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Thomas Khurana

September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

Consciousness of Life and Self-Consciousness


Some Reflections on a Transition in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit
I. Additive and Transformative Models of Human Spirit
In my presentation today I will confine myself to a rather limited task: to investigate a certain
transition that Hegel presents in the Phenomenology of Spirit at the beginning of the chapter on
The Truth of Self-Certainty (Die Wahrheit der Gewiheit seiner selbst). In this chapter,
Hegel introduces a particular conception of self-consciousness by departing from a certain
consciousness of life. It is a common idea that the animal and the human self can be
distinguished by reference to the fact that human beings operate essentially as self-conscious
beings. Hegel, as many other philosophers, subscribes to this idea. If we look at his philosophy
of nature and his philosophy of spirit, we will find that Hegel makes explicit use of this
contrast: Although animal life is to be considered, in Hegels view, as a basic form of
subjectivity and is marked by a certain relation to itself that Hegel calls self-feeling
(Selbstgefhl), it lacks a self-relation that Hegel calls self-consciousness and which he
reserves for the sphere of spiritual life. Animals can be characterized as self-like or self-ish
Hegels German term is selbstisch (ENZ II 350, 9:430; 363, 9:479) but they are not a
self for themselves: they are not self-conscious. The essential question, of course, is how to
understand self-consciousness more precisely and how to characterize this feature of human
spiritual life in its relation to animal life. I will take a closer look at the transition in the
Phenomenology in order to illuminate Hegels answer to these questions. I will argue that the
Phenomenology highlights the way in which the form of self-consciousness is intimately related to
the form of animal life.
Before I enter this short, but notoriously over-determined passage of the Phenomenology, it
might be helpful to place Hegels view generally in a broader context of views on the relation
of animal and self-conscious life. With a distinction that is probably very familiar in this
context here in Leipzig, a distinction proposed by Matthew Boyle and others, we can oppose
additive and transformative conceptions of the rational animal. According to the additive
picture which seems to be dominant in the contemporary philosophy of mind, we understand
the concept of a rational or self-conscious animal as describing an animal that has an
additional feature: a peculiar capacity that is added to a number of capacities the respective
being shares with related animals. Put crudely, a rational animal is an animal plus rationality,
or, life plus self-consciousness, as it were. According to this picture, the step from mere animal

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

life to spirit consist in certain higher faculties being added on to the theoretical and practical
abilities of the animal organism that already sensibly perceives and instinctively manipulates
and assimilates its environment. In the additive picture, the basic capacities are understood in
such a way that they basically remain intact and are supplemented by capacities that can act
on them from without: Our additional rational capacities allow us to process and evaluate our
sensory input further, they give us the possibility to inhibit, select or modify our given vital
impulses and tendencies, but they do not inherently modify the basic capacities as such. These
capacities remain fundamentally the same in the sentient and the sapient being.
Such a conception might appear suggestive at first, in so far as it accounts both for the fact
that human beings seem to share essential abilities with animal beings and the fact that they
make use of these abilities in quite distinct ways. At the same time, the additive picture raises a
number of deep problems. Empirically, it has turned out to be very difficult to pin down a
specific cognitive ability in human beings that is not also to be found, at least in some basic
form, in some other species of animal life. Conceptually, the additive picture renders
mysterious the precise nature of the interaction of the merely animal and the rational
capacities and leaves the very unity of the rational being unexplained. If a rational animal is
defined by a merely additional rational faculty, it seems that its rationality remains external to
all its basic faculties so that rationality can only be understood as a form of external
domination or imposition. This seems to be an unfortunate picture of rationality, unable to
explain the unity of our spontaneous and receptive capacities.
To avoid the problems that surround the additive picture, it was thus suggested that we
should rather develop a transformative conception of rationality. Rational animals are not
animals with additional rational capacities, but animals of a different sort. Rationality in this
sense concerns a difference in genus in the Aristotelian sense: a fundamental difference that
distinguishes different species of a common genus in such a way, that the genus itself is thereby
differentiated. As Aristotle has it: in two living beings, say a human and a horse, we do not
only find something shared, namely that they are both living animal beings, but this common
feature for both means something different: not only must both be animals, but this very
animality must also be different for each ..., and so this common nature is specifically different
for each from what it is for the other. ... This difference, then, must be an otherness of the
genus. For I give the name of difference in the genus to an otherness which makes the genus
itself other.1 Rationality thus does not consist of a separate stratum of capacities added to the
capacities we share with animal beings, rationality rather describes the fundamentally

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

changed form in which we possess and realize our capacities. A rational animal therefore is
animal in a different way.
I think it is obvious that Hegel adheres to some variant of the transformative view. In his
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, he says explicitly that animal humanity is altogether
different from animality proper (Tierische Menschlichkeit ist etwas ganz anderes als
Tierheit).2 And in this Aesthetics, he qualifies the difference between man and animal as
infinite and explains this by saying that even in his animal functions man does not remain
in them as his in-itself, as the animal does; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them,
and lifts them into self-conscious science. (STHET 13:112)3 In the Encyclopedia he adds
that in the human being everything is suffused with thinking, not only his acts of rational
deliberation and willing, but just as much his intuition or wishing (ENZ I 24Z1, 8:82). The
step from the animal to the human, from sentient life to self-conscious life is therefore not to
be understood as the addition of an accompanying consciousness to the faculties of the living
being, but rather as a transformation of the whole way of being alive. This transformation
depends, as Hegel points out, on the elevation of the in-itself into self-conscious knowledge. ...
In this way man breaks the barrier of his immediate being in it self, so that precisely because
he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as
spirit. (STHET 13:112). Self-consciousness is hence not just added to animality and
accompanies it as a monitoring or regulating force, but grasps this very animality and thereby
transforms it.
So, generally speaking, I think Hegel clearly subscribes to a transformative picture. What
is peculiar about him, I think, is that in spelling this picture out he tries to resist two tendencies
that are sometimes connected to a transformative view: he tries to resist (i) the tendency to
radicalize the sense of transformation in such a way that animal and the human seem to
become completely incommensurable, even unrelated; (ii) and the tendency to understand the
transformation as always already completed. The first tendency is produced by the one-sided
focus of some conceptions of the transformative pictures on the fact that the faculties we seem
to share with animals are in fact of a completely different nature in us so that rational animals
and mere animals in fact do not have in common what they seemed to share. This can give us
the impression that rational animals and mere animals do not share anything essential at all.
But this cant be right. The point of a transformative account cant be that the animal and the
human do not have anything in common, but rather that it is not a single capacity or factor
that remains unaltered in both of them. What they have in common, is rather a general form
of organization, articulated in both in different ways. The animal and the human do not share
a certain specific capacity, but they rather share the general form or organization of the living:

