The common denominator for what I have called “religious” ideals is the goal of being absolved from negativity, absolved from the pain of loss. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel presents three paradigmatic forms of trying to achieve such religious absolution: Stoicism, Skepticism, and what Hegel calls the Unhappy Consciousness.72 What they have in common is that they seek to overcome secular faith—to be released from the commitment to a finite form of life—in order to achieve peace of mind. In Stoicism the ideal peace of mind is posited as a state of apathy (apatheia), and in Skepticism it is posited as a state of being undisturbed by anything (ataraxia). For the Unhappy Consciousness, the ideal peace of mind cannot be achieved in this life but only in the eternal bliss of an otherworldly beyond.
Following his characteristic philosophical method, Hegel does not criticize Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness from an external standpoint. Rather, he seeks to show that these religious forms of life cannot resolve their own contradictions and require a transformation of their own self-understanding.
The point of departure for Hegel is Stoicism (as it was for me in chapters 1 and 2), since Stoicism is the most fundamental form of denying the commitment to a finite form of life. Stoicism is still influential today as a popular form of practical wisdom, with clear affinities to Buddhism. The Stoic acknowledges that his body is frail and that all his social relations—all forms of his dependence on other people—are precarious. Yet the Stoic holds that his own virtue can be invulnerable to anything that happens to his body or his social standing in the world. The key to achieving such invulnerability is to renounce the beliefs—the practical commitments—that make us suffer. If I believe that my physical well-being is important, I will suffer from being sick, since I am practically committed to sustaining my health. Likewise, if I believe that it is important that I have the material and social resources to lead a free life, I will suffer from being enslaved, since I am practically committed to my emancipation. The Stoic, however, will try to teach me that it does not matter that I am sick or that I live my life in chains. Stoic virtue is a matter of letting go of such concerns and contemplating the rational order of the cosmos, thereby attaining what the Stoic philosopher Spinoza famously describes as “intellectual love of God.” The intellectual love of God is independent of any judgment I may have regarding my physical condition or my social standing. According to Spinoza, all our suffering is caused by the “false beliefs” that consist in our practical commitments, which distinguish between what we count as good and evil, success and failure, right and wrong. Such “false beliefs” prevent us from attaining what Spinoza calls the “blessedness” of having “complete peace of mind.” Attaining complete peace of mind is for Spinoza the true religious salvation, which makes us accept everything that happens to us as necessary rather than as something that we can change.
The problem with such peace of mind, as Hegel points out, is that it is completely empty. The Stoic says that he is committed to “the true,” “the good,” and “the just,” but he cannot provide any determinate content to these concepts. For truth, goodness, and justice to have any determinate content, we must hold something to be true, good, and just. Moreover, we must distinguish between what we hold to be true and false, good and evil, just and unjust. How we make such distinctions is contestable and revisable, but making them is necessary for any form of responsibility. To determine anything as true, good, and just requires a practical commitment that binds us to suffer from and revolt against what we count as false, evil, and unjust. Yet the supposed wisdom of the Stoic is to withdraw from such commitments, since they make him liable to agonize over the state of the world and leave him vulnerable to contestation. The Stoic is thus caught in a self-contradiction. Stoicism is supposed to be a way of life that makes us virtuous citizens, but all it can do is point us to an empty peace of mind that dissolves any determinate conception of the true, the good, and the just. In Hegel’s apt phrase, the goal of Stoic apathy is a “lifelessness” that “consistently withdraws from the movement of existence, withdraws from actual doing as well as from suffering,”73 and in effect renounces any commitment to anything.
