'Hegel: Walking on the path of the Absolute' by Martin Jenkins

The term 'Absolute' is associated with German Idealist Philosophy. It plays the foundational role upon which, the structure of indubitable human knowledge can be built. For JG. Fichte, the Absolute was based in the 'I' and became known in the dialectical movement between the said 'I' and the 'Not-I'.1 FWJ Shelling's understanding of the Absolute is that of an underlying Identity of the Subjective and Objective, the Conscious and the Unconscious, of Intelligence and Nature which sustains them but which is beyond, direct human cognition.2 Unlike Schelling and others, Hegel maintains that the Absolute can be known by human cognition.

In this paper I will provide a brief overview of how Hegel demonstrates this in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.3 This will be followed by consideration on how the content of the Encyclopaedia actually coheres. The ostensible view is that the content and development of the Absolute is identical with the way the three books of the Encyclopedia are presented. This is contentious as I shall hopefully demonstrate.

The first of the three books of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences is the Logic. In it, Hegel outlines how Reason or God arrives at an understanding of itself: i.e. categories of Thought thinking itself. The Mind of God/Reason externalises itself in Nature and becomes Nature,- explored in the Encyclopaedia Nature - creating orderly systems before manifesting itself in Encyclopaedia Geist in human beings ultimately as self-understanding Geist: as Geist understanding itself in the Idea or Absolute Idea. Firstly, to the Logic.

Encyclopaedia Logic

In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel demonstrates how Thinking thinks itself. Whilst Thought is initially confronted with intuitions, feelings, - experience, the truth of these can only be known through and within Thought. Thought or Reason or God is taken (this a contentious point) to enable cognition of Reality.4 It is, as the Ancient Greeks termed it, Nous.5 Objective Thought Determinations are immanent to the Universe -although Thought only becomes aware of this much later in the final book of the Logic.6 Thought determinations arise of necessity which is facilitated by dialectic (more below) and, they are dialectically cognised to achieve self-awareness by and through Subjective human cognition in a cumulative, process that has its terminus in the Absolute Idea. The Logic is thus 'the science of the 'Pure Idea'..of the Idea in the abstract element Thinking'.7

In other words, Thought/Reason/God cognises what is initially other to itself. It sublates, supersedes (Aufhebung) this other to itself thus heralding a higher, more comprehensive result and understanding of itself. This continues until all otherness-to-itself is ended in the comprehensive identity of the Absolute Idea. As Hegel writes:

"But the Idea shows itself as thinking that is strictly identical with itself and this at once shows itself as the activity of positing itself over and against itself in order to be For-Itself and to be, in this other, only at home with itself."8

This journey in the Logic from Being to Absolute Idea and in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences itself (Logic, Nature and Geist) occurs by means of Dialectic. Namely the mediation of Thinking Reason with itself. As described by Hegel, Dialectical thinking has three moments:

a) the side of abstraction or of the understanding.

b) the dialectical or negatively rational side.

c). the speculative or positively rational side.9

Abstraction or Understanding is limited to cognising fixed, separate thought determinations - the principle of bi-valence in standard Logic. A thing is what it is and nothing else (Law of Identity); A thing cannot be and not be (Law of Non-Contradiction and either a thing is or it is not, it cannot be both (Law of Excluded Middle).

In the Dialectical moment of the negatively rational, however, the fixed determinations become opposites. Thought is confronted by contradiction.10 In the final moment of speculative positive reason, apprehension of the unity of the opposites entails the affirmation that is contained in their dissolution and sublation, supersession (Aufhebung) in a progressive, cumulative result.

For instance, in the Logic, it famously begins with Being. Pure Being is. It is undetermined, simple and immediate.11 As pure, and abstract, taken immediately, Being is simultaneously Nothing. Side by side in Understanding, we have Being and Nothing. The negatively rational side of Thinking posits them as opposites. Yet Being is Nothing and Nothing is Being: the truth of them both is found by speculative or positively rational thought in Becoming.12 In Becoming, the unity of Being and Nothing is, due to their vague nature, a vanishing unity. Dialectical Negative Reason detects a contradiction. The contradiction is overcome or superseded (Aufhebung) in a new term of Being-There.13 This whole movement is the determination of Thinking developing dialectically in a necessary way by examining its concepts.