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

they both only are in making themselves into that which they are and they articulate this selfconstitutive quality by performing processes of shape, of assimilation (and that is to say:
perception and action in the broadest sense) and processes of genus (to use Hegels
terminology).4 The commonality of animal and human thus has to be expressed in a more
formal and a holistic way; but we should avoid expressing it in such an abstract way that we
will be tempted to understand our rationality primarily by its opposition to animality.
(ii) A second distinctive feature of Hegels transformative picture resides in the fact that he
presents the transformation as an activity. Some contemporary advocates of transformative
views tend to present the transformation of animal capacities in the rational animal as always
already completed: If we face an exemplar of the human species, it is as such to be regarded as
transformed in all its abilities; even if it might seem that way, it doesnt have merely animal
abilities. It is not by accident that Hegel describes the difference between animal and human
in a slightly different manner by saying the human being does not remain in his animal
functions as his in-itself, but goes beyond it. Hegels picture is thus transformative in the
additional sense that he understands spiritual life as an activity to bring itself forth by
transforming our animal life. Rational animals are not defined by the fact that their capacities
are always already transformed, but rather: that they are altered in the sense that they have
entered and continue to evolve in this process of transformation. If that is the case, then
human beings are not only closely related to animals in the sense that they embody another
species of the same genus, but also in the sense that human beings are inherently marked by
the difference between mere animality and rational animality. In his Science of Logic, Hegel
defines spirit accordingly by saying that life appears both as opposed to it and as posited as at
one with it, in a unity reborn as the pure product of spirit.5 It is true that the realization of
spirit depends on the unity of life and spirit and hence on the accomplishment of
transformation, but the work of this unification also includes that spirit inherently opposes
itself to life. According to this view there might be room for a certain animality in us that is as
of yet not wholly transformed. To be clear: even so, it would not be right to say that we share
this animality with non-rational animals insofar as they do not possess an animality to which
they oppose themselves. Hegel thus strictly remains within a transformative view, but he
understands it in such a way that this allows for an animality in us, still to be transformed. In
order to develop this picture a little further, I shall now turn to Hegels presentation of selfconsciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit.

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

II. The Emergence of Self-Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit



The feature that makes the account in the Phenomenology of Spirit interesting for the topic of our
conference the relation of animal and human self lies in the fact that it introduces selfconsciousness in some sense as a transformation of the consciousness of living unity: Where
consciousness constitutes its object as living, it is confronted with something that possesses the
very type of differential unity that consciousness itself is characterized by. In being conscious
of life, consciousness is confronted with something akin to itself. This amounts to, as Hegel
says, an ignition of self-consciousness. The interesting question now is how to understand the
turn from consciousness of life to self-consciousness and the subsequent development of selfconsciousness itself.
To avoid misunderstandings, it might be helpful to note right from the start that the
trajectory that the Phenomenology describes in the progression from sense-certainty to perception
to understanding to self-consciousness does neither make the claim to depict the actual
trajectory of our phylogenetic evolution, nor suggests to describe the course of the early
ontogenetic maturation of our cognitive abilities the first steps of our cognitive development
in which we might develop those capacities that distinguish us from our closest animal
relatives. The protagonist with which the phenomenology begins is neither a pre-human
cognitive agent, nor an infant, but, as Hegel says, a natural consciousness that strives toward
true knowledge. The phenomenology tells the history of the experience of this natural
consciousness in its attempt to reach true knowledge and that, in large part, means: to arrive
at the right conception of its own knowledge. Even if the description of the stage of sensecertainty abstracts from the fundamental distinctions of the order of perception, and even if
the stage of perception abstracts from the capacity of understanding, the phenomenology does
not suggest that there actually exists a natural consciousness that could operate without
perception or understanding. Rather the phenomenology tries to show that a natural
consciousness that defines its true knowledge in terms of sense-certainty will have to make the
experience that sense-certainty cannot stand on its own and that perception is the truth and
the ground of sense-perception; similarly understanding is revealed as the truth and ground of
perception, and finally: self-consciousness as the truth and ground of consciousness.6 The
development of the phenomenology thus does not describe a straightforward genesis of certain
cognitive capacities, but rather the development, the unfolding of our self- conceptions.

