The philosopher -- himself an abstract form of estranged man -- sets himself up as the yardstick of the estranged world. The entire history of alienation, and the entire retraction of this alienation, is, therefore, nothing more than the history history of the production of abstract ( i.e., absolute), though, of logical, speculative thought. Estrangement, which thus forms the real interest of this alienation and its super-session, is the opposition of in itself and for itself, of consciousness and self-consciousness, of object and subject -- i.e., the opposition within thought itself of abstract thought and sensuous reality, or real sensuousness. All other oppositions and the movements of these oppositions are only the appearance, the mask, the exoteric form of these two opposites which are alone important and which form the meaning of these other, profane oppositions. It is not the fact that the human essence objectifies itself in an inhuman way, in opposition to itself, but that it objectifies itself in distinction from and in opposition to abstract thought, which constitutes the essence of estrangement as it exists and as it is to be superseded.
The appropriation of man's objectified and estranged essential powers is, therefore, firstly only an appropriation which takes place in consciousness, in pure thought -- i.e., in abstraction. In the Phenomenology, therefore, despite its thoroughly negative and critical appearance, and despite the fact that its criticism is genuine and often well ahead of its time, the uncritical positivism, and equally uncritical idealism of Hegel's later works, the philosophical dissolution and restoration of the empirical world, is already to be found in its latent form, in embryo, as a potentiality and a secret. Secondly, the vindication of the objective world for man -- e.g., the recognition that sensuous consciousness is not abstractly sensuous consciousness, but humanly sensuous consciousness; that religion, wealth, etc., are only the estranged reality of human objectification, of human essential powers born into work, and therefore only the way to true human reality -- this appropriation, or the insight into this process, therefore appears in Hegel in such a way that sense perception, religion, the power of the state, etc., are spiritual entities, for mind alone is the true essence of man, and the true form of mind is the thinking mind, the logical, speculative mind. The humanity of nature and of nature as produced by history, of man's products, is apparent from the fact that they are products of abstract mind and therefore factors of the mind, entities of thought. The Phenomenology is therefore concealed and mystifying criticism, criticism which has not attained self-clarity; but insofar as it grasps the estrangement of man -- even though man appears only in the form of mind -- all the elements of criticism are concealed within it, and often prepared and worked out in a way that goes far beyond Hegel's own point of view. The "unhappy consciousness", the "honest consciousness", the struggle of the "noble and base consciousness", etc., etc., these separate sections contain the critical elements -- but still in estranged form -- of entire spheres, such as religion, the state, civil life and so fort.
Just as the entity, the object,appears as a thought-entity, so also the subject is always consciousness of self-consciousness; or rather, the object appears only as abstract consciousness and men only as self-consciousness.
The various forms of estrangement which occur are therefore merely different forms of consciousness and self-consciousness. Since abstract consciousness, which is how the object is conceived, is in itself only one moment in the differentiation of self-consciousness, the result of the movement is the identity of self-consciousness and consciousness, absolute knowledge, the movement of abstract thought no longer directed outwards but proceeding only within itself; i.e., the result is the dialectic of pure thought.
The importance of Hegel's Phenomenology and its final result -- the dialectic of negativity as the moving and producing principle -- lies in the fact that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, objectification as loss of object [ Entgegenstandlichung ], as alienation and as supersession of this alienation; that he therefore grasps the nature of labor and conceives objective man -- true, because real man -- as the result of his own labor. The real, active relation of man to himself as a species-being, or the realization of himself as a real species-being -- i.e., as a human being, is only possible if he really employs all this species-powers -- which again is only possible through the cooperation of mankind and as a result of history -- and treats them as objects, which is at first only possible in the form of estrangement.
* We shall now demonstrate, in detail, the one-sidedness and the limitations of Hegel, as observed in the closing chapter of the Phenomenology .
This chapter ("Absolute Knowledge") contains the concentrated essence of the Phenomenology, its relation to the dialectic, and Hegel's consciousness of both and their interrelations.
