Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought.

emphasis added in bold characters for clarity of message
paraphrase based on:

Check out a book by the author of this Hegel website

Nostalgic Postmodernism: Postmodern Therapy

WWW.Amazon.Com

Introduction

If we ask ourselves how it is possible for human beings to know true facts, it is easy to conclude that true knowledge is not possible for humans.  Human beings have a human kind of understanding.  Our eyes are only able to see certain wave lengths of light as color, whereas another species might see a world colored differently merely because their eyes would detect and interpret the available wavelengths differently.  And just as the kind of eyes we have determine what we are able to see, so the kind of minds we have determine what we will be able to notice, think is important, and reflect on and come to feel we can understand.  Just as the structure of our eyes convert the simple wavelength into a color that we recognize, a color that looks different in different lights, next to different shades, so our minds convert the Truth of Absolute reality into a human truth that is shaded with the perspective our human understanding imposes on it.  Our needs, our desires, our habits, and the history of all of these, contaminate our view of reality.    We can understand the Absolute only by contaminating it with our human minds. 

And we cannot just subtract out the contaminated element of our perception and remove it for this would leave us either with a shapeless set of facts or else a distinctive empty place that was left by our realization that our understanding had produced a distortion.  Moreover, if we try to avoid error altogether, we will surely do so by avoiding preconceived kinds of errors, and that will also be a kind of contamination -- for our judgment as to what is an error is also subject to error. 

Regardless, anyone who wants to understand postmodern and poststructural thinkers, or even existentialists, should be at least a little familiar with Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. 

Note that the title of this book is sometimes translated as "The Phenomenology of Spirit."  This particular version I have chosen for you, calls the book I have paraphrased on this website Phenomenology of Spirit (Galaxy Books) .

We will begin with our common sense understanding of things and reason about this understanding in such a way as to achieve insight into untruths about our knowledge.  But like those engaged in science, we will maintain a thoroughgoing skepticism of authority.  Our project will involve broadly transversing fields of ideas and educating ourselves so that we can achieve a level that allows us to make better judgments. 

We need to educate our judgments because, in general, it is better to follow one's own conviction than to hand oneself over to authority.  This is not because one's opinions are better than an authority's.  The primary difference, in fact,  between one's own opinions and those of an authority's is the conceit which we hold to our own opinions.  We are much more capable of seeing the mistakes in authority's opinions.  But when we do see the flaws in the opinion of authority, our judgment is often mistaken for we are often laboring under authority's opinions with the very erroneous concepts we would criticize.  Criticizing the authority does not allow us to break with the tradition of that authority establishes. 

To achieve a superior kind of judgments, we need a more radical rejection of authority than simple criticism of another authority.   We need to be skeptical about all knowledge, especially our own.  For in order to understand things well, we need to pass through phases of imperfect understandings.  Each stage opens up new possibilities for us to achieve a deeper and more accurate picture of Absolute reality. 

But these imperfect understandings are not to be despised.  To despise and reject imperfect understanding is to create a one-sided kind of understanding that will fail to develop into a more mature and accurate understanding.   Our imperfect understanding has within it the germ of a better understanding and to dismiss its merit halts the growth of our ideas, prevents us from achieving the understanding that is possible. 

Skeptics who despise such intermediate concepts can only wait for new ideas to be cast their way, and when they receive them they can only be dissatisfied with these new ideas and discard them.  On the other hand, when the provisional misunderstanding is seen as an intermediary form of understanding, new understanding can emerge. 

The goal of refining our understanding is to get to a place in which our notions accurately correspond to the objects we seek to understand.  Only then can we find satisfaction.  To achieve this level of understanding, we must begin with a healthy skepticism about our naive concepts. 

But it is difficult for us to let go of our naive concepts.  Our attempt to improve our understanding is always hampered by the anxiety that the old ideas will be lost and also by the fear that the new ideas may not be flattering to one's old ideas.  But this clinging to the old misunderstanding is a kind of conceit which results in  unfruitful thought and blocks the way towards a growth of understanding. 

