Introduction
It is the purpose of this article to unfold the pure concept of the self. This concept is pure in the sense that it has emerged from the development of consciousness. The development began from our having elaborated our only assumption, that the activity of knowing is distinct from its object. We also granted that consciousness is situated in space and time, and that the activity of knowing begins with the senses; yet this is not a logical assumption - it is fact. We compared the notion consciousness had of its object, and of the nature of its relationship with its object, with what we knew about the nature of real space and time, as well as viewing that notion from as many angles as were allowed by that point of development. We also gave consciousness an attitude: it was supremely self-confident of its object of being the true Absolute, i.e. certain. We further extracted from these premises abilities, capacities, for the pure activity of consciousness from its own notion: the capacity to differentiate and identify. With these capacities, consciousness was able to move through its evolution on its own, without our interference as readers.
According to only these restraints, we began our movement with consciousness as sense-certainty. We discovered contradictions and tensions that sense-certainty came across. It was motivated to resolve these tensions because it wished to regain its initial supreme self-confidence. When it lost that initial supreme self-confidence, that certainty, it felt pain. The tensions were the cause of its pain. When it relieved those tensions, and believed itself to have regained that initial certainty, it felt pleasure. Relieving those tensions were the cause of its pleasure. This process of falling into doubt and despair, which caused it to feel pain, then rising up into certainty and hope, which caused it to feel pleasure, repeated itself. Thus, the impetus for the movement was for it not any lofty goal of knowing the absolute, but the hedonic principle: seek pleasure, avoid pain. The movement for sense-certainty was motivated by its feelings.
 |
| This has been true for consciousness since the beginning. |
At this early stage, the activity of knowing was a bare simplicity, so it could not differentiate between its feelings, its senses, and its thoughts. They were all the same for sense-certainty. A simple medley, a unity that was all just the activity of knowing. Thus, for sense-certainty, there was no difference between its feelings, senses, and thoughts; each had the same authority in motivating sense-certainty's action. This is the experience of being an animal. Feelings gave sense-certainty feedback on how close or far it was from the truth. Sense-certainty, however, not knowing the difference between its senses, thoughts, and feelings, confused its feelings for the truth. The truth is what feels good, pleasure. The false is what does not feel good, but painful pain. "Avoid pain, seek pleasure" was supposed to mean: "avoid lies, seek the truth" or "avoid evil, seek good" or "avoid chaos, seek harmony" or "avoid war, seek peace", and so on. Feelings are important motivators for consciousness to progress; their nature shall be explored in further detail in higher stages of consciousness. They are not really the focus of the movement thus far. Simply be aware that they are present.
Back to the movement at hand, as consciousness progressed upwards towards the shape of perception it developed the ability to invert. It progressed further and developed intelligence in the shape of understanding, still being motivated by pleasure and pain. The activity of thought is not an empty, vain activity, to impress; it is an activity that is motivated by pleasure and pain that is motivated by nothing other than the objects of thought. For the understanding, those objects were force, law, the inverted law, and infinity. It is at this stage that consciousness became aware of cause and effect as a phenomenon.
So, consciousness caught sight of the first supersensible world, and then the second. At this stage, there was no longer much tension, pain; there was only a pure desire to resolve the tension, just to resolve it. The understanding discovered infinity. Initially, infinity presented itself to consciousness as an object. The understanding, thinking it through, realized that the nature of infinity could not allow infinity to be only an object. If infinity was only an object, it would exclude subject, and hence not be infinity. That tension could only be resolved by the realization that infinity was also subject. Having made this discovery, consciousness overcomes itself and becomes self-consciousness.
Self-Consciousness In Itself, By Itself
Consciousness, at this point, has recognized itself as infinity. Consciousness has become self-consciousness. The self contains within itself everything in the movement of consciousness that led up to its development. It is a body that senses, perceives, and understands. Self-consciousness is still situated in a world of appearances which is still present for it. Self-consciousness takes the Absolute to be for it to be itself. The self is the supreme being for self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is, therefore, selfish.
