Generally speaking to understand Napoleon is to understand him in relation to the whole of anterior historical evolution , to understand the whole of universal history. 34
Before analyzing the “I think,” before proceeding to the Kantian theory of knowledge —i.e., of the relation between the (conscious) subject and the (conceived) object, one must ask what this subject is that is revealed in and by the I of “I think.” One must ask when, why, and how man is led to say “I… .” 36
Indeed, we all know that the man who attentively contemplates a thing, who wants to see it as it is without changing anything, is “absorbed,” so to speak, by this contemplation— that is, by this thing, the less he is conscious of himself. he may perhaps talk about the thing, but he will never talk about himself; in his discourse, the word “I” will not occur.
For this word to appear, something other than purely passive contemplation, which only reveals Being, must also be present. And this other thing, according to Hegel, is Desire, Begierde, of which he speaks in the beginning of Chapter IV. 37
Therefore, to speak generally: if the true (absolute) philosophy, unlike Kantian and pre-Kantian philosophy, is not a philosophy of Consciousness, but rather a philosophy of Self-Consciousness, a philosophy conscious of itself, taking account of itself, justifying itself, knowing itself to be absolute and revealed by itself to itself as such, then the Philosopher must —Man must— in the very foundation of his being not only be passive and positive contemplation, but also be active and negating Desire. Now, if he is to be so, he cannot be a Being that is, that is eternally identical to itself, that is self-sufficient. Man must be an emptiness, a nothingness, which is not a pure nothingness, (reines Nichts), but something that is to the extent that it annihilates Being, in order to realize itself at the expense of Being and to nihilate in being. Man is negating Action, which transforms given Being and, by transforming it, transforms itself. 38
… the Animal does nto really transcend itself as given —i.e., as body; it does not rise above itself in order to come back toward itself; it has no distance with respect to itself in order to contemplate itself.
For Self-Consciousness to exist, for philosophy to exist, there must be transcendence of self with respect to self as given. 39
And this is possible, according to Hegel, only if Desire is directed not toward a given being, but toward a nonbeing. To desire Being is to fill oneself with this given Being, to enslave oneself to it. … Desire must be directged toward a nonbeing —that is, toward another Desire, another greedy emptiness, another I. For Desire is absence of Being, … and not a Being that is.