Stoicism, Skepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness

8/12/2019 Stoicism, Skepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness

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The Freedom of Self-Consciousness

Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness

1. In the first half of the discussion of self-consciousness, we caught our first glimpse of

the structure of Spirit: the synthesis of both social substance and self-conscious individuals

by mutual recognition among particular desiring consciousnesses. We saw there how both

the Master !err" and Slave #iener" misunderstand this structure according to a model of

independence. $ach mista%enly ta%es it that the Master can be, in and for himself, what he

ta%es himself to be, without in any way depending upon the recognition or activity of the

Slave. We saw further how what Spirit is implicitly or in itself e&presses itself in the

metaphysical irony that in adopting a strategy of independence in recognition and the

satisfaction of desire, the Master in fact ensures that he will achieve e&actly the opposite

of what he intends, and so show himself precisely to be dependent on the Slave for both

recognition and the satisfaction of desire. 'inally, we saw how within what is for herself a

merely dependent consciousness, the Slave by pursuing the satisfaction of desires that are

merely abstract or ideal for her (because felt only by the Master) nonetheless can be seen

to achieve thought. We can see in thin%ing the emergence of a new sort of freedom, in

which dependence and independence mutually presuppose and condition one another. In

itself the self-consciousness that is for itself merely dependent reveals itself as free insofar

as it thin%s.

*. +he e&position or Wiederholung of the e&perience of self-consciousness conceiving

itself under categories of independence ma%es this emergence of the freedom of thought

available to us, who occupy the phenomenological point of view. +he same point emerges

only dar%ly for the phenomenal self-consciousnesses that are our obect, however. +he

account labeled +he 'reedom of Self-onsciousness canvasses three further strategies

whereby that freedom can still be misunderstood according to categories of independence


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and dependence. Stoicism, Scepticism, and the /nhappy onsciousness all fail to

appreciate the social nature of self-consciousness. Stoicism and Scepticism both mista%e

the freedom of thought for a sort of authority over things in virtue of which the thin%er is

independent and the things are dependent upon it. +his power of independent authority is

disoined from any social conte&t. +he Stoic and the Sceptic understand themselves as

independent in the sense of Mastery, but their mastery ta%en to be e&ercised over the

obects of thought rather than over its subects. +he /nhappy onsciousness proects the

relation between independent and dependent consciousness, and understands itself as the

Slave of a heavenly Master.

0. $ach of these is a strategy for understanding self-conscious individuality, without

ac%nowledging the interdependence of its various moments. s a result, each sei2es one-

sidedly on a different formal aspect of that individuality, as the one essential to it. +hus

Stoicism focuses e&clusively (and so abstractly) on the universal aspect of individuality, its

function as recogni2ing or constituting consciousness, the sense in which ta%ing it so is

ma%ing it so, for consciousness. ccordingly it can be identified with the attempt to ma%e

what things are in themselves coincide immediately with what they are for consciousness.

Scepticism focuses e&clusively (and so abstractly) on the negative aspect of individuality,

the difference between recogni2ing and recogni2ed consciousness, the distinction between

what things are in themselves and what they are for consciousness, which e&presses itself,

indeed forces itself on us, in the movement of e&perience. +he /nhappy onsciousness

focuses e&clusively (and so abstractly) on the particular aspect of individuality, its

dependent e&istence as recogni2ed or constituted consciousness, being for another.

ccordingly, all employ (what we will come to recogni2e later, in the e&position of Spirit,

as alienated) categories of independence and dependence. Stoicism and Scepticism treat

individuality as independent and see% to identify themselves with that independent

element. +hey are strategies for mastering the changeable, contingent world that


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constrains us. +he /nhappy onsciousness treats individuality as dependent, and

identifying itself with the merely particular, see%s to overcome it.

3. +he e&position proceeds in the tripartite structure we are accustomed to from the

discussion of Consciousness. +here is an introductory paragraph, 145", which tells us

something about what we will be able to gather from our rehearsal of the e&perience of

self-consciousness misunderstanding itself in the various ways presented in this section.

