Chapter 42 (c) Absolute freedom and terror

I．absolute freedom Consciousness finds its concept in usefulness.But this concept of consciousness is, on the one hand, still an object, and on the other hand, because it is an object, it is not yet directly possessed by consciousness, and on the other hand, it is still an end. Usefulness is still a predicate of the object, not yet the subject itself, in other words, not yet the subject's immediate and sole reality.This is the same case as we saw before, that being-for-itself has not yet manifested itself as the substance of the other moments, and for this reason the useful is immediately the conscious self, and therefore possessed by consciousness. —But, [since consciousness takes usefulness as its concept], the objective form of the useful has in fact been withdrawn and abolished in itself, and as a result of this inner transformation, the actual reality of reality has emerged. Changes, new ideologies, absolute freedom emerged.

This is because, in fact, what is presented here is nothing but an objective illusion that separates self-consciousness from its possessions.For, on the one hand, all the persistence and validity of the particular constituent parts of the real and believed worlds are at all returned to this simple determination, as to their origin and spirit; and On the other hand, this simple determination has nothing in itself anymore, it is rather a pure metaphysics, a pure concept or knowledge of self-consciousness.That is to say, consciousness already knows from the being-in-itself and for-itself of the useful thing as an object that its being-in-itself is essentially a being-for-other; Really speaking, something passive, or something that exists for another self.Yet objects appear to consciousness in the abstract form of pure being-in-itself, because consciousness is a pure perception, and the distinctions of this pure perception have the form of pure concepts. ——

But the being-for-itself, that is, the being-for-itself in which it returns for its being, the self (Selbst), is not a self as distinct from I (Ich), not that which is called an object A self proper to the thing itself; for consciousness, as pure perception, is not such a separate self as if the object could be opposed to it also as a separate self; The intuition of the self is the double absolute viewing of itself; its certainty is the universal subject, and its cognizant concept is the essence of all reality.If, therefore, the useful was only an alternation [movement] of moments that does not return to its own unity, and was therefore only an object of cognition, it is no longer such; For cognition itself is the movement of those abstract moments, it is the universal self, both its own self and the self of the object, and, as universal, it is the unity of this movement returning to itself.

Spirit thus appears as absolute freedom; it is now such self-awareness that it knows that its certainty of itself is the essence of all spiritual realms of the real world and of the supersensible world, or vice versa. In other words, it knows essence and reality as consciousness's knowledge of itself. —a consciousness which is conscious of its own pure personality and of all spiritual reality in it, which is only spiritual; For it the world is simply its will, and its will is the universal will. ① To be more exact, the general will is not an empty thought about will expressed by the assent expressed by tacit consent or by representatives, but the real general will, in other words, the will of all individuals. will itself.For the will in itself is the consciousness of the personality, or of each individual person, and, as this true practical will, it must be a self-conscious essence of all and of each personality, so that The action taken by each individual is always the action of the undivided whole, and the action which emerges as the action of the whole is the direct conscious action of each individual.

① This passage is a generalization of the characteristics of the new ideology.On page 489 of the previously quoted "Philosophy of History": "Sensation, sensuality, and impulse are also ways that the inner life uses to realize itself, but...they are unstable contents of the will. As for fairness and morality are...universal Will.... Will is free only when it desires nothing else... but itself. The absolute will is the will that desires to be free. The will that desires itself is all right and the basis of obligation". - translator This undivided entity of absolute freedom has ascended the throne of the world, and no power can compete with it.For since consciousness is really the only element from which spiritual essences or forces derive their substance, as soon as consciousness realizes that objects have no essence other than self-consciousness itself, or that objects are absolutely It is the concept, and the whole system of the spiritual forces, which they organized and preserved by dissolving them into groups, disintegrates and collapses.At first the concept became an existing object because the object was decomposed or differentiated into isolated and continuous groups; continuity; negativity has permeated every aspect of it.

