The Divided Mind. Part Three: The Unhappy Consciousness (2)

‘A?farternoiser?for his?tuckish armenities. Ouhr Former who erred in?having?down to?gibbous?disdag?our darling breed. And then the?confisieur?for the?boob’s indulligence. As sunctioned for his?salmenborg?by the?Councillors-om-Trent.?Pave?Pannem at his?gaiter’s bronze! Nummer half dreads Log Laughty. Master's?gunne?he?warrs?the?bedst’.

- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939

Joyce’s body focussed satire as it is prone to do again transports the serious into the domain of the comical, the sacred is dragged down to the level of the profane, the power of the Father is thereby undermined for the Father is Farter (Vater in German) in this parody of the?Pater Noster, Our Father, the Lord's Prayer, this farternoiser, Our Father who art in heaven, Ouhr Former who erred in?having?.... . Which connects neatly to the problems confronting Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's, (1770 - 1831), Unhappy Consciousness, and which had its living embodiment in S?ren Aabye Kierkegaard, (1813 - 1855), did S?ren but know it; for such a consciousness cannot merely make the qualitative leap into the elation and good comfort of Spirit; oh no, it must needs endeavour, it being of a divided contradictory nature, to bring the universal and the individual together; individuality that is of such importance to Kierkegaard, for whom it is in the individual where proper integrity lies (truth is subjectivity remember), and yet the Unhappy Consciousness is of a divided nature in contradistinction to an individual consciousness. Let us return to the story of Abraham that Kierkegaard reads so much into (see the previous part in this series): ‘And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,?here?I?am’. (Genesis 22:1).?One needs faith in order to understand Abraham, according to Kierkegaard, or rather his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio: ‘No one was as great as Abraham. Who is able to understand him?’; and faith as the spontaneous inclination of the heart is a paradox of existence. Could Kierkegaard have possibly read the section in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit' on the Unhappy Consciousness? One assumes so, he wrote so much on Hegel, which makes his reflections upon Abraham all the more mysterious; there is certainly a paradox there, but not the one that Kierkegaard supposes.

Hegel does not refer to Abraham in this section but the story fits with what is said about the Unhappy Consciousness; if the initiative is given to the side of the Unchangeable the individual consciousness endeavours to sort things out with regard to its relation to the Unchangeable but while the Unchangeable is necessary or rather non-contingent the Unhappy Consciousness is a contingent being. God calls Abraham,?and Abraham says 'here I am'; the non-contingent thus connects in a certain manner with the individual from whose contingency upon finding itself in the Unchangeable emerges self-questioning of the kind we all are familiar with: why me? The Unchangeable is brought into the individual by the individual, this divided being, while the Unchangeable itself is a unity; there are therefore brought from on high two kinds of contingency, the single individual, Abraham, with his dreams, his desires, his feelings, all of which are contingent, the individual can even come to regard his or her life as meaningless; but that necessary thing above whatever it is that wants to relate to Abraham, that relation in itself is also contingent; and the fault lies with Abraham for he is the contingent one; how can there be a necessary connection to a contingent being? As Hegel explains:

‘In fact, through the Unchangeable’s assuming a definite form, the moment of the beyond (jenseits) not only persists, but really is more firmly established; for if the beyond seems to have been brought closer to the individual consciousness through the form of an actuality that is individual, it henceforth on the other hand confronts him as an opaque sensuous unit with all the obstinacy of what is actual’.

