Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/203

 ($$\gamma$$.$$\gamma$$.) The absolute maintenance of the finite in reflection.

Having now reached this point, we desire to see how it fares with the finite, whether it is possible to get away from it in a real and actual way, and whether it secures its right, the right, namely, to become truly abrogated and absorbed, to divest itself of finiteness, or whether it remains in its finiteness, and gets the form of the infinite merely because the infinite is a finite as contrasted with it. It would seem here as if reflection did not mean to leave standing what is for it a nonentity, and as if self-consciousness meant to deal seriously with its finiteness, and really to divest itself of it. That, however, is precisely what does not happen here. It makes a mere show of doing this. What occurs here is rather that the finite maintains itself; I cling to myself, I do not give up my nullity, but make myself infinite therein, constitute myself an active operative infinite. What we have therefore here is that the finite Ego, inasmuch as it is the positing of an infinite beyond itself, has posited the infinite itself as a finite, and is therein identical with itself as that which is in like manner finite, and now as being identical with the infinite becomes infinite itself. This is the culminating point of subjectivity, which clings fast to itself, the finiteness which remains and renders itself infinite in its very finiteness, the infinite subjectivity, which has done with all content. But this very subjectivity, this culmination of finiteness still maintains itself; in it all content evaporates, and is rendered vain; the only thing that does not vanish, however, is this vanity. This culmination has the appearance of being a renunciation of the finite, but it is just in it that finiteness, as such still maintains itself. Speaking more definitely, abstract self-consciousness, pure thought, is as it were the absolute power of negativity to make short work with everything, but the power which still maintains itself as this definite Ego, while it yields up the