Hegel's "Unhappy Consciousness" (Part One)

Introduction to Close Reads

0:00This is Close Reads, a philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. I'm Wes Alwyn. And I'm Mark Lentenmeyer.

0:09It is a new dawn for Close Reads, but yet more of the same on Partially Examined Life. We have just now started reading more of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and in fact have rejected the peach copy, the Miller translation, in favor, at least, at least, at least, at temporarily for the Terry Pinkard version, which is one that is available online. And I wanted to look at another part of the self-consciousness chapter.

Self-Consciousness Chapter

0:40So we sort of started our whole treatment on Partially Examined Life with a self-consciousness chapter, including the famed master-slave dynamic that we just talked about in our last episode on Fanon, commenting on that. But then right after that was the stoicism part that we have treated on this podcast, where something has gone wrong in the process of self-consciousness in that the person sees himself as entirely, I am the essential, only what I think of things, right?

1:13As Epictetus says, what happens out there doesn't matter unless I deem that it matters. That's not the quote for Epictetus. Do you remember the exact quote? Nothing's good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That's at least part of it. That's Shakespeare, but yeah. Oh, right, right. But that's the stoic credo, yeah. It is nothing to me, right? The external events are nothing to me. It's only my own virtue, my own reactions to things.

Hegel's Critique of Stoicism

1:40So, but in any case, Hegel thinks this is pathological because you are denying the reality and that it matters of the external world. And then right after that is a short section on skepticism, which he just sees as just worse than stoicism in that you're not just saying it doesn't matter from a values perspective, but I'm not even sure it's there. That's why it doesn't matter from a values perspective, because for all I know, I could be a brain in a vat, etc.

Skepticism and Unhappy Consciousness

2:10So actually, Descartes ends up having, insofar as he outlines in ethics at all in his works, is a stoic. But right after that, so this is going to be section 206, which is in the Terry Pinker translation, page 123 or PDF, page 170 in the link that I will probably send you unless I just clip out this bit on the unhappy consciousness. So the whole section is just called Stoicism, Skepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness.

2:40And I was thinking, you know, we already discussed on this podcast, the section after this on reason. And I thought this was easily skippable. It's just another pathological state in which I have some sort of externalized voice in my head. I have divided the self, but I don't I haven't closed the circle. I haven't realized that this is actually me. So that's unhappy. But in recently reviewing this section in running up to a teaching session, I discovered this was way more involved and strange than I thought.

3:13So I thought it was worth our time to actually read through it. Do you have any memories of this or?

Routledge Guidebook to Hegel's Phenomenology

3:20Well, coincidentally, I was just reading about it yesterday in the Routledge guidebook to Hegel's Phenomenology, which I highly recommend. I had gotten to this section in the Routledge guidebook. So we're going to we're going to be discussing a stage that grows out of skepticism. And I think it's describing a although I'm not sure even even after reading the guidebook because I have to go over it. But I think it's we're talking about Stoic or early or medieval Christianity is inspired

3:52by Stoicism to some extent. But it although it supposedly grows out of skepticism. So we're going to find a new internal contradiction and really a form of alienation that the unhappy

Alienation and Unhappy Consciousness

4:06consciousness will try to resolve by such things as asceticism or devotion and prayer, this kind of alienated version of God where we try to overcome the distance between between him and us. But can't really do it. Yeah, I was. That was what surprised me is I didn't remember that there was talk of priests, that there was there was an overtly religious element when we haven't yet gotten to the religion section in this book. I thought it was just, you know, we get ourself built by running into another self-consciousness

4:41and now I'm a self-consciousness recognizing you as a self-consciousness. Yay. We are together as spirit. And we already saw in our reading looking through the reason chapter that comes right after this that at least there are more steps in between there that there's this whole let's be idealists. So everything ends up being a subdivision of the eye, every every category of thing that I can can scan before me. What happens to other people in that situation? It seems like it's pathological in some ways, just like what we've been talking about here.

5:15All right. Well, so we're zooming in on this little bit. Let's let's see how much of it we can get through.

Section 207 Discussion

5:20Section 206. Please proceed, Wes. In skepticism, consciousness experiences itself in truth as a self-contradictory consciousness. From out of this experience, there then arises a new shape which brings together the two thoughts which skepticism keeps us under. That's two very clear sentences from Hegel. Can we get a third? I mean, we don't know what he's referring to exactly, but it's just there's no in itself

5:55or anyway skepticism's thoughtlessness about itself has to vanish because it is in fact one consciousness that has these two modes in it. This new shape is thereby one that is for itself, the doubled consciousness of itself as self-liberating, unchangeable, self-equal self-consciousness, and of itself is absolutely self-confusing, self-inverting, and it is the consciousness of its being this contradiction.

6:28In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the simple freedom of itself. In skepticism, it realizes itself and annihilates the other aspect of determined existence, but on the contrary, it doubles itself and is to itself now something twofold. The doubling, which was previously distributed between two singular individuals, the master and the servant, is thereby brought back into one singular individual. Although the doubling of self-consciousness within itself, which is essential in the concept of spirit, is thereby present, its unity is not yet present, and the unhappy consciousness

7:04is the consciousness of itself as a doubled, only contradictory creature. So what he's talking about, right, in Stoic freedom, we had some measure of independence from the world because there's nothing good out there in itself. That part is all in the head, and if we realize that, we can be less flustered by the world. That's the wrong word, but that's just for some reason the one that came to mind. And then with skepticism, right, everything is just appearance, as you pointed out, Mark.

