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The Trope of Eigensinn in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

The presupposition which calls itself the
fear of error thus reveals itself to be more
likely the fear of the truth.

GWF Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §74

Introduction1

In early Hegel scholarship, it was common to view Hegel as an optimistic, even naïve,

believer of historical, epistemological, and cultural progress, and, consequently, not to take

his account very seriously.2 We are currently experiencing renewed interest in developing a

more sophisticated reading of Hegel’s concept of progress;3 yet recent scholarship has also

drawn attention to the parts of Hegel’s corpus that speak to obstacles to the forward

movement of history and knowledge, as well as to individual psychological development,

especially the Phenomenology of Spirit (henceforth PhG). One recent example is Rebecca

Comay, who reads the PhG in light of Freud’s concept of “resistance.” Resistance is defined by

Freud as everything that interrupts the ongoing work of analysis. Comay argues that the

natural consciousness that the reader follows throughout the PhG displays a similar

tendency of resistance to progress: more than a Bildungsroman about spirit’s journey

towards self-knowledge, the PhG is therefore an anti-Bildungsroman filled with the obstacles


1 I would like to thank Richard J. Bernstein, Jay M. Bernstein, René Rosfort, Aaron J. Goldman, and Michael Becker

for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.


2 See Pinkard (2017), “Introduction”, and Pahl (2011), 141, for two concise overviews of such a reading.
3 See, for instance, Pinkard (2017) and Zantvoort (2015). Rahel Jaeggi presented a paper entitled “Normativity

and Progress in History: With and Against Hegel,” at the New York German Idealism Workshop on Dec 18th
2015, which also deals with this topic.

that spirit tirelessly generates to stall its very own progress.4 Similarly, Katrin Pahl has

emphasized the famous metaphor of the Weg der Verzweiflung (highway of despair), which

Hegel uses to describe consciousness’s path towards absolute knowing, as well as Hegel’s

remarks that consciousness loses both its own self and the truth during its journey. She

writes that “[t]he subject in despair loses its head, its every bone is broken, it self-digests, its

heart breaks, its spirit is crushed but restless.” In short, “Bildung is torture” to

consciousness.5 According to Pahl, despair doesn’t annihilate the subject completely – the

subject always bounces back from its self-loss as if made of rubber – but it nevertheless

keeps the subject in constant and unending movement. Thus despair “undoes the final

teleology of the Phenomenology.”6

As a way problematizing the idea of progress in Hegel and contributing to this

discussion of resistance, I wish to draw attention to the concept of Eigensinn as it appears in

the PhG. The word itself can be translated in a variety of ways. A. V. Miller renders Eigensinn

“self-will” and “self-centered attitude”, while Terry Pinkard prefers “stubbornness”,

“obstinacy”, and “inflexibility”, and Henry S. Harris makes the interesting choice to translate


4 Comay (2015), 261-2. An early observer of the link between the PhG and the genre of the Bildungsroman, in

Anglophone Hegel scholarship, is Josiah Royce. See Royce (1964), 147-150.


5 Pahl (2011), 142.
6 Pahl (2011), 144. Other examples of readings that focus on resistance or obstacles to the progress of spirit in

the PhG can be found in Schmidt (2002), Zantvoort (2014), and Marasco (2015). Dennis J. Schmidt critiques the
position that spirit is a quick learner, and that its journey towards absolute knowing is “progressive from start
to finish”. (Schmidt 2002), 26. Instead, he suggests that, rather than being characterized by progress, spirit’s
development is filled with dead ends and repetition. Spirit “persists in repeating its past in order to change it.”
(Ibid.), 28. Bart Zantvoort’s argues for the importance of what he calls the inertia (Trägheit) of spirit; that is,
spirit’s resistance to its own self-transformation. Despite Hegel’s putative belief that this inertia is impossible –
since, Hegel assumes, the Concept must always move forward – Zantvoort insists that Hegel also shows that an
inertia or slowness of the pace of spirit is a necessary condition for spirit to endure in time. Finally, Robyn
Marasco argues that despair is what drives the whole dialectic in the PhG. “Indeed,” she writes, “despair is the
restlessness of the negative.” Marasco (2015), 31. With the focus on despair as the primary motor of
consciousness, Marasco wants to complicate the picture of Hegel as the great thinker of reconciliation.

Eigensinn as the much more neutral “privacy”. 7 All of these translations connote a form of

recalcitrance or resistance, an insistence on one’s own self, and a sense of motionlessness.

To my knowledge, the current literature has not yet considered this concept as relevant for

understanding Hegel’s complex view on progress. I will show that Hegel understands

Eigensinn as a kind of stubborn interiority or inwardness that halts the development of

spirit. More specifically, I argue Hegel deploys the term “Eigensinn” to capture the non-

productive failures of spirit. While the entire PhG can be read as a catalogue of the failures of

natural consciousness, most of these failures are productive. That is, the reader of the PhG –

the so-called phenomenological “we” – learns something from those errors committed by

consciousness, and, for this reason, the readers’ knowledge expands.8 However, some of the

failures of consciousness are, so I want to argue, not productive. Eigensinn is such a moment

in the development of spirit, which does not further its progress, but which rather functions

as a kind of dead end. I.e., the readers do not learn from the non-productive failures of spirit

in the same way that they learn from the productive errors.

A look at the concept of Eigensinn will reveal that Hegel is sensitive to a certain kind

subjective inwardness and interiority, which he at times describes as a type of silence (as

Søren Kierkegaard would later do much more emphatically). Yet Hegel is generally critical of

this category. When consciousness stubbornly insists on its own interiority, its forward

movement is obstructed. In fact, I show that Eigensinn is the most emphatic form of stubborn

interiority, which Hegel ultimately links to the biblical trope of the “hard heart”. The latter


7 I will mainly be using “stubbornness” as a translation of Eigensinn.
8 At the end of the book, we, the readers, discover that the PhG is our own story – that we ourselves are spirit; that

is we are human sociality, which reflects upon itself and transforms itself historically. In this sense, spirit’s
knowledge is a form of self-knowledge.

evokes an old form of spiritual rebellion against God – one that is only deepened, on Hegel’s

analysis, by modern individualism.

Nevertheless, my claim will be that even though Eigensinn is a kind of interiority that

obstructs the development of consciousness, it also has another function within the larger

narrative Hegel lays out in the book. I suggest that the reason Hegel includes these non-

productive failures in the narrative of the PhG is not, as one might have imagined, to throw

into relief the necessity of spirit’s progression towards self-knowledge. Hegel’s aim is rather

to reveal the porous nature of human development and the enduring risk of historical,

cultural and epistemological regression. 9 Far from presenting a triumphalist view of

enlightenment progress, as mentioned above, or a “closed system” – an expression often

applied to Hegel’s philosophy, especially by French 20th century philosophy10 – the PhG

describes a development always susceptible to breakdowns and regression.


