18440400-18440800    -BETWEEN written Karl Marx's ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS 
18440400-18440800    -BETWEEN written Karl MarxTHIRD MANUSCRIPT, Critique of Hegel's Dialectic and General Philosophy 
18440400-18440800    -BETWEEN 
This is, perhaps, the place to make a few remarks, by way of explanation 
and justification, about the Hegelian dialectic -- both in general and 
in particular, as expounded in the _Phenomenology_ and _Logic_, as well 
as about its relation to the modern critical movement.  
 
Modern German criticism was so pre-occupied with the old world, and so 
entangled during the course of its development with its subject-matter, 
that it had a completely uncritical attitude to the method of criticism, 
and was completely unaware of the seemingly formal but in fact essential 
question of how we now stand in relation to the Hegelian dialectic.  The 
lack of awareness about the relation of modern criticism to Hegelian 
philosophy in general and to the dialectic in particular has been so 
pronounced that critics like Strauss and Bruno Bauer are still, at least 
implicitly, imprisoned within Hegelian logic, the first completely so 
and the second in his _Synoptiker_ (where, in opposition to Strauss, he 
substitutes the "self-consciousness" of abstract man for the substance 
of abstract nature) and even in his _Das entdeckte Christentum_.  For 
example, in _Das entdeckte Christentum_ we find the following passage: 
 
     "As if self-consciousness, in positing the world, that which is 
     different, and in producing itself in that which it produces, since 
     it then does away with the difference between what it has produced 
     and itself and since it is only in the producing and in the 
     movement that it is itself -- as if it did not have its purpose in 
     this movement," etc.  
 
              [ Bruno Bauer, _Das entdeckte Christentum, Eine Erinnerung  
                an das achtzehnte Jahrhundert une ein Beitrag zur Krisis 
                  des neunzehnten_, Zurich and Winterthur, 1843, p.113 ] 
 
 
Or again: 
 
     "They (the French Materialists) could not yet see that the movement 
     of the universe only really comes to exist for itself and enters 
     into unity with itself as the movement of self-consciousness." 
 
                                              [ Bauer, ibid., p.114 f. ] 
 
 
These expressions are not even different in their language from the 
Hegelian conception.  They reproduce it word for word.  
 
How little awareness there was of the relation to Hegel's dialectic 
while this criticism was under way (Bauer's _Synoptiker_), and how 
little even the completed criticism of the subject-matter contributed to 
such an awareness, is clear from Bauer's _Gute Sache der Freiheit_, 
where he dismisses Herr Gruppe's impertinent question "and now what will 
happen to logic?" by referring him to future Critics.  
 
But, now that Feuerbach, both in his "Thesen" in the _Anekdota_ and in 
greater detail in his _Philosophie der Zukunft_, has destroyed the 
foundations of the old dialectic and philosophy, that very school of 
Criticism, which was itself incapable of taking such a step but instead 
watched while it was taken, has proclaimed itself the pure, resolute, 
absolute Criticism which has achieved self-clarity, and in its spiritual 
pride has reduced the whole process of history to the relation between 
the rest of the world, which comes into the category of the "masses", 
and itself.  It has assimilated all dogmatic antitheses into the _one_ 
dogmatic antithesis between its own sagacity and the stupidity of the 
world, between the critical Christ and mankind -- the "rabble".  It has 
daily and hourly demonstrated its own excellence against the 
mindlessness of the masses and has finally announced that the critical 
Day of Judgment is drawing near, when the whole of fallen humanity will 
be arrayed before it and divided into groups, whereupon each group will 
receive its certificate of poverty.  The school of Criticism has made 
known in print its superiority to human feelings and the world, above 
which it sits enthroned in sublime solitude, with nothing but an 
occassional roar of sarcastic laughter from its Olympian lips.  After 
all these delightful capers of idealism (Young Hegelianism) which is 
expiring in the form of Criticism, it (the critical school) has not once 
voiced so much as a suspicion of the need for a critical debate with its 
progenitor, the Hegelian dialectic.  It has not even indicated a 
critical attitude to Feuerbach's dialectic.  A completely uncritical 
attitude towards itself.  
 
Feuerbach is the only person who has a serious and critical attitude to 
the Hegelian dialectic and who has made real discoveries in this field.  
He is the true conqueror of the old philosophy.  The magnitude of his 
achievement and the quiet simplicity with which he present to to the 
world are in marked contrast to the others.  
 
Feuerbach's great achievement is: 
 
(1) To have shown that philosophy is nothing more than religion brought 
into thought and developed in thought, and that it is equally to be 
condemned as another form and mode of existence of the estrangement of 
man's nature.  
 
(2) To have founded _true materialism_ and _real science_ by making the 
social relation of "man to man" the basic principle of this theory.  
 
(3) To have opposed to the negation of the negation, which claims to be 
the absolute positive, the positive which is based upon itself and 
positively grounded in itself.  
 
Feuerbach explains the Hegelian dialectic, and in so doing justifies 
taking the positive, that is sensuously ascertained, as his 
starting-point, in the following way: 
 
     --  Hegel starts out from the estrangement of substance (in logical 
         terms: from the infinite, the abstractly universal), from the 
         absolute and fixed abstraction.  In ordinary language, he 
         starts out from religion and theology.  
 
     --  Secondly, he supercedes the infinite and posits the actual, the 
         sensuous, the real, the finite, the particular.  (Philosophy as 
         supersession of religion and theology.) 
 
