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.
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Famous quotes containing the word unhappy:
“The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)