In this transition there actually emerge two representatives of the new shape of con
sciousness. Each one sets itself apart from others in some way, but each stands in a differ
ent relation to public morality. Public morality in turn is represented in this sphere by a
further conscience that is sincerely and openly committed to upholding universal duty, but that proves in fact to be much closer in spirit to the other two consciences than it initially appears.
The first representative of the new shape turns its back on public morality and retreats into itself. For this conscience, Hegel writes, ‘all life, all spiritual essentiality, has withdrawn into this self and lost its difference from the I itself" Such conscience thus finds perfection away from public view in the inner "purity of its heart". It is divine in its own eyes not because it acts out of publicly declared conviction, but simply because it harbours deep within itself the noblest thoughts and intentions. Indeed, such conscience shies away from action altogether, because it fears that by engaging in such action it will inevitably become embroiled in selfish, worldly concerns and so sully the purity of its moral heart. The only way it can give expression to its inner purity and nobility, therefore, is through speech. Yet such speech is not understood - or perhaps even intended - to meet with any voice of recognition from others, but is, rather, the narcissistic disclosure of itself to itself: it is speech that is "immediately heard" by conscience itself and ‘only the echo of which returns to it".104
This conscience is what Hegel - following Rousseau, Schiller and Goethe - calls the
"beautiful soul".105 Such a soul pronounces itself beautiful and holy, because it holds its intentions to be pure and free from narrow self-interest. In fact, however, its self- proclaimed moral purity itself testifies to its supreme self-absorption, for conscience secures such moral purity only by refusing to let go of itself and enter into real social inter
action and communion with others. In Hegel’s own words, cin order to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with the actual world, and persists in its self-willed [eigensinnig] impotence to renounce its self. . . or to transform its thought into being". Such refusal to let go of oneself comes at a price, however, because, as Christ declared, "whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it". Accordingly, the ‘transparent purity" of its heart fills the beautiful soul not just with a feeling of its own beauty but also with ‘a sense of emptiness".
This purely inward soul is so inward and abstract that it vanishes before its very eyes "like a shapeless vapour that dissolves into thin air", and so ‘finds itself only as a lost soul"106
Together with this beautiful soul there arises a second consciousness - one that does not simply remain submerged in itself but goes out into the world and acts. Like the beautiful soul, this consciousness understands that action is always ultimately self-serving. Unlike the beautiful soul, however, it openly embraces, rather than shies away from, such self- serving action. Yet such consciousness is not nakedly self-interested like the protagonists in the life and death struggle: it still wants to be recognized by others as a moral conscience.
Public morality, at this stage in the Phenomenology, does not prescribe specific courses of action, but requires that whatever one does be undertaken - and be seen to be under
taken - in the sincere conviction that it is right and dutiful. Indeed, such morality demands that all persons aim explicitly to exl^bit the same universal, and universally recognized, personal integrity in their actions. Their task is thus not to set themselves apart from, or above, others, but to see themselves as equal members of a community of good consciences.
The new, self-interested conscience realizes, therefore, that, in order to count as moral in society, it must declare publicly that it is acting out of personal conviction in accordance with the universally recognized idea of conscientious, dutiful action. It must state that it is seeking to be good and dutiful like everyone else. Within itself, however, such conscience does not regard itself as bound by a shared, public ideal of morality. It believes itself to be free, under the cover of its public declaration, to put its own interests above those of others and, indeed, to pursue them against those of others. Such conscience recognizes, therefore,
that in its public declaration it does no more than pay lip-service to the public conception of duty. As Hegel puts it, self-interested conscience is ‘the specific individuality that exempts itself from the universal, [and] for which pure duty is only a universality that appears on the s u r fa c e that is, for which ‘duty is only a matter of words’.107
Such conscience pretends to be dutiful in the publicly recognized sense, but is all the while ‘conscious of the antithesis between what it is for itself and what it is for others, of the antithesis of universality or duty and its reflection out of universality into itself I It is thus well aware that it is a hypocritical consciousness that pursues its own self-interest while feigning to display an integrity and authenticity that seeks public recognition as something universal and equally shared by all. Indeed, it acknowledges to itself that it is ‘evil’ (bose) in so far as it aims to outdo others in direct contravention of recognized public morality.108 Yet such conscience does not by any means regard itself as simply and straightforwardly evil or hypocritical: for when it is charged by others with such hypocrisy, it immediately insists that it is justified in what it does by its own particular conception of duty and entitlement. Such conscience takes itself, therefore, to be a rightfully and righteously self- serving consciousness. Hegel sums up the complex self-understanding of such conscience as follows: ‘It admits, in fact, to being evil by asserting that it acts, in opposition to the acknowledged universal, according to its own inner law and conscience.’109 The fact that this conscience acts out of the conviction that its self-serving actions conform to its own particular sense of duty, and so justify its hypocrisy and evil, confirms that it is, indeed, the twin of the beautiful soul, born in the same logical transition that gave rise to the latter:
for both see their self-ascribed moral qualities as setting them quite apart from others.