The object now exists objectively in such a way that each individual consciousness detaches itself from the sphere into which it was assigned, and no longer regards these particular groups as its essence and its works or enterprise, understands itself as the concept of will, understands all groups as the essence of this will, and can therefore realize itself only in a labor which is itself the labor of the whole.In this absolute freedom, then, all spiritual essences, that is to say, all social strata, into which the whole is dissolved are eliminated; a separate consciousness, and thus sublates its limitations; its ends are universal ends, its language the universal law, and its enterprise the universal enterprise.

Objects and distinctions have now lost their useful meaning which was the predicate of all actual existence; the object from which consciousness begins its movements is now not such a foreign thing from which it returned to itself, but In its view, the object is consciousness itself; therefore the present opposition exists only in the difference between the individual consciousness and the universal consciousness; That thing, it is universal consciousness and will.This real beyond of it now floats over the now-gone corpse of the independence of actual or supposed existence, as if it were only an empty "supreme being" (etresupreme). ) exudes a wisp of dull breath.

Ⅱ.fear After the sublation of the differentiated groups of spirits, after the sublation of the limited life of the individuals, and after the sublation of the two worlds of this life, only the universal self-consciousness in itself emerges. movement, and this movement is an interaction between consciousness in universal form and private consciousness; the general will gathers in itself and becomes an individual will in opposition to the universal law and enterprise.But this particular consciousness is immediately aware of itself as a general will; it is aware that its objects are its own laws and its own accomplishments; When creating objectivity or objectivity, what it accomplishes is not some individual thing, rather just some legal and state affairs activities.

This movement is thus the interaction of consciousness with itself; in this movement of its own consciousness does not abandon anything as a free object opposed to it.For this reason consciousness is incapable of any positive work, neither the universal work of language nor the universal work of reality, neither the laws and regulations of conscious freedom nor the will of will. actions and careers realized by freedom. — Conscious freedom, if it can accomplish anything, will accomplish nothing else than this: it, as a universal substance, makes itself an object and a permanent and unchanging being.This other, then, must be the distinction in liberty itself, according to which liberty resolves itself into subsisting spiritual groups and different branches of power; The ideological things of various separate powers; but on the other hand, they should be those real essences that appear in the actual cultural world; Those particular groups of labor differentiated into more specialized social classes. —General freedom, if it were thus differentiated into its own moments, and thus into a subsistence of existence, would thus be freed from individual individuality and would distribute the mass of individuals to its different parts.But then the personality feels its action and being restricted to a branch of the whole, to one kind of action and being; is a particular personality; it would cease to be really a universal sense of self.Universal self-consciousness cannot be deceived, nor can it be deceived by either the idea of ​​obedience to those laws of its own making which it has partly participated in, or the representation it enjoys in making laws and acting in general And renounce reality,--reality here means to make laws by oneself, to accomplish general and not individual works; for the self is not real when it is only represented and presented ideally. ; where it is represented, it is not there.

Individual self-consciousness does not exist in this universal enterprise of absolute freedom as an actually existing entity, nor does it exist in individual acts and individual acts of will of absolute freedom.In order for the universal to be an action, it must gather itself into a unity like the individual, and place an individual self-consciousness in the leading position; In, is a realistic will.But in this way, all other individual self-consciousness is excluded from the whole of this action, and only a partial participation in this action is involved. As a result, this action should not be an act of actual universal self-consciousness. —Therefore, universal liberty can neither produce any affirmative cause nor perform any affirmative action; all it can do is negative action; it produces only destructive fury.