Self-consciousness has not developed the terms to describe itself in the same way we are describing it. For consciousness, the content of its unfolding were vague movements, a vague awareness. We simply used the words that were given to us from the English language to give more concreteness to these vague movements. Knowledge of self, for self-consciousness, begins with an awareness of one's senses, that those senses are "mine". This sensing moves towards perceiving, where consciousness becomes aware of thinghood. Then it's activity moves to intelligence, becoming aware of relations, causes, and effects. Finally consciousness ends at self-awareness. This development, as we have seen, unfolds slowly at first. However, there is nothing about our premises that necessitates this slowness. This slowness was only necessary for consciousness, and us, at first because at the beginning of the movement because we did not know where it would end up. Thus consciousness needed time to undergo that movement from sense to self-awareness, and we needed time to trace out that movement. Now, that movement is instinctive, and hence it becomes instant. Self-consciousness needs no time to be self-conscious, and thus, self-consciousness has again reached a state of being an immediate activity of knowing. While it is immediate, it is the product of a movement that contains mediation.
Consciousness has a self. It can only know that it is a self by means of this movement. The object of consciousness is consciousness itself. This kind of relating constitutes the content of the pure self. Consciousness has learned of this through recognizing its identity with infinity. Infinity is both object and subject; it is a self-aware being. Consciousness began the movement assuming itself to be subject. But since it is identical to infinity, consciousness recognizes itself also to be object, to itself. The inverted law, which is a real objective existence independent of consciousness, expresses the true inner being of an inverted reality, with an inverted space and inverted time. The inverted law expresses the true inner being of uninverted law, i.e. law of force. The inverted law declares: like becomes unlike, and unlike becomes like. In other words, the self-same repels itself from itself, and what has been repelled from itself becomes self-attractive. The self-same becomes other than itself, but in doing so remains self-same. Since it remains self-same, its state of being repelled from itself necessitates its self-attraction. This is the nature of infinity. In eternal rest, it remains in eternal motion.
Self-consciousness is the type of awareness that consciousness obtains when it repels itself from itself, and in doing so remains itself. When I think about myself, I am thinking about something. That something that I think about is myself. I have made myself into an object for myself, distinct from myself. But at the same time, in making that distinction I remain myself. In making myself into an object I have repelled myself from myself, but since I am myself, that repulsion becomes self-attractive, and I no longer think of myself. I think of something else, say a tree, or a house, or a thing, or a here, a now, the properties of a thing, a force, a cause, an effect, etc. Self-consciousness thinks of anything that it previously took to be its object, the absolute.
The objective world and the things in it still exist for self-consciousness in the way that they did right at the start - as being in fact reality. Yet self-consciousness does not attribute to the objective world of appearances and the things in it the prestige and status of being the Absolute divine standard of truth as it previously did. An objective world still stands opposed to self-consciousness. This world is self-subsisting and exists on its own account, for it too is animated by infinity. The objective world is one expression of infinity, while self-consciousness is the other. Both have their own independent existence. Self-consciousness has learned, however, that it is independent of the object only as an implicit and vague awareness.
Independence from the objective world is for self-consciousness only an arousing suspicion. As we have already mentioned. Consciousness underwent its movement towards become self-conscious only by means of a silent and mute shifting in configuration of its awareness of its object every step of the way. Only we as readers tracing out that path were able to differentiate each step by using our English language. Self-consciousness does not know what we clearly know. Our knowledge is for it still an arousing suspicion. Thus, self-consciousness must prove to itself its independence from the objective world of appearances.
At the same time, however, self-consciousness cannot help but be a self-consciousness that senses. The sensing that allows for self-consciousness to sense is fundamental to self-consciousness. Without sense there is no awareness for self-consciousness as self-consciousness. In other words, self-consciousness must have a body with functioning organs that allows it to sense, and that body must remain functional in order for self-consciousness to remain self-conscious. Thus, this body must remain alive. Self-consciousness is a living thing. It is alive, and hence is a part of, and dependent on, an ecosystem, which we will end up identifying as Life.