It may seem that since we are trying to come up with an accurate picture of the way we understand things, that we need a final agreed upon test of determining the truth of our knowledge, some way to determine if we have finally attained an accurate picture of things.  But this is not the case.  The truth in our minds is abstract, and although our minds may seem separate from the facts we entertain as truth, that is not clearly the case.  And any Absolute knowledge we attain must be achieved by working through this relative knowledge that our human minds makes available.

For we will see, on further reflection, that how we know things, is interwoven with what it is we know.  And any imagined test for scientific truth is merely something that the naive mind creates as a test.  It is the mind's own standard -- for we cannot invent an independent test of our mental understanding of a fact.  Any test we create is a test that our minds create to test the the accuracy of our mind's understanding.   All we can really do is examine what it is we seem to know.  We cannot get behind our own judgment of truth, so to speak, to set up independent criterion of truth. 

But when we try to compare what we have thought is true, with new information about what is true, and find these two things different, then our understanding will evolve and a new concept will be created which will conform better to the reality, and the object of our knowledge, itself, becomes different since it is partly created by our way of thinking about it and partly by our past ways of thinking about it. 

And so by a process which we will call 'dialectic' the human mind converts its knowledge as well as its consciousness of that knowledge, and it does this merely by our 'Experience'    and our reflection on that experience.  First the understanding will be chaotic, and out of this chaos will merge two different extremes, a thesis, and an antithesis.  And these extremes will, over time, merge and form a synthesis, and this process will educate our judgment and enhance our knowledge.

Of course, this is not the ordinary understanding of how we acquire knowledge.  To our ordinary understanding, it seems that when we realize that something we thought we knew was mistaken that we dispense with the old ideas and embrace the new.  But our reflection here will show us that this shift in understanding carries with it a shadow of the old way of thinking about it.  Eventually, human beings will lay aside entertaining such false intermediate notions of the objects of their study and we will reach a position in which appearance and essence are the same. Then we will have knowledge of the Absolute itself, but our task now is to chart the path of human understanding through these intermediate stages of understanding.

A. Consciousness

The first stage of human knowledge is the development of Consciousness, the awareness of objects in the world.  These objects may include people, but it is not yet an awareness that these people have their own experience, their own consciousness. 

Consciousness yields the most elemental kind of knowledge.  It is achieved in three ways: through sense certainty, through perception, and through the force of understanding.  Each of these three kinds of consciousness are increasingly more developed as we progress through life and they are all based on a dialectic process in which the chaotic reality is torn into thesis and synthesis and then merged into a synthesis, again and again. 

Sense Certainty 

The most elementary kind of knowledge is that which we gather from the perception of our senses.  We see a bird in the tree and we know that there is a bird in the tree. 

When we look around us, the source of information we can know in this way seems limitless, and it seems to be the most authentic form of knowing.  What can we know better to be true that what we see and feel with our own bodies?  This, however, is an illusion.  When we perceive situations, we inevitably make conceptual judgments about what we see.  And so, when we gather knowledge about the world through our senses, there are two kinds of information we can gather.  One is about the world and the facts it contains, and the other is about the consciousness that perceives and distorts these objects.  We notice the bird in the tree because we have time to notice it, because it is big enough to see, because our ears  are able to detect its song and appreciate it and because we find ourselves attending instead to an animal that would be easier for us to kill and eat.  The fact that we notice the bird flying overhead, therefore, tells us not only about the bird, but about ourselves. 

And as we examine and reflect on these objects we grow informed about the world fact as well as about the workings of our human minds.  As we study the world fact we see that everything is in constant interactive flux with our minds and bodies.  For example, our sense experience of World fact changes as our physical place in the world moves, and as our time of observation changes, and it changes, too, as our experience with similar objects enlightens us about this particular object. Our knowledge bathes our perceptions with increased intelligibility, but also carries with it a distortion that is specific to our particular history.

