hegel consciousness of life and self-consciousness - rough draft 09 2014

Thomas Khurana From Animal Self to Human Self September 19, 2014 Universität Leipzig

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Consciousness of Life and Self-Consciousness

Some Reflections on a Transition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

I. Additive and Transformative Models of Human Spirit

In my presentation today I will confine myself to a rather limited task: to investigate a certain

transition that Hegel presents in the Phenomenology of Spirit at the beginning of the chapter on

“The Truth of Self-Certainty” (“Die Wahrheit der Gewißheit seiner selbst”). In this chapter,

Hegel introduces a particular conception of self-consciousness by departing from a certain

consciousness of life. It is a common idea that the animal and the human self can be

distinguished by reference to the fact that human beings operate essentially as self-conscious

beings. Hegel, as many other philosophers, subscribes to this idea. If we look at his philosophy

of nature and his philosophy of spirit, we will find that Hegel makes explicit use of this

contrast: Although animal life is to be considered, in Hegel’s view, as a basic form of

subjectivity and is marked by a certain relation to itself that Hegel calls self-feeling

(“Selbstgefühl”), it lacks a self-relation that Hegel calls self-consciousness and which he

reserves for the sphere of spiritual life. Animals can be characterized as self-like or self-ish –

Hegel’s German term is “selbstisch” (ENZ II §350, 9:430; §363, 9:479) – but they are not a

self for themselves: they are not self-conscious. The essential question, of course, is how to

understand self-consciousness more precisely and how to characterize this feature of human

spiritual life in its relation to animal life. I will take a closer look at the transition in the

Phenomenology in order to illuminate Hegel’s answer to these questions. I will argue that the

Phenomenology highlights the way in which the form of self-consciousness is intimately related to

the form of animal life.

Before I enter this short, but notoriously over-determined passage of the Phenomenology, it

might be helpful to place Hegel’s view generally in a broader context of views on the relation

of animal and self-conscious life. With a distinction that is probably very familiar in this

context here in Leipzig, a distinction proposed by Matthew Boyle and others, we can oppose

additive and transformative conceptions of the rational animal. According to the additive

picture which seems to be dominant in the contemporary philosophy of mind, we understand

the concept of a rational or self-conscious animal as describing an animal that has an

additional feature: a peculiar capacity that is added to a number of capacities the respective

being shares with related animals. Put crudely, a rational animal is an animal plus rationality,

or, life plus self-consciousness, as it were. According to this picture, the step from mere animal


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life to spirit consist in certain higher faculties being added on to the theoretical and practical

abilities of the animal organism that already sensibly perceives and instinctively manipulates

and assimilates its environment. In the additive picture, the basic capacities are understood in

such a way that they basically remain intact and are supplemented by capacities that can act

on them from without: Our additional rational capacities allow us to process and evaluate our

sensory input further, they give us the possibility to inhibit, select or modify our given vital

impulses and tendencies, but they do not inherently modify the basic capacities as such. These

capacities remain fundamentally the same in the sentient and the sapient being.

Such a conception might appear suggestive at first, in so far as it accounts both for the fact

that human beings seem to share essential abilities with animal beings and the fact that they

make use of these abilities in quite distinct ways. At the same time, the additive picture raises a

number of deep problems. Empirically, it has turned out to be very difficult to pin down a

specific cognitive ability in human beings that is not also to be found, at least in some basic

form, in some other species of animal life. Conceptually, the additive picture renders

mysterious the precise nature of the interaction of the merely animal and the rational

capacities and leaves the very unity of the rational being unexplained. If a rational animal is

defined by a merely additional rational faculty, it seems that its rationality remains external to

all its basic faculties so that rationality can only be understood as a form of external

domination or imposition. This seems to be an unfortunate picture of rationality, unable to

explain the unity of our spontaneous and receptive capacities.

To avoid the problems that surround the additive picture, it was thus suggested that we

should rather develop a transformative conception of rationality. Rational animals are not

animals with additional rational capacities, but animals of a different sort. Rationality in this

sense concerns a “difference in genus” in the Aristotelian sense: a fundamental difference that

distinguishes different species of a common genus in such a way, that the genus itself is thereby

differentiated. As Aristotle has it: in two living beings, say a human and a horse, we do not

only find something shared, namely that they are both living animal beings, but this common

feature for both means something different: “not only must both be animals, but this very

animality must also be different for each ..., and so this common nature is specifically different

for each from what it is for the other. ... This difference, then, must be an otherness of the

genus. For I give the name of ‘difference in the genus’ to an otherness which makes the genus

itself other.”1 Rationality thus does not consist of a separate stratum of capacities added to the

capacities we share with animal beings, rationality rather describes the fundamentally


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changed form in which we possess and realize our capacities. A rational animal therefore is

animal in a different way.

I think it is obvious that Hegel adheres to some variant of the transformative view. In his

Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, he says explicitly that “animal humanity is altogether

different from animality proper” (“Tierische Menschlichkeit ist etwas ganz anderes als

Tierheit”).2 And in this Aesthetics, he qualifies the difference between man and animal as

“infinite” and explains this by saying that even in his animal functions man “does not remain

in them as his in-itself, as the animal does; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them,

and lifts them … into self-conscious science.” (ÄSTHET 13:112)3 In the Encyclopedia he adds

that in the human being everything is suffused with thinking, not only his acts of rational

deliberation and willing, but just as much his intuition or wishing (ENZ I §24Z1, 8:82). The

step from the animal to the human, from sentient life to self-conscious life is therefore not to

be understood as the addition of an accompanying consciousness to the faculties of the living

being, but rather as a transformation of the whole way of being alive. This transformation

depends, as Hegel points out, on the “elevation of the in-itself into self-conscious knowledge. ...

