of consciousness to go back from itself, and to take as its object the
whole that is present, itself and its operation included. The second
moment is to grasp the form in which a proposition, with whose content
our consciousness is in any way occupied, exists. An undeveloped
consciousness, on the other hand, usually knows nothing of what is
present in addition to the content. For instance, in the judgment “This
thing is one,” attention is paid only to the one and the thing, and
not to the circumstance that here something, a determinate, is related
to the one. But this relation is the essential, and the form of the
determinate; it is that whereby this house which is an individual,
makes itself one with the universal that is different from it. It is
this logical element, _i.e._ the essential element, that Scepticism
brings to consciousness, and on this it depends; an example of this is
number, the one, as the hypothetical basis of arithmetic. Scepticism
does not attempt to give the thing, nor does it dispute as to whether
it is thus or thus, but whether the thing itself is something; it
grasps the essence of what is expressed, and lays hold of the whole
principle of the assertion. As to God, for example, the Sceptics do not
inquire whether He has such and such qualities, but turn to what is
most inward, to what lies at the ground of this conception, and they
ask whether this has reality. “Since we do not know the reality of
God,” says Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. III. c. I, § 4), “we shall not be able
to know and perceive His qualities.” Likewise in the preceding books
(II. c. 4, sqq.), inquiry is made as to whether the criterion of truth
as fixed by the understanding is anything, whether we know the thing in
itself, or whether the ‘I’ is to itself the only absolute certainty.
This is the way to penetrate to reality.
In these ways the operations of Scepticism are undoubtedly directed
against the finite. But however much force these moments of its
negative dialectic may have against the properly-speaking dogmatic
knowledge of the understanding, its attacks against the true infinite
of the speculative Idea are most feeble and unsatisfactory. For this
last is in its nature nothing finite or determinate, it has not the
one-sided character which pertains to the proposition, for it has the
absolute negative in itself; in itself it is round, it contains this
determinate and its opposite in their ideality in itself. In so far as
this Idea, as the unity of these opposites, is itself again outwardly
a determinate, it stands exposed to the power of the negative; indeed
its nature and reality is just to move continually on, so that as
determinate it again places itself in unity with the determinates
opposed to it, and thus organizes itself into a whole whose
starting-point again coincides with the final result. This identity is
quite different from that of the understanding; the object as concrete
in itself, is, at the same time, opposed to itself; but the dialectic
solution of this finite and other is likewise already contained in the
speculative, without Scepticism having first had to demonstrate this;
for the rational, as comprehended, does, as regards the determinate,
just what Scepticism tries to do. However, if Scepticism attempts to
deal with this properly speculative element, it can in no way lay
hold of it, nor make any progress except by doing violence to the
speculative itself; thus the method of its procedure against the
rational is this, that it makes the latter into a determinate, and
always first of all introduces into it a finite thought-determination
or idea of relationship to which it adheres, but which is not really
in the infinite at all; and then it argues against the same. That is
to say it comprehends it falsely and then proceeds to contradict it.
Or it first of all gives the infinite the itch in order to be able to
scratch it. The Scepticism of modern times, with which for crudity of
comprehension and false teaching the old cannot compare, is specially
noteworthy in this respect. Even now what is speculative is transformed
into something crude; it is possible to remain faithful to the letter,
and yet to pervert the whole matter, because the identity of the
determinate has been carried over to the speculative. What here appears
to be most natural and impartial is to have an investigation made of
what the principle of a speculative philosophy is; its essential nature
seems to be expressed thereby, and nothing is apparently added or
imputed to it, nor does any change appear to be effected in it. Now,
here, according to the conception of the non-speculative sciences,
it is placed in this dilemma: the principle is either an unproved
hypothesis or demands a proof which in turn implies the principle. The
proof that is demanded of this principle itself pre-supposes something
else, such as the logical laws of proof; these rules of logic are,
however, themselves propositions such as required to be proved; and
so it goes on into infinitude, if an absolute hypothesis to which
another can be opposed is not made (_supra_, p. 362). But these forms
of proposition, of consecutive proof, &c., do not in this form apply to
what is speculative (_supra_, p. 364) as though the proposition were
before us here, and the proof were something separate from it there;
for in this case the proof comes within the proposition. The Notion is
a self-movement, and not, as in a proposition, a desire to rest; nor is
it true that the proof brings forward another ground or middle term and
is another movement; for it has this movement in itself.
Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VII., 310-312), for example, thus
reaches the speculative Idea regarding reason, which, as the thought
of thought, comprehends itself, and is thus in its freedom at home
with itself. We saw this (pp. 147-151) with Aristotle. In order to
refute this idea, Sextus argues in the following way: “The reason that
comprehends is either the whole or it is only a part.” But to know
the speculative it is requisite that there should be, besides the
‘either ... or,’ a third; this last is ‘both ... and’ and ‘neither
... nor.’ “If reason as the comprehending is the whole, nothing else
remains to be comprehended. If the comprehending reason is, however,
only a part which comprehends itself, this part again, as that which
comprehends, either is the whole (and in that case again nothing at
all remains to be comprehended), or else, supposing what comprehends
to be a part in the sense that what is comprehended is the other part,
that which comprehends does not comprehend itself,” &c. In the first
place, however, it is clear that by arguing thus nothing is shown
further than the fact that here Scepticism in the first place brings
into the relationship of thought thinking about thought, the very
superficial category of the relationship of the whole and the parts,
as understood by the ordinary understanding, which last is not found
in that Idea, although as regards finite things the whole is simply
composed of all the parts, and these parts constitute the whole, the
parts and the whole being consequently identical. But the relationship
of whole and part is not a relationship of reason to itself, being
much too unimportant, and quite unworthy of being brought into the
speculative Idea. In the second place Scepticism is wrong in allowing
this relationship to hold good immediately, as it does in the ordinary
and arid conception, where we make no objection to it. When reflection
speaks of a whole, there is for it beyond this nothing else remaining.
But the whole is just the being opposed to itself. On the one hand
it is as whole simply identical with its parts, and, on the other
hand, the parts are identical with the whole, since they together
constitute the whole. The self-comprehension of reason is just like
the comprehension by the whole of all its parts, if it is taken in
its real speculative significance; and only in this sense could this
relationship be dealt with here. But in the sense implied by Sextus,
that there is nothing except the whole, the two sides, the whole and
the parts, remain in mutual, isolated opposition; in the region of
speculation the two indeed are different, but they are likewise not
different, for the difference is ideal. Outside of the whole there
thus undoubtedly remains another, namely itself as the manifold of
its parts. The whole argument thus rests upon the fact that a foreign
determination is first of all brought within the Idea, and then
arguments against the Idea are brought forward, after it has been thus
corrupted by the isolation of a one-sided determination unaccompanied
by the other moment of the determination. The case is similar when it
is said; “Objectivity and subjectivity are different, and thus their
unity cannot be expressed.” It is indeed maintained that the words
are literally adhered to; but even as contained in these words, the
determination is one-sided, and the other also pertains to it. Hence
this difference is not what remains good, but what has to be abrogated.
We may perhaps have said enough about the scientific nature of
Scepticism, and we have concluded therewith the second section of Greek
philosophy. The general point of view adopted by self-consciousness in
this second period, the attainment of the freedom of self-consciousness
through thought, is common to all these philosophies. In Scepticism we
now find that reason has got so far that all that is objective, whether
of Being or of the universal, has disappeared for self-consciousness.
The abyss of the self-consciousness of pure thought has swallowed up
everything, and made entirely clear the basis of thought. It not only
has comprehended thought and outside of it a universe in its entirety,
but the result, positively expressed, is that self-consciousness itself
is reality. External objectivity is not an objective existence nor
a universal thought; for it merely is the fact that the individual
consciousness exists, and that it is universal. But though for us
there is an object, yet this is for it no object, and thus it still
has itself the mode of objectivity. Scepticism deduces no result, nor
does it express its negation as anything positive. But the positive
is in no way different from the simple; or if Scepticism aims at the
disappearance of all that is universal, its condition, as immovability
of spirit, is itself in fact this universal, simple, self-identical—but
a universality (or a Being) which is the universality of the individual
consciousness. Sceptical self-consciousness, however, is this divided
consciousness to which on the one hand motion is a confusion of its
content; it is this movement which annuls for itself all things, in
which what is offered to it is quite contingent and indifferent; it
acts according to laws which are not held by it to be true, and is a
perfectly empiric existence. On another side its simple thought is
the immovability of self-identity, but its reality, its unity with
itself is something that is perfectly empty, and the actual filling in
is any content that one chooses. As this simplicity, and at the same
time pure confusion, Scepticism is in fact the wholly self-abrogating
contradiction. For in it the mind has got so far as to immerse
itself in itself as that which thinks; now it can comprehend itself
in the consciousness of its infinitude as the ultimate. In this way
Scepticism flourishes in the Roman world, because, as we saw (p.
281), in this external, dead abstraction of the Roman principle (in
the principle of Republicanism and imperial Despotism) the spirit
has flown from an existence here and now, that could give it no
satisfaction, into intellectuality. Then because here the mind can only
seek reconciliation and eudæmonism inwardly through cultured thought,
and the whole aim of the world is merely the satisfaction of the
individual, good can only be brought forth as individual work in each
particular case. Under the Roman emperors we certainly find famous men,
principally Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius and others; they, however,
only considered the satisfaction of their individual selves, and did
not attain to the thought of giving rationality to actuality through
institutions, laws and constitutions. This solitude of mind within
itself is then truly Philosophy; but the thought is abstractly at home
with itself as dead rigidity, and as to outward things it is passive.