     --  Thirdly, he once more supersedes the positive, and restores the 
         abstraction, the infinite.  Restoration of religion and 
         theology.  
 
Feuerbach, therefore, conceives the negation of the negation _only_ as a 
contradiction of philosophy with itself, as philosophy which affirms 
theology (supersession, etc.) after having superseded it and, hence, 
affirms it in opposition to itself.  
 
The positing or self-affirmation and self-confirmation present in the 
negation of the negation is regarded as a positing which is not yet sure 
of itself, which is still preoccupied with its opposite, which doubts 
itself and therefore stands in need of proof, which does not prove 
itself through its own existence, which is not admitted.  It is, 
therefore, directly counterposed to that positing which is sensuously 
ascertained and grounded in itself.  (Feuerbach sees negation of the 
negation, the concrete concept, as thought which surpasses itself in 
thought and as thought which strives to be direct awareness, nature, 
reality.) 
 
But, since he conceives the negation of the negation from the aspect of 
the positive relation contained within it as the true and only positive 
and from the aspect of the negative relation contained within it as the 
only true act and self-realizing act of all being, Hegel has merely 
discovered the abstract, logical, speculative expression of the movement 
of history.  This movement of history is not yet the real history of man 
as a given subject, it is simply the process of his creation, the 
history of his emergence.  We shall explain both the abstract form of 
this movement and the difference between Hegel's conception of this 
process and that of modern criticism as formulated in Feuerbach's _Das 
Wesen des Christentums_, or, rather, the _critical_ form of a movement 
which in Hegel is still uncritical.  
 
Let us take a look at Hegel's system.  We must begin with his 
_Phenomenology_, which is the true birthplace and secret of the Hegelian 
philosophy.  
 
 
     [ chapter and section headings ] 
     _Phenomenology_ 
 
     A.  Self-consciousness 
 
         1.  Consciousness.  
 
             (a) Certainty in sense experience, or the "this" and 
                 meaning.  
             (b) Perception or the thing with its properties and 
                 illusion.  
             (c) Power and understanding, phenomena and the 
                    super-sensible world.  
 
         2.  Self-consciousness.  The truth of certainty of 
             oneself.  
 
             (a) Independence and dependence of self-consciousness 
             (b) Freedom of self-consciousness.  Stoicism, 
                 scepticism, the unhappy consciousness.  
 
         3.  Reason.  Certainty and truth. 
 
             (a) Observational reason; observation of nature and of 
                 self-consciousness.  
             (b) Realization of rational self-consciousness through 
                 itself.  Pleasure and necessity.  The law of the 
                 heart and the madness of self-conceit.  Virtue and 
                 the way of the world.  
             (c) Individuality which is real in and for itself.  The 
                 spiritual animal kingdom and deception or the thing 
                 itself.  Legislative reason.  Reason which tests 
                 laws.  
 
     B.  Mind. 
 
         1.  True mind, morality. 
         2.  Self-estranged mind, culture.  
         3.  Mind certain of itself, morality.  
 
     C.  Religion. 
         Natural religion, the religion of art, revealed religion.  
 
     D.  Absolute knowledge. 
 
 
Hegel's _Encyclopaedia_ begins with logic, with pure speculative 
thought, and ends with absolute knowledge, with the self-conscious, 
self-comprehending philosophical or absolute mind -- i.e., super-human, 
abstract mind.  In the same way, the whole of the _Encyclopaedia_ is 
nothing but the extended being or philosophical mind, its 
self-objectification; and the philosophical mind is nothing but the 
estranged mind of the world thinking within its self-estrangement -- 
i.e., conceiving itself abstractly.  Logic is the currency of the mind, 
the speculative thought-value of man and of nature, their essence which 
has become completely indifferent to all real determinateness and hence 
unreal, alienated thought, and therefore though which abstract from 
nature and from real man; abstract thought.  The external character of 
this abstract thought...  nature as it is for this abstract thought.  
Nature is external to it, its loss of self; it grasps nature externally, 
as abstract thought, but as alienated abstract thought.  Finally mind, 
which is thought returning to its birthplace and which as 
anthropological, phenomenological, psychological, moral, 
artistic-religious mind, is not valid for itself until it finally 
discovers and affirms itself as absolute knowledge and therefore as 
absolute, i.e., abstract mind, receives its conscious and appropriate 
existence.  For its real existence is abstraction.  
 
Hegel commits a double error.  
 
The first appears most clearly in the _Phenomenology_, which is the 
birthplace of Hegelian philosophy.  When, for example, Hegel conceives 
wealth, the power of the state, etc., as entities estranged from the 
being of man, he conceives them only in their thought form...  They are 
entities of thought, and therefore simply an estrangement of pure -- 
i.e., abstract -- philosophical thought.  Therefore, the entire movement 
ends with absolute knowledge.  What these objects are estranged from and 
what they confront with their claim to reality is none other than 
abstract thought.  The philosopher -- himself an abstract form of 
estranged man -- sets himself up as the yardstick of the estranged 
world.  The entire history of alienation, and the entire retraction of 
this alienation, is, therefore, nothing more than the history history of 
the production of abstract (i.e., absolute), though, of logical, 
speculative thought.  Estrangement, which thus forms the real interest 
of this alienation and its super-session, is the opposition of in itself 
and for itself, of consciousness and self-consciousness, of object and 
subject -- i.e., the opposition within thought itself of abstract 
thought and sensuous reality, or real sensuousness.  All other 
oppositions and the movements of these oppositions are only the 
appearance, the mask, the exoteric form of these two opposites which are 
alone important and which form the meaning of these other, profane 
oppositions.  It is not the fact that the human essence objectifies 
itself in an inhuman way, in opposition to itself, but that it 
objectifies itself in distinction from and in opposition to abstract 
thought, which constitutes the essence of estrangement as it exists and 
as it is to be superseded.  
 
