Post by David Proud

'... und das Selbstbewußtsein ... es ist Begierde' - Hegel. 'Credo' by Baroness Gertrud von Puttkamer, aka Marie-Madeleine, (1881 – 1944). I love the desire that knows no fulfillment. I love the red flame that consumes my soul. The trembling, trembling notes of the symphony of life. – – I love the great longing, the longing without a goal. I love the deep pain and the torment that has kissed me. I love renunciation, for it is ecstasy! 'Glaubensbekenntnis' Ich liebe die Begierde, die keine Erfüllung kennt. Ich liebe die rote Flamme, die meine Seele verbrennt. Die zitternden, zitternden Töne auf des Lebens Saitenspiel. - - Ich liebe die große Sehnsucht, die Sehnsucht ohne Ziel. Ich liebe die tiefen Schmerzen und die Qual, die mich geküsst. Ich liebe die Entsagung, weil sie die Wollust ist! ... self-consciousness is Desire. Certain of the nothingness, of this other, it explicitly affirms that this nothingness is for it the truth of the other; it destroys the independent object and thereby gives itself the certainty of itself as a true certainty, a certainty which has become explicit for self-consciousness itself in an objective manner. In this satisfaction, however, experience makes it aware that the object has its own independence. Desire and the seIf-certainty obtained in its gratification, are conditioned by the object, for self- certainty comes from superseding this other: in order that this supersession can take place, there must be this other. Thus self-consciousness, by its negative relation to the object, is unable to supersede it; it is really because of that relation that it produces the object again, and the desire as well. - Hegel, 'Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807. Notes: As it happens Hegel covers renunciation in the Phenomenology too. See below. It may shed some light on how it can be ecstatic. ['In the Studio, Anna Ancher, the Artist's Wife Painting', Michael Ancher, (1849-1927)]:-