Chapter 49 Chapter VII Religion

Among the forms discussed heretofore (which we roughly distinguish as consciousness, self-consciousness, rationality, and spirit), religion has undoubtedly appeared as a general awareness of the absolute essence, but that is from the absolute essence. From the point of view that the essence is the consciousness that knows the object; the absolute essence itself, the self-consciousness of the spirit, does not appear in those forms. That is, in the stage of consciousness, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is already a consciousness of the supersensory or inner essence of objectivity.But the supersensible, the eternal, or whatever one calls it, has no self.It is only universal, which is far from the spirit that knows itself to be spirit. —Secondly, the self-consciousness that finds its fulfillment in the form of distressed consciousness is also only the pain of the spirit that once again strives to objectify itself and fails to achieve its own objectification.The unity of the individual self-consciousness at this stage with its unchanging essence is therefore still unattainable for it. ——

The immediate definite being of reason and the proper mode of reason which seems to us to arise out of the shape of pain is without religion, since the self-consciousness of reason knows or seeks itself in the immediate present. On the contrary, in the ethical world we see a religion, a religion of the underworld.This religion is a belief in the horror of fate, the unfamiliar night, and in the vengeance of dead spirits;—the former is pure negativity in the form of the universal, the latter is pure negativity in the form of individuality. negativity.Hence the Absolute Essence in the latter form is undoubtedly the ego [or subject], and is what is, since the ego can be nothing but what is.But the individual ego is this individual shadow which separates itself from the universal, which is fate.Since this individual shadow is a shadow, a sublated this, it is the universal self; but the negative meaning of the former has not yet been transformed into the positive meaning of the latter, so the sublated self is simultaneously It also directly signifies this particular and non-essential thing.And that selfless destiny is still a night without consciousness, without reaching distinction within itself, and without reaching the clarity of self-knowledge.

This belief in a contentless necessity and the underworld would become a belief in heaven, because the dead self must be united to its universality, and in the universality must unfold what it contained, And thus understand itself clearly.But we have seen that this kingdom of faith developed its content only in the elements of (abstract) thought, not in concepts, and thus it disappeared in its destiny, that is, in the religion of enlightenment.In this religion of enlightenment the supersensible beyond of the intellect is restored, but in such a way that self-consciousness is content with the temporal world, and neither the supersensible world nor the The empty, unknowable, and fearless beyond is recognized as self and not as power.

In the moral religion, at last, the Absolute Essence reappears as a positive content; but this content is as much a differential content as a being returned to and included in the self, the content of which Parts are negated as soon as their differences are established. But the fate in which this contradictory movement is caught is an ego that is conscious of itself as essential and actual fate. The spirit that knows itself is in religion directly its own pure self-consciousness.The forms of the mind which we have considered, the true spirit, the self-alienated spirit, and the self-assured spirit, together constitute the spirit's own consciousness, which is opposed to its own world and cannot be opposed here. know itself in the living world.But in conscience the spirit subordinates to itself its objective world, with its representations and its specific concepts, and it is now self-consciousness in itself.In this self-consciousness spirit, as the represented object, has for itself the meaning of the universal spirit, which contains in itself all essences and all realities, but which does not assume free actuality or independent external forms of nature.It is true that the universal spirit has a shape or form of existence, because it is the object of its own consciousness, but because its own consciousness is presumed in religion to have the essential determination of self-consciousness, the form that this consciousness takes is entirely self-transparent; and the reality that the spirit contains is included in it and superseded in it, just as we say that the spirit is "all actuality"; and all actuality is meant to be thought universal reality.