The appropriation of man's objectified and estranged essential powers 
is, therefore, firstly only an appropriation which takes place in 
consciousness, in pure thought -- i.e., in abstraction.  In the 
_Phenomenology_, therefore, despite its thoroughly negative and critical 
appearance, and despite the fact that its criticism is genuine and often 
well ahead of its time, the uncritical positivism, and equally 
uncritical idealism of Hegel's later works, the philosophical 
dissolution and restoration of the empirical world, is already to be 
found in its latent form, in embryo, as a potentiality and a secret.  
Secondly, the vindication of the objective world for man -- e.g., the 
recognition that sensuous consciousness is not _abstractly_ sensuous 
consciousness, but _humanly_ sensuous consciousness; that religion, 
wealth, etc., are only the estranged reality of human objectification, 
of human essential powers born into work, and therefore only the way to 
true human reality -- this appropriation, or the insight into this 
process, therefore appears in Hegel in such a way that sense perception, 
religion, the power of the state, etc., are spiritual entities, for mind 
alone is the true essence of man, and the true form of mind is the 
thinking mind, the logical, speculative mind.  The humanity of nature 
and of nature as produced by history, of man's products, is apparent 
from the fact that they are products of abstract mind and therefore 
factors of the mind, entities of thought.  The _Phenomenology_ is 
therefore concealed and mystifying criticism, criticism which has not 
attained self-clarity; but insofar as it grasps the estrangement of man 
-- even though man appears only in the form of mind -- all the elements 
of criticism are concealed within it, and often prepared and worked out 
in a way that goes far beyond Hegel's own point of view.  The "unhappy 
consciousness", the "honest consciousness", the struggle of the "noble 
and base consciousness", etc., etc., these separate sections contain the 
critical elements -- but still in estranged form -- of entire spheres, 
such as religion, the state, civil life and so fort.  Just as the 
entity, the object,appears as a thought-entity, so also the subject is 
always consciousness of self-consciousness; or rather, the object 
appears only as abstract consciousness and men only as 
self-consciousness.  The various forms of estrangement which occur are 
therefore merely different forms of consciousness and 
self-consciousness.  Since abstract consciousness, which is how the 
object is conceived, is in itself only one moment in the differentiation 
of self-consciousness, the result of the movement is the identity of 
self-consciousness and consciousness, absolute knowledge, the movement 
of abstract thought no longer directed outwards but proceeding only 
within itself; i.e., the result is the dialectic of pure thought.  
 
The importance of Hegel's _Phenomenology_ and its final result -- the 
dialectic of negativity as the moving and producing principle -- lies in 
the fact that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, 
objectification as loss of object [_Entgegenstandlichung_], as 
alienation and as supersession of this alienation; that he therefore 
grasps the nature of labor and conceives objective man -- true, because 
real man -- as the result of his own labor.  The real, active relation 
of man to himself as a species-being, or the realization of himself as a 
real species-being -- i.e., as a human being, is only possible if he 
really employs all this species-powers -- which again is only possible 
through the cooperation of mankind and as a result of history -- and 
treats them as objects, which is at first only possible in the form of 
estrangement.  
 
 
                                  [ * ] 
 
We shall now demonstrate, in detail, the one-sidedness and the 
limitations of Hegel, as observed in the closing chapter of the 
_Phenomenology_.  This chapter ("Absolute Knowledge") contains the 
concentrated essence of the _Phenomenology_, its relation to the 
dialectic, and Hegel's consciousness of both and their interrelations.  
 
For the present, let us observe that Hegel adopts the standpoint of 
modern political economy.  He sees labor as the essence, the 
self-confirming essence, of man; he sees only the positive and not the 
negative side of labor.  Labor is man's coming to be for himself within 
alienation or as an alienated man.  The only labor Hegel knows and 
recognizes is abstract mental labor.  So that which above all 
constitutes the essence of philosophy -- the alienation of man who knows 
himself or alienated science that thinks itself -- Hegel grasps as its 
essence, and is therefore able to bring together the separate elements 
of previous philosophies and present his own philosophy as _the_ 
philosophy.  What other philosophers did -- that they conceived separate 
moments of nature and of man's life as moments of self-consciousness, 
indeed, of abstract self-consciousness -- this Hegel knows by doing 
philosophy.  Therefore, his science is absolute.  
 
Let us now proceed to our subject.  
 
"Absolute Knowledge." The last chapter of the _Phenomenology_.  
 
The main point is that the object of consciousness is nothing else but 
self-consciousness, or that the object is only objectified self- 
consciousness, self-consciousness as object.  (The positing of man = 
self-consciousness.) 
 
It is, therefore, a question of surmounting the object of consciousness.  
Objectivity as such is seen as an estranged human relationship which 
does not correspond to human nature, to self-consciousness.  The 
reappropriation of the objective essence of man, produced in the form of 
estrangement as something alien, therefore means transcending not only 
estrangement but also objectivity.  That is to say, man is regarded as a 
non-objective, spiritual being.  
 