In this way man breaks the barrier of his immediate being in it self, so that precisely because

he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as

spirit.” (ÄSTHET 13:112). Self-consciousness is hence not just added to animality and

accompanies it as a monitoring or regulating force, but grasps this very animality and thereby

transforms it.

So, generally speaking, I think Hegel clearly subscribes to a transformative picture. What

is peculiar about him, I think, is that in spelling this picture out he tries to resist two tendencies

that are sometimes connected to a transformative view: he tries to resist (i) the tendency to

radicalize the sense of “transformation” in such a way that animal and the human seem to

become completely incommensurable, even unrelated; (ii) and the tendency to understand the

transformation as always already completed. The first tendency is produced by the one-sided

focus of some conceptions of the transformative pictures on the fact that the faculties we seem

to share with animals are in fact of a completely different nature in us so that rational animals

and mere animals in fact do not have in common what they seemed to share. This can give us

the impression that rational animals and mere animals do not share anything essential at all.

But this can’t be right. The point of a transformative account can’t be that the animal and the

human do not have anything in common, but rather that it is not a single capacity or factor

that remains unaltered in both of them. What they have in common, is rather a general form

of organization, articulated in both in different ways. The animal and the human do not share

a certain specific capacity, but they rather share the general form or organization of the living:


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they both only are in making themselves into that which they are and they articulate this self-

constitutive quality by performing processes of shape, of assimilation (and that is to say:

perception and action in the broadest sense) and processes of genus (to use Hegel’s

terminology).4 The commonality of animal and human thus has to be expressed in a more

formal and a holistic way; but we should avoid expressing it in such an abstract way that we

will be tempted to understand our rationality primarily by its opposition to animality.

(ii) A second distinctive feature of Hegel’s transformative picture resides in the fact that he

presents the transformation as an activity. Some contemporary advocates of transformative

views tend to present the transformation of animal capacities in the rational animal as always

already completed: If we face an exemplar of the human species, it is as such to be regarded as

transformed in all its abilities; even if it might seem that way, it doesn’t have merely animal

abilities. It is not by accident that Hegel describes the difference between animal and human

in a slightly different manner by saying the human being does not remain in his animal

functions as his in-itself, but goes beyond it. Hegel’s picture is thus transformative in the

additional sense that he understands spiritual life as an activity to bring itself forth by

transforming our animal life. Rational animals are not defined by the fact that their capacities

are always already transformed, but rather: that they are altered in the sense that they have

entered and continue to evolve in this process of transformation. If that is the case, then

human beings are not only closely related to animals in the sense that they embody another

species of the same genus, but also in the sense that human beings are inherently marked by

the difference between mere animality and rational animality. In his Science of Logic, Hegel

defines spirit accordingly by saying that “life appears both as opposed to it and as posited as at

one with it, in a unity reborn as the pure product of spirit.”5 It is true that the realization of

spirit depends on the unity of life and spirit and hence on the accomplishment of

transformation, but the work of this unification also includes that spirit inherently opposes

itself to life. According to this view there might be room for a certain animality in us that is as

of yet not wholly transformed. To be clear: even so, it would not be right to say that we share

this animality with non-rational animals insofar as they do not possess an animality to which

they oppose themselves. Hegel thus strictly remains within a transformative view, but he

understands it in such a way that this allows for an animality in us, still to be transformed. In

order to develop this picture a little further, I shall now turn to Hegel’s presentation of self-

consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit.


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II. The Emergence of Self-Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit

The feature that makes the account in the Phenomenology of Spirit interesting for the topic of our

conference – the relation of animal and human self – lies in the fact that it introduces self-

consciousness in some sense as a transformation of the consciousness of living unity: Where

consciousness constitutes its object as living, it is confronted with something that possesses the

very type of differential unity that consciousness itself is characterized by. In being conscious

of life, consciousness is confronted with something akin to itself. This amounts to, as Hegel

says, an ignition of self-consciousness. The interesting question now is how to understand the

turn from consciousness of life to self-consciousness and the subsequent development of self-

consciousness itself.

To avoid misunderstandings, it might be helpful to note right from the start that the

trajectory that the Phenomenology describes in the progression from sense-certainty to perception

to understanding to self-consciousness does neither make the claim to depict the actual

trajectory of our phylogenetic evolution, nor suggests to describe the course of the early

ontogenetic maturation of our cognitive abilities – the first steps of our cognitive development

in which we might develop those capacities that distinguish us from our closest animal

relatives. The protagonist with which the phenomenology begins is neither a pre-human

cognitive agent, nor an infant, but, as Hegel says, a “natural consciousness” that strives toward

true knowledge. The phenomenology tells the history of the experience of this natural

consciousness in its attempt to reach true knowledge and that, in large part, means: to arrive

at the right conception of its own knowledge. Even if the description of the stage of sense-

certainty abstracts from the fundamental distinctions of the order of perception, and even if

the stage of perception abstracts from the capacity of understanding, the phenomenology does

not suggest that there actually exists a natural consciousness that could operate without

perception or understanding. Rather the phenomenology tries to show that a natural

consciousness that defines its true knowledge in terms of sense-certainty will have to make the

experience that sense-certainty cannot stand on its own and that perception is the truth and

the ground of sense-perception; similarly understanding is revealed as the truth and ground of

perception, and finally: self-consciousness as the truth and ground of consciousness.6 The

development of the phenomenology thus does not describe a straightforward genesis of certain

cognitive capacities, but rather the development, the unfolding of our self- conceptions.


