B. Freedom of Self-Conciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness

The reason for devoting so much space to this brilliant passage is quite simply its immense importance: within Hegel's exposition, in Marx and Marxism, above all for the understanding of modern society. Hegel reminds us that the intellectual freedom needed for knowledge and provided by self-certainty, or self-consciousness, is not a simple given; nor is it reached, as Descartes and Sartre hold, through mere introspection. Like Descartes, in his theory of prethetic consciousness Sartre maintains that it is always possible for a cognitive subject, conscious of other things, or things other than itself, to take itself as its object, hence to become self-conscious.28 For Hegel, on the contrary, self-consciousness, or self-certainty, can only emerge through social conflict, which is missing in Sartre's more abstract account.

The master-slave relation is depicted as a struggle between two persons locked in an unequal relationship. It is easy to grasp modern society in terms of this metaphor. This analysis leaves unresolved the crucial issue of an alternative form of society in which the relations between individuals would be even approximately equal. Yet later on in the Phenomenology (e.g., §349) and in the Encyclopedia,29 he at least imagines a relation of full equality, or mutual recognition, which is a necessary condition of full self-consciousness. Certainly, various forms of political theory, most recently in feminist social theory, presuppose the real possibility of a society in which social inequality is reduced or even abolished.

Hegel, who has considered only that form of self-certainty arising within a relation of inequality, further studies three related attitudes. Each represents an approach to the subject as self-conscious. Stoicism and skepticism are well known in the history of philosophy. Unhappy consciousness (das unglückliche Bewub tsein) is illustrated in a form of

Christianity that Kierkegaard emphasized after Hegel's death as part of the anti-Hegelian reaction. Hegel sees these three views as illustrating ways for the individual, aware of himself, to understand his relation to the surrounding world.

Hegel begins by taking stock of the results of the master-slave analysis. Through social interaction, the subject that was initially wholly abstract has reached awareness of itself as "a being that thinks or is a free self-consciousness" (§197, 120). These two aspects, which represent the person as passive, or theoretical, and active, or practical, are successive phases of the freedom of self-consciousness. This new stage, where thought (Denken) begins, features a person who thinks or is a free self-consciousness" (§197, 120), namely, a person who, for the first time, is self-aware, hence capable of knowledge.

Hegel further introduces a distinction between deficient and full forms of thought, or mere representation (Vorstellung), typical of religion, and deficient forms of philosophy, such as Kant's critical philosophy, on the one hand, and thought, on the other. Thought, which is conceptual, unifies the concept of the thing and the thing of the concept, the theory and its object. Later in the book, in the chapter on religion, there is a long polemic against a representational approach to knowledge. The discussion is limited here to emphasizing the basic distinction between representational and conceptual thought. Unlike representation that vainly seeks to grasp an external object, thought cognizes what is within, hence immanent to, consciousness.

What is represented, what immediately is, the being as such [das Vorgestellte, Gestaltete, Seiende als solches] has the form of being something other than consciousness; but a Concept [Begriff] is a being, and this difference, insofar as it is in it, is its limited content. What is represented, what immediately is, and this distinction, insofar as it is present in consciousness itself, is its determinate content; but since this content is at the same time a content grasped in thought, consciousness remains immediately conscious of its unity with this determinate and distinct being. (§197, 120*)

Beginning with stoicism, free consciousness appears in different forms within human culture, the history of spirit, or the record of human attempts to cognize the world and ourselves. Hegel, who discusses stoicism and skepticism in detail in his Lectures on the History of Philoso phy, knew both theories well.

In the space of a few words, he reveals detailed knowledge of stoicism. Its principle is that the individual thinks, and only differences

within thought, not within external reality, are significant. In a concealed reference to Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and philosopher, and to Epictetus, a Roman slave who became a philosopher, he says that "whether on the throne or in chains . . . its [i.e., the Stoic's] aim is to be free, and to maintain that lifeless indifference which steadfastly withdraws from the bustle of existence" (§199, 121). The stoic indifference to existence to which the passage alludes is linked with a concern for the benevolence and orderliness of the universe intended to lead to spiritual peace (apatbeia) or well-being (euthymia).

