Chapter 46 (c) Conscience, the good soul, evil and its forgiveness①

① From "conscience" to "beautiful soul" and then to "evil and its forgiveness", this is the trilogy of the development of German moral philosophy in Hegel's mind.From the moralism of Kant and Fichte to the romanticism of Schiller, Novaris, Schelling, Schleimachal, etc., it shows that the moral consciousness (conscience) whose essence is the pure duty of living on the other side, develops When it comes to the moral "wisdom mind" and beautiful soul; the individual and the general must be united, and the selfish and public intentions must be consistent. Sometimes the individual has the upper hand and takes action, and sometimes the general dominates and only watches quietly.If we develop further, we will reach the stage of religion that Hegel believes is higher than morality. "Evil and its forgiveness" shows that in the apocalyptic Christianity, duty and impulse, rationality and emotion have all dialectically reconciled and achieved a concrete unity. - translator

The antinomy of the moral world view, that is, there is both a moral consciousness and no moral consciousness, or in other words, the validity of duty exists both on the other side of consciousness and, conversely, only within consciousness. The link, which has been summarized above, is the idea in which the amoral consciousness becomes moral, its contingent knowledge and will are considered sufficiently important, and it acquires happiness by virtue of its gift.Such contradictory appearances, ideas, and moral self-consciousness are not accepted into oneself, but placed in another essence other than itself.But this placement of moral self-consciousness outside itself that which it cannot but regard as necessary is itself a contradiction in form, just as it is a contradiction in content.But what is manifestly self-contradictory, and what the moral world-view goes back and forth in its divisions and dissolutions, is in itself the same thing, since pure duty as pure knowledge is nothing but the conscious self (or subject), while the conscious ego is nothing but being and reality, so that which is said to be beyond actual consciousness is nothing but pure thought, and thus is in fact the ego; for this For this reason, self-consciousness, whether it appears to us or in itself, returns to itself and knows that essence as itself, knowing that what is real in that essence is at the same time pure knowledge and pure duty.Self-consciousness regards itself as fully valid in its contingency, and it, as valid in its contingency, knows its immediate individuality as pure knowledge and action, as true reality and harmonious.