Feuerbach, therefore, conceives the negation of the negation only as a contradiction of philosophy with itself, as philosophy which affirms theology (supersession, etc.) after having superseded it and, hence, affirms it in opposition to itself.
The positing or self-affirmation and self-confirmation present in the negation of the negation is regarded as a positing which is not yet sure of itself, which is still preoccupied with its opposite, which doubts itself and therefore stands in need of proof, which does not prove itself through its own existence, which is not admitted. It is, therefore, directly counterposed to that positing which is sensuously ascertained and grounded in itself. (Feuerbach sees negation of the negation, the concrete concept, as thought which surpasses itself in thought and as thought which strives to be direct awareness, nature, reality.)
But, since he conceives the negation of the negation from the aspect of the positive relation contained within it as the true and only positive and from the aspect of the negative relation contained within it as the only true act and self-realizing act of all being, Hegel has merely discovered the abstract, logical, speculative expression of the movement of history. This movement of history is not yet the real history of man as a given subject, it is simply the process of his creation, the history of his emergence. We shall explain both the abstract form of this movement and the difference between Hegel's conception of this process and that of modern criticism as formulated in Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums, or, rather, the critical form of a movement which in Hegel is still uncritical.
Let us take a look at Hegel's system. We must begin with his Phenomenology, which is the true birthplace and secret of the Hegelian philosophy. [ chapter and section headings ]
Phenomenology A. Self-consciousness 1. Consciousness.
(a) Certainty in sense experience, or the "this" and meaning.
(b) Perception or the thing with its properties and illusion.
(c) Power and understanding, phenomena and the super-sensible world.
2. Self-consciousness. The truth of certainty of oneself.
(a) Independence and dependence of self-consciousness (b) Freedom of self-consciousness. Stoicism, scepticism, the unhappy consciousness.
3. Reason. Certainty and truth.
(a) Observational reason; observation of nature and of self-consciousness.
(b) Realization of rational self-consciousness through itself. Pleasure and necessity. The law of the heart and the madness of self-conceit. Virtue and the way of the world.
(c) Individuality which is real in and for itself. The spiritual animal kingdom and deception or the thing itself. Legislative reason. Reason which tests laws.
B. Mind.
1. True mind, morality.
2. Self-estranged mind, culture.
3. Mind certain of itself, morality.
C. Religion.
Natural religion, the religion of art, revealed religion.
D. Absolute knowledge. Hegel's Encyclopaedia begins with logic, with pure speculative thought, and ends with absolute knowledge, with the self-conscious, self-comprehending philosophical or absolute mind -- i.e., super-human, abstract mind.
In the same way, the whole of the Encyclopaedia is nothing but the extended being or philosophical mind, its self-objectification; and the philosophical mind is nothing but the estranged mind of the world thinking within its self-estrangement -- i.e., conceiving itself abstractly.
Logic is the currency of the mind, the speculative thought-value of man and of nature, their essence which has become completely indifferent to all real determinateness and hence unreal, alienated thought, and therefore though which abstract from nature and from real man; abstract thought.
The external character of this abstract thought... nature as it is for this abstract thought. Nature is external to it, its loss of self; it grasps nature externally, as abstract thought, but as alienated abstract thought.
Finally mind, which is thought returning to its birthplace and which as anthropological, phenomenological, psychological, moral, artistic-religious mind, is not valid for itself until it finally discovers and affirms itself as absolute knowledge and therefore as absolute, i.e., abstract mind, receives its conscious and appropriate existence. For its real existence is abstraction.
Hegel commits a double error.
The first appears most clearly in the Phenomenology, which is the birthplace of Hegelian philosophy. When, for example, Hegel conceives wealth, the power of the state, etc., as entities estranged from the being of man, he conceives them only in their thought form... They are entities of thought, and therefore simply an estrangement of pure -- i.e., abstract -- philosophical thought. Therefore, the entire movement ends with absolute knowledge. What these objects are estranged from and what they confront with their claim to reality is none other than abstract thought.
