Chapter 58 Ⅲ.The Development of the Concept of Absolute Religion

The mind is the content of its consciousness, first of all, in the form of pure substance, in other words, the mind is initially the content of its pure consciousness. [Secondly,] the element of thinking is its movement [from the universal] down to a particular being or individuality.The middle term between them is their synthetic link, the consciousness transformed into something else, or the process of representation itself. ——The third link is the return from appearance and other things, that is, the element of self-consciousness itself. —These three moments constitute the spirit; the spirit is separated in representation, that is, because it exists in that it exists in a certain way, but this specificity is nothing but a moment of it.Its actualizing movement therefore consists in the unfolding of its own nature in each of its moments, that is, in each of its elements.Since each circle of this movement is complete in itself, its return to itself is at the same time a transition to another circle.Representation constitutes the middle term between pure thought and self-consciousness itself, and is only one of the determinations; but at the same time, as already pointed out, this character of representation as a synthetic connection is dispersed in all these moments, And it is their common stipulation.

The content itself which we are about to examine already partly presents itself as a consciousness of distress and belief.But in distressed consciousness it has the property that it arises from consciousness and is a longing [beyond] content in which the mind is neither satisfied nor settled, because the mind's The content is not yet self-existing, or in other words, the spiritual substance is not yet the spiritual content.In faith-consciousness, on the other hand, the content is considered as the selfless essence of the world, or mainly as the objective content given by appearances, which generally cannot achieve reality and are therefore not self-conscious. Conviction, which, on the one hand as an illusory knowledge, on the other hand as a pure insight, is separated from the content. ——

The consciousness of the religious community, on the other hand, has as its substance a (spiritual) content which is the conviction that the religious community has of its own spirit. 1.spirit in itself; trinity Spirit is originally represented as a substance in pure thought elements, and thus is immediately the simple, self-identical Eternal Essence, but this Eternal Essence does not have the abstract meaning of Essence, but has the meaning of Absolute Spirit.But the spirit is not the meaning, nor the inner [essence], but the real.For the simple, eternal essence, if it stays in the appearances and nouns of the simple, eternal essence, is spirit only in terms of empty nouns.But the simple essence, because it is an abstraction, is in fact itself a negative thing, of course it is the negativity of thought or negativity in the essence in itself; thing.This simple essence as essence exists only in itself or for us.But since this purity is precisely abstraction or negativity, it is for-itself or it is the ego, the concept. —It is thus objective; and since representation understands and expresses the just-mentioned necessity of the concept as an event (Geschehen), the eternal essence, so to speak, produces for itself an other.But in this other it also returns directly to itself; for this difference is a difference from itself, that is to say, it is immediately only different from itself, and thus it is the unity that returns to itself.

In this way, three moments can be distinguished: (1) the moment of essence, (2) the moment of being-for-itself (this moment is the other or the other of the essence, the essence exists for the other or the other) and (3) ) the moment of knowing itself in something else or the moment of being-for-itself in something else.Essence sees itself only in its being-for-itself; in this externalization it is only in itself; that being-for-itself which excludes itself from essence is the knowledge of itself of essence; this knowledge [As if] the spoken word, which is externalized to the speaker, detached from the speaker, but which is also heard at once, and which is only the process of hearing itself. the existence of words.So when the distinction is made, it is immediately removed as soon as it is made, and as soon as the distinction is removed, it is also immediately made, and truth and reality are just this circle-like return to themselves. (dialectical) movement.

① "Word" (DasWort) here also contains the original Greek word logos (truth, way). - translator This [dialectical] movement within itself shows that the absolute essence is spirit.The Absolute Essence, not apprehended as spirit, is but abstract emptiness, and so spirit, not apprehended as this [circular] movement, is but words or empty nouns. The moments of the spirit, when grasped in their purity, are restless concepts, which are their true selves only in the other, and rest only in the whole.But the representational consciousness of the religious community is not such conceptual thinking, it has a content without the necessity of thinking, and it does not bring the conceptual form, but the natural relationship between father and son into pure consciousness. within the field.When it carries out representational cognition in this way, it is true that the essence is still revealed to it, but because of this (external) comprehensive representational cognition, the various links of the essence are separated on the one hand and have nothing to do with each other. , so that they cannot be related to each other through their own concepts, on the other hand, representation always retreats from this pure object of its own (so that it cannot penetrate into the object, ) only externally related to the object.The object is revealed to representation-consciousness by something alien, and in this thought of spirit the representation cannot recognize itself, the nature of pure self-consciousness.