And since the truth we seek is Universal truth, we cannot get at truth by exploring such specifics.  Truth is something universal and specifics do not tell us about the universal.

Perception 

What we are calling perception here is that which sees in terms of Universals.  We not only see the cup on the table and recognize that it is there in this moment, but we judge that it is of the character of all cups and will not disappear in the next moment as real cups never do, that it will in fact hold a liquid, and allow us to drink from it, that we can put it on the shelf and unless someone takes it, it will be there in the morning for our use. 

For common sense tells us that the elements in our world, for example this cup,  exist in a kind of simple and enduring  wholeness.  The cup sits on the table, in its wholeness and simplicity.  But we create this illusion by talking about 'aspects' of the simple wholeness.  We speak of the handle, the rim, the color, the size, and because we call these 'aspects' we preserve the illusion that the cup is a simple, whole object.  And because we presume that this cup is the same as the one that looks exactly like this one on the next day, it stretches in our memory as something that exists over time. 

Or consider the case of the storm overhead, or the song that we hear in the afternoon, or the rumor or the joke.  The simple coherence of these objects as objects is an illusion we create by agreeing that certain elements are merely parts (a raindrop is not the storm, but part of the storm), and that certain configurations the next day can be counted as the same object as the previous day, justifying ourselves in claiming its singleness by a variety of rules.  And so we might say that "this is the same storm as yesterday" even though all the rain. 

But everyday understanding thinks that the cup on the shelf exists as a simple cup, not a configuration of parts of a cup, and that the box of kleenex, too, is a singular object. 

Again, our naive reliance on these simple perceptions as grounds for knowledge is based on our failure to recognize the extent to which our minds collect elementary elements in our perception and seduce us into thinking of these collections as distinct, separable and enduring objects.  Think of an ocean or a bank of snow.  Think of an hour or a hand of cards.  The unitary appearance of these objects is an illusion of the human mind. 

Force and Understanding 

The naive attitude thinks that the mind does not help to create the world around it,  but this is illusion.  We can only perceive objects our minds have learned to recognize, to distinguish, and which have importance for us.  The child who cannot yet distinguish the cat from the dog, cannot perceive this animal as a dog.  And unless the human is able to recall the recognition of this dog from moment to moment, then it can hardly think of itself as perceiving a real dog.  In ways like this, too, the mind contributes to the experience of perception and understanding. (p.179) 

And so we can say that the mind constitutes understanding.  By this we mean that the mind generates understanding.  It takes from the flux of the colors and noises around us certain patterns which our minds can learn to recognize.   We constitute our understanding by having human interests that show us what to notice, what to consider important, and because we participate in a society which has taught our human minds to make much of the patterns that we detect.  This particular difference in the pattern of objects differentiates a boot from a sandal.  It's a difference that can be useful on winter days.  But there are many differences in the objects around us that we fail to notice. And if we noticed those differences instead, our world would be a different world.  In this way, our minds constitute our worlds, our understanding. 

The way human understanding is constituted is dialectical.  This means, the whole of experience, the undifferentiated unity of chaotic form, is organized by the mind into polar opposites, which we shall call the thesis and the antithesis.  These polar opposites serve to differentiate the chaos.  A classroom of children is just a mob until one's attention is called to the fact that there are boys and girls (opposites), or black children and white children (opposites).  The "opposites" our minds create are only differences we elect to notice while other potential "opposites" are not noticed. 

These opposites, we call the 'thesis' and the 'antithesis.'  They exist as opposites only in a 'moment' of time, although this moment can exist for a varying length of time.  They polarize or separate the blur of chaos into a coherent dichotomy.  Then, as our minds reorganize and notice other opposites, the ones that had been noticed blend together again, or synthesize.  For example, we might separate the tall men from the short when we are selecting men for basket ball teams, and then we ignore height as we separate the smart men from the less intelligent for participation in a seminar.  In this way, our mental experience of the world is in constant flux and flow, and dialectical process of understanding shapes and reshapes the chaos around us.  There is an Absolute Reality existing behind all of this, but our mental veil of dialectically changing appearances hides the Absolute world of permanent reality.