9 It is interesting that both in Hegel’s First Philosophy of Spirit (1803-4), from the Jena period, and in the mature

Philosophy of Right (1820), the concept of Eigensinn plays a quite different role than the one that it, on my view,
plays in the PhG. In the preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel writes the following: “It is a great obstinacy
[Eigensinn], the kind of obstinacy [Eigensinn] which does honor to human beings, that they are unwilling to
acknowledge anything in their attitudes that has not been justified by thought – and this obstinacy [Eigensinn]
is the characteristic of the modern age, as well as being the distinctive principle of Protestantism.” Hegel
(1991), 22. Does this statement imply that Hegel has changed his view in the period between the PhG and the
Philosophy of Right? And how can we distinguish between the obstructive sense of Eigensinn in the PhG, and
this, later, healthy critical function of Eigensinn? I will not be able to address these questions here, however.
Terry Pinkard argues that the answer to these questions has to do with a distinction between Ancient and
modern forms of Eigensinn. Pinkard (2012), 175-176. For an interpretation of the meaning of Eigensinn in the
First Philosophy of Spirit, see H.S. Harris (1996).
10 One of the most famous examples of such a critique is Derrida’s “From Restricted to General Economy: A

Hegelianism without Reserve”. Here, following Bataille’s reading of Hegel, Derrida voices the suspicion that
nothing is ever sacrificed, risked and lost in what appears to be PhG’s all-consuming narrative. With his
idiosyncratic fiscal metaphors, Derrida argues that the Hegelian way of thinking functions as a closed, or with
Bataille’s term “restricted,” economy: a system of meaning in which the account is always balanced. That is,
everything that is risked is viewed as an investment necessarily generating profit. Consequently, the system
precludes any unnecessary expenditure. According to Derrida, Hegel’s text is permeated by the structure of
Aufhebung (sublation) such that everything that is negated is also, necessarily, preserved.

To begin, we might want to say that, in a general sense, all shapes of consciousness in

the PhG are stubborn and inflexible, in that they cling to their own standard of truth until

internal contradictions both bring about collapse and give rise to new shapes from the ruins

of the previous ones.11 However, initially at least, I’m interested in stubbornness on a more

specific textual level. As with most important categories in the PhG, Eigensinn is a dynamic

concept that unfolds gradually throughout the book. Hegel uses this and related terms (e.g.

Eigendünkel, hartnäckiger, steifen Nacken) in several sections.12 In this paper, I discuss three

places in the text where the category emerges in an especially perspicuous way. First, I

analyze the role stubbornness plays in Hegel’s description of the servant in the famous

paragraphs on mastery and servitude. Secondly, I examine stubbornness in Hegel’s account

of the “beautiful soul,” and, thirdly, its place in the climactic conflict between the acting and

the judging consciousness. Finally, I evaluate the significance of Eigensinn at the more

general level of the PhG and conclude that the concept is employed by Hegel to indicate the

permanent risk of stagnation or regression in the development of spirit.

I. A Stubborn Servant?


11 In the Introduction to the PhG, Hegel writes that consciousness possesses an ability to go beyond itself by

limiting itself, and that this is a form of self-inflicted violence. He continues: “[f]eeling this violence, anxiety about
the truth might well retreat and strive to hold onto what it is in danger of losing” (§80). Throughout the paper, I
will be referring to Terry Pinkard’s translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit (Pinkard (2012)) in brackets with
paragraph number.
12 To mention some other examples: in the “Reason” chapter, the shape of consciousness Hegel calls ‘virtue’

views ‘the way of the world’ as stubborn and conceited (Eigendünkel) (§382); in the “Spirit” chapter, Hegel
writes that, from the point of view of the universal human law (nomos), the unwritten divine law (physis) is
nothing but “stubbornness [Eigensinn] and disobedience” (§465); and, in the section on the French Revolution
entitled “absolute freedom”, the abstract ideal of freedom stands over and against equally abstract citizens
whose “inflexible isolation” (eigensinnige Punktualität) this ideal is unable to accommodate (§590).

Arguably, the most striking use of the term Eigensinn in the entire PhG is found in the “Self-

Consciousness” chapter. It occurs in Hegel’s description of the dialectics of mastery and

servitude, and forms part of the series of failed attempts at mutual recognition, set off by

the struggle to death between two desiring self-consciousnesses. Famously, despite its

submission to mastery, servitude turns out to be the more progressive moment of the two,

since it intuits itself as freedom. It is in this context – Hegel’ description of servitude – that

the concept of Eigensinn first emerges. My goal in this section is to suggest a reading of two

passages, both relating to the servant’s fear of death.

In the first passage, Hegel writes that,


If [the servile] consciousness engages in formative activity without […] absolute fear, then it has a
mind of its own which is merely stubborn vanity [ein eitler eigner Sinn],13 for its form, that is, its
negativity, is not negativity in itself, and his formative activity thus cannot in his own eyes give
him the consciousness of himself as consciousness of the essence. (§196, my emphasis, CVP,
translation modified)

A bit further down in the same paragraph, he continues:


Because not each and every one of the ways in which his [i.e. the servant’s] natural consciousness
was brought to fruition was shaken to the core, he is still attached in himself to determinate
being. His having a mind of his own is then merely stubbornness [der eigne Sinn ist Eigensinn], a
freedom that remains bogged down within the bonds of servitude. (§196, emphasis in original)

Before I lay out my reading of these passages, let me briefly unpack the more exact conditions

– namely fear, service, and work – that need to be in place for the servile consciousness to gain

a sense of itself as a self-consciousness that is not stubborn and “bogged down” in servitude.


13 The
category of Eitelkeit (vanity) is related to Eigensinn – in their ultimate expression, both are forms of
pathologically exaggerated subjectivity – but I will not be commenting on this connection here. For an account of the
place of Eitelkeit in Hegel’s critique of Romanticism, see Mascat (2013).