7:38We can't know, I think, you know, it's not just that we can't know what is true, right, the things in themselves are inaccessible, but the part that we do have access to in a way is constructed, right? So it annihilates the other aspects of determinate existence. But what's this doubling part? Right. Although the doubling of self-consciousness within itself, which is essential to the concept of spirit, so that's interesting. I mean, we know this from the very beginning of the self-consciousness chapter, that to have any sort of sense of self-consciousness, you have to double it.

8:13Well, let's see. So initially, the breaking off is the just trying to look at myself. And so basically, you create a me. You have the I, the observing part, and you have the me that you're looking at. That's not yet a fully doubled self-consciousness, because I immediately realize that the I is the me. That was the whole point. I'm trying to look at myself. As we go through and get to master and slave, then we say essential for this not to just be a short circuit that is just this cycle that completely whips around really fast, which he

8:46does think is life, right? There's something, it is the dialectic. It is an example. The dialectic is maybe the prime example of the dialectic, but we need a full something that we recognize as a separate self-consciousness. And that sort of makes us stop and beefs up our sense of self-consciousness. So and as you were pointing out at some point, right, we we couldn't recognize another person as another self-consciousness unless we somehow had this capability. We were primed for it,

9:16right? It's sort of like Chomsky's. You have to have this whole language system ready in order to learn language that, you know, no you talking to your dog is never going to, like, give it a sense of self-consciousness in the way that you have a sense of self-consciousness. It is not ready for that. So part of that is to be able to internalize somebody else's self-consciousness as a second self-consciousness within your own consciousness, right? To imagine it, to put yourself in the other person's shoes, to see through their eyes, because you can't literally see through their eyes. So you

9:49have to have a doubled self-consciousness. And this is what is required to really recognize somebody else as an other and trade ideas with them. This is at least what I think that spirit is going to be, is just the ability for us to speak in a public space, a common language, trades, ideas, memes. We're sharing a group mind in a certain way just because we have the shared culture. Yeah. I mean, I think the doubling in this case, the schism comes from the fact that,

10:21right, Kant gives us this kind of, he gives something and then he taketh away. What he gives us is he allows us not to be skeptics about science by saying we have this immediate access to all the appearances. But then he says there's this beyond, there's these things in themselves from which we are inevitably alienated. And one of those is God. So we can't know things in themselves. Only God in a sense can know things in themselves, but we, it doesn't take us out of

10:55tension with the desire to get to this beyond. And I think that's where, you know, what we're going to see in the next session sections are ways of, uh, these attempts by unhappy consciousness to bridge that gap in light of the fact that we can't have direct knowledge. So how would a transcendent beyond, what does that have to do with having a doubling of self-consciousness within myself? Because one part of me says, I only have access to the appearances. There's just our appearances.

11:28And the other part says, Oh, actually there are things in themselves. I just don't have access to them. Um, I think that's the epistemological layer. Yeah. How, I'm not sure how self-consciousness is involved in that at all. I mean, from an analytical point of view for Kant, it is a matter of an analysis of the self to say, we only know the appearances because as you said, we are constructing the appearances, but it's not even clear if you're just talking about, you know, the description of a, of a, according to Kant of a person in an ordinary knowledge situation, they're, they're not engaged in transcendental philosophy. They're

12:03not engaged in self-consciousness at all. And nobody said that in order to, you know, to know the appearances to know our constructions is to be self-conscious. That's a form of self-consciousness. We, we put our minds into the appearances. Our mind are the appearances are part, part us, part mind. Um, he says this in previous sections. Sure, sure. But it's self-consciousness that we don't, maybe you're describing exactly what the issue is here. It's a self-consciousness that we don't know is a self-consciousness, right? I don't know. I think that this glass,

12:36whatever is just an objective thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah. But in fact, it is just knowing the glass is a form of self-consciousness because I created the glass. The glass is, is part of myself. The glass is, uh, as he's going to say in the reason section, a, a subdivision, uh, or at least the category glass, the category physical object, the category unity, the category number, these are subdivisions of the category I. Yeah. From the standpoint of a Kantian, which I think,

13:06when he's talking about skepticism here, he is right. There's, it's human skepticism is partly the target. I think he was fonder towards ancient skepticism than modern skepticism, but his target really here is modern skepticism where I think Kant kind of gets lumped into that category, even though Kant is trying to say he's overcoming skepticism to say that all we have access to the, is the appearances is a very skeptical idea. But you see, Hume doesn't worry about this distinction with, you know, with, between the appearances and the things in themselves, right? Kant introduces

13:42that division. And that is, I think the division on which unhappy consciousness is premised because for Hume in a way, God does and other things in themselves just get bracketed out and they go away. But Kant says, Ooh, no, we have to have, it's still a matter of faith. You know, we can't know things in themselves, but we can have this faith relation to them. And so that's the division. We're going to divide things into knowledge and faith. I think it becomes clear. I think it becomes clear in these later sections. I'm not just, um, sure. Sure. I think you're, you're, you're causing

