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23PracticalReason_TheSpiritualAnimalKingdom.mp3
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Practical Reason
In the section we have been considering, consciousness has discovered that its individualistic turn has not enabled it to find 'wisdom and virtue'; on the contrary, the pursuit of pleasure has merely led to unhappiness, the law of the heart has become self-conceit, and virtue has been revealed as high-minded hypocrisy. In the section we will now discuss, entitled 'Individuality Which Takes Itself To Be Real In And For Itself', Hegel examines other ways in which modern individualism makes it hard to avoid moral failures of this kind.
The Spiritual Animal Kingdom
In the next subsection (enigmatically entitled 'The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and Deceit, or the “Matter In Hand” Itself') Hegel considers an important aspect of this individualistic turn, which is that the subject evaluates himself in terms of his 'works' (i.e. his deeds and products), which he views as an expression of himself, coming to know what he is through what he can do: 'Consciousness must act merely in order that what it is in itself may become explicit for it; in other words, action is simply the coming-to-be of Spirit as consciousness . . . Accordingly, an individual cannot know what he [really] is until he has made himself a reality through action'. In this way, it might appear that the individual would allow himself to be judged on the basis of his actions; but in fact all acts of self-expression are viewed as unique, and equally valuable: 'It would only be put down as a bad work by a comparing reflection, which, however, is an idle affair, since it goes beyond the essential nature of the work, which is to be a self-expression of the individuality, and in it looks for and demands something else, no one knows what'. This form of conscious'ness thus adopts a non-judgemental attitude (which Forster claims is modelled on Herder's historicism), as a result of which Reason takes up an attitude of joyous self-affirmation:
Therefore, feelings of exaltation, or lamentation, or repentance are altogether out of place. For all that sort of thing stems from a mind which imagines a content and an in-itself which are different from the original nature of the individual and the actual carrying-out of it in the real world. Whatever it is that the indi'vidual does, and whatever happens to him, that he has done himself, and he is that himself. He can have only the conscious'ness of the simple transference of himself from the night of possibility into the daylight of the present . . . The individual, therefore, knowing that in his actual world he can find nothing else but its unity with himself, or only the certainty of himself in the truth of that world, can experience only joy in himself.
On the one hand, the individual's scheme of values is so relativistic, and on the other his sense of himself is so vacuous, that he feels that nothing he does can possibly be held against him, so that he can shake off all the spiritual alienation he has so far experienced, and see himself as 'an absolute interfusion of individuality and being'.
Hegel argues, however, that things are not as satisfactory as they appear. The difficulty is that consciousness finds that its works are an unstable form of self-expression because they persist while it changes, whilst the significance of the work is open to the interpretation of others, so that its work now seems to stand against it: 'Conscious'ness is thus made aware in its work of the antithesis of willing and achieving, between end and means, and, again, between this inner nature in its entirety and reality itself, an antithesis which in general includes within it the contingency of its action'. Faced with this antithesis, consciousness now tries to guarantee that it will be well thought of by others by making sure it can be associated with what'ever is the current 'big thing' or 'matter in hand', as then it knows it will be thought of as 'honest'. This 'honesty' is, however, a great humbug, as the individual will try to say he is part of this worthwhile project even if he has done nothing, by asserting that at least he has stimulated others, or was not in a position to do anything (even though he wanted to), or by claiming credit for things he has not done. This humbug quickly becomes apparent to others, who see that the indi'vidual has associated himself with their project merely to look good in their eyes; all individuals thus come to seem hypocritical to one another, as it comes to seem that all action is self-promotion: 'It is, then, equally a deception of oneself and of others if it is pretended that what one is concerned with is the “matter in hand” alone. A consciousness that opens up a subject-matter soon learns that others hurry along like flies to freshly poured-out milk, and want to busy themselves with it; and they learn about that individual that he, too, is concerned with the subject-matter, not as an object, but as his own affair'. Joyous self-affirmation thus becomes transformed into poisonous cynicism. Consciousness then comes to accept that others will participate in the 'matter in hand', and that it cannot expect to keep this to itself. In so doing, it comes to see that the 'matter in hand' is something universal: '[The matter in hand's] nature [is] such that its being is the action of the single individual and of all individuals whose action is immediately for others, or is a “matter in hand” and is such only as the action of each and everyone: the essence which is the essence of all beings, viz. spiritual essence . . . It is the universal which has being only as this action of all and each, and a reality in the fact that this particular consciousness knows it to be its own individual reality and the reality of all' . As consciousness comes to recog'nize that its projects form part of a wider enterprise, it no longer succumbs to the self-regarding jealousies of the Spiritual Animal Kingdom, and instead comes to see in its actions a moral purpose, rather than the mere expression of self that comes from creative activity:
Thus what is object for consciousness has the significance of being the True; it is and it is authoritative, in the sense that it exists and is authoritative in and for itself. It is the absolute 'matter in hand', which no longer suffers from the antithesis of certainty and its truth, between universal and individual, between purpose and its reality, but whose existence is the reality and action of self-consciousness. This 'matter in hand' is therefore the ethical substance; and consciousness of it is the ethical consciousness.
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