Self-conscious man is a divided being; his dirempt condition appears as original sin--an innate wickedness that he cannot extirpate by his own efforts.
(108) In other words, Hegel's claim to wisdom could be understood as a claim to counter the skepticism that so afflicts philosophy when it takes its bearings from the opposition of consciousness.109 It cannot be a claim to provide a comprehensive account of the whole since spirit continually dirempts itself.
This is sometimes expressed as the naivety of consciousness in which the world is given and the object itself "speaks." However, this "moment" gives rise to its own negation as it is
dirempted by its own inadequacy, the fact that the concept is ultimately inadequate to its object.
The idea that we are animals of a rational kind differs appreciably from rampant platonism which is led to conceive of rationality as
dirempted from nature thanks to its tacit endorsement of a disenchanted nature.
The unity of life is constantly
dirempted, because only as
dirempted can it continue to be a unity.
The condition of Faust's dirempted self-consciousness finds philosophic expression in Hegel's analysis of unhappy consciousness (ungluckliches Bewusstsein).
The contract with Mephisto contains emotional conditions that might satisfy Faust's dirempted soul, but he also stumbles upon an intellectual solution with practical ramifications.
In other words, it follows that once an intellective soul has come into existence, and barring an external force or agency that
dirempts its ontological constitution, it will exist forever.
To be distended is to be stretched away from, it is to be forcibly separated, it is to be
dirempted. In broad terms, to regard time as distension and human life as temporal, human existence itself must be a distension.