Hegel, who maintains that forms of thought are related to the historical moment in which they appear, now notes that stoicism could only appear "in a time of universal fear and servitude, in which culture had risen to thought" (§199, 121*), parenthetically like the unequal relation of the slave to the master. The stoic, who is "indifferent to natural existence" (§200, 122), is free in thought only. Such a theory is unable to furnish criteria for truth or goodness other than "contentless thought" (§200, 122). Since it has no content beyond the level of thought, abstract stoic freedom is not real social freedom. Stoicism that abstracts from the world offers only an abstract conception of freedom realized in skepticism as "the actual experience of what the freedom of thought is" (§202, 123).

Stoicism presents a concept of independent consciousness within the relation of social inequality that skepticism realizes and experiences. "Skepticism is the realization of that of which Stoicism is only the Concept—and the actual experience of the freedom of thought" (§202, 123*). In an early article on skepticism, Hegel depicts as its principle the principle of contradiction according to which for every argument there is an equal counterargument.30 Here he describes skepticism as a basically negative movement, which is illustrated in such forms of consciousness as the overcoming of objective reality as well as its relation to that reality.

In comparison to the master-slave relation, stoicism corresponds to the abstract idea of freedom as an independent consciousness, whereas skepticism corresponds to its realization through the slave. Skepticism, like the dialectical movement of consciousness, is abstract thinking, without content, which relates "in an only external way to subsistent being, that is its content" (§203, 124*). Skepticism exerts its freedom in negating otherness, or what concretely exists, so that "what vanishes is the determinate [das Bestimmte]" (§204, 124*). It is the negation of "all singularity and all difference" (§205, 125). Yet it is beset by in-

ternal contradiction in its attention to the inessential, in its opposition of change to permanence and of permanence to change that is insight-fully compared to the squabbling of children.

The attention to stoicism and skepticism seem surprising. One might expect discussion of other, more important philosophical theories. Stoicism, which has no important modern representatives, was not a serious contender when Hegel wrote. Yet skepticism was strongly present in Hegel's period: in Hume, who famously awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber; in Gottlob Ernst Schulze (pseudonym Aenesidemus), a minor anti-Kantian, whose views Hegel considered in his early article on skepticism; and in Maimon, whom Kant regarded as his most penetrating contemporary critic. Hegel apparently regards stoicism and skepticism as illustrating the least and next least forms of human freedom, or free self-consciousness. This in turn justifies their treatment in some detail in an account of the historical rise of self-consciousness in human culture.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Hegel's treatment of stoicism and skepticism is his attention to the link between forms of thought and specific historical circumstances. Philosophers who understand their discipline as concerned with truth that appears in, but is unlimited by, time are anticontextualists. Philosophical contextualists consider truth not only to appear in but also to be limited by time. As a contextualist, Hegel regards thought as intrinsically historical. Marxists hold that what they call bourgeois society "causes" ideologically distorted views tending to maintain socially distorted forms of society. In linking stoicism to a particular historical moment, Hegel is not suggesting, as Marxists sometimes maintain, that our views are "caused" by it in any simple sense. He rather suggests that types of theory are made possible, even helped to emerge as it were, by specific historical circumstances.

Hegel accords twice as much space to a form of religion than to the two philosophical theories canvassed here. This may now seem surprising since, at least in English-language philosophy, the divorce between philosophy and religion is nearly complete. A main thrust of the Enlightenment tradition, whose force is far from spent, lies in the concerted attempt to isolate reason from faith of any kind. Many subscribe to Heidegger's view that atheism is a precondition for philosophy.31 Yet the attention to religion is hardly surprising, given Hegel's conviction that philosophy and religion consider the same object through radically different forms of thought.

This section is mainly devoted to exposition of a specifically religious

attitude toward freedom. Skepticism is described as self-contradictory, since it affirms what it also denies. What Hegel calls the unhappy consciousness progresses beyond skepticism. For the two attitudes that skepticism separates are internalized in a form of Christianity in which the individual is divided against himself. This division, which exhibits the dominance of the immutable over the mutable, of the infinite God over finite human being, is a further form of the master-slave relation. The unhappy consciousness exhibits cognitive dissonance, since the subject is simultaneously committed to conflicting theses.