The Logic consists of three sections or Doctrines: Being, Essence and Concept. The schema of Thinking Thought is outlined and described. Being is immediacy of thought determinations. (Thinking In-Itself). Essence is the mediation of thought determinations with themselves (Thinking for-itself). Concept, which is the form of dialectical development of Identity sublating thought determinations or contents which are momentarily negative to it, progressively reaches fruition by achieving self-knowledge of itself as the totality of the previous process and the very Idea of this process which results in the Absolute Idea. Finite thinking accesses Infinite Thinking by means of cognising the Categories that are inherent to being. What is 'objective' therefore, is made 'subjective' and the 'subjective' comprises the 'objective', resulting finally, in the Absolute Idea. The epistemological and ontological foundation of human knowledge is situated with the Absolute Idea. Hegel writes:

"As the unity of the subjective and objective Idea, the Idea is the Concept of the Idea, for which the Idea as such, is the object and for which the object is itself - an object in which all determinations have come together. This unity therefore, is the absolute truth and all truth, it is the Idea which thinks itself and, at this stage moreover, it is present as thinking i.e. as logical Idea."14

To reiterate, the Logic concludes by grasping the Concept of itself as the Concept of the Idea. The Concept is the methodological content and process of the dialectical development culminating in Absolute Idea's self-realisation which as an object for-itself; achieves awareness of itself as this process in its Totality and result. It is its otherness and the otherness is it, in a final state of Identity, of knowing self-awareness.

Self-awareness is intuiting. As intuiting the Idea posits the negation of itself in its other, as immediate being. In other words, the absolute freedom of the Idea launches from out of itself and as such, it posits itself as Nature.

"Considered according to this unity that it has with itself, the Idea that is for itself is intuiting and the intuiting Idea is Nature. But as intuiting, the Idea is posited in the one-sided determination of immediacy or negation through external reflection. The absolute freedom of the Idea however, is that it does not merely pass over into life, nor that it lets its life shine within itself as finite cognition but, in the absolute truth of itself, it resolves to release out of itself into freedom the moment of its particularity or of the initial determining and otherness [i.e.] the immediate Idea as its reflexion or itself as Nature."15

The Absolute Idea becomes Nature.

As Alison Stone writes:

"The absolute idea, recognising itself as the mere thought (or concept) of the unity of concept and matter, is 'driven' to overcome its merely intellectual mode of existence, assuming the form of a really existing unity....the Idea, having recognised its own character as a form of thought, sees that this is a partial, merely intellectual character. This prompts the Idea to transcend its limitation by becoming an objectively existing unity of concept and matter: that is, by becoming nature."16 [Alison Stone. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature: Overcoming the Division between Matter and Thought. Reproduced from Dialogue 39 (2000) 725-43]. www.GWFHegel.org

Nature is the Idea and, is the object of the Idea. As such, object Nature will disclose the immanent operation of Reason or the Idea. This operation occurs dialectically - by the categories established in the Logic.

"At this stage, it is important simply to note that Hegel does, indeed, make this identification: 'The Idea, ...contracting itself into the immediacy of being, is the totality in this form - nature' Hegel is thus required to develop a philosophy of nature because, in his view, being - the 'object' with which philosophy is always concerned - itself turns out to be nothing but nature. Nature, as it emerges in Hegel's philosophy, is in turn understood to be not just brute contingency or sheer givenness, but existing actually - 'the Idea as being', the 'Idea that is' (diese seiende Idee), or, as Hegel puts it in his 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of nature, 'the embodied immediate Idea'.17 An Introduction to Hegel, Freedom, Truth and History. Stephen Houlgate, Blackwell 2005, pp. 106-8

Encyclopaedia Nature.

