Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Richard Dien Winfield

Author:Richard Dien Winfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part 2

Consciousness has left behind the form of self-actualization that ties itself to the natural character of the individual as exhibited in particular activities and works. Instead, consciousness now seeks to actualize itself in a pure activity free of any connection to the given nature of the individual, exhibiting itself in a matter at hand that is purified of all the contingencies afflicting works in their particularity.

How is this to be achieved? Is it simply a matter of the individual consciousness accepting whatever happens in its activities to be its self-actualization? Is this indifference, this “going with the flow,” how the individual purifies its activity and produces works that are equally purified of any particular commitment? And if so, can this mode of purification validate the certainty that what is is the self-actualization of consciousness?

The purpose of consciousness remains nothing other than self-exhibition, becoming what one is, or engaging in self-actualization. Since the particular content of activity and works is contingent, the possibility of certifying that self-actualization is achieved was problematic so long as that content was the focus of attention. If now one instead recognizes that the truth of self-actualization is indifferent to the contents involved, then the work in question, the matter at hand, die Sache selbst is whatever is present in one’s self-actualization. If, however, one’s self-actualization is achieved only in indifference to any particular actual character that might be ascribed to it, it is as indeterminate as the abstract work and the purified activity in which it is putatively exhibited.

This indeterminacy can be accepted and that acceptance is observed in paragraph 411 in connection with the so-called honest consciousness. This honest consciousness embraces what Hegel describes as the idealism expressed by the purified work, the idealism that regards the self to remain at one with itself in pervading all the contingencies that afflict activity and work. In this pure self-realization, the so-called honest consciousness regards whatever it is doing to give it the satisfaction of realizing itself. As Hegel observes in paragraphs 412 and 413, this is the case even when the honest consciousness does not bring to fruition what it aims at. Even then it regards its failure as its self-actualization.

Can the honest consciousness really validate its certainty that whatever is is its self-actualization? Here, as Hegel notes, the thing that matters is just the unity of the decision of consciousness to recognize itself in a work, independently of the contents of any of the factors involved. Can that be a satisfactory solution? Is that going to be a way of conducting oneself so that one is in a position to verify that the actuality one confronts is one’s own actuality? Or is this in truth a path of deception, involving both self-deception and the deception of others?

Hegel observes how the latter turns out to be what consciousness here experiences. First of all, the “honest consciousness” deceives others by reporting that the things they do are its self-actualization rather than exclusively their own. Secondly, the

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