Hegel describes the process of surmounting the object of consciousness 
in the following way: 
 
The object does not only show itself as returning into the self, 
(according to Hegel that is a one-sided conception of the movement, a 
conception which grasps only one side).  Man is equated with self.  But 
the self is only abstractly conceived man, man produced by abstraction.  
Man _is_ self [_selbstisch_].  His eyes, his ears, etc., have the 
quality of self; each one of his essential powers has this quality of 
self.  But therefore it is quite wrong to say that self-consciousness 
has eyes, ears, essential powers.  Self-consciousness is rather a 
quality of human nature, of the human eye, etc.; human nature is not a 
quality of self-consciousness.  
 
The self abstracted and fixed for itself is man as abstract egoist, 
egoism raised to its pure abstraction in thought.  (We shall come back 
to this later.) 
 
For Hegel, human nature, man, is equivalent to self-consciousness.  All 
estrangement of human nature is therefore nothing but estrangement of 
self-consciousness not as the expression, reflected in knowledge and in 
thought, of the real estrangement of human nature.  On the contrary, 
actual estrangement, estrangement which appears real, is in its 
innermost hidden nature -- which philosophy first brings to light -- 
nothing more than the appearance of the estrangement of real human 
nature, of self-consciousness.  The science which comprehends this is 
therefore called phenomenology.  All reappropriation of estranged 
objective being, therefore, appears as an incorporation into 
self-consciousness; the man who takes hold of his being is only the 
self-consciousness which takes hold of objective being.  The return of 
the object into the self is therefore the reappropriation of the object.  
 
Expressed comprehensively, the surmounting of the object of 
consciousness means [the following eight points taken almost verbatim 
from _Phenomenology_, chapter "Absolute Knowledge"]: 
 
 (1) That the object as such presents itself to consciousness as 
     something disappearing.  
 
 (2) That it is the alienation of self-consciousness which 
     establishes thingness [_Dingheit_].  
 
 (3) That this alienation has not only a negative but also a 
     positive significance. 
  
 (4) That this significance is not only for us or in itself, but for 
     self-consciousness itself.  
 
 (5) For self-consciousness the negative of the object, its own 
     supersession of itself, has a positive significance -- or 
     self-consciousness knows the nullity of the object -- in that 
     self-consciousness alienates itself, for in this alienation it 
     establishes itself as object of establishes the object as 
     itself, for the sake of the indivisible unity of 
     being-for-itself.  
 
 (6) On the other hand, this other moment is also present in the 
     process, namely, that self-consciousness has superseded and 
     taken back into itself this alienation and objectivity, and is 
     therefore at home in its other-being as such.  
 
 (7) This is the movement of consciousness, and consciousness is 
     therefore the totality of its moments.  
 
 (8) Similarly, consciousness must have related itself to the object 
     in terms of the totality of its determinations, and have 
     grasped it in terms of each of them.  This totality of 
     determinations make the object intrinsically [an sich] a 
     spiritual being, and it becomes that in reality for 
     consciousness through the apprehending of each one of these 
     determinations as determinations of self or through what we 
     earlier called the spiritual attitude towards them.  
 
ad (1)  
 
That the object as such presents itself to consciousness as something 
disappearing is the above-mentioned return of the object into self.  
 
ad (2)  
 
The alienation of self-consciousness establishes thingness.  Because man 
is equivalent to self-consciousness, his alienated objective being or 
thingness (that which is an object for him, and the only true object for 
him is that which is an essential object -- i.e., his objective essence; 
since it is not real man, and therefore not nature, for man is human 
nature, who becomes as such the subject, but only the abstraction of 
man, self-consciousness, thingness can only be alienated 
self-consciousness) is the equivalent of alienated self-consciousness, 
and thingness is established by this alienation.  It is entirely to be 
expected that a living, natural being equipped and endowed with 
objective -- i.e., material -- essential powers should have real natural 
objects for the objects of its being, and that its self-alienation 
should take the form of the establishment of a real, objective world, 
but as something external to it, a world which does not belong to its 
being and which overpowers it.  There is nothing incomprehensible or 
mysterious about that.  It would only be mysterious if the contrary were 
true.  But it is equally clear that a self-consciousness, through its 
alienation, can only establish thingness -- i.e., and abstract thing, a 
thing of abstraction and not a real thing.  It is also clear that 
thingness is therefore in no way something independent or substantial 
vis-a-vis self-consciousness; it is a mere creature, a postulate of 
self-consciousness.  And what is postulated, instead of confirming 
itself, is only a confirmation of the act of postulating; an act which, 
for a single moment, concentrates its energy as product and apparently 
confers upon that product -- but only for a moment -- the role of an 
independent, real being.  
 
When real, corporeal man, his feet firmly planted on the solid earth and 
breathing all the powers of nature, establishes his real, objective 
essential powers as alien objects by externalization [Entausserung], it 
is not the establishing [Setzen] which is subject; it is the 
subjectivity of objective essential powers whose action must therefore 
be an objective one.  An objective being acts objectively, and it would 
not act objectively is objectivity were not an inherent part of its 
essential nature.  It creates and establishes only objects because it is 
established by objects, because it is fundamentally nature.  In the act 
of establishing, it, therefore, does not descend from its "pure 
activity" to the creation of objects; on the contrary, its objective 
product simply confirms its objective activity, its activity as the 
activity of an objective, natural being.  
 