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Let us now focus on just one crucial transition in this development: the one at which

consciousness grasps itself as self-consciousness and experiences that as self-consciousness it

can find satisfaction only in another self-consciousness. My interest concerns the way in which

Hegel emphasizes the fundamental role that animal life has for the exposition and

development of self-consciousness. Life plays a role with regard to at least three steps of

Hegel’s presentation: (i) That human consciousness is essentially self-consciousness dawns on

this consciousness where it constitutes its object as living. (ii) That this self-consciousness can

find its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness, becomes clear to this self-consciousness

where it understands itself as desire in general and experiences the limits of mere animal

desire. (iii) The way in which self-consciousness realizes this experiences, implies a dialectical

tension between life and self-consciousness in which it on the one hand has to abstract from

his own life and on the other hand accept that “life is as essential to it as is pure self-

consciousness.” (PhG 3:150). In the following I shall pursue each of these steps in a schematic

fashion.

II.1 From Consciousness of Life to Self-Consciousness

The natural consciousness that the Phenomenology traces constitutes itself successively in terms of

sense-certainty, perception and understanding. On the stage of understanding, consciousness

conceives its object as an expression of force and law. In the movement of explanation, the

understanding unfolds its object in such a way that a structure comes to the fore that

corresponds to consciousness itself: The object is understood as the appearance of a force that

articulates itself lawfully in its different presentations. The I seems to find in the movement of

the explanation of its object, as Hegel writes, “the counterpart of its own self and is thus on the

point of developing into self-consciousness as such” (ENZ III §423Z). Whereas in the

movement of the understanding this appears as a form of self-satisfaction and a mere

conversation of consciousness with itself that doesn’t seem to have a proper object, there is

actually one object that embodies the structure exposed in the understanding: the living

creature. In his Encyclopedia Phenomenology, Hegel writes: “In the living creature consciousness

beholds the very process of positing and sublating the distinct determinations, perceives that

the difference is no difference, i.e., no absolutely fixed difference … It is … in the

consciousness of this dialectical, this living unity of what is distinct that self-consciousness is

kindled, the consciousness of the simple ideal entity that is its own object and is thus

differentiated within itself.” (ENZ III §423Z)7 It is in the contemplation of the living, “an

appearance of an interior that is for itself”, that “self-consciousness is ignited”. (ENZ III

§418Z).


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The first appearance or emergence of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology is hence

provoked in the striving of consciousness to adequately grasp its object. Consciousness grasps

itself as self-consciousness where it “discovers its own self as the essential of the object” (ENZ

III, §418). In this sense Hegel introduces self-consciousness not as a special form of

consciousness of a separate type of inner object – the self – but rather as an implication of true

consciousness of the world. Where we surpass sense-certainty and perception as the ultimate

forms of knowledge and grasp our object as alive, that is to say: as an appearance of an inner

that is for itself, we recognize a variant of our own activity and structure in the object of our

knowledge.

The way Hegel presents it, the starting point seems to be a structural homology between

the differential unity of the life process and of consciousness that allows the subject to behold

in a living creature a type of unity that corresponds to its own. However, this does not yet

specify the very turn that is needed in order to pass from a consciousness of some living

creature to self-consciousness proper; and by itself, it does not give us any clues as to the

meaning that life has for a fully developed self-consciousness. After noting this first ignition of

self-consciousness vis a vis a living unity, Hegel spells out what happens in the step from

consciousness of life to self-consciousness and articulates in how far self-consciousness actually

articulates a form of unity that differs from life.

A first explicit characterization of a step beyond life that self-consciousness takes, is given at

the point where Hegel concludes his formal characterization of life and states that it ultimately

presents itself as “simple genus”. In presenting itself as “simple genus”, the living being

exposes the very unity that the I possesses. But in the movement of life, this simple genus

“does not exist for itself as this “simple.”” (PhG ¶ 172). In the movement of life this simple

genus shows or presents itself without however being grasped by the life process itself. In his

philosophy of nature, Hegel had explained this by showing that the genus can only always

exist as exemplified by individuals that have to disappear in turn in order to reproduce the

genus. Therefore the living individual is not in and for itself the genus and hence individual

existence and genus remain divided. In other words: the simple genus remains an abstraction

and does not gain a concrete positive existence. The life process exposes the simple genus in

itself, but not for itself. “Rather,” Hegel writes, “in this result, life points towards something

other than itself, namely, towards consciousness, for which life exists as this unity, that is, as

genus.“ (PhG ¶ 161). Only by being grasped in the medium of consciousness does the genus

character of the living get fully exhibited. The very structure of the living thus only comes fully

into view from the point of view of consciousness. It is however not a consciousness foreign to

and separate from life. This consciousness not only grasps the simple genus of life, but grasps


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itself as simple genus. The other to which life points in its result is thus not an other of a

completely different order, but rather, as Hegel calls it, “this other life for which the genus as

such exists and which is the genus for itself, namely, self-consciousness“ (PhG 3:143).

In this sense Hegel introduces self-consciousness not as a pure consciousness of itself

separate from its living object or realization, but introduces it as a life that knows itself. This

however raises a difficult question: If organic life is defined by exposing the structure of the

concept only blindly and as such, but not for itself, in what sense can we call something that is

the genus for itself, still alive? The unity of the life that the subject lives and the consciousness

of this life seems problematic. And indeed, Hegel describes the self-consciousness that emerges

from the consciousness of life as “initially exist[ing] for itself merely as this simple essence”

and as having itself “as the pure I.” (PhG ¶173, 3:143). It seems that the self-consciousness that

emerges from consciousness of life, is initially merely an abstract or formal consciousness of

itself, expressed by the “motionless tautology of ‘I am I’” (PhG ¶167, 3:138). The object of

consciousness that had ignited self-consciousness either must have dissolved or it remains as an

external object apart from this pure I, an external left-over that has exhausted its meaning in

allowing consciousness to grasp this unity. However, this does not sit well with the fact that

Hegel calls self-consciousness “this other life”: It is essential for this self-consciousness to exist

as a living consciousness. Only initially does this self-consciousness regard itself as a pure I. In

its further experience, however, “this abstract object will … become enriched and will contain

the development that we have seen in life” (PhG ¶173, 3:143)

II.2 From Self-Consciousness as Desire itself to Recognizant Self-Consciousness

What it means more precisely that the self-consciousness is not a pure I in which the life of its

objects have dissolved but rather an I that has and leads a material life, becomes clear in the

way in which Hegel characterizes the internal dynamic and development of self-consciousness.

