Modern Political Thought: What Is Self-Consciousness in Hegel's Usage - Term Paper Example

? As presented in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and thus to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness; Hegel characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and even refers us to the development of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as an essential moment in the fulfilment of this aim of Life to become 'for-itself.' The following paper delineates this overlooked thread of the dialectic. The central thesis is that each step along the path of self-consciousness' attempt at making the truth of its unity with itself explicit, is simultaneously a step in the realization of the aim of Life: to become 'for-itself.' Moreover, this represents the difference or transformation of consciousness to self-consciousness. Hegel has articulated a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and thrown light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in an epic drama of Life's struggle and Spirit's birth. Consciousness becomes Self-Consciousness precisely because the examination of consciousness is the discovery that we are mediated by others, and thus we discover that we 'need' or desire others. In the stages leading up to self-consciousness, consciousness placed the locus of truth into that which it took to be other than itself. The particular and immediate being of the 'This' [Sense-Certainty], the universal Thing with its many properties [Perception], and the self-eliciting forces [Understanding] were all dialectical consequences of consciousness' certainty regarding the Truth of this other. Now, as Hegel words it, "the Notion of this truth vanishes in the experience of it" (Hegel 166). All the ways in which the object appeared as in itself manifest themselves now in Truth as merely the guises of the object as for an other, i.e. as for consciousness. Only at the end of "Force and the Understanding" does certainty become identical with truth, "for the certainty is to itself its own object"(Hegel 166). Through the negative experience of the dissolving of its certainties of external truths, consciousness has come to see that it itself is the Truth of these certainties. Thus, when consciousness becomes Self-consciousness, it has entered "the native realm of truth"(Hegel 167) and the earlier moments are nothing but abstractions from this self-relation, vanishing due to their unreality for consciousness To arrive at this 'self relation', consciousness first undergoes a rigorous self examination. It seeks to find certainty in what can be 'immediately' known. However, it soon discovers that what is 'immediate' is actually 'mediated'. For example, in looking at the immediacy of the self or the “I” it discovers that whatever can be said of oneself, can only be done with the language of the community. If I was to look at who I am as an individual entity, I would discover that whatever I can say about myself, others can say about themselves. Further, the very language that I use to describe myself is the language of my community. Thus, we are mediated in our immediacy by the language of the community. Likewise with the immediacy of the “now”. The immediate moment is discovered as passing as soon as it enters consciousness. What was thought to be immediate for consciousness, is actually an 'other' for consciousness (Russo 14). That is, there is a split in the immediate between consciousness and what has already passed. At the level of sense-certainty, consciousness discovers that it is not immediate but rather, mediated by an other, which is something beyond consciousness and thus, the process begins where consciousness is aware of itself. There is a fundamental discovery that what was thought to be “particular” is actually a “universal” (Lauer 49). This is what is implied by a mediated immediate. Where consciousness begins within thinking about its own nominal or particular self, it discovers that universal factors have helped shaped it like language or time passing. However, consciousness is not yet aware of itself in relation to an other or the nature of the relation to another. Hegel asserts, however, that there still remains an otherness in all this. Consciousness posits a distinction within itself, which, however, for consciousness is not a distinction at all. Because self-consciousness distinguishes itself from itself, it is a distinguishing movement for which this distinction is unreal (Flay 34). As such, "the difference, as an otherness, is immediately superseded for it"(Hegel 167). The unreality for consciousness of this distinction is quite important for everything that follows, for this differentiation, by the very tautologous nature of its movement, comes to be continually superseded because the difference lacks being. The difference is not a true difference and self-consciousness has the form of a "motionless tautology," an "I am I." Yet, it stands to reason that if the difference is as such nothing, and self-consciousness is thereby deflated into a vacuous tautology of I=I, then "it is not self-consciousness" (Hegel 167). In other words, the other of which it is aware cannot yet truly be consciousness; rather the otherness is for it in the form of a being, or as a distinct moment. This means that self-consciousness has not yet worked off consciousness as such, i.e. the various forms of the sensuous world still accompany this deficient self-consciousness. Yet, simultaneously, this first stage of self-consciousness knows that this difference is not a true difference. Thus, this initial preservation of the sensuous world is only an apparent preservation for the unity of self-consciousness with itself: ... hence the sensuous world is for it an enduring existence which, however, is only appearance, or a difference which, in itself, is no difference. This antithesis of its appearance and its truth has, however, for its essence only the truth, viz. the unity of self-consciousness with itself; this unity must become essential to self-consciousness, i.e. self-consciousness is Desire in general. (Hegel 167) In its initial genesis, self-consciousness inherently sets itself the task of actualizing or making real its self-unity (Stewart 114). The overcoming of the antithesis