14:17me to rethink my whole interpretation of the relation between these various parts of the book in that. I thought that in the first few sections, he's talking about knowledge, but then he makes this pivot to self-consciousness, which is not a form of knowledge of the outside world. It is trying to understand that I am a being that is engaged in relations with the outside world, self-consciousness in the sense that we ordinarily understand it, that I can stop. I can, uh,

14:48eventually reason, right? I can, uh, it gains me freedom. So it's, it's phenomenologically, but you seem to be saying that this whole thing is still working its way through the history of epistemology. So we have, uh, I'm not sure who, what figure is represented by the, the, the moment of force and understanding, but that we should interpret pretty much this whole section throughout, including master slave as a Kantian comment on epistemology. And then per your, uh, interpretation

15:21of the reason, we're just following the sections on stoicism and skepticism, right? Yeah. So unhappy consciousness is supposed to emerge out of a contradiction within skepticism, right? So the car in skepticism, consciousness experiences itself in truth as a self-contradictory consciousness, the contradiction arises within skepticism. So I guess, is it within skepticism as a theory of knowledge or is it within skepticism as a form of life? Are those different things? Do you see

15:55what the, what the difference is that I'm saying, right? You could say, yeah, I mean, if you're thinking of a, for ancient skeptics, right? Yeah. There was a way of life associated with skepticism called ataraxia where you, you refrain from any, it's like just not, not being, um, tranquility perturbed tranquility. Yeah. You refrain from making any judgments about things, you know, you're, you're, we, we can't know. And therefore, because you're not, it's, it's, it's, there's similarities to

16:30skepticism, obviously, but because we can't know, we're not as perturbed by the world, right? Because all our, all our, our desire and frustration, all those things follow on thinking that we know something about the world. And if we don't, then, um, we can be more tranquil. So there is a way of life associated with ancient skepticism. I don't know, but I do think his target here is, um, is more modern skepticism. I do think he's pivoting off of the Hume and, and the immediate

17:04developments after that. And I don't know what way of life is associated with that, except that it's somewhat atheistic, I think in Hume, but in Kant, you, you get an attempt to have your cake and eat it too. And I think that's part of what, what's going on here is the, is this division between wanting to have, wanting to say, we can only know the appearances, but we can still have this other, you know, so we're alienated from things in themselves, but so somehow we're going to have these other relations like prayer. It's a little unclear because I was making an association to

17:38medieval Christianity because of asceticism and prayer and things like that. But like, I mean, this is part of the problem of this is it's not purely historical, right? Because Kant, you know, medieval asceticism precedes Kant, obviously, and skepticism doesn't fit neatly into this because there's ancient skepticism and then there's modern and the medieval comes in between, but. All right, let's read, uh, section 207. Because to itself, this contradiction of its essence is

18:08one consciousness, the unhappy and estranged consciousness within itself must always have in one consciousness that of another consciousness. But just when it thinks itself to have achieved victory, to have achieved restful unity with the other consciousness, each must again be immediately expelled from the unity. However, its true return into itself or its reconciliation with itself will exhibit the concept of spirit that has been brought to life and has entered into existence because in it, as one undivided consciousness, it is already a doubled consciousness. It itself is the

18:46beholding of a self-consciousness in an other. It itself is both of them and to itself, the unity of both is also the essence. However, for itself, it is to itself, not yet this essence itself, nor is it yet the unity of both. So we get a little recapitulation of some master-slave stuff and the way self-consciousness is predicated on internalizing the consciousness of another, which I think he's just saying is not enough here at this point. We're still divided in a sense. That doesn't mean that

19:20we've become a kind of unity. Yeah, I'm not sure. So when, right, when it thinks itself to have achieved victory and to have achieved restful unity, each must be immediately expelled from the unity. Is that just because, right, if somehow, if it's a real other person, then of course it is expelled from the unity, right? Even if I think somehow your conception of me and my conception of me, I've internalized you as a super ego or something, but I realize that that's all me,

19:51how does the internal version of you, of society, need to be expelled again immediately? Like, the actual you out in the world, of course you need to be, if I think for one second, we're one, like, well, that doesn't work out because you have a transcendence and your own shit going on. But if I've already internalized it and it's just, you are the voice of, you know, Norman Bates' mother, you've become internalized. Can't I just get over that and realize, oh,

20:21this is actually just me talking and achieve tranquil unity? Why does it invariably, you know, not just in pathological cases like his, have to be expelled? Yeah. Other than pointing to the division, you know, that he points to in 206, which I gave my interpretation, it may turn out to be wrong, but as having something to do with a division that arises from within skepticism, I don't know how else we explain the schism here that's coming. So it itself

20:54is both of them, and to itself, the unity of both is also an essence. However, for itself, not yet this essence itself, nor is it the unity of both. Yeah, I think we're going to have to read on to figure that out. All right. Well, at first, it is only the immediate unity of both, but while for it, the two are opposed consciousnesses and not the same consciousness, one of them, namely the simple unchangeable unchangeable is to itself as the essence, the other. However, the manifold be