I am referring here to the famous characterization that self-consciousness is “desire itself”

(“Begierde überhaupt”).8 Hegel introduces this characterization for the first time in the

introductory passages of “The Truth of Self-Certainty” where he defines the basic structure of

self-consciousness. Self-consciousness includes two poles, the consciousness of a given object

and the unity of self-consciousness, and is confronted with the problem of their unification.

Self-consciousness is understood to strive for the sublation of the opposition of its two

moments. It is in this quite formal sense that self-consciousness has the structure of desire as

such: It consists in an awareness of a contradiction that it strives to reduce.9

By using the term “desire,” Hegel refers self-consciousness back to life once again. Self-

consciousness is not only ignited by a certain consciousness of life that leads to the insight that


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the self is the essential of the object (ENZ III §418Z, 10:207) and therefore can leave life

quickly behind. Self-consciousness itself also has a striving form that seems fundamentally

analogous to the living.10 As an animal strives to assimilate parts of its environment and to

turn it into itself in order to reduce the tension of its inner drives, self-consciousness tries to

reduce the tension between its objective consciousness and its self-consciousness.11 This

highlights, as Robert Pippin points out, a fundamental orectic dimension of self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is not an immediate being at one with oneself but rather a striving or

struggle for unity.12 Self-consciousness does neither mean to be aware of myself in the way in

which I am aware of an external object I have to observe; nor to be aware of myself in the

sense that I immediately feel my unity. I am rather conscious of myself by determining

myself.13

But what exactly does it mean that Hegel characterizes the striving activitiy of self-

consciousness by the term desire which refers self-consciousness back to a natural striving and

might even suggest that the basic form of self-consciousness is actualized in animal desire?14

The term desire at first suggest to depict self-consciousness as intent on the dissolution and

consumption of its objects. The “breath of the sensuous world” that is given to self-

consciousness qua consciousness appears to self-consciousness as a mere appearance, the

essence of which is nothing other than the pure unity of self-consciousness. Hegel writes: “this

opposition between its appearance and its truth has only the truth for its essence, namely the

unity of self-consciousness with itself. This unity must become essential to self-consciousness,

which is to say, self-consciousness is desire itself.“ (PhG 3:139) This description suggests that

self-consciousness aims at the consumption and destruction of its objects: to assimilate its

objects in such a way that they are turned into the self.15

However, in the very experience of self-consciousness, it becomes clear that such a

consumption cannot lead to self-conscious satisfaction. A self-consciousness that tries to

devour its objects opposes itself to its object – life – in such a way that it ironically repeats its

structure: it engenders a bad infinity of desires. Self-consciousness cannot attain its unity by

consuming its other, but only by recognizing it. In its own striving, Self-consciousness has to

supersede animal desire, not only by realizing desire in a different medium or on a different

level – the level of consciousness – but by taking on a different form: It realizes itself in a

striving that cannot be thought as an endless circle of need and fulfillment.

That self-conscious desire is forced to surpass animal desire already becomes clear when we

realize that the object of the consciousness pole of self-consciousness is life.16 Consciousness

grasps itself as self-consciousness where its object is not a mere sensuous this or a dead object,

but a living thing that is reflected in itself and that is self-contained, independent and self-


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reliant in a certain sense. In so far as self-consciousness dissolves its object as a nullity, it

reduces the living to a dead thing and looses the object that had ignited self-consciousness in

the first place. Self-consciousness hence does not really achieve a unity of consciousness and

self-consciousness, but rather cancels consciousness and is left with the motionless tautology of

I am I. It becomes clear, that self-consciousness can only truly satisfy its peculiar desire, if it

maintains the self-contained character of its object. Self-consciousness cannot satisfy itself by

reducing the living to the level of a dead thing or a fleeting sensuous this. Although it is true

that self-consciousness initially „marks its object with the character of the negative“ and hence

appears as desire itself, it has to learn “even more so from experience about this object’s self-

sufficiency.“ (PhG ¶168, 3:139f.)

How is this experience being made by self-consciousness? Hegel suggests that self-

consciousness learns this by grasping the dissatisfaction inherent in the attempt at the

destruction of its other. In this sense it would be just as essential for self-consciousness to

eventually supersede animal desire than to begin as such a desire: Self-consciousness would

form itself in the experience of the limits of animal desire. In its initial form of desire, self-

consciousness tries to attain certainty of itself by sublating its other that presents itself as

independent. It thereby equates its own certainty with the nullity of its object. It seems obvious

that thereby self-consciousness cannot attain the independence it seeks for: For one, self-

consciousness is revealed to be dependent on an object that is fundamentally different from

itself. Secondly, as the manifestation of its independence is reached by the dissolution of this

object it is in addition in constant need of ever more objects it can reduce. Self-consciousness

thus “once again ... re-engenders the object as well as the desire.” (PhG ¶175, 3:143). The end

of desire is therefore not a lasting satisfaction, but just the beginning of the next desire, the

sublation of the object is the need for the next one.