If it moves it only moves while bearing with it a contempt of all
distinctions. Scepticism thus belongs to the decay both of Philosophy
and of the world.
The stage next reached by self-consciousness is that it receives
a consciousness respecting that which it has thus become, or its
essential nature becomes its object. Self-consciousness is to itself
simple essence; there is for it no longer any other reality than
this, which its self-consciousness is. In Scepticism this reality is
not yet an object to it, for to it its object is merely confusion.
Because it is consciousness, something is for it; in this opposition
only the vanishing content is for the sceptical consciousness, without
its having been comprehended in its simple permanence. Its truth,
however, is its immersion in self-consciousness, and the fact of
self-consciousness becoming an object to itself. Thus reality has
indeed the form of a universal in existence or in thought, but in
this its self-consciousness is really not a foreign thing as it is
in Scepticism. In the first place it is not simple as immediate and
merely existent, a complete ‘other,’ as when we speak of the soul being
simple; for this last is the simple negative that turns back out of
movement, out of difference, as the universal, into itself. In the
second place this universal power that expresses that “I am at home
with myself,” has likewise the significance of the Being, which, as
objective reality, has a permanence for consciousness, and does not
merely, as with the Sceptics, disappear; for reason in it alone knows
how to possess and to find itself. This inwardness of mind at home with
itself has built in itself an ideal world, has laid the foundation
and groundwork of the intellectual world, of a kingdom of God which
has come down into actuality and is in unity with it, and this is the
standpoint of the Alexandrian philosophy.
SECTION THREE
THIRD PERIOD: THE NEO-PLATONISTS.
SINCE Scepticism is the annulling of the opposites which in Stoicism
and Epicureanism were accepted as the universal principles from which
all other opposites took their rise, it likewise is the unity in which
these opposites are found as ideal determinations, so that the Idea
must now come into consciousness as concrete in itself. With this
third development, which is the concrete result of all that has gone
before, an entirely new epoch begins. Philosophy is now on quite a
different footing, since, with the rejection of the criterion for
subjective knowledge, finite principles in general also disappear;
for it is with these that the criterion has to do. This then is the
form which Philosophy takes with the Neo-Platonists, and which is
closely connected with the revolution which was caused in the world
by Christianity. The last stage which we reached—that subjective
contentment and return of self-consciousness into itself which is
attained by the renunciation of all that is fixed and objective, by
flight into the pure, infinite abstraction in itself, by the absolute
dearth of all determinate content—this stage had come to perfection in
Scepticism, although the Stoic and Epicurean systems have the same end
in view. But with this complete entering into and abiding within itself
of infinite subjectivity, Philosophy had reached the standpoint at
which self-consciousness knew itself in its thought to be the Absolute
(Vol. II. p. 372); and since Philosophy now rejected the subjective and
finite attitude of self-consciousness, and its manner of distinguishing
itself from an unmeaning external object, it comprehended in itself the
difference, and perfected the truth into an intelligible world. The
consciousness of this, expressing itself as it did in the spirit of the
world, now constitutes the object of Philosophy; it was principally
brought about by employing and reasoning from Platonic conceptions and
expressions, but also by making use of those of the Aristotelians and
Pythagoreans.
The idea which had now come home to men that absolute existence is
nothing alien to self-consciousness, that nothing really exists for it
in which self-consciousness is not itself immediately present—this is
the principle which is now found as the universal of the world-spirit,
as the universal belief and knowledge of all men; at once it changes
the world’s whole aspect, destroying all that went before, and bringing
about a regeneration of the world. The manifold forms which this
knowledge assumes do not belong to the history of Philosophy, but to
the history of consciousness and culture. This principle appears as a
universal principle of justice, by which the individual man, in virtue
of his existence, has absolute value as a universal being recognized
by all. Thus, as far as external politics are concerned, this is the
period of the development of private rights relating to the property
of individual persons. But the character of Roman culture, under
which this form of philosophy falls, was at the same time abstract
universality (Vol. II. p. 235), in the lifelessness of which all
characteristic poetry and philosophy, and all citizen life perished.
Cicero, for example, shows, as few philosophers do, an utter want of
appreciation of the state of affairs in his country. Thus the world has
in its existence separated into two parts; on the one side we have the
atoms, private individuals, and on the other side a bond connecting
them, though only externally, which, as power, had been relegated to
one subject, the emperor. The Roman power is thus the real Scepticism.
In the domain of thought we find an exact counterpart to this species
of abstract universality, which, as perfect despotism, is in the
decline of national life directly connected with the isolation of the
atom, showing itself as the withdrawal into the aims and interests of
private life.