But the highest reality, the most opposed to universal freedom, or rather the only object of which freedom can still be conscious, is the freedom and individuality of actual self-consciousness itself.For that universality, that is, the universality which does not allow itself to acquire the reality of an organic combination but which aims at maintaining itself without losing its undivided continuity, is in fact differentiating itself in itself at the same time. , as it is movement or consciousness in general.Rather, it is, for the sake of its own abstraction, splitting itself into equally abstract extremities: Split into the simple, inflexible, ruthless universality, and the discrete, absolute, rigid rigidity and obstinate single point (Punktualitat) of actual self-consciousness.Now that it has accomplished the destruction of organized reality, it exists alone and for itself, and this is its only object;—an object which has no other content, no other possession, no other It is simply the knowledge of oneself as the absolutely pure, free, individual self.On what basis can we understand this kind of object? The only basis is its abstract specific existence. —The relation between the two is therefore a completely immediate, unmediated, pure negation, that is to say, the negation of the individual as being in the universal; Since both are immediately and absolutely for-itself, nothing can be inserted as a middle term to bring them together.The only enterprise and action that universal freedom can perform is then death, and a death without any content, without any substance, since what is denied is the contentless point of the absolutely free self; it is thus It is the coldest and most insipid death, and it has no more meaning than splitting a vegetable head and swallowing a mouthful of cold water. In the plainness of this simple syllable that expresses nothing, there is contained the wisdom, the reason, by which the government, the general will, completes itself.The government itself is nothing but a self-establishing point, or individuality of the general will.Government, as a will and fulfillment [activity] from one point, is at the same time willing and fulfilling a particular will and action.It thus, on the one hand excludes other individuals from participation in its own actions, and on the other hand constitutes itself a government which is itself a definite will, and thus opposed to the general will; There is no other choice but to present itself as a faction.What we call a government is only the victorious faction, and just because it is a faction, it immediately conceives the necessity of its overthrow; and, conversely, being a government makes it a faction, make it sinful.If the general will preserves itself in the actual conduct of the government, in other words, in the crimes committed against it (the general will), then the government, on the other hand, has nothing specific and external to allow By which the will against it (the government) manifests its guilt; For that is opposed to government as the actual general will, but the unreal pure will, the (inner) intention.Suspicion, therefore, takes the place of guilt; In other words, suspicion has the meaning and effect of committing a crime, and the external action taken to deal with this reality hidden in the pure inner intention is to simply eliminate this existing self or individual. This ego has nothing to eliminate but its very existence. Ⅲ.Awakening of free subjectivity Absolute freedom becomes its own object in this unique enterprise of its own, and self-consciousness experiences what this absolute freedom is.Absolute freedom, in its own right, is precisely this abstract self-consciousness cleansed of all distinctions and all distinct things in itself.Absolute freedom is its own object in so far as it is abstract self-consciousness; the terror of death is the intuition of this negative essence of absolute freedom.But self-consciousness, which is absolutely free, discovers a reality which is quite different from the conception which this reality originally had of itself, that is, according to which the general will is only the positive essence of the personality. , the personality knows itself only affirmed or maintained in the general will.But now, the absolutely free self-consciousness sees completely differently. As pure insight, it has absolutely separated its positive essence from its negative essence, in other words, it has completely separated the absolute directness without predicates. Divided into pure thought and pure matter, what now stands before it is the realized absolute transition from one essence to the other. —The universal will, as absolutely positive, actual self-consciousness, since it is this self-conscious reality which has risen to pure thought or abstract matter, is transformed into a negative essence, showing itself to be at the same time The sublation of self-thinking (or self-awareness). Absolute freedom, as the pure self-identity of the universal will, therefore, itself contains negation, but therefore also contains the difference in general, and develops this difference to make it a real difference again.For pure negativity has, in the self-identical universal will, that persistent element or substance in which its own moments are realized, that substance which it can transform into its determination; And as soon as this entity manifests itself as the negation of individual consciousnesses, various mental groups are reorganized and large numbers of individual consciousnesses are assigned to these groups.Feeling the dread of death, their absolute master, these individual consciousnesses again succumbed to negation and distinction, belonged to groups, returned