Hegel's attitude toward religion is complex. Although he was a practicing Lutheran, it will become clear in the chapter on religion that his theory of knowledge is independent of any commitment to Christianity or even to organized religion. Here he presents an essentially negative depiction of a type of Christian belief, illustrated by Kierkegaard, later to become his opponent.32 Unhappy consciousness illustrates Hegel's belief that religion, which prefers faith to philosophical reason, fails to think through the problem of knowledge. Unhappy consciousness, in which the individual defines himself through his subordination to God, repeats the same structure as the slave's relation to the master, hence evoking Hegel's opprobrium.

Stoicism and skepticism were studied as forms of realization of human freedom. The unhappy consciousness falls below the level of freedom attained in such types of philosophy. In the way he turns toward God, the individual depicted as an unhappy consciousness renounces his independence. As is later noted (see §344), by reverting from self-consciousness to consciousness, by entering voluntarily into a relation of slave to master, such a person makes himself into a thing. Hegel's negative evaluation explains the relative ferocity of his mordant description of this form of Christianity here and elsewhere in the book. It further explains, despite his resistance to anti-Semitism,33 his consistently negative depiction of Judaism here and elsewhere. Judaism appears to him as the subjection of a people to inflexible rules with the same or a similar result. This negative view of Judaism as a religion was widely shared at the time. Kant deplored the inability to bring the Jews to the true religion.34 Fichte considered it appropriate that, since Jews do not believe in Jesus Christ, they be deprived of civil rights.35

Since it is internally contradictory, skepticism cannot be maintained. It leads to a new attitude combining within the individual's awareness the two moments that skepticism isolates. If stoicism represents the abstract attitude of the master and skepticism affirms the master against

the slave, then the new attitude illustrates both perspectives within a single consciousness. Thinking of the way that certain forms of Christianity affirm the utter nothingness of the individual in the sight of God, Hegel says that "the Unhappy Consciousness is the consciousness of self as a dual-natured, merely contradictory being" (§296, 126).

The skeptical dualism between the subject and the world is taken up within consciousness in the "unhappy consciousness, divided in itself" (§207, 126*). Its true return (Rückkehr), or reconciliation (Versöhnung ) with itself, can only occur through spirit, which will be described in the chapter on that topic. Now depicting religious devotion as an unthinking relation of human beings to God, Hegel writes that "the Unhappy Consciousness itself is the gazing of one self-consciousness into another, and itself is both, and the unity of both is also its essential nature. But it is not as yet explicitly aware that this is its essential nature, or that it is the unity of both" (§207, 126).

There is, to begin with, an immediate unity, within the individual's consciousness, in which the finite, or "changeable," individual takes himself to be inessential with respect to the "unchangeable" that he accepts as his essence. The religious individual, aware of his finitude, is unconsciously also the infinite being to which he is devoted, "in such a way that again it does not itself take the essence to be its own" (§208, 127). The discussion anticipates both Kierkegaard and Feuerbach. In an anticipation of Kierkegaard, Hegel describes the effort of the individual, who struggles to lose himself and who agonizes over his life, activity, and essential nothingness. In noting that the religious individual's effort to transcend himself in God is "itself this same consciousness" (§209, 127), he anticipates Feuerbach's "unmasking" of religion as essentially a human phenomenon36

The finite individual's awareness of himself and awareness of the infinite God are contained within his divided consciousness, whose truth "is just the unified being [Einssein] of this dual consciousness" (§210, 128*). This relation within a consciousness divided against itself occurs in three easily recognizable ways, which correspond to the three persons of the Christian trinity: as the immutable (or God the father), as individuality belonging to the immutable (or the Son), and as the divided self that finds itself in the immutable (or the Holy Ghost). For Hegel, Judaism fails to achieve this truth that requires the unification within the individual's consciousness of the individual with God.

The first form is one in which difference predominates. In respect to the God of the Old Testament, the religious individual here knows

God "only as the alien [das Fremde] who condemns the individual" (§210, 128*). Passing judgment on Judaism, Hegel depicts the unhappy consciousness as "in its unhappiness [in seinem Unglücke]" (§211, 128*) (but not "in its wretchedness" as Miller incorrectly translates). Hegel's point is that this religion contains an unresolved "contradiction [Gegensatz]" (§211, 128*). Since the division within consciousness cannot be overcome, the hope of the religious individual to unite with God "must remain a hope, that is, without fulfillment or contemporaneity [Gegenwart]" (§212, 129*).