Insofar as the forms of representation and the modes of cognition based on the relations of natural things have to be transcended, especially insofar as the moments constituting the movement of the mind are treated as isolated, unshakable entities or subjects, not as moments of transition Insofar as the perception must be transcended, this transcendence must be seen as a (dialectical) compulsion of the concept, as we mentioned earlier when we talked about the other side of the problem; But since it is only instinct, it misidentifies itself, and it rejects the content as well as the form, which is tantamount to saying that the content is reduced to a historical image (or appearance) and a treasure handed down by tradition.What is preserved here is only the purely external within the sphere of belief, and thus a dead thing devoid of intellectual content, while the inner essence in belief disappears, since the inner essence will be the concept that knows itself as a concept .

2.The externalized spirit; the kingdom of the Son The Absolute Spirit, which is represented as the Pure Essence, is certainly not the Abstract Pure Essence; on the contrary, the latter, just because it is a moment of the Spirit, is reduced to a constituent element of the Spirit.In this element, however, the process of expression of the spirit itself suffers, as far as form is concerned, the same defects as essence as essence.Essence is abstraction, and is therefore the negation of its simplicity, an other; likewise in the element of (pure) essence, spirit is the form of simple unity, which is likewise chiefly a transformation into other process. —Or in other words, the relation of the eternal essence to its being-for-itself is the immediate simple relation of pure thought; [independent] existence; this otherness is a difference, and this difference is as immediate and indifferent as in pure thought,—a recognition of love in which the lover and the loved are essentially different. Not against each other.The spirit expressed in the pure thinking element is primarily not only in pure thinking, but actual, because its concept contains its otherness, that is to say, the understanding of the pure thought. , the sublation of concepts that are merely in thought.

The purely thinking element, since it is an abstraction, is itself rather the other (or the opposite) of its simplicity, and must therefore pass into the real element of representation, in which the pure concept The various moments of each acquire a substantive location and oppose each other, and at the same time they are all subjects. back to itself. (1) world Thus the mere eternal or abstract spirit will become an other to itself, that is to say, will come into being and at once into immediate being.It thus creates a world.This creation is to express the concept itself in the language of representation according to its absolute movement; or to express the fact that the simple which is expressed as absolute abstraction, that is, pure thought, because it is abstract, can be said to be Negative, and thus what is opposed to itself, or something else. —Or to state the same thing in another way, it can also be said that pure thought is something else because that which is posited as essence is simple immediacy or immediate being, but as Immediateness, or being, is lacking in self, or immanence and thus passive or being-for-others. —This being-for-other is at the same time a world; the spirit which has the property of being-for-other is the static continuation of the moments previously included in pure thought, and thus the simple universality of these moments The elimination of them and their dispersion become their respective particularities.

But the world is not just such a spirit thrown externally into the whole and its external order; rather, since the spirit is essentially a simple self, there is also a self in the world. : The world is the mind that exists in particular, the individual self that is conscious and distinguishes itself from itself as the other or the world. — This individual self was not yet the spirit for itself when it was first posited so immediately; Therefore, it does not exist as a spirit. It may be called innocent, but it cannot be called strictly good.In order for it to be in fact self and spirit, it must first become an other to itself, just as the eternal essence is expressed as a movement identical with itself in its other (or otherness).Since this spirit is originally determined to exist immediately, or to be dispersed into its various consciousnesses, its becoming other generally means penetrating into itself.Immediate presence is transformed into thought, or mere sensuous consciousness into thought-consciousness; and since this thought arises from immediacy or conditioned thought, it is not pure knowledge, but has the opposite or alien thought in itself, and thus thought in itself with the opposition of good and evil. "Man" is so mythologically expressed by the religious consciousness that, with such things happening,—