The Absolute Idea is sublated as Nature.

"Nature has presented itself as the idea in the form of otherness. Since in nature the idea is as the negative of itself or is external to itself nature is not merely external in relation to this idea, but the externality constitutes the determination in which nature as nature exists." (192. EN)18

Here, the Idea finds nature particularised, existing in a condition of 'asunderness'. In a cumulative succession of dialectical movements, the otherness that the Idea finds in the asundered phenomena of Nature is sublated by it. This could be termed an intermediation between 'the One' (the inner Idea) and the 'Many' (the variegated phenomena of Nature existing in a condition of externality) in which, the otherness of the 'Many' is incorporated, sublated (Aufhebung) by and, into the Idea. This otherness is not a wholly alien quality, as by means of progressive dialectical intermediation, Idea finds itself in what was previously, otherness. Thus:

"Nature is to be viewed as a system of stages, in which one stage necessarily arises from the other and is the truth closest to the other from which it results, though not in such a way that the one would naturally generate the other, but rather in the inner idea which constitutes the ground of nature." (194. EN)19

Encyclopaedia Nature is composed of three sections: Mathematics, Inorganic Physics and Organic Physics. In Part One, Mathematics, the Idea becomes Space, Time and Motion.20 . In Inorganic Physics, Matter and its characteristics are outlined culminating in individual body and, Life. Organic Physics explores Life in its Geological, Vegetative and Animal manifestations.

Throughout the processes, the Idea acquires an 'Ideality' of Nature. That is, the Idea conceptualises the external otherness of Nature as the 'embodied immediate idea'. In so doing, Nature is sublated by the Idea but the latter fails to adequate itself in Nature. It does not find the truth of itself within Nature.21 In other words, the real being of the Idea does not adequate to its Concept within Nature.

Thus, in the final stages of the Encyclopaedia Nature, we read that the subjectivity of the individual animal cannot allow for the realisation of the Concept/Idea. The individual animal is immediate with Nature subject to all its vicissitudes including death. Positively, animals as are included in their Genus or Universal. Yet negatively, the individual only achieves an abstract objectivity with its Genus, as it is subject to death. Despite this, positively, there is a subjectivity in both the individual and the Genus. The Idea as subjectivity in the Genus has 'sublated the last externality of Nature' i.e. immediacy.22

"In this way Nature has passed over into its truth, into the subjectivity of the Concept whose objectivity is itself the suspended immediacy of individuality, the concrete generality, the Concept which has the concept as its existence - into Geist". EN 298.23

Encyclopaedia Mind/Geist.

Dialectically, Geist emerges from Nature as a process. The third book of the Encyclopaedia series -Encyclopaedia Geist - is constituted by three parts: Mind Subjective, Mind Objective and Absolute Mind. The first part is itself composed of sub-sections: A. Anthropology: The Soul, B. The Phenomenology of Mind, Consciousness; C. Psychology, Mind.

In sub-section A: Anthropology, Hegel accounts how Geist or the Idea remains immediate or implicit in Nature. Here, the Idea is not yet conscious of itself, is not yet an object for itself, is not yet 'For-Itself.' This goal will eventually be achieved by means of the development of the Idea dialectically sublating (Aufgehobun) its otherness, sublating itself in its otherness.

Nature realises its 'externality', 'separateness', its 'materiality as an untruth', inadequate to the immanent Concept.24 Accordingly, Nature 'sets itself aside' passing over into Geist as its truth, a truth emerging from, yet remaining within Nature's corporeity.25 So, returning to Anthropology, the Idea is firstly actualised as a World Soul: "the Soul is the awaking of Consciousness'.26 It is a universality which is one and simple 'the sleep of Geist - the passive Nous of Aristotle, which is potentially all things'.27 Again, it is not yet conscious of itself.

Yet the world soul has no determinate existence, it simply is, it is Ideal.28 From it are particularised individual sentient souls who have immediate being and as such, remain abstract. Within such immediacy, there are feelings, sensations which, due to immediate Ideality gives the place of a subject which is immersed in them.29 This 'Self-Feeling' is indistinct from them. There is an awareness without an awareness, so to speak.