In this human dialectical construction of the world of appearances, we humans objectify images making them seem to have an existence outside our minds, even though, if no one could see them, perceive them, they would not exist in the form that we understand them.   After all, our mind creates the experience of a cup by combining the sight of the cup (the wave lengths our eyes translate as sight) with the touch of the cup (the stimulation of the neurons on our finger tips) and many other perceptual experiences that are part of this cluster.  These experiences are all mediated by our human bodies, continuously translating the unintelligible, unperceivable, Absolute, which is no more outside us than within us.  Our minds construct this impression of an outside world by our complex mental process of noticing and creating differences, of categorizing them, polarizing them and synthesizing those differences as we construct new differences.

But the world of appearances, the world we construct of concrete objects, is the world of consciousness.  We are conscious of the objects we objectify, be they other people, or inanimate or animate things. In the beginning, we do not see ourselves as objects.  We have not yet constructed ourselves in the way that we construct these apparently outer objects.  We are simply perceiving consciousnesses, drinking in the patterns of shapes around us and using our minds to structure the chaos into something meaningful we see as existing 'out there.'  At this stage of our development, we have not yet reflected on our selves as minds which perceive. 

But out of consciousness can emerge a sense of ourselves as objects, we form this as a self-concept, as an ego, a personality, something or someone who can be an object for others.  Suddenly the child does not merely notice the cookie on the table, the bird on the window sill.  Suddenly the child realizes that he  may not sees the cookie when it is not hidden by the napkin, that he might be fooled, that his perception of the world is fallible, that he sometimes sees things differently than others do just because people are different.  Some people perceive the orange as good to eat, and others not.  One is an individual, perceiving the world in one's own unique way. 

But in the stage of consciousness one does not yet understand that one's self is also constructed from the chaos of impressions around and inside us.  And at this early stage we do not yet realize that our consciousness is part of the community which has given birth to our minds. 

B. Self-Consciousness

Whereas Consciousness consists of an awareness of objects, self-consciousness consists in an awareness of oneself.  In this stage of mental development there is an awareness of the self as a separate person like other people, someone who can have a name, who can make people angry, who can be seen and noticed as an object. 

The information that is used in constructing a sense of selfhood is preserved in a memory of moments.  Not all moments that one experiences are remembered and capable of being folded into a sense of self, but when people experience these moments while feeling Desire, the moments can be remembered and used to construct a sense of self. 

Desire awakens a sense of self.  Until one experiences Desire, the world is merely a world of objects, but in the moment of Desire, the self is lacking what is imagined and desired.  The Desire that is capable of constructing a sense of self  is not merely a need that the organism experiences, a discomfort that could be satisfied in some unimagined way.  Desire brings with it the picture of what is capable of satisfying that desire (even if that is not true).  In Desire, the state of longing or hunger for some imagined object, the self is capable of becoming self-conscious.  The concept of self is shaped by the object of Desire, as it is pictured in the imagination. 

This mental state of Desire that enables the birth of the sense of self is rooted in a dialectical relationship between the emerging consciousness and the desired object as it is being formed in consciousness.  First the desired object is pictured and then negated, that is judged not existing, not real,  at least it is not real for the subject who wishes to consume it.  This is followed by an emerging self that is synthesized from the imagined object and its negation.  The self is created as an entity that is lacking the object of desire.  Self-consciousness is Desire.  Desire is self-consciousness.

Humans find Desire uncomfortable but cannot abolish it.  Nevertheless, there is a positive result from the prevalence of Desire in the the human experience -- for from the dialectic flux of desire and self-consciousness there develops the notion of Mind or Spirit.

A. Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage

Desire makes possible self-consciousness, the awareness of oneself as a person among people, as an individual, but self-consciousness can only flower in fullness when another person recognizes and acknowledges that self-consciousness.   When the other person takes note that the subject is feeling Desire, then Desire is made self-reflective and self-conscious. 

