1.  That dull meandering of the spirit we encountered in the last paragraph of the preceding section [VI.B.II.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §33.1] that doesn't differentiate anything within itself any more has thus moved into itself beyond consciousness, which, in contrast, has now become clear to itself.

– ²The first moment of this clarity is determined in its necessity and condition by the self-realization of pure insight, which is in itself concept.  Pure insight does this by establishing otherness, definition, within itself.  ³This is what makes it negative pure insight, i.e. negation of the concept.  As such it is just as pure.  Indeed, this makes it the pure thing, absolute essence, the absolute being, which has not further defining features [VI.B.II.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §17.8 M].  ⁴Looked at more closely, as absolute concept, it is a differentiation of differences which are no longer that, of abstractions or pure concepts that no longer support themselves, but which only have support and differentiation through the whole of the motion.  ⁵This drawing distinctions in what is undifferentiated is precisely the absolute concept making itself into its own object, asserting itself as the essence in opposition to that motion.  ⁶What this lacks as a result is holding the abstractions or differences apart from each other so that it ends up just pure thinking as a pure thing [VI.B.II.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §18 M].

– ⁷Now this is precisely that dull, unconscious meandering of spirit within itself to which faith declined when it lost differentiated content.  It is also that motion of pure self-consciousness, to which self-consciousness should be the absolutely alien beyond.  ⁸This pure self-consciousness is motion in pure concepts, in differences that are nothing of the kind, so it really does collapse into unconscious meandering, i.e. into pure feeling, pure thinghood.

– ⁹The concept alienated from itself – for it does indeed stand here on the level of this alienation – however, does not recognize here the same essence in both sides, the motion of self-consciousness and its absolute being, the same essence which is in fact their substance and persistence.  ¹⁰The concept alienated from itself does not recognize this identity, so it only takes essence in the form of the objective beyond and differentiating consciousness, which in this way has the in itself outside it, as a finite consciousness.

2.  Enlightenment now has the same conflict with itself it previously had with faith over that absolute being [VI.B.II.B.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §§9, 26 M] and splits into two parties.  ²One party proves itself to be the victor only by itself splitting into two parties, demonstrating that it possesses the principle it struggled against within itself and thus overcoming the one-sidedness in which it previously entered the fray.  ³The interest that was divided between it and the other party now falls completely within it forgetting the other one, for that interest now finds the opposition within this party, the opposition that concerns it.  ⁴This in fact elevates the opposition into the higher, victorious element, in which it emerges purified.  ⁵The discord emerging in the one party that appeared to be a misfortune turns out in fact to be its good fortune.

3.  Pure essence itself contains no difference within it, which is why difference enters it whether through the emergence of two such pure essences for consciousness or a twofold consciousness of the one essence.

– ²Pure, absolute essence, that pure absolute being, only exists in pure thinking, or better, it is pure thinking itself, i.e. simply beyond the finite, beyond self-consciousness and is only the negative essence.  ³But this all makes it being, the negative of self-consciousness.  ⁴As its negative, it is also related to self-consciousness.  It is the external being related to self-consciousness, in which the differences and defining features fall, acquiring differences in it so that it is tasted, seen, and so on and the relation is sense certainty and perception.

4.  That negative beyond necessarily transits into this sensuous being and if we start with this, while abstracting from these definite modes of the relation of consciousness, what remains is pure material as the dull meandering and motion within itself.  ²It is essential here to remember that pure material is only that which remains when we abstract from seeing, feeling, tasting and so on; i.e. it is not what is seen, tasted, felt, etc.  It is not the material that is seen, felt, and tasted nor the colour, a stone, a salt, etc.  Pure abstraction is what it is, which is what makes the pure essence of thinking or pure thinking itself present as something not differentiated in itself, the undefined, predicate-free absolute.

