Chapter 24 (b) The laws of the heart and megalomaniacs

What necessity really is in self-consciousness is what necessity is to the new form of self-consciousness; in the new form self-consciousness knows itself to be necessary; it knows that it has immediately in itself a universal or law; And this kind of law, because of its stipulation that it directly exists in the self-existence of consciousness, is called the law of the heart.This new form of self-consciousness, for itself, as individuality, is just as essential as the previous form, but by virtue of its determination it is richer than the previous form; Existence is necessary or universal to it.

The law, therefore, which is immediately the law inherent in self-consciousness, or the mind which has a law in itself, is what this self-consciousness aims to achieve.What remains to be seen now is whether its realization corresponds to this concept, and whether it realizes in this realization that its law is the essence. Ⅰ.The laws of the heart and the laws of reality There is a reality opposed to this mind.For the law in the mind is first of all only for itself, unrealized, and therefore something different from the concept.This thing, being different from the concept, defines itself as a reality, it is the opposite of what it wants to realize, and thus is the contradiction between law and individuality.Such a reality is then, on the one hand, a law by which individual individuality is repressed, a coercive world order contradicting the law of the mind; It is human beings under the mandatory world order, and human beings do not abide by inner laws but succumb to an external inevitability. —Here it is already evident that this reality, which appears opposite the present new shape of consciousness, is nothing but that aforementioned relationship of individuality split from its truth, the condition of a cruel necessity which oppresses individuality. It's just a relationship.The former movement appears to us in opposition to the new form, since the new form arose out of it, and since it is the moment from which the new form emerges, it must be for the new form. .However, this moment appears to the new form as something that it has come across by chance, because the new form of self-consciousness is unaware of its own origin, and considers its essence to be rather that it is for itself, or In that it is the negation of this positive being-in-itself.

This individuality then deliberately plans to sublate the necessity that contradicts the law of the mind and the pain that the necessity brings.Individuality thus ceases to be frivolous and careless in its former form, which pursued only individual pleasures, and becomes solemn and earnest as a noble purpose which finds its pleasure in the display of its own noble nature and in the creation of human welfare.What individuality realizes is law in itself, and its joy is at the same time the universal joy of all minds.For it two things are inseparable: its pleasure is that of regularity, and the fulfillment of universal human laws affords it individual pleasures.For in itself individuality and necessity are immediately one; law is the law of the mind.Individuality has not yet left its place, the unity of the two has not yet been brought about through the intermediary movement which unity should have, nor established through upbringing.The realization of the immediate, uneducated essence is taken as the demonstration of its nobility and the revelation of human welfare.

On the contrary, the law that is opposed to the law of the mind is separate from the mind, free for itself.Man, subject to such laws, does not live in that pleasing unity of law and mind; human life, if not cruel divisions and pains, at least lacks respect for itself in obedience to laws. enjoyment without the awareness of its own nobility while transgressing the law.Since this powerful, divine and human law is separated from the mind, it is considered by the mind to be an illusion, and this illusion is supposed to lose what is still connected with it, that is, to lose its power and reality.It is true that the laws of man and gods may accidentally coincide with the laws of the heart in their content, and thus may be approved or acquiesced by the laws of the heart. But for the heart, the essence does not lie in the mere laws themselves, but in its In obeying law, it acquires consciousness of itself in that it satisfies itself in obeying law.But if the content of universal necessity does not agree with the mind, then universal necessity, so far as its content is concerned, is nothing in itself, but must give way to the laws of the mind.

Ⅱ.put heart into reality The individual then enforces the law of its heart; The law of the mind becomes the universal order, and pleasure becomes a lawful reality in its own right.But in this process of realization, the law has actually been separated from the mind, and it has directly become a relationship that should be sublated.The law of the heart is no longer a law of the heart precisely because of its own realization, because it acquires the form of existence and becomes a universal force in the process of realization. For the form of existence or universal force, this The [specific] mind is indifferent.

