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T E x T IPart 2, Section 2, Chapter 2 Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity [189] Whether truth is defined more empirically as the agreement of thinking with being or more idealistically as the agreement of being with thinking, the point in each case is to pay scrupulous attention to what is understood by being and ~lso to pay attention to whether the knowing human spirit might not be lured out into the indefinite and fantastically become something such as no existing human being has ever been or can be, a phantom with which the individual busies himself on occasion, yet without ever making it explicit to himself by means of dialectical middle terms how he gets out into this fantastical realm, what meaning it has for him to be there, whether the entire endeavor out there might not dissolve into a tautology within a rash, fantastical venture. If, in the two definitions given, being [V~ren] is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum [something wanted] and everything is placed in the process of becoming [Vorden], because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of bec·oming . Thus truth is an approximating whose beginning cannot be established absolutely, because there is no conclusion that has retroactive power. On the other hand, every beginning, when it is made (ifit is not arbitrariness by not being conscious ofthis), does not occur by virtue of immanental thinking but is made by virtue of a resolution, essentially by virtue of faith. That the knowing spirit is an existing spirit, and that every human being is such a spirit existing for himself, I cannot repeat often enough, because the fantastical disregard ofthis has been the cause of much confusion. May no one misunderstand me. I am indeed a poor existing [190] spirit like all other human beings, but ifin a legitimate and honest way I could be assisted in becoming something extraordinary, the I 203 204 I T EXT pure I-I, I would always be willing to give thanks for the gift and the good deed. If, however, it can occur only in the way mentioned earlier, by saying eins, zwei, drei, kokolorum or by tying a ribbon around the little finger and throwing it away in some remote place when the moon is full-then I would rather remain what I am, a poor existing individual human being. The term "being" in those definitions must, then, be understood much more abstractly as the abstract rendition or the abstract prototype of what being in concreto is as empirical being. If it is understood in this way, nothing stands in the way of abstractly defining truth as somethingfinished, because, viewed abstractly , the agreement between thinking and being is always finished, inasmuch as the beginning of the process of becoming lies precisely in the concretion that abstraction abstractly disregards. But if being is understood in this way, the formula is a tautology ; that is, thinking and being signify one and the same, and the agreement spoken of is only an abstract identity with itself. Therefore, none of the formulas says more than that truth is, if this is understood in such a way that the copula is accentuated truth is-that is, truth is a redoubling [Fordoblelse]. Truth is the first, but truth's other, that it is, is the same as the first; this, its being, is the abstract form of truth. In this way it is expressed that truth is not something simple but in an entirely abstract sense a redoubling, which is nevertheless canceled at the very same moment. . Abstraction may go on by paraphrasing this as much as it pleases-it will never come any further. As soon as the being of truth becomes empirically concrete, truth itself is in the process of becoming and is indeed in turn, by intimation, the agreement between thinking and being, and is indeed actually that way for God, but it is not that way for any existing spirit, because this spirit, itself existing, is in the process of becoming. For the existing spirit qua existing spirit, the question about [191] truth persists, because the abstract answer is only for that abstractum which an existing spirit becomes by abstracting from himselfqua existing, which he can do only momentarily, although at such moments he still pays his debt to existence by existing nevertheless. Consequently, it is an existing spirit who asks...

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