Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Lecture Nine: C (DD) ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE – Part 2

Описание: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Lecture Nine: C (DD) ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE – Part 2

Before we begin, 3 points:
ONE: Hegel informs us not only that Religion contains and is the GROUND of all the shapes that have preceded (e.g., Self-consciousness, Reason, and Spirit), but that Absolute Knowing, the final shape, is the Truth and GROUND of Religion itself and likewise contains all that has preceded, including Religion!
TWO: In our first lecture we said the goal of the Phenomenology (“the science of the experience of consciousness”) is Absolute Knowing and the ABSOLUTE CONCEPT, and this means that the CONCEPT – aka Thought, the Self, Consciousness, the “I” – is ALL REALITY and all that exists AND the singular result of our exit from Plato’s Cave. The CONCEPT is the standpoint of Absolute Science and the beginning of the Science of Logic. The CONCEPT or Self, Thought (etc.) first emerged as the Object or Reality at the end of Perception in “A: Consciousness” as the “unconditioned universal,” and then became the main focus in “B: Self-consciousness.” Finally in “C,” the unity of “A” and “B”, of Consciousness and Self-consciousness, we had “REASON” as the certainty that consciousness, the “I”, is ALL REALITY, which Hegel also called the “Category” – the unity of the “I” (self-consciousness) and Being. We also noted that Reason (and the Category, etc.) did not become ALL REALITY until we reached SPIRIT, and then only at the close of Spirit in Conscience, evil and forgiveness where we had the RECIPROCAL RECOGNITION of Acting and Judging Conscience, which became absolute Spirit, God, and Reich Gottes and brought the Phenomenology to a close (i.e., FOR US, not for consciousness itself). What we learned, the Key to the book, is that absolute Spirit (“Spirit knowing itself as Spirit”) requires at least TWO Selves who recognize each other as equals and as equally ALL REALITY. As Hegel said, each Self or Conscience is a “U.I.”, a unity of Universality and Individuality, that is, each Self is the CONCEPT itself which sees only itself in its opposite: we thus have here “One PURE KNOWING knowing another PURE KNOWING.” It is precisely by enlisting this “conceptual recognition” that Hegel will solve the issue of overcoming the believer’s alienation and separation from the absolute Being (or God). Etc.
––For a transcript of these lectures go to academia.edu: "ken foldes" - where much additional material and links can also be found.