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

Let us now focus on just one crucial transition in this development: the one at which
consciousness grasps itself as self-consciousness and experiences that as self-consciousness it
can find satisfaction only in another self-consciousness. My interest concerns the way in which
Hegel emphasizes the fundamental role that animal life has for the exposition and
development of self-consciousness. Life plays a role with regard to at least three steps of
Hegels presentation: (i) That human consciousness is essentially self-consciousness dawns on
this consciousness where it constitutes its object as living. (ii) That this self-consciousness can
find its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness, becomes clear to this self-consciousness
where it understands itself as desire in general and experiences the limits of mere animal
desire. (iii) The way in which self-consciousness realizes this experiences, implies a dialectical
tension between life and self-consciousness in which it on the one hand has to abstract from
his own life and on the other hand accept that life is as essential to it as is pure selfconsciousness. (PhG 3:150). In the following I shall pursue each of these steps in a schematic
fashion.
II.1 From Consciousness of Life to Self-Consciousness
The natural consciousness that the Phenomenology traces constitutes itself successively in terms of
sense-certainty, perception and understanding. On the stage of understanding, consciousness
conceives its object as an expression of force and law. In the movement of explanation, the
understanding unfolds its object in such a way that a structure comes to the fore that
corresponds to consciousness itself: The object is understood as the appearance of a force that
articulates itself lawfully in its different presentations. The I seems to find in the movement of
the explanation of its object, as Hegel writes, the counterpart of its own self and is thus on the
point of developing into self-consciousness as such (ENZ III 423Z). Whereas in the
movement of the understanding this appears as a form of self-satisfaction and a mere
conversation of consciousness with itself that doesnt seem to have a proper object, there is
actually one object that embodies the structure exposed in the understanding: the living
creature. In his Encyclopedia Phenomenology, Hegel writes: In the living creature consciousness
beholds the very process of positing and sublating the distinct determinations, perceives that
the difference is no difference, i.e., no absolutely fixed difference It is in the
consciousness of this dialectical, this living unity of what is distinct that self-consciousness is
kindled, the consciousness of the simple ideal entity that is its own object and is thus
differentiated within itself. (ENZ III 423Z)7 It is in the contemplation of the living, an
appearance of an interior that is for itself, that self-consciousness is ignited. (ENZ III
418Z).

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

The first appearance or emergence of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology is hence


provoked in the striving of consciousness to adequately grasp its object. Consciousness grasps
itself as self-consciousness where it discovers its own self as the essential of the object (ENZ
III, 418). In this sense Hegel introduces self-consciousness not as a special form of
consciousness of a separate type of inner object the self but rather as an implication of true
consciousness of the world. Where we surpass sense-certainty and perception as the ultimate
forms of knowledge and grasp our object as alive, that is to say: as an appearance of an inner
that is for itself, we recognize a variant of our own activity and structure in the object of our
knowledge.
The way Hegel presents it, the starting point seems to be a structural homology between
the differential unity of the life process and of consciousness that allows the subject to behold
in a living creature a type of unity that corresponds to its own. However, this does not yet
specify the very turn that is needed in order to pass from a consciousness of some living
creature to self-consciousness proper; and by itself, it does not give us any clues as to the
meaning that life has for a fully developed self-consciousness. After noting this first ignition of
self-consciousness vis a vis a living unity, Hegel spells out what happens in the step from
consciousness of life to self-consciousness and articulates in how far self-consciousness actually
articulates a form of unity that differs from life.
A first explicit characterization of a step beyond life that self-consciousness takes, is given at
the point where Hegel concludes his formal characterization of life and states that it ultimately
presents itself as simple genus. In presenting itself as simple genus, the living being
exposes the very unity that the I possesses. But in the movement of life, this simple genus
does not exist for itself as this simple. (PhG 172). In the movement of life this simple
genus shows or presents itself without however being grasped by the life process itself. In his
philosophy of nature, Hegel had explained this by showing that the genus can only always
exist as exemplified by individuals that have to disappear in turn in order to reproduce the
genus. Therefore the living individual is not in and for itself the genus and hence individual
existence and genus remain divided. In other words: the simple genus remains an abstraction
and does not gain a concrete positive existence. The life process exposes the simple genus in
itself, but not for itself. Rather, Hegel writes, in this result, life points towards something
other than itself, namely, towards consciousness, for which life exists as this unity, that is, as
genus. (PhG 161). Only by being grasped in the medium of consciousness does the genus
character of the living get fully exhibited. The very structure of the living thus only comes fully
into view from the point of view of consciousness. It is however not a consciousness foreign to
and separate from life. This consciousness not only grasps the simple genus of life, but grasps

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

itself as simple genus. The other to which life points in its result is thus not an other of a
completely different order, but rather, as Hegel calls it, this other life for which the genus as
such exists and which is the genus for itself, namely, self-consciousness (PhG 3:143).
In this sense Hegel introduces self-consciousness not as a pure consciousness of itself
separate from its living object or realization, but introduces it as a life that knows itself. This
however raises a difficult question: If organic life is defined by exposing the structure of the
concept only blindly and as such, but not for itself, in what sense can we call something that is
the genus for itself, still alive? The unity of the life that the subject lives and the consciousness
of this life seems problematic. And indeed, Hegel describes the self-consciousness that emerges
from the consciousness of life as initially exist[ing] for itself merely as this simple essence
and as having itself as the pure I. (PhG 173, 3:143). It seems that the self-consciousness that
emerges from consciousness of life, is initially merely an abstract or formal consciousness of
itself, expressed by the motionless tautology of I am I (PhG 167, 3:138). The object of
consciousness that had ignited self-consciousness either must have dissolved or it remains as an
external object apart from this pure I, an external left-over that has exhausted its meaning in
allowing consciousness to grasp this unity. However, this does not sit well with the fact that
Hegel calls self-consciousness this other life: It is essential for this self-consciousness to exist
as a living consciousness. Only initially does this self-consciousness regard itself as a pure I. In
its further experience, however, this abstract object will become enriched and will contain
the development that we have seen in life (PhG 173, 3:143)
II.2 From Self-Consciousness as Desire itself to Recognizant Self-Consciousness
What it means more precisely that the self-consciousness is not a pure I in which the life of its
objects have dissolved but rather an I that has and leads a material life, becomes clear in the
way in which Hegel characterizes the internal dynamic and development of self-consciousness.
I am referring here to the famous characterization that self-consciousness is desire itself
(Begierde berhaupt). 8 Hegel introduces this characterization for the first time in the
introductory passages of The Truth of Self-Certainty where he defines the basic structure of
self-consciousness. Self-consciousness includes two poles, the consciousness of a given object
and the unity of self-consciousness, and is confronted with the problem of their unification.
Self-consciousness is understood to strive for the sublation of the opposition of its two
moments. It is in this quite formal sense that self-consciousness has the structure of desire as
such: It consists in an awareness of a contradiction that it strives to reduce.9
By using the term desire, Hegel refers self-consciousness back to life once again. Selfconsciousness is not only ignited by a certain consciousness of life that leads to the insight that