Feeling bathed in the observation of the other which can penetrate and observe one's Desire, the self no longer sees the Other as an object but projects its own experience and subjectivity into the self-consciousness of the Other.   It perceives itself, therefore, in the other and imagines that it is the Other's consciousness that is perceived epathetically.   In order to effect this construction, the self must cancel what it projects other in its image of the self.

For example, a slave desiring to take a piece of cake from the table might negate the cake for himself by telling himself that he cannot have it (otherwise he would have eaten it and the cake would not create a situation of Desire).  In the presence of another person who could observe and recognizes the subject's Desire for this cake, the subject becomes self-conscious.   In this self-consciousness, the slave sees that his Desire is apprehended and he projects a Desire into the other (perhaps merely a Desire to know if the subject desires the cake) in the attempt to understand the Master's self-consciousness.  This projection of Desire into the Other allows the subject to negate the Desire in himself, for it is now a different Desire, perhaps a Desire to avoid being seen as Desiring.  And the desire and recognition of that Desire by the other form the poles of a dialectic which are synthesized in the formation of self-consciousness.

For a different example of how self-consciousness can grow out of the dialectical interaction of Desire and recognition from the Other.  Consider a person who has an impulse to steal something.  This desire becomes self-conscious as he imagines that it is recognized by another person.  Then bathed in the feeling of recognition, the other person's Desire is imagined and projected and the self-desire is transformed.  It can be transformed by subtracting from the self the desire to steal, or subtracting it from the other.  Leaving the concept of the self, or the other, a concept of an honest person. 

In ways like this we all continuously revise our picture of other people's motivations and desires.  At various stages in the dialectic, we may think that the action stems from ourselves or the other, but in truth the action is being created mutually by suspicions and expectations that keep changing as the underlying desire and self-concept also continue to evolve. 

But because self-consciousness is a consciousness of what is negated and negating something that is being pictured creates Desire, Desire is created wherever negation is created.  And so Desire to be dishonest would be created in the act of negating the dishonesty of others, and the Desire to eat the cake would be created in the act of denying that Desire.  (If one were distracted the desire might go away, but thinking about it while denying the desire for it merely intensifies the Desire.) 

Self-consciousness develops in such a dialectical interaction between self-consciousness recognizing each other and shaping each other's motivations in a continually evolving fashion. 

When the two people relating are Master and Slave, however, this dialectic deforms the self-consciousness in important ways.  Ordinarily, one's desires are pursued and satisfied and there is a healthy attachment to objects that are created in the mind that could be used in the satisfaction of Desire.  In the case of the Master, however, the Slave is merely the instrument of the Master and the enjoyment the Master has in satisfying Desire is mediated by the toil of the Slave.  The Master does not learn, therefore, that he is able to pursue the satisfaction of his own Desire, and as long as the Slave provides for the Master's Desire, the Master does not experience the Self-consciousness of Desire. 

For the slave it is the reverse.  The Slave creates an awareness of his Desire because his Desire is not satisfied, and what he wants to be is to be a Master, and this Desire will be evident to the extent that it is not stifled by fear.  It will show itself either in stubbornness (if the fear is a slight anxiety) or in rebellion, even the risking of life.  The possibility of having to endure death from the Master in order to fill his own Desire creates a dilemma that is resolved by the Slave's degree of resistance to the will of the Master.  And if it is resolved that death will be risked, to the extent that death is risked, it awakens consciousness in the Slave and recognition from the Master. 

In the meantime, by using his toil to satisfy not his own Desires, but the Desire of the Master, the slave cancels his natural dialectic attachment to existence in which Desires are pursued and satisfied or diverted and this energy feeds into his growing sense of having a 'mind of his own,'   and this mind expresses itself as some level of resistance to a simple satisfying of the Master's desires. 

And so with the Master and Slave, each contributes something to the nature of the relationship and to the motivation which inspires, prods or frightens the other.  Each may risk his life to define himself as one who will do that.  The Master may risk his life to enforce his will on his Slave and to establish fear in the Slave.  And the Slave may risk his life to rebel and establish his own identity. 

