristic lies in being free from one another, are
thus each in that unity no longer free from the other; each is transcended. Hence, as regards content, they
become, as such, object, each of them holds good for the other; and, as regards form, they become object in
suchwise that this reciprocal interchange is, at the same time, merely pictured--a mere idea. Or, again, the
actually non-moral, because it is, at the same time, pure thought and elevated above its own actual reality, is
in idea still moral, and is taken to be entirely valid. In this way the first propo- sition, that there is a moral
self-consciousness, is reinstated, but bound up with the second that there is none; that is to say, there is one,
but merely in idea. In other words, there is indeed none, but it is all the same allowed by some other
consciousness to pass for one.
1. i.e. there is not the opposition of an object to subject which consciousness requires.
b. DISSEMBLANCE [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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