In the struggle to death, the servant succumbed to the fear of losing her life, and thus

chose a life in enslavement over a free life. This teaches the servant that life and freedom are

values, and that one had to be sacrificed for the sake of the other, since no values matter if one

is not alive. In other words, self-consciousness is dependent on life or nature. (§194)

However, the fear of death teaches servile consciousness an additional lesson:


This Consciousness [i.e. servile consciousness] was not driven with anxiety about just this or that
matter, nor did it have anxiety about just this or that moment; rather it had anxiety about its
entire essence [Wesen – i.e. its being as such]. It felt the fear of death, the absolute master. In that
feeling, it had inwardly fallen into dissolution, trembled in its depths, and all that was fixed
within it had been shaken loose. (§194)

The phenomenon that Hegel wants to distill in the passage quoted above is the experience

of all particular concerns, all givens, and values loosening their grip. Undergoing fear of

death, all particular desires lose their prior appearance of necessity. Hegel writes that “[all]

durable existence becomes absolutely fluid.” (§194) However, the fear of death that

liquidates all particular concerns and desires makes something stand out as fixed; namely

what Hegel calls “the simple essence of self-consciousness” and “absolute negativity, pure

being-for-itself” (§194). The servant now grasps herself as the negating power; a power to

reject any given desire (although, at this point, this is solely in the service of self-

preservation). Since the servant appreciates her power to endorse or reject her own

desires, we, the readers of the PhG, learn that, despite its dependence on nature, self-

consciousness is also, in another respect, independent of nature.

Yet servitude’s experience of fear is fleeting, and does not amount to a lasting insight.

The raw fear of death is paralyzing and must be sublimated in some form to be meaningful

at all. Kojève has suggested that fear must be given a social form; otherwise the servant’s

fear “remains internal-or-private and mute.” 14 Hegel therefore insists that “the two

moments of fear and service per se [Dienstes überhaupt], as well as the moment of culturally

formative activity [Bildens] are both necessary […].” (§196) To explain why the moments of

service and formative activity are necessary, one could say that Hegel focuses on two

different aspects of the phenomenon of working for someone. Service, Dienst, is working for

someone: it is submitting oneself to a law or rule posited by another person. And although

the power-relation of master and servant is asymmetrical,15 in such a submission the

other’s will becomes my will, and I identify with the other. (This is a significant theme that

Hegel develops throughout the PhG.)16 By contrast, in culturally formative activity, one

works (Arbeit) for someone. Here the emphasis is placed on the formation or molding of

nature. The servant produces an external reflection of its own ideas and skills in nature and

it can recognize itself in this reflection.17 Working on the natural world makes nature seem

less alien and hostile to consciousness.18

This brief summary of a part of the master-servant dialectic puts us in a position to

examine Eigensinn. How are we to understand Hegel’s comment that if the servant had not

14 Kojève (1980), 28.
15 Feudalist power-relations are usually considered the historical “model” for the master-servant dialectics.
16 More specifically, in this context, Hegel writes that “not only is there universal dissolution as such [i.e. the

dissolution in fear], but, in his service, the servant also achieves this dissolution in actuality” (§194). Service
allows for negativity to gain an outward and social expression. Service is thus a precursor to a submission to a
universal standard with which consciousness identify, which comes into full existence with the shape of
consciousness Hegel calls “Reason”. See Neuhouser (2009), 50.
17 Because the servant does not bluntly negate the object – such as the master does in consuming it – but labors

on it, she surpasses the standpoint of “desire”, which Hegel describes earlier in the section. From this
standpoint of desire, self-consciousness does not see the object as having any authority. It is only self-
consciousness, which has authority, or is “self-sufficient”. However, by working on the thing, while not being
allowed to consume it, the servant learns to tolerate a competing source of authority. It realizes that the object
(nature) cannot be eliminated altogether – and yet it can be formed or shaped. By nevertheless seeing itself
reflected in nature in an externalized and enduring form, “the working consciousness comes to an intuition of
self-sufficient being as its own self.” (§195).
18 When nature seems less alien, it also seems less antagonistic to being a self-sufficient self-consciousness,

which is the servant’s ideal self-image, Neuhouser explains. Neuhouser (2009), 52-53.

been shocked by an absolute fear before she engaged in work, then she would have been

vain or stubborn (§196)? When we look at the two passages I quoted above, we can see that

the servile consciousness can have ‘a mind of its own’ in two different ways; namely in a

“bad” way 1) where it is vain or stubborn, or in a “good” way 2) in which it is freed from

“determinate” being. 2) Requires that the servant is permeated by absolute fear, and finds a

way to maintain its experience of itself as pure negativity. But how are 1) and 2) – we could

say the “stubborn” servant (1) and the “progressive” servant (2) – related?

In her essay “Stubborn Attachment, Bodily Subjection”, Judith Butler presents a

reading of the moment of Eigensinn in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter. Her main argument

is that the unhappy consciousness posits moral laws and norms as a response to the fear of

death and that this positing of universal norms, more specifically, is caused by a desire to

flee the body. According to Butler, this flight from the body is prefigured in the moment of

the servant. As I read it, Butler’s interpretation implies that 1) and 2) ought to be read as

two “phases” that the servant undergoes. She assumes that the servant first experiences

extreme fear in the struggle to death, but that after this experience, in working for the

master, the servant nevertheless indulges in a kind of complacency, “taking up a posture of

smugness or stubbornness”.19 Butler views both servitude and the unhappy consciousness

as being stubborn (eigensinnige), and she interprets the stubbornness as that which brings

about the transition to the unhappy consciousness (via stoicism and skepticism). Thus she

writes that “[t]he unhappy consciousness emerges here in the movement by which terror

[i.e., the fear of death] is allayed through a resolution of stubbornness or, rather, through


19 Butler (1997), 41.

the action by which the terror of bodily death is displaced by a smugness and stubbornness

that, in the next chapter [the section on the unhappy consciousness], is revalued as religious

self-righteousness.”20

Butler does not elaborate on how Hegel conceives of such a stubborn servant, but I

would like to take a moment to meditate on this question. We can imagine a scenario where

the servant is able to repress or forget her fear of death, and thus becomes stubborn. (Hegel

also imagines a servant who only experiences fear of particular things, but not a radical fear

of death. (§194)) To be stubborn here means to be attached to “this and that”, or to what

Hegel calls “determinate being.” My interpretation of this phrase is that a servant who

merely works, without enduring the transformative experience of radical fear, remains

preoccupied with her personal wants and needs. She is focused on the satisfaction of her

own natural wants: satisfying her hunger, her thirst, and probably relieving her exhaustion

in slaving for the master.21 Perhaps she remains content with the narcissistic pleasure she

receives from recognizing herself in the objects she produces. Such a servant would perhaps

even experience a kind of comfort in her servitude, since she is relieved from appreciating

the responsibility she holds as the author of her own values. 22 Hegel writes that the

stubborn servant’s sense of self is “eine Freiheit, welche noch innerhalb der Knechtschaft


20 Butler (1997), 42.
21 In fact, such a stubborn servant would resemble the master. Kobe makes this point. Kobe (2015), 845. Schmidt

argues that the master is a “dead end” (what I have also called a non-productive failure) on spirit’s journey: “as
long as consciousness lets itself be determined according to its desire for mastery, it will be a failed
consciousness, one without a future. From out of the consciousness determined by mastery no fundamentally
new form of consciousness can issue.” Schmidt (2002), 29. I think Schmidt is correct in claiming that mastery is a
dead end, although Hegel never claims that the master is stubborn. To clarify, my claim is not that Eigensinn is the
only form of dead end in the PhG, but rather that, according to Hegel, it is the one that is most significant and
dangerous, as will become clear in sections III and IV.
22 This “stubborn servant” anticipates the unhappy consciousness, which is anxious to repel the authorship of its

own actions.