(Since both do, however, regard themselves as moral - albeit in a highly idiosyncratic way - their sense of separateness does not turn them back into shapes of mere self- consciousness.)
The self-interested acting conscience is explicitly judged to be hypocritical by a third consciousness that speaks on behalf of universally recognized public morality and sees through the agent’s initial attempt to pass itself off as genuinely conscientious in the pub
licly recognized sense. This judging conscience appears initially to be quite different from the two representatives of the new shape of conscience. Hegel points out, however, that this judging conscience is closer to its hypocritical counterpart than it thinks (and also closer to the beautiful soul than we might imagine).
First of all, the very fact that the acting conscience does not respect public morality shows that that morality is not in fact truly universal. The judge is thus actually placed in the same position as the agent: namely, that of appealing to a law that has particular authority for him.110 Second, the judging conscience is guilty of a certain hypocrisy of its own. The judge belongs to the same world as the acting conscience and the beautiful soul and shares their view that action carried out by individuals in the name of duty is invariably selfish (a view that led the beautiful soul to shy away from action). The judge sees through the hypocrisy of the acting conscience, therefore, because he is already on the look out for such hypocrisy.
He looks at the agent’s particular action and ‘explains it as resulting. . . from selfish m o tiv e s but this is in part, at least, because he looks at every action in this way:
just as every action is capable of being looked at from the point of view of conformity to duty, so too can it be considered from the point of view of the particularity [of the doer] This judging of the action thus takes it out of its outer existence and reflects it into its inner aspect, or into the form of its own particularity. If the action is accompanied by fame, then it knows this inner aspect to be a desire for fame.111
This means that - like the ‘Kantian" moral consciousness we considered earlier - the judge is not completely serious and honest in his advocacy of public morality: for, although he says that his judgements on others promote genuinely conscientious action, his critical eye does not really allow for the possibility of such action. All action stands under the suspi
cion of being self-serving. As Hegel points out (expanding on the well known French saying), ‘no man is a hero to his valet: not, however, because the man is not a hero, but because the valet - is a valet, whose dealings are with the man, not as a hero, but as one who eats, drinks, and wears clothes, in general, with his individual wants and fancies’.
Equally, Hegel continues, ‘for the judging consciousness, there is no action in which it could not oppose to the universal aspect of the action, the personal aspect of the individuality, and play the part of the moral valet towards the agent".112
Third, the judge is also a hypocrite in so far as he advocates conscientious action, but contents himself with passing judgement on others, and, indeed, proclaims such judgement itself to be truly conscientious action. The judge suspects that action in the world will always be self-serving, and so keeps himself pure by avoiding such action altogether. In this respect, he is himself a kind of ‘beautiful soul". Yet, unlike the first beautiful soul, he does not simply withdraw from the world into his own divine interiority. He passes judgement on the world, exposes the hypocrisy o f others, and claims that he is ‘acting"
conscientiously in the process. Like the hypocritical conscience, therefore, the judge hypo
critically declares that he is acting conscientiously without actually doing so. As Hegel writes, the judging conscience ‘does well to preserve itself in its purity, for it does not act, it is the hypocrisy [Heuchelei] which wants its judging to be taken for an actual deed, and instead of proving its rectitude by actions, does so by uttering fine sentiments". Conse
quently, the judge’s ‘n a tu re . . . is altogether the same as that which is reproached with making duty a matter of mere words. In both alike, the side of reality is distinct from the words uttered."113 The difference between the two consciences is that the agent acts out of conscious self-interest while proclaiming his conformity to duty, whereas the judge does not act at all.
A further important difference is that the agent knows that he is being hypocritical, whereas the judge does not. Due to the fact that the acting conscience enjoys this clear understanding of itself, it is able, as Hegel puts it, to ‘see its own self in this other con
sciousness": for it can recognize in the judge the very hypocrisy it acknowledges within itself.114 Such a recognition in turn ushers in a significant change in the consciousness of the agent.