+he discussion of Stoicism then occupies paragraphs 146" to *71", and the discussion of

Scepticism paragraphs *7*" to *78". +he treatment of the /nhappy onsciousness in

introduced for us in paragraphs *75"-*13". +he discussion of the /nhappy

onsciousness is itself divided into three parts. +he first, the pure inner heart, is dealt

with in paragraphs *19" to *15". +he second, wor% and enoyment, is dealt with in

paragraphs *16" to ***". 'inally, the third form of /nhappy onsciousness,

renunciation or asceticism, is dealt with in paragraphs ***" to *07".

9. +he large problem that begins to emerge in this section, and which will be with us

throughout the discussion of Reason, is how to reconcile two different roles that

individual self-consciousness plays. n the one hand, each individual self-consciousness

is dependent on and responsible to something other than itself, in both its wor% on things

(that have natures) and its recognition by others (that have histories). It is bound by

norms, and in being assessed according to them is determinately ac%nowledged. n the

other hand, individual self-consciousness is independent in that it is responsible for

assessing, that is, determinately ac%nowledging, others. part from its recogni2ing and

assessing activity, there is no social substance, and no binding universals (determinate

norms or concepts). +his latter dimension of independence e&presses the certainty of self-

consciousness, what things, including itself, are for it. +he former dimension of

dependence e&presses the truth of self-consciousness, what things, including itself, are in


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themselves. +he conceptual challenge is to find a coherent way of conceiving this dual

structure, according to which self-consciousness as individual is both constrained and

constraining, both constituted and constituting, both assessed and assessing. We, of

course, have seen in the social story about mutual recognition the outlines of the

resolution !egel will finally endorse. ;ut this resolution is not yet e&plicit for the

phenomenal self-consciousnesses that we consider.

8. +he specific form of this problem that e&ercises the phenomenal self-consciousnesses

canvassed under the headings of Stoicism, Scepticism, and the /nhappy onsciousness

concerns the irreconcilability of a conception of authority and responsibility that has a

determinate content with a conception of such authority as independent. +he basic

arguments are recogni2able as versions of those we saw already in the discussion of

perception, where the issue arose with respect to the determinateness of properties, and so

of the obects that instantiate them, in the conte&t of a conception of properties that

rehenomenology. It will emerge in the

discussion of ?eason that the concept of determinate authority, or of someone being

bound or obliged by a contentful norm, essentially depends on the social distinction

between the point of view of a performer who is being assessed and that from which the

performance is assessed. +hin%ing includes the application of determinate repeatables,

which can be applied correctly or incorrectly. Insofar as a repeatable has a determinate

content, the correctness of its application in particular circumstances depends on the

correctness of applying other repeatables as well, to which the first is lin%ed inferentially

or by incompatibility. In the case of Stoicism and Scepticism in particular, !egel thin%s

their misunderstanding of the freedom of thought in terms of independence shows itself

(to us) in its failure to ma%e e&plicit what is implicit in the possession by its states of

determinate content.


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5. In the discussion here, !egel introduces a consideration that was not in play in the

e&position of onsciousness, though it arises already in the Introduction. +his is the idea

that the only way determinate content can be conferred on a concept is by the movement

of actual e&perience. It is an actual history of application in concrete circumstances, and

in concert with a particular collection of fellow concepts whose applicability is ta%en to be

re


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6. onsider Stoicism:

Its principle is that consciousness is a being that thin%s, and that consciousness

holds something to be essentially important, or true and good only in so far as it

thin%s it to be such. 146"