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stehenbleibt” (my emphasis, CV-P). That is, the servant’s freedom has come to a standstill. It

has stalled. It has gotten stuck in the mud of particular natural desires, to which the servant

remains enslaved. This is the first time in the PhG that Hegel uses the term Freiheit (hitherto

he has only used selbständigheit, “self-sufficiency”). The stubborn servant contains a

potential for a kind of freedom, which she can only actualize once she grasps herself as

negativity through an enduring form of fear. More concretely, in working for the master, the

servant must grasp her ability to form – for instance, water and flour into bread – as more

than an arbitrary skill. She must understand herself qua self-consciousness as the author of

form or universal concepts. 23 The freedom of abstracting, in thought, from concrete

sensuous being is what characterizes the next shape of consciousness, stoicism. Yet because

the stubborn servant fears the total permeation of the fear of death – or, we could say,

because the servant is afraid of fear itself – she does not reach this standpoint of universal

thinking.24

As is perhaps implicit in this brief meditation, my reading of the section on the servant

differs from Butler’s in certain respects. There are especially two aspects of this

disagreement I would like to bring out. First, I disagree with Butler’s claim that the term

“stubbornness,” in the context of the servant, refers to a flight from the body. To me, the


23 In the opposite case, where the servant remains stubborn, “pure form can as little become the essence as can

the pure form when it is taken as extending itself beyond the individual be a universal culturally formative
activity, an absolute concept. [In that case,] the form is a skill which, while has dominance over some things,
has dominance over neither the universal power nor the entire objective essence” (§196).
24 However, Hegel does indicate that the stoic consciousness could potentially be either a servant or a master: “Its

[the stoic’s] activity consists in neither being the master who has his truth in the servant nor in being the servant
who has his truth in the will of the master and in his serving the master. Instead, it consists in being free within all
the dependencies of his individual existence, whether on the throne or in fetters, and in maintaining the
lifelessness which consistently withdraws from the movement of existence […] into the simple essentiality of
thought.” (§199, my emphasis, CVP)

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opposite seems to be the case. I read stubbornness as a kind of insistence on one’s own

interiority. Here, when the moment first comes on the scene, interiority is merely sensuous;

it consists in an attachment to immediate physical needs (the “this and that” or

“determinate being”). The stubborn servant that fails to sublimate fear is therefore not

fleeing the body, but, on the contrary, is unable to abstract from her own immediate bodily

needs. The body – in the form of my immediate desires – is what ‘bogs down’ the servant

and keeps her in servitude. In contrast, the mind of the “progressive” servant, who

successfully sublimates fear, is completely abstracted from its body. Here, form or

negativity is isolated. This is a requirement for stoicism to come into being as pure form or

pure thought. However flawed it might later turn out to be, the recourse to abstract thought

was necessary for dispelling the appearance of the servant’s nature as something

unconditionally authoritative. Conversely, it is precisely the stubborn servant’s insistence

on its own natural needs that stalls its development.25

This brings me to the second difference between Butler’s reading and my own. I think

it is crucial for understanding the movement of the section that the “progressive” servant –

the servant that gives rise to stoicism – does not display Eigensinn; she is not stubborn. To

be sure, as I have emphasized, Hegel imagines the possibility of a stubborn servant, but this

is precisely in order to show, by way of contrast, that such a servant would be lacking the

formative experience that generates stoicism. Hence I do not think that the two ways for the

25 For all the ingenuity of her interpretative claim that the positing of moral norms or laws performed by the

unhappy consciousness (and prefigured in the moment of the servant) is a response to fear of death and
involves a flight from the body, I thus think Butler misinterprets how the concept of “stubbornness” functions
within the section, although this concept plays a central role in the rhetoric of her argument. I agree that the
transition to stoicism requires an abstraction of mind from body, but, as I explain in the next paragraph, I insist
on distinguishing the flight from the body and the transition to stoicism from stubbornness, whereas Butler
associates them.

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servant to earn a ‘mind of its own’, referred to above, are two consecutive phases, as Butler

seems to suggest. Rather, I see them as two possible scenarios for natural consciousness. The

progressive servant that sublimates the fear of death leads to stoicism, and the stubborn

and complacent servant leads nowhere. I read the latter as a dead end on spirit’s journey.

As mentioned above, Butler claims that it is the stubborn servant that brings about the

transition to stoicism. However, Hegel seems to be saying the opposite: “If consciousness

engages in formative activity without that first, absolute fear, then it had a mind of its own

which is merely stubborn vanity” (§196, my emphasis, CVP, translation modified). Yet

working without fear is exactly what the progressive servant does not do, as Hegel

emphasizes by using the conditional. Instead, I contend, Hegel introduces the trope of

Eigensinn in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter to indicate a kind of dead end, which we can

retrospectively see did not further spirit’s path towards absolute knowing. In this way, Hegel

outlines two alternatives, instead of just the one that generated the next shape of

consciousness. We can also see that, from the prospective point of view of natural

consciousness, things are open; there is no single course of events that would need to have

happened. Therefore, insofar as spirit’s movement is necessary, this is only a retrospective

necessity.

Like any other shape in the PhG, save for absolute knowing, the stubborn servant falls

short of complete self-knowledge. In this sense, it fails. Yet I want to insist that this is not a

failure in the same sense as the progressive servant that carries us through to stoicism in

virtue of its failure. One could of course object that the stubborn servant teaches us, the

readers of the PhG, a general lesson about the futility of insisting on one’s own natural

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desires. However, it does not teach the reader how she has reached the point in the

development of spirit called absolute knowing, because the stubborn servant is not a

constitutive moment in this process; rather it is a dead end, or what I have called a non-

productive failure.