Christianity surpasses Judaism, which cannot unite the individual with an unembodied God (ungestalteten Unwandelbaren), in its own efforts to enter into relation with God as embodied (gestalteten Unwandelbaren). The essence of this form of religion is "the unified being of the particular individual with the Unchangeable" (§213, 129*). With the Christian trinity in mind, Hegel says that this union can occur in three ways. Yet to the extent that union between man and God is possible at all, it is possible only in the third form, or spirit understood as "consciousness that is aware of its own being-for-self" (§214, 130).

The initial form is a relation of "pure consciousness" where God only seems to be present since He has not yet "developed [entstanden]" (§215, 130*). The individual, who has here surpassed stoicism and skepticism in holding together in consciousness pure thought and individuality, is still not aware of the identity between God and himself.

The first, devotional, form of Christianity does not yet exhibit thought. Hegel, who can be very harsh, depicts the desire for immediate union between the individual, described as "a pure heart," and God as an infinite yearning, whose "thinking as such is no more than the chaotic jingling of bells, or a mist of warm incense, a musical thinking that does not get as far as the Concept" (§217, 131*). Hegel will argue later in the book that the cognitive aims of religion can be fulfilled only in philosophy. Here he claims that the subject of religous devotion "feels" but does not know, since knowledge requires concepts. Elsewhere, he is severely critical of the medieval church and Roman Catholicism in general, for instance in a remark on transubstantiation that "the host is venerated even as an outward thing so that if it has been eaten by a mouse, both the mouse and its excrement are to be venerated."37

Unhappy consciousness exists in three ways, to begin with as an individual. Second, it exists as a person who "finds itself only as desiring and working" but who (since it feels rather than thinks) fails to become

"certain of itself" (§218,132). A person with an unhappy, divided consciousness confronts an "actuality broken in two" that is both a mere nothingness and "sanctified" (§219, 133). Such an individual, who could affirm himself if actuality were a mere nothingness, cannot do so in the face of an actuality that has "the form of the Unchangeable" (§220, 133). He finds himself in "a relationship of two extremes" (§221, 133) lacking any effective mediation. At most, the person, who surrenders himself to the divine, becomes aware of himself in what he does as "individuality being for itself in general [der fürsichseienden Einzelheit überhaupt]' (§222, 135*).

Third, there is the person who has proven his self-sufficiency "through his will and its realization [Vollbringen]" (§223, 135*). This is the lesson of the slave's confrontation with the actual world. Despite a religious attitude of self-abnegation, the individual becomes aware of himself "in work and enjoyment" (§223, 135).

If actuality is a mere nothingness, then, as Hegel penetratingly says about the individual, "his actual doing thus becomes a doing of nothing, his enjoyment a feeling of its unhappiness" (§225, 135*). Calling us back to reality, he remarks that "consciousness is aware of itself as this actual individual in its animal functions" (§225, 135*). In a sharply critical remark, he notes that the turn away from actuality is conjoined with a turn toward God, since "the immediate destruction of its actual being is mediated through the thought of the Unchangeable" (§226, 136*).

This relation between the individual and God, which is compared to a syllogism (Schlub ), is mediated by a third term, or mediator, which is "itself a conscious Being" (§227, 136). Hegel sharply criticizes the religious mediator, apparently the Roman Catholic priest, to whom the individual, who forsakes his "action and enjoyment," forfeits his "will," "freedom of decision [Entschlusses]" and "responsibility for his own action" (§228, 136*). In this surrender of oneself, the individual "truly and completely deprives itself of the consciousness of inner and outer freedom, of the actuality in which consciousness exists for itself" (§229, 137). Yet the individual also finds himself in this way. In the completed sacrifice, he throws off his unhappiness. For since intentions, like the language in which they are expressed, are intrinsically universal, in what it does the individual realizes itself as "the representation of reason, the certainty of consciousness, absolute in itself in its individuality, or the being of all reality" (§230, 138).