Here we see how the constant naturalism or humanism differs both from 
idealism and materialism and is at the same time their unifying truth.  
We also see that only naturalism is capable of comprehending the process 
of world history.  
 
Man is directly a natural being.  As a natural being, and as a living 
natural being, he is on the one hand equipped with natural powers, with 
vital powers, he is an active natural being; these powers exist in him 
as dispositions and capacities, as drives.  On the other hand, as a 
natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being, he is a suffering, 
conditioned, and limited being, like animals and plants.  that is to 
say, the objects of his drives exist outside him as objects independent 
of him; but these objects are objects of his need, essential objects, 
indispensable to the exercise and confirmation of his essential powers.  
To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being 
with natural powers means that he has real, sensuous objects as the 
object of his being and of his vital expression, or that he can only 
express his life in real, sensuous objects.  To be objective, natural, 
and sensuous, and to have object, nature, and sense outside oneself, or 
to be oneself object, nature, and sense for a third person is one and 
the same thing.  Hunger is a natural need; it therefore requires a 
nature and an object outside itself in order to satisfy and still 
itself.  Hunger is the acknowledged need of my body for an object which 
exists outside itself and which is indispensable to its integration and 
to the expression of its essential nature.  The Sun is an object for the 
plant, an indispensable object with confirms its life, just as the plant 
is an object for the Sun, as expression of its life-awakening power and 
its objective essential power.  
 
A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural 
being and plays no part in the system of nature.  A being which has no 
object outside it, it would exist in a condition of solitude.  For as 
soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I am 
another, a reality other than the object outside me.  For this third 
object I am therefore a reality other than it -- i.e., its object.  A 
being which is not the object of another being therefore presupposes 
that no objective being exists.  As soon as I have an object, this 
object has me for its object.  But a non-objective being is an unreal, 
non-sensuous, merely thought -- i.e., merely conceived -- being, a being 
of abstraction.  To be sensuous -- i.e., to be real -- is to be an 
object of sense, a sensuous object, and thus to have sensuous objects 
outside oneself, objects of one's sense perception.  To be sensuous is 
to suffer (to be subjected to the actions of another).  
 
Man as an objective sensuous being is therefore a suffering being, and 
because he feels his suffering [Leiden], he is a passionate 
[leidenschaftliches] being.  Passion is man's essential power vigorously 
striving to attain its object.  
 
But man is not only a natural being; he is a human natural being; i.e., 
he is a being for himself and hence a species-being, as which he must 
confirm and realize himself both in his being and in his knowning.  
Consequently, human objects are not natural objects as they immediately 
present themselves, nor is human sense, in its immediate and objective 
existence, human sensibility and human objectivity.  Neither objective 
nor subjective nature is immediately present in a form adequate to the 
human being.  And as everything natural must come into being, so man 
also has his process of origin in history.  But for him history is a 
conscious process, and hence one which consciously superseded itself.  
History is the true natural history of man.  (We shall return to this 
later.) 
 
Thirdly, since this establishing of thingness is itself only an 
appearance, n act which contradicts the nature of pure activity, it must 
be superseded once again and thingness must be denied.  
 
ad 3, 4, 5, 6.  
 
(3) This alienation of consciousness has not only a negative but also a 
positive significance, and (4) it has this positive significance not 
only for us or in itself, but for consciousness itself.  
 
(5) For self-consciousness, the negative of the object or its own 
supersession of itself has a positive significance -- or 
self-consciousness knows the nullity of the object -- in that 
self-consciousness alienates itself, for in this alienation it knows 
itself as object or, for the sake of the individisible unity of 
being-for-itself, the object as itself.   
 
(6) On the other hand, the other moment is also present in the process, 
namely, that self-consciousness has superseded and taken back into 
itself this alienation and objectivity, and is therefore at home in its 
other-being as such.  
 
To recapitulate.  The appropriation of estranged objective being or the 
supersession of objectivity in the form of estrangement -- which must 
proceed from indifferent otherness to real, hostile estrangement -- 
principally means for Hegel the supersession of objectivity, since it is 
not the particular character of the object but its objective character 
which constitutes the offense and the estrangement as far as 
self-consciousness is concerned.  The object is therefore negative, 
self-superseding, a nullity.  This nullity of the object has not only a 
negative but also a positive significance for consciousness, for it is 
precisely the self-confirmation of its non-objectivity and abstraction.  
For consciousness itself, the nullity of the object therefore has a 
positive significance because it knows this nullity, the objective 
being, as its self-alienation, because it knows that this nullity 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 only act.  Hence, something comes to exist for 
consciousness insofar as it knows that something.  Knowing is its only 
objective relationship.  It knows the nullity of the object -- i.e., 
that the object is not direct from it, the non-existence of the object 
for it, in that it knows the object as its own self-alienation; that is, 
it knows itself -- i.e., it knows knowing, considered as an object -- in 
that the object is only the appearance of an object, an illusion, which 
in essence is nothing more than knowing itself which has confronted 
itself with itself and hence a nullity, a something which has no 
objectivity outside knowing.  Knowing knows that when it relates itself 
to an object it is only outside itself, alienates itself; that it only 
appears to itself as an object, or rather, that what appears to it as an 
object is only itself.  
 
On the other hand, says, Hegel, this other moment is also present in the 
process, namely, that self-consciousness has superseded and taken back 
into itself this alienation and objectivity, and is therefore at home in 
its other-being as such.  
 
This discussion is a compendium of all the illusions of speculation.  
 