II. Stubborn Powerlessness: The Beautiful Soul

In this section and the next, I examine two instances of Eigensinn at the very end of the

“Spirit” chapter: first, the romantic trope of the beautiful soul, and, second, the dialectic

between the “acting” and the “judging” consciousness. The beautiful soul, the actor and the

judge all emerge as responses to a problem within the moment called “conscience,” about

which it is first necessary to say a few words to contextualize Hegel’s use of the category of

stubbornness.

Conscience is a shape that emerges out of the collapse of the paradigm called “the

moral worldview”, which is haunted by the problem of translating the content of pure

universal duty into a particular situation.26 Conscience offers an immediate solution to this

problem, insofar as the conscientious self knows what is right to do and fulfills its duty

simply by following its own inner moral compass – its conviction (§635, §637). However, a

new problem quickly emerges. For how can conscience demonstrate – to itself and to other

agents – that it is capable of objective moral judgment, i.e. that the content of its purportedly


26 The section on “Die Moralität” presents a stylized version of Kantian moral philosophy. The moral worldview

is split between the realms of morality and nature, duty and particular action, and virtue and happiness. Since
moral consciousness believes that nature (inclinations, desires, and self-interest) has to be sacrificed for the
sake of universal duty, it cannot convert its noumenal will (Wille) into concrete moral choices (Wilkür). It
therefore remains a completely formal moral self that neither acts, not interact with other agents.

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universal conviction is in fact universal and not simply an expression of personal preference

or inclination? (§645)

At this point in the PhG’s narrative, we are observing complex social forms – shapes of

spirit – and Hegel looks not only at (inter)action, but also at its linguistic or communicative

dimension.27 It is not a coincidence that Hegel turns to language at precisely this point.

Since conscience defines itself by its own inner conviction of right and wrong, it depends on

a “medium”, language, through which it can declare this personal passion to its peers to

earn their recognition.28 To understand the role the moment of stubbornness plays in this

context, it is therefore important to consider the role Hegel attributes to language. This is

because, as we will see in what follows, stubbornness here takes the form of silence, a

refusal to communicate.

In an important sense, language in the “Conscience” section and work in the master-

servant dialectic play similar roles in Hegel’s argument. (Notwithstanding this parallel,

though, it is important to keep in mind that conscience exemplifies a specifically modern

subjectivity. In fact, one could go as far as to say that conscience is the highest aspiration of

modernity: a morally self-authorizing individual.) Like work, language is a way for

consciousness to become objectively for-itself, or self-conscious (§652).29 Language is an

externalization (Entäusserung, related to Äusserung (utterance)) of thought or intention.

Like the servile consciousness recognizing its own signature in the object it produces,


27 However, scattered reflections on language appear as early as the section on sense-certainty.
28 By contrast, Hegel argues, “Moral consciousness remains silent, remains shut off and at odds with itself in its

own interior, for as yet the self does not have any existence within this interiority” (§653). In other words,
because the moral worldview essentially does not act, it has no need to verbally “account” for itself.
29 Habermas has written an article where he explores the parallel function of work or labor and language in

Hegel’s Jena Philosophy of Spirit. See Habermas (1973).

15

conscience grasps itself in the materiality of the words it utters.30 Moreover, language is

“self-consciousness existing for others” (§652). That is to say, when the conscientious self

externalizes itself in a language shared by a speaking community, its interior self becomes

publicly accessible.

Recall that Hegel was not only interested in work (Arbeit), but also in service (Dienst),

since both of these moments – together with the fear of death – are preconditions for a

specific kind of formative experience. It was only insofar as the servant submitted itself to

an external standard that it could gain an experience of sacrificing its own particular desires

for a universal cause, thus identifying itself with this cause.31 Although this analogy is

imperfect, speaking is, in some sense, to submit oneself to an external standard. To speak is

to deposit what we, as modern subjects, tend to feel is most particularly ours in the shared

categories of language. The interior subjectivity of conscience is invested with more

significance than in the case of the servant whose private sphere was (merely) her natural

needs. Modern individuals are self-consciously aware of their interiority as a source of

meaning and authority. It is an important Hegelian insight that, for moderns, to speak and

act is to risk oneself. Once we speak our minds, our words become susceptible to

misinterpretations, prompts for clarifications, counterarguments, and deliberations. It is

this precarious feature of language that makes conscience take the form of a beautiful soul,

and, more specifically, a stubborn beautiful soul.


30 “The content of conscience’s language is the self knowing itself as essence” (§653).
31 Although in this case it was not yet a universal cause the servant herself posited, but only the particular and

arbitrary ends posited by the master. See Neuhouser (2009), 51.

16

Conscience becomes a “beautiful soul” from fear of losing authority over its words and

deeds. The fear stems from the fact that self-authorization is precisely what defines

conscience – it is what makes it such an eminent modern achievement. As a moral

perfectionist, the beautiful soul wants to preserve the pure universality of duty, but it can

only do so if it refrains from acting and speaking. Conscience thus develops into a radical

form of silent interiority without any world-directedness. As Hegel puts it, the beautiful soul

is “absolute self-consciousness within which consciousness is submerged” (§657). We can

tell that Hegel views the beautiful soul as a deep modern pathology from his description of

one extreme scenario, in which the beautiful soul is so paralyzed by fear that it abstains

from acting and speaking altogether. In this scenario, the beautiful soul develops a kind of

private language through which it deliberates with itself in its own interior. The “echo” of its

own speech “is all that returns to it” (§658).32 In the end, as Hegel describes it, the

proclamations of its smug self-certainty of its own inner purity are reduced to a “dying

sound” (§658). The cause of this stubborn silence is that


[the beautiful soul] lacks the force to relinquish itself [die Kraft der Entäusserung], that is,
lacks the force to make itself into a thing, and to suffer the burden of being. It lives with the
anxiety that it will stain the glory of its inwardness by means of action and existence. Thus to
preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with actuality, and it steadfastly
perseveres in its obstinate powerlessness [eigensinnigen Kraftlosigkeit] (§658, my emphasis,
CVP).

Here stubbornness is linked with an inert interiority that is unwilling to move and actualize

itself. The beautiful soul attempts to shield its own “authentic” self and remain morally

32 Hegel’s
comments about a private language have of course given rise to many comparisons with
Wittgenstein’s “private language argument”, which I shall not rehearse here. See for instance Pinkard (1996),
214 and Redding (1996), 130-31. Comay suggests that, in hearing only voices from its head, the beautiful soul
has become psychotic. She writes that “[l]anguage has become a terminal illness communicated from self to
self.” Comay (2011), 115.

17

pure. However, by not acting, its self disappears. Hegel wants to show us that a self with no

external or objective expression can be nothing but a “dying sound”, can be nothing at all.