From a latent self-relation of Ideality to the particulars - to feelings and sensations - emerges a formal universal of self. From this simple being, the soul breaks with its corporeity.30 Again, there is at this stage, no conscious awareness.

The soul is nether distinct from, nor absorbed in the sensations, rather 'has them and moves in them, without feeing or consciousness of the fact."31 The regular, repetitiveness of feelings and sensations of corporeality is incorporated into the soul creating habitual practice: Habit. The soul is imposingpurpose on corporeity and the latter is conceived as external and 'a barrier'.32

Further:

"The Soul, when its corporeity has been moulded and made thoroughly its own, finds itself there a single subject; and the corporeity is an externality which stands as a predicate, in being related to which, it is related to itself...In this identity of interior and exterior, the latter subject to the former, the soul is actual: in its corporeity it has free shape, in which it feels itself and makes itself felt, and which, as the Souls work of art, has human pathognomic and physiognomic expression."33

External body and internal soul exist in a temporary unity of intermediation. Yet the soul shows the unreality of corporeity as the body offers little resistance to the moulding influence of the soul.34 The soul sets itself apart from corporeity of the body, absorbs it and makes it its own. The immediacy of the soul, of Being -as cited above- is accordingly left behind as the soul realises the Ideality of its qualities. As such, an inwardness of infinite self-relation is arrived at in the soul.35 From this 'Free Universality'' an Ego or 'I' emerges. The stage is now set for the emergence of Consciousness.

Consciousness is immediate, experiencing the 'Here and Now' of sensations. It is certain of sensations but not of their truth.36 Their truth is found in a combination of thought and sensible qualities, mediated by Universals ( as manifestations of the Concept) Mediated objects take the guise of appearance in which conscious intellect of the 'I' discerns the operation of Universals.37 In such judgements, the object is not distinct from the I as in it, the I finds the counterpart or reflex of its own self. Present in the other object is the categories and concepts of the 'I' and, in the other, the I becomes conscious of its own activity.38 Self=Consciousness is achieved.

Desire leads self-consciousness to cognise itself in an object, the latter becoming subjective and the subjectivity become objective.39 Appetite is destructive, consuming and annihilating the object. Satisfaction of appetite is therefore, transient.40 This immediacy is negated by Universality as self-consciousness finds itself identical with the object. This is an action of a Free object. In the object therefore, the Universal of self-consciousness is found by self-consciousness. From one-sided particularity, subjective self-consciousness is now Universal.41

In beholding the other Self-Consciousness, I behold myself. Yet this other is opposed to me. Each wants to be recognised as a free self , consequently, a struggle ensues. This contradiction is solved by the death of the other. This apparent solution only gives rise to another and greater contradiction: recognition is rendered impossible if the struggle results in the death of the other.42

Here we arrive at the Master and Slave, the initial structure of human, political and social life. To keep his life, the defeated enters slavery and gives up any hope of the equal recognition of his freedom. The Master reigns over the slave by Force.43 In this one-sided relation, the slave is not recognised as a particular instantiation of Universal self-consciousness. This socio-political relation becomes settled and established.

However, whilst the master suppresses the slave with the force and institutions deriving from his single self-hood, the slave 'in the service of his Master' overcomes the blind and immediate expression of appetite, develops a sense of individualism through the his 'fear of his lord'. This is 'the beginning of wisdom' and the passage to Universal self-consciousness.44

It marks such a beginning as obedience, in this instance to the Master, 'is a necessary moment in the education of all men'.45 In observing obedience, the appetite, egotism and self-will of the slave are suppressed. That is, the myopic, immediate, desire driven self-consciousness (egotism) which closes itself off to others is negated. The slave consciousness is open to other. This, does not apply to the Master.

