第52章

Consequently, human objects are not natural objects as they immediately present themselves, nor is human sense, in its immediate and objective existence, human sensibility and human objectivity. Neither objective nor subjective nature is immediately present in a form adequate to the human being. And as everything natural must come into being, so man also has his process of origin in history. But for him history is a conscious process, and hence one which consciously superseded itself. History is the true natural history of man. (We shall return to this later.)

Thirdly, since this establishing of thingness is itself only an appearance, n act which contradicts the nature of pure activity, it must be superseded once again and thingness must be denied.

As to 3, 4, 5, 6.

(3) This alienation of consciousness has not only a negative but also a positive significance, and (4) it has this positive significance not only for us or in itself, but for consciousness itself.

(5) For self-consciousness, the negative of the object or its own supersession of itself has a positive significance -- or self-consciousness knows the nullity of the object -- in that self-consciousness alienates itself, for in this alienation it knows itself as object or, for the sake of the individisible unity of being-for-itself, the object as itself.

(6) On the other hand, the other moment is also present in the process, namely, that self-consciousness has superseded and taken back into itself this alienation and objectivity, and is therefore at home in its other-being as such.

To recapitulate. The appropriation of estranged objective being or the supersession of objectivity in the form of estrangement -- which must proceed from indifferent otherness to real, hostile estrangement -- principally means for Hegel the supersession of objectivity, since it is not the particular character of the object but its objective character which constitutes the offense and the estrangement as far as self-consciousness is concerned. The object is therefore negative, self-superseding, a nullity.

This nullity of the object has not only a negative but also a positive significance for consciousness, for it is precisely the self-confirmation of its non-objectivity and abstraction. For consciousness itself, the nullity of the object therefore has a positive significance because it knows this nullity, the objective being, as its self-alienation, because it knows that this nullity exists only as a result of its own self-alienation...

The way in which consciousness is, and in which something is for it, is knowing. Knowing is its only act. Hence, something comes to exist for consciousness insofar as it knows that something. Knowing is its only objective relationship. It knows the nullity of the object -- i.e., that the object is not direct from it, the non-existence of the object for it, in that it knows the object as its own self-alienation; that is, it knows itself -- i.e., it knows knowing, considered as an object -- in that the object is only the appearance of an object, an illusion, which in essence is nothing more than knowing itself which has confronted itself with itself and hence a nullity, a something which has no objectivity outside knowing. Knowing knows that when it relates itself to an object it is only outside itself, alienates itself; that it only appears to itself as an object, or rather, that what appears to it as an object is only itself.

On the other hand, says, Hegel, this other moment is also present in the process, namely, that self-consciousness has superseded and taken back into itself this alienation and objectivity, and is therefore at home in its other-being as such.

This discussion is a compendium of all the illusions of speculation.

Firstly, consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is at home in its other-being as such. It is therefore, if we here abstract from Hegel's abstraction and talk instead of self-consciousness, of the self-consciousness of man, at home in its other-being as such. This implies, for one thing, that consciousness -- knowing as knowing, thinking as thinking -- claims to be the direct opposite of itself, claims to be the sensuous world, reality, life -- thought over-reaching itself in thought (Feuerbach). This aspect is present insofar as consciousness as mere consciousness is offended not by estranged objectivity but by objectivity as such.

Secondly, it implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has acknowledged and superseded the spiritual world, or the general spiritual existence of his world, as self-alienation, goes on to reaffirm it in this alienated form and presents it as his true existence, restores it and claims to be at home in his other-being as such. Thus, for example, having superseded religion and recognized it as a product of self-alienation, he still finds himself confirmed in religion as religion. Here is the root of Hegel's false positivism or of his merely apparent criticism; it is what Feuerbach calls the positing, negating, and re-establishing of religion or theology, but it needs to be conceived in a more general way. So reason is at home in unreason as unreason. Man, who has realized that in law, politics, etc., he leads an alienated life as such. Self-affirmation, self-confirmation in contradiction with itself and with the knowledge and the nature of the object is therefore true knowledge and true life.

Therefore there can no longer be any question abut a compromise on Hegel's part with religion, the state, etc., since this untruth is the untruth of his principle.

If I know religion as alienated human self-consciousness, then what I know in it as religion is not my self-consciousness but my alienated self-consciousness confirmed in it. Thus I know that the self-consciousness which belongs to the essence of my own self is confirmed not in religion but in the destruction and supersession of religion.