The moment of the beyond persists; the Unchangeable is not merely an imperative from on high, it is absolute, infinite value; but with the beyond the complete picture is forever denied to the individual such as Abraham; all he knows is that there are commands from on high, so what is to be done other that what he is told must be done? The individual is limited, in intelligence, in knowledge, so why not follow orders from the Unchangeable and see how it transpires? There is always a superfluity in situations pf this kind whereby the why finishes up as commentary, sometimes of a prolix and convoluted nature, this best that humans can do. Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling' for instance, where he writes: 'The dialectic of faith is the finest and most remarkable of all; it possesses an elevation, of which indeed I can form a conception, but nothing more. I am able to make from the springboard the great leap whereby I pass into infinity, my back is like that of a tight-rope dancer, having been twisted in my childhood, hence I find this easy; with a one-two-three! I can walk about existence on my head; but the next thing I cannot do, for I cannot perform the miraculous, but can only be astonished by it'. Astonished by what? A dialectical three step shuffle, a terrified awe when the Unchangeable becomes individual and an individual is addressing the Unchangeable and all to be gained is a hope which is not realizable, for the Unchangeable I can relate to is the hope but the beyond finishes up existing even more in the individual. And consider this, how well do we know other individual? How well do we know ourselves as individuals? There is always something inaccessible there. St Augustine, (354 - 430), made much of this:?‘You cannot lay bare the lurking places of your mind.’ The individual mind is memory and its vastness a consequence of its memory, that which is full of ‘hidden and unsearchable caverns’; and he asserts ‘in my memory too I meet myself.’ ?But in such a vast cavern replete with unexplored regions and an unknown interior the self meets itself but whereabouts in the memory do we meet ourselves? ‘I do not even know what I do not know', said Augustine.

'The mind 'is a mystery in broad daylight', said Jean-Paul Sartre, (1905 - 1980). If I do not know myself how can I possibly know another individual especially if that individual is the Universal? The beyond thus brought close is thereby an opaque sensuous unit, (ein undurchsichtiges sinnliches?Eins,?I do so like that phrase); that is, other individuals, you, in other words, how you feature in my world, contingent individuals with a contingency that is ineliminable; and we all know how the words and the gestures of other individuals can be misinterpreted, I do it often enough myself; the opacity and the refractoriness of actuality as opposed to that which is virtual is thereby uncertain and unforeseeable, and our hope of becoming one with the universal, the Unchangeable, as an individual opaque sensuous unit is as forlorn as it would be with any other opaque sensuous unit though they too be within the Unchangeable; or rather it is a hope that can only ever remain a hope, and this is the situation of Kierkegaard and of Abraham having made their God into an opaque sensuous unit. Kierkegaard is part of the transcendent because he feels to be so, and his hope of becoming one with the transcendent remains a hope, lacking fulfilment, and this is the real paradox of faith; hope arises through the individual merging with the beyond, the transcendent, a hope for an unrealisable unity, for once the transcendent is there it vanishes, persisting in an utter remoteness. In so far as we are hoping we can smell the divine aroma in our nostrils but it remains so far far away and the unhappy consciousness is forever unhappy endeavouring to penetrate further and further into the beyond:

'The hope of becoming one with it must remain a hope, i.e., without fulfilment and present fruition, for between the hope and its fulfilment there stands precisely the absolute contingency or inflexible indifference which lies in the very assumption of definite form, which was the ground for hope. By the nature of this immediately present unit, through the actual existence in which it has clothed itself, it necessarily follows that in the world of time it has vanished, and that in space it had a remote existence and remains utterly remote'.

I mention nostrils and smelling because the King James Bible does so too in its depictions of the individual's relation to God as to that of an opaque sensuous unit:

'All?the?while my breath is in me, and?the?spirit of?God?is in my?nostrils', (Job 27:3).

'They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they?smell?not', (Psalms 115:6).

'But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus?the?things which were sent from you, an odour of a?sweet?smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to?God'. (Philippians 4:18).

Salvador Dali, ‘Dematerialization near the Nose of Nero’, 1947

And so for Kierkegaard prayers and offerings smell sweetly to God, as he writes in 'Works of Love':

‘If prayer is an offering of the lips and pleasing to God, then mercifulness is actually the heart’s offering and is, as Scripture says, a sweet fragrance in God’s nostrils. Oh, when you think of God, never forget that he does not have the least understanding about money. My listener, if you were a speaker, what assignment would you choose: to speak to the rich about practicing generosity or to the poor about practicing mercifulness? I am quite sure which one I would choose or, rather, which one I have chosen-if only I were a speaker. Oh, there is something indescribably reconciling in speaking to the poor man about practicing mercifulness!’