Now, Hegel seems to assume that, contrary to the animal in its assimilative activity, self-

consciousness experiences that it falls short of itself in this endless movement. In its satisfaction,

self-consciousness experiences that it is in fact “an other than self-consciousness, the essence of

desire“ (PhG 3:143). By its attempt to bring forth its own unity self-consciousness fails to

produce its own unity and produces the endless circle of desire instead. In order to truly attain

the unity of self-consciousness, it has to direct itself to an object of a different sort that, first,

can only be negated insofar as it negates itself and, second, that can endure in its own

negation. Hegel writes: “For the sake of the self-sufficiency of the object, it thus can only

achieve satisfaction if this object itself effects the negation in itself.” Self-consciousness is thus

in need of an object that is self-dependent and self-reliant in just the way it is itself. The first

aspect of this self-sufficiency is already present in the living insofar as it is able to negate itself.


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But the living individual is, according to Hegel, not able to endure and sustain itself in this

self-negation, but comes asunder in it: “the distinguished, merely living shape also sublates its

self-sufficiency in the process of life itself, but, with its distinctions, it ceases to be what it is.

However, the object of self-consciousness is equally self-sufficient in this negativity of itself”

(PhG ¶176, 3:144). In surpassing the limited animal form of desire, self-consciousness requires

an object that is more than merely alive. Consciousness of a living object ignites self-

consciousness, but in order for self-consciousness to realize itself – that is: to attain the unity of

consciousness and self-consciousness – it requires a self-conscious living being, a living self-

consciousness as its object. This brings us to Hegel’s notorious thesis that “self-consciousness

attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.” (PhG ¶175, 3:144)

The operation through which self-consciousness relates to its proper object and which

grants it a different form of satisfaction, cannot be understood as analogous to animal desire

any more and is characterized by Hegel as a movement of recognition instead. Self-

consciousness does not claim its own self as the essential of the object and does not unify itself

with this object by consuming it and turning it into itself, but by recognizing or acknowledging

this object. In order for this recognition not to be a loss of its own independence, but rather an

operation of unification with itself, this recognition must be structurally mutual. Self-

consciousness satisfies itself in the relation to its object by recognizing the object as in turn

recognizing itself. Self-consciousness therefore does not only attain a more challenging

understanding of the object of consciousness, it also manifest a different mode of operation.

Self-consciousness exists and actualizes itself as redoubled self-consciousness and experiences

that it can only properly prove its independence by being dependent “on itself”. In the final

analysis this means, that self-consciousness is not satisfying itself in being dependent on just

another self-consciousness, but only in being dependent on a self-consciousness that is part of

the same we. Self-consciousness thus realizes itself in the structure of an I that is We and We

that is I.17 It attains satisfaction not in consuming and turning its object into itself, but in being

recognized by a subject that it itself recognizes.

II.3 The Dialectics of Detachment and Attachment to Life

At this juncture, it seems that a completely different analysis could take off. One could easily

imagine that the discussion of a consciousness of life that first gave rise to the discovery of self-

consciousness and the discussion of self-consciousness as desire which described the initial

form of its striving, are now completely left behind. It has become clear, or so it seems, that

life can neither be the proper object of self-consciousness, nor can the consumptive mode of

living processes describe the unifying process of self-consciousness. It seems natural to assume


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that on the level we have now reached, the level of recognition, the life of the respective self-

conscious subjects is not essential any more. Having reached this point, it seems that

everything just depends on the statuses that the different self-conscious subjects ascribe to each

other and nothing depends on the material life they might have.

Hegel’s presentation however suggests something else. This new level of a redoubled self-

consciousness was motivated by the problem of the unity of self-consciousness and its objective

consciousness. Already in the description of the simple self-consciousness Hegel had pointed

out that the “whole breadth of the sensuous world” has to be preserved for self-consciousness.

That is to say, self-consciousness always also remains objective consciousness. In a similar vein,

we can’t understand redoubled self-consciousness in such a way that the sensuously,

perceptually, intellectually grasped world of those self-consciousness dissolves in thin air and

that from now on it just counts what subjects arbitrarily attribute to each other. The inter-

subjective structure of self-consciousness rather has to be understood as illuminating how the

co-constitutive subjects can thereby relate to their life, the world of the understanding, of

perception and sense-certainty. Self-consciousness therefore does not find its satisfaction in

another pure I, but, as Hegel points out explicitly: in a “living self-consciousness” (PhG 3:144).

Hegel dramatizes the irreducible meaning of life for recognizant self-consciousness in the

struggle to death in which the pure concept of recognition first appears and explicitly develops

for self-consciousness. In this struggle both the tension between self-consciousness and life and

the irreducibility of life for self-consciousness are exposed. The struggle emerges where an

immediate self-consciousness attempts to present itself in its certainty and to gain recognition

for this. Hegel writes: “The exhibition of itself as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness

consists in showing itself to be the pure negation of its objective mode, that is, in showing that

it is fettered to no determinate existence, that it is not at all bound to … life.” (PhG ¶187, 3:148).

In its first movement, the self-consciousness that strives for recognition and seeks to find its

truth in another self-consciousness, therefore abstracts from the particularity of its own as well

as the other subject’s life. The self-consciousness risks its natural being for what it claims to be

in order to proof the primacy of its self-consciousness over the consciousness of its own life.18

„It is solely by staking one’s life”, this self-consciousness contends, “that freedom is proven to

be the essence, namely, that as a result the essence for self-consciousness is proven to be not

being, not the immediate way self-consciousness emerges, not its being absorbed within the

expanse of life – but rather, it is that there is nothing on hand in it itself which could not be a

vanishing moment for it, that is, that self- consciousness is merely pure being-for-itself.” As the

Berlin Phenomenology makes clearer than the original Jena Phenomenology, this is not

merely the attitude of the self-centered and selfish self-consciousness of desire, but even more


13

so the attitude of the recognizant self-consciousness that seeks to recognize itself in the other.

