← Continuing to read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the last part of the chapter “Self-Consciousness”. By this point, consciousness has evolved from skepticism – in which all that it is and that it experiences it knows to be just thought – into the unhappy consciousness (UHC). The skeptic lived in constant motion between two contradictory positions, that (a) it is the ever-changing thoughts, versus (b) it is the unchangeable essential core of thoughts. The UHC retains this dichotomy, but considers itself to be just that. UHC is, for itself and by its own definition, a contradictory dualism.
Foreshadowing: I was very much not impressed by this section of Hegel’s text. It started off fine, but became increasingly obtuse and vague. Then, conferring some secondary texts, I realized that Hegel is trying to do two things. First, progress the phenomenological project, and take consciousness beyond its current contradiction. But (secondly) he is also pushing his ideas on religion, especially the history of Christianity as he sees it (and as he studied it in earlier decades). This second parallel goal is not explicitly defined, and this forces the narrative to take all sorts of turns and employ all sorts of ideas and conceptual trajectories that it would not have made sense otherwise. This is not the first time I’ve faced Hegel contorting the text to suit some theory he has, but this has been the worst for me so for.
For my plans to summarize the text and its ideas, this means a shorter and abbreviated writeup. Essentially I intend to virtually skip everything that is not necessary for getting consciousness to the next chapter.
The initial challenge for unhappy consciousness
The unhappy consciousness (UHC) sees it is divided into essential/immutable and unessential/changeable sides. But over this perspective, it sees itself as unessential since it is aware of this contradiction, but then again, it sees itself as the unchanging awareness of all this. This indicates to the UHC that it should get rid of the unessential element, which is impossible since its very identity means containing both of them. Thus:
But inasmuch as the two are equally essential to the Unhappy Consciousness and are mutually contradictory, that consciousness is merely the contradictory movement in which the opposite does not come to rest in its opposite, but only generates itself anew in it as an opposite. [208]*
It’s life is unhappy since to think about life is to see the unessential in itself, which (per above) leads to seeing the changeless, and then to be frustrated in that goal. The progress it does make, is to see that this changelessness is of an individuality, and when the UHC relates to it, it relates to it as one individual to another. That other, essential and changeless individual, is however realized as being beyond integration, and thus can only be a target of aspiration (and later devotion/worship).
A few words on unhappy consciousness and religion
This section of text becomes increasingly infused with allusions and implications of Christian theology and history. Not every reference is clear, but here is a sample quote that is obviously referencing the trinity:
The movement in which the unessential consciousness strives to attain this oneness is itself threefold in accordance with the threefold relation this consciousness will have with its incarnate beyond : first, as pure consciousness ; second, as a particular individual who approaches the actual world in the forms of desire and work ; and third, as consciousness that is aware of its own being-for-self. [214]*
Various Christian ideas arise in this text. Including explicit mention of devotion and asceticism and ministers, as well as implied allusion to trends in Christian history, including the crusades (seeking and failing to reunite to Jesus, thus must seek unity via religious communities) and the medieval church (that subordinates men who in a manner analogous with the master’s slave, are thus led to realize the universal within themselves).
The general idea is that the UHC posits its own unchanging essential aspect as being beyond incorporation, and yet as being individualized, and this can be seen in Christianity which posits a god that is beyond and which men try to relate to, but ultimately fail. They fail because their religion is not authentic; an authentic religion would be one that treated god as the Geist, and hence man as an integral expression of god.
In an essay about this section, Leo Rauch hears Hegel saying that religion “is the outward projection of individual psychic elements”, and “we must regard [this religion] as the epiphenomenon of consciousness in the dialectical clash between its component essences”. Since it is unable “to grasp itself in any conclusive manner, the Unhappy Consciousness finds a way of saying what it must on another plane – religion.” [Ch.8]
And Charles Taylor in his book mentions that this difficulty faced by the UHC trying to unify with the transcendental, as a theory, is the origin of the Feuerbachian and Marxian conception of religious consciousness as alienated (nb. those two had a different conception of religion than Hegel, as they anthropomorphized Geist into a generic man).
Overcoming unhappy consciousness
- Unhappy consciousness (UHC) is a dyad of [a] the immutable self-identical subject of thought, and [b] the individual who is subject to the changeable world.
- However, he identifies himself as [1] a particular containing the inessential mutable; whereas [2] he projects the immutable into a beyond.
- Consequentially UHC feels that division (i.e. of [a/b] caused by [2]) as a loss, and yearns to be reunited with the immutable. But qua individual/particular he cannot possibly be reunited with the unchanging.
- And thus is forever seeking ways to relate to the projected immutable.
That is the end of “Self-consciousness”; the third chapter of the book is “Reason”. Rational thought will realize that the immutable is not divorced from the self, since everything (all of reality) has rational thought underlying it; both the self and the world it perceives are due to rational necessity, and it is this rational necessity which it had thought to be an immutable beyond and now realizes is intimately integral to it individually.
Post-script
There were various reasons for my negative impression of this section of writing in The Phenomenology of Spirit:
- As I mentioned above, it was as if there was a second author pushing his own agenda, with resulting trajectories, as well as necessary vagueness (or increased range of potential meaning) necessary to fit the alternative narrative. For me, this was the principle source of aggravation.
- I was not convinced that this stage (i.e. UHC) was necessary; couldn’t the skeptic consciousness transform straight into Reason?
- And apropos, isn’t the dyad of the UHC already present in skepticism (and hence redundant)?