And in 'Practice in Christianity' again it is clear that this is an Unhappy Consciousness hoping to draw nearer and nearer to a God that is an opaque sensuous unit that retreats further and further away in the hoping:

‘Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn - and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness - all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are truth, only you, our Saviour and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do - that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself - from on high, but through lowliness and abasement’.

The section on the Unhappy Consciousness in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit', like much in this great work, certainly opened my eyes to something fundamental concerning the human condition; I discern the Unappy Consciousness in the writings of Lord Byron, (1788 - 1824): ‘I hold virtue in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition; each a feeling, not a principle. I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity, and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body’. And: ‘I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence of God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be over-rated’. And though Byron claimed to have probably no precise opinion on the subject in his struggle between natural piety and doubt, and wrote that: A pleasant voyage, perhaps to float / Like Pyrrho on a sea of speculation', he did compose his own prayer:

'The Prayer of Nature'

by Lord Byron

Father of Light! great God of Heaven!

Hear'st thou the accents of despair?

Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?

Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?

Father of Light, on thee I call!

Thou seest my soul is dark within;

Thou who canst'mark the sparrow's fall,

Avert from me the death of sin.

No shrine I seek, to sects unknown;

Oh, point to me the path of truth!

John Martin, ‘The Celestial City and the River of Bliss’, 1841

Thy dread omnipotence I own;

Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.

Let bigots rear a gloomy fane,

Let superstitition hail the pile,

Let priests, to spread their sable reign,

With tales of mystic rites beguile.

Shall man confine his Maker's sway

To Gothic domes of mouldering stone?

Thy temple is the face of the day;

Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne.

Shall man condemn his race to hell,

Unless they bend in pompous form?

Tell us that all, of one who fell,

Must perish in the mingling storm?

Shall each pretend to reach the skies,

Yet doom his brother to expire,

Whose soul a different hope supplies,

Or doctrines less severe inspire?

Shall these, by creeds they can't expound,

Prepare a fancied bliss or woe?

John Martin, 'The Plains of Heaven', 1851-3

Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground,

Their great Creator's purpose know?

Shall those, who live for self alone,

Whose years float on in a daily crime -

Shall they by Faith for guilt atone,

And live beyond the bounds of Time?

Father! no prophet's laws I seek,-

Thy laws in Nature's works appear;-

I own myself corrupt and weak,

Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!

Thou, who canst guide the wandering star

Through trackness realms of other's space;

Who calm'st the elemental war,

Whose hand from pole to pole I trace.

Thou, who in wisdom placed me here,

Who, when thou wilt, canst take me hence,

Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere,

Extend to me thy wide defence.

To Thee, my God, to thee I call!

Whatever weal or woe betide,

By thy command I rise or fall,

In thy protection I confide.

If, when this dust to dust's restored,

My soul shall float on airy wing,

How shall thy glorious name adored

Inspire her feedle voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share

With clay the gaves eternal bed,

While life yet throbs I raise my prayer,

Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain;

Grateful for all thy mercies past,

And hope, my God, to thee again

This erring life may fly at last.

(December 29, 1806)

‘Solitude’, John Martin, 1843

Hegel describes a particular kind of comportment assumed by the Unhappy Consciousness, that of devotion (Andacht), which is not thinking itself but a movement towards thinking and which connects with feeling (Gefühl), as he delves deeper and deeper into the manner whereby people throughout history and in modern times endeavour to connect themselves with what they can conceptualise in terms of pure thinking or of the Unchangeable, that is to say, the other extremity in the disconnect between the individual and that which transcends the individual; but the individual endeavours to think pure thinking without thinking it and the relation itself of one to the other is not a relation of pure thinking, rather, it is a conditional relation conditioned by the situation in which the individual finds him or herself, by the resources that he or she has ready to hand for the making of any kind of sense out of all this, because it is certainly true that Kierkegaard has considerably more knowledge of scripture than myself to draw upon, but these are contingent matters, mere devotion, although the word does not quite capture the sense of Andacht, the turning of one's attention towards God.