For this to be possible, self-consciousness has to loose its own immediacy and particularity just

as it has to eliminate the particularity of the other in order to unite itself with the other in a

“universal self-consciousness”. In its initial stages, the struggle for recognition therefore relates

to life negatively: Spirit tries to free itself by completely detaching from its natural existence.19

However, in the attempt of this proof of independence it becomes clear immediately that

this proof cannot be completed without missing its aims. The attempt to prove oneself through

death attains only the natural negation of the natural position of consciousness and it does not

produce an enduring spiritual independence. If self-consciousness actually looses its life in this

struggle, it proofs its primacy only by disappearing; if the other self-consciousness loses its life,

it can also not find its satisfaction in an other self-consciousness and the struggle will have

forced self-consciousness to return to an isolated self-certainty. Self-consciousness here makes

the experience that the immediacy it wants to detach itself form is “at the same time the

bodiliness of self-consciousness, in which, as in its sign and tool, self-consciousness has its own

self-feeling as well as its being for others and its relation that mediates between itself and

them”. Self-consciousness thus learns “that life is as essential to it as is pure self-consciousness”

(PhG 3:150).

It is insufficient to consider this as an unfortunate, but in the final analysis contingent

limitation, as if, alas, self-consciousness cannot totally detach form life as it needs some kind of

material infra-structure. If this was all Hegel wanted to remind us of, it would be unjustified to

call life as essential to self-consciousness as the pure I. (One could also say: no freedom without

gravity or without the right distance between the earth and the sun). Life is essential for self-

consciousness in a different sense: not as a merely contingent natural factor, that limits the

freedom of spirit, but rather as the very existence of self-consciousness. In the Berlin

Phenomenology Hegel defines this life which has turned out to be as essential to self-

consciousness as the pure I as the “existence” or “being-there” of the freedom of self-

consciousness: “Dasein seiner Freiheit” (ENZ III §432). Only if self-consciousness in detaching

form the given forms of its natural existence can attain or sustain a transformed natural

existence can the detachment present itself and endure in the world. Even if it is true that

freedom can only be won by putting the natural life at stake, it can just as much only present

and realize itself in life. This other life is not the mere natural life in which self-consciousness

was first sunk, but rather the natural existence that this self-consciousness gives itself: the life it

is unwilling to detach itself from, that it commits itself to, that it maintains, sustains and

transforms through its operations.20


14

So it is clear that the “struggle of recognition” (ENZ III §432, 10:221), can only succeed if it

does not end in the death of one of its protagonist. The opposition of lordship and bondage

fulfills this requirement. But in the description of this constellation of lord and bondsmen,

Hegel goes even further in stressing the irreducibility of life for self-consciousness. Not only is

it necessary that the struggle avoids the death of its combatants, the two sides in which it

results have a diverging future potential due to the different roles they grant life. According to

Hegel, the further development of free self-consciousness can only be reached from the side of

the bondsman. In the constellation of lord and bondsman that embodies the structure of self-

consciousness, we are confronted with two opposing sides: the lord, embodying pure self-

consciousness, pure being for itself on the one side, and the slave, embodying life, being for

the other, on the other side. Surprisingly the side that seems to have given up in the battle and

fallen short of its own freedom, the bondsman, is the point of departure for a subsequent

development, whereas the master turns out to be a dead-end. The freedom of self-

consciousness is thus not won by developing pure self-consciousness, but rather only from the

side of life. Or more precisely: form the side of a self-consciousness that has reattached to life

in the course of this struggle.

At first it should seem that the master has attained what both protagonist’s had aimed for:

he has succeeded in producing an exhibition of his own independence and has attained

recognition for this by the bondsman. In addition, the master seems to have found a solution

for the unity of self-consciousness and the objects of consciousness by outsourcing the

problem: He has put the bondsman between him and the world and relates to the objects of

the world only through this interface. Thereby he manages to relate to the world only insofar

as it is consumable. On closer inspection however, it becomes evident that the master thereby

does not attain true independence. The recognition he has attained is one-sided and

asymmetrical so that the master is dependent on a being in which he does not find himself.

Thus, the servile consciousness turns out to be the truth of the master’s self-consciousness.

With this ironic twist however, we at first only reach a negative result that we have, by now,

arrived at multiple times: The truth of self-consciousness does not reside in pure self-

consciousness, the motionless tautology of an I am I, but rather in some sort of the unity of

self-consciousness and its object. The positive result of the master-slave dialectic lies in the fact

that the figure of the bondsman points to three processes that might explain how this unity

might come about. The three moments that Hegel stresses as productive in the experience of

the bondsman are fear, service and work. (If we put these elements that are specific to the

master slave dialectic more generally we could say: for its free development, self-consciousness

is in need of self-feeling, education, and formation). In the fear of death the slavish


15

consciousness has not used death as a sovereign wager like the master, but has suffered it.

Paradoxically, it is thereby the slave that has truly experienced the detachment from his

natural existence – in other words: death, the dissolution of everything fixed –, endured it and

continued itself in it. The master confined himself to an abstract relation to death, where the

slave has interiorized it. If we abstract from the peculiar story of the master-slave dialectic, the

general point seems to be that the realization of self-consciousness needs the medium of

feeling: a living receptiveness.

The second element of service again seems to point to the inferiority of the slave, but has

effects that allow the slave to become self-sufficient. In the operation of service the slave

appropriates the experience of the fear of death that has shaken him and turns it into a

productive capacity. In its service, the slave “sublates all the individual moments of his

attachment to natural existence, and he works off his natural existence” Instead of abstractly

detaching from life as the master did, the servant concretely and practically transforms his

natural existence. Hegel seems to suggest that to do so, it is helpful or necessary for the human

being to serve the will of an other. This will is as such not determined by the natural existence

of the slave and therefore allows him to distance himself form his natural existence without

abstracting from it.