The occurrence of this event is not regarded as necessary,—man, by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, loses the form of his own identity, and from the state of innocent consciousness, never waits for labor to provide enjoyment for himself. banished from heaven, from the garden of many creatures. (2) Good and Evil Since this self-deepening of the consciousness of a given being immediately causes its own non-identity within itself, evil appears to be the first specific being of which consciousness itself penetrates.And since the thoughts of good and evil are complete opposites, and this opposition has not been eliminated, this consciousness is essentially only the consciousness of evil.But at the same time, precisely because of this opposition, the consciousness of good that opposes the consciousness of evil arises, and the mutual relationship between them is established. —Since the transformation of immediate presence into thought, and since, on the one hand, the penetration of consciousness itself is thought, and on the other hand, the moment in which essence becomes something else is thus more precisely determined, [Consciousness ] Becoming evil can also be further traced back from the external world of existence and transferred to the original thinking field.Thus it may be said that the first son of the God of Light fell when he penetrated into himself, but immediately another was brought forth to take his place.Moreover, those forms which belong to mere forms of representation and not to concepts, such as "fallen" and "son", likewise reduce the conceptual moment in reverse to representation, or bring representation into the realm of thought. —It is equally insignificant to attach various other figures (such as angels) to the simple idea of ​​the otherness (Anderssein) of the Eternal Essence, and to turn from these figures into itself. of.This attachment must also be praised, because in this way the moment of alienation, as it should be, can at the same time be expressed as difference (Unterschiedenheit), not of course as multiplicity (Vielheit) in general, but It is simultaneously expressed as a specific difference, so that on the one hand, it simply knows itself to be the Son of the essence, and on the other hand, the individual externalizes (or relinquishes) his being-for-itself, that is, abandons his own independent existence and We live only in the glorification of the essence; thus even the return of the externalized (abandoned) being-for-itself and the penetration of evil into itself can be attributed to the externalization (renunciation) of being-for-itself. Go on one hand.In the case of the division into two of the otherness of the divine essence, the moments of the spirit, if they are to be counted, can more precisely be counted as "four-in-one," or by virtue of this number itself being divided into two parts; A part remains good, and a part becomes evil, so it can be expressed as "five in one". —But counting these moments can generally be regarded as useless, because, on the one hand, what is different is itself only a single thing, that is to say, only the thought of difference, which is about Distinctive thought is only a thought, and likewise it is this particular second distinct which is opposed to the first distinct.But, on the other hand, counting is futile because the thought which conceives the many as one must be dissociated from its oneness or universality, and distinguished into more than three or four distinct things. ; this universality, in contrast to the absolute determinateness of the abstract principle of one and number, appears to be indeterminate with respect to the relation of numbers itself, so that only numbers in general are referred here, that is to say, not A certain number of differences.It is therefore entirely superfluous to think purely of numbers and calculations here in general, just as in other cases the difference between mere quantities and numbers is not thought-provoking and indifferent.