Since, therefore, in religion the character of the real consciousness of the spirit has no free and independent alien form, the particular being of the spirit is distinct from its self-consciousness, and its real reality lies outside religion. of.Of course, these are two aspects of one spirit, but the consciousness of spirit does not include two aspects at once. Religion expresses the aspect of the spirit's specific existence, action, and effort, while the other aspect of the spirit is in its reality. life experienced in the world.Spirit in its own world, as we now know, is the same thing as spirit conscious of itself as spirit, or in religion, so that the fulfillment of religion consists in the fact that these two forms are identical to each other. That is, not only the reality of spirit is grasped by religion, but, on the contrary, spirit becomes actual spirit as spirit conscious of itself, becomes the object of its own consciousness. —Insofar as in religion the spirit represents itself to itself, it is undoubtedly consciousness, and the reality contained in religion is the form and the cloak of the spirit's own representation.But now sex does not enjoy full rights in this appearance, that is to say, it is not just a spiritual cloak, but an independent and free existence.On the contrary, since presentity is not fulfilled in appearance, it is only a certain form, which does not reach what it should be, that is, the spirit that is not conscious of itself.Since the form of the spirit is to express the spirit itself, the form itself will be nothing but spirit, and the spirit will express itself as it is in its essence.In this way, however, it arrives—as it would seem contrary to what is required—that the objects of its consciousness have at the same time the form of a free and independent reality; Only the spirit is conscious of itself as a free and independent reality, and is conscious of itself in reality.

In the first place, since self-consciousness is distinguished from actual consciousness, religion, and the spirit or particular being of the spirit existing in the world, the latter is contained in the whole of the spirit, since the moments of the spirit are separate and each Each link expresses itself.But the moments of spirit: consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit—the last moment (spirit) as immediate spirit is not yet the consciousness of spirit.The whole of the spirit's various aspects taken together constitutes the total real existence of the spirit in the world; this stage of the spirit itself contains the general determination of the previous forms, that is, the various aspects just mentioned.Religion presupposes the experience of these moments and is the simple totality or absolute self or soul of these moments. —Secondly, the relationship between the process experienced by these links and religion cannot be considered as being in time.Only the whole spirit is in time, and those forms which are the whole spirit itself appear in succession one after the other.For only the whole has real reality, and therefore only the whole has a purely free form with respect to other things, which is expressed as time.But the moments of the whole: consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, because they are only moments, have no separate existence from each other. ——

Just as the spirit is distinguished from its moments, so, thirdly, we must also distinguish the moments themselves from their particular individual determinations.We see that each of these moments is itself divisible into several moments and different modalities in its own development: for example, in the stage of consciousness, two modalities of sensuous certainty and perception are distinguished.These latter two aspects appear separately in time and belong to a particular whole. —For the spirit descends from its universality to become individual by determination.This stipulating or mediating link is consciousness, self-awareness, and so on.But individuality is constituted by the forms of these moments.These forms thus express the individuality or actuality of the mind, and are differentiated from each other in time, but in spite of the difference the latter retains within itself the preceding form.

Therefore since religion is the completion of the spirit [the process of development], the individual moments of the spirit: consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit must return and have returned to religion as their ground, so together they constitute the specific existing reality of the whole spirit. nature, and the whole of the mind exists only because it is the movement of these aspects of it that separate from itself and return to itself.The general development of religion is contained in the movement of these universal links.But since each of these properties is expressed not just as it is generally understood, but as it is in and for itself, that is to say, as it passes through itself as a whole In that way, what is produced here is not only the development of religion in general, but also the complete processes experienced by the above-mentioned individual aspects of the spirit, which at the same time contain various stipulations of religion itself.The whole of the spirit, the spirit in religion, undergoes again the process from its immediacy to the knowledge of its in-itself or immediate state, and through this process to a form in which it Appearing as an object of its own consciousness, it is completely identical with its essence and intuites itself as it is. —In this process of development, the spirit itself then acquires definite forms which constitute the different stages of this movement: while a definite religion thus likewise possesses a definite real spirit.Thus if consciousness, self-consciousness, reason and spirit belong to the spirit which knows itself, then these particular forms which are specially developed within each stage of consciousness, self-consciousness, reason and spirit belong to the spirit which knows itself. specific form.The specific form of religion adopts a form suitable to it from the forms of each of its links as its actual spirit.This single determination of religion pervades all aspects of its actual existence and imbues them with this common stamp.