'Its thinking as such is no more than the chaotic jingling of bells', writes Hegel, 'or a mist of warm incense, a musical thinking that does not get as far as the Notion, which would be the sole, immanent objective mode of thought’ .... that is to say, with such pure thinking there is an appeal to the essential grasped not as concepts but as feelings, and so it does not yield the concept, the sole immanent objective mode of thought, which is to say, thinking that is aware of its object and of itself as an historically conditioned subject and aware of how it can overcome such conditioning, thinking in a coherent systematic whole; rather, religious rites and services are an impoverished type of thinking, while still being thinking, for ritual chanting may be a distinctively human kind of activity yet it does not yield for the thinker the object that the thinker endeavours to relate to. And so too with musical thinking which may be deep and profound and stirring but difficult to articulate in conceptual terms. An?infinite pure inner feeling thereby grasps the Unchangeable but not in the proper manner, it is a reaching outwards towards its infinity and this infinity manifests itself as something alien. The Unhappy Consciousness incorporates a division into two sides both of which are consciousnesses whereby the contingent individual is estranged within itself, the universal, and it does not realise that it is both of these consciousnesses nor how to get from the individual to the universal without losing the individual endeavouring to grasp an object that is part of itself while treating that other side as something alien to itself; the experience of the holy is of the holy other, as Rudolf Otto, (1869 - 1937), called it; a very much mistaken perspective that the Unhappy Consciousness needs to work itself through; it is just no good at all to be staying there.

The inward motion of the pure heart is where such thinking and feeling is carried out. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and?lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight’. (Proverbs 3:5-6).?At the centre of what a person is, is the pure heart feeling its way towards pure thinking, the Unchangeable, together feeling the relation while feeling itself; such a devotional relation is on a somewhat higher plane than mere praying as the essence of the person relates him or herself to that which he or she feels to be of infinite importance; that which promises the possibility of giving their lives meaning is attained through feeling; the pure heart is infinite yearning; this agonisingly divided thinking through individuality, pure thinking thinking itself as a particular individuality known and recognised by the transcendent because it is an individual and not a principle nor an abstract force:

'What we have here, then, is the inward movement of the pure heart which feels itself, but itself as agonising self-divided, the movement of an infinite yearning which is certain that its essence is such a pure heart, a pure thinking which thinks of itself as a particular individuality, certain of being known and recognised by this object, precisely because the latter thinks of itself as an individuality. At the same time, however, this essence is the unnattainable beyond which, in being laid hold of, flees, or rather has already flown'.

Salvador Dali, 'The Veiled Heart', 1932

'Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, dust and ashes', said Augustine. 'Yet suffer me to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou too, perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou return and have compassion upon me. For what would I say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came into this dying life (shall I call it?) or living death'. I am dust and ashes through which runs incoherent thinking the very expression of my contingency and the universal that recognises the beyond as unreachable ... how can God enter into our hearts? asks Augustine:

‘And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me? whither can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me that can contain Thee? do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast made, and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? or, because nothing which exists could exist without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists contain Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? because I am not gone down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For if I go down into hell, Thou art there. I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all, wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into me? for whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and the earth’.

Kierkegaard himself, in the 'Philosophical Fragments', asks how the infinite can enter into a particular moment of time; how can the finite contain the infinite experience I cannot conceptualise but which I have a feeling about? (Although as I always like to point out there is something self-contradictory about using a concept to make the claim we have no understanding, or concept, of the concept):

'The Moment in time must have a decisive significance, so that I will never be able to forget it either in time or eternity; because the Eternal, which hitherto did not exist, came into existence in this moment. Under this presupposition let us now proceed to consider the consequences for the problem of how far it is possible to acquire a knowledge of the Truth'.

