1.  Having grasped the thought that individual consciousness in itself is absolute essence, consciousness returns in this thought back into itself.  ²For unhappy consciousness being in itself is its own beyond.  ³Still, its motion has accomplished something within it.  It has arrived at individuality in its complete development.  Individuality, here actual consciousness, is now its own negative, i.e. it is established as the objective extreme.  Unhappy consciousness has drawn its being for itself out of itself and turned it into being.  In that process its unity with this universal has also emerged for it, which for us no longer falls outside it, since the individual overcome is the universal.  Consciousness maintains itself here within this, its own negativity, so the unity is its essence present in consciousness as such.  ⁴Unhappy consciousness' truth is the midpoint emerging in the syllogism whose extremes were held in absolute separation declaring to the one, invariable consciousness, that the individual has renounced itself, while telling the other, the individual, that the invariable is no longer an extreme against it, now it is reconciled with it.  ⁵This midpoint is their unity immediately knowing both and relating each to each other, consciousness of their unity announcing to consciousness, i.e. to itself, You are the certainty of being all truth!

2.  Self-consciousness is now reason, so its previous negative relation to otherness turns into a positive one.  ²Then it was only concerned with its independence and freedom, with saving and maintaining itself at the cost of the world or even of its own reality, both of which appeared to self-consciousness to be negative to its essence.  ³Now, however, having secured itself, reason has acquired peace in respect to both of them and can bear them both.  Self-consciousness is now sure of itself as realtiy, sure that all actual reality is nothing other than it.  Its thinking is immediately actual reality to which it now relates as idealism.  ⁴Grasping itself as idealism, it's as if the world only just came into being for self-consciousness.  It didn't understand the world before.  Desiring it and reworking it, self-consciousness also withdrew into itself away from the world and even destroyed the world as far as it was concerned; destroying itself too as consciousness: consciousness of the world as essence and consciousness of the world's nothingness.  ⁵Now at last, after the tomb of its truth has disappeared, after nullifying the destruction of its reality, now that it regards the individuality of consciousness as in itself absolute essence, self-consciousness discovers it as its new, real world.  The world is interesting now because it remains where previously self-consciousness was only interested in its disappearance.[Preface §8.4]  For the world's persistence will become self-consciousness' own truth and present.  Self-consciousness is certain of only experiencing itself in that.

3.  Reason is consciousness' certainty of being all reality. This is how idealism formulates the concept of reason.  ²Consciousness has emerged as reason with that certainty immediately in itself and idealism formulates the certainty just as immediately: I am I!  Self-consciousness as such had just an empty object as such.  Free self-consciousness had an object that withdraws from the others leaving them just as valid as it is.  Now 'I am I' means that I is my object with the consciousness of the nullity of everything else; I is sole object, all reality occupying the total present [IV. A. Lordship and Bondage §9; IV. B. Stoicism, etc. §4].  ³Self-consciousness is, however, all reality for itself as well as in itself only when it becomes it, i.e. when it proves itself to be this reality.  ⁴It proves this on the path where first, in the dialectical motion of meaning or opinion [sense-certainty], perception, and the understanding, otherness as the in itself disappears.  The process of proving itself continues then in the motion through independence of consciousness in lordship and bondage, through the thoughts of freedom, of sceptical liberation and the struggle for absolute liberation of totally split consciousness.  Through all these patterns of self-consciousness, otherness as it exists for consciousness vanishes for consciousness.  ⁵Two sides emerged, one after the other.  In one, essence or truth had for consciousness the definition of being.  In the other side, it was only defined for consciousness.  ⁶Then both reduced down to one truth: what exists, the in itself, only is what it is for consciousness and what exists for it, for consciousness, is also in itself.  ⁷The consciousness that is this truth left the path behind it and forgot all about it when it emerged directly as reason; in this immediate emergence, reason appears to be only the certainty of this truth.  ⁸It offers the assurance that it is all reality without conceptually comprehending it; the forgotten path is the comprehension that lies behind the sudden confidence.  ⁹For anyone who has not trodden that path and hears it in this pure form – after all, he too asserts it himself in concrete terms – the claim will be incomprehensible.