Freedom of Self-Consciousness 

Both Master and Slave strive for freedom.  The Master tries to be free by using the Slave to achieve his own desires.  But the Master is limited by the extent that the Slave can satisfies the Master's desires.  And the Slave is limited, too, by his fear that his master will kill him if he tries exert his own will.   Nevertheless, the people who form this relationship can have a form of freedom, but the attempt to maintain freedom must pass through three preliminary stages and one final stage. Stoicism, Skepticism, unhappy consciousness, are the preliminary stages and Consciousness of Reason is the final stage of freedom. 

With stoicism, the Slave is able to achieve a level of personal freedom. Freedom is limited by punishment and discipline, but the Slave who is able to tolerate and endure this discipline with stoicism, that is without yielding to it in all ways, has a level of freedom even while in bondage. 

With skepticism, people are able to free themselves mentally from the rule of authority.  Those who accept authority  completely are mental captives of other minds.  The problem with skepticism, however, is that the skeptic goes from one extreme to the other and is confused.  The opposites do not synthesize.  Freedom is purchased at the price of a whirling complexity, and skeptic falls into a focus on the unessential.  Hence, this, too, is a limited kind of freedom. 

In the stage of the Unhappy Consciousness, the skeptics' divided nature, becomes a part of the self-concept.  The person at this stage sees himself as being a person who is divided and torn and who is unhappy about it.  There is a misery that comes from wishing for a complete self-understanding  which is elusive. 

This movement towards freedom ends when it dawns on people that they have complete unity with reality.  This is the beginning of the absolute sovereignty and freedom of the mind.  Conscious Reason is supreme. 

C. Free Concrete Mind  Reason

Reason is not just a function of mind, something people do. It is a stage of mind when people are trying to understand themselves.  In this stage, people observe and analyze or reason about the observation. In the stage of Reason, people make observations and reason about those observations.  Most importantly, they observe themselves and reason about it. 

First, in observation, one categorizes oneself, calls oneself "thoughtful" for example, or "punctual."  In categorizing oneself this way, the categorizer must notice differences between himself and others and subtract from himself all elements which would blur those differences.  That is, he must overlook times in which he is not thoughtful, or not punctual.  Moreover, he must stand in relation to others who will be seen as less represented by these categories, less thoughtful or less punctual, and their opposite tendencies, too, must be overlooked.  This kind of knowledge is based on Reason, and Reason does not yield a knowledge of the Absolute Truth.  It approximates truth in a dialectical manner. 

But Reason believes that truth can be arrived at by rational means and the individual who tries to reach Truth through Reason tries to objectify concepts, to determine which of those concepts apply to himself or to other people or objects.  For example, we might create the concept of a nerve weakness and then convince ourselves that there is such a thing in nature.   Reason conceives of this process as as a discovery of something objective, but the truth that is pursued by Reason is created as much as discovered by the mind. 

Still, Reason is needed for us to make sense of our observations, and all Reason must conform to the Laws of thought (logical laws) as well as the psychological laws. 

To illustrate, physiognomists are people who make a living defining the soul of others by the shape of their facial features, and although many may believe in this, and these pronouncements may be consensually accepted, all the physiognomists give us is conjecture and their pronouncements cannot be trusted.  Yet a person may look at a person with a low forehead, for example, and feel convinced that this implies a person of limited culture.  This system of thought is made persuasive by its consensual acceptance especially by people who are in positions of authority. 

Similarly, to accept phrenological pronouncements (phrenologists are people who feel they can recognize a person's character by detecting bumps in the shape of the skull) we must accept the system of signs that designate what to be truth. , "When, ...[we say your inner being is ] so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted,' this means nothing else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality." 

If organs could did correspond to function in the simple way that Reason suggests, then each organ would have one and only one function.  It would not make sense for the penis to serve both urination and be an organ of sexual pleasure. [paraphraser's note: This example is Hegel's.] 