+he freedom of thought is conceived in terms of the moment of independence

consciousness has as recogni2ing. +he distinction between what things are for

consciousness and what they are in themselves, we saw in the Introduction, becomes

e&plicit for consciousness itself in e&perience. +he Stoic idea is that since consciousness is

sovereign with regard to what things are for it, that distinction can be enforced by

e&perience only insofar as consciousness permits it. $&perience, we saw, arises already

for merely desiring organisms. primitive but still paradigmatic case is that in which an

animal ta%es or treats something as food by falling to without further ado and eating it

up. n occasion, however, this ta%ing will show itself to be a mista%ing. +he obect

reveals itself as ultimately inedible--disgusting and unnourishing. What the animal in

practice initially ta%es the obect to be in itself, namely food, is displayed as only what the

obect was for consciousness. +he Stoic@s strategy for denying the moment of

independence of the obect, and hence the moment of dependence of consciousness, that

becomes manifest in this sort of e&perience is reinterpretation. $&perience can only

enforce the distinction between what things are in themselves and what they are for

consciousness in virtue of the incompatibility of one ta%ing with another--treating as food

by eating with treating as no&ious by vomiting. ;ut these incompatibilities are determinate

differences for consciousness only insofar as they are posited by it, which is to say they

constrain it only insofar as it is committed to them. +here are three ways one can appeal

to the sovereignty of consciousness as ta%er or recogni2er to try to evade what is implicit

in such an e&perience. ne can deny that in vomiting one has in practice classified what

was eaten as disgusting and not nourishing, that is, alter the significance of this response.

r one can deny that in eating one has in practice classified what was eaten as food, that


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is, alter the significance of that response. r one can deny that the two concepts one has

applied to one thing by eating it and vomiting it bac% up are incompatible. +his is what the

Stoic is e&pressing in saying for instance that although my performance had the

conse


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contracted into the simple positing of differences in the pure movement of

thin%ing. 144"

Since I have the power to redraw the lines around concepts that determine correct and

incorrect application in particular cases, I can always redraw them so as to avoid

constraint by the myriad details that manifest themselves in e&perience. ;ut if this moment

of independence is inflated so as to e&clude dependence entirely, it becomes impossible to

see what I am doing as drawing lines at all.

!ence freedom in thought, too, is only the Cotion of freedom, not the living reality

of freedom itself. 'or the essence of that freedom is at first only thin%ing in

general, the formas such, which has turned away from the independence of things,

and returned to itself. ;ut since individuality in its activity should show itself to be

alive, or in its thin%ing should grasp the living world as a system of thought, there

would have to be present in thought itself a content for that individuality, in the

one case a content of what is good, and in the other of what is true...

;ut here the Cotion as an abstraction cuts itself off from the multiplicity of things,

and thus has no content in its own self but one that is given to it. onsciousness

does indeed destroy the content as an alien immediacy Sein" when it thin%s itD but

the Cotion is a determinate Cotion, and this determinateness of the Cotion is the

alien element which it has within it...

+he +rue and the Eood, wisdom and virtue, the general terms beyond which

Stoicism cannot get, are therefore in a general way no doubt uplifting, but since

they cannot in fact produce any e&pansion of the content, they soon become

tedious. *77"

+he content of genuinely constraining concepts is elaborated and developed in e&perience

precisely because of the alien element e&perience has within it. ;anishing this element of

dependence from one@s conception of e&perience is also banishing determinate content

from one@s thoughts.


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17. +he Stoic strategy for conceiving the freedom of thought according to the model of

independence can accordingly be seen (by us) to be inade


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In the end, every commitment is found wanting, defeasible by the ingenuity of the

assessor.

11. ?ecall that in the Introduction scepticism is characteri2ed as misunderstanding the

negative lesson that ought to be learned from e&perience having the structure of

unmas%ing the way we too% things to be in themselves as merely the way they are for

consciousness. Where we ought to see determinate negation, the revelation of specific

inade


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though grasped one-sidedly in the way we will later come to be able to diagnose as

e&pressing an alienated structure of Spirit, in the idea that e&perience is something we do,

as well as being something that happens to us. +his independence ought to be grasped as

one aspect, balanced by a corresponding dependence, though. It is this that Scepticism

characteristically refuses to ac%nowledge.

