The Logic of Hegel

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

P. [111], § 54. Eudaemonism. But there is Eudaemonism and Eudaemonism; as Cf. Hegel, Werke, i. 8. 4 The time had come when the infinite longing away beyond the body and the world had reconciled itself with the reality of existence. Yet the reality which the soul was reconciled to—the objective which the subjectivity recognised—was actually only empirical existence, common world and actuality.... And though the reconciliation was in its heart and ground sure and fast, it still needed an objective form for this ground: the very necessity of nature made the blind certitude of immersion in the reality of empirical existence seek to provide itself with a justification and a good conscience. This reconciliation for consciousness was found in the Happiness-doctrine: the fixed point it started from being the empirical subject, and what it was reconciled to, the vulgar actuality, whereon it might now confide, and to which it might surrender itself without sin. The profound coarseness and utter vulgarity, which is at the basis of this happiness-doctrine, has its only elevation in its striving after justification and a good conscience, which however can get no further than the objectivity of mere intellectualism.

'The dogmatism of eudaemonism and of popular philosophy (Aufklärung) therefore did not consist in the fact that it made happiness and enjoyment the supreme good. For if Happiness be comprehended as an Idea, it ceases to be something empirical and casual—as also to be anything sensuous. In the supreme existence, reasonable act (Thun) and supreme enjoyment are one. So long as supreme blessedness is supreme Idea it matters not whether we try to apprehend the supreme existence on the side of its ideality,—which, as isolated may be first called reasonable act—or on the side of its reality—which as isolated may be first called enjoyment and feeling. For reasonable act and supreme enjoyment, ideality and reality are both alike in it and identical. Every philosophy has only one problem—to construe supreme blessedness as supreme Idea. So long as it is by reason that supreme enjoyment is ascertained, the distinguishability of the two at once disappears: for this comprehension and the infinity which is dominant in act, and the reality and finitude which is dominant in enjoyment, are taken up into one another. The controversy with happiness becomes a meaningless chatter, when happiness is known as the blessed enjoyment of the eternal intuition. But what was called eudaemonism meant—it must be said—an empirical happiness, an enjoyment of sensation, not the eternal intuition and blessedness.'

P. [112], § 55. Schiller. Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen(1795), 18th letter. 'Through beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through beauty the intellectual man is led back to matter and restored to the sense-world. Beauty combines two states which are opposed to one another.' Letter 25. 'We need not then have any difficulty about finding a way from sensuous dependence to moral liberty, after beauty has given a case where liberty can completely co-exist with dependence, and where man in order to show himself an intelligence need not make his escape from matter. If—as the fact of beauty teaches—man is free even in association with the senses, and if—as the conception necessarily involves—liberty is something absolute and supersensible, there can no longer be any question how he comes to elevate himself from limitations to the absolute: for in beauty this has already come to pass.' Cf. Ueber Anmuth und Würde(1793). 'It is in a beautiful soul, then, that sense and reason, duty and inclination harmonize; and grace is their expression in the appearance. Only in the service of a beautiful soul can nature at the same time possess liberty.' (See Bosanquet's History of Aesthetic.)

P. [115], § 60. The quotation in the note comes from § 87 of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft (Werke, ed. Ros. and Sch. iv. 357).

P. [120], § 60. Fichte, Werke, i. 279. 'The principle of life and consciousness, the ground of its possibility, is (as has been shown) certainly contained in the Ego: yet by this means there arises no actual life, no empirical life in time—and another life is for us utterly unthinkable. If such an actual life is to be possible, there is still needed for that a special impulse (Aufstoss) striking the Ego from the Non-ego. According to my system, therefore, the ultimate ground of all actuality for the Ego is an original action and re-action between the Ego and something outside it, of which all that can be said is that it must be completely opposed to the Ego. In this reciprocal action nothing is brought into the Ego, nothing foreign imported; everything that is developed from it ad infinitum is developed from it solely according to its own laws. The Ego is merely put in motion by that opposite, so as to act; and without such a first mover it would never have acted; and, as its existence consists merely in action, it would not even have existed. But the source of motion has no further attributes than to set in motion, to be an opposing force which as such is only felt.

'My philosophy therefore is realistic. It shows that the consciousness of finite natures cannot at all be explained, unless we assume a force existing independently of them, and completely opposed to them;—on which as regards their empirical existence they are dependent. But it asserts nothing further than such an opposed force, which is merely felt, but not cognised, by finite beings. All possible specifications of this force or non-ego, which may present themselves ad infinitum in our consciousness, my system engages to deduce from the specifying faculty of the Ego....

'That the finite mind must necessarily assume outside it something absolute (a Ding:an:sich), and yet must on the other hand acknowledge that this something only exists for the mind (is a necessary noümenon): this is the circle which may be infinitely expanded, but from which the finite mind can never issue.' Cf. Fichte's Werke, i. 248, ii. 478.

CHAPTER V.

P. [121], § 62. F. H. Jacobi (Werke, v. 82) in his Woldemar (a romance contained in a series of letters, first published as a whole in 1781) writes: 'The philosophical understanding (Verstand) is jealous of everything unique, everything immediately certain which makes itself true, without proofs, solely by its existence. It persecutes this faith of reason even into our inmost consciousness, where it tries to make us distrust the feeling of our identity and personality.' 'What is absolutely and intrinsically true,' he adds (v. 122), 'is not got by way of reasoning and comparison: both our immediate consciousness (Wissen)—I am—and our conscience (Gewissen) are the work of a secret something in which heart, understanding, and sense combine.' 'Notions (Begriffe), far from embalming the living, really turn it into a corpse' (v. 380).