It is at this point that mind once more rises above the ruin, and again
goes forth from its subjectivity to the objective, but at the same time
to an intellectual objectivity, which does not appear in the outward
form of individual objects, nor in the form of duties and individual
morality, but which, as absolute objectivity, is torn of mind and of
the veritable truth. Or, in other words, we see here on the one hand
the return to God, on the other hand the manifestation of God, as He
comes before the human mind absolutely in His truth. This forms the
transition to the mind’s restoration, by the fact of thought, which had
conceived itself only subjectively, now becoming objective to itself.
Thus in the Roman world the necessity became more and more keenly felt
of forsaking the evil present, this ungodly, unrighteous, immoral
world, and withdrawing into mind, in order here to seek what there
no longer can be found. For in the Greek world the joy of spiritual
activity has flown away, and sorrow for the breach that has been made
has taken its place. These philosophies are thus not only moments in
the development of reason, but also in that of humanity; they are forms
in which the whole condition of the world expresses itself through
thought.
But in other forms some measure of contempt for nature here began to
show itself, inasmuch as nature is no longer anything for itself,
seeing that her powers are merely the servants of man, who, like a
magician, can make them yield obedience, and be subservient to his
wishes. Up to this time oracles had been given through the medium of
trees, animals, &c., in which divine knowledge, as knowledge of the
eternal, was not distinguished from knowledge of the contingent. Now it
no longer is the gods that work their wonders, but men, who, setting
at defiance the necessities of nature, bring about in the same that
which is inconsistent with nature as such. To this belief in miracle,
which is at the same time disbelief in present nature, there is thus
allied a disbelief in the past, or a disbelief that history was just
what it was. All the actual history and mythology of Romans, Greeks,
Jews, even single words and letters, receive a different meaning; they
are inwardly broken asunder, having an inner significance which is
their essence, and an empty literal meaning, which is their appearance.
Mankind living in actuality have here forgotten altogether how to
see and to hear, and have indeed lost all their understanding of the
present. Sensuous truth is no longer accepted by them; they constantly
deceive us, for they are incapable of comprehending what is real, since
it has lost all meaning for their minds. Others forsake the world,
because in it they can now find nothing, the real they discover in
themselves alone. As all the gods meet together in one Pantheon, so
all religions rush into one, all modes of representation are absorbed
in one; it is this, that self-consciousness—an actual human being—is
absolute existence. It is to Rome that all these mysterious cults
throng, but the real liberation of the spirit appeared in Christianity,
for it is therein that its true nature is reached. Now it is revealed
to man what absolute reality is; it is a man, but not yet Man or
self-consciousness in general.
The one form of this principle is therefore the infinitude in itself
of the consciousness that knows itself, distinguishes itself in itself,
but yet remains in perfectly transparent unity with itself; and only
as this concretely self-determining thought has mind any meaning. An
actual self-consciousness is the fact that the Absolute is now known
in the form of self-consciousness, so that the determinations of the
former are manifested in all the forms of the latter; this sphere does
not properly belong to Philosophy, but is the sphere of Religion,
which knows God in this particular human being. This knowledge, that
self-consciousness is absolute reality, or that absolute reality is
self-consciousness, is the World-spirit. It is this knowledge, but
knows this knowledge not; it has merely an intuition of it, or knows
it only immediately, not in thought. Knowing it only immediately means
that to the World-spirit this reality as spirit is doubtless absolute
self-consciousness, but in existent immediacy it is an individual man.
It is this individual man, who has lived at a particular time and in
a particular place, and not the Notion of self-consciousness, that is
for the World-spirit absolute spirit: or self-consciousness is not yet
known nor comprehended. As an immediacy of thought, absolute reality is
immediate in self-consciousness, or only like an inward intuition, in
the same way that we have pictures present in our mind.
The other form is that this concrete is grasped in a more abstract way,
as the pure identity of thought, and thus there is lost to thought the
point of self-hood pertaining to the concrete. This aspect, expressed
as absolute reality in the form of mind in conceiving thought, but
yet as in some measure existing immediately in self-consciousness as
absolute reality, comes under Philosophy. But spirit, if complete in
every aspect, must have also the natural aspect, which in this form of
philosophy is still lacking. Now as in Christianity universal history
makes this advance of mind in the consciousness of itself, so in the
innermost mysteries of the same, in Philosophy, this same change must
just as inevitably take place; in fact, Philosophy in her further
development does nothing else than grasp this Idea of absolute reality,
which in Christianity is merely shadowed forth. Absolute Spirit implies
eternal self-identical existence that is transformed into another
and knows this to be itself; the unchangeable, which is unchangeable
in as far as it always, from being something different, returns into
itself. It signifies the sceptical movement of consciousness, but in
such a form that the transient objective element at the same time
remains permanent, or in its permanence has the signification of
self-consciousness.