The “truth” of Stoicism is therefore Skepticism, in the sense that Skepticism makes explicit the denial of all forms of commitment, which is merely implicit in Stoicism. Like Stoicism, Skepticism was founded as a school of thought in Ancient Greece, with the mission of educating its pupils into a way of life that is absolved from all forms of painful disturbance. Unlike the Stoic, the Skeptic has no pretense that such absolution is compatible with a commitment to truth, goodness, or justice. On the contrary, the Skeptic recognizes that an apathetic peace of mind can be achieved only by negating the determinate content of any thought or action. To this end, the Skeptic learns a method of negating the validity of any belief that anyone may hold—including any belief regarding truth, goodness, or justice—with the aim of being released from all forms of practical commitments and attaining the peace of mind he calls ataraxia.
By the same token, however, the Skeptic is caught in a contradiction of his own. Skepticism promotes itself as a therapeutic way of life by promising that its method of negating all beliefs will lead to peace of mind. In practice, however, the Skeptic has to spend all his time refuting beliefs he holds to be false. As long as the Skeptic is doing anything, there will always be at least one belief that he has to refute—namely, the belief that what he is doing matters. Moreover, the Skeptic has no way of justifying his own commitment to ataraxia. Why is it better to have peace of mind than to be passionately engaged? Why is it better to be undisturbed than to be moved and deeply affected by what happens to you? The Skeptic denies that anything ultimately matters while holding that ataraxia ultimately matters, and he denies being committed to anything, while being committed to not being committed to anything. The Skeptic claims to be indifferent, but he is far from indifferent to the fact that he and others fail to be indifferent.74
The “truth” of Skepticism, then, is the Unhappy Consciousness. Both the Stoic and the Skeptic seek to achieve religious absolution—complete peace of mind—by virtue of their own activity. They are therefore bound to be dissatisfied and unreconciled (“unhappy”) with themselves, since their own activity is marked by the condition of finitude that they aspire to leave behind. The unavoidable dissatisfaction is merely implicit in Stoicism and Skepticism, but it becomes explicit in the Unhappy Consciousness. In Hegel’s Phenomenology the Unhappy Consciousness refers primarily to various forms of Christian faith, but it should also be understood more broadly as any standpoint that regards our finitude as a negative restriction, which prevents us from achieving the salvation we supposedly desire. The Unhappy Consciousness acknowledges that there can be no absolution from finitude in this life, but it treats our dependence on material support and on the fragile recognition of others as a lamentable condition, which falls short of how our lives ideally should be. This is the standpoint that Hegel seeks to overcome and help us leave behind.
The aim of Hegel’s Phenomenology can thus be seen as a secular “reconciliation” with our finitude, in the sense of grasping that our finitude is not a limitation that blocks us from attaining the absolute. Rather, grasping finitude as the condition of intelligibility for any form of spiritual life is what Hegel calls the “absolute knowing” of “absolute spirit.” Hegel’s use of these terms has led to centuries of misunderstanding, whereby Hegel is read as promoting some form of theology of a Cosmic Spirit or Absolute God who actualizes himself in human history. Nothing could be further from the truth. The absolute knowing of absolute spirit is not the act of a divine mind, but our philosophical grasp of the conditions of spiritual life. This philosophical grasp makes clear that there can be no life without death, no spirit without matter, no success without failure. Such finitude is “absolute” in the sense that it does not fall short of an eternal life, but is the condition of possibility for any form
of life.
We can thus grasp the full stakes of Hegel’s secular reading of the incarnation and my secular reading of the crucifixion in chapter 3. For the Unhappy Consciousness of Christian faith, we suffer from a lack of eternal life and need to be redeemed from our finitude. The birth and death of Jesus are supposed to accomplish such redemption. Through a movement that the Bible calls kenosis, God descends into the mortal body of Jesus. God thereby becomes susceptible to suffering and death, culminating in the excruciating crucifixion of Jesus. The crucifixion is the lowest point in the descending movement of kenosis, but in the end God does not succumb to its gravity. On the contrary, from a religious perspective, the resurrection of Jesus and his ascent to heaven paves the way for salvation by showing that even the most painful form of devastation and death can be transcended.
