Self-awareness (Hegel)

After having described the three stages of the conscience (significant Certainty, Perception and Understanding), Hegel approaches in the Phénoménologie of the Spirit the following stage: self-awareness or autoconscience. This part of the Phenomenology of the Spirit which coîncide with chapter IV, contains inter alia the famous dialectical one of the Master and the slave, crucial for the Marxist interpretation of Hegel.

Presentation

Whereas the first three chapters treated cognitive faculties of the Homme, of what there is the apparently passive one in him (the object was posed vis-a-vis a conscience), Hegel now will study the conscience as a Désir and Action, i.e. as it becomes aware of its Liberté and its transformer power, driving of the human Histoire.

IV. The truth of the certainty of oneself

Hegel considered the conscience in general, i.e. the conscience of the outside world. In this conscience, the Certitude of the object moved immediate Expérience with the Entendement while passing by the Perception. There is thus a Dialectique Vérité which reveals every moment of the conscience like Erreur S. Up to now, the truth was posed apart from the conscience; but while becoming aware of the identity of “I” and the act of relation of the conscience, we arrive at the self-awareness, “in the native kingdom of the truth. ”

The self-awareness is a new method of the To know, it is a knowledge of oneself, a return of the conscience since the being-other. In this direction, it is pure a Tautologie, because the difference of with the Objet is abolished: “I am I”. The self-awareness is thus the moment of the awakening of the identity of oneself with oneself. It remains however at the same time a conscience of an object (negative moment) and of oneself, i.e. of sound true gasoline. As this conscience to one it relates, it becomes Désir.

Control and constraint

As a desire, i.e. Volonté to be assimilated, endorse, therefore to destroy what is opposed, the self-awareness seeks the recognition of another conscience in a combat with death. The negativity of this conscience thus implies:

negation of its nature Animal E, therefore the possibility of denying, of wanting its clean Dead;
recognition of the freedom of Others which one seeks to be assimilated.

The animal man becomes truly man by his contempt of death. But, if it yields to fear of dying, it becomes a conscience Esclave, not-recognized, it remains in an animal state, but while working for a Master whom it recognizes like his superior.

The Master is thus the winner, he does not need to recognize the other, but to be such, he must be recognized by a man that he judges his inferior. The man-Master is in this direction an existential dead end: he does not manage to satisfy his desire. The slave is as for him a servile conscience: he preferred to live, he still depends on his animal life, he is not free. He works for the Master, and, while working, he transforms the Nature, and it is because he transforms that he will be the true subject of the human history. It is seen here that, for Hegel, nature is transformed into world, in history, by the result of a fight: this fight leads to the Travail of the slave.

Freedom of the conscience of oneself

The slave becomes aware of his freedom by the transformation of nature, but this freedom is purely mental: it is not carried out, but remains interior. The dialectical one of the servile conscience is divided into three moments:

the Stoicism : it is the thought which is conceived free; detachment of the outside world: the stoical one is proclaimed universally free. It is withdrawn in its thought and separates from nature and the company: in stoicism, the man is thus a Empire in an empire. But this independence is illusory, it is a false freedom, abstract.
the Skepticism : awakening solipsist, the me denies the world (empirical and sensitive), the Réalité. It does not act more than the stoical one: its radical negation is purely imaginary.
the unhappy conscience : the negation of the world led to the religious conscience, which creates for itself a transcendent Master, God, always by fear of death, and in that it is still a servile conscience. This conscience is unhappy because it is divided between one me empirical and mortal, and one me transcending. The unhappy conscience thus does not arrive at the unit, it is torn in itself.

Detailed talk of the autoconscience part

Introduction

Before the self-awareness, truth is something of other than me. But the concept of the object does not hold in the experiment made on him. The certainty (of the subject) is lost in the truth (of the object). (This passage summarizes chapter I, II, and III) But in the self-awareness, the certainty is with oneself its own object, the conscience is with oneself even truth, therefore the certainty (of myself) coincides with the truth (of myself).

1. Self-awareness, in oneself

If the knowledge (of CS) of another (object) disappeared well, its moments are preserved. The singularity to be it aimed, opposite to the universality of perception, the empty interior of the understanding are not then any more of the gasolines, but moments from which the truth is to disappear. The subsistence simple to be it different, seems also lost. However, if the difference were not, the CSS would be only tautology “Ich bin Ich.). The different being must thus persist (aufheben) like a being (or a moment) distinct, which does not have in the CSS any being. It is the object of the desire (Begierde) as denied, therefore desired, posed like negative.

2. Life

The object-other (of the desire) is turned over in itself. The CSS distinguishes it (it makes the difference in him and it), regards it as being, independent, therefore alive. The unit is divided by the CSS. But since being for oneself is to it simple substance (i.e. existing by itself, not mediatized), it removes itself by posing the other (media), there is thus again dissolution (return to the whole to be it parménidien). The life is this cycle, this movement.

3. Ego and the desire

Introduction: life and CSS

The unit obtained at the end of dialectical from the life has in it all its moments as exceeded, it is universal unit.