The third aspect that distinguishes the slave is the process of work by means of which he

enters a new relation to the objective world. At first, it seemed to be a true cunning of the

master that he interposed the servant between himself and the world to finally attain a pure

consumption without being directly dependent on the world and its particularities. However,

in the same stroke the master has deprived himself of the possibility to experience the

independence of the world, and even more so, the possibility of experiencing his own capacity

to modify and realize himself in the world. By means of his work the servant who seemed to

have given up his self in order to keep his life attains a new form of being for himself that does

not arise from the consumption of things but from their formation. In the process of his work,

the servant does not just destroy or dissolve the independent object, but transforms them.

Insofar as the formation gains a lasting existence in the outer object, the servant manages to

manifest himself in the sensuous world. Thus the servant reveals a fundamental trait that

distinguishes spiritual processes of assimilation: they do not mainly operate by means of

consumption of a given nature, but by embodiment and objectification of spirit in nature.21

The servant thus points to the possibility of a different freedom of self-consciousness in

which life takes on an essential and at the same time transformed role. It was already true for

the master that life was irreducible for him – in the sense that he trivially needed to not lose

his life in the struggle and was dependent, more importantly, on the life of his servant. The


16

master, however, conceived of his life as a merely natural factor that is to be instrumentalised

in order to appropriate the world.22 The master thus presents a succinct model of freedom as

domination of nature – a model, that simultaneously reveals that this type of domination

implies a dependence on this very nature. The “freedom” of the slave – a freedom which has

still to be unfolded by dissolving the constellation of an unequal and one-sided recognition – is

not attained as a mere detachment from or instrumentalisation of life, but rather as its seizure

and transformation. The servant experiences life as essential to self-consciousness and

commits to it. Thereby he does not grasp it as a mere natural limitation, but rather reveals it

to be the existence and embodiment of his self-consciousness. By means of self-feeling,

education and formation, the servant becomes for himself in his living reality. In this activity

he transforms his living nature – he works off his natural existence – without losing it. In the

servant self-consciousness thus realizes itself as “second nature.”

III. Concluding Remark

By following the transition from consciousness of life to self-consciousness and from desiring to

recognizant self-consciousness we have seen that Hegel articulates the form of the human self

by departing from the unity of animal life. Consciousness turns out to be self-consciousness for

the first time where life is its object; and this self-consciousness initially pursues its own unity

in a way analogous to animal desire. In the further realization of this self-consciousness it

becomes clear that it must go beyond life in the double sense that it must conceive of its object

as more than just alive and must direct itself to this object not in a movement of desire, but of

recognition. This step beyond life can however not be completed by the mere detachment

from or instrumentalisation of life, but requires that self-consciousness inhabits and transforms

the natural life in which it had first anticipated itself. Only as such can it partake in the

universal self-consciousness that grants it satisfaction. In short: the human self is ignited by the

consciousness of its counterpart, animal life; it emerges by manifesting a different structure

and even by detaching itself from its own life; but it realizes itself only by seizing and

transforming its natural life: by producing a living unity of self-consciousness and life. This is

how we might understand Hegel’s description of spiritual life from the Science of Logic I have

quoted before: “In spirit, however, life appears both as opposed to it and as posited as at one

with it, in a unity reborn as the pure product of spirit” (WL DiGiovanni 677).


17

1 Aristotle, Metaphysics X. 8, 1057b39ff. 2 VG, p. 161: „Tierische Menschlichkeit ist ganz etwas anderes als Tierheit.“, translation taken from: G.W.F.

Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet, introduction by Duncan Forbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 133

3 The unabridged passage: „Die höhere Stufe nun ist das Wissen dieser an sich seienden Einheit, wie die 2 VG, p. 161: „Tierische Menschlichkeit ist ganz etwas anderes als Tierheit.“, translation taken from: G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet, introduction by Duncan Forbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 133

3 The unabridged passage: „Die höhere Stufe nun ist das Wissen dieser an sich seienden Einheit, wie die klassische Kunstform dieselbe zu ihrem im Leiblichen vollendet darstellbaren Gehalte hat. Dieses Erheben aber des Ansich ins selbstbewußte Wissen bringt einen ungeheuren Unterschied hervor. Es ist der unendliche Unterschied, der z.B. den Menschen überhaupt vom Tiere trennt. Der Mensch ist Tier, doch selbst in seinen tierischen Funktionen bleibt er nicht als in seinem Ansich stehen wie das Tier, sondern wird ihrer bewußt, erkennt sie und erhebt sie, wie z.B. den Prozeß der Verdauung, zu selbstbewußter Wissenschaft. Dadurch löst der Mensch die Schranke seiner ansichseienden Unmittelbarkeit auf, so daß er deshalb gerade, weil er weiß, daß er Tier ist, aufhört, Tier zu sein, und sich das Wissen seiner als Geist gibt.“ (ÄSTHET 13:112), English translation: „Now the higher state is the knowledge of that unity in-itself which is the content of the classical art-form and is capable of perfect presentation in bodily shape. But this elevation of the in-itself into self-conscious knowledge introduces a tremendous difference. It is the infinite difference which, for example, separates man as such from the animal. Man is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he does not remain in them as his in-itself, as the animal does; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them, and lifts them, as, for instance, the process of digestion, into self-conscious science. In this way man breaks the barrier of his immediate being in it self, so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit.” (G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) p. 80.

4 Cf. Boyle: „Rational mentality and nonrational mentality are different species of the genus of animal mentality. What the two ‚have in common‘, on this view, is not a separable factor that is present in both, but a generic structure that is realized in fundamentally different ways in the two cases“ (Boyle, „Additive Theories“, S. 6, emphasis added.).