between an apparent world of sensuous otherness and the truth of self-consciousness is the 'movement' of self-consciousness in making explicit its own unity with itself (Hegel 167). We can already see that, for Hegel, all self-conscious desire is desire of self. Since the unity of self-consciousness is the true unity underlying the apparent difference between self and sensuous world, the negation of the apparent difference through a negation of the immediate object constitutes the attempted realization of self-consciousness' unity. As such, all "desire for the immediate object" is truly a self-conscious desire for the unity of self-consciousness. At this stage, Hegel abruptly introduces the notion of Life. As he says, for 'we phenomenologists' or 'in-itself', when mere consciousness became self-consciousness by returning into itself, so did the object return into itself. As such, "the object has become Life"(Hegel 168). The general relation of being "that which is reflected into itself" is therefore a defining feature of Life (Hegel 168), and not only is self-consciousness living as such, but its immediate object is alive as well. The latter, however, is not yet a self-consciousness. It remains an object, but a living one. A living object, on the one hand, and a self-consciousness, on the other, are manifestations of one and the same relation, Life or reflection-into-self, a relation which first manifested itself at the stage of Understanding (Verene 47). Both Life, self-consciousness, and their relation are a direct consequence of their genesis out of the relation of the Understanding to the inner essence of things as force. In brief, the universal consequence of the Understanding's relation to Force is "the distinguishing of what is not to be distinguished, or the unity of what is distinguished"(Hegel 168). I have already noted how this takes shape in the initial phase of self-consciousness. To continue with the category of Life, the 'unity of what is distinguished' is, as force, likewise "a repulsion from itself"(Hegel 168). This unity which directs itself into many forms, and yet consists of no real direction, hence retaining its many forms as differences in a simple universal medium, is itself a mediated stage which goes into the apparently antithetical extremes of Self-consciousness and Life: the former [Self-consciousness] is the unity for which the infinite unity of differences is; the latter [Life], however, is only this unity itself, so that it is not at the same time for itself. To the extent, then, that consciousness is independent, so too is its object, but only implicitly. (Hegel 168) Thus, the initial appearance of Self-consciousness necessarily implies that to Self-consciousness there is correlated Life. The latter is a "simple fluid substance of pure movement within itself" (Hegel 169). In section 171, Hegel reviews the constitutive moments of Life, wherein the essential import of its existence is that Life is a "process" of consumption of itself, and an active re-absorption. After its initial self-destruction and re-absorption, Life has gone beyond its "simple original substance," having now achieved a "reflected unity" of these two moments and thus constituting a universal "simple genus" (Hegel 172). Fundamentally, it eats itself and thereby achieves a kind of transcendence of itself, which, however, does not yet "exist for itself" as the simple unity that it is(Hegel 172). In a crucial move, Hegel states that "this result," i.e. the fact that Life's self-reflected transcendence of itself lacks existence for-itself, "points to something other than itself, viz. to consciousness, for which Life exists as this unity, or as genus"(Hegel 172). Therefore, Life has a kind of teleological termination in a Self-consciousness. Of course, self-consciousness is not a result of Life, but both are so intimately correlated that the one implies, or better, needs the other. Hegel's insight astounds all the more when he goes on to remind us that Self-consciousness is itself a Life: This other Life, however, for which the genus as such exists, and which is genus on its own account, viz. self-consciousness, exists in the first instance only as this simple essence, and has itself as pure 'I' for object. In the course of its experience which we are now to consider, this abstract object will enrich itself for the 'I' and undergo the unfolding which we have seen in the sphere of Life. (Hegel 173) The 'course of its experience' which Hegel mentions is nothing other than the dialectical struggle of consciousness both in desire and in the Master-Slave dialectic to achieve true self-consciousness (Williams 180). Self-consciousness, then, is a redemption of Life from its incarceration 'in-itself.' Self-consciousness is not in truth an 'alien' being in a completely 'alien' world, with natural life set over and against it. Rather, the very drive of self-consciousness to assimilate life into its own being, which we shall consider shortly, is itself an inherent and necessary moment in Life itself. In short, the secret of life is that in self-consciousness, Life can be for-itself. By way of prefacing a consideration of the Master-Slave dialectic in this connection, the fact that Life's redemption from its pure being-in-itself occurs only in self-consciousness' complete transformation of the natural in work is itself an instance of the expression: 'nature requires art.' As we shall see, to achieve its ends, Life also requires death. The full exposition of this necessity will reveal itself only at the end of our investigation and should be held in mind. The relationship between consciousness and life is at first much more abstract, that unity with itself not yet being given in self-consciousness. We saw earlier that the abstractness of this 'I,' which can express only a tautologous relation of 'I am I,' saddles consciousness with the appearance of its self as a sensuous other (Rauch 141). Now, we know that this sensuous other is simply the unity of life existing for consciousness, but not for itself. It is the sheer unity of a living object. As such, self-consciousness is immediately aware of Life, in the form of an object over and across from it, yet takes this object to be nothing, an appearance of its self, and hence it must negate and