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

the self is the essential of the object (ENZ III 418Z, 10:207) and therefore can leave life
quickly behind. Self-consciousness itself also has a striving form that seems fundamentally
analogous to the living.10 As an animal strives to assimilate parts of its environment and to
turn it into itself in order to reduce the tension of its inner drives, self-consciousness tries to
reduce the tension between its objective consciousness and its self-consciousness. 11 This
highlights, as Robert Pippin points out, a fundamental orectic dimension of self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is not an immediate being at one with oneself but rather a striving or
struggle for unity.12 Self-consciousness does neither mean to be aware of myself in the way in
which I am aware of an external object I have to observe; nor to be aware of myself in the
sense that I immediately feel my unity. I am rather conscious of myself by determining
myself.13
But what exactly does it mean that Hegel characterizes the striving activitiy of selfconsciousness by the term desire which refers self-consciousness back to a natural striving and
might even suggest that the basic form of self-consciousness is actualized in animal desire?14
The term desire at first suggest to depict self-consciousness as intent on the dissolution and
consumption of its objects. The breath of the sensuous world that is given to selfconsciousness qua consciousness appears to self-consciousness as a mere appearance, the
essence of which is nothing other than the pure unity of self-consciousness. Hegel writes: this
opposition between its appearance and its truth has only the truth for its essence, namely the
unity of self-consciousness with itself. This unity must become essential to self-consciousness,
which is to say, self-consciousness is desire itself. (PhG 3:139) This description suggests that
self-consciousness aims at the consumption and destruction of its objects: to assimilate its
objects in such a way that they are turned into the self.15
However, in the very experience of self-consciousness, it becomes clear that such a
consumption cannot lead to self-conscious satisfaction. A self-consciousness that tries to
devour its objects opposes itself to its object life in such a way that it ironically repeats its
structure: it engenders a bad infinity of desires. Self-consciousness cannot attain its unity by
consuming its other, but only by recognizing it. In its own striving, Self-consciousness has to
supersede animal desire, not only by realizing desire in a different medium or on a different
level the level of consciousness but by taking on a different form: It realizes itself in a
striving that cannot be thought as an endless circle of need and fulfillment.
That self-conscious desire is forced to surpass animal desire already becomes clear when we
realize that the object of the consciousness pole of self-consciousness is life.16 Consciousness
grasps itself as self-consciousness where its object is not a mere sensuous this or a dead object,
but a living thing that is reflected in itself and that is self-contained, independent and self

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

reliant in a certain sense. In so far as self-consciousness dissolves its object as a nullity, it


reduces the living to a dead thing and looses the object that had ignited self-consciousness in
the first place. Self-consciousness hence does not really achieve a unity of consciousness and
self-consciousness, but rather cancels consciousness and is left with the motionless tautology of
I am I. It becomes clear, that self-consciousness can only truly satisfy its peculiar desire, if it
maintains the self-contained character of its object. Self-consciousness cannot satisfy itself by
reducing the living to the level of a dead thing or a fleeting sensuous this. Although it is true
that self-consciousness initially marks its object with the character of the negative and hence
appears as desire itself, it has to learn even more so from experience about this objects selfsufficiency. (PhG 168, 3:139f.)
How is this experience being made by self-consciousness? Hegel suggests that selfconsciousness learns this by grasping the dissatisfaction inherent in the attempt at the
destruction of its other. In this sense it would be just as essential for self-consciousness to
eventually supersede animal desire than to begin as such a desire: Self-consciousness would
form itself in the experience of the limits of animal desire. In its initial form of desire, selfconsciousness tries to attain certainty of itself by sublating its other that presents itself as
independent. It thereby equates its own certainty with the nullity of its object. It seems obvious
that thereby self-consciousness cannot attain the independence it seeks for: For one, selfconsciousness is revealed to be dependent on an object that is fundamentally different from
itself. Secondly, as the manifestation of its independence is reached by the dissolution of this
object it is in addition in constant need of ever more objects it can reduce. Self-consciousness
thus once again ... re-engenders the object as well as the desire. (PhG 175, 3:143). The end
of desire is therefore not a lasting satisfaction, but just the beginning of the next desire, the
sublation of the object is the need for the next one.
Now, Hegel seems to assume that, contrary to the animal in its assimilative activity, selfconsciousness experiences that it falls short of itself in this endless movement. In its satisfaction,
self-consciousness experiences that it is in fact an other than self-consciousness, the essence of
desire (PhG 3:143). By its attempt to bring forth its own unity self-consciousness fails to
produce its own unity and produces the endless circle of desire instead. In order to truly attain
the unity of self-consciousness, it has to direct itself to an object of a different sort that, first,
can only be negated insofar as it negates itself and, second, that can endure in its own
negation. Hegel writes: For the sake of the self-sufficiency of the object, it thus can only
achieve satisfaction if this object itself effects the negation in itself. Self-consciousness is thus
in need of an object that is self-dependent and self-reliant in just the way it is itself. The first
aspect of this self-sufficiency is already present in the living insofar as it is able to negate itself.