1*. +he problem with this way of wor%ing out in practice a conception of self-

consciousness as independent and unconstrained is this. n the one hand, in the small, the

sceptical consciousness addresses itself (albeit negatively) to determinately contentful

claims and proects, and appeals to determinately contentful claims incompatible with

these, in order to preclude endorsement of them. n the other hand, in the large, it denies

that endorsement of those claims and proects is ever in order. ne of the lessons we

learned from the dialectical rehearsal of the e&perience of perceiving consciousness is that

determinateness of content re


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10. +hus Scepticism is in no better a position than Stoicism to reconcile its understanding

of itself as independent in its ta%ings with the determinate content of those ta%ings.

What Scepticism causes to vanish is not only obective reality as such, but its own

relationship to it, in which the @other@ is held to be obective and is established as

such...

What vanishes is the determinate element, or the moment of difference, which,

whatever its mode of being and whatever its source, sets itself up as something

fi&ed and immutable unwandelbarer, ; version has unmittelbarer, immediate".

*73"

+he determinate element is what constrains, in refutation or ustification of an

endorsement. +he constraint or dependence that becomes e&plicit in those dialectical

performances is implicit in e&perience. +he determinate incompatibilities and inferential

involvements that articulate the contents of claims arise in the practical process of

commitment and refutation that is e&perience, as !egel conceives it. +he trouble with

Scepticism is that while it e&presses its self-certainty as mastery in dialectical refutation

that essentially depends on the determinateness of what refutes and is refuted,

+his self-certainty does not issue from something alien, whose comple&

development was deposited within it, a result which would have behind it the

process of its coming to be. *79"

It is the dependence on or answerability to the obects we thin% about e&pressed

practically in the movement of e&perience that gives our thought its determinate content.

Scepticism, li%e Stoicism, one-sidedly insists on its independence from constraint by this

process, denying that there is any way things are in themselves that what they are for us is

answerable to, and so li%e it too in not being entitled to the notion of determinate contents

to which it must help itself in order to compel surrender of commitment to certain

contents.


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13. We can see that Scepticism nonetheless does represent an advance over Stoicism.

Self-consciousness understanding itself as Sceptical identifies itself with negation not only

abstractly, in the sense of the universality of recogni2ing, assessing, or ta%ing, as Stoicism

did, but also concretely. 'or it identifies itself with negation as the debun%ing movement

of e&perience, which it ma%es e&plicit in dialectic. We have ust seen that this is implicitly

incompatible with denying the moment of dependence of consciousness on its obects that

is manifested in e&perience. 'or Scepticism denies that it is constrained by e&perience,

while its practical attempts to show its independence of such constraint by dialectical

undermining of all endorsements presupposes inferential and incompatibility relations

among determinate contents of thought, which can only be made sense of in the conte&t of

actual practices of endorsement and the constrained revision of endorsement in

e&perience.

In Scepticism, consciousness e&periences itself in truth as in itself a contradictory

consciousness. 'rom this e&perience emerges a new form of consciousness which

brings together the two thoughts which Scepticism holds apart...+his new form is,

therefore, one which %nows that it is the dual consciousness of itself. *78"

+he new form of consciousness is e&plicitly for itself the contradiction that Scepticism is

implicitly, or in itself. +hat is, it will attain in its certainty to what Scepticism is in truth.

+his is something we can see, not something that need be e&plicit either to Scepticism or

to the new form of self-consciousness. +he e&pressively progressive or e&plicitating

relation between these is, as always, something phenomenologically discerned, not

something e&plicit to the phenomenal self-consciousnesses in


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19. +he new form of consciousness is e&plicitly aware both of the moment of

independence or authority of consciousness, according to which things are something for

it, are recogni2ed, assessed, classified by it, and the moment of dependence or

responsibility of consciousness, according to which things are something in themselves, to

which recognitions, assessments, and classifications must answer. It is further e&plicitly

aware that, according to its (alienated) misunderstanding of what independence and

dependence mean, these two moments are incompatible.