Hence because the conscientious individual – as an individual capable of grounding moral

truth in its own subjective interior – marks a highpoint of modernity, the stubborn beautiful

soul represents the modern nadir. The beautiful soul is a self which, due to the stubborn

insistence on the very interiority that was the trademark of conscience, turns out to be

utterly impotent.

The cause of the beautiful soul’s stubbornness is not fear of literal death, as in the case

of the servant that dreads a violent death at the hands of the master. Rather, the beautiful

soul fears the radical contingency involved in the interpretation of its acts and words by

others. While the servant seeks refuge from the fear of death in its own mundane desires

and private preoccupations, the beautiful flees into its own interior realm to avoid public

judgment. Since the beautiful soul identifies itself as this authentic self, which does the right

thing because in its gut it feels it to be right, the reinterpretation by others feels like self-

loss.33 And because the beautiful soul refuses to act and engage in deliberations with its

peers about the moral controversies they encounter, it becomes “bogged down” – just like

the servant – by its own self-feeling, unable to sacrifice its attachment to “determinate

being”. (Here, we must assume, these determinacies would be its own particular, albeit

well-intended, opinions and arbitrary preferences, whose privileged moral status seem

increasingly doubtful.)


33 As Hegel writes in the “Introduction” to the PhG, “while it [consciousness] immediately regards itself rather as

real knowing, this path has negative meaning for it, and what is the realization of the concept will count instead, to
it, as the loss of itself, for on this path, it loses its truth.” (§78, my emphasis, CVP)

18

Yet it is much worse than that. Since the beautiful soul has no public existence, Hegel

indicates, it “exists itself in the act of disappearing,” and “vanish[es] like a shapeless vapor

dissolving into thin air.” (§658) This radical attempt to preserve authenticity at the cost of

social and linguistic engagement in the world amounts to a total loss of self, which we could

read as a radical nihilistic emptiness. There seems to be something completely futile, even

impossible, for Hegel, about the project of a completely static inwardness that does not in

any way communicate with the world through either speech or action.34

In a manner similar to the stubborn servant discussed above, I would therefore

suggest that the beautiful soul represents a non-formative insistence on the interiority of

conscience (which is itself the most self-conscious form of interiority, for Hegel), which

blocks spirit’s movement towards self-knowledge. The route traced by this version of the

beautiful soul leads nowhere but to complete meaninglessness. The reader of the PhG thus

learns that spirit has progressed despite, not because of this moment of Eigensinn. Again,

Hegel presents us with a different route, which we retrospectively – from the point of view

of the shape of absolute knowing – can see must have been the route that eventually led to

that stage.

III. Actor and Judge


34 Habermas has argued that a rejection of the universal rules of communication is practically impossible. He

writes about the radical skeptic (but I think it would apply equally to this moment of the beautiful soul) that
“he cannot reject the ethical substance (Sittlichkeit) of the life circumstances in which he spends his waking
hours, not unless he is willing to take refuge in suicide or serious mental illness. In other words, he cannot
extricate himself from the communicative practice of everyday life in which he is continually forced to take a
position by responding yes or no. As long as he is still alive at all, a Robinson Crusoe existence through which
the skeptic demonstrates mutely and impressively that he has dropped out of communicative action is
inconceivable, even as a thought experiment.” Habermas (1999), 100.

19

After the disappearance of the stubborn beautiful soul, Hegel considers a shape of spirit in

which moral evaluation and moral action have been split into two different

consciousnesses. He asks us to picture a duel between a judging and an acting

consciousness. The judge “clings tenaciously to duty,” and represents the possibility of a

universal, moral standard of the community, while at the same time refraining from acting

(§660). The acting consciousness is a dissident from this collective moral discourse. She

acts and “fills empty duty” with content (§659). The actor shapes her life according to her

own norms, despite being a particular individual, while retaining the belief – emblematic of

conscience – that the right thing to do is what feels right. The content of duty is “taken from

its own self.” (§659) That is, duty and passion must coincide. In this section, Eigensinn will

recur as a result of the judging consciousness’ insistence on his own inner truth.

In the eyes of the judge, the actor is suspicious. If her motives are personal and

inward, how can he, the judge, know that they are pure and not selfish? The judge

scrutinizes every deed that the actor performs and finds self-interested motives in each of

them (§664). Because the actor exempts herself from the universal norms of the

community, she is, according to the judge, evil. However, Hegel argues, from the point of

view of the actor, there is also something dishonest about the judge. Despite the judge’s

claim to universality, in the eyes of the actor, he represents merely an individual

perspective on the truth of the action (§§666-67).35 For the actor, the judge is thus the one


35 Hegel
seems to argue indirectly that all action can be viewed in both a particular and universal light: as
something the individual wills and desires to do, and as an action informed by the knowledge of duty.

20

who appears evil, since he declares his own law to be the universal law.36 The law of the

actor and the law of the judge are in genuine conflict, since they both make a claim to

universality by insisting that they are realizing their duty.

The movement out of this impasse begins as the actor recognizes this similarity

between herself and the judge, which leads her to confess her own evil. In the confession,

the actor acknowledges her imperfect knowledge of all aspects and motivations for an

ethical action. She confesses her merely particular perspective, while emphasizing that she

nevertheless must act. She suggests that this finite perspective is not so much a limitation as

a condition for action.37 Hence she pleas for the judge to recognize and forgive their shared

finitude. The actor thus performs a remarkable gesture: she lets go and performs a sacrifice

of her own, prior self-conception – the conception of herself as a self-sufficient individual

insisting that her own perspective is the only right one – by withdrawing and opening

herself up to the perspective of the judge.38

However, at this moment, the judge falls back on the position of Eigensinn. This

happens in a raging outburst against the actor – he screams: “This [i.e. finite and

perspectival justification of moral action] was not what was meant by the judgment – Quite


36 With a nice metaphor, Bowman describes the judge as committing “sins of omission,” and the actor as
committing “sins of commission.” He reads the image of the actor and judge as Hegel’s critique of Kant’s account
of individual conscience. Bowman (2017), 84.
37 Hence it is a complex confession since it also contains a moment of accusation. After all, the actor says both

that the judge is as good and as evil as herself. For a brilliant account of the inherent ambiguity of Hegel’s
concept of confession see Comay (2011), 121-123.
38 Hegel writes that the actor’s “confession is not “an abasement, nor a humiliation, nor is it a matter of [her]

casting [herself] aside in [her] relationship with the other, for this declaration is not something one-sided
through which [she] would posit [her] inequality with the other” (§666). The actor does not annihilate herself
(such as the unhappy consciousness attempts to do). This is to say that she avoids falling into the kind of
destructive sacrificial practice which Hegel criticizes throughout the book, which involves a literal sacrifice of
consciousness’ natural aspect – be it bodily desires (unhappy consciousness), self-interest (virtue), or
particular opposing opinions (the terror). On this topic, see also Bubbio (2014).

