G.W.F. Hegel, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The unhappy consciousness is the shape of spirit that has discovered the division within itself and cannot close it — a consciousness that knows itself as both the singular, changeable being it empirically is, and as yearning toward the Unchangeable that stands over against it as its own opposite.1 What makes this shape genuinely tragic, and not merely melancholy, is that the opposition is internal.
Mind is by nature tragic because it is opposed to itself; the fight is not between consciousness and some external power but within the self, and between the self and what it takes to be the divine.1 The medieval Christian who seeks God in the Crusades discovers, at the end of that seeking, only a tomb — the Absolute Being is posited as the Beyond, and the Beyond by definition is not where consciousness stands.2
This is not a contingent failure of piety but a structural necessity: the Unchangeable, as the unhappy consciousness conceives it, cannot be found precisely because it is meant to be just beyond.2 What distinguishes the unhappy consciousness from the earlier shapes of stoicism and skepticism is worth pressing. Stoicism retreats into pure abstract thinking and turns a blind eye to singular individuality altogether; skepticism is the unremitting, unsettled movement of that contradiction, never resting.3
The unhappy consciousness stands above both, because it brings together pure thinking and singular individuality rather than sacrificing one to the other — yet it has not been elevated to the reconciliation of the two.3 It stands, as I put it, at the midpoint where abstract thinking comes into contact with the singular individuality of consciousness as singular individuality.3
Its thinking therefore cannot reach the concept; it launches itself in the direction of thinking, and on that path becomes devotion — a devotion whose object comes on the scene as something alien, not conceptualized, not truly its own.4 The unhappy consciousness is therefore both high and helpless. Its thinking remains that of the shapeless roar of pealing bells, or a warm, all-suffusing vapor — pure inward feeling that cannot crystallize into the concept through which the object would be genuinely its own.4
The ascetic effort to close the gap by suppressing natural consciousness only deepens it: the ascetic is more conscious of his animal nature than natural man, because he is perpetually engaged in suppressing it, and what results is a personality confined within its narrow self, brooding over itself, as unfortunate as it is pitiably so.5 In the larger movement of the Phenomenology, the unhappy consciousness constitutes the tragic fate of the certainty of itself that is supposed to be in and for itself — it is the counterpart, the dark underside, of the comic consciousness that was perfectly happy within itself, in which all divine essence had returned into the self.6
The comic consciousness dissolves substance into the self-certain individual; the unhappy consciousness is the reverse movement, in which the self relinquishes itself before a substance it cannot possess. Together they mark the extremes between which religion, as the shape of Geist, must find its way. The resolution — which the unhappy consciousness cannot accomplish from within its own resources — requires that the Unchangeable itself take on the shape of singular individuality, so that what consciousness seeks as its opposite it can recognize as itself.
Until that recognition is accomplished, consciousness can come only upon the grave of its own life, and even the presence of that tomb is merely the source of trouble, toil, and struggle — a fight which must be lost.2
Mind is by nature tragic because it is opposed to itself and, being its own opposite, is also its own opponent. There is a perpetual fight of mind against mind, within the self as well as between self and self, and even between the human and the divine spirit.Early Theological Writings, pp. 68–69
'The Absolute Being cannot be found where it is sought; for it is meant to be just beyond.... Consciousness, therefore, can come only upon the grave of its own life.... But the presence even of that tomb is merely the source of trouble, toil, and struggle, a fight which must be lost.'Early Theological Writings, pp. 68–69
It transcends both of these; it both brings together and keeps together pure thinking and singular individuality, but it has not yet been elevated to that thinking for which the singular individuality of consciousness is reconciled with pure thinking itself. Put more correctly, it stands instead at the midpoint where abstract thinking comes into contact with the singular individuality of consciousness as singular individuality.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 127
its thinking remains that of the shapeless roar of the pealing of bells, or that of a warm, all-suffusing vapor, or that of a musical thinking which does not amount to concepts... this object does not make its entrance as conceptualized, and for that reason it comes on the scene as something alien.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 127
The ascetic is more conscious of his animal nature than natural man because he is constantly engaged in suppressing it. 'We have here before us a personality confined within its narrow self and petty activity, brooding over itself, as unfortunate as it is pitiably so.'Early Theological Writings, pp. 68–69
the unhappy consciousness is conversely the tragic fate of the certainty of itself that is supposed to be in and for itself.Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 431