But the concept of human character as categorizable in the simple way suggested by Reason is a faulty concept.  Human character is flexible, evolving, and it forms and shapes itself in a dialectical fashion.  Categorizing human beings with general terms always simplifies their reality. 

The Realization of Rational Self-Consciousness 

In spite of the fact that each individual appears individual and unique, particularized, each individual's sense of personal identity, self-concept, cannot be understood apart from the community.  We shall call this the Social Order or Ethical World.  For example, a person's  wants may appear to be HIS wants, but they take their shape from the want of others, and they are satisfied not only by his own labor but require their labor or their action as well. 

And the wisest in the community are those who live in accordance with the customs of their community.  When this is the case, the individual, at one with the mind around him, does not see himself as existing in singleness and independence.    When he does realize how much his sense of fashion, his desires, his interests and concerns are shaped by the community that defines him, his confidence in his individuality will be lost. When the individual sees himself as an individual, as he must, then he will see himself as against the laws and customs.  But only by identifying with the values of the community can the individual find happiness. 

Happiness will be achieved by passing through certain stages.  First the individual must overcome hedonism.  Hedonism is a part of an early phase in the dialectical development of the human mind.  It is natural to seek pleasure, but the individual discovers that he cannot give himself pleasure while denying it to those arround him, that his own pleasure is bound up with the pleasure of others. 

Sentimentalism is another phase that the developing mind passes through.    Moral sentimentalism leads to confusion and contradiction and this does not eradicate the subjective individualism that pursues its own ends in opposition to the desires of other's.  The person in this stage tries to do good but believes goodness requires his own personal activity, feels personally responsible for the general good of the community.  Time shows that goodness, however, is not contingent on his efforts. 

But people in the stage of subjective individuality are engaged in action trying to translate a vision in their minds to a reality, and it is preparation for life in a free spiritual community. 

Spirit 

In the next stage, Spiritual development begins.  In this stage, Laws create a concrete social life that allow for individuality, in which people can be conscious of themselves as thinking people only when in communication with others.  In this stage, Spiritual existence and social life go together.  The social life begins with the simplest form, the family, and extends up to the highest experience of universal mind, Religion.  The preceding phases of experience have prepared the way for the spiritual development.  There is a social self-consciousness, and a lack of opposition, a feeling of mutual care. 

But Spirit cannot exist except through the union of opposing elements;  The first level of spiritual development comes about by the synthesis of race and gender relations to maintain the nationalities.  Then society develops through the Greek stage, the Roman stage, the Christian stage. the enlightenment stage and the morality stage. 

In the final stage (morality) the substance of spirit becomes subjectified.  People begin to experience the spirit within them.  In this stage the individual recognizes the freedom of his own will.  And his actions reflect the will of the whole so perfectly that each naturally contributes to the good of the community. 

The moral stage has stages within it as well, and during these stages each individual passes into the understanding that each individual is of equal value.  But in the early stages there is self-dishonesty for the moral consciousness tries to hide from itself.  During this phase individuals can be hypocritical. 

But in a later part of the moral stage people develop Conscience, and the soul become beautiful.  Here the individual is self-legislating.  He sees what is right and does what is right without hesitating.   The problem in this stage life is so complete that the individual may cut himself off from society, and this is a problem because Conscience has no meaning apart from society.  Society is the source of conscience.   People then try to create goodness in social isolation and it becomes a kind of self-hypnotized activity in which action is intended to produce universal good.  But because the person in this stage is self-mystified they can produce evil. 

But it is at this point that individuals begin to experience their limits and become aware of Absolute Spirit, or Religion. 

The Absolute 

And finally there is a communication with the Absolute.  Only in this final stage is there truth that is not created out of the Dialectic of Perception, Understanding, or Reason.  The Absolute exists and is not created by us.  It is not to be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited.  And at the end of this stage of development there is an understanding of Religion, and the individual has sufficient spirit to contribute to the Absolute Spirit of the universe, and to reflect it.