Good and evil were once a definite distinction made by thought.As long as their opposites are not eliminated, they are represented as the essence of thought, each independent, man is the self without essence, and is the synthetic base of the existence and struggle of good and evil.But these universal forces of good and evil are also subordinate to the ego, or the ego is the actual embodiment of good and evil.From this it follows that, just as evil is nothing but the penetration into itself of a particular natural being of the spirit, so good, on the other hand, is the entry into real life and manifests itself in the self-consciousness of a specific being. —What in the spirit of pure thought is only generally suggested as alien (or transformed into something else) of the divine essence, here, with regard to representation, is nearer to its realization.This actualization appears to be contained in the self-relegation of the divine essence, renouncing its own abstraction and unreality. The other side, the evil side, is presented as an event distinct and external to the divine essence; evil in the divine essence is understood as the wrath of God, the The highest and most severe efforts that can be made by the representation of limitations] remain fruitless for lack of concept. The alienation of the divine essence then manifests itself in a double way: (1) the spiritual self and (2) the simple thought of the spiritual are these two moments, the absolute unity of which is the spirit itself.The alienation of spirit consists in the fact that the two are alien to each other, and the one is of unequal value to the other.This disequilibrium is thus of a double character; and gives rise to two unions which have as their common moments the two moments just mentioned.In a union, the divine essence is regarded as the essential aspect, and the natural being and self are regarded as the non-essential and about to be superseded aspects.In another union, on the other hand, being-for-itself is regarded as the essential aspect, and the simple divine essence is regarded as the non-essential aspect.The still empty intermediate moment between the two is the specific being in general, the mere commonality of the two moments in these two unions. (3) Salvation and reconciliation The dissolution of this opposition does not take place through the struggle of the two parties, which are presented as separate and independent from each other.Precisely because of their independence, each must be free to dissolve itself within itself through its own concepts.This struggle takes place at first only where both sides cease to be a mixture of thought and independent existence, and confront each other only as thought.For in this case they are essentially in relation to each other only as definite concepts; on the contrary, as independent things, they have their essence besides their opposition; their movement is thus their free and their own inherent movement.The reason why the movement of both is a movement in itself is that it can be considered in relation to both and itself, and therefore begins with the opposite of the other, which is defined as existing in itself.Such movement is considered free action.But the necessity of the externalization of a being-in-itself is contained in the concept that a being-in-itself acquires its determination only in opposition, and because of this it has no real persistence.Therefore, that which has no existence for itself, but takes the simple as its essence, it must externalize itself, go to death, and through death alienate itself and the absolute essence, it has a natural existence and individual self reality.This alienation of it, or its sensuous present being, returns to itself by this second becoming alienation (or second negation) and is posited as the superseded, universal.In this way the essence becomes itself in its sensuous present-being; the immediate presence of actuality is no longer alien and external to the essence, since it is sublated and universal. s things.So this death is its birth as spirit.This sublated, immediate present being of the self-conscious essence is the essence as universal self-consciousness.The notion of the sublated individual self (which is the Absolute Essence) thus expresses directly the structure of a [religious] community which hitherto remained only in appearance, now returns as self to itself; The second factor of determination—appearance—passes over to the third factor—self-consciousness itself.If we try to examine again the manner in which the representation takes in its progress, we shall first see the manner in which the representation speaks of the human nature of the divine essence.In this sentence, it has already been said that God and man are not separated from each other, just as in the sentence "the divine essence externalizes itself from the beginning, its existence penetrates into itself and becomes evil", although it does not It does not say, but implies, that this specific existence of evil is not inherently alien to the divine essence; if the absolute essence really has an other outside it, if it really If there is a so-called depravity, then it will only have the empty term of absolute essence.The moment in itself, therefore, constitutes rather the main moment of the spiritual self. —Being in itself, and thus first approaching actuality, belongs to the Divine Essence itself, which