"Spirit contains this actuality here because the extremes whose unity it is just as immediately each have the determination to be for itself its own actuality. Their unity is subverted into aloof aspects, each of which is for the other an actual object excluded from it. The unity thus emerges as a mediating middle which is excluded and distinguished from the departed actuality of the two aspects; thus it itself has an actual objectivity differentiated from its aspects, and it is for them, i.e., it is existent. The spiritual substance enters into existence, first while it has gained for its aspects the sort of self-consciousness which knows this pure self to be an actuality which is immediately in force, and therein it just as immediately knows that it is this actuality only through the alienating mediation. Through the former, the moments are refined into the self-knowing category and thereby are refined right up to the point that they are moments of spirit. Through the latter, spirit comes into existence as spirituality."
wtf is Hegel saying?
If I recall "Spirit" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and makes it sound more mystical than it probably is.
And Hegel was obsessed with trying to find out how apparent contradictions really... weren't?
So Gemini actually did a great "translation" of this paragraph into something people on this forum could understand:
"If it helps to view it as a distributed architecture problem, Hegel is basically describing how autonomous nodes (individuals) form a network (Spirit).
Because the individual nodes don't trust each other and act strictly in their own self-interest, they can't simply mesh. Instead, their "unity" emerges as a shared, externalized protocol or state machine (the mediating middle). The network actually "comes into existence" when the nodes are fully initialized and aware of their local state, but simultaneously realize they can only achieve anything by serializing their data and passing it through this massive, alienating central protocol."
TLDR: society is made up of individuals, but every single individual thinks they are the main character. We all view ourselves as independent and self-sufficient. And because we all act like we are the centre of the universe, we don't naturally form a harmonious blob. We look at other people and see them as external objects -- NPCs who are separate from us. To interact, we have to invent a third party that sits between us—money, laws, government, social norms. ("The unity thus emerges as a mediating middle which is excluded and distinguished from the departed actuality of the two aspects; thus it itself has an actual objectivity...")
IMHO it's actually really just bog standard liberalism / social contract stuff masquerading behind obscurantist German / high-philosophical language. Though it's probably more mmeant to be more about knowledge and experience and human spirit than boring market relationships etc.
That and much of it was meant to be read somewhat poetically not prescriptively.
I am also not convinced that today's distracted and scattered brains are even capable of reading and digesting something like Kant or Hegel fully. I have a hard time slowing down and thinking at the slow but detailed pace the text requires. I used to read this stuff on the bus or plane before smart phones and even then it was hard to focus deeply enough.
Also, now I old and just fall asleep.