Dialectical of the life and the CSS

The autoconscience is certain of oneself only by the suppression to be it different which arises to it like independent life (cf 2). It is thus essentially desire. But so that this suppression is, this different must also be. The autoconscience also reproduces its object, by learning that it is conditioned by this object which it denies. It will not be satisfied that when the different object itself is negation i.e. independent universal object, i.e. car-conscience. The CSS thus reaches its satisfaction in another CSS. When a autoconscience is the object, the object is as well “me” as “object”. What results from that, it will be seen, it is the spirit.

With Independence and dependence of the CSS

Introduction to “domination and constraint”

The autoconscience is only as being recognized of another. The concept of this unit of the autoconscience in its doubling is “concept of infinite”: each determinability of the CSS is immediately the opposite of itself.

1. The doubled CSS

Dialectical of the recognition

For the autoconscience, it thus required there of an external autoconscience, which has a double significance:

a) While being seen like another CSS, it lost itself

b) It lost the other by removing it

it thus comes from there to remove itself, since it became the different one.

It is thus found equalizes with itself. It returns the other again absolutely other. But the other CSS (imagined and necessary for the CSS) made the same thing. This reciprocity is thus conscious. The two CSS thus recognize itself while being recognized reciprocally: each CSS is by the means of the other which recognizes it, if not it is only alive thing. It is necessary thus that each CSS is made recognize, from where the fight to come.

2. The fight of the opposite CSS

Introduction

By removing the other, the autoconscience is insulated. In this immediacy (it was different the media), it is singular. The other is for the autoconscience negation, therefore inessential. The autoconscience must thus rise with the universal one.

Dialectical of the fight to the death

The autoconscience must thus be presented to itself in the form of a negation of its objective, singular being. It must thus show that it is not attached to the life. But the request is the same one for the other. Each one thus tends to dead other. But that implies the risk of its own life. The two CSS are proven mutually, and with themselves, by means of the fight to the death. It is by the risk of its life that freedom is preserved, that it is proven that the gasoline of the CSS is not the immediate mode to be it in which the CSS emerges initially (a thing) (immediate certainty, singular: gewissheit) but objective, independent certainty (wahrheit). But this supreme proof removes the truth which was to leave there because death is negation without independence, without recognition.

Transition

The autoconscience learns whereas the life is as essential as the CSS, therefore: The CSS, the CSS for the other (choseity). In the CSS are then present: a) the Master b) the slave (that which preferred the life with freedom).

3. Master and slave

Dialectical of the Master and the slave

a) Domination

The Master is “for oneself”, it is in relation to another autoconscience dependant on the things (it is due to the life). The thing is the object of the desire, worked by the slave. The independence of the thing is denied by the Master, who leaves it with the slave for work, and is satisfied to enjoy it. The Master thus denies the thing by the pleasure. For the Master, the recognition is effective by the means of the slave. The slave cannot control the being and arrive at the absolute negation. A unilateral recognition took seat (2nd moment). But for the Master, the truth of oneself is the servile, inessential conscience.

b) Fear

For the slave, it is the Master who is the gasoline. Its truth is thus the autoconscience independent of the Master. If this truth is for the slave, it has in him experience of the gasoline of the Master, through the fear of death. While being useful, the slave gradually eliminates his adhesion with the determined being.

c) Culture (or formation)

By the mediation of work, the autoconscience slave comes to itself. Work forms (different from the pleasure which is a disappearing state), a subsistence, an objectivity has. The worker accustoms himself with the independence of the object, like intuition of oneself. The servile autoconscience had the being for oneself (the Master) in front of which it trembled. By forming the object, it creates for itself its own being-for-oneself having which it does not tremble any more. The two moments, fear and constraint, are necessary here: without constraint, the fear remains formal, interior, dumb. Without fear, there is no essential depth in the servile activity, not of release to be it natural.

B. Freedom of the autoconscience. Stoicism, skepticism and unhappy conscience

Introduction

The autoconscience autostante (the Master) does not arrive for it at the gasoline objectifies en-soi. The driven back conscience (the slave) manages for him to the object in oneself in the act to be formed. In addition, in the Master, it intuitionne the being for oneself, conscience. But these moments fall one apart from the other. None of both carries out the unit of the en-soi and the pour-soi. To think it, the object is not driven in representations, but in concepts: represented with the form of one something of other that conscience, whereas a concept is contents included/understood. The conscience is immediately conscious of its unit with this being, which is not the case in the representation where the conscience has to remember that is its representation. In thinking it, I am free: my movement is in myself, my object (the concept) is immediate unit to be it for oneself and to be it in oneself.

Dialectical

1.Stoicism

a) Introduction

This freedom of the autoconscience, in the history of the spirit, was called stoicism. Its principle is qu “essence” (or “truth”) is only when it conscience behaves like thinking gasoline.

b) Dialectical

It is not any more the difference like given thing (conscience of a being there natural) but the thought difference, immediately nondifferent from ego. Its to act is to be free, from acting it like suffering, it withdraws itself in the simple essentiality of the thought. This autoconscience whose gasoline is one “I who have in him an being-other”, is abstract, indifferent compared to the natural being-there. Its reflection “is doubled”. Its freedom is not alive freedom, but as an operative individuality, the conscience must arise like alive and for this reason to contain what is true the life. Only, the concept does not have any contents in itself: stoicism, when it was questioned known the criterion of the truth, gave for answer “truth is rationality”.

c) Transition

This thinking conscience is thus only the unfinished negation of the being-other, withdrawn in oneself.

