In the dialectic of consciousness, the tension lay between a certain norm of knowledge and what we actually are able to know in attempting to fulfil it. With self-consciousness, the dialectic will be between our idea of ourselves, what we claim to be, and what we actually are. These are the two moments Hegel calls self-certainty and truth. In the earlier dialectic the key notion was knowledge; here the centre of interest shifts to desire and its fulfilment. In our notion of ourselves, the object of our self-certainty is not something towards which we are neutral; on the contrary we are passionately attached to it. When our truth belies this and forces us on to another model of self-certainty, the transition is not made without pain.

And this transition itself is of a different kind. It must not be seen in intellectual terms, that a certain notion of self becomes untenable and has to be abandoned. Rather it is that the attempt to act out a certain idea of ourselves leads to consequences, in which the original idea is certainly undermined because the goal is not reached, but which give rise to the next stage not so much by refuting the previous self-certainty as by the creation of a new situation for man.

The dialectic of self-consciousness is thus a dialectic of human longing and aspiration, and their vicissitudes. What underlies it? What is the form of aspiration, the self-certainty, which can ultimately be fulfilled and which will bring the dialectic to a close?