a. The Spiritual Kingdom and Deceit, or the 'Matter in Hand' Itself

Hegel distinguishes three forms of individuality in the full sense, beginning with a detailed account of intrinsically real individuality. This furnishes a criterion that he then applies in more rapid

treatments of types of practical reason. Recent action theory is often limited to grasping the difference between an action and a motion.42 In comparison, Hegel provides an unusually rich description of the individual as consciously acting to realize goals in one of the profoundest passages in the book. Marx later echoes this idea in his famous image of the many-sided human being.43

The individual whom Hegel has in mind is a real human being, or "a single and specific one" (§397, 237). Individuality presupposes a finite human being, who, from the perspective of consciousness, is wholly unlimited, hence at liberty to realize himself in unimpeded fashion in the social world. A human being, or "this limitation of being, however, cannot limit the action of consciousness, for this is here a perfected relation to itself.' relation to an other, which would be a limitation of it, has been eliminated" (§398, 238*). Like the Fichtean self or the Sartrean existentialist, the Promethean individual is not limited by anyone or anything other than himself.

Hegel now develops a broadly Aristotelian view of the realization of purpose in and through action. The determinate nature of an individual is its purpose (Zweck). A person's determinate nature is depicted as a triple relation: the object in which purpose is realized (Gegenstand); the conscious goal (Zweck), or purpose, that is realized; and the activity that intentionally realizes the purpose in the form of the object.

There is an identity in difference between the subjective purpose and its objective realization. For "these different sides are now with respect to the concept of this sphere so to be grasped that their content remains the same and no difference enters" (§400, 239*). People have particular capacities, talents, and so on, that are manifested in what they do. Yet we only know who we are when we have acted.

In a profound remark, anticipating depth psychology, Hegel notes that much of what we do is done unconsciously. It is only when the deed is done that we become aware of the result and, hence, of who we are. "What it is in itself it hence knows out of its actuality. An individual can hence not know what it is before it has brought itself to actuality through its action" (§401, 240*). The relation between a given person's purpose and deeds is, hence, circular, since who the person is only becomes apparent in what the person does.

The individual who is going to act seems, therefore, to find himself in a circle in which each moment already presupposes the other, and thus he seems unable to find a beginning, because he only gets to know his original nature, which must be his End, from the deed, while, in order to act, he must have that End beforehand. (§401, 240)

What we do allows for comparison, since "the work, like the individual's original nature which it expresses, is something specific" (§402, 241). Predicates such as "good" or "bad" are out of place. For everything a person does expresses his nature "and for that reason it is all good" (§403, 241). Similarly, emotional reactions of all kinds are inappropriate, "altogether out of place" (§404, 242).

According to this theory of self-realization through activity, "the work [Werk] produced is the reality which consciousness gives itself" (§405, 242). Conversely, the work itself "has received into itself the whole nature of the individuality" (§405, 243). In the work, we become aware of the difference between the person as a potential and as a real individuality, between the person as implicit and explicit, or "between doing and being" (§406, 244). We further become aware of the differences between what is desired and what is achieved, for instance, "between purpose and that which is the original essentiality" (§407, 244). And we finally become aware of "the unity and necessity of action" (§408, 245) as the means relating purpose to actuality. True work unites universality and being that endures beyond whatever contingent factors affect the individual's activity. "This unity is the true work; it is the very heart of the matter [die Sache selbst]" (§409, 246).

Since what we do has an intrinsically universal character, the so-called heart of the matter uniting the individual actions and social reality "expresses the spiritual essentiality in which all these moments have lost all validity of their own, and are valid therefore only as universal' (§410, 246). When purpose has been realized through action as actuality, the individual has finally become aware of himself in "consciousness of its substance" (§411, 246). Someone is honest (ehrlich) who recognizes and strives toward personal realization through the general principle implicit in the matter at hand. Whatever happens, such an individual has at least desired to realize his purpose, "at least willed it" (§413, 247).

Hegel remarks obscurely that honesty (Ehrlichkeit ) requires that the conscious individual "does not bring together its thoughts about the 'matter in hand' " (§414, 248). Perhaps he means that we ought not to represent a failure to realize our goals as in fact their realization. In practice, "the truth of this integrity . . . is not as honest as it seems" (§415, 248-249), since the individual who acts is concerned both with the action and with himself. What we do has the peculiar characteristic of being simultaneously for ourselves and, as universal, for others as well. Actions are always partly disinterested and partly interested, as "a play of individualities with one another in which each and all find them-

selves both deceiving and deceived" (§416, 250). This ambivalence cannot be overcome. Notwithstanding the views of Kant and organized religion, we can never overcome self-interest in wholly disinterested action. For the matter in hand is a "subject in which individuality is just as much as itself, or as this, as all individuals; and the universal is only a being [Sein] as the action of all and each, a reality in that this particular consciousness knows it as its singular reality and as the reality of all" (§418, 252*).