Universal Self-consciousness is the awareness of a free, universal and independent self in the other. With this mutual recognition, Subjectivity has become Objective in its Universality.46 The Universality is Reason. Reason, as the Absolute Idea dialectically unifies the Concept and reality. Indeed, this dialectical process of unification underpins the whole movement as described above. (i.e. the adequation of reality to the Concept in the dialectical movement).47

Objects, which nominally, stand before self-consciousness are understood by Reason/Idea as they are inherently constituted, structured by Reason itself. Reason is thinking itself. Concept/self-consciousness and object (whether human or not) are unified. Hegel writes:

"The universality of Reason...whilst it signifies that the object which was only given in consciousness qua consciousness, is now itself universal, permeating and encompassing the ego, also signifies that the pure ego is the pure form which overlaps the object and encompasses it"48

Self-consciousness is therefore satisfied that the determinations it has are not just restricted to its thought determinations; they are determinations of the objects themselves. This identity is the activity of Reason. In Hegel's terminology, substance knows itself a s subject, it exists for-itself.49

From here, Section II: Mind Objective, Hegel's socio-political philosophy -expounded in greater detail in the Philosophy of Right- is outlined. Social structures are the dialectical instantiation of Reason or Geist of a people so as to allow the utmost Freedom. In Section III Absolute Mind, Art, Religion and Philosophy, we have the Absolute Idea becoming self-conscious of itself. In short, Art and Religion are inadequate to understand the ultimate end found in Philosophy: thought thinking itself as the Absolute Idea.

The overall pattern.

The issue I wish to examine here, is how the three books of the Encyclopedia cohere. The ostensible presentation of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences is of course as follows: Logic is followed by Nature and finally Mind or Geist. The Logic externalises itself in Nature where the latter is seen as a transition to the Geist. This 'linear' reading is explicitly outlined by Hegel in his Introduction to the Encyclopedia Geist, section 18. Near the end of the Encyclopedia Geist, appear three Syllogysms. The First syllogism 575 reiterates the linear reading already cited. However, this reading is subsequently problematised by the remaining two syllogysms.50

The very next syllogism 576, has Geist as the Middle term which 'presupposes Nature and couples it with the Logical principle'.51 Mind reflects upon itself in the Idea. Does this mean that Mind dialectically develops out of Nature, and realises this by means of reactive reflection upon Nature after it has achieved Self-Consciousness? It further discovers the Idea manifesting itself in the social structure of society by means of Philosophy, to further freedom.

With the third syllogism 577, the Idea of Philosophy as Self-knowing Reason , the Absolute universal, stands as the Middle term.52 This divides into Mind and Nature. Whereas Mind is Reason's presupposition as the development of subjectivity; Nature is the 'process of the objectively and implicitly existing Idea". Self-knowing Reason knows itself in Philosophy - complete knowledge of itself and of its dialectical development through Nature and Mind.

Syllogysms.

The First syllogism could set out the general scheme from which, the ensuing syllogisms provide differing perspectives on simultaneous developments. Indeed, S. Alexander maintains that all three syllogysms provide differing, simultaneous perspectives.53 The second syllogism could be interpreted as Geist, in presupposing Nature, has developed out of it. When Self-Consciousness appears, Geist discovers in Nature the 'Logical Principle'. On the one hand, 'looking backwards' from the position of Self-Consciousness, Geist subjectively discovers the Logic objectively immanent in Nature to disclose a Philosophy of Nature Naturphilosophie (as stated in the First syllogism when Logic externalises itself into Nature). Yet this cannot disclose the Absolute Idea, as Nature proves inadequate to the realisation of self-consciousness which is the sine qua non for cognition of the Absolute Idea, so the latter could not find its truth in Nature. On the other hand, from the position of realised Self-Consciousness, Geist, in reflecting upon itself 'in the Idea' proceeds historically to construct a socio-political actuality as guided by thinking Reason - in and by the 'subjective cognition' of Philosophy. Geist has emerged from and cognised Nature but not yet realised the Absolute Idea as espoused in Absolute Mind.