Life
Like self-consciousness, the objective world of appearances is ultimately animated by infinity. The truth of objective appearance, as well as all that is contained in the world of appearances, is that it vanishes. The world of appearances is a world in flux, and its flux is due to its composition, the play of forces. The world of appearances is a play of forces, which obeys one law, which sunders itself into many laws, which is nevertheless a union of laws. The unifying element in the play of forces is difference; even law, which is supposed to command, obeys a law, and that is the inverted law. The inverted law obeys itself, commands both itself and law as it first appeared for the understanding, as well as the inverted world of appearances and the first world of appearances. The inverted law and the first law are an expression distinct from infinity, but are just as much a part of infinity. Infinity is both object and subject, so the objective world cannot be only object. It is subject as well. Thus, the object is also a living thing. It contains organic matter and inorganic matter.
 |
| The universe is expanding because it is alive. |
The living objective world of appearances, therefore, regenerates itself. It exchanges its substance with the inverted world continually, to infinity. Both of these worlds are as a whole expressions of infinite, and they abide eternally. The objective world of appearances is truly independent and can exist with or without consciousness or self-consciousness. The flux of the objective world of appearances is an independent self-subsistence. Apples rot, and new apples are born. Animals die, and new ones are there to take their place. In addition to being alive, the living objective world of appearances is an infinite universal flux. In being absolutely self-subsistent, it is enduring and abiding.
The objective world of appearances is a unity, a self-relatedness, a being-for-self. Just as we saw with the thing, that unity has diversity within it; being-for-self has within itself being-for-another. Thus, the objective world is a diversity, a related-to-otherness, being-for-another. This diversity is expressed by the emergence of many living things, all of which are consciousnesses. All these living things sense, and undergo the path we have just outlined. All these living things are animated by the principle of self-preservation, as we saw with sense-certainty. Some of those living things develop and evolve into being self-conscious living things. Like the properties of a thing, these living things are independent from and indifferent from each other. But the fact that they belong to a single category of living things unites them. Yet, this category of all living things, is not something living things can experience with their senses or perception. All living things are knowable to us only through their being intelligible.
They need to have bodies made of organic matter in order to sense. Sensing is a fundamental quality of any consciousness. Yet they have distinct shapes, and forms in which they appear. These shapes are accessible to perception and sense, and thus individual living things congregate in a unity with those individuals that look similar to themselves. For animals, at most the thing with its many properties is the Absolute true. Thus they identify themselves with things that look similar to themselves, for each animal is identifying itself to the single "thing" that unifies them. Amoebas, for example, identify with amoebaness. Bacteria with bacterianess, birch trees with birch-treeness, etc. These individuals form a "species", which each body of that species tracing out its own path in the tree of life. Identification with a group does not require self-consciousness, only the capacity to sense. As a group these living things vanish (die) and reappear (are born). They subsist for periods longer than a life of an individual member first through asexual reproduction. These shapes undergo change over time.
Asexual reproduction turns out to have its advantages and disadvantages, Just as perception addressed the tensions inherent in the thing and its many properties by distributing the contradictions and tensions inherent in the thing into two things, and as the understanding addressed the tensions inherent in force and its expression into two forces, some individuals of a species address the tensions and contradictions inherent in being a single type of individual, and distribute those tensions into two types of individuals that are different, yet belong to the same species. These individuals are male and female members of that species. They are different, complementary, yet equally members of their species. The two sexes reproduce sexually. Insofar as they are distinct and independent of each other, male and female are the same and dependent on each other by virtue of belonging to the same species. The product of sex ensures that the species subsist beyond the lifespan of a single individual; the species is a vanishing and reappearing, it is self-subsistent. The offspring of two individuals inherits characteristics of both its parents, and this transfer is accomplished by means of genes. The sexes are not equal as in being the same. They are equal insofar as they are different - they are complementary.