21:28changeable as the inessential. For it, both are essences that are alien to each other. Because it is the consciousness of this contradiction, it itself takes the side of the changeable consciousness and is itself inessential. All right. So the contradiction here, maybe the previous section isn't exactly about the rest with the other consciousness. The other consciousness, yeah, I don't know that that's master-slave in 207. I think it's just the two sides. The two consciousnesses

22:03that come out of the split in 2006, in 206. Right. So when he says the one consciousness and the other consciousness, he's just talking about the two sides of the split. If it doesn't make sense to us to say that the thing in itself, the Kantian inaccessible is necessarily a self-consciousness, we at least can think that that includes, and this is going to be very important for the previous and the following section, other people. So it's certainly not one

22:34self-consciousness that I think is the rest of the world, but it involves self-consciousness. I'm recognizing the world as at least one instance of self-consciousness. And, you know, obviously many instances of self-consciousness and maybe a bunch of things that are not self-consciousness, but that's not what necessarily we're worried about. So if you, if you see, right, this is why I was talking about a form of life that it, if I'm skeptical about the existence of other minds, that's, that's a real personal problem. That's not just an epistemic mistake. That is narcissism.

23:09That is, I am positing myself as the essential, right? This is kind of why stoics make me a little sick because, oh, it only matters what I think of things, what other people think of things. Oh, that doesn't matter. Like that's a great defense mechanism when you're Norman Bates trying to fend off your mother. But when you're just trying to live in a world with people, like you actually, this is Rorty talking through me. You actually have to subject your views, your opinions about what is good and bad to a social enterprise that we are engaged in together. That is going to be

23:41what spirit is. So it is, you are, you're trying to say, I don't have to participate in the public spirit. I am just, I am self-contained. I can either from a values perspective or with stoicism, with a values and knowledge perspective, just say what I've got going in here, this self-consciousness, this is the essential. What is out there is the inessential. I'm not really realizing per the whole cont, ficta, whatever, that I am somehow implicated in both. And I have to regard both as essential and actually ultimately as me in a sense, right? I end up being the social in a certain way,

24:17right? I'm not, not because we're Emersonian, all of our souls are merging, but because the software that I use to think is public is open source public software, and you're a fool if you think that you just created all that yourself, for instance. Yeah. I'm still feel like I'm not understanding. So, and now I'm thinking, well, understanding in this, in Kantian terms is helpful, but maybe really he is focused on ancient skepticism. That's one thought, or at least the kind of, right, ancient Greek skepticism precedes Stoicism, I think, but then there's a Roman version that's

24:55kind of contemporaneous with Stoicism. Were the ancients concerned, do you recall, with the problem of other minds specifically? I thought they were more encountering, like, the pre-Socratics and the folks like that that were wondering, like, what is the ultimate basis of matter? And they were like, well, we can't know. I'm fine with that. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out what this division is between the two consciousnesses in an unhappy consciousness. And I think one of them has access to the appearances, but the other is bothered by not having access to things in themselves and the

25:31beyond and all that. That's the working hypothesis. And that goes, whether it's for ancient skepticism skepticism or for modern skepticism. But now we're getting some kind of, in 207, we're trying to fuse that with master-slave stuff. Must always have in one consciousness that of another consciousness.

25:53Which I, so at 27, all right, we kind of bracketed, it's not fully clear yet. And then 208, the two are opposed consciousnesses and not the same. One of them is to itself, as the essence. The other is... The simple unchangeable. Right. So, okay. So now we get a contrast between the unchangeable essence and the changeable, which is inessential. And so maybe is the unchangeable essence like the substance, you know? I was thinking it was the Cartesian subject,

26:29the cogito, that is unchangeable. And then the rest, the phenomena... It's almost like the distinction, Kant's distinction between noumenal self and then phenomenal self for the ego as appearance, right? Our inner psychological life, which is a flux and a change. Right. I thought for Kant, the one that I have actually access to is the phenomenological self. So that I would identify the flux as me, right? Because he's basically a Humean on this point. Whereas the transcendental

27:04self, the soul is posited as the simple, unchangeable beyond. But it seems like Hegel is saying the opposite of that here. He's saying that what I identify myself as, right, as maybe the Cartesian cogito, is not with the flux that I'm beholding, but with the simple observer that does not change. But that then everything else becomes the flux. The world that I'm beholding, the world that I, as Stoic, was saying is unimportant. The world that is as skeptic, I was

27:34saying, I don't know the meaning of any of this. It's just a play of images. Yeah, I would go farther than observer that that aspect of the Cartesian and say, yeah, self is substance. So the unchangeable substance versus the flux. Yeah. Myself, the phenomenal self as I experience it. Okay. Stream of consciousness. For it, both are essences that are alien to each other. All right. So this now, this is now making sense to me because it is the consciousness of

28:04this contradiction. It feels it itself takes the side of the changeable consciousness and is to itself the inessential. Okay. Takes the side of the changeable conscious. I kind of get that based on what we've been saying. It is to itself the inessential. If it's taking side of the changeable, how does it become to itself the inessential? Simply unchangeable is to itself as the essence. The other is the inessential, but for it, from the point of view of the inessential,