Finally, the third syllogism has the Idea of Philosophy, of self-knowing Reason as the middle term. It divides itself into Geist and Nature. This self -judging division into the two appearances of Geist and Nature (the First and Second syllogisms) 'characterises both as its (self-knowing g Reason) manifestations'.54 So the Absolute Idea manifests itself in Nature to understand itself by means of Geist understanding the Absolute Idea's implicit objectification in Nature (although to reiterate, at this stage, Nature cannot permit the self-consciousness of the Idea in understanding itself) and, manifests itself subjectively in Geist to achieve self-knowledge of itself by understanding the Absolute Idea as Mind Objective as demonstrated by and in Philosophy.

This process is cumulative: the Concept's necessary dialectic causes the 'movement and development' of the process, yet simultaneously, the movement and development of the process is 'equally the action of cognition'. From Nature, to Nature being understood by Self-conscious human beings -Geist-, to the manifestation of Freedom in sociality and to the cognition in Philosophy of this process and its result: all is for the cognition of the Absolute Idea. When this 'essence' of the Absolute Idea is understood, the Idea is fully understanding itself, is 'In and For-Itself'. Its essence is realised as Truth.

In the truth, the 'eternal Idea', 'eternally' sets itself to work. This could mean that what is, what exists, is the immanent action of the 'eternal Idea'. Unlike Spinoza' non-reflexive Substance that is God/Nature (Deus sive Natura), the eternal Idea 'enjoys itself as absolute mind'.55 Namely, what is, not merely exists but understands itself (through human beings) as 'absolute Mind' as espoused in Philosophy. According to Ermylos Plevrakis, this is the Noesis Noeseos of Theos as stipulated by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. So when we think in the Mind Absolute, we are thinking the thinking of self-knowing Reason. Finite is Infinite, human is 'God' so to speak.56

Granted this is the case. If so, what is the point of the First syllogism? For both the First and Third syllogysms can be read as the same: in the beginning is the Absolute idea, it is externalised in Nature and achieves its self-reflexive truth in the Encyclopaedia Geist. This is not correct as the first syllogism does not account for how both Self Consciousness arises and further, as Krill Chepurin terms it, retroactively 'spiritualises nature' - finding the Logical principle immanently active in Nature.57 The third syllogism does account for this.

To conclude, The Syllogisms provide differing perspectives of the activity of the Absolute with the Third providing the definitive activity. The Absolute Idea eternally exists. It acquires self-knowledge of itself by means of Nature and Geist - especially by means of human self-consciousness. This entails finite human consciousness partaking of the infinite consciousness of the Absolute Idea by a double movement. Firstly, when self-consciousness is reached, human self-consciousness can 'look back' to cognise the Absolute in Nature, retrospectively, so to speak. Secondly, human self-consciousness qua self-consciousness is Geist, collective mindfulness, self-consciousness of a people. 'Looking forward', as it were, this is manifested in the ethical, political and cultural being of a state. Art and Religion are not adequate to the full cognition of the Absolute Idea, as this is realised in Philosophy alone.

Unlike the Absolute of Schelling which remains hidden and beyond human knowledge, Hegel's Absolute is knowable - as he demonstrates. In Being, it is nascent, to become fully known in the Absolute Idea. As such, people, in their everyday lives, are being and acting, ' walking' within the existing instantiation of the Absolute Idea.58

References.

1. JG Fichte. The Science of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press. 1991

2. FWJ Schelling. System of Transcendental Idealism. University of Virginia Press. 1978.

3. GWF Hegel. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

Logic. (1830). Oxford University Press. 1975.

Nature. (1830). Oxford University Press. 1970.

Mind. (1830). Oxford University Press. 1971.

4. -13. Logic. Op cite.

5. - 11. Zusatze. (Z). ibid.

6. -24. ibid.

7. -19. ibid.

8. -18,-11, 24 & 238 ibid. See also EM -382. The Concept is identical with itself yet negative to itself. This disjunction is inherent to the Dialectical process pending the adequation of the Concept with itself as realised Absolute Idea: as self-conscious Identity. Freedom is frequently mentioned in connection with the process as the Freedom of Thought striving to understand itself by means of Necessity. Perhaps this harks back to the centrifugal movement of Fichte's Absolute I?

