Page:Phenomenology of Mind vol 2.djvu/10



REASON is spirit, when its certainty of being all reality has been raised to the level of truth, and reason is consciously aware of itself as its own world, and of the world as itself. The development of spirit was indicated in the immediately preceding movement of mind, where the object of consciousness, the category pure and simple, rose to be the notion of reason. When reason "observes" this pure unity of ego and existence, the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, of for-itself-ness and in-itself-ness this—unity is immanent, has the character of implicitness or of being ; and consciousness of reason finds itself. But the true nature of "observation" is rather the transcendence of this instinct of finding its object lying directly at hand, and passing beyond this unconscious state of existence. The directly perceived (angeschaut) category, the thing simply "found," enters consciousness as the self-existence of the ego, ego, which now knows itself in the objective reality)', and knows itself there as the self. But this feature of the category, viz. of being for-itself as opposed to being immanent within itself, is equally one-sided, and a moment that cancels itself. The category therefore gets for consciousness the character which it possesses in its universal truth—it is self-contained