 |
| Where babies come from. |
There is not enough room here to elaborate on the intricacies of natural selection. There are better accounts from more able writers. Each living thing, however, is united by the fact that they are living things, and therefore conscious. In the same way that properties of a thing cannot be properties unless they belong to the unity thing, living things cannot be living things unless they belong to a unity. That element that unites all living things is consciousness. Thus, the individuality of individual living things is cancelled when considering their relation to consciousness as a whole. Self-conscious itself is an individual, but that individuality and its independence, is cancelled due to its belonging to a whole. Sometimes, the individual must be sacrificed for the group. By the same token, it is necessary at rare times for the group to be sacrificed for the individual.
Individuals living things live life in the living world of objective appearances, their environment. In the course of their lives, some of these individuals will get to reproduce. As a result of this reproduction, offspring is produced. New individual bodies are born, and new consciousnesses appear. The new consciousnesses, children, live alongside those who produced them, their parents, until they can go through life on their own. The new consciousnesses in their turn reproduce, and they become parents, and the first pair of parents become grandparents. This process continues onward, potentially to infinity, or until the species experiences a cataclysm and as a whole disappears, like the dinosaurs. All these individuals, in their turn, in no particular order, confront death. Their bodies decay, and their consciousness vanishes. The entirety of this circuit is the process of Life.
Life is composed of all living things that reside in the living objective world of appearances. But as we have already mentioned, a living thing cannot be a living thing without consciousness. Therefore, life points to consciousness, which begins as sense-certainty, a thing that senses, like bacteria and trees. Sense-certainty undergoes a movement, and it ends up becoming a thing that perceives and senses, like an animal. That movement is complimented with an evolution from single celled organisms to complex, many celled organisms - in particular we are referring to animals. Some animals come to reproduce sexually. On the side of consciousness, perception undergoes a movement that becomes intelligence, understanding. Thus far, the only animal to certainly be capable of understanding are homo sapiens, but there is evidence to suggest that other primates, elephants, squids, and dolphins have also reached the stage of understanding. These species have reached this stage through sexually reproducing, and hence, natural selection for traits that exhibit intelligence. Finally, understanding underwent an evolution, on its own terms, found infinity, and became self-consciousness. Homo-sapiens are an example of self-consciousnesses.
When we say "self-consciousness", we can refer to the process in its own terms. The fact that homo-sapiens are self-conscious is not necessarily implied by the assumptions we began with in the evolution of consciousness. If gorillas ever become self-conscious, they too will be able to think about themselves in the same way we do, and further, will undergo the same movement that we have yet to complete towards absolute knowing. Dolphins have shown signs of being self-conscious. Thus, these early stages of self-consciousness describes dolphins just as much as humans. What makes humans different are the fact that we as a species have undergone higher stages of consciousness than dolphins.
 |
Having described the living objective world of appearances, a universal flux that has its source in infinity, we found that there were individual living things. Their being alive pointed to consciousness, which in turn points to self-consciousness. The objective world of fluctuating appearances, as we have discovered, contains living things, and is as a whole a living thing. Thus, we must return to the self, as we were before we elaborated on the living world of flux, and see how the self relates to itself as it relates to the world of flux.
The Self and Desire
As we have already mentioned in the section Self-Consciousness In-itself, By itself, self-consciousness is an immediacy. Since it is a product of the movement of consciousness, it within itself contains a thoroughgoing mediation. Self-consciousness is self-conscious in an instant. It does not need time to move from its knowledge of sense to a knowledge of self. Thus, self-consciousness has the ability to render itself into an object for itself, while remaining itself. At the same time, self-consciousness relates to an objective world of appearances. Self-consciousness therefore has two objects (i) self-consciousness itself, (ii) the objective living world of fluctuating appearances. Only the first has the status of being the Absolute true for self-consciousness, while the second confronts self-consciousness in an abiding manner.
