Since he rather notoriously uses words to mean what HE needs them to, here's a link to Hegel Glossary: to give at least some sense of this.
The first sentence I take to be arguing or claiming that to be alive is to possess subjectivity, which is defined as "the mediation between a self and its development into something different": in other words (mine) there's what you feel you are and what you feel you could be, and subjectivity is what goes on to attempt to wrangle one into the other.
The second sentence I see is translated slightly differently elsewhere viz: "This substance is, as subject, pure, simple negativity, and is for this very reason the bifurcation of the ...simple" -- which is therefore (I take it) making a distinction between "living substance" (presumably the whole being including body and whatever) and "substance as subject", which would be the awareness: which Hegel is arguing is "pure, simple negativity"; again, think this is definitional... he's saying (something like) awareness is always the act of making distinctions between what something is and what it's not (the "something" often being the self; the latter sometimes including what it's becoming)... so he's saying that awareness (my word) IS negativity, and vice versa. The capacity to distinguish is a bifurcation; distinguishing as a process encompasses -- by positing a thing and its opposite* as in a significant relationship -- a second act of judgment (which is to say "negation"). This sequence of negations brings us towards a true understanding: the fact of the distinction, combined with an understanding of the importance of linkage between what something is and what it isn't. "The true" -- meaning true understanding -- thus encompasses a grasp of process of judgement, the map of distinctions as it were, as well as the fact of the distinctions: thus all mistakes and false paths along the way -- along with why they happened and how they were overcome and reabsorbed -- also belong to "the true"... In the glossary, you'll see Hegel also insists that "The whole is the true": this (I think) is another way of saying the same thing; that everything -- including all possible errors along the way and how they happened -- must be contained in the True Understanding. Which can only be reached by setting out for it; and only grasped by undertaking the full journey.
The first sentence I take to be arguing or claiming that to be alive is to possess subjectivity, which is defined as "the mediation between a self and its development into something different": in other words (mine) there's what you feel you are and what you feel you could be, and subjectivity is what goes on to attempt to wrangle one into the other.
The second sentence I see is translated slightly differently elsewhere viz: "This substance is, as subject, pure, simple negativity, and is for this very reason the bifurcation of the ...simple" -- which is therefore (I take it) making a distinction between "living substance" (presumably the whole being including body and whatever) and "substance as subject", which would be the awareness: which Hegel is arguing is "pure, simple negativity"; again, think this is definitional... he's saying (something like) awareness is always the act of making distinctions between what something is and what it's not (the "something" often being the self; the latter sometimes including what it's becoming)... so he's saying that awareness (my word) IS negativity, and vice versa. The capacity to distinguish is a bifurcation; distinguishing as a process encompasses -- by positing a thing and its opposite* as in a significant relationship -- a second act of judgment (which is to say "negation"). This sequence of negations brings us towards a true understanding: the fact of the distinction, combined with an understanding of the importance of linkage between what something is and what it isn't. "The true" -- meaning true understanding -- thus encompasses a grasp of process of judgement, the map of distinctions as it were, as well as the fact of the distinctions: thus all mistakes and false paths along the way -- along with why they happened and how they were overcome and reabsorbed -- also belong to "the true"... In the glossary, you'll see Hegel also insists that "The whole is the true": this (I think) is another way of saying the same thing; that everything -- including all possible errors along the way and how they happened -- must be contained in the True Understanding. Which can only be reached by setting out for it; and only grasped by undertaking the full journey.
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