In this way the forms which appeared before are now arranged in an order different from the order in which they originally appeared.Regarding this point, we must first briefly point out the points worth noting. —In the series we have examined, each moment penetrates itself into itself and develops into a whole according to its own principles; Persisting moments take it as their substance.But this entity now manifests itself; it is the deep essence of the spirit which is itself sure; The entire richness of this realistic spirit of the world moves forward, and all its particular moments jointly adopt and absorb within themselves the same determination of the whole. - This self-assured spirit and its movement are the true reality and being-for-itself that belongs to each individual moment. ——

So if the previous single-line series, in its progression, showed regression at knot points, but after going back, it still moved forward along the single line again, it now seems to be at these knots. Points, at these universal links, are interrupted and broken into straight lines, which, when combined into a bundle, join themselves symmetrically at the same time, so that each line in its The same differences that have been formed within each other will be merged together. —Furthermore, it is self-evident how the arrangement of these general directions suggested here is to be understood in the light of the whole discourse.It goes without saying that these different forms must in essence be regarded only as moments in the developmental process, and not as isolated parts.Whereas these moments are attributes of its substance in the spirit of reality, they are only predicates or predicates of the subject in religion.

Likewise all forms or shapes in general, whether in themselves or in us, are indeed contained in spirit and in every spirit.But as far as the reality of the spirit is concerned, the most important thing is only what kind of determination the spirit has in its consciousness, in what kind of determination the spirit expresses itself, or in what form the spirit recognizes it. essence. The former difference between the actual spirit and the spirit which knows itself to be spirit, or between the spirit as consciousness and the spirit as self-consciousness, is superseded in the spirit which really knows itself; Self-awareness is consistent.But since religion is here only immediate, the difference has not yet returned to the spirit [to unity].Here the concept of religion is only initially established; in the concept of religion, the essence is self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is aware of itself as all truth, and in truth contains all reality.This self-consciousness, since it is consciousness, has itself as its object; the spirit which at first knows itself directly is therefore for itself spirit in the form of immediacy, and the determination of the form in which it expresses itself is also spirit. It is the stipulation of existence.It is true that this existence has as its content neither sensations or materials, nor other one-sided moments, purposes, and determinations, but it has spirit as its content and is itself conscious of itself as all truth and reality.The content, in this way, is not identical with its own form; that is to say, the spirit, being essence, is not identical with its consciousness.Spirit, only when it is in its own certainty, that is, in its own truth, or when it splits as consciousness into two extremes, has a relationship of being for each other in the spiritual form, It is truly the Absolute Spirit.The form which the mind takes as the object of its consciousness still has as its content the certainty of the mind, the substance.Through this content, the reduction of the object to pure objectivity, to the negative form of self-consciousness, disappears.This immediate unity of mind with itself is the basis or pure consciousness in which consciousness splits into its constituent parts (subject and object).Shut up in this way in its own pure self-consciousness, spirit does not exist in religion as the creator of nature in general; but what it produces in this movement is spiritual, that is, Its own forms, which together constitute the totality of its appearance; and the movement itself develops its perfect realization through its individual aspects or its imperfect realizations. The first realization of the spirit is the concept of religion itself, that is, immediate or natural religion.Here the spirit realizes itself in immediate and natural form, but the second reality of the spirit must be such a spirit as its own object.It recognizes itself in a sublated form of nature, or in the form of the ego.This is the religion of art.For this form is elevated to the form of the ego by the creative activity of consciousness, which can then intuit its own activity or ego in its objects.Finally, the third reality of the spirit sublates the one-sidedness of the first two realities; since the ego is an immediacy, immediacy is likewise an ego.If the first reality of the mind may be said to be generally in the form of consciousness and the second in the form of self-consciousness, then the third reality of the mind is in the united form of the former two; and being-for-itself, and since it is presented as if it were for itself, it is a revealed religion.Although here the spirit has indeed attained its true form, but this form itself and its form of representation remain an unconquered aspect, from which it has yet to pass into the concept, in order to completely eliminate the form of objectivity in the concept. , and the concept is likewise containing its counterpart within itself.The mind then grasps its own concept, as only we [students of mental phenomena] do; and the form of its purpose, or its definite element (since this element or form is concept), is itself.