4.  Starting right off with the claim makes of the idealism that does not delineate this path a pure assurance which doesn't comprehend itself, much less being capable of making itself comprehensible to others.  ²It utters an immediate certainty that just stands there along with the other immediate certainties, which, unfortunately, all got lost on the path [Introduction §4.7 – 10].  ³Those other claims have just as much right to assert their certainty as this one does.  ⁴Reason appeals to the self-consciousness in any single consciousness: I am I.  My object and essence is I and nobody can deny reason this truth.  ⁵But in grounding this truth on that appeal, reason sanctions the truth of the other certainty, namely that of: for me, there is something other; what is my object and essence is something other than myself [A. Consciousness]; or I can only be my object and essence by completely withdrawing myself from the other and standing there as a reality beside it [B. Self-Consciousness].

– ⁶Only when reason emerges as reflection out of this antithetical certainty will its claim stand not just as certainty and assurance, but as truth; and not beside others, but as the only one.  ⁷Direct emergence is the abstraction of mere presence, whose essence, being in itself is absolute concept, i.e. the motion of the process of becoming, of coming to be.

– ⁸Consciousness will define its relation to otherness or object in various ways, according to the given stage of the world spirit's process of becoming aware of itself.  ⁹How consciousness directly finds and defines itself and its object in each case, how it is for itself, depends on what the object has already become or what the object is already in itself.

5.  Reason is the certainty of being all reality.  ²This in itself, this reality, is still a thoroughly universal one, the pure abstraction of reality.  ³It is the first positivity, self-consciousness inherently for itself, and hence that I, ego, is just the pure essence of given being; it is the simple category.  ⁴Elsewhere the category is the essence of given being without distinguishing between given being as such and that in opposition to consciousness.  Here, however, the category is the essence or simple unity of given being only as thinking, actual reality.  In this category, self-consciousness and being are one and the same essence.  The same essence not in terms of a comparison, but in and for itself.  ⁵Only one-sided, bad idealism leaves this unity as consciousness to one side with an in itself confronting it.

– ⁶Difference is inherent to this category, this integral unity of self-consciousness and being, for its essence is precisely this: within otherness, in absolute difference, to be immediately identical with itself [Preface §26.1, §54.8].  ⁷This is why difference is; but it is completely transparent and, as such, it exists as a difference that is simultaneously not one at all.  ⁸It appears as a plurality of categories.  ⁹When idealism declares the unity of self-consciousness to be all of reality, making that unity directly into essence, without having conceptually comprehended it as absolutely negative essence – only this has negation, definition, difference within it – then even more incomprehensible than the first assertion above is this second assertion, namely, that there are differences within the category, species.  ¹⁰While this assurance as such, just like the assurance of a given definite number of kinds of categories, is new, it actually includes the hint that one no longer has to accept it as an assurance at all.  ¹¹For difference begins in the pure I, ego, in the pure understanding itself, which implies that immediacy, assurance and finding have already been abandoned and conceptual comprehension begins here.  ¹²Now, putting up with simply accepting a plurality of categories as some sort of find, extracted from, say, the forms of judgement, must be seen as a disgrace to science.  Where else is the understanding supposed to be able to demonstrate a necessity if not in itself, in pure necessity?