21

the contrary!” He shuts down into “utter silence” and isolates himself from the dialogue

(§667). Hegel shows that an inversion has taken place: now the judge, who had identified

with the universal, is revealed as the most particular. Through the eyes of the actor, we see

the judge’s stubbornness: “the other [i.e. the judge] [is] somebody who sets his own stiffed-

neck [steifen Nacken] selfsame character in opposition to the confessing consciousness,”

someone who retains a “non-communicative being-for-itself” (§667). The judge is

transformed into a “hard heart [which] shows itself to be the consciousness forsaken by

spirit” (§667). At this point, I want to argue, we reach the full realization of the moment of

stubbornness. Hegel calls it the “highest rebellion of the self-certain spirit” (§667). It is a

more extreme and more fully articulated version of the beautiful soul’s stubbornness

because, in this case, the other (the actor) has made a rapprochement towards a mutually

recognitive relation. While the beautiful soul was wholly passive, the judge makes an active

move in defying the good will of the actor and refuses to take an honest look at himself.39

Hegel argues that, ironically, because the judge is unable let go of himself – to externalize

himself and speak to the actor – he loses himself by losing his mind to insanity. He ends the

paragraph on the judge’s rebellion by describing how the judge “breaks down into madness

and melts into a yearning tubercular consumption” (§668). Again, Eigensinn is used to

denote a dead end. Stubbornness is a non-productive failure that does not advance spirit’s

development.

Thus far, I have described three examples of stubbornness – the servant, the beautiful

soul, and the judge – and I have argued that we ought to read them as instances of inert


39 Footnote masked for blind review.

22

interiority, which function as non-productive failures of the natural consciousness. The

moments of Eigensinn display a tendency of insisting stubbornly on one’s self – whether this

“self” consists in parochial natural desires, as in the case of the servant, or in self-

authorizing moral subjectivity, as in the case of the different versions of conscience. But

what are we to make of this final stage in the development of the category of Eigensinn?

Considering the actor’s solicitation – or even expectation – that the judge forgive her for her

finitude, it is perhaps surprising that the judge defies this expectation. Paradoxically, this

stubborn defiance has a sense of freedom to it. 40 This is, however, not the freedom of

universal thought which, like the servant (and later the stoic), abstracts from all

determinate and natural content; nor is it the richer social freedom in which I am with

myself in otherness, or in which I determinate myself in a mutually recognizing community,

a conception that Hegel later develops in the Philosophy of Right. This stubbornness is

rather a freedom to say No to all of that, and to insist on one’s impenetrable private

inwardness and silence – even when reciprocation is expected; a freedom to defy even the

do ut des logic of instrumental reasoning. In its full articulation in the example of the judge,

Eigensinn is, I suggest, this rebellion that represents a general tendency to wish to remain

static – or un-dialectical – and to continue to be what one already is.

But why does the hard heart stick stubbornly to its own perspective, while refusing to

reciprocate the invitation to recognize the actor? As in the two previous cases, the reason

here seems to be a (for Hegel and for his readers, misguided) fear of a loss of self. The fear

of death and ultimate self-loss, which the stubborn servant did everything to repress, has

40 I agree with Comay, who points out that “[d]espite or because of its mean-spiritedness, the judge’s silence

contains a glimmer of critical, even emancipatory, potential.” Comay (2011), 122.

23

developed into the beautiful soul’s fear of self-loss in the others’ interpretations of deeds

and speech; and, here, it culminates in the hardhearted judge’s fear that he might lose

himself by exposing his finitude and dependence on the actor.41 Ultimately, the object of

fear is thus the fear involved in recognizing, and existing with, one’s absolute dependency

on others. As finite and vulnerable creatures engaging in the world, we are subject to

misunderstanding, criticism, failure, hurt feelings, and injury. I think that Eigensinn is a

name Hegel gives to the deep temptation we feel to protect ourselves – both from the risks

involved in existing in the world together with others, and from our fundamental

dependence on them. Perhaps it is this anxiety that Hegel refers to in his “Introduction” to

the PhG, when he writes “the presupposition which calls itself the fear of error reveals itself

to be more likely the fear of truth” (§74).42 If we read “error” in an expanded sense that

includes the risks of failure, loss and sacrifice, which finite and vulnerable creatures are

inevitably exposed to, but which nevertheless are a condition for “truth” – the co-existence

in a community based in mutual recognitive relationships, however morally flawed and

imperfect – then “the fear of error” must be Eigensinn’s desire to establish a sense of

security, invulnerability, and spiritual self-sufficiency. But this fear of risk-taking and other-

dependency frustrates the work of mutual recognition. Not only that: extreme fear of risk

develops into dogmatic skepticism, and a mistrust of everything new; it obstructs spirit’s

development as such.


41 Jay M. Bernstein also mentions that what the judge loses, by not forgiving or performing counter-confession

to the actor, is his self. Bernstein (1996), 50.


42 For a more traditional reading of this passage as referring to Kant’s critical philosophy, see Westphal (1998), 6.

24

IV. Eigensinn and the Risk of Regression

How should we understand the significance of Eigensinn in the context of the PhG as a

whole? With the judging beautiful soul’s final outburst and retreat, the moment of Eigensinn

has evolved into a full-blown defiance against reconciliation. (A kind of reconciliation does

happen, of course, and I will say more about that below). On the one hand, Hegel’s argument

seems to be that this position is simply untenable – a completely nonsensical and

destructive dead end, a non-productive failure. We cannot check out of the community,

because we depend on others for even our own most basic self-understanding.43 A self that

radically distrusts the world goes mad (§668). This presents us with a puzzle. If I am correct

in claiming that Eigensinn does not contain a productive potential for the progression of

spirit, if Eigensinn leads nowhere but to a self-defeating radical defiance, which is un-

productive, why would Hegel bother describing the phenomenon at all?