is a concept for us [philosophers], that is, because it is a concept for us, so it is for representation [or As far as the consciousness of image is concerned, it appears to be an incomprehensible event that cannot be grasped by concepts.Nature-in-itself assumes the form of an external, indifferent existence to representational consciousness.But the idea that the two seemingly divergent moments, the absolute essence and the self-existing self, are not separate, is also present in front of this representation (consciousness) (because the representation (consciousness) has a real content), but This thought is only presented before this appearance later, when the divine essence is externalized, that is, when God becomes flesh.In this way the representation is still immediate and therefore not yet spiritual, that is to say, it only sees the human figure of the divine essence as a particular and not yet universal thing—this representation, seen in this consciousness Then it becomes spiritual when, in the figured or humanized divine essence, it casts off its immediate image or existence again, and returns to the essence in its motion.Only by returning to the essence of oneself is the spirit. – Thus, generally speaking, the reconciliation of the divine essence with the other, especially with the other's thoughts and with evil, is expressed here in the form of representations. —If this reconciliation (or unity) of God and man is expressed in a conceptual way, it should be said that the divine essence and the whole of nature are originally the same, just as nature is nothing apart from the divine essence—of course this It can be regarded as a non-spiritual way of expression, which is bound to cause misunderstanding.Since evil and good are identical, evil is not evil, and good is not good, but both are superseded: evil in general is being-for-itself concentrated in itself, good in general is self-forgetfulness. A simple sense of selflessness.Since both are expressed conceptually in this way, at the same time their unity is manifested; for being-for-itself that exists within itself is simple knowledge, and so is the simple consciousness of selflessness. Being-for-itself that exists purely within itself.If, therefore, it must be said that good and evil are one and the same in terms of the [dialectical] concept of good and evil, that is, in the sense that they are not good and evil, it must also be said that they are not The same thing, but pure is different; for simple being-for-itself, or pure knowledge, as it were, is likewise pure negativity, or absolute distinction in themselves.Only these two propositions together have a complete formulation of the whole, and the affirmation and affirmation of the former must hold its opposite (i.e. the latter) against it with insurmountable obstinacy.Since both propositions are true, both propositions are false, and their error consists in treating those abstract forms, such as equality and non-identity, identity and non-identity, as some real, fixed, real things, and take them as grounds.Neither one nor the other alone has truth, truth is the [dialectical] movement of both, in which simple identity is abstraction, and thus absolute difference, which is self-distinction, self-distinguishment from itself, It is thus self-identity.The same is true of the identity of the divine essence with nature in general, and with humanity in particular: the divine essence is nature in so far as it is not an essence; nature is also divine in its essence.But it is only in the spirit that these two abstract aspects attain their truth, that is, are posited as sublated moments—a positing that cannot be termed with the conjunction of judgment and its spiritlessness "is "To express. Likewise nature is nothing outside of its essence; but this nothing itself is also something, for being and nothing itself are identical; Unity is evil with respect to the opposite link.For the average person, the difficulty that arises with this concept is due to the fixation on the abstract connective word "is" and the forgetting [of the dialectic] of thinking, in which the two moments are both being and not--they are A movement, and this movement is the spirit. —This unity of spirit, or in which difference is only a sublated moment, is for representational consciousness the above-mentioned reconciliation [of God and man], and since This unity is the universality of self-consciousness, and therefore self-consciousness ceases to be the consciousness of representations; the movement of thought has returned to self-consciousness through representations. 