Welcome to

GWFHegel.Org

. . . where the Absolute Truth is living and enjoying.

"The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases - a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it - all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws - is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason." Hegel, Werke, vii, 17.

This web site is devoted to the study of Hegel as he presents himself in the context of his own writings. In this way we allow Hegel to teach us what the Science of Philosophy is, and how, through such Science, the Absolute Truth reveals or rationally unfolds itself, although this may challenge, in a radical and transformative way, the accepted ideas and methods we may currently have of philosophy and science. By taking the approach of simply following Hegel's thought in its own development, we discover in the process that we have actually re-invented Philosophy and Science in a such a totally comprehensive and systematic way that we are finally able to integrate Mind and Matter into an Absolute Whole that transcends and encompasses both while yet maintaining a clear differentiation and distinction between them - a genuine unity in diversity that has been the cynosure of philosophical inquiry from time immemorial.

The task is to scientifically comprehend the ability of Reason to simultaneously hold contradictory sides, such as identity and difference or unity and diversity, within a higher unity, the Absolute or Spirit, without reductionistically collapsing the differentiation. The explicit process involves three stages: (1) the abstract understanding of the separated sides of the contradiction, (2) the dialectical relation of the sides, which dissolves their abstract independent separate existence (negative reason), and (3) the raising of this dialectical relationship into a dynamic unity - a process Hegel calls aufheben or sublimation, and in his later writings - positive reason. The ability to rationally think through this process provides us with an insight into the essence of the Concept (Begriff), whose intrinsic dynamic is constitued by the dialectical and sublimational activity that is self-evoked by the very nature of the various aspects or moments of the Concept itself. To understand this requires a rigorously scientific mind and sound philosophical training in order to be able to follow the dialectical and sublimational movement consistently throughout the whole development of the Phenomenology, Logic, Nature and Spirit until the entire scope of Reality is taken up into a rational, systematic Whole - the Absolute Idea or Divine Personality.

This is not to be misunderstood as a spirit monism - it is not a monotonous, static result, but a living multi-dimensional Reality - a result that is ever producing itself through the process of expressing or externalizing itself in otherness, then returning to itself by finding itself in this otherness. This process is the unending pulse beat of the Absolute where each beat may be considered a particular, while the pulse is the universal whole. And this is not to be misunderstood as pantheism since otherness means exactly what is 'other' to God, this pure opposition being an essential moment, the overcoming of which is the very life of Spirit.

Continued