destroy this independent manifestation. Self-consciousness' super-ceding of the object is thus a super-ceding of an abstract form of its own self. This is an important aspect that distinguishes consciousness from self-consciousness. As mentioned above, the desire of self-consciousness for the object is truly a desire for itself, a desire to find satisfaction in a unified self-certainty. Nevertheless, self-consciousness is in truth radically dependent upon the object whose negation it requires for the very self-certainty it seeks. The object continues thus to re-appear, as it must if self-conscious desire is to maintain the possibility of its satisfaction: Thus self-consciousness, by its negative relation to the object, is unable to supersede it; it is really because of that relationship that it produces the object again, and the desire as well. It is in fact something other than self-consciousness that is the essence of Desire (Hegel 175). Here, self-consciousness is caught in a particular bind. The object, which self-consciousness took to be a pure nothing, gains the character of independence precisely in the movement of self-consciousness to negate and destroy it. Nevertheless, it must continue to supersede and thus negate the object, for self-consciousness must realize itself as the unity underlying the difference between itself and the apparent otherness. Self-consciousness remains stuck in a vicious circle of desire, destruction, and the resurgence of desire (Kain 46). True satisfaction eludes it, and its unity with itself in the other cannot be made explicit. Thus Hegel can say that "it is in fact something other than self-consciousness that is the essence of desire," because the living object, now independent, is only a stubborn unity only for self-consciousness and not for itself. Only as a unity for itself could the object properly serve to make explicit self-consciousness' unity with itself in this other and not through a negation of this other. It would be free from having to negate the object only if the object could negate its own self. Now, that object, which in order to be wholly for-itself must negate itself, is nothing other than consciousness: “it must carry out this negation of itself in itself, for it is in itself negative, and must be for the other what it is ... achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” (Hegel 175). The force of this necessary requirement ushers in a new stage in Hegel's phenomenological reflection, and it marks the beginning of true self-consciousness in the process of leaving behind the sensuous world. The Notion of self-consciousness is to achieve satisfaction by making its unity with itself in its other explicit. Therefore, only a self-consciousness can be the true other of a self-consciousness. Just like itself, the other self-consciousness, "in being an object, is just as much 'I' as 'object'." (Hegel 177) The possibility has arisen that self-consciousness can know itself in its other, for its own other is just itself while still remaining independently other: “What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is - this absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: 'I' that is 'We' and 'We' that is 'I.'” (Hegel 177) The dialectic which develops from here constitutes the true realm of Spirit, and with the unity between “we” and the “I” we reach a critical stage of self-consciousness as distinct from consciousness. At first, however, Spirit is a fledgling and remains saddled with the problems of desire and Life. From the point of view of the self-consciousnesses themselves, each still sees in the other a sensuous and natural form of itself. The struggle for recognition between the two will take on at first the character of an inequality. This inequality arises out of the necessity of each to rid itself of its abstract relation to itself in the form of its embedded nature in a merely apparent sensuous reality (Westphal 128). At first each relates to its other in the mode of Desire, whereby each seeks to detach itself from "any specific existence..[viz.].that it is not attached to life"(Hegel 187). It seeks to destroy the other, which is for it only an inessential form of itself appearing in the shape of pre-conscious life: "each seeks the death of the other"(Hegel 187). Likewise, the reciprocity inherent in self-consciousness entails that what the one does to the other it also does to itself: self-consciousness risks its own life (Hegel 187): “And it is only through staking one's life that freedom is won; only thus is it proved that for self-consciousness, its essential being is not [just] being, not the immediate form in which it appears, not its submergence in the expanse of life, but rather that there is nothing present in it which could be regarded as a vanishing moment, that it is only pure being-for-self.” (Hegel 187). We know that self-consciousness must attain certainty of the fact that it is the Truth of all previous certainties. Oddly enough, self-consciousness knows this Truth but it is not yet certain of itself as that Truth, for it has an other appearing as an immediate sensuousness. It sees in the other only an abstract form of itself and its attempt to destroy this abstract otherness is only for it an attempt at self-redemption (Hyppolite 160). Ironically, the attempt of each to attain self-certainty through fearless battle results in a mutual (although ultimately a-symmetric) dialectical repulsion away from nature into a higher phase of self-consciousness. Initially, however, when each risks its Life in attempting to negate the other's Life, any absolute success on the behalf of either results in the death of both, for "death is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the required significance of recognition"(Hegel 188). Out of this develops on the behalf of one self-consciousness the awareness of the essential nature relation of Life to self-consciousness' in terms of its aims (Hegel 189). In other words, one self-consciousness has feared death, seeing as it makes impossible self-consciousness very purpose in Life (Hegel pun intended) and hence clings to Life. There arises now a new relationship of inequality between the two self-consciousnesses: one has become slave, the other master. The dialectic that ensues between