“When Hegel writes that “language is the existence of the spirit as the immediate self,” he suggests that language connects the universal consciousness to the particular individual. Language is universal, in the sense that it is shared by all of the members of a linguistic community, but it lives only in the utterances of particular individuals. According to Hegel, language is the concrete expression of spirit in and through individuals. Judging and confessing are both speech acts that marry universality and particularity in this way.”