5 G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. & ed. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) p. 677, vgl. WL 6:471: „Im Geiste aber erscheint das Leben teils ihm gegenüber, teils als mit ihm in eins gesetzt und diese Einheit wieder durch ihn rein herausgeboren.“

6 See the Encyclopedia Phenomenology on this: “The truth of consciousness is self-consciousness and the latter is the ground of the former, so that in existence all consciousness of another object is self-consciousness; I am aware of the object as mine (it is my representation), thus in it I am aware of me” (ENZ III §424).

7 See also ENZ III (§423Z, 10:212): „Am Bewußtsein dieser dialektischen, dieser lebendigen Einheit des Unterschiedenen entzündet sich daher das Selbstbewußtsein, das Bewußtsein von dem sich selber gegenständlichen, also in sich selbst unterschiedenen einfachen Ideellen, das Wissen von der Wahrheit des Natürlichen, vom Ich.“ – In the early Hegel, the idea that in the living the opposition between the objective and the subjective is complicated is expressed by the definition of the living as the “objective subject-object” (D 2:94ff.).

8 In the context of the Jena Phenomenology, in which there is no preceding discussion of animal life, the sudden turn to “desire” can indeed seem puzzling. This has lead Fred Neuhouser to the project of developing a deduction of the concept of desire that might elucidate Hegel’s account: „Deducing Desire and Recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit“, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), S. 243-262.

9 The Berlin Phenomenology alternately also speaks of the „Trieb“ of self-consciousness (ENZ III §425, 10:213f.; §426Z, 10:215f.; §427, 10:216).

10 Cf ENZ III §426Z, 10:216: „Das Beseelte hingegen und der Geist haben notwendig Trieb, da weder die Seele noch der Geist sein kann, ohne den Widerspruch in sich zu haben und ihn entweder zu fühlen oder von ihm zu wissen.“

11 The inherent connection between the peculiar type of unity and the striving character is pointed out in the chapter on “Observing reason”: the striving movement of the organic can be described as the organism distinguishing itself from what it searches and at the same time identifying itself with it by consuming it. On very formal terms this seems to correspond to self-consciousness that distinguishes and at the same time identifies itself with it: „Ebenso ist aber das Selbstbewußtsein beschaffen, sich auf eine solche Weise von sich zu unterscheiden, worin zugleich kein Unterschied herauskommt“ (PhG 3:199).

12 This is connected to a distinctly practical conception of self-consciousness brought out succinctly in Pippin’s reading of the phenomenology: „I think that Hegel’s position is that we misunderstand all dimensions of self-consciousness, from apperception in consciousness itself, to simple, explicit reflection about myself, to practical self-knowledge of my own so-called identity, by considering any form of it as in any way observational or inferential or immediate or any sort of two-place intentional relation. […] Hegel, I want to


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say, treats self-consciousness as (i) a practical achievement of some sort. Such a relation must be understood as the result of an attempt, never, as it certainly seems to be, as an immediate presence of the self to itself, and it often requires some sort of striving, even struggle.“ (Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit, S. 15f.).

13 With regard to higher forms of self-consciousness this points to the fact that self-consciousness cannot be understood in terms of a theoretical model of self-observation; rather, we have to think of self-consciousness in terms of a practical self-commitment and self-determination.

14 For the idea that the human being literally comes to be conscious of itself in the process of its animal desires, see Alexandre Kojève, „Zusammenfassender Kommentar zu den ersten sechs Kapiteln der Phänomenologie des Geistes“, in: ders., Hegel, hrsg. v. Iring Fetscher, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1975, S. 48-89, S. 54: “human existence is only possible, where there is something we call life – biological, animal life. For there is no desire without life.”

15 The Berlin Phenomenology explicitly speaks of „destruction“: „Die Begierde ist so in ihrer Befriedigung überhaupt zerstörend wie ihrem Inhalte nach selbstsüchtig“ (ENZ III §428, 10:218).

16 „[D]er Gegenstand der unmittelbaren Begierde ist ein Lebendiges“ (PhG 3:139). 17 In the relation of recognition, self-consciousness is only dependent on itself in so far as the recognizant self-

consciousness and the recognized self-consciousness partake in the same “we”. Thus, the success of reciprocal recognition is not possible in terms of an isolated interaction of two subjects, but has to be understood as the actualization of the structure of spirit, that is to say, as the actualization of an I that is We, and a We that is I („Ich, das Wir, und Wir, das Ich ist“ (PhG 3:145)). Cf. Neuhouser, „Desire, Recognition, and the Relation between Bondsman and Lord“, S. 46.

18 Cf. Brandom, „The Structure of Desire and Recognition“, S. 129ff. 19 Cf.: „Der Mensch allein kann alles fallen lassen, auch sein Leben: er kann einen Selbstmord begehen; das

Tier kann dieses nicht; es bleibt immer nur negativ; in einer ihm fremden Bestimmung, an die es sich nur gewöhnt“ (RPh §5Z, 7:51).

20 This is sometimes expressed by pointing out that life does not regain its importance as a mere natural fact, rather as a “value”. However, I don’t think this captures the irreducible character that life gains for self-consciousness at this juncture. It does not attain its importance merely as a value, but rather as the fundamental mode of existence of values.

21 For the general mode of operation characteristic of formation, see RPh (§56, 7:121f.). Here, Hegel qualifies formation as „the idea of the most adequate form of appropriation“ that „unifies the subjective and the objective“ (ibd., 121).

22 This distinguishes the master from a being of mere animal desires. The master does not move in the endless circle of unsatisfied desire by treating the world as non-living anorganic stuff to be consumed; the master does indeed behave as a self-. However, he can only do so by outsourcing the workings of desire and hence by making himself dependent on its endless circles.

hegel consciousness of life and self-consciousness - rough draft 09 2014

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