handout - the UC Davis Philosophy Department

The Emergence of Spirit• The object of desire, in which consciousness finds itself, is a living thing.• Experience shows that the living other is independent of one’s self.• The self cannot of itself achieve unity with what is independent of it.• The self can attain unity with the other only if the other attains unity with it.• So, the unity of self-consciousness with itself can be attained only through itsunity with another self-consciousness.• “Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only through another self-consciousness”(Paragraph 175).• The being self-conscious for another self-consciousness is the first emergence ofspirit: “I that is We and We that is I” (Paragraph 177).Acknowledgement• The unity of one self-consciousness with another can be attained only insofar aseach self-consciousness acknowledges the other as being self-consciousness.• The acknowledgement has three double senses.• The self has come outside itself :– The self has lost itself in the other.– The self does away with the otherness of the other by seeing itself there.• In doing away with the otherness of the other by seeing itself there:– The self does away with the other.– The self does away with itself.• In the process, the self returns to itself :Reciprocity– The self gets itself back from the other.– The self lets the other go free.• The process of finding one’s self in the other, abolishing its otherness, and regainingthe self is carried out by both self-consciousnesses involved.• Each is what it is only through the other.• The acknowledgement is mutual acknowledgement.14