Unhappy Consciousness - The Unhappy Consciousness

The Unhappy Consciousness

In this externalisation of the good from human affairs we see forming what Hegel calls the unhappy consciousness. This, Hegel associates with much of the early Christian era when people turned away from the world through ascetic and monastic life and prayer.

Of course, for Hegel, each of these stages is an attainment, the achievement of the unhappy consciousness is the truth of the will, which has been trained and nurtured though the ascetic life.

The contradictions in the unhappy consciousness are given some resolution in the person of Jesus Christ. Here the temporal and eternal are combined and held up toward a higher plane wherein life now posits an afterlife. Yet it remains an unhappy consciousness since all goodness is alienated in God or in the afterlife.