6.  So now the pure essence of things, like their difference, belongs to reason, which means that there can be no more talk of things, i.e. of things that for consciousness would only be its negative.  ²For the claim that the many categories are species of the pure category means that the pure category is still their genus or essence and not opposed to them.  ³But they are ambiguous, for their inherent multiplicity sets them against the pure category as its otherness.  ⁴They do in fact contradict the pure category with their plurality.  Pure unity must now overcome, incorporate them into itself, which is how it constitutes itself as the negative unity of the differences.  ⁵But as negative unity, it excludes the differences as such along with that first immediate pure unity.  That makes it individuality, a new category, exclusive consciousness, i.e. now there is another for it!  ⁶Individuality is the category's transition out of its concept into an external reality.  It is the pure schema, which is consciousness and, being individuality and exclusive one, a reference to another.  ⁷But this other of the category amounts to only the otherness of the first categories, namely pure essence and pure difference, while within them, i.e. precisely in the assertion of the other, within this other itself, consciousness too is just itself.  ⁸Each of these different moments refers to something other although, in fact, no otherness emerges within any of them.  ⁹The pure category refers to the species that transit into the negative category, individuality, which itself refers back to the pure category.  Individuality here is the pure consciousness that remains clear unity with itself in each of those; again, this unity is referred to another, which, in being, has vanished and once vanished, is generated again.

7.  We see pure consciousness here doubled up: now restlessly moving back and forth, running through all its moments, vaguely aware in them of otherness that is overcome, i.e. disappears, when grasped; now tranquil unity certain of its truth.  ²For the unity, that motion is the other; for the motion, however, that peaceful unity is the other; clearly, consciousness and object alternate between these in mutual opposition.  ³Consciousness is first a search going back and forth and its object is the pure in itself and essence; then again consciousness regards itself as the pure category and its object as the motion of the differences.  ⁴As essence, however, consciousness is this whole course itself, moving out of itself as simple category and transiting into individuality and object.  Then it observes the same course in the object, overcomes it as something different, assimilates the object to itself and then announces its certainty of being all reality, itself and its object.

8.  Its first utterance is only this abstract, empty phrase that everything is its own.  ²For the certainty of being all reality is initially only the pure category.  ³Empty idealism expresses this first form of reason that finds itself in the object, grasping reason initially just as it is.  But it deceives itself into believing that showing this pure possession – being mine – of consciousness in all being, expressing the things as feelings or images, means it has shown that mine to be all reality.  ⁴That idealism must then be also absolute empiricism, because to fill the empty mine, i.e. for the difference and for all its development and structuring, its reason requires an alien impulse as the source of multiplicity of feeling or imaging.  ⁵Clearly, this idealism turns out to be the same kind of self-contradictory ambivalence as scepticism; the only difference being that the latter's negativity is replaced with a positive mode of expression.  Unfortunately, this idealism is just as incapable of bringing together its contradictory thoughts of pure consciousness as all reality and the alien impulse, sensuous feeling and imagery as an identical reality.  Instead, it lurches around, throwing itself from the one to the other, back and forth, bogged down in the bad, i.e. sensuous, infinity.  ⁶Reason is all reality in the sense of that abstract mine regarding the other as indifferent and alien.  This involves just that kind of rational knowledge of another we found to be characteristic of meaning [sense-certainty] and perception as well as the understanding that grasps what is meant and perceived.  ⁷Now, even this idealism's concept acknowledges that such knowledge is not true knowledge at all, for only the unity of apperception is the truth of knowledge.  ⁸In order to reach the other that is essential to it, i.e. the in itself, which, unfortunately, it does not have within it, this idealism's pure reason is thus sent back by itself to that knowledge which is not a knowledge of the truth at all.  It thus condemns itself quite consciously and intentionally to an untrue knowledge and cannot do without that meaning and perception, even though they have no truth for it.  ⁹It stands in the immediate contradiction of claiming something doubled and simply antithetical as essence with the unity of apperception confronting a thing, which, whether called alien impulse, empirical essence, sensuousness, or thing-in-itself, remains in its concept in all cases quite alien to the unity.

9.  This idealism is caught in the contradiction because it claims that the abstract concept of reason is the truth.  This is why reality emerges immediately to it as something that is not the reality of reason, although reason is supposed to be all of reality.  It remains a restless searching and sees its searching as the recognition that satisfaction in finding what it seeks is quite impossible.

– ²Actual reason is not so inconsistent.  At first only the certainty of being all reality, in this concept reason is aware as certainty, as I, ego, of not yet being reality in truth and is hence driven to elevate its certainty to truth and to fill up that empty mine.