One way of answering this question could be to take recourse to a traditional view of

Hegel, according to which each failure (i.e. sin or evil) suffered by spirit eventually

contributes to and is justified by the result of the process: spirit’s gaining self-knowledge

(i.e. the good).44 If one remained faithful to such a picture, stubbornness in the PhG could be

read as a moment of rebellion against the whole edifice Hegel raises in the book; similar to a

43 That even our most fundamental status of being self-consciousness is dependent on an other self-
consciousness is the argument Hegel makes in the first part of “Self-Consciousness” chapter. On the other-
dependency in the duel between the actor and the judge, see Bernstein (1996), 51.
44 This is an objection raised by Hannah Arendt, who accuses both Hegel and Marx for supporting the view that

”evil is no more than a privative modus of the good, that good can come out of evil; that, in short, evil is but a
temporary manifestation of the good.” Arendt (1970), 56. Theodor Adorno criticizes Hegel’s claim that his system
is, in the final analysis, complete and rational. The system functions as a theodicy, a justification of past suffering.
Adorno (1993), 27-30. (Adorno thinks that Hegel’s claim about completeness stands in contrast to his focus of the
negativity of the concept.) On Hegel’s system as a theodicy, see also Löwith, (1964), Chapter 1. To be sure, Hegel
himself claims in the introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1930) that his philosophy of
history provides a theodicy. However, as I explain in the final paragraphs of the paper, I do not think this applies
to the PhG.

25

sinner’s act of defiance against God or the good. It would then be tempting to read Hegel’s

inclusion of the moment of rebellion as an intentional act of planting dead ends on spirit’s

journey merely to place into relief the straight path towards absolute knowing. However,

there are at least two reasons, why such a reading is unwarranted with respect to the PhG.

First, I do not think the way Hegel applies the category of stubbornness supports a

reading, because I do not think his account is a vertical one. In the last section of the

“Spirit”-chapter, we find a wholly horizontal relation between the actor and the judge.

“Confession”, “forgiveness,” “stiff-necked”, and the “hard heart” are not to be taken literally,

but are all religious metaphors for a certain inter-human relation and moral psychological

experience. Hegel emphasizes the possibility of secular communal norms that do not negate

finite features of the self, but accepts them and lets them be shaped – rather than destroyed.

The duel between actor and judge teaches the reader that the rules we create for governing

our imperfect human communities must accommodate our finite knowledge and natural

desires. Finitude is not our “hereditary sin”. More specifically, “confession” and

“forgiveness” are names for a secular self-sacrifice or conversion, in which an agent opens

up to the other person’s perspective by giving up her conception of herself as a self-

sufficient agent. Confession and forgiveness are thus the conditions for mutual recognition

in a speaking and acting community, which, as a community rather than as an individual

conscience, authorizes its own norms. They are not names for a relation between a sinning

individual and God. To overcome Eigensinn would mean to give up one’s own self-

conception of being a self-sufficient individual with a privileged perspective on truth.

Hegel’s remedy for Eigensinn is thus a mutual self-sacrifice. And this is indeed how the

26

“Spirit” chapter ends: with a forgiveness that reconciles the actor and the judge (§671).45

Eigensinn (especially hardheartedness), on its part, is a refusal of all of this: a refusal to let

go of oneself. As I argued above, the hard heart is an important trope for Hegel. Conscience

is the highest achievement of modernity, and the hard heart, which is a (de)formation of

conscience itself, is the strongest form of spiritual refusal. Hegel re-interprets the ur-scene

of an individual looking towards the sky, cursing God in an act of defiance: here, the

imperviousness to God becomes the imperviousness to another human being. The religious

trope is secularized and turned into a description of the human experience of rejecting the

social bond with the other.

Second, I want to challenge the idea that the meaning of Eigensinn, as an exemplar of

what I have called a non-productive failure of spirit, is a failure that eventually yields a

positive outcome, or which is used to emphasize the progress of spirit. Despite the apparent

happy ending in the “reconciling yes” that is usually read as the mutual recognition of actor

and judge, at the end of the “Spirit”-Chapter (§671), we should note, as I have emphasized,

that Eigensinn always seems to “points out” of the narrative of the PhG. We have

encountered the servant, who stays occupied with her own affairs without ever aspiring to

the higher universal ideals of freedom, the evaporated beautiful soul, and the insane judge.


45 My reading of the reconciliation of the actor and judge differs from Bowman’s. Bowman argues that the actor’s

confession involves no genuine self-negation, but only an absolution of the actor’s past, whereas the judge’s
forgiveness does involve such self-negation. This, he thinks, creates an asymmetry between actor and judge.
Bowman (2017), 86. Against Hegel, Bowman defends the hard heart, since “personal integrity virtually demands
that the judging consciousness harden his heart.” Ibid. 85. Although Hegel only explicitly states this in relation to
the confession, I read both confession and forgiveness as involving a sort of self-sacrifice that is not “an
abasement, nor a humiliation” (§666). I show in note38 above, Hegel is adamant, throughout the PhG, that
extreme self-annihilating practices are self-defeating. If the acts of confession and forgiveness are successful,
there would be symmetry in the sense that the two agents each sacrificed their conception of themselves as self-
sufficient individuals.

27

Since these shapes never generate any new shapes, I suggest that we read these dead ends,

not as failures turning into progress, but as a sign of Hegel’s sensitivity to the permanent

risk, and occasional actuality, of the collapse of communication. The logic of mutual

recognition is not one of deterministic causality.46 There is nothing in Hegel, which can

force us to confess or forgive, i.e. nothing forces us to recognize the claim of the other. Hegel

does not give any explanation for the judge’s change of heart. We do not learn why he

suddenly forgives the actor, or why the actor made her confession in the first place.47 The

openness highlights the risk involved in making the confession; namely, that the “sacrifice”

it implies may be refused. Even if the subject recognizes its other and solicits its recognition,

the other might not recognize it in turn. In other words, since I cannot force the other to

forgive me, I am always at the mercy of the other’s freedom, the other’s alterity. But this

radical alterity means not only that the overcoming of alienation is never guaranteed in the

encounter between self and community, but also that the movement of spirit is always

susceptible to breakdowns. It would also indicate that the infamous Aufhebung is not the

monstrous dialectical machinery always threatening to eliminate all otherness, as we

sometimes encounter it in 20th and 21st century French interpretations of Hegel. It would

take more work to demonstrate this, of course. For now we can at least say that Eigensinn is

one example of a latent risk of the regression of mutual recognition that destabilizes the

pace of spirit. Progress is never guaranteed.


46 On this point, see Bernstein (1996), 46-47.
47 Comay illustrates this point nicely when she writes about Hegel’s concept of forgiveness that “Despite its
traditional appearance, and despite or because of the abruptness of its elaboration, Hegel’s notion of forgiveness
is, when scratched (and insofar as comparisons add up to an argument), as hyperbolic as anything in Derrida, as
asymmetrical as anything in Levinas, as disastrous as anything in Blanchot, as paradoxical as anything in
Kierkegaard…” Comay (2011), 134.

28


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