Hegel on the Absolute

Scott,

More interesting philosophy ties!  :)

"Though it may seem contradictory that the Absolute should be conceived
essentially as a result, it needs little pondering to set this show of
contradiction in its true light.  The beginning, the principle, or the
Absolute, as at first immediately enunciated, is only the universal.  Just
as when I say 'all animals', this expression cannot pass for a zoology, so
it is equally plain that the words, 'the Divine', 'the Absolute', 'the
Eternal', etc., do not express what is contained in them; and only such
words, in fact, do express the intuition as something immediate.  Whatever
is more than such a word, even the transition to a mere
proposition, contains a becoming‑other that has to be taken back, or is a
mediation.  But it is just this that is rejected with horror, as if absolute
cognition were being surrendered when more is made of mediation than in
simply saying that it is nothing absolute, and is completely absent in the
Absolute." ‑ Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Colten Strickland