Chapter 20 (b) Observations of the pure self of self-consciousness and its relation to external reality; laws of logic and laws of psychology

When observing nature, the observing consciousness discovers realized concepts in inorganic matter, and also discovers laws whose links are concrete things and things at the same time pretend to be abstractions; but this concept realized in inorganic nature, Not a simplicity that reflects itself.On the contrary, the life of organic matter is precisely this simplicity returning to itself; the opposition of universality and individuality in life itself is not separated from each other in the essence of this life; In its undifferentiated element the genus performs the movement of differentiation and remains undifferentiated and undifferentiated in the opposites from which it differentiates.The concept of freedom is universal, and its universality absolutely contains within itself a developed individuality; such a concept of freedom can only be observed in concepts that exist as concepts, that is to say, only in observed in self-awareness.

Ⅰ.law of thinking Observing reason, returning to itself and pointing at the concept that actually exists as a concept of freedom, first discovers the laws of thought.The laws of thinking are all such individuality, which is thinking in itself, an abstract negative movement which returns completely to simplicity; the laws of thinking are all outside reality. — To say that laws have no reality is the same as saying that laws have no truth.Although the law is not the whole truth, it should be said to be the formal truth after all.But pure form without reality is an abstraction of thought-things or emptiness without division, for without division there is no content. —But, on the other hand, since the laws of thought are laws of pure thought, which is a universal in itself, and therefore a knowledge with immediate being and in its being all reality, these laws are Absolute concepts are thus necessarily both formal and essential to things.Since the universal moving in itself is the simple concept split into two, the split concept has a content in itself, and such a content that it is all content except a sensibility. exist.Sensible being is a content which, far from contradicting the form, is not at all separate from it, but rather is essentially the form itself; for the form is nothing but the universal or universal which splits itself into its pure moments.

But since this form (or content, so to speak) is for observation, it acquires a determination of content, it is a content that is observed, given, that is, merely existing.It becomes a static existence of many relations or a large number of differentiated necessities, which, as a fixed content, should have truth in their stipulations, so in fact they are all free from form. thing. —But this absolute truth of fixed determinateness, or of laws of various kinds, is in contradiction to the unity of self-consciousness, in other words, to thought and form.What is, so to speak, a fixed, self-perpetuating law can only be a moment of the unity which is reflected in itself, can only be what appears as a non-persisting quantity.However, when we examine these laws and treat them individually from the relationship of motion, what they lack is not content, because they all have a defined content, what they lack is rather form, and form That's what they are.In fact, these laws are not truths of thought not so much because they are said to be mere forms without content as for the opposite reason, since they become something absolute insofar as their determination , precisely a formless content.In their truth, they should be regarded as cognition or thought movements as unsustainable moments in the unity of thought, and not as laws of knowledge.But observation does not also recognize knowledge itself, it only reverses or transforms the nature of knowledge into a form of existence, in other words, it understands the negativity of knowledge as the law of knowledge. ——

Here, it is enough for us to reveal the invalidity of the so-called laws of thinking based on the general nature of things. As for the detailed development, that is a matter of speculative philosophy.In speculative philosophy these laws will show themselves for what they really are, they will reveal themselves as individual vanishing or non-persisting moments which take for their truth only the whole of the movement of thought, that is, knowledge itself. . Ⅱ.laws of psychology This negative unity of thinking is purely for itself. It can even be said that the negative unity of thinking is for-itself, the principle of individuality, and its reality is a consciousness of action.Therefore, according to the nature of the matter, the observing consciousness is led to observe the reality of the laws of thought, that is, the observing consciousness of action.But since the observing consciousness does not know this connection, it thinks that on the one hand it still retains its thinking within the laws of thinking, and on the other hand it acquires another existence in its present object, that is, the consciousness of action; Consciousness of action is purely for-itself, because it sublates the other and takes this intuition of itself, of negativity, as its reality.

A new field of observation has now opened up in the action reality of consciousness.Psychology consists of a set of psychic laws according to which the mind behaves differently towards its own reality in different ways, towards other things that are presently present.Sometimes, the spirit adopts an attitude of accepting reality, adapting itself to the existing customs, ethics and morals, and the way of thinking that targets the spirit itself; Interest and emotion to select what is especially for itself, and to adapt objective things to itself.The former attitude treats one's individuality negatively, and the latter treats one's universality negatively. —In the former case, independence (individuality) only generally gives what is presently given the form of a conscious individual, and as far as content remains within the bounds of the presently existing general reality; but in the latter In this case, independence makes at least a certain modification of reality that does not violate its essential content, and sometimes even makes modifications that make the individual himself as a special reality and unique content opposed to the universal reality; if the individual only individually If he does this universally and for all, this opposition creates a complete sublation of what already exists, and thus produces another world, another right , law and ethics.