5.  One Enlightenment calls absolute essence, the absolute being, that predicate-free absolute in thinking beyond the actual consciousness we started from.  The other Enlightenment calls it material.  ²If they were to be distinguished as nature and spirit/mind or God, then that unconscious meandering within itself could only be nature if it lacked the wealth of developed life, while spirit/mind or God would lack consciousness that differentiates itself within itself.  ³As we have seen, both are simply the same concept; the difference does not lie in the matter itself, but purely in the different starting points for the two developments and that each of them stops still at its own point in the motion of thinking.  ⁴If they would move beyond that, then they would meet each other and recognize as the same thing what the one claims is an abomination and the other a foolishness.  ⁵For the one, the absolute being exists in its pure thinking or immediately for pure consciousness outside finite consciousness, its negative beyond.  ⁶It needs to reflect upon the fact that the simple immediacy of thinking is nothing other than pure being, while it is also true that what is negative for consciousness also relates to it, that in the negative proposition the 'is' (the copula) simultaneously separates and holds the two terms together.  Then the relation to this beyond would emerge one of an external given to consciousness and hence as what is called pure material.  This would supply the absent moment of presence.

– ⁷The other Enlightenment starts from sensuous being and then abstracts from the sensuous relation of tasting, seeing and so on, making it into the pure in itself, to absolute material, to what is not felt nor tasted.  This is what makes this being predicate-free simplicity, the essence of pure consciousness.  It is the pure concept as inherently given being, pure thinking within itself.  ⁸This insight does not take the opposite step in its consciousness from the given being that is purely given into the thought that is the same as purely given being.  It does not move from the pure positive to the pure negative.  Now, the positive is only pure by virtue of negation, while the pure negative is pure, identical to itself within itself, and precisely for that reason positive.

– ⁹This comes down to saying that the two have not arrived at the concept of Cartesian metaphysics, namely that being and thought are inherently the same.  They have not come to the thought that being, pure being, is not a concrete actual reality, but the pure abstraction nor conversely, that pure thinking, self-identity, or essence is partly the negative of self-consciousness and hence being, while it is also partly, as immediate simplicity, nothing other than being.  Thinking is thinghood or thinghood is thinking.

6.  Essence here has the split in it in such a way that it belongs to two kinds of ways of viewing the situation.  The essence must have the difference within itself; although in that case the two viewpoints coalesce into one, for the abstract moments of pure being and the negative, by means of which they distinguish themselves, are then united in the object of these viewpoints.

– ²The common universal is the abstraction of the pure jittering within itself, i.e. of purely thinking of itself.  ³This simple axial motion has to throw itself apart because it is itself only motion by distinguishing its own moments.  ⁴This distinguishing of the moments leaves behind what is unmoved as the empty shell of pure being, which is no real thinking, no longer any kind of life in itself.  For it exists as the difference of all content.  ⁵The differentiation, which asserts itself outside that unity, is thus the flux of the moments that does not return into itself, and those moments are being in itself, being for another, and being for itself.  This is actual reality as object for the actual consciousness of the pure insight.  Utility [VI.B.II.a. Enlightenment's struggle etc. §20 ff and VIII. Absolute knowledge §4.3 M].

7.  Utility looks bad to faith, to sensitivity, and to the abstraction that fixes the in itself and calls itself speculation.  Nevertheless, pure insight completes its realization in utility and it is in utility that pure insight becomes an object to itself.  It no longer denies this object.  Moreover, this object no longer has the value of emptiness or of the pure beyond for it.  ²Pure insight is, as we saw, the given concept itself, self-identical, pure personality, differentiating itself within itself such that each of the distinguished parts is itself pure concept, that is immediately not distinguished.  Pure insight is simple, pure self-consciousness that is just as for itself as it is in itself in an immediate unity [VI.B.I.b. Faith and pure insight §§10, 11 M].  ³Its being in itself is thus not persisting being, for it ceases immediately to be anything in its difference; such a being, however, that immediately has no support is not in itself, but rather essentially for another, which is the power absorbing it.  ⁴But this second moment, opposed to the being in itself, disappears just as immediately as the first one, i.e. as being only for another it is in fact just vanishing as such and we have now arrived at being returned into itself, at being for itself.  ⁵This simple being for itself is, as self-identity, much more a being and hence something for another.