3.The spirit in its own full state; the kingdom of the Holy Spirit The spirit is thus posited in the third element, the universal self-consciousness; the spirit is its own religious community (Gemeinde).The movement of this association, as the movement of self-consciousness (and self-consciousness itself is different from its appearance), is the process of realizing what has become potential.The dead divine man or human God is potentially universal self-consciousness; he must realize this latent universal self-consciousness as the object of this self-consciousness.In other words, since self-consciousness constitutes an aspect of the opposite contained in appearances, that is, the evil aspect, which has as its essence natural being and individual being-for-itself, the evil aspect (due to It is regarded as an independent aspect, not yet regarded as a moment), in order to [overcome] its independence, it must raise itself to the spiritual level in its own right, or it must be in its To elucidate the spiritual movement in the process of self-improvement or overcoming evil. This self-consciousness of the evil side is the spirit of nature; from this nature the ego must withdraw into itself and penetrate into itself, that is to say, it must become evil.But naturalness is already potentially evil; so penetrating into itself involves convincing itself that the very presence of nature is evil.From the perspective of representational consciousness, the fact that the world becomes evil and that there are evil beings is an actual fact, and likewise, the reconciliation of the absolute essence and man is also an actual fact; but for self-consciousness itself, in terms of form, , the evil in this representation is only a sublated moment—for the ego is a negative principle—and thus a kind of knowledge, which is a pure activity of consciousness in itself. – Likewise, in terms of content, this negative moment must also be expressed.Since, as said above, the Absolute Essence is already in itself reconciled with itself and is a spiritual unity in which the parts of representation are sublated or are mere moments, this shows that every part of representation is here has different and opposite meanings from all its predecessors, by which each complements that of the other, and by which the content is a spiritual content.Since the determination of each is likewise its opposite, the unity in the other (or the other), the essence of spirit, is accomplished.Just as before, two opposite meanings are combined for us [philosophers], or for themselves, and even the abstract forms of identity and non-identity, identity and non-identity are sublated. . So if in representational consciousness the internalization of natural self-consciousness is actually existing evil, then internalization within self-consciousness is the knowledge of evil as something that belongs in itself to actual existence.This knowledge is undoubtedly a process of becoming evil, but only the process of becoming evil thoughts, and is therefore recognized as the first moment of reconciliation.For knowledge, as a return to itself from the immediacy of nature (and natural immediacy is considered to have the determination of evil), is the abandonment of natural immediacy and the death of evil.It is not natural being itself that is abandoned by consciousness, but what is abandoned is that which is at the same time known to be evil.The immediate movement into itself is likewise a mediated movement,— It presupposes itself, or it is its own ground; consciousness penetrates into its ground because nature already penetrates itself in itself.Because of evil, man must penetrate into himself, and evil itself is a process of penetrating into himself. —Because of this, this first movement itself is only immediate, or only its simple conception, since it is the same as its ground.The [dialectical] movement or transformation into the other must therefore only appear in its more specific form. Therefore, in addition to this immediacy, the mediating role of representational awareness is also necessary.The knowledge of nature (the non-real being as spirit), and this universality in which the ego takes place within itself, is in itself the reconciliation of spirit with itself.This in-itself, seen from that self-consciousness which has not attained conceptual knowledge, has a form which exists and is presented to it by representations.Hence this grasp (Begreifen), for this self-consciousness, is not yet the grasp (Ergreifen) of a conception which not only recognizes the universality of superseded nature, but is therefore identical with itself. reconciled, but to grasp the appearance in which the divine essence, through the event of its own externalization, through its incarnation and its death, is identical with its own Reality is reconciled. —More precisely, the present grasp of this representation expresses what was formerly called the resurrection of the soul within the representational form, or the transformation of the individual self-consciousness