Thus the individual, precisely because it has established its own order, finds that its own order no longer belongs to it.Through the realization of its law, the individual thus does not establish its law (for this realization, so to speak, belongs to the individual in its own right, but is foreign to the individual), but merely involves itself in into the order of reality; and the order of reality into which it is drawn is a coercive force both foreign and hostile to it. —The individual, by its own behavior, puts itself into the universal element of existing reality, or rather, it takes itself as a universal element of existing reality; its behavior, even according to its In terms of the meaning given by itself, it should also have the value of a general order.But in this way the individual, apart from itself, continues to develop into the universal for itself, and removes the individual from itself; the individual wishes to know the universal only in its immediate, for-itself form, and therefore, It does not recognize itself in this universality of freedom, although it belongs at the same time to this universality of freedom, because in fact this universality of freedom is the action of the individual.This action of the individual thus has an inverted meaning: on the one hand, it contradicts the general order, because the individual's behavior should be the behavior of the individual's individual mind, rather than the universal reality of freedom; It recognizes the universal reality, because to act means to transform its essence into a free reality, that is to say, to admit that reality is its essence.

The individual has already specified, by means of its concept of action, how it subjects itself to the real universal and how the real universal is opposed to it.Its action, as reality, belongs to the universal; but its content is its own individuality, which, being individual, wants to maintain itself against the universal.However, what we are talking about here is not the issue of establishing a specific law, but the problem is that the idea of ​​the direct unity of the individual mind and the universal has been elevated to a law that should be obeyed, and according to the idea of ​​the unity of the individual and the universal, Every mind necessarily recognizes itself in the universal law.But this mind, which establishes its reality in its behavior, making its behavior express its being-for-itself or happiness, is only the mind of a particular individual.Its behavior is only regarded or taken as universal by it directly, that is to say, it is originally a particular and only has the form of the universal: its particular content, as a particular content, is only recognized as a special content. It becomes something universal.Other individuals, therefore, do not find the law of their own mind in this content, but find rather the law of another's mind; This universal law of the mind, the other individuals now turn against the reality this individual has established, just as this individual opposes their reality.Just as the individual found only rigid laws repulsive, so it now finds the minds of other people repulsive in themselves, contrary to its noble intentions.

For this consciousness, first of all, knows only the universal in the immediate form of universality, and the necessity only in the form of the necessity of the mind, it knows nothing of the nature of actuality and validity; As a being, it is really universal in itself; it does not know that the individuality of consciousness, which entrusts itself to realization in order to be able to exist as this particular immediate individuality, is instead in this own It annihilates itself in the universal; it thus does not attain this being of its own, but rather completes its own alienation in being.But the reality in which consciousness does not recognize its own origin is not a dead necessity, but a living necessity through universal individuality.This divine and human order, which consciousness now finds valid, [before] it regarded as a dead reality in which not only itself, (it would determine itself The mind that exists for this particular for-itself, as opposed to the universal,) and others who are also subject to this law, have no consciousness of themselves; but now consciousness finds that this dead reality is caused by everyone. The consciousness becomes alive, and discovering it becomes the law of all minds.Consciousness then learns through such experience that reality is living law, and it acquires this experience precisely because it realizes the law of its own mind.For this means nothing but that individuality becomes its own object in the form of a universal, in which it does not recognize itself.

Ⅲ.individual megalomaniac What this form of self-consciousness regards as truth from its own experience, therefore, contradicts what it is or is for itself.But when its for-itself is taken as a form of absolute universality, this is the direct union of the laws of the mind with self-consciousness.At the same time, the persistent living order is likewise the very essence and work of self-consciousness itself, and it is this persistent living order which creates nothing but self-consciousness; this order has immediate unity with self-consciousness. .Thus self-consciousness, belonging to two opposite essentialities, contradicts itself and disintegrates in its innermost being.This particular law of the mind is originally only that law in which self-consciousness recognizes itself, but through the realization of this law, the universal and effective order also becomes its own for self-consciousness. Essence and its own reality; thus both contradictory aspects in its consciousness appear to it in the form of its essence and its own reality.

Since self-consciousness proclaims the moment of its conscious annihilation, and thus expresses the result of its experience, it manifests itself as its own inner inversion, the madness of consciousness; Crazy consciousness, its essence immediately becomes non-essence, its reality directly becomes unreality. —Insanity is not to be understood here as the general taking of the unessential for the essential, and the unreal for the actual, as it were; Thus what is essential or actual to one man would not be essential or actual to another, and the consciousness of actuality and unreality or of essentialness and non-essential would be separated from each other. —If in fact something is real and essential to consciousness in general but not to me, then in my consciousness of its unreality I am at the same time conscious of its reality, because I That is, consciousness as a whole—and since they are both fixed [in me], this is a unity, and this unity is madness as a whole.However, in this state, what is insane is only an object of consciousness, not consciousness itself.On the contrary, in the result of the experience which has appeared here, consciousness is aware of itself in its laws as this actuality; Already alienated for it, then, as self-consciousness, as absolute reality, it becomes aware of its own unreality; Straightforwardly its essence, and its essence then went berserk in its deepest innermost being.