Its truth returned into itself, or its reconciliation with itself will, however, display

the Cotion of Spirit that has become a living Spirit, and has achieved an actual

e&istence, because it already possesses as a single undivided consciousness a dual

nature. +he /nhappy onsciousness itself is the ga2ing of one self-consciousness

into another, and itself is both, and the unity of both is also its essential nature.

;ut it is not as yet e&plicitly aware that this is its essential nature, or that it is the

unity of both. *75"

If it understood how these are reconciled in the freedom of individual self-consciousnesses

in a social substance instituted by mutual recognition, that is, if it grasped the essentially

social structure of Spirit, it would be for itself what it is in itself. Since it does not grasp

the social structure that alone can reconcile these diverse moments, it introects them and

understands its self as an individual as already containing them, although they are

incompatible in one individual.

+"he duplication which formerly was divided between two individuals, the lord

and the bondsman, is now lodged in one. +he duplication of self-consciousness

within itself, which is essential to the Cotion of Spirit, is thus here before us, but

not yet in its unity: the /nhappy onsciousness is the consciousness of self as a

dual-natured, merely contradictory being. *78"


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18. nother e&pression of the defectiveness of the conception that the /nhappy

onsciousness has of the individuality that it is in fact !egel@s in der +at would be apt

here as an e&pression of his view as to what this individuality really consists in" is that it

ta%es the two sides of its dual nature to be the contribution of two different %inds of thing,

which it understands to be independent of, as well as contradictory to each other. It is for

itself the collision of two incompatible sorts of thing. n the one hand, there is a merely

particular, desiring, animal. s such it is subect to the movement of e&perience, as what

things are for its desire answers in practice to what they are in themselves. In this way it is

a thoroughly dependent, contingent, empirical being. n the other hand there is a

universal, independent being, a heavenly Master who is beyond the dependence manifested

in e&perience, and so for whom there is no distinction between what things are in

themselves and what they are for it. !egel calls this the /nchangeable das

/nwandelbare". +hese reifications as independent of two moments of actual self-

conscious individuality, its falling apart into particularity and universality that cannot then

be reconciled, is a conse


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in the form of thought in Stoicism and Scepticism, in that the /nhappy onsciousness

recogni2es itself as an individual who does not e&ercise independent or autonomous

authority over things and selves, but which is responsible to or bound by the authority of

and so dependent upon the universal--the /nchangeable that is the form in which it

ac%nowledges bindingness in general.

15. +he dialectic that rehearses for us the e&perience of the /nhappy onsciousness

comes in three parts. +he first stage in its reconstructed progress corresponds to an

understanding of the dependence of its particular self on the universal as devotion, or the

pure heart. It consists in a simple and inarticulate awe of the authority it is bound by. +he

second stage corresponds to an understanding of the dependence of its particular self on

the universal as wor%. It consists of e&ercising the actual s%ills and powers of the

particular desiring being in the service of the universal. +he third stage corresponds to an

understanding of the dependence of its particular self on the universal as renunciation. It

consists in the actual sacrifice of its concrete particularity, by giving up its will or authority

to decide for itself what things are for it, how it will classify them, by giving up its

property, or authority over the products of its labor, and by giving up its understanding, or

authority to say what its classifications mean. /nhappy onsciousness in general, as it

appears to us, is introduced in the te&t in paragraphs *78" to *13". Its appearance to

itself as devotion is discussed in paragraphs *19" to *15". Its appearance to itself as

wor% and service is discussed in paragraphs *16" to ***". 'inally, its appearance to

itself as renunciation and asceticism is discussed in paragraphs ***" to *07".

16. lthough the /nhappy onsciousness does not ta%e itself to have a %ind of authority

that is both independent and determinately contentful, the features whose implicit

incompatibility showed us the inade


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incompatibility of independence and determinate contentfulness manifests itself again in

the first two stages of the /nhappy onsciousness. In the first self-conception, the

implicit casualty of this conflict is determinateness, while in the second it is independence.

