Observation of Self-Consciousness in its Purity and in its Relation to

External Actuality: Logical and Psychological Laws

167 298.Observation of nature finds the concept realized in inorganic nature as
laws, whose moments are things which at the same time behave as abstractions.
However, this concept is not a simplicity reflected into itself. On the
other hand, the life of organic nature is only this simplicity reflected into
itself, the opposition of itself as the opposition of universal and singular
which does not break apart within the essence of this life itself. The essence
is not the genus, which in its undifferentiated elements separates itself and
moves itself, and which at the same time would be for itself undifferentiated
within its opposition. This free concept, whose universality has that developed
singularity just as absolutely within itself, is found by observation
only in the concept existing as the concept itself, or in self-consciousness. 299. While observation
now turns back around into itself, and it directs
itself to the actual concept as the free concept, it finds first of all the laws
of thought. This singular individuality, which thinking is in its own self, is
the abstract movement of the negative taken entirely back into simplicity,
and the laws lie outside the bounds of reality. – To say they have no reality
generally means nothing but that they are without truth. To be sure, they
are also supposed not to be the entire truth but nonetheless to be formally
true. Yet “the purely formal without reality” is itself a thought-thing,55 that
is, an empty abstraction without any estrangement in it, an estrangement
which, if it were there, would be nothing else but the content itself. – But
on the other side of the coin, while they are the laws of pure thinking, and
pure thinking is in itself the universal and is thus knowing that immediately
has being and thereby has all reality in it, these laws are absolute concepts,
and they are inseparably the essentialities both of form and of things. Since
universality which moves itself within itself is the estranged simple concept,
the concept has in this way a content in itself, the kind of content which
is all content but is not a sensuous being. It is a content that is neither
in contradiction to nor separated in any way from the form; rather, it is
essentially the form itself, for the latter is nothing but the universal dividing
itself into its pure moments.
300. However, just as this form or this content is for observation as observation,
it also acquires the determination of a found content, a given, i.e.,
only existing content. It becomes a motionless being of relations, a set of
detached necessities, which, as a rigidly fixed content in and for themselves, 168
are supposed to have truth in their determinateness and in that way are
in fact extracted from the form. – However, this absolute truth of fixed
determinatenesses or of many various laws contradicts the unity of selfconsciousness,
or it contradicts the unity of thinking and form as such.
What is declared to be a fixed and constant law in itself can be only a
moment of the unity reflecting itself into itself; it can come on the scene
only as a vanishing magnitude. However, if in the course of being studied,
they are torn away from the context of movement and are arranged as singulars,
then these determinatenesses are not lacking in content since they
in fact have a determinate content. What they lack is form, which is their
essence. In fact, it is not because they are supposed to be only formal and
to have no content that these laws are not the truth of thinking; rather, it is
for the very opposite reason, namely, because it is in their determinateness,
or just as a content from which the form has been taken, that they are supposed
to count as something absolute. In their truth, as vanishing moments
55 Gedankending. in the unity of thinking, they would have to be taken to be knowing, or to

be the thinking movement, but not taken to be laws of knowing. However,

observation is not knowing itself, and it does not recognize56 that it is not
knowing; rather, observation inverts its nature into the shape of being, i.e.,
it grasps its negativity only as laws of being. – Here it is sufficient to have
pointed out the invalidity of the so-called laws of thinking on the basis of
the universal nature of what is at issue. The more precise development of
this belongs to speculative philosophy, in which those laws prove themselves
to be what they are in truth, namely, singular vanishing moments
whose truth is only the whole of the thinking movement, or knowing itself.
301. This negative unity of thinking is for itself, or it is instead beingfor-
itself, the principle of individuality, and within its reality it is an active
consciousness. Observing consciousness will thus by the very nature of the
matter which is at issue57 be guided towards it according to its being the
reality of those laws. While the way this all hangs together is not something
which itself is for observing consciousness, the observing consciousness
supposes that in the laws of thinking, thinking itself in one respect
stands off to the side to observational consciousness, and in another respect
thinking acquires another way of being58 in what is now to observing consciousness
the object, namely, the acting consciousness which is for itself in
such a way that it sublates otherness and has its actuality in this intuition
of itself as the negative.
302. For observation, a new field is thus opened up in the acting actuality
of consciousness. Psychology contains the class of laws according to which
spirit conducts itself in various ways towards the various modes of its actuality
as an only found otherness. In part, spirit receives these into itself so that
169 it comes to be according to these only unearthed habits, mores, and ways of
thinking as the kinds of items within which it is, to itself, as actuality and
as an object. – In part, it knows itself to be self-active against them, and
with inclination and passion, it selects out for itself only what is particular
in them, and thus makes what is objective come to be adequate to itself. In
the former, it conducts itself negatively towards itself as singularity, and in
the latter it conducts itself negatively towards itself as universal being. –
According to the first aspect, self-sufficiency gives to that which is only
found the form of conscious individuality as such, and in view of the content,
it remains within the bounds of the only found universal actuality.
However, according to the other aspect, it at least gives universal actuality
a distinctive modification which does not contradict its essential content,
56 kennt es nicht. 57 Natur der Sache. 58 ein anderes Sein. or else it also gives it the kind of modification by which

the individual, as
particular actuality and distinctive content, opposes itself to that universal
actuality – and as the individual sublates that universal actuality in an
only singular manner, that opposition becomes a crime; but when it does
so in a universal manner which thereby acts for all, it brings about another
world, other rights, other laws, and other mores which replace what had
been present.
303. Observational psychology, which at first expresses its perceptions
of the universal modes which present themselves for it in active consciousness,
discovers all sorts of faculties, inclinations, and passions, and while
in its recounting of this collection, the recollection of the unity of selfconsciousness
does not allow itself to be suppressed, observational psychology
must at least get to the point of being astonished that in spirit so many
sorts of contingent things of so many heterogeneous sorts can be alongside
one another in the way they would be in a sack, especially since they
show themselves to be not motionless dead things but to be instead restless
movements.
304. In recounting these various faculties, observation stays put within
the universal aspect. The unity of these diverse abilities is the aspect
opposed to this universality, that of actual individuality. – It can grasp and
recount again the different actual individualities, for example, that one person
has more inclination to this, whereas another person has more inclination
to that, that one person has greater intellect than another, but all
this is even less interesting than enumerating the species of insects, mosses,
and so on, for these latter give observation the right to take them singularly
and as devoid of concepts because they essentially belong to that element of
contingent separation. Conversely, to take conscious individuality so spiritlessly
as a singular existing phenomenon has the contradiction that the
essence of individuality is the universal of spirit. However, while comprehension
allows individuality at the same time to come on the scene in the
form of universality, comprehension finds individuality’s law, and now it
seems to have a rational purpose and a necessary task to pursue.
305. The moments constituting the content of the law are, on the one
hand, individuality itself, and on the other hand, its universal inorganic
nature, namely, its circumstances, situations, habits, mores, religion, and
so forth, and it is from these moments that determinate individuality is 170
to be comprehended. They contain what is determinate as well as what is
universal, and they are at the same time something present and available 59