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[XXVIII.1.]
abstraction of itself. For consciousness itself the nullity
of the object has a positive meaning because it knows this nullity,
the objective being, as its self-alienation, because it knows that
it 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 sole act. Something therefore comes to
be for consciousness insofar as the latter knows this something. Knowing
is its sole objective relation.
It [consciousness] then knows the nullity of the object (i.e., knows the
non-existence of the distinction between the object and itself, the non-existence
of the object for it) because it knows the object as its self-alienation;
that is, it knows itself-knows knowing as object - because the object
is only the semblance of an object, a piece of mystification, which
in its essence, however, is nothing else but knowing itself, which has
confronted itself with itself and hence has confronted itself with a nullity--a
something which has no objectivity outside the knowing. Or: knowing
knows that in relating itself to an object it is only outside itself--that
it only externalises itself; that it itself only appears to
itself as an object--that that which appears to it as an object is only
itself.
On the other hand, says Hegel, there is here at the same time this other
moment, that consciousness has just as much annulled and reabsorbed this
externalisation and objectivity, being thus at home in its other-being
as such. In this discussion all the illusions of speculation
are brought together.
First of all: consciousness, self-consciousness, is at home
in its other-being as such. It is therefore--or if we here
abstract from the Hegelian abstraction and put the self-consciousness
of man instead of self-consciousness--it is at home in its other-being
as such. This implies, for one thing, that consciousness (knowing
as knowing, thinking as thinking) pretends to be directly the other
of itself - to be the world of sense, the real world, life-thought
surpassing itself in thought (Feuerbach) ~ This aspect is contained herein,
inasmuch as consciousness as mere consciousness takes offence not at estranged
objectivity, but at objectivity as such.
[XXIX.1.]
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[XXVIII.2.]
Secondly, this implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has recognised
and superseded the spiritual world (or his world's spiritual, general
mode of being) as self-alienation, nevertheless again confirms it in this
alienated shape and passes it off as his true mode of being - reestablishes
it, and pretends to be at home in his other-being as such. Thus,
for instance, after superseding religion, after recognising religion to
be a product of self-alienation, he yet finds confirmation of himself
in religion as religion. Here is the root of Hegel's false positivism,
or of his merely apparent criticism: this is what Feuerbach designated
as the positing, negating and re-establishing of religion or theology--but
it has to be expressed in more general terms. Thus reason is at home in
unreason as unreason. The man who has recognised that he is leading an
alienated life in law, politics, etc., is leading his true human life
in this alienated life as such. Self-affirmation, self-confirmation in
contradiction with itself - in contradiction with both the knowledge
and the essential being of the object - is thus true knowledge and
life.
There can therefore no longer be any question about an act of accommodation
on Hegel's part vis-à-vis religion, the state, etc., since
this lie is the lie of his principle.
[XXIX.2.]
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