Firstly, consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is at home in its 
other-being as such.  It is therefore, if we here abstract from Hegel's 
abstraction and talk instead of self-consciousness, of the 
self-consciousness of man, at home in its other-being as such.  This 
implies, for one thing, that consciousness -- knowing as knowing, 
thinking as thinking -- claims to be the direct opposite of itself, 
claims to be the sensuous world, reality, life -- thought over-reaching 
itself in thought (Feuerbach).  This aspect is present insofar as 
consciousness as mere consciousness is offended not by estranged 
objectivity but by objectivity as such.  
 
Secondly, it implies that self-conscious man, insofar as he has 
acknowledged and superseded the spiritual world, or the general 
spiritual existence of his world, as self-alienation, goes on to 
reaffirm it in this alienated form and presents it as his true 
existence, restores it and claims to be at home in his other-being as 
such.  Thus, for example, having superseded religion and recognized it 
as a product of self-alienation, he still finds himself confirmed in 
religion as religion.  Here is the root of Hegel's false positivism or 
of his merely apparent criticism; it is what Feuerbach calls the 
positing, negating, and re-establishing of religion or theology, but it 
needs to be conceived in a more general way.  So reason is at home in 
unreason as unreason.  Man, who has realized that in law, politics, 
etc., he leads an alienated life as such.  Self-affirmation, 
self-confirmation in contradiction with itself and with the knowledge 
and the nature of the object is therefore true knowledge and true life.  
 
Therefore there can no longer be any question abut a compromise on 
Hegel's part with religion, the state, etc., since this untruth is the 
untruth of his principle.  
 
If I know religion as alienated human self-consciousness, then what I 
know in it as religion is not my self-consciousness but my alienated 
self-consciousness confirmed in it.  Thus I know that the 
self-consciousness which belongs to the essence of my own self is 
confirmed not in religion but in the destruction and supersession of 
religion.  
 
In Hegel, therefore, the negation of the negation is not the 
confirmation of true being through the negation of apparent being.  It 
is the confirmation of apparent being or self-estranged being in its 
negation, or the negation of this apparent being as an objective being 
residing outside man and independent of him and its transformation into 
the subject.  
 
The act of superseding therefore plays a special role in which negation 
and preservation (affirmation) are brought together.  
 
Thus, for example, in Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_, private right 
superseded equals morality, morality superseded equals family, family 
superseded equals civil society, civil society superseded equals state, 
and state superseded equals world history.  In reality, private right, 
morality, family, civil society, state, etc., continue to exist, but 
have become moments and modes of human existence which are meaningless 
in isolation but which mutually dissolve and engender one another.  They 
are moments of movement.  
 
In their real existence this character of mobility is hidden.  It first 
appears, is first revealed, in thought and in philosophy.  Hence, my 
true religious existence is my existence in the philosophy of religion, 
my true political existence is my existence in the philosophy of right, 
my true natural existence is my existence in the philosophy of nature, 
my true artistic existence is my existence in the philosophy of art and 
my true human existence is my existence in philosophy.  Similarly, the 
true existence of religion, state, nature, and art is the philosophy of 
religion, nature, the state and art.  But if the philosophy of 
religions, etc., is for me the true existence of religion, then I am 
truly religious only as a philosopher of religion, and I therefore deny 
real religiosity and the really religious man.  But at the same time I 
confirm them, partly in my own existence or in the alien existence which 
I oppose to them -- for this is merely their philosophical expression -- 
and partly in their particular and original form, for I regard them as 
merely apparent other-being, as allegories, forms of their own true 
existence concealed under sensuous mantles -- i.e.  forms of my 
philosophical existence.  
 
Similarly, quality superseded equals quantity, quantity superseded 
equals measure, measure superseded equals essence, essence superseded 
equals appearance, appearance superseded equals reality, reality 
superseded equals the concept, the concept superseded equals 
objectivity, objectivity superseded, equals the absolute idea, the 
absolute idea superseded equals nature, nature superseded equals 
subjective spirit, subjective spirit superseded equals ethical objective 
spirit.  ethical spirit superseded equals art, art superseded equals 
religion, religion superseded equals absolute knowledge.  
 
On the one hand, this act of superseding is the act of superseding an 
entity of thought; thus, private property as thought is superseded in 
the thought of morality.  And because thought imagines itself to be the 
direct opposite of itself -- i.e., sensuous reality -- and therefore 
regards its own activity as sensuous, real activity, this supersession 
in thought, which leaves its object in existence in reality, thinks it 
has actually overcome it.  On the other hand, since the object has now 
become a moment of thought for the thought which is doing the 
superseding, it is regarded in its real existence as a continuation of 
thought, so self-consciousness, of abstraction.  
 
From one aspect the existence which Hegel superseded in philosophy is 
therefore not real religion, state, nature, but religion already in the 
form of an object of knowledge -- i.e., dogmatics; hence also 
jurisprudence, political science, and natural science.  From this 
aspect, he therefore stands in opposition both to the actual being and 
to the immediate non-philosophical science or non-philosophical concepts 
of being.  He therefore contradicts their current conceptions.  
 
From the other aspect the man who is religious, etc., can find his final 
confirmation in Hegel.  
 
We should now examine the positive moments of the Hegelian dialectic, 
within the determining limits of estrangement.  
 
