Summary
At the end of chapter 4, Hegel describes the “unhappy
consciousness” that arises from individuals having to struggle for
recognition from one another to realize themselves as self-conscious
subjects. He asserts that various religious institutions and philosophical
systems serve as a refuge from the fear and objectification that
arise in this struggle. By turning toward a transcendent being (God),
one can take comfort in a being that exists purely for itself, rather
than in a struggle for recognition between beings, and thus isolate
oneself from that struggle. This turn toward a transcendent being
follows from the initial attempt of consciousness to grasp the nature
of the object. The striving for sense certainty leads to perception
and to the social nature of universal concepts.
Hegel’s understanding of the dialectical movement of thought leads
him to take issue with the idealist notion of reason. Reason is not,
as the Kantian idealists claim, a matter of fitting isolated objects into
universal categories. Reason involves a self-conscious ego struggling
to assimilate objects while having to fend off their otherness,
which it sees as a threat to its existence as a self-conscious being.
Like Kant, Hegel believes that reason leads consciousness
to fit particular phenomena into universal categories. However,
this process is not smooth and always involves an element of uncertainty and
vagueness, since objects exist in a fluid spectrum of variations and
do not readily conform to distinct universal categories. Thus, insofar
as consciousness is oriented to those stable categories of thought,
it is also aware of a set of standards governing how phenomena conform
to such categories. These standards, or Laws of Thought, reside
neither in the objects nor in the mind but in a third dimension,
in the “organized social whole.” When looking at the social dimension,
we can see that every individual self-consciousness belongs to one
collective self-consciousness, a locus of identity existing outside
of every individual in the collective. Laws of thought, morality,
and conventions belong to social life. Individual activities and
interpretations conform to these laws as having a taken-for-granted
existence, as “matters at hand,” and individuals see these common
laws not as alien but as emanating from their own selves, as a law
of one’s own heart. Hegel calls this dimension of collective consciousness
Spirit.
Spirit is the location of the ethical order, the realm
of the laws and customs, to which individual consciousnesses assent
but that exist outside of individuals in the social being. Individuals
interpret and act out laws and customs in an individual way, but
they do so in tension with this communal spirit. The ethical communal
spirit has two manifestations. First, it is the basis of the deep-seated
ethical orientation of individuals, as an object of faith. Second,
it has an outward existence as the culture and civilization of a
given historical age. These two moments of ethical spirit, or ethical
life, are in tension with each other. In modern Enlightenment culture,
for example, the external cultural expression of ethical life, or
Spirit, is a kind of individualism. An emphasis on education and
the acquisition of wealth actually orients consciousness away from
the social being and the deep ethical life of which it is a part.
In its most extreme negative form, individualism in the modern world
finds expression in despotism and political terrorism. When political
life is no longer a true expression of common ethical life, factions
merely pretending to represent the collective will enforce their
rule through terror and the annihilation of opposing factions. In
its more positive guise, individualism finds expression in individual
rights.
The next stage in the development of consciousness is
religion. Religion is essentially a collective Spirit conscious
of itself, and as such it reflects a given culture’s expression
of ethical life and the balance between individual and collective.
There are different phases in the development of religion represented
in the various world religions and reflected in art, myth, and drama.
But religion is not the highest stage of consciousness. This place
is reserved for Absolute Knowledge. Whereas with religion, spirit
is conscious of itself in pictorial or poetic form, in the state
of Absolute Knowledge, consciousness combines attention to subjective
knowledge with attention to objective truth. That is, in absolute
knowledge, spirit becomes aware of its limitations and seeks to
correct its contradictions and inadequacies by moving to a higher
plane of understanding. Absolute Knowledge is self-conscious and
critical engagement with reality. It is the standpoint of science
and the starting point of philosophical investigation.
Analysis
The religious connotations of the Hegelian term Spirit have
led many to believe that Hegel understands Spirit as a kind of supernatural
or divine force guiding human civilization and history. As noted, Spirit is
a translation of the German word geist, which can also
mean “mind,” and while spirit is reflected in religion, in itself
it is actually something more like culture, or the collective mind
of a social being. “Ethical life” is an expression of spirit in
everyday reality. The ethical encompasses the common understandings,
customs, and moral codes of a culture, a supraindividual communal
source of interpretation determining how people act, what they believe,
and how they relate to the world and to the divine. Hegel says that
even reason, which Kant treated as abstract and universal, is deeply embedded
in collective culture.