to a partial and limited enterprise, but in doing so they also return to their physical reality. From this tumult the spirit may be thrown back to its point of departure, to the world of ethics and the world of edification (the world of ethics and edification can only be affected by the re-entry of the master [death] into the soul). Energized and rejuvenated by fear, the spirit may have to start over and repeat forever the circle of inevitability, if the result of development is only the complete penetration of both self-consciousness and entity, that is, if the result It is the penetration in which self-consciousness, aware of its universal nature as the negative power opposed to itself, is willing to see itself not as this particular but as a universal, and therefore also can bear the objective reality of the universal spirit which rejects it as a particular thing.—However, the result of development is not like this, because in absolute freedom, whether it has been reduced to a variety of specific existence That consciousness which is or is fixed on its own particular purposes and thoughts, whether of reality or of an external valid standard world of thought, penetrates each other without interaction; rather, the world, as the general will , appears completely in the form of consciousness, and self-consciousness also gets rid of all extended specific existence or various purposes and judgments, and gathers into a simple self. Self-consciousness interacts with the above-mentioned essence (universal will) And attained culture or indoctrination is thus the highest and last culture, from the point of view of which the pure, simple reality of self-consciousness has simply vanished and passed into nothingness. In the world of indoctrination In itself, self-consciousness does not intuit its negation or alienation in this purely abstract form; its negation is rather a full-fledged negation, the honor or wealth it has acquired in exchange for alienating itself; or , is the language of spirit and insight attained by split consciousness; or, the principle of usefulness (utility) of belief in the celestial realm or initiation [stage] of consciousness. All these regulations follow the ego [or individual] in absolute freedom the loss suffered; its negation is meaningless death, the sheer horror of the negation which contains nothing positive in itself, nothing fulfilling.—But at the same time, this negation, In its actuality, it is not a foreign thing; it is neither the general necessity of the other side in which the ethical world perishes, nor the individual accident of private property to which the divided consciousness is bound. ] or the interests of the proprietor, it is rather the general will; and the general will, in itself this last abstraction, has nothing positive and can therefore recover nothing from the sacrifice. price;—but only then is it immediately one with self-consciousness, or it is pure positive precisely because it is pure negative; Negativity without content is transformed into absolute affirmation in the inner concept. For consciousness, the immediate unity of the ego and the general will, the ego's claim to know itself as this specific center in the general will , such experiences are transformed into absolutely opposite experiences.What consciousness feels gone in this new experience is abstract existence, or the immediacy of a point without substance, and this lost immediacy is that universal which consciousness now knows itself to be. Sex, because it is sublated immediacy, because it is pure knowledge or pure will.Consciousness thus knows that this pure will is itself, that it is itself the essence, but it does not know that this essence is the immediately existing essence; that is, it does not know that the pure will is the revolutionary government or the Nor does the anarchy of anarchy know itself to be the center of the one trend or the opposite; the general will, on the contrary, is rather its pure knowledge and will, which Consciousness is rather the general will as this pure knowledge and will.Here it does not lose itself, for if the atomic point of consciousness is it, so is pure knowledge and will.It is thus the interaction of pure consciousness with itself; pure knowledge, as an essence, is the general will; but this essence is nothing but pure consciousness.Self-consciousness is therefore pure knowledge of that which is pure knowledge of essence.Moreover, it [self-consciousness], as individual self, is only the form of the subject or actual action known to it as form; while objective reality, being, is also form for it, but is A form of absolute selflessness; for, objective reality, existence, is what is not known; but this knowledge knows that knowledge is essence. ① Refers to Kant's "thing in itself" or "thing in itself". - translator Absolute freedom has thus reconciled with itself the antithesis of general and individual will; the self-alienated spirit, i.e., has attained the culmination of its own antithesis, so that both pure and pure will still exist in each other. The spirit of distinction has reduced this opposition to a transparent form in which it finds itself. —Just as the realm of the real world passes into the realm of belief and insight, so absolute freedom passes from the realm of reality, which destroys itself, to another realm of self-conscious mind, and here absolute freedom carries with it This unreality is regarded as truth; and the spirit, since it is and continues to be thought, since it knows that this being enclosed in self-consciousness is the whole and complete essence, it is because of this truth about The thoughts are restored, and the vitality is revived.This creates a new ideology, a moral spirit.