(a) The act of superseding as an objective movement which re-absorbs 
alienation into itself.  This is the insight, expressed within 
estrangement, into the appropriation of objective being through the 
supersession of its alienation; it is the estranged insight into the 
real objectification of man, into the real appropriation of his 
objective being through the destruction of the estranged character of 
the objective world, through the supersession of its estranged mode of 
existence, just as atheism as the supersession of God is the emergence 
of theoretical humanism, and communism as the supersession of private 
property the vindication of real human life as man's property, the 
emergence of practical humanism.  Atheism is humanism mediated with 
itself through the supersession of religion; communism is humanism 
mediated with itself through the supersession of private property.  Only 
when we have superseded this mediation -- which is, however, a necessary 
precondition -- will positive humanism, positively originating in 
itself, come into being.  
 
But atheism and communism are no flight, no abstraction, no loss of the 
objective world created by man or of his essential powers projected into 
objectivity.  No impoverished regression to unnatural, primitive 
simplicity.  They are rather the first real emergence, the realization 
become real for man, of his essence as something real.  
 
Therefore, in grasping the positive significance of the negation which 
has reference to itself, even if once again in estranged form, Hegel 
grasps man's self-estrangement alienation of being, loss of objectivity, 
and loss of reality as self-discovery, expression of being, 
objectification and realization.  In short, he sees labor -- within 
abstraction -- as man's act of self-creation and man's relation to 
himself as an alien being and the manifestation of himself as an alien 
being as the emergence of species-consciousness and species-life.  
 
(b) But in Hegel, apart from or rather as a consequence of the inversion 
we have already described, this act appears,firstly, to be merely formal 
because it is abstract and because human nature itself is seen only as 
abstract thinking being, as self-consciousness.  
 
And secondly, because the conception is formal and abstract, the 
supersession of alienation becomes a confirmation of alienation.  In 
other words, Hegel sees this movement of self-creation and 
self-objectification in the form of self-alienation and 
self-estrangement as the absolute and hence the final expression of 
human life which has itself as its aim, is at rest in itself and has 
attained its own essential nature.  
 
This movement in its abstract form as dialectic is therefore regarded as 
truly human life.  And since it is still an abstraction, an estrangement 
of human life, it is regarded as a divine process, but as the divine 
process of man.  It is man's abstract, pure, absolute being (as distinct 
from himself), which itself passes through this process.  
 
Thirdly, this process must have a bearer, a subject; but the subject 
comes into being only as the result; this result, the subject knowing 
itself as absolute self-consciousness, is therefore God, absolute 
spirit, the self-knowing and self-manifesting idea.  Real man and real 
nature become mere predicates, symbols of this hidden, unreal man and 
this unreal nature.  Subject and predicate therefore stand in a relation 
of absolute inversion to one another; a mystical subject-object or 
subjectivity encroaching upon the object, the absolute subject as a 
process, as a subject which alienates itself and returns to itself from 
alienation, while at the same time re-absorbing this alienation, and the 
subject as this process; pure, ceaseless revolving within itself.  
 
First, the formal and abstract conception of man's act of self-creation 
of self-objectification.  
 
Because Hegel equates man with self-consciousness, the estranged object, 
the estranged essential reality of man is nothing but consciousness, 
nothing but the thought of estrangement, its abstract and hence hollow 
and unreal expression, negation.  The supersession of alienation is 
therefore likewise nothing but an abstract, hollow supersession of that 
hollow abstraction, the negation of the negation.  The inexhaustible, 
vital, sensuous, concrete activity of self-objectification is therefore 
reduced to its mere abstraction, absolute negativity, an abstraction 
which is then given permanent form as such and conceived as independent 
activity, as activity itself.  Since this so-called negativity is 
nothing more than the abstract, empty form of that real living act, its 
content can only be a formal content, created by abstraction from all 
content.  Consequently there are general, abstract forms of abstraction 
which fit every content and are therefore indifferent to all content: 
forms of thought and logical categories torn away from real mind and 
real nature.  (We shall expound the logical content of absolute 
negativity later.) 
 
Hegel's positive achievement in his speculative logic is to present 
determinate concepts, the universal fixed thought-forms in their 
independence of nature and mind, as a necessary result of the universal 
estrangement of human existence, and thus also of human thought, and to 
comprehend them as moments in the process of abstraction.  For example, 
being superseded is essence, essence superseded is the concept, the 
concept superseded is...  the absolute idea.  But what is the absolute 
idea? It is compelled to supersede its own self again, if it does not 
wish to go through the whole act of abstraction once more from the 
beginning and to reconcile itself to being a totality of abstraction 
which comprehends itself as abstraction knows itself to be nothing; it 
must relinquish itself, the abstraction, and so arrives at something 
which is its exact opposite, nature.  Hence the whole of the _Logic_ is 
proof of the fact that abstract thought is nothing for itself, that the 
absolute idea is nothing for itself, and that only nature is something.  
 
The absolute idea, the abstract idea which "considered from the aspect 
of its unity with itself in intuition [Anschauen]", and which "in its 
own absolute truth resolves to let the moment of it s particularity or 
of initial determination and other-being, the immediate-idea, as its 
reflection, issue freely from itself as nature", this whole idea, which 
conducts itself in such a strange and baroque fashion, and which has 
caused the Hegelians such terrible headaches, is purely and simply 
abstraction -- i.e., the abstract thinker; abstraction which, taught by 
experience and enlightened as to its own truth, resolves under various 
conditions -- themselves false and still abstract -- to relinquish 
itself and to establish its other-being, the particular, the 
determinate, in place of its self-pervasion [Beisichsein], non-being, 
universality, and indeterminateness; to let nature, which is concealed 
within itself as a mere abstraction, as a thing of things, issue freely 
from itself -- i.e., to abandon abstractions and to take a look at 
nature, which exists free from abstraction.  The abstract idea, which 
directly becomes intuition, is quite simply nothing more than abstract 
thought which relinquishes itself and decides to engage in intuiting.  
This entire transition from logic to philosophy of nature is nothing 
more than the transition -- so difficult for the abstract thinker to 
effect, and hence described by him in sich a bizarre manner -- from 
abstracting to intuiting.  The mystical feeling which drives the 
philosopher from abstract thinking to intuition is boredom, the longing 
for a content.  
 
