Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 22 No. 1, 2007.
Original scientific paper
“Our complement”. On a more accurate understanding of a methodological motif from the “Introduction” of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Thomas Sören Hoffmann
Abstract
In the “Introduction” of his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel portrays phenomenological knowledge in the tension between immediate self construction and a philosophical understanding of its development to the point of true knowing. This study deals with the question of what exactly must be regarded as the “complement” of philosophic understanding. From analyzing the “Introduction” and returning to the texts about the absolute epistemology from Hegel’s systematic outlines from Jena, it follows that the “complement” must be seen in the abolition of consciousness in its content, as well as in the (deductive) evidence of the realization of the absolute epistemology in it. Thus, consciousness is on the one hand (without its complement) a “constructive” self-development of its own totality; but it is not simultaneously a consciousness (“deduction”) of the self-development of its own identity’s totality – it is the later only as a moment of absolute epistemology, as an existing idea of a philosophy, which can only though itself understand this existence as its own moment.
Keywords
Absolute; consciousness; dialectics; absolute insight; phenomenon; idea of philosophy; method; appearing knowledge
Hrčak ID:
16503
URI
Publication date:
6.8.2007.
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