804

[R Srivatsan]

804.  Spirit is not only a negative withdrawal into itself (stoicism), not the mere dissolution of the self into the world of substance (Spinoza, Fichte), nor yet the abstraction of the absolute which dissolves all detail and determination in the world (Schelling).

Spirit is rather the movement of the self (not simply the equality of the self with itself as described critically in the previous paragraph) which moves outside its limit and submerges in substance (immerses itself in the world around it, observing, judging, desiring), and then, withdraws from substance and reflecting on it, making that substance into an object with a content, sublating the difference between objectivity and content:  thus turning the objective substance into matter. 

This first withdrawal from substance is the self-dividing concept, the becoming of the pure I.  Since this withdrawal is the self-movement of I = I, it means that this I thinks the existence of the outside from which it withdraws.  The concept, i.e., the differentiation of the world, its articulation in thought, the dawning of being-there, i.e., the knowledge of the existence of a reality out there which has its own truth and exists (this is, I think, Kant's notion of the noumenon). But going beyond this, the subsistence of a Dasein, or a specific being there for itself, is also a concept (a thought process) posited determinately, it is a specificity.  Thus, it is also within itself a logical operation in substance which shows itself to the differentiated I in its specificity and difference.

Thus the I in the Hegelian pattern no longer has to cling to its form of individual self-consciousness (the model as a hypostatized synthetic unity of apperception, Kant) against the substantiality and objectivity, which in truth exists as a spiritual being .  Rather the I here is comfortable in its alienation from itself in its having plunged into reality and equal to itself in that estranged position.  Best example, the confessing soul and the community that forgives it -- both different from each other, but at the same time embracing each other.

This Hegelian I, is also not a tertium quid (a third being, which we know not what it is) that looks at these differences and disposes them into an absolute night in which all cows are black (Schelling is referred to here).  

The Hegelian I rather is a seemingly inactive knowing which emerges from the one undifferentiated substance, comprehends how and why what is differentiated moves within itself and comes back to unity.

Srivats

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R Srivatsan
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There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work … in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion. - Simone de Beauvoir