The body of self-consciousness is a part of the objective world of appearances just as much as it is part of self-consciousness. Its body is made of objective material, and hence operates according to the truth of appearance as demonstrated by the play of forces. The body decays. The matter which composes it disappears. For example, the body loses fat, or carbohydrates, or protein, or iron, etc. If the body, like ours, is mostly made of water, the hydrogen and oxygen leave the body, then we must replenish this loss. The body feels this loss, and it produces tension in self-consciousness, a sort of pain. Self-consciousness, in feeling hunger or thirst, or something of the sort, has lost the inner harmony of relating to itself and its object through its body in a state of equilibrium independent of the object. Self-consciousness has lost its independence. That independence from the objective world of appearance is what we call self-certainty or supreme self-confidence. The relief of that tension is called satisfaction, and satisfaction is a sort of pleasure. Being self-certain is supremely satisfying.
The hunger, or thirst, of self-consciousness, through pain, shows self-consciousness it is dependent on the body for its being a self-consciousness. Thus self-consciousness relates to the objective world of appearances through desire. This first shape of self-consciousness is referred to as desire, for desire is the activity of self-consciousness that motivates it to relate to the objective world practically. Further the body is dependent on the objective world of appearances in order to sustain itself as a living thing. This dependence is in contradiction with what self-consciousness has discovered about itself from the path of consciousness it now has behind it - it is supposed to be independent of the objective world of appearances. Self-consciousness' arousing suspicion that it is independent of the objective world of appearances is not confirmed by the objective world of appearances.
 |
| Desire. |
Self-consciousness wants its second object, which is the living objective world, to confirm and align with the first, which is itself. Until this alignment occurs, self-consciousness is in tension with both its objects, and the objects are in tension with each other. Self-consciousness is just barely distinct from consciousness. It is a desiring being, and nothing more. Furthermore, it is an individual desiring being. Its desire arises when it is dissatisfied; and when it is satisfied, its desire subsides. As we have seen, the true source of its dissatisfaction is the tension produced due to the equilibrium in which it is relating to itself being disturbed. If self-consciousness is to relate to itself in a state of equilibrium, its body too must be in equilibrium. Yet, from the fact that its body is extended, it is part of the objective living world of appearances, and thus it must decay. This decay interrupts the equilibrium of the body, and thus, self-consciousness itself. It is dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction is exasperated by demonstrating to self-consciousness that it is not independent; this means that self-consciousness is not the Absolute true. The Absolute cannot be dependent on anything that is not Absolute, and the living objective world of appearances is not absolute.
Thus, self-consciousness must replenish itself by consuming the object. Since self-consciousness is an individual desiring being, it can only consume an individual living thing, whether this be a plant or an animal. By consuming it, self-consciousness thereby replaces the material lost with the organic matter of the living thing. The parts of the body lost reappear in a slightly different form, and the desire subsides. But the body, being an individual member of the whole which is the objective living world of appearances, must decay again. The desire reappears, and self-consciousness again finds itself dissatisfied. It must bring about its own satisfaction again.
Thirst arises and is satisfied in a similar manner. Of course, desire manifests itself in a variety of ways, we are only using hunger as an example. Self-consciousness learns that this is the very essence of desire itself. Desire appears, vanishes, and reappears, and re-vanishes, ad infinitum. Satisfaction is connected to desire; as desire vanishes, self-consciousness is satisfied; as desire appears, self-consciousness is unsatisfied. It lives its life in a fluctuating state of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Self-consciousness recognizes its dependence on the objective living world of the appearances when it is dissatisfied. In order to ensure that it is continually satisfied, and thereby make its independence a living reality, rather than an arousing suspicion, self-consciousness must find a way to become continuously satisfied.