of the divine essence into a universal or religious community. —The death of divine man, as death, is abstract negativity, the immediate result of a movement which ends only in the attainment of the universality of nature.In the spiritual self-consciousness, death loses its natural meaning, in other words, it transforms into the concept just mentioned.Death is then glorified from its immediate meaning, from the non-existence of this individual individual, into the universality of a spirit that lives in its religious community, where it dies and is resurrected every day. . ①The so-called "spirit" and the Christian term "Holy Spirit" here are the same word "Geist". - translator That view which belongs to the element of representation, that the absolute spirit, as an individual person, or rather, a particular person, represents in its particular being the nature of the spirit,—this representation-based Perception is thus now transferred to self-consciousness itself, raised to the knowledge of itself preserved in its otherness (or the other).So this self-consciousness does not actually die, as the particular individual is represented to actually die, but his particularity dies in his universality, that is to say, in his In knowledge, this knowledge is the nature of self reconciled with itself.The element of representation that first appeared here is thus posited here as sublated, in other words, as returning to the ego, to the concept; subject.Because of this, the appearance factor, pure thought and the eternal spirit in pure thought are no longer outside the appearance consciousness, still less outside the self; on the contrary, the true meaning of the return of the whole to itself lies in including all the links in itself. .The death of the intermediary caught or grasped by the ego means the sublation of his objectivity or of his particular being-for-itself which has become universal self-consciousness. — On the other hand, precisely because of this, the universal is self-consciousness, and the pure or unreal spirit of mere thought becomes real.The mediator dies not only of his natural side or of his particular being-for-itself, not just a dead shell out of essence, but an abstract aspect of the divine essence.Because as long as his death has not completed the reconciliation (God and man), the mediator is one-sided. He only knows to regard the simple abstraction of thinking as opposed to reality as the essence; There is no equal worth; it is only in the spirit that the ego reaches this point.The death of the represented mediator therefore involves at the same time the death of the abstraction not posited as the divine essence of the self. 这样的死正是那感到上帝自身已经死了的苦恼意识①所深切感觉到的痛苦。这种沉痛的语言正表达了最内在的、简单的自我知识，也表达意识之返回到自我＝自我的黑夜的深处，这种自我同一的黑夜在它自身以外更不知道、也区别不出来任何东西。因此，这种〔痛苦的〕感觉，事实上，意味着丧失了实体，并丧失了实体与意识相对立的对象性。但是同时，这种感觉乃是实体的纯粹的主观性或对它自身的纯粹确信，而这种自身确信是实体作为对象或作为直接的、纯粹的本质所缺乏的。因此这种知识是一种精神化的过程，通过这一过程，实体变成了主体，实体的抽象和无生命性消亡了，因而它就变成现实的、简单的和普遍的自我意识了。 ①请参看本卷第231页及译注。 - translator 所以精神就是自己知道自己的精神；它知道自己；凡是是精神的对象的东西就存在，换言之，凡呈现在精神的表象中的就是真实的绝对的内容。这内容，我们看到，表现了精神自身。同时它不只是自我意识的内容，并且不只是自我意识的对象，而且它又是现实的精神。精神所以是现实的精神，因为它经历过它的本性的三个要素；这种自己通过自身的运动构成精神的现实性。凡是自己运动的东西，这就是精神。精神是运动的主体，同样精神也是运动自身，或者说，精神是为主体所贯穿过的实体。当我们进入宗教〔领域〕时，我们曾看到，精神这一概念是如何发展出来的，即作为一种有自身确信的精神的运动，这精神宽恕了恶，从而也同时抛弃了它自己固有简单性和生硬的不变性，换句话说，精神是：绝对对立的东西认识到自己与对方是同一的运动，而这种认识是打破两个极端之间的对立而达到的"一致"①——那获得神圣本质的这种启示的宗教意识直观到〔精神的〕这一概念，并且扬弃了它的自身和它所直观到的对象之间的区别；这种宗教意识由于是主体，所以也是实体，并且正因为或者只由于它是这种〔辩证〕运动，所以它本身就是精神。 ①这里的"一致"二字，原文作"Ja"，直译应作"是"或"是的"，是指对立面的和解，对话或统一，兹译作"一致"，使得文字较顺。俄文译本作"DE"（那里），显然是错误的。 - translator 不过，这种宗教社团在它的这种自我意识里还没有得到完成。一般讲来，它的内容是在表象的形式下作为它的对象，而这种宗教社团的现实的精神性，从它的表象〔形式〕到它自身的回归，都感受到二分化（Entzweiung）的侵袭，正如纯思维要素的本身也曾陷于二元化那样。这种宗教社团也没有意识到它自身的性质；它是这样一种精神性的自我意识：自己不以自己为对象，或者自己还没有发展到自己意识到自己的过程；不过就它是意识而言，它就具有曾被考察的那些表象。——我们看见，自我意识在它的最后的转折点上，有着自身内在化的过程，并且达到在自身内存在的知识；我们看见，自我意识抛弃（entauβern）它的自然定在，而达到纯粹的否定性。不过，这种否定性的肯定意义在于：这种否定性或知识的纯粹内在性，同样也是自身同一的本质，——换句话说，实体在这里已变成了绝对的自我意识，而这绝对的自我意识，在虔敬的意识看来，却是一个〔外在的〕他物。虔敬的宗教意识把知识的纯粹内在化之自在地即是绝对简单性或实体这一方面，理解为这样一种东西的表象，这东西并非按照概念看来是如此，而是当作一种外来的、异己的善良的恩赐行为。换言之，它并没有意识到，纯粹自我的这种深邃性是这样一种〔否定性的〕威力，由于这威力的作用，那抽象的本质就从它的抽象性里被拖下来，并且通过这种纯粹虔敬的力量而被提高为自我。——这样一来，自我的行动就对抽象本质保持着一种否定的意义，因为实体这一方面的外在化或放弃其自身对自我来说还是潜在的东西，而自我也同样还没有把握或理解它，换言之，没有在自我的行动本身内找到这实体或本质。——由于本质和自我的这种统一〔只是〕潜在地得到实现，所以意识对于它〔同本质〕的和解的观念也还停留在表象阶段。意识获得满足，是由于它外在地给它的纯粹否定性附加上它同本质的统一性这一肯定的意义；因而它的满足本身仍然带有一种远在彼岸与它对立的色彩。因此，它自己固有的和解，出现在它的意识内作为一个遥远的东西，作为一个在遥远的将来的东西，正如别的自我所达到的和解是表现为一个在遥远的过去的东西那样。正如那个别的神性的人只有一个潜在的父亲和一个现实的母亲，同样那普遍的神性的人、宗教社团，便以它自己特有的行动和知识为父亲，而以永恒的爱为母亲，这永恒的爱，它只是感觉到，但没有作为现实的直接的对象在它的意识内直观到。因此它的和解只是在它的内心里，但同它的意识还是分而为二的，并且它的现实性还是破碎而不完整的。那出现在它的意识中作为潜在性或纯粹中介性的一面，就是远在彼岸世界的和解；但是那出现在它的意识中作为当前现在、作为直接性和特定存在的一面，却是那还有待于神圣化的世界。当然这个世界潜在地是同〔神圣〕本质相和解的；当然神圣本质知道，它不复把对象当作自身的异化，而是当作在它的爱中与自己同一的。 但是对自我意识来说，这个直接的当前存在还不具有精神的形态。这样，那宗教社团的精神，在它的直接意识里，就是与它的宗教意识相分离的；这宗教意识诚然宣称它们两者潜在地不是分离的，不过所说的不分离只是潜在的，不是实现了的，换言之，同样还没有成为绝对的自为存在。