Such questioning as this we find in St. Anselm's, (1033 - 1109), 'Proslogion', his prayer reflecting upon the attributes of an unknowable God:

‘Speak now, my whole heart; speak now to God: I seek Your countenance; Your countenance, 0 Lord, do I seek. So come now, Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You, where and how to find You. If You are not here, 0 Lord, where shall I seek You who are absent? But if You are everywhere, why do I not behold You as present? But surely You dwell in light inaccessible. Yet, where is light inaccessible? Or how shall I approach unto light inaccessible? Or who will lead me to and into this light so that in it I may behold You? Furthermore, by what signs, by what facial appearance shall I seek You? Never have I seen You, 0 Lord my God; I am not acquainted with Your face. What shall this Your distant exile do? What shall he do, 0 most exalted Lord? What shall Your servant do, anguished out of love for You and cast far away from Your face? He pants to see You, but Your face is too far removed from him. He desires to approach You, but Your dwelling place is inaccessible. He desires to find You but does not know Your abode. He longs to seek You but does not know Your countenance. 0 Lord, You are my God, and You are my Lord; yet, never have I seen You. You have created me and created me anew and have bestowed upon me whatever goods I have; but I am not yet acquainted with You. Indeed, I was made for seeing You; but not yet have I done that for which I was made’.

'Churches, New Jerusalem', 1917, Aristarkh Lentulov

Such religious thinking stretches down into a person's very foundations while yet the infinite recedes from him or her; the pure heart grasps at the infinite or the essential and can neither stabilise it conceptually nor can the pure heart stabilise itself .... and what then is left but feeling?

To be continued .....

Notes to ‘Finnegans Wake’ quotation:

1. paternoster?= the Lord's Prayer, especially in the Latin version.

2. Turkish; and tückisch (German), spiteful; and Tuck, Friar, one of Robin Hood's merry men.

3. Armenia; and amenity; the quality of being pleasant or agreeable; pleasant pursuits, pleasures, delights; Armenia occupied by Turks from 1405; nationalism in 19th and 20th centuries met by systematic massacres and starvation; atrocities.

4, having?= that which one has or possesses; possession, wealth, belongings; and (sinning God).

5, gibbous?= Of persons and animals: Hunch-backed.

6. dag?(Dutch) = day; and 'Our Father, Which art in Heaven' down to 'Give us this day our daily bread' (Lord's Prayer).

7. confiteor?= a form of prayer, or confession of sins ('Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti', I confess to Almighty God, etc.) used in the Latin Church at the beginning of the mass, in the sacrament of penance, and on other occasions; confiseur (French), confectioner.

8. boob?= a dull, heavy, stupid fellow; a clown, a nincompoop.

9. indulgence?= full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The indulgence is granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution; and?Pope's indulgence; and intelligence.

10. sanctioned.

11. salmebog?(Danish) = hymnbook.

12. councillor?= a private or confidential adviser.

13. TRENT?= City, North-East Italy, Austrian until 1919. The Council of Trent, 1545-1563, established the principles of the Counter-Reformation, and ended all possibility of reconciliation between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism; and omtrent (Danish), approximately.??

14. pave?= to lay or cover with a pavement (a street, road, floor, etc.); and Cave Canem (Latin), Beware the dog; and panem (Acc.) (Latin),?bread; and pave (Danish), pope.

16. gaiter?= a covering of cloth, leather, etc. for the ankle, or ankle and lower leg.

17. bronze?= impudence, unblushingness.

18. nummer?=?obs. f.?number.

19. hundred; and halvtreds (Danish), fifty.

20. Log?an Lagh (lug un la) (Gaelic), Hollow of the Hill; valley, Co. Wicklow, S. of Dublin; anglic.?Luggelaw; Loch Lachan (lokh lokhen) (Gaelic), Duck Lake, Co. Antrim; anglic.?Loughloughan.

21. gunne?= obs. form of?gun; and Michael Gunn managed Gaiety, Dublin.

22. was.

23, bedst?(Danish) = best.

IonTheodorescu-Sion, 'Lux in tenebris lucet', 1909