I wish we can still write like Hegel and get away with it. The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter. The Spirit shows itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss. To pit this single insight, that in the Absolute everything is the same, against the full body of articulated cognition [is] to palm off its Absolute as the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black - this is cognition naively reduced to vacuity. Least of all will the Phenomenology of Spirit be like the rapturous enthusiasm which, like a shot from a pistol, begins straight away with absolute knowledge, and makes short work of other standpoints by declaring that it takes no notice of them. Appearance is the arising and passing away that does not itself arise and pass away, but is in itself, and constitutes the actuality and the movement of the life of the true. The True is thus the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk; yet because each member collapses as soon as he drops out, the revel is just as much transparent and simple repose.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 07:19:25 +0000