The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his 
essence -- i.e., from his natural and human essence.  His thoughts are 
therefore fixed phantoms existing outside nature and man.  In his 
_Logic_, Hegel has locked up all these phantoms, conceiving each of them 
firstly as negative -- i.e., as alienation of human thought -- and 
secondly as negation of the negation -- i.e., as supersession of this 
alienation, as a real expression of human thought.  But since this 
negation of the negation is itself still trapped in estrangement, what 
this amounts to is in part a failure to move beyond the final stage, the 
stage of self-reference in alienation, which is the true existence of 
these phantoms.  
 
[Marx note: That is, Hegel substitutes the act of abstraction revolving 
within itself for these fixed abstractions; in so doing he has the 
merit, first of all, of having revealed the source of all these 
inappropriate concepts which originally belonged to separate 
philosophers, of having combined them and of having created as the 
object of criticism the exhaustive range of abstraction rather than one 
particular abstraction.  We shall later see why Hegel separates thought 
from the subject; but it is already clear that if man is not human, then 
the expression of his essential nature cannot be human, and therefore 
that thought itself could not be conceived as an expression of man's 
being, of man as a human and natural subject, with eyes, ears, etc., 
living in society, in the world, and in nature.] 
 
Insofar as this abstraction apprehends itself and experiences an 
infinite boredom with itself, we find in Hegel an abandonment of 
abstract thought which moves solely within thought, which has no eyes, 
teeth, ears, anything, and a resolve to recognize nature as being and to 
go over to intuition.  
 
But nature, too, taken abstractly, for itself, and fixed in its 
separation from man, is nothing for man.  It goes without saying that 
the abstract thinker who decides on intuition, intuits nature 
abstractly.  Just as nature lay enclosed in the thinker in a shape which 
even to him was shrouded and mysterious, as an absolute idea, a thing of 
thought, so what he allowed to come forth from himself was simply this 
abstract nature, nature as a thing of thought -- but with the 
significance now of being the other-being of thought, real, intuited 
nature as distinct from abstract thought.  Or, to put it in human terms, 
the abstract thinker discovers from intuiting nature that the entities 
which he imagined he was creating out of nothing, out of pure 
abstraction, in a divine dialectic, as the pure products of the labor of 
thought living and moving within itself and never looking out into 
reality, are nothing more than abstractions from natural forms.  The 
whole of nature only repeats to him in a sensuous, external form the 
abstractions of logic.  He analyzes nature and these abstractions again.  
His intuiting of nature is therefore only the act of confirmation of his 
abstraction from the intuition of nature, a conscious re-enactment of 
the process by which he produced his abstraction.  Thus, for example, 
Time is equated with Negativity referred to itself.  In the natural 
form, superseded Movement as Matter corresponds to superseded Becoming 
as Being.  Light is the natural form of Reflection-in-itself.  Body as 
Moon and Comet is the natural form of the antithesis which, according to 
the _Logic_, is the positive grounded upon itself and the negative 
grounded upon itself.  The Earth is the natural form of the logical 
ground, as the negative unity of the antithesis, etc.  
 
Nature as nature -- i.e., insofar as it is sensuously distinct from the 
secret sense hidden within it -- nature separated and distinct from 
these abstractions is nothing, a nothing proving itself to be nothing, 
it is devoid of sense, or only has the sense of an externality to be 
superseded.  
 
     "In the finite-teleological view is to be found the correct premise 
     that nature does not contain the absolute end within itself." 
 
Its end is the confirmation of abstraction. 
 
     "Nature has revealed itself as the idea in the form of other-being.  
     Since the idea in this form is the negative of itself, or external 
     to itself, nature is not only external relative to this idea, but 
     externality constitutes the form in which it exists as nature." 
 
                                                         [ Hegel p.225 ] 
 
     "For us, mind has nature as its premise, since it is nature's truth 
     and, therefore, its absolute primus.  In this truth, nature has 
     disappeared, and mind has yielded as the idea which has attained 
     being-for-itself, whose object as well as subject is the concept.  
     This identity is absolute negativity, for, whereas in nature the 
     concept has its perfect external objectivity, in this its 
     alienation has been superseded and the concept has become 
     identical with itself.  It is this identity only in that it is a 
     return from nature." 
 
     "Revelation, as the abstract idea, is unmediated transition to, the 
     coming-to-be, nature; as the revelation of the mind which is free it 
     is the establishing of nature as its own world; an establishing 
     which, as reflection, is at the same time a presupposing of the 
     world as independently existing nature.  Revelation in its concept 
     is the creation of nature as the mind's being, in which it procures 
     the affirmation and truth of its freedom." 
 
     "The absolute is mind; this is the highest definition of the 
     absolute." 
 
                                                           [ p.392,393 ] 
 
 
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