9. -79 E Logic. Op cite. Although Hegel scholars maintain Hegel employs differing schemas of the Dialectic. See for instance Andy Blunden. Non-Linear Processes and the Dialectic. https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Non-linear%20processes%20and%20the%20dialectic.pdf Blunden writes thirteen different compositions of the Dialectic can be found within Hegel's works.

10. - 11 E. Logic. Op cite.

11. -87 ibid.

12. ibid.

13.-89. ibid.

14. -236. ibid.

15.-244. ibid.

16. Alison Stone. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature. Overcoming the Division between Matter and Thought. Dialogue Issue 39 (2000). Hosted on www.gwfhegel.org/nature/as.html

17. Stephen Houlgate. An Introduction to Hegel, Truth and History. Blackwell. 2005. Pp. 106-8.

18. GWF Hegel. Encyclopedia Nature op cite. -192.

19. ibid. -194.

20. ibid. -203, 205.

21. -381. E.M. Zusatze

22. -296, 7, 8 E.N. See also: -218-222. EL.

23. -298. E.N.

24. -389. Zusatze. E.M.

25. -388. ibid.

26. -387. ibid.

27. -389. ibid.

28. -390. Zusatze. ibid.

29. -407. ibid.

30. -409. ibid.

31. -410. ibid.

32. ibid.

33. -411. ibid.

34. -412. ibid.

35. -413. ibid.

36. -418. ibid.

37. -420. ibid.

38. -423. ibid.

39. -427. ibid.

40. -428. ibid.

41. -429. ibid.

42. -432. ibid.

43. -433. ibid.

44. -435. ibid.

45. Zusatze. ibid.

46. -436. ibid.

47. -437. ibid.

48. -438. ibid.

49. -439. ibid.

50. -575. ibid.

51. -576. ibid.

52. -577. ibid.

53. S. Alexander quoted in Cincia Ferrini. Hegel on Nature and Spirit. Hegel Studien. 9/03/2012. P. 25.

54. -577. E.G. op cite.

55. Schelling's letter to Hegel dated. 4th February 1795 announces the influence of Spinoza: "In the meanwhile, I have become a Spinozist -Don't be amazed: you are about to hear in what way. For Spinoza, the world (the object pure and simple, as opposed to the subject) was all; for me, it is the I. It seems to me that the real difference between critical philosophy and dogmatic philosophy lies in the fact that the critical philosophy begins with the absolute I (the I which is as yet unconditioned by any object), and dogmatic philosophy begins with the absolute object, or the not-!. The ultimate consequence of the latter is Spinoza 's system; of the former, the Kantian system. Philosophy must begin with the unconditioned. Now the question is where this unconditioned lies: in the I or in the not-!. When this question is decided, everything is decided. For me, the supreme principle of all philosophy is the pure, absolute!.. .. The absolute I comprises an infinite sphere of absolute being; within this sphere, finite spheres take shape, which arise through the restriction of the absolute sphere ... " Cited in Alexandre Guilherme. Fichte and Schelling: The Spinoza Connection. Durham Theses, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2471/ Note 23, P 183.

56. Ermylos Plevrakis. The Aristotelian Theos in Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. Hegel Bulletin 82. Volume 41. Spring 2020. pp. 83-101. See -552 EM and the quote from Aristotle's Metaphysics xi.7.at the end of the Encyclopaedia Mind. (1817 & 1830).

57. Krill Chepurin. Nature, Spirit and Revolution: Situating Hegel's Philosophy of Nature. Comparative and Continental Philosophy.. 2016. Vol 8, No 3, pp. 302-314.

58. -24. EL. Addition 2. Hegel writes the following about the Absolute: "We usually suppose that the Absolute must lie far beyond; but it is precisely what is wholly present, what we as thinkers always carry with us and employ, even though we have no express consciousness of it". (my emphasis)