§ 436. Universal self-consciousness is the affirmative awareness of self
in an other self: each self as a free individuality has his own “absolute”
independence, yet in virtue of the negation of its immediacy or appetite
without distinguishing itself from that other. Each is thus universal
self-conscious and objective; each has “real” universality in the shape of
reciprocity, so far as each knows itself recognised in the other freeman,
and is aware of this in so far as it recognises the other and knows him to
be free.
This universal re-appearance of self-consciousness—the notion which is
aware of itself in its objectivity as a subjectivity identical with itself
and for that reason universal—is the form of consciousness which lies at
the root of all true mental or spiritual life—in family, fatherland,
state, and of all virtues, love, friendship, valour, honour, fame. But
this appearance of the underlying essence may be severed from that
essential, and be maintained apart in worthless honour, idle fame, &c.
§ 437. This unity of consciousness and self-consciousness implies in the
first instance the individuals mutually throwing light upon each other.
But the difference between those who are thus identified is mere vague
diversity—or rather it is a difference which is none. Hence its truth is
the fully and really existent universality and objectivity of
self-consciousness,—which is _Reason_.
Reason, as the _Idea_ (§ 213) as it here appears, is to be taken as
meaning that the distinction between notion and reality which it unifies
has the special aspect of a distinction between the self-concentrated
notion or consciousness, and the object subsisting external and opposed to
it.
(c) Reason(133).
§ 438. The essential and actual truth which reason is, lies in the simple
identity of the subjectivity of the notion, with its objectivity and
universality. The universality of reason, therefore, whilst it signifies
that the object, which was only given in consciousness _quâ_
consciousness, is now itself universal, permeating and encompassing the
ego, also signifies that the pure ego is the pure form which overlaps the
object, and encompasses it without it.
§ 439. Self-consciousness, thus certified that its determinations are no
less objective, or determinations of the very being of things, than they
are its own thoughts, is Reason, which as such an identity is not only the
absolute _substance_, but the _truth_ that knows it. For truth here has,
as its peculiar mode and immanent form, the self-centred pure notion, ego,
the certitude of self as infinite universality. Truth, aware of what it
is, is mind (spirit).
Sub-Section C. Psychology. Mind(134).