1.  Self-consciousness takes itself to be reality as such and has its object in itself, but as one which it initially only has for it, for self-consciousness, and which is not yet given.  Given being confronts self-consciousness as a different reality from its own and self-consciousness sets out to observe itself as another independent being by realizing its being for itself.  ²This first goal is about becoming aware of itself as an individual being in the other self-consciousness and even to making this other into itself.  It is certain that in itself, in principle, the other is already it.

– ³It has elevated itself out of customary ethical substance and the calm being of thinking up to its being for itself, which is why it has the law of custom and existence, the knowledge of observation and theory all as a grey shadow disappearing behind it, for this is really a knowledge of something whose being for itself, its actual reality, is quite distinct from that of self-consciousness.  ⁴Instead of the spirit of the universality of knowledge and action, in which the feeling and enjoyment of individuality are silent, the earth spirit has entered into self-consciousness, whose only true reality is given being, the actual reality of individual consciousness.

Loathing intellect and science

Supreme gifts of man

...

It has given itself to the devil

And now must perish.    [Goethe, Faust Part I, V, lines 1851-2 and 1866-7 adapted by Hegel M]

2.  He plunges into life and wallows in the pure individuality in which his self-consciousness first emerges.  ²He doesn't so much make his own happiness as he simply takes it and enjoys it.  ³The shadows of science, laws and principles, which are all that stand between him and his own actual reality, vanish, a lifeless mist he cannot accept with the certainty of his own reality.  He grabs hold of life like plucking a ripe fruit, a fruit that readily offers itself to the hand that takes it.

3.  Only in terms of one moment is his action driven by desire.  He does not aim at the destruction of the whole objective essence, but only that of the form of its otherness, its independence, which is a mask devoid of essence.  For he regards it in itself as the same essence: his own selfhood.  ²The element in which desire and its object exist distinct from and independent of each other is living existence; the enjoyment of desire overcomes, consumes this existence, to the extent that desire's object has it.  ³Here, however, the element that gives each their separate reality is rather the category, a mode of being that is essentially something thought.  Thus, it is the consciousness of independence – be it natural consciousness or consciousness developed into a system of laws – that sustains the individuals, each for itself.  ⁴This separation is nothing in itself for the self-consciousness who knows the other as his own selfhood.  ⁵He makes it then to the enjoyment of pleasure, to consciousness of his realization in a consciousness that appears to be independent, i.e. to an intuition of the unity of both independent consciousnesses.  ⁶He reaches his goal and experiences precisely therein what the truth of that is.  ⁷He comprehends himself as this single being for itself.  Now, realizing the goal overcomes, consumes it, for he does not become his own object as this individual, but rather as the unity of himself and the other self-consciousness, i.e. as an individual overcome, as a universal.

4.  Pleasure enjoyed certainly has the positive significance of having become itself as an objective self-consciousness.  Equally, it has the negative significance of having overcome, consumed itself.  The realization was comprehended only in the former sense, so its experience only emerges into its consciousness as a contradiction in which the reality of its singularity arrived at sees itself destroyed by the negative essence.  Despite confronting that singularity empty and devoid of actual reality itself, the latter is still the consuming power.  ²This essence is nothing other than the concept of what this individuality is in itself.  ³It is, however, here still the poorest form of self-realizing spirit/mind.  Individuality regards itself as no more than the abstraction of reason, the immediacy of the unity of being for itself and being in itself, so its essence is only the abstract category.  ⁴In fact, this individuality no longer has the form of immediacy, simple being, as in observing spirit/mind, where it is abstract being, something alien, thinghood as such.  ⁵Now being for itself and mediation have entered into this thinghood.  ⁶This is why it emerges as a circle, whose content is the developed pure relationship of the simple essences.  ⁷The realization of this individuality achieved here consists thus in nothing other than in having thrown this circle of abstractions out from their confinement in simple self-consciousness into the element of being for self-consciousness, objective dispersion.  ⁸What becomes object as the essence for self-consciousness in enjoying pleasure is the dispersion of those empty essences: pure unity, pure difference and their relationship.  Beyond that the object individuality experiences as its essence has no content.  ⁹It has what is called necessity; for necessity, destiny etc., is precisely that of which one does not know what to say about what it does, what its specific laws and positive content are, because it is the absolute pure concept intuited as being, the simple and empty but unstoppable and imperturbable relation, whose work, product, is only the nothingness of singularity.  ¹⁰The relation is this firm context, because the things related are pure essences or empty abstractions; unity, difference and relation are categories each of which is nothing in and for itself; each only exists in relation to its opposite, which is also why they can't get away from each other.  ¹¹They are related to each other through their concept, for they are pure concepts themselves.  It is this absolute relation and abstract motion that constitutes necessity.  ¹²Instead of plunging into life out of dead theory, merely single individuality, only at first with the pure concept of reason for its content, has rather plunged into the consciousness of its own lifelessness and is endowed with nothing but empty and alien necessity, dead reality.

5.  The transition occurs from the form of the one into that of universality, from one absolute abstraction into the other, from the purpose of pure being for itself, having rejected community with others, into its pure opposite and hence just as abstract being in itself.  ²This appears to happen in such a way that the individual has merely perished, while the absolute solidity of singularity is pulverized into dust on the equally hard but continuous reality.

– ³As consciousness, the individual is the unity of himself and his opposite, so that this downfall is still for him his purpose and its realization just as much as the contradiction between what was essence for him and what is essence in itself.  He experiences the double meaning lying in what he did in taking his life: he took life but only really embraced death.

6.  This transition of his living being into lifeless necessity appears to him for this reason to be more of an inversion mediated by nothing.  ²Whatever does the mediating would have to be that in which both sides are one.  That would be the consciousness that recognizes one moment in the other, its purpose and action in its destiny, vice versa, and its own essence in this necessity.  ³But this unity is for this consciousness precisely joy itself, the simple, isolated feeling; so the transition from the moment of this its goal into the moment of its true essences is for it a pure leap into the opposite.  For these moments are not contained in feeling and linked by it, but only in the pure self, which is a universal, thinking.  ⁴From this experience, which was supposed to bring its truth into being for it, consciousness has in fact become more of a riddle to itself.  He cannot see the consequences of his actions as his actions as such.  What befalls him he does not regard as the experience of what he is in himself.  The transition is no mere change of form for the same content and essence, once thought of as content and essence of consciousness and then as object, as his own intuited essence.  ⁵Abstract necessity thus applies only to the negative, uncomprehended power of the universality on which individuality is shattered.

7.  This is as far as the manifestation of this pattern of self-consciousness gets.  The last moment of its existence is the thought of its loss in necessity, the thought of its self as an absolutely alien essence.  ²Self-consciousness in itself has, however, survived this loss; for this necessity, this pure universality is its own essence.  ³This reflection of consciousness into itself, knowing necessity as itself, is a new pattern of consciousness.