10

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

But the living individual is, according to Hegel, not able to endure and sustain itself in this
self-negation, but comes asunder in it: the distinguished, merely living shape also sublates its
self-sufficiency in the process of life itself, but, with its distinctions, it ceases to be what it is.
However, the object of self-consciousness is equally self-sufficient in this negativity of itself
(PhG 176, 3:144). In surpassing the limited animal form of desire, self-consciousness requires
an object that is more than merely alive. Consciousness of a living object ignites selfconsciousness, but in order for self-consciousness to realize itself that is: to attain the unity of
consciousness and self-consciousness it requires a self-conscious living being, a living selfconsciousness as its object. This brings us to Hegels notorious thesis that self-consciousness
attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness. (PhG 175, 3:144)
The operation through which self-consciousness relates to its proper object and which
grants it a different form of satisfaction, cannot be understood as analogous to animal desire
any more and is characterized by Hegel as a movement of recognition instead. Selfconsciousness does not claim its own self as the essential of the object and does not unify itself
with this object by consuming it and turning it into itself, but by recognizing or acknowledging
this object. In order for this recognition not to be a loss of its own independence, but rather an
operation of unification with itself, this recognition must be structurally mutual. Selfconsciousness satisfies itself in the relation to its object by recognizing the object as in turn
recognizing itself. Self-consciousness therefore does not only attain a more challenging
understanding of the object of consciousness, it also manifest a different mode of operation.
Self-consciousness exists and actualizes itself as redoubled self-consciousness and experiences
that it can only properly prove its independence by being dependent on itself. In the final
analysis this means, that self-consciousness is not satisfying itself in being dependent on just
another self-consciousness, but only in being dependent on a self-consciousness that is part of
the same we. Self-consciousness thus realizes itself in the structure of an I that is We and We
that is I.17 It attains satisfaction not in consuming and turning its object into itself, but in being
recognized by a subject that it itself recognizes.
II.3 The Dialectics of Detachment and Attachment to Life
At this juncture, it seems that a completely different analysis could take off. One could easily
imagine that the discussion of a consciousness of life that first gave rise to the discovery of selfconsciousness and the discussion of self-consciousness as desire which described the initial
form of its striving, are now completely left behind. It has become clear, or so it seems, that
life can neither be the proper object of self-consciousness, nor can the consumptive mode of
living processes describe the unifying process of self-consciousness. It seems natural to assume

11

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

that on the level we have now reached, the level of recognition, the life of the respective selfconscious subjects is not essential any more. Having reached this point, it seems that
everything just depends on the statuses that the different self-conscious subjects ascribe to each
other and nothing depends on the material life they might have.
Hegels presentation however suggests something else. This new level of a redoubled selfconsciousness was motivated by the problem of the unity of self-consciousness and its objective
consciousness. Already in the description of the simple self-consciousness Hegel had pointed
out that the whole breadth of the sensuous world has to be preserved for self-consciousness.
That is to say, self-consciousness always also remains objective consciousness. In a similar vein,
we cant understand redoubled self-consciousness in such a way that the sensuously,
perceptually, intellectually grasped world of those self-consciousness dissolves in thin air and
that from now on it just counts what subjects arbitrarily attribute to each other. The intersubjective structure of self-consciousness rather has to be understood as illuminating how the
co-constitutive subjects can thereby relate to their life, the world of the understanding, of
perception and sense-certainty. Self-consciousness therefore does not find its satisfaction in
another pure I, but, as Hegel points out explicitly: in a living self-consciousness (PhG 3:144).
Hegel dramatizes the irreducible meaning of life for recognizant self-consciousness in the
struggle to death in which the pure concept of recognition first appears and explicitly develops
for self-consciousness. In this struggle both the tension between self-consciousness and life and
the irreducibility of life for self-consciousness are exposed. The struggle emerges where an
immediate self-consciousness attempts to present itself in its certainty and to gain recognition
for this. Hegel writes: The exhibition of itself as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness
consists in showing itself to be the pure negation of its objective mode, that is, in showing that
it is fettered to no determinate existence, that it is not at all bound to life. (PhG 187, 3:148).
In its first movement, the self-consciousness that strives for recognition and seeks to find its
truth in another self-consciousness, therefore abstracts from the particularity of its own as well
as the other subjects life. The self-consciousness risks its natural being for what it claims to be
in order to proof the primacy of its self-consciousness over the consciousness of its own life.18
It is solely by staking ones life, this self-consciousness contends, that freedom is proven to
be the essence, namely, that as a result the essence for self-consciousness is proven to be not
being, not the immediate way self-consciousness emerges, not its being absorbed within the
expanse of life but rather, it is that there is nothing on hand in it itself which could not be a
vanishing moment for it, that is, that self- consciousness is merely pure being-for-itself. As the
Berlin Phenomenology makes clearer than the original Jena Phenomenology, this is not
merely the attitude of the self-centered and selfish self-consciousness of desire, but even more