In Luther’s German translation of the Bible—which was important for Hegel—kenosis is translated by the term Entäusserung, which designates the activity of God emptying himself into the world at the moment of creation and into the body of Jesus at the moment of the incarnation. By becoming mortal, God empties himself of his divine attributes; he renounces omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Luther’s translation makes it possible to hear this act of self-emptying as an expression of devotion, as if God gave himself over to the world wholeheartedly, avowing his belonging to mortal life without reserve. Yet, from the standpoint of Christian faith and the Unhappy Consciousness, we cannot be devoted wholeheartedly to this life. The descent of God into a mortal body is merely an intermediary step that is followed by the ascent to heaven. The mortal body of Jesus—subject to need, dissolution, and irrevocable death—is ultimately separated from the “glorious” body of resurrection that is immortal. As Luther puts it, the historical Jesus who lived on earth “is really dead as a man,” but as the divinity of Christ “he has remained always alive, for life could and cannot die.”75 In the same way, the Unhappy Consciousness separates the notion of its own salvation from the fate of the mortal body to which it is bound on earth. Our mortality is conceived as a descent (a “fall”) from which we need to be saved by an ascent to eternal life.
For Hegel, on the contrary, the mortality of Jesus should lead us to recognize fragile material embodiment as inseparable from any form of spiritual life. Spiritual life does not descend or “fall” into finitude. Rather, spiritual life is from the beginning subject to—and the subject of—a finite form of life. We can see how Hegel makes this point by converting Luther’s religious conception of Entäusserung as divine love into a secular notion of spiritual commitment. The term Entäusserung is used frequently both in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and his Science of Logic, but it becomes particularly significant in the concluding sections of the Phenomenology, where Hegel employs it on every page.76
At stake here are the conditions of possibility for leading a spiritual life, both individually and collectively. Leading a spiritual life requires a conception of who we ought to be as individuals and as a community, what Hegel calls an “Idea” of who we are. Following Hegel’s secular notion of the incarnation, the Idea of who we are is not something that can exist in a separate realm; it must be materially embodied in our practices. Moreover, the Idea of who we are is not contemplative. We cannot discover who we are through introspection, but only by emptying ourselves out in the sense of being wholeheartedly engaged—being at stake, being at risk—in what we do and how we are recognized by others. The Idea of who we are is not an abstract ideal that is external to our form of life; it is the principle of intelligibility in light of which we can succeed or fail to be who we are striving to be.
For example, the Idea of being Martin is striving to maintain my existential identity: the order of priority among my practical identities that gives me a sense of what matters in my life and when it matters, what must be done sooner and later. If I had no Idea of what it means to be Martin, I could not strive to be anyone or do anything, since I would not be able to discriminate between what is important and unimportant in my life. Nothing would show up either as urgent or tedious, central or peripheral, since the question of priority would be unintelligible to me. Likewise, the Idea of the United States of America is striving to hold ourselves to the principles with which we identify as citizens. If we had no Idea of the United States of America, we could not strive to be Americans or do anything that we take to be American. No form of legislation or political practice could show up as consistent or inconsistent with our commitment to the United States of America, since we would have no Idea of who we are supposed to be.
The Idea of a form of life is therefore the condition of intelligibility for both any form of fidelity and any form of betrayal. It is because I have an Idea of what it means to be Martin that I can betray myself as a person, and it is because we have an Idea of the United States of America that we can betray ourselves as a nation. Being Martin is not something that happens automatically; I have to strive to be Martin and I can fail to be who I take myself to be. Likewise, being the United States of America does not happen automatically; we have to strive to be the United States of America and we can fail to be who we take ourselves to be. Moreover, striving to be Martin is not a task that can be completed and striving to be the United States of America is not a mission that can be accomplished. Rather, striving to be Martin is intrinsic to being Martin, just as striving to be the United States of America is intrinsic to being the United States of America.