①Hegel uses the word "madness" (Verucktheit) in this passage to emphasize and visualize the contradiction and inversion in which self-consciousness falls into here.Readers must understand the meaning of "crazy" from the inversion of contradiction. - translator The beating of the heart for the welfare of mankind is thus transformed into madly conceited passion, into the rage of a consciousness which preserves itself from destruction, and this transformation takes place because consciousness itself is upside down and Instead of acknowledging itself as this inversion, it now endeavors to see and speak of it as something else.Consciousness then speaks of the general order as a perversion (Verkehrung) of the laws of its heart and of its fortunes, a perversion produced by fanatical missionaries, licentious tyrants, Humiliated and oppressed to compensate for their own humiliation, invented to inflict nameless misery on oppressed humanity. —Consciousness, in this insanity of its own, expresses individuality as inverted and inverted, but as a foreign and accidental individuality.But the individuality itself, which the mind or consciousness immediately wants to become universal, is this now inverted and inverted itself, and its action only makes the mind itself aware of this contradiction.For to it the true thing is above all the law of the mind,— It is a mere fiction, which does not stand the test of the sun like an unchanging order, but rather perishes in the sun.Its law should have reality; to become reality, to become the law of effective order, is its purpose and essence; unrealistic. —— Likewise its own reality, the mind itself of the individuality of consciousness, becomes essence to itself; but its purpose is to make this individuality into being; Rather, itself is immediately essence for it, or its own as law or universality (which it is universality in its own consciousness) rather becomes an end for it. —Its concept, the idea that it is itself the universal, becomes its object through its action; it then experiences itself as unreal rather than real The thing is its reality.The upside-down and upside-down, then, is not an accidental and alien individuality, but the mind itself in all respects is precisely that upside-down and upside-down. But since the immediately universal individuality is reversed and reversed, this universal order, as the law of all minds, that is, as the law of reversed consciousness, is itself reversed, just as As the furious madness proclaimed.On the one hand, this universal order proves itself to be the law of all hearts in the resistance that a particular law of mind encounters in other individuals.The law of subsistence is always protected against the law of any individual, because the law of subsistence is not an empty dead unconscious necessity, but the universality and substance of the mind; Those things which are real, live in it as individuals and are conscious of themselves in it.Therefore, even if they complain that this general order violates their inner laws, even if they insist on the opinions or desires of their hearts against this general order, in fact, they are attached to this general order with their hearts after all. They lose everything if this general order is removed from them, or if they place themselves outside of it, which is above them, and which is their essence.Since this is the reality and power of the public order, the public order itself is the essence, the living essence that is itself equal and universal, and individuality is the form of this public order. --But on the other hand, this public order is likewise an upside-down thing. For, since the public order is the law of all minds, and all individuals are immediately this universal order, in this case this order is only an individuality or reality of mind existing for itself.Thus, when consciousness establishes its own laws, it experiences resistance from other consciousnesses whose laws contradict the equally individual laws of their minds; and these other consciousnesses, in their resistance, What is done is precisely to establish their laws and make them effective.The ready-made universal is thus nothing but a universal resistance and struggle between all of us, in which each strives to maintain his own individuality, but at the same time cannot do so. This, because each individuality is equally resisted and mutually dissolved by the other.The public order as seen by the average man is thus a general melee in which each takes what he can, tries to strengthen his own individuality by doing justice to the individuality of others, and His own individuality is likewise lost by the fair treatment of others.This order is the world process (Weltlauf), which seems to be a persistent process, but in fact it is only an imaginary universality, and its content is rather a non-essential game of the establishment and dissolution of individuality. If we compare these two aspects of the universal order, we see that the latter universality has as its content restless individuality, to which opinion or individuality is Law, reality is unreality, and unreality is reality.But it is at the same time the actual aspect of the general order, since the individual being-for-itself belongs to this aspect. —The general order on the one hand is a static essence, but only as such, it is an inner thing; it is not nothing, but it is not reality after all; The individuality of reality can become reality by itself. Consciousness of this form already knows that in the law, in the truth and goodness in itself, it is not individuality but only essence, but on the other hand it knows that individuality is an inverted and inverted thing, so it must Sacrifice the individuality of consciousness; this form of consciousness is virtue.