12

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

so the attitude of the recognizant self-consciousness that seeks to recognize itself in the other.
For this to be possible, self-consciousness has to loose its own immediacy and particularity just
as it has to eliminate the particularity of the other in order to unite itself with the other in a
universal self-consciousness. In its initial stages, the struggle for recognition therefore relates
to life negatively: Spirit tries to free itself by completely detaching from its natural existence.19
However, in the attempt of this proof of independence it becomes clear immediately that
this proof cannot be completed without missing its aims. The attempt to prove oneself through
death attains only the natural negation of the natural position of consciousness and it does not
produce an enduring spiritual independence. If self-consciousness actually looses its life in this
struggle, it proofs its primacy only by disappearing; if the other self-consciousness loses its life,
it can also not find its satisfaction in an other self-consciousness and the struggle will have
forced self-consciousness to return to an isolated self-certainty. Self-consciousness here makes
the experience that the immediacy it wants to detach itself form is at the same time the
bodiliness of self-consciousness, in which, as in its sign and tool, self-consciousness has its own
self-feeling as well as its being for others and its relation that mediates between itself and
them. Self-consciousness thus learns that life is as essential to it as is pure self-consciousness
(PhG 3:150).
It is insufficient to consider this as an unfortunate, but in the final analysis contingent
limitation, as if, alas, self-consciousness cannot totally detach form life as it needs some kind of
material infra-structure. If this was all Hegel wanted to remind us of, it would be unjustified to
call life as essential to self-consciousness as the pure I. (One could also say: no freedom without
gravity or without the right distance between the earth and the sun). Life is essential for selfconsciousness in a different sense: not as a merely contingent natural factor, that limits the
freedom of spirit, but rather as the very existence of self-consciousness. In the Berlin
Phenomenology Hegel defines this life which has turned out to be as essential to selfconsciousness as the pure I as the existence or being-there of the freedom of selfconsciousness: Dasein seiner Freiheit (ENZ III 432). Only if self-consciousness in detaching
form the given forms of its natural existence can attain or sustain a transformed natural
existence can the detachment present itself and endure in the world. Even if it is true that
freedom can only be won by putting the natural life at stake, it can just as much only present
and realize itself in life. This other life is not the mere natural life in which self-consciousness
was first sunk, but rather the natural existence that this self-consciousness gives itself: the life it
is unwilling to detach itself from, that it commits itself to, that it maintains, sustains and
transforms through its operations.20

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Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

So it is clear that the struggle of recognition (ENZ III 432, 10:221), can only succeed if it
does not end in the death of one of its protagonist. The opposition of lordship and bondage
fulfills this requirement. But in the description of this constellation of lord and bondsmen,
Hegel goes even further in stressing the irreducibility of life for self-consciousness. Not only is
it necessary that the struggle avoids the death of its combatants, the two sides in which it
results have a diverging future potential due to the different roles they grant life. According to
Hegel, the further development of free self-consciousness can only be reached from the side of
the bondsman. In the constellation of lord and bondsman that embodies the structure of selfconsciousness, we are confronted with two opposing sides: the lord, embodying pure selfconsciousness, pure being for itself on the one side, and the slave, embodying life, being for
the other, on the other side. Surprisingly the side that seems to have given up in the battle and
fallen short of its own freedom, the bondsman, is the point of departure for a subsequent
development, whereas the master turns out to be a dead-end. The freedom of selfconsciousness is thus not won by developing pure self-consciousness, but rather only from the
side of life. Or more precisely: form the side of a self-consciousness that has reattached to life
in the course of this struggle.
At first it should seem that the master has attained what both protagonists had aimed for:
he has succeeded in producing an exhibition of his own independence and has attained
recognition for this by the bondsman. In addition, the master seems to have found a solution
for the unity of self-consciousness and the objects of consciousness by outsourcing the
problem: He has put the bondsman between him and the world and relates to the objects of
the world only through this interface. Thereby he manages to relate to the world only insofar
as it is consumable. On closer inspection however, it becomes evident that the master thereby
does not attain true independence. The recognition he has attained is one-sided and
asymmetrical so that the master is dependent on a being in which he does not find himself.
Thus, the servile consciousness turns out to be the truth of the masters self-consciousness.
With this ironic twist however, we at first only reach a negative result that we have, by now,
arrived at multiple times: The truth of self-consciousness does not reside in pure selfconsciousness, the motionless tautology of an I am I, but rather in some sort of the unity of
self-consciousness and its object. The positive result of the master-slave dialectic lies in the fact
that the figure of the bondsman points to three processes that might explain how this unity
might come about. The three moments that Hegel stresses as productive in the experience of
the bondsman are fear, service and work. (If we put these elements that are specific to the
master slave dialectic more generally we could say: for its free development, self-consciousness
is in need of self-feeling, education, and formation).

In the fear of death the slavish


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Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

consciousness has not used death as a sovereign wager like the master, but has suffered it.
Paradoxically, it is thereby the slave that has truly experienced the detachment from his
natural existence in other words: death, the dissolution of everything fixed , endured it and
continued itself in it. The master confined himself to an abstract relation to death, where the
slave has interiorized it. If we abstract from the peculiar story of the master-slave dialectic, the
general point seems to be that the realization of self-consciousness needs the medium of
feeling: a living receptiveness.
The second element of service again seems to point to the inferiority of the slave, but has
effects that allow the slave to become self-sufficient. In the operation of service the slave
appropriates the experience of the fear of death that has shaken him and turns it into a
productive capacity. In its service, the slave sublates all the individual moments of his
attachment to natural existence, and he works off his natural existence Instead of abstractly
detaching from life as the master did, the servant concretely and practically transforms his
natural existence. Hegel seems to suggest that to do so, it is helpful or necessary for the human
being to serve the will of an other. This will is as such not determined by the natural existence
of the slave and therefore allows him to distance himself form his natural existence without
abstracting from it.
The third aspect that distinguishes the slave is the process of work by means of which he
enters a new relation to the objective world. At first, it seemed to be a true cunning of the
master that he interposed the servant between himself and the world to finally attain a pure
consumption without being directly dependent on the world and its particularities. However,
in the same stroke the master has deprived himself of the possibility to experience the
independence of the world, and even more so, the possibility of experiencing his own capacity
to modify and realize himself in the world. By means of his work the servant who seemed to
have given up his self in order to keep his life attains a new form of being for himself that does
not arise from the consumption of things but from their formation. In the process of his work,
the servant does not just destroy or dissolve the independent object, but transforms them.
Insofar as the formation gains a lasting existence in the outer object, the servant manages to
manifest himself in the sensuous world. Thus the servant reveals a fundamental trait that
distinguishes spiritual processes of assimilation: they do not mainly operate by means of
consumption of a given nature, but by embodiment and objectification of spirit in nature.21
The servant thus points to the possibility of a different freedom of self-consciousness in
which life takes on an essential and at the same time transformed role. It was already true for
the master that life was irreducible for him in the sense that he trivially needed to not lose
his life in the struggle and was dependent, more importantly, on the life of his servant. The