In this first mode...it is only a movement towards thin%ing, and so is devotion. Its

thin%ing as such is no more than

the chaotic jingling of bells, or a mist of warm incense,

a musical thin%ing that does not get as far as the Cotion...

What we have here is the inward movement of the pure heart which feels itself, but

as agoni2ingly self-divided, the movement of an infinite yearning which is certain

that its essence is such a pure heart, a pure thin%ing which thin%s of itself as a

particular individuality...*15"

#evotion does not reach the level of thought. It remains completely inarticulate. It is

without determinate content because it is not articulated in terms of material

incompatibility and inferential relations in the way that only the products of the rough and

tumble of e&perience can be. /nderstood as a form of merely abstract, indeterminate

dependence, and so lac%ing determinate dependence, this feeling lac%s a determinate

obect to answer to as well. ?etreating into inner feeling, /nhappy onsciousness ta%ing

itself to be devotion achieves at most a subective sense of its individuality.

;ut...the return of the feeling heart into itself...is the pure heart which for us or in

itself has found itself...

this feeling is, in itself, a feeling of self...+hus it comes forward here as self-feeling,

or as an actual consciousness e&isting on its own account. *16"

We can see something of the individuality that it is implicitly, in itself or for us, being

e&pressed in this merely felt self-certainty, albeit one-sidedly in being separated from the

determinate obective constraint that is re


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/nhappy onsciousness, which sei2es on this aspect of individuality to the eventual cost

of its conception of itself as a purely dependent particular related to a purely independent

universal.

14. +he second species of self-conception under the heading of the /nhappy

onsciousness ta%es the practical form of immersing itself in actual transformation of a

recalcitrant world--in wor%, and therefore in determinate desire and e&perience. t the

same time, conceiving of itself as the servant of a heavenly Master, it disclaims

responsibility both for the desire, since it pursues the Aord@s universal ends, not its own

particular ones, and for the universal s%ills it e&ercises in its particular activity.

In the struggle of the heart and emotions the individual consciousness is only a

musical abstract moment. In wor% and enoyment which ma%e this unsubstantial

e&istence a reality, it can directly forget itself, and the consciousness of its own

particular role in this reali2ation is cancelled out by the act of than%ful

ac%nowledgment. **0"

...the particular individual gives than%s, i.e. denies itself the satisfaction of being

conscious of its independence, and assigns the essence of its action not to itself but

to the beyond...***"

+his giving than%s is an e&plicit relin


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for us, but this conse


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;ut this assignment of responsibility for determinate powers to something beyond is

contradicted by e&perience. 'or the powers one finds oneself e&ercising in s%illful wor%

are not given as full blown talents, but must be developed through e&perience, confronting

the determinate independence of obects with the determinate independence of one@s

ta%ings and ma%ings. +hey are determinately contentful precisely as products of this sort

of process of development. c%nowledging this point is incompatible with a conception

of the active e&periencing individual as purely dependent.

'or though consciousness renounces the show of satisfying its feeling of self, it

obtains the actual satisfaction of itD

for it has been desire, wor%, and enoymentD

as consciousness it has willed, acted, and enoyed. ***"

We can see that the second form of the /nhappy onsciousness is one in which that

consciousness is implicitly guilty. 'or the practical aim its activity is in service of is the

cancellation of its individuality, which it identifies with mere particularity. ;ut actually

and in-itself it enoys that individuality in its wor%, that is it concretely e&presses,

develops, and identifies with it.

...the result is the renewed division into the opposed consciousness of the

/nchangeable /nwandelbaren", and the consciousness of willing, performing,

enoying, and self-renunciation itself which confronts itD in other words, the

consciousness of independent individuality in general. ***"

Self-feeling and individuality developing through e&perience re-assert themselves against

the independent and /nchangeable.