For the same reason, the Idea of who we ought to be is itself something that can be challenged and transformed. Because any Idea—whether of an individual or a collective—must be embodied in practice, the Idea of who we ought to be can always be taken up in a different way, called into question, and be the subject of a revolution. This is the radical implication of Hegel’s notion of Entäusserung. There is not first an inner Idea that is then subjected to an external fate in the world, and there is not first an inner self that is then dependent on the recognition of others. Rather, any Idea and any sense of self must from the beginning be externalized in the material practices they sustain. We cannot even try to be anyone or do anything without putting ourselves at stake—pouring ourselves forth, emptying ourselves out—in the activities to which we are committed and which may demand a profound transformation of who we take ourselves to be. This finitude is both the promise and the peril of spiritual life.
We can thus clarify the stakes of a secular reconciliation with finitude and draw together the threads of This Life. The Unhappy Consciousness of religious faith cannot reconcile itself with being alive, in the sense of being vulnerable to pain, loss, and death. As we have seen, any form of life must strive to maintain itself—to sustain a fragile material body—in order to be what it is. Even in the most fulfilled form of spiritual life, striving to be ourselves is essential to being ourselves. The Unhappy Consciousness, however, thinks that we are striving to put an end to striving and long to rest in peace. Religious reconciliation is therefore always deferred to an unattainable future, when we will be absolved from the finitude of life. A secular reconciliation, by contrast, recognizes that “there is nothing degrading about being alive” (as Hegel puts it in a poignant phrase).77 Being vulnerable to pain, loss, and death is not a fallen condition but inseparable from being someone for whom something can matter.
The point is not that we should embrace pain, loss, and death. The idea of such an embrace is just another version of the religious ideal of being absolved from vulnerability. If we embraced pain we would not suffer, if we embraced loss we would not mourn, and if we embraced death we would not be anxious about our lives. Far from advocating such invulnerability, a secular reconciliation with finitude acknowledges that we must be vulnerable—we must be marked by the suffering of pain, the mourning of loss, the anxiety before death—in order to lead our lives and care about one another. Only through such an acknowledgment can we turn away from the religious promise of absolut
ion and turn toward our time together. Only through such an acknowledgment can we understand the urgency of changing our lives. We are reconciled with being alive, but for that very reason we are not reconciled to living unworthy lives. We demand a better society and we know that it depends on us. In taking action, we are not waiting for a timeless future but grasp in practice that our time is all we have.
III
We are now ready to return to Memphis in 1968. On February 12—the birthday of Abraham Lincoln—nearly thirteen hundred black sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. Their labor conditions were intolerable and symptomatic of the economic forms of exploitation that plagued the black community even after the legal victories of the civil rights movement. Despite working full-time, the sanitation workers lived in poverty and did not earn enough to provide for their families. They had no insurance and regularly suffered severe injuries in the physically demanding work of handling garbage tubs and packer trucks. They worked all day in filth, but the city of Memphis did not provide them with gloves, uniforms, or even a place to shower. The equipment at their disposal was outdated, but the city refused to spend money on updating it. Moreover, the sanitation workers were not allowed to form a union and the black employees were addressed as “boys” by their white bosses, with clear echoes of the epoch of slavery.78
The precariousness of the labor situation had been highlighted on February 1, when two black workers—Echol Cole and Robert Walker—were crushed to death in a packer truck, owing to a defective mechanism that the city had neglected to replace. Less than two weeks later the strike began, with the sanitation workers demanding union rights and improved labor conditions. They were met with fierce resistance from the white mayor and the city council. The police attacked the strikers and their supporters with mace, while their demands for basic rights were vilified by the media. Yet the black community of Memphis came together in support of the sanitation workers. There were nightly meetings in the churches to organize and mobilize the community in daily actions. Ministers joined workers, students, housewives, and other citizens in picket lines, protest marches, and a boycott of downtown stores. As the movement grew, leading national union organizers such as William Lucy, Jesse Epps, and Joe Paisley were sent to Memphis to help the strikers. The city officials responded by stepping up police intimidation, threats of violence, and sanctions. Memphis was on the verge of a major confrontation between workers and the owners of capital.
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