28:38which we can sort of, it's part of us. We could put our, we could imagine ourselves in its shoes for it. Both are essences that are alien to each other. So from the point of view of the flux, the flux itself and the supposedly unchangeable self that I think that I am are alien to each other. I'm not sure why he's saying that. But in the contradiction, it takes the side of the changeable and then is to itself the inessential. What is to itself the inessential? The consciousness

29:10of the contradiction is to itself the inessential? Maybe that's what. Yes. So the inessential side is the consciousness of the contradiction. Whereas I could just from the naive point of view, right? Seeing myself as the essential and sort of just dismissing everything else. I don't see it as my contradiction. I just see it as something I'm not going to worry about. Yeah. I think that's what's going on here. Yeah. But you do realize that this is a real conflict. On some part of you, the part of you that you're rejecting, that you're abjecting.

29:44But this is, yeah, I just bracket out the whole problem of the noumena and don't think about it and then take the side of, yeah, right? The phenomenon. All right. However, as consciousness of unchangeableness or of the simple essence, it must at the same time concern itself with freeing itself from the inessential. Well, that to me means the changeable then. Anyway, freeing itself from the inessential. Well, what is the it here? Is the it still the side of the inessential,

30:15which it was in the previous paragraph? Because it is the consciousness of the contradiction. It itself takes the side of the changeable concept and is to itself the inessential. However, as consciousness of unchangeableness or the simple essence, so are we going back to the first position or are we still saying that somehow the second position has become, now can detect simple essences from its side? I've lost track of the pronouns is what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, the split is between consciousness of changeableness and of unchangeableness.

30:46So as consciousness of unchangeableness, it must free itself from the inessential, which is the changeableness, which means to free itself from itself. For whether it is indeed for itself only the changeable and the unchangeable is to itself something alien, it is in that way itself simple and there by unchangeable consciousness. It is thereby aware of the unchangeable consciousness as its essence, although it is still aware of it in such a way that for itself, it itself is

31:20again not this essence. The stance that it assigns to both thus cannot be an indifference of one to the other, that is, cannot be an indifference of itself with respect to the unchangeable. Rather, it is immediately itself both of them and for it, it is the relation of both as a relation of essence to the inessential in such a manner that this latter is to be sublated. The latter inessential changeableness is to be sublated. However, while both are to itself equally essential and equally

31:56contradictory, it is only the contradictory movement in which the opposite does not come to rest in its own opposite, but instead newly engenders itself only as an opposite within. Within it, yeah. Oh, Hegel, you just, yeah, just degenerated into contradiction. So this is not any easier than the Miller. It's making me want to just read the same section in the Miller and see if it's any clearer.

32:27Well, yeah, I mean, I was, yesterday I was comparing all the translations and I was finding Miller actually the most readable, but then we have to deal with his special language, like the notion and all that stuff that these guys wanted to get rid of. So I would say we should investigate a little more before we choose a translation. Seth and Dylan aren't going to start reading it. So we can, we have time to do that. But anyway, yeah, I agree. I don't find this more clear than the Miller and I don't find the Inwood clear either. I don't find any of them

33:00that the Miller, I think the Miller is probably the most clear so far, in my opinion. So let me, let me just start reading section 208 that you just read in the Miller and we'll see if it is significantly different at all. At the very least, I was sort of fumbling around to try to find it on the web while you were reading it. So I didn't get everything that you just read and I don't want you to have to read it again. So I'm going to read this other translation. All right. And I'm going to compare them as you read. Okay. All right. Since it is to begin with only the immediate unity of the two. And so takes

33:31them to be not the same, but opposites. One of them, namely the simple unchangeable it takes to be the essential being, but the other, the protein changeable, it takes to be the unessential. The word protein was certainly not right. The two are it's the protein. That's a, it's translated as manifoldly changeable here. That's weird. I mean, those don't mean the same thing, but the other, the protein changeable it takes to be the unessential. The two are for the unhappy consciousness alien to one another. And because

34:06it is itself the consciousness of this contradiction. So here it's saying the unhappy consciousness is consciousness of the contradiction. Whereas Pinkard was saying for it, both are essences that are alien to each other. In other words, for the inessential side of the equation, this is just saying the unhappy consciousness, the whole phenomenon that we're talking about. Mm hmm. So this means a different thing. Okay. For the unhappy consciousness alien to each other, because it is itself the consciousness of this contradiction, it identifies itself with

34:40the changeable consciousness and takes itself to be the unessential being. Okay. So he says identifies itself with the changeable. Yeah. Pinkard says, takes the side of the changeable, which is much less clear to me. So, so I think Miller, right, he's interpreting. Mm hmm. And so that's a, that's a benefit and a deficit at the same time. So Miller says, takes the side of means. Pinkard is much more literal, I think. So, so Miller is saying, takes the side of means identifies itself with, which to me is a

35:13much clearer way of putting it, if he's right about the interpretation. But at least we understand, we've read so much of the Miller that then, you know, his, the word notion is not going to scare us. This identification, like this is, this is what we think is. Yeah. We might, we might need to stick, stick with the Miller. Yeah. Because so far, yeah. My experience is, it's just, it's an easy, it's, it's, it's a more enjoyable read. It's a better, yeah, it's clear. But as consciousness of unchangeableness or of simple essential being, it must at the same time set about freeing itself