*1. ur reali2ation of this point shows us the inade


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With this appears the third relationship or process of this consciousness, which

proceeds from the second as a consciousness that has truly proved itself to be

independent, by its will and its deed. **0"

+he essence of the third form of the /nhappy onsciousness is the renunciation or

surrender of the individuality that is not successfully suppressed by understanding itself in

terms of wor% in service of the universal. +he attempt is to free itself from action and

enoyment, so far as they are regarded as its own, and to cast away its own freedom of

decision and herewith the responsibility for its own action, **6". +he concrete e&ercise

of authority and responsibility, which is what we have begun to see individuality to consist

in, is to be relin


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+his mediated relation is thus a syllogism, in which the individuality, initially fi&ed

in its antithesis to the in-itself, is united with this other e&treme only through a

third term...

+his middle term is itself a conscious ;eing, for it is an action which mediates

consciousness as suchD the content of this action is the e&tinction of its particular

individuality which consciousness is underta%ing. **5"

+hese are supposed to form a complete set, because the strategy of devotion focuses

on the universal aspect of individuality, losing contentfulness because it ignores the

necessary contribution of particularity. +he strategy of service focuses on the particular

aspect of individuality, the actual application of the universal to, or its reali2ation in

particular cases. lthough in this way determinate content is indeed secured, the way it is

secured depends essentially on activity by the individual, so that the universal does not

appear as purely independent and the individual, still conceived as merely particular, as

purely dependent. +he third strategy focuses on the individual, as mediating between the

particular and the universal. In grasping the essential role of the individual as mediator,

this form of /nhappy onsciousness has made e&plicit to itself an important feature of the

actual structure of self-conscious individuality--the dependent consciousness reali2es that

its relation to the universal is mediated by its relation to another individual. +his insight

appears still only in a flawed and partial form, because the /nhappy onsciousness does

not recogni2e itself in the person of the mediator. +he asymmetry of this relation, in

which the /nhappy onsciousness relinrogress is made in that the relation of the particular

consciousness to the in-itself conceived as a beyond is correctly ta%en essentially to

depend on its social relations to another self-consciousness. +his truth is evidently a

development of that achieved by the Slave.


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*0. +he third form of the /nhappy onsciousness, though ultimately unsuccessful as a

way of reconciling a conception of determinately contentful merely particular self-

consciousness with a commitment to its thorough-going dependence on an utterly

independent universal, does achieve a genuine ontological transformation that will turn out

to be important later. 'or insofar as it succeeds in sacrificing itself, in deferring its

authority and responsibility to that of the mediator, it shows in actual concrete practice

that it does not identify with this actual, particular animal that it ta%es itself to be. +his is,

parado&ically under the circumstances, an e&ercise of pride, identifying oneself with an

ideal that one is for oneself rather than with what one actually is in oneself.

nly through this actual sacrifice could it demonstrate this self-renunciation. 'or

only therein does the deception vanish which lies in the inner ac%nowledgment of

gratitude through heart, sentiment, and tongue, an ac%nowledgment which indeed

disclaims all power pertaining to its own independent e&istence, ascribing it all to a

gift from above, but which in this very disclaimer, holds on to its own particular

e&istence, does so outwardly in the possessions it does not surrender, inwardly in

the consciousness of the decision if has itself made, and in the consciousness of its

content which it has itself determined, which it has not e&changed for one coming

from outside, which last would fill it up with what is meaningless for it. **4"

!uman history is %ic%ed off by the proect of pride, in the form of self-consciousness

understanding itself as mastery. >rogress is represented by the final form of the /nhappy

onsciousness even though it still conceives of itself according to the alienated model of

un


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*3. What is beginning to emerge for us, and will be pursued in the ne&t part of the

e&position, is a lesson concerning:

+his unity of obectivity and being-for-self, which lies in the Cotion of action, and

which therefore becomes for consciousness essence and obect...

that in principle action is only really action when it is the action of a particular

individual. *07"

ccordingly, we turn our attention from the conception consciousness has of its self to the

conception it has of its action. +his is discussed under the heading of ?eason because

?eason is purposive activity,**".

Stoicism, Skepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness

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