Up to this point the agent has held himself apart from others by putting the satisfaction of his own individual interests above those of others, while hypocritically declaring himself to be acting according to a shared conception of moral integrity. He now sees, however, that there is in fact a profound continuity and equality between himself and his accuser, for both are equally hypocritical. Nofce that the agent is necessarily led to recognize this equality by his experience of his own hypocrisy and of the hypocritical judgement passed on it. Such equality is thus something that, logically, he cannot disavow. On the contrary, he has to accept it as the new truth of his situation: he may always have thought of himself as someone special, whose interests should be privileged, but he now has to acknowledge that in truth he is just like those who judge him. The agent gives expression to this newly recognized equality in words and, in so doing, he automatically bares his soul to the judge:
he confesses his own hypocrisy. This confession completes the transformation of the agent:
for in the very act of confession the agent explicitly ceases holding himself apart and openly affirms the continuity between himself and his accuser. He says ‘Yes, I admit it: I am a hypocrite, just like you\
Confession of guilt need not, of course, always indicate that the agent has turned away from ‘evil’ self-interest: the confession may be made out of a desire to continue to be visibly evil In the current case, however, things are different: for the confession is made not just to allow the agent to pursue his selfish interests without hypocrisy and thereby to set him more firmly against others, but specifically to acknowledge the equality between the agent and his judge. The agent does not say Tes, Fm evil and there’s nothing you can do about it’, but ‘We’re alike, you and I - both hypocrites together.’ In his confession, therefore, the agent renounces his desire to stand apart from everyone else and put himself first, and seeks common ground with those who judge him. The acting conscience, Hegel writes, becomes one that has ‘renounced its separate being-for-self and thereby expressly super
seded its particularity, and in so doing posited itself in continuity with the other as a universal’.115
Accordingly, the confession is an invitation to the judge to reciprocate and confess his own hypocrisy as well, and so to establish a bond of mutual acceptance between the two.
The judge, however, is not aware that he is a hypocrite and refuses the invitation contained in the agent’s confession. He holds fast to his view of himself as the one who passes right
eous judgement on the iniquities of the agent, and he denies that the two share anything in common at all or are in any way ‘equal’. The judging conscience thus ‘repels this com
munity of nature, and is the hard heart [das harte Herz] that is^or itself and which rejects any continuity with the other’.116 In this way, Hegel claims, the judge again shows himself to be a ‘beautiful soul’, who remains immured within his own moral perfection, unwilling to let go of himself and to acknowledge any common identity with those who are not sim
ilarly pure of heart.
In refusing to acknowledge such an identity, the judge denies both that he is in any way hypocritical himself and that the agent can ever be anything but hypocritical and evil. In so doing, Hegel maintains, the judge denies that the human spirit has the freedom to change and reform itself: ‘It thereby reveals itself as a consciousness which is forsaken by and which itself denies Spirit; for it does not know that Spirit, in the absolute certainty of itself, is lord and master over every deed and actuality, and can cast them off, and make them as if they had never happened [ungeschehen machen]!117 In other words, the hard
hearted judge refuses to forgive those who confess their hypocrisy, and to accord them the freedom, in spite of their past evil, to act morally in the future. As a result, the judge - rather than the agent himself - becomes the one who perpetuates the idea that the agent cannot be anything but selfish and evil.
The figure of the judge represents, for Hegel, the pinnacle of moral self-righteousness:
the one who most explicitly locates his moral perfection in a self that stands apart from those it deems ‘sinful’. Such a judge is rigorously unforgiving, even when sinners confess their hypocrisy to him. Indeed, he sees it as his moral duty to refuse to utter words of forgiving reconciliation to such sinners.
Hegel argues, however, that - logically, if by no means always in fact - the hard heart of the judge must ‘break’ and concede that it does, after all, share a common identity with the agent. This is because the judge cannot continue to remain blind to the fact that the agent, through his very confession, has become a genuinely moral conscience that seeks to be part of a community of equals; and as soon as the judge recognizes this, he cannot but see himself - and his own stated moral commitment to universally recognized duty - in the agent. At this point, Hegel writes, the judge necessarily
renounces the divisive thought, and the hard-heaxtedness of the being-for-self which clings to it, because it has in fact seen itself in the first [i.e. the agent]. The first consciousness. . . makes itself
into a superseded 1 aufgehoben] particular consciousness, thereby displaying itself as in fact a univer
sal . . . and therein the universal consciousness [i.e. the judge] thus recognises itself.118
Like the acting conscience, therefore, the judge comes to recognize an equality between the two of them, where beforehand he had seen only an absolute difference.
With this change of heart the judge forgives the ‘evil* agent: for he no longer holds the agent’s hypocrisy and deeds against him as an indelible stain on his character - as something ‘im perishable119 - but acknowledges his freedom to cast off his hypocrisy and become moral. The readiness to forgive another, for Hegel, is thus rooted in the recogni
tion of the other’s fundamental equality with oneself as a free being. Such forgiveness, it should be noted, does not here mean simply letting someone off the hook willy-nilly and forgetting whatever he has done. It means granting to those who confess their ‘sins’ - and thereby turn to seek moral communion with their fellow hum an beings - the freedom to be moral, and not condemning them eternally for what they have done. It thus means letting moral judgement eventually give way to reconciliation. The judgement that hypocrisy is evil is not itself suspended; but the agent is not simply identified with, and
tion of the other’s fundamental equality with oneself as a free being. Such forgiveness, it should be noted, does not here mean simply letting someone off the hook willy-nilly and forgetting whatever he has done. It means granting to those who confess their ‘sins’ - and thereby turn to seek moral communion with their fellow hum an beings - the freedom to be moral, and not condemning them eternally for what they have done. It thus means letting moral judgement eventually give way to reconciliation. The judgement that hypocrisy is evil is not itself suspended; but the agent is not simply identified with, and