35:47from the unessential, i.e. from itself. For though it indeed takes itself to be merely the changeable and the unchangeable is for it an alien being, yet it is itself a simple, hence unchangeable consciousness. And hence is aware that this consciousness is its own essence. Although in such a way that again, it does not itself take the essence to be its own. All right. So here I didn't, this is where I lost track of the, the pronoun and the pinkard. And this, at least I'm clear what the pronoun is referring to, right? The unhappy consciousness is taking itself to be,

36:22I think what is added here is as if there is three homunculi, there is the point of view of, you know, the stoic or the skeptic that is the observer I was calling, you were saying it's a little more than that. And then the abjected other is the other consciousness that we're playing with. Whereas in Miller, the unhappy consciousness is the overall phenomena that we're talking about. And you can just say the unhappy consciousness can sort of race from one side to the other. So it's as if there's a third, you know, we got the id and the superego and here's the ego

36:55that's running back and forth between them. I don't know if that's the same, you know, maybe this is less true to Hegel than pink art is being, but at least makes more sense to me. Yeah. I mean, he, I think he's making some interpretative decisions, but it's, that makes it much easier to read. Do you want to finish it? And I, I think maybe we should try the inward here, at least a few sentences. Sure. Sure. Why not? After you done. All right. The attitude it assigns to both cannot therefore be one of mutual indifference. That is, it cannot be indifferent toward the unchangeable. Rather, it is itself directly

37:30both of them. And the relation of the two is for it a relation of essential being to the unessential so that this latter has to be set aside. But since for it, both are equally essential and contradictory, it is merely the contradictory movement in which one opposite does not come to rest in its opposite, but in it only produces itself afresh as an opposite. I've again lost the thread just in trying to pronounce these words in a row. All right. Let's try, let's try inward third, third times a charm. I'm sure we're going to

38:01fully understand this now. PDF page 137. All right. So you're still going to read 136. Okay. Yeah. Since it is initially only the immediate unity of the two. Okay. But for it, the two are not the same, but opposed one of them, namely the simple unchangeable is to it as the essence, but the other, the multiple changeable. Okay. Multiple was manifold and multiple was protein in the other translations. The multiple changeable is as the unessential. I don't really

38:35like multiple changeable. I think manifold would be better there. Yeah. Is as the unessential. What does protein actually mean? Something is versatile, adaptable. Proteus is the, is the shape-shifting God. Yeah. So right for Kant, like I'm, I, is this the same word that Kant used for the manifold, right? Is this a term of art? There's a lot of questions here because if it's Kant's manifold, then that's just sense data, unorganized, you know, buzzing confusion of sense data before they get organized by the categories. So probably not exactly, but, but it, you know,

39:11it'd be interesting to know if he's using that word manifold and if it's supposed to be associated with that. I mean, obviously there's at least a loose association because we're talking about the changeable. So that maybe the word protein is supposed to get at that, that shape shifting unformed quality of the changeable, like the indeterminacy of the changeable. I just, for some reason was, was, uh, thinking of it as primal, but that's not what that means. So. All right. The multiple changeable is as the unessential. The two are for it essences that are alien to one another. And because it is the, because it is itself the consciousness of this

39:46contradiction, it ranges itself on the side of the changeable conscious, it ranges itself. Okay. Takes the side of, identifies it. Yeah. That ranges itself on the side of the changeable consciousness and is to itself the unessential, but as consciousness of unchangeableness or of the simple essence, it must at the same time set about freeing itself from the unessential that is freeing itself from itself. For though it is for itself only the changeable and the unchangeable is for it

40:19something alien, yet it is itself simple and hence unchangeable consciousness, a consciousness of which it is thus conscious as its essence, but in such a way that for itself, again, it itself is not the essence. What does that one sentence mean? What does that mean? Well, right. For itself, only the changeable, that makes sense, right? With just our stream of consciousness, the way we grasp ourselves.

40:50But it is simple. The unchangeable is something alien, right? There's this alien numinal substance, Cartesian substance underneath that. Okay. The unchangeable is the alien, yet it is itself simple. All right. The it. So it's unhappy consciousness in general. I thought it was the side of the inessential that it's, and maybe it's just a matter of whenever you take a point of view, then the locus of that point of view is a simple. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So that's like

41:22the Cartesian observer now, as opposed to the Cartesian substance. And from that standpoint, yeah, I think that's right. So even though it's consciousness, it's like William James's spotlight, right? Yeah. So even though it's a stream of consciousness, there's also a spotlight. Yeah. It itself is itself simple and hence unchangeable. Consciousness, a consciousness of which it is thus conscious as its essence, but in such a way that for itself, again, it itself is not

41:52this essence. Okay. I kind of get that now in light of this new way we're looking at it. Well, is it just because it has identified or unhappy consciousnesses are already identified the side one as the essence, the essential is the essence. And now, hey, imagine yourself as side two, put yourself in the range of the inessential. Hey, well, insofar as your point of view, you are simple. And so you are thus the essence, right? If it's your point of view, you're going to, but