the Master and the Slave has been much discussed in the literature and I will not pursue any of its main developments here. Instead I will focus on two elements particularly relevant to my thesis: death and work. Death has already made an appearance, and although Hegel turns to a detailed discussion of the Master's slavish relationship to the Slave, death resurfaces as the 'condition for the possibility' of the Slave's freedom through work. In anticipation, we can already see the very relationship to death which first enslaved one of the self-consciousness will constitute its implicit freedom. Although the Slave possesses a thing-like existence, the Truth for slave consciousness is actually pure being-for-self. The seed of negativity and being-for-self has been implicitly sown within slave consciousness, neither because it happens to exist as a slave, nor because, as a slave, it looks to the master as its essence. Rather, the slave already carries within it the truth of self-consciousness, because: “this consciousness has been fearful, not of this or that particular thing or just at odd moments, but its whole being has been seized with dread; for it has experienced the fear of death, the absolute Master”. (Hegel 194) Fear of death first arose in the life and death struggle of the two self-consciousnesses to achieve self-certainty. Such a certainty could only be attained, however, by fighting the other self-consciousness in a mortal combat. Why such a mortal combat? The fight has to be to the death, for in being able to risk its life, self-consciousness shows its ability to detach itself from life. It succeeds in risking its life just as much as the Master. Otherwise it would not have confronted the "absolute Master," its own death, and "its whole being" would not have been "seized with dread"(Hegel 194). Hegel asserts as much when he writes that, although the slave has the master's independence for it as an essential reality, this truth is already contained within itself(Hegel 194). As we have seen, the seed of the slave's pure being-for-self, the very truth of its self-consciousness, was planted there by its fear of the absolute Master: In that experience it has been quite unmanned, has trembled in every fibre of its being, and everything solid and stable has been shaken to its foundations. But this pure universal movement, the absolute melting-away of everything stable, is the simple essential nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self, which consequently is implicit in this consciousness. (Hegel 194) In the fear of death, consciousness has experienced the dissolution of its external self, the "melting-away" of being "entangled in a variety of [natural] relationships"(Hegel 187), and has tasted the reality if its true self. This is important for the dissolution of consciousness into self-consciousness. This taste of freedom and substantial self-hood remains only implicit, however. This truth of all self-consciousness achieves its explicit realization only in the slave's work, for in work "he rids himself of his attachment to natural existence in every single detail; and gets rid of it by working on it"(Hegel 194). In the next section (Hegel 195), Hegel goes on to qualify the the power of death and service to the master as merely necessary conditions of self-consciousness' true freedom: “the feeling of absolute power both in general and in the particular form of service, is only implicitly this dissolution, and although the fear of the lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware that it is a being-for-self.(Hegel 195) It turns out that work is the only sufficient vehicle of the self-revelation of self-consciousness' truth. The slave's new position with regard to the object of the master's desire puts himself in a new relationship to desire in general. This negative middle term or the formative activity is at the same time the individuality or pure being for-self of consciousness which now, in the work outside of it, acquires an element of permanence. (Hegel 195) In Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, consciousness is continuously discovering what it thought to be solely a part of itself, is actually entwined in a dialectical relationship with something other than itself. It has been argued that as consciousness of its own life, that it consciousness is aware of its desire for another. But also, that this desire is the desire for desire – it desires to be recognized as it recognizes itself. With this form of self-recognition, the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness is completed. This paper has examined how consciousness is continually discovering how it is mediated by an other, and further, how this mediation eventually grows into self-conciousness. The stages toward this end, are all an extension of the fundamental realization that there is no immediate consciousness but only mediated consciousness. What and how mediation occurs is self-consciousness. Works Cited: Flay, J. (1984). Hegel's Quest for Certainty. Albany: SUNY Press. Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller (Hegel Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Hyppolite, J. (1979). Genesis and Structure in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Kain, P. (2005). Hegel and the other: a study of the phenomenology of spirit. Albany: SUNY Press. Lauer, Q. (2001). A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Fordham University Press. Rauch, L. and Sherman, D.(1999). Hegel's phenomenology of self-consciousness: text and commentary. Albany: SUNY Press. Russon, J.E. (2004). Reading Hegel's Phenomenology. Indianapolis: The University of Indiana Press. Stewart, J.B. (2000). The Unity of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. A Systematic Interpretation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Verene, D. (2007). Hegel's absolute: an introduction to reading the Phenomenology of spirit. Albany: SUNY Press. Westphal, M. (1998). History and truth in Hegel's Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Williams, R. (1992). Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the other. Albany: SUNY Press. From Consciousness to Self-Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. On the Master/Slave Dialectic in Hegel Read More