The objective living world of appearances never shows its dependence on self-consciousness to self-consciousness. But when self-consciousness feels dissatisfied by desire, it reveals to itself its dependence on the objective living world of appearances. Conversely, the objective living world of appearances asserts its independence on self-consciousness whenever the feeling of dissatisfaction impinges on the senses of self-consciousness. Thus, when it satisfies this dissatisfaction, self-consciousness denies the assertion of the objective living world of appearances' independence, and self-consciousness in turn asserts its own independence over the world. When it does this, it negates the significance of the objective world, and asserts the significance of self-consciousness as being the one Absolute standard of truth. The objective world in its turn denies this negation whenever self-consciousness satisfies the pangs of desire. Self-consciousness places itself in a tug-of-war, where the winner demonstrates its independence. Its opponent is a wall. The objective world negates the significance that self-consciousness as being the one Absolute standard of truth for self-consciousness. The objective world does this automatically with impunity and indifference.
It is in this way that self-consciousness loses its certainty of itself. It is certain of itself only if it considers itself to be its own Absolute standard of truth, and abides in a state of equilibrium. Self-consciousness discovers that the objective world negates the independence of self-consciousness. Whenever this happens, self-consciousness feels dissatisfaction. In order to ensure for itself continuous satisfaction, it must prevent the objective living world of appearances from directing that capacity to negate on self-consciousness. Self-consciousness must turn the focal point of the object's negation back on the object itself, and thereby allow the object to negate its own independence.
In this way, the objective world of appearances will no longer negate the independence of self-consciousness, and hence, self-consciousness will find continuous satisfaction. The arousing suspicion that self-consciousness is the one Absolute standard of truth for itself will become a reality. The question is how exactly self-consciousness will accomplish this feat. Self-consciousness is an individual living thing. It cannot make the totality of the objective living world of appearances negate itself, it is impossible; neither can it make all living things ever go along with its plan, since it cannot even perceive or sense all living things. It can only perceive or sense some living things.
These living things are conscious. In being conscious, they must undergo the process that we have traced out thus far, and eventually reach the stage of self-consciousness. These living things also are parts of the objective living world of appearances. The whole of appearances, as whole, does not impact a self-consciousness that occupies a unique point in space and time. Thus, self-consciousness realizes that it does not have to make the totality of the living world of appearances affect its own negation. Self-consciousness only needs to make some living things affect their own negation. In this way, self-consciousness can ensure for itself continuous satisfaction, and hence, true self-certainty.
Self-consciousness is able to accomplish this with animals that have not yet reached the stage of self-consciousness by domesticating them. Yet, when an animal relinquishes its own independence, self-consciousness does attain satisfaction, but again it is short-lived. This is because the animal was never truly independent. If it is still in the process of reaching self-consciousness, a consciousness, the animal is completely dependent on its senses, and hence, the objective world. This is especially true of sense-certainty and perception. Further, an animal who has reached the understanding, while it has overcome its dependence on the senses, nevertheless it still is dependent on the object being independent in order to have a true sense of itself. The Absolute for the understanding, while it may be an unconditioned universal, is still in essence an independent object that stands opposed to consciousness. The understanding depends on the independence of the object.
Only another self-consciousness has the arousing suspicion of its own independence from the independent objective living world of appearances. Still, a self-consciousness occupies a living body, and hence, is still a part of the objective world. Self-consciousness must find a way to ensure for itself a continuous state of satisfaction, where the pangs and tensions caused by desire are relieved. In this way, self-consciousness would secure for itself a state of being self-certain, becoming supremely self-confident, and hence, happy. That self-consciousness is for self-consciousness the one Absolute standard of truth would no longer be an arousing suspicion, but rather an objective and abiding truth. Self-consciousness would be a universal, ineradicable substance; it would be independent just like the objective world of appearances. At the same time, it would preserve the independence of the objective world.
Only by being independent can self-consciousness be self-consciousness in actual fact, i.e. a true self-consciousness. In order to secure its independence in an abiding manner, self-consciousness must compel another self-consciousness to negate its own independence. Thus, self-consciousness attains its own satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.
No comments:
Post a Comment