42:24I also recognize that I am a creation of the other side of side a, and so I'm not the essence. And so it's sort of, you've created this fiction that realizes it's a fiction. Yep. Okay. The position it assigns to the two cannot therefore be an indifference of them towards each other. All right. Yeah. They're just not, they're not going to just, right. Because we flip back and forth between them. Yeah. That is not an indifference of itself towards the unchangeable. Rather, right, so we can't just say, bracket out the noumena and say, okay, maybe they're out there

42:55and, but we're not going to think about it. Rather, it itself immediate, it is itself immediately both of them. And the relation of the two is for it as a relation of the essence to the non-essence. So that the latter is to be sublated, but. So the relation of the two is a relation of the essence to the non-essence, whichever one we take to be the essence or the non-essence, because it flips back and forth. Yes. But since for it, both are equally essential

43:25and contradictory, it is merely the contradictory movement in which the contrary does not come to rest in the contrary, but with it, it only generates itself anew as a contrary. All right. So it sounds like a cycling. Is it, is this clear because it's the third time we've read it or is it clear because it's a better translation? I was going to ask the same question. I don't know yet. Maybe we should, should we read to 09 and the end?

Conclusion and Future Plans

43:51Yes. Yes. Start with the inward. All right. Yeah, sure. Here then we have a struggle against an enemy. Victory over whom is rather a defeat. Where attainment of the one is rather the loss of it in its contrary. Consciousness of life, of its being there and activity, is only grief over this being there and activity. For it has in this only the consciousness of its contrary as the essence and of its own nothingness. It passes over out of this into an ascent to the unchangeable.

44:25But this ascent is itself this consciousness. So the ascent is the consciousness of the contrary, namely of itself as singularity. The unchangeable that enters into consciousness is by this very fact at the same time affected by singularity and is only present with the latter. Far from having destroyed singularity in the consciousness of the unchangeable, singularity only emerges constantly in it. By the way, the one benefit of the inward is he does a commentary where he explains each section at the end.

44:55Do we want to see what he says about this section? And the other thing is he's translating Dasein as being there, which is kind of controversial because it's Heideggerian. And then it's the way, let's see, let's see the way Pinkert translates it. So consciousness of life of its existence. So Pinkert and Miller, I think, are both going to just say existence. Consciousness of life of its existence and activity is only an agonizing over this existence

45:25and activity. For then therein it is consciousness that its essence is only its opposite is conscious only of its own nothingness. It seems about, well, so nothingness that wasn't there before. Wait, so why don't you read the Miller? I was reading the Miller there. Could you do the whole thing?

45:45Uh, yep. Yeah. Here, this is 209, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Here then we have a struggle against an enemy to vanquish whom is really to suffer defeat where victory in one consciousness is really lost in its opposite. Consciousness of life of its existence and activity is only an agonizing over this existence and activity for there, therein it is conscious that its essence is only its opposite is conscious only of its own nothingness. Raising itself out of this consciousness, it goes over into the

46:16unchangeable, but this elevation is itself the same consciousness. It is therefore directly consciousness of the opposite, namely of itself as a particular individual. Okay. So Inwood calls that singularity, which I find to be very confusing. And Miller very conveniently says particularly individual, which is very clear, much clear, but God, the unchangeable that enters into consciousness is through this very fact at the same time affected by individuality and is only present with the latter individuality. Instead of having been extinguished in the

46:52consciousness of the unchangeable only continues to arise there from extinguished in the consciousness. I think we have to stick with the Miller. Well, should we say what, see what Inwood's commentary about this is? Yeah. PDF page 570 in the Inwood. The enemy is the changeable in attaining one of the opposites, the unchangeable, the overseer consciousness loses it in its opposite, the changeable, the overseer consciousness. Okay. It is discontented with its worldly life regarding

47:22itself as nothing in contrast with the essence. So it ascends to the unchangeable, focuses its consciousness on it. But this ascent is performed by itself as singularity, and this infects the unchangeable. Singularity cannot be eliminated from its consciousness of the unchangeable, hence the victory is pyrrhic. Why I switch from changeable to singularity? Perhaps because it is more obvious that in its ascent, it must remain singular than that it must remain changeable,

47:52but also to prepare the way for the next section. So Pinkert is also going to use individuality, not singularity. So this Inwood thing is just far too technical and wants to give some literal translation of the German that then we're supposed to figure out. It's just not going to, it's not going to work. Well, and I don't know that because we said, right, right. Miller has his own rephrasing later in, in the book of these sections, and they don't really help that much either because they're

48:25still basically using the same terminology. And I see the exactly the same thing in the Inwood here that I don't know that this really cleared anything up for me. Should we see what Miller's own take on 209 is? Yeah. Give me a PDF page. 209 is PDF page 562 in the Miller that, and it has one sentence 209 just Miller says what this whole thing means is the unhappy consciousness cannot unite

48:58itself with its unchangeable essence without importing changeableness into that essence. And so starting a fresh cycle of struggle and misery. Well, that's, that's actually kind of helpful. That's snappy. That does not just repeat the same. Yeah. That's helpful. All right. So it's trying to get to the unchangeable, but it always imports changeableness in that process. Yeah. That is a nice little succinct way of putting it. All right. Well, we have reached the end of our hour.