15

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

master, however, conceived of his life as a merely natural factor that is to be instrumentalised
in order to appropriate the world.22 The master thus presents a succinct model of freedom as
domination of nature a model, that simultaneously reveals that this type of domination
implies a dependence on this very nature. The freedom of the slave a freedom which has
still to be unfolded by dissolving the constellation of an unequal and one-sided recognition is
not attained as a mere detachment from or instrumentalisation of life, but rather as its seizure
and transformation. The servant experiences life as essential to self-consciousness and
commits to it. Thereby he does not grasp it as a mere natural limitation, but rather reveals it
to be the existence and embodiment of his self-consciousness. By means of self-feeling,
education and formation, the servant becomes for himself in his living reality. In this activity
he transforms his living nature he works off his natural existence without losing it. In the
servant self-consciousness thus realizes itself as second nature.

III. Concluding Remark


By following the transition from consciousness of life to self-consciousness and from desiring to
recognizant self-consciousness we have seen that Hegel articulates the form of the human self
by departing from the unity of animal life. Consciousness turns out to be self-consciousness for
the first time where life is its object; and this self-consciousness initially pursues its own unity
in a way analogous to animal desire. In the further realization of this self-consciousness it
becomes clear that it must go beyond life in the double sense that it must conceive of its object
as more than just alive and must direct itself to this object not in a movement of desire, but of
recognition. This step beyond life can however not be completed by the mere detachment
from or instrumentalisation of life, but requires that self-consciousness inhabits and transforms
the natural life in which it had first anticipated itself. Only as such can it partake in the
universal self-consciousness that grants it satisfaction. In short: the human self is ignited by the
consciousness of its counterpart, animal life; it emerges by manifesting a different structure
and even by detaching itself from its own life; but it realizes itself only by seizing and
transforming its natural life: by producing a living unity of self-consciousness and life. This is
how we might understand Hegels description of spiritual life from the Science of Logic I have
quoted before: In spirit, however, life appears both as opposed to it and as posited as at one
with it, in a unity reborn as the pure product of spirit (WL DiGiovanni 677).

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Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig


1
2

23

9
10

11

12

Aristotle, Metaphysics X. 8, 1057b39ff.