Observational psychology begins by describing what it observes as perception in a general way, manifested by the consciousness of action, and then discovers that there are faculties, interests, and emotions that are almost a collection, and that because of its presence in When describing this aggregate, one cannot forget that self-consciousness is unified, so it cannot but be amazed that in the mind, as in a pocket, there can be such a variety of things that are accidentally combined together. Things, in particular, they all present themselves not as dead still lifes but as constant movements.

In the account of these powers, observation is on the side of generality; And the unity of these various abilities is the opposite of this universality, which is the individuality of reality. ——But now, in understanding each real individual, the narrative method is adopted again, saying that one person prefers this thing, another person prefers that thing, one person has a better understanding than others, and another person has more emotions than others. Abundance, etc., is really a matter of even less importance than enumerating the families and genera of insects and mosses; Treating them individually and thoughtlessly, it would be self-contradictory to conceive of the conscious individual in the same way as individually existing phenomena, since conscious individuality is essentially the universality of the mind.However, since in the process of understanding in this way, individuality is also included in the form of universality, and the laws of individuality are found out, this action now seems reasonable and necessary.

Ⅲ.individual law The link that constitutes the content of the law of individuality is the individual itself on the one hand, and the general inorganic nature that the individual faces on the other, such as the current environment, situation, customs, morality, religion, etc.; The situation is understandable.They contain both the particular or determinate and the universal or communal, and at the same time are a ready-to-exist which on the one hand presents itself directly to observation and on the other The form of individuality expresses itself. The laws of the relationship between these two parties must then contain and show what exactly these particular circumstances do and influence on individuality.But on the one hand, because this individuality is also a universal thing, it mixes or melts into the external universal things, such as ethics, morals, customs, etc., in a direct and calm way, and adapts itself to it. on the other hand it opposes them and even reverses or transforms them; moreover, in individual cases it treats them with complete disapproval, neither accepting their influence nor influencing them.

What influence and which kind of influence the external universal has on the individual is, in fact, a meaning of the same meaning, entirely up to the individual; When it takes this specific shape, it just means that it has already been like this.The environment, situation, morality, etc., on the one hand are shown as objectively existing things, and on the other hand, they are all shown in this specific individual, but in fact what they show is only the insignificant and unimportant nature of individuality. It is nothing more than something that does not represent its essential prescriptiveness.Of course, if there is no such social environment, ideas, customs and morals, and general world conditions at all.The individual would not be what it is, because everything included in the general world situation constitutes the universal substance. —But since the world situation has specified itself in this individual (which is the very individual to be understood), it must in itself have specified itself in itself, and has The determinateness acquired by specialization affects an individual; for only in this way can it be said that the world situation makes the individual the particular individual that it is now.If the original face of the external element is as it appears in individuality, then individuality should be understood through the world situation.Because the world and the individual seem to be two galleries with repeated content, one of which is the reflection of the other; These are the translations of the same in the conscious individual; the former is the sphere, the latter the focus, which itself reflects the sphere.

But the sphere, that is, the world of the individual, directly has a double meaning. It is not only the world and reality existing in itself and for itself, but also the world of the individual.It can be said to be the world of the individual in the sense that it becomes one with the individual, in the sense that the individual merely accepts it into itself as it is, while the individual himself remains in a form Consciousness of the mind claims to be opposite to it, but the reason why it is the world of the individual can also be said in another sense, because it is the external reality that has been reversed or transformed by the individual. —Because the individual has this freedom, the real world can have this double meaning, and because the real world can have these two meanings, the individual world can only be understood in terms of the individual; the freedom conceived by psychology The real world that exists for itself affects the individual, but because the individual has this kind of freedom, the influence of reality on the individual has two absolutely opposite situations. The individual can let the influence of reality affect him. Shocks can also intercept it, reverse it or change it.In this way, however, what is called psychological necessity becomes empty phrase, to the extent that an individual is said to be under some influence, but it is also absolutely possible that it does not feel the influence at all.

Thus, the being-in-itself and for-itself which constitutes an aspect of the psychic law, and therefore its universality, disappears.Individuality is nothing but that world of its own, that is to say, the world of individuality; individuality itself is its own sphere of action in which it presents itself as actual, itself is The unity of ready-made and manufactured being; the two aspects of this unity are not separated from each other as the world in itself and the individuality existing for itself, as the laws of psychology suppose; In other words, if we treat each of them as an aspect, there is no necessity or law in the relationship between them.