– ⁶This nature of pure insight in the unfolding of its moments, of it as object, expresses what is useful, utility.  ⁷Something persisting in itself, a thing, exists and this being in itself is simultaneously only a pure moment.  This means it is absolutely for another; while it is also true that it is only for another as it is in itself.  These opposed moments have returned back into the inseparable unity of being for itself.  ⁸If now utility expresses the concept of pure insight, utility is not that as such, but insight as image, as object.  Utility is only the restless flux of those moments, one of which is the condition of being returned into itself, but only as being in itself, i.e. as something abstract against the other moments that step aside.  ⁹Utility itself is not the negative essence, these moments in their opposition simultaneously undivided in one and the same viewpoint, i.e. having them as a kind of thinking in itself when they are pure insight.  The moment of being for itself is certainly there in utility, but not encompassing and going beyond the other moments of in itself and being for another, which would make it the self.  ¹⁰Pure insight thus has in utility its own concept in its pure moments for its object; insight is now the consciousness of this metaphysics, but not yet conceptual comprehension of it.  It has not yet arrived at the unity of being and concept itself.  ¹¹Because utility still has the form of an object for insight, it still has a world, even if it is no longer one existing in and for itself ; a world that insight distinguishes from itself.  ¹²Unfortuantely, the opposing terms come apart at the peak of the concept, so the next level will be that these collapse together and the Enlightenment experiences the consequences of its actions.

8.  Looking at the object reached here in relation to this whole sphere, what we have is that the real world of culture and education has reduced itself to the vanity of self-consciousness – into the being for itself that still has vanity's confusion for its content and remains the single concept that is not yet the universal for itself.  ²Returned into itself, however, it is pure insight – pure consciousness as the pure self, negativity, just as faith was exactly the same thing as pure thinking or positivity [VI.B.I.a. Education and culture and their realm of reality §39 and VI.B.I.b. Faith and pure insight §3.5-13 M].  ³Faith has the moment completing it in that self, but this completion is its downfall.  Now it is in pure insight that we see the two moments, one the absolute being, purely thought or negative, and the other material, which is the positive given being.

– ⁴This completeness still lacks the actual reality of self-consciousness that belonged to vain consciousness, the world from out of which thinking elevated itself into itself.  ⁵This lack is made good in utility when pure insight reaches positive objectivity therein; this all makes it really self-satisfied consciousness.  ⁶This objectivity now constitutes its world; it has become now the truth of the previous wholes, of the ideal world as much as of the real one.  ⁷The first world of spirit/mind is the extensive realm of its dispersing existence and the isolated certainty of its self, just as nature disperses its life in infinitely diverse embodied forms without their genus being present.  ⁸The second world contains the genus; it is the realm of being in itself, of truth opposed to that certainty [VI.B.I. Self-alienated mindful spirit's world M].  ⁹The third factor, however, utility, is the truth that is simultaneously the certainty of itself.  ¹⁰The realm of the truth of faith lacks the principle of actual reality or the certainty of itself of being this single individual.  ¹¹Actual reality, or the certainty of itself of being this single individual, lacks the in itself.  ¹²In the object of pure insight both worlds are united.  ¹³Utility is the object to the extent that self-consciousness sees through it and that it has the personal certainty of itself, its pleasure (its being for itself) within it.  This is how self-consciousness sees into it and this insight is what contains the true essence of the object.  Now as something seen through, a being for another, insight itself is true knowledge and self-consciousness has in the same way immediately the universal certainty of its self, its pure consciousnesss, in this relation, in which then truth, presence, and actual reality are united.  ¹⁴The two worlds are reconciled and heaven is transplanted down onto the earth.