VG, p. 161: Tierische Menschlichkeit ist ganz etwas anderes als Tierheit., translation taken from: G.W.F.
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet, introduction by Duncan Forbes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 133
The p.
VG,
unabridged
161: Tierische
passage:
Menschlichkeit
Die hhereistStufe
ganz nun
etwasistanderes
das Wissen
als Tierheit.,
dieser an translation
sich seienden
taken
Einheit,
from: wie
G.W.F.
die
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet, introduction by Duncan Forbes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 133
The unabridged passage: Die hhere Stufe nun ist das Wissen dieser an sich seienden Einheit, wie die
klassische Kunstform dieselbe zu ihrem im Leiblichen vollendet darstellbaren Gehalte hat. Dieses Erheben
aber des Ansich ins selbstbewute Wissen bringt einen ungeheuren Unterschied hervor. Es ist der unendliche
Unterschied, der z.B. den Menschen berhaupt vom Tiere trennt. Der Mensch ist Tier, doch selbst in seinen
tierischen Funktionen bleibt er nicht als in seinem Ansich stehen wie das Tier, sondern wird ihrer bewut,
erkennt sie und erhebt sie, wie z.B. den Proze der Verdauung, zu selbstbewuter Wissenschaft. Dadurch lst
der Mensch die Schranke seiner ansichseienden Unmittelbarkeit auf, so da er deshalb gerade, weil er wei,
da er Tier ist, aufhrt, Tier zu sein, und sich das Wissen seiner als Geist gibt. (STHET 13:112), English
translation: Now the higher state is the knowledge of that unity in-itself which is the content of the classical artform and is capable of perfect presentation in bodily shape. But this elevation of the in-itself into selfconscious knowledge introduces a tremendous difference. It is the infinite difference which, for example,
separates man as such from the animal. Man is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he does not
remain in them as his in-itself, as the animal does; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them, and lifts
them, as, for instance, the process of digestion, into self-conscious science. In this way man breaks the barrier
of his immediate being in it self, so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an
animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit. (G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans.
T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) p. 80.
Cf. Boyle: Rational mentality and nonrational mentality are different species of the genus of animal mentality.
What the two have in common, on this view, is not a separable factor that is present in both, but a generic structure that
is realized in fundamentally different ways in the two cases (Boyle, Additive Theories, S. 6, emphasis added.).
G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. & ed. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010) p. 677, vgl. WL 6:471: Im Geiste aber erscheint das Leben teils ihm gegenber, teils als mit ihm in eins
gesetzt und diese Einheit wieder durch ihn rein herausgeboren.
See the Encyclopedia Phenomenology on this: The truth of consciousness is self-consciousness and the latter is
the ground of the former, so that in existence all consciousness of another object is self-consciousness; I am
aware of the object as mine (it is my representation), thus in it I am aware of me (ENZ III 424).
See also ENZ III (423Z, 10:212): Am Bewutsein dieser dialektischen, dieser lebendigen Einheit des
Unterschiedenen entzndet sich daher das Selbstbewutsein, das Bewutsein von dem sich selber
gegenstndlichen, also in sich selbst unterschiedenen einfachen Ideellen, das Wissen von der Wahrheit des
Natrlichen, vom Ich. In the early Hegel, the idea that in the living the opposition between the objective and
the subjective is complicated is expressed by the definition of the living as the objective subject-object (D
2:94ff.).
In the context of the Jena Phenomenology, in which there is no preceding discussion of animal life, the
sudden turn to desire can indeed seem puzzling. This has lead Fred Neuhouser to the project of developing
a deduction of the concept of desire that might elucidate Hegels account: Deducing Desire and Recognition
in the Phenomenology of Spirit, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), S. 243-262.
The Berlin Phenomenology alternately also speaks of the Trieb of self-consciousness (ENZ III 425, 10:213f.;
426Z, 10:215f.; 427, 10:216).
Cf ENZ III 426Z, 10:216: Das Beseelte hingegen und der Geist haben notwendig Trieb, da weder die Seele
noch der Geist sein kann, ohne den Widerspruch in sich zu haben und ihn entweder zu fhlen oder von ihm
zu wissen.
The inherent connection between the peculiar type of unity and the striving character is pointed out in the
chapter on Observing reason: the striving movement of the organic can be described as the organism
distinguishing itself from what it searches and at the same time identifying itself with it by consuming it. On
very formal terms this seems to correspond to self-consciousness that distinguishes and at the same time
identifies itself with it: Ebenso ist aber das Selbstbewutsein beschaffen, sich auf eine solche Weise von sich zu
unterscheiden, worin zugleich kein Unterschied herauskommt (PhG 3:199).
This is connected to a distinctly practical conception of self-consciousness brought out succinctly in Pippins
reading of the phenomenology: I think that Hegels position is that we misunderstand all dimensions of selfconsciousness, from apperception in consciousness itself, to simple, explicit reflection about myself, to
practical self-knowledge of my own so-called identity, by considering any form of it as in any way
observational or inferential or immediate or any sort of two-place intentional relation. [] Hegel, I want to

17

Thomas Khurana
September 19, 2014

From Animal Self to Human Self


Universitt Leipzig

13

14

15
16
17

18
19

20

21

22

say, treats self-consciousness as (i) a practical achievement of some sort. Such a relation must be understood
as the result of an attempt, never, as it certainly seems to be, as an immediate presence of the self to itself, and
it often requires some sort of striving, even struggle. (Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the
Phenomenology of Spirit, S. 15f.).
With regard to higher forms of self-consciousness this points to the fact that self-consciousness cannot be
understood in terms of a theoretical model of self-observation; rather, we have to think of self-consciousness
in terms of a practical self-commitment and self-determination.
For the idea that the human being literally comes to be conscious of itself in the process of its animal desires,
see Alexandre Kojve, Zusammenfassender Kommentar zu den ersten sechs Kapiteln der Phnomenologie des
Geistes, in: ders., Hegel, hrsg. v. Iring Fetscher, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1975, S. 48-89, S. 54: human
existence is only possible, where there is something we call life biological, animal life. For there is no desire
without life.
The Berlin Phenomenology explicitly speaks of destruction: Die Begierde ist so in ihrer Befriedigung
berhaupt zerstrend wie ihrem Inhalte nach selbstschtig (ENZ III 428, 10:218).
[D]er Gegenstand der unmittelbaren Begierde ist ein Lebendiges (PhG 3:139).
In the relation of recognition, self-consciousness is only dependent on itself in so far as the recognizant selfconsciousness and the recognized self-consciousness partake in the same we. Thus, the success of reciprocal
recognition is not possible in terms of an isolated interaction of two subjects, but has to be understood as the
actualization of the structure of spirit, that is to say, as the actualization of an I that is We, and a We that is I
(Ich, das Wir, und Wir, das Ich ist (PhG 3:145)). Cf. Neuhouser, Desire, Recognition, and the Relation
between Bondsman and Lord, S. 46.
Cf. Brandom, The Structure of Desire and Recognition, S. 129ff.
Cf.: Der Mensch allein kann alles fallen lassen, auch sein Leben: er kann einen Selbstmord begehen; das
Tier kann dieses nicht; es bleibt immer nur negativ; in einer ihm fremden Bestimmung, an die es sich nur
gewhnt (RPh 5Z, 7:51).
This is sometimes expressed by pointing out that life does not regain its importance as a mere natural fact,
rather as a value. However, I dont think this captures the irreducible character that life gains for selfconsciousness at this juncture. It does not attain its importance merely as a value, but rather as the
fundamental mode of existence of values.
For the general mode of operation characteristic of formation, see RPh (56, 7:121f.). Here, Hegel qualifies
formation as the idea of the most adequate form of appropriation that unifies the subjective and the
objective (ibd., 121).
This distinguishes the master from a being of mere animal desires. The master does not move in the endless
circle of unsatisfied desire by treating the world as non-living anorganic stuff to be consumed; the master does
indeed behave as a self-. However, he can only do so by outsourcing the workings of desire and hence by
making himself dependent on its endless circles.

18

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