49:28And instead of learning almost anything about the unhappy consciousness, we have instead investigated the translations that are available and decided that we are right the first time and Miller wins. And so I think the partially examined life, despite our, I don't know if the other guys have put a lot of time into the pink herd. No, they have not even started it. They have not started. I had only started the first section as of yesterday and was like, this is hard. I need, I need to close read. I read the

50:00first, I read the first section yesterday and then went to the privilege guide. Yeah. Have you revisited the, um, Greg Sadler half hour Hagel lectures on these sections? I think you had said, I haven't. I don't, I don't find them very helpful. I listened to a lot of them. I don't. Is it because the same thing that we're pointing out with Inwood and, and is that he just uses the same language that he's describing and doesn't necessarily relate it to the, the actual world? It's not exactly that he's trying

50:33to be, but it's just too vague to be helpful to me. So it is like that in a way, but, but it's more, it's not that he's just repeating technical language. It's just that he's giving very, a very vague overview of the, um, of what the section is supposed to be about. So I, I haven't, I didn't find it helpful, but you might, I mean, I would, I definitely found them helpful to like refresh. Like after I had gone through my own very painful sentence by sentence, then to hear him read them. Okay. That reminds me that's somebody else reading it. I mean, just any, did I say that

51:09I got the audio book for this? No. Yes. So in, in, uh, teaching this self-consciousness chapter for the, uh, the second time is the series of big books and kind of philosophy, which of course is like my fifth time reading that section, the Lordship and bondage. I just felt like, uh, it was right there in audible. It kept keeps prompting it at me because I've gotten being in time and similar things. And so I just like, I'll use my audible credit. And I listened from the beginning and just

51:40having, you know, the, the joy of an audio book is it keeps cranking forward, even if you kind of space out and you can always, you know, jump back 30 seconds or whatever, but that as a way of reviewing like, okay. So I was following through the preface or the, uh, there's the preface and then there's the, another intro. I think the preface is the bad one. The preface is the one that he wrote when he finished the whole book, but I got through that and I thought I really understood it. Then the intro itself, which is, which is great. Uh, then the sense certainty and the, uh, perception when I got to

52:11force an understanding, like this is way longer than I remember it. And I almost completely tuned out. So I feel like that could, I know we already had an episode on it. I don't want to necessarily spend more time on it, but it was not as effective with that. But then yes, for going through the sections that we were studying, that was fine. But then I let it keep going and, and, uh, you know, okay. Even though we just covered the stoicism in close reads, this was still challenging and surprising to me, listening to it. I was still having trouble following every sentence and then when it got to this unhappy consciousness, this is why we were doing this today because like

52:44the audio just went on way longer than I remember the ideas being here. So I guess here's a, here's the immediate question. Do we want to do another session in the Miller on the unhappy consciousness next week? Or do you want to? Yeah. Okay. All right. So we'll hopefully get to some of the actual ideas other than there's something vaguely, you know, schizophrenic, vaguely associated, dissociated identity disorder in the unhappy consciousness. We've at least established that so far. There's a division that keeps reasserting itself that is related to epistemology, but also in

53:21the way that we live in relation to epistemology. Yeah. Okay. Well, so we'll do that. And, uh, you know, who knows how far we'll get in it or how many sections we would have to, I guess the, this is now our, our third take on Hagel on this book in recent memory. And I am really interested to hear from our listeners, whether this is helpful, whether this is painful, whether this is really only benefiting the two of us, because if, unless you're like actually following along on the page, like we are,

53:54you just absolutely have no idea what's going on or whether we are stumbling into the actual ideas enough that it makes it useful to you. If reading it three times in a row doesn't, doesn't help in different translations, then yeah. I feel like there are at least a few sentences in here that we actually decoded that like, yeah, we did. I would not have been able to do so before. And maybe that's what this requires, which just means it is not only impossible to do justice to on close reads, but it's probably impossible to do justice to period without devoting your life to this book.

54:27Yeah. And all because it's poorly written. Well, and, and this makes me, he could have, could have been clear, whatever you might think of the Sadler half hour, the fact that he got through the whole book and he presented this in that form. I don't know. It seems like it's a great service to mankind. Yeah. So thanks everybody. If you liked, if you liked this, yeah, sure. Go give us five stars on the iTunes store, whatnot. If you want to get this part too, you do have to pay us money. You have

55:00to go to patreon.com slash close reads philosophy, or if you're a partially examined life supporter, you just update your support there to the $10 level from the $7 level. So it's actually a little cheaper to do them as a, as a bulk than to do $5 by itself on the, on the standalone Patreon close reads page. But in any case, however many of these we do, whether it's a two or maybe eight to get through the whole thing, you will, you will witness it all. Otherwise we'll see you when we see you. Bye. All right. Bye. Close reads is a partially examined life podcast. See partially

55:34examined life.com. We're distributed through the evergreen podcast network. See evergreenpodcast.com slash close reads philosophy. And you can also find us at close reads philosophy.com or just look up close reads on your favorite podcast, listening platform.