2. Skepticism

a) Introduction

Skepticism is the realization of that of which stoicism is only the concept. For the conscience the inessentiality of the being-other occurs. This orientation polemizes will be crowned success because it is prepared by stoicism.

b) Dialectical

To act of skepticism brings the dialectical movements of the significant certainty, perception and the understanding, but also the inessentiality of the relation Master/slave as well as ethical laws (command of the control). Skepticism makes disappear the different being like objective and manner of behaving at its place. What disappears, it is the difference which is: “not to be in itself, but to have its gasoline in another”. To think skeptic is the negative gasoline like simple. The autoconscience skeptic makes the experiment of this ataraxie be thought, it confesses being fixes quotas for, be directed and obey with what is not to him gasoline. Singular life and lost autoconscience, it states the neantity of perception but perceives. Its to act and its words are always contradicted.

c) Transition

In skepticism, the conscience makes in truth the experiment of oneself like contradictory in oneself, from where proceeds a new figure, because it is in fact a conscience which has in it two modes. The unhappy conscience is the self-awareness like gasoline doubles only contradictory.

3. Unhappy conscience

a) Introduction

The true return in oneself even will present the concept of the spirit become alive and entered the existence, but for oneself, the unhappy conscience is not yet this gasoline itself, not yet the unit of both.

b) Dialectical

For the unhappy conscience, essence is “to know the immutable simple one” and the inessential one is the changeable multiple, i.e. its way of being in the world because it is aware of contradiction. It passes from there in rise to the immutable one, but this rise is conscience of its opposite at once, therefore conscience of its inessential singularity. Thus the conscience of immutable in oneself is a figuration of immutable which is not for oneself: the immutable one faces the significant conscience opaque, effective, the hope to become one with him is without possible achievement. A-being remains purely and simply with far.

c) The Christian attitude

Introduction

The conscience has to raise the report/ratio external with immutable illustrated in becoming-a absolute. The movement is triple: like pure conscience, singular gasoline, conscience of its being for oneself

Judaism

By the pure conscience the immutable one is illustrated which is not for oneself, but opposite and imperfect. It is only enthusiasm. The interior movement of the pure emotional power which feels painfully like singularity. It obtains the certainty to be recognized of this object (the immutable one) for the reason which he thinks like singularity too. But this object, in the act to seize, escapes because the conscience seizes itself when she wants to think it like singularity. It is unattainable differently than by its sepulchre. It will end up giving up this expensive combat which it is necessary that it loses.

Judaism with Christianity

It is the emotional power which for us was satisfied in one autosentiment, in this return in oneself is occurred the relation of the desire and the work, which check the interior certainty of oneself by the act of sursumer the foreign gasoline and to enjoy it. But the conscience is not like wishing and working, it is not present this autosentiment, its interior remains broken, it is necessary for him to destroy for oneself the checking. The effectivity against which desire and work are turned is not any more with this conscience nothing in oneself but a broken effectivity, nothing as much as a sanctified world (Christ). But she arrives to the destruction of the effectivity and the pleasure, because the immutable book her figure for the pleasure. This relation with the effectivity is for oneself of the singular conscience. In its acting, the conscience is held like credit opposite the passive effectivity. For this conscience the en-soi is different, the activity (or power) is beyond oneself, and instead of returning in oneself it returns the power in the other extreme, purely universal. In the reciprocal abandonment of the two parts emerges for the conscience its unit with immutable the, affected one of separation. Its action to return grace is for the conscience its to act clean, which is reflected in the extreme of the singularity.

Christianity

In the opposite report/ratio of the conscience where its reality is to him nothing, to act of nothing, where the pleasure is feeling of misfortune, it is conscious of it like effective singular in the animal functions, given like the enemy, object of asceticism. The conscience realizes soiled, unhappy and. But joint conscience of its unit with the immutable one, because the required destruction of its effective being is médiatisé by the thought of the immutable one. In this mediate report/ratio where the singularity is syllogized with this extreme that by a third (the saint spirit, the church), the conscience is released to act it and of the pleasure like his and rejects on medium term the fault its of acting (confession, discharge). But remains still the objective, fruit of work and the pleasure, that the conscience pushes back like foreigner and foolish (terrestrial goods) in the act to fast and to be mortified. By these moments of abandonment which leads to businesses where she does not understand anything (religious rites), the conscience expressed herself of sound “I” and made of her autoconscience an objective being, a thing (renunciation of oneself). In the sacrifice, the conscience is déprise of its misfortune. This sacrifice contained in oneself to act it of the other, for the conscience, its will comes to be universal, in oneself. In the same way, its act to give up the possession and pleasure is not to him its to act clean, but to act absolute, beyond. In this object (beyond) is occurred to him the representation of the reason, the certainty to be, in its singularity, absolutely in oneself, any reality.

Internal bonds

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