Hegel und das absolute Wissen

Gwendoline Jarczyk

Pierre-Jean Labarrière

pp. 147-160

in: Paul Sars, Chris Bremmers, Koen Boey (eds), Eros and Eris, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

The last section of the Phenomenology of Mind, "Absolute Knowledge,' is often interpreted as a Promethean recapitulation of all human knowledge, in a sort of apotheosis of the end of time. However, replacing the text in the structure of the total work, and thus proceeding to a literal decipherment of it, amounts to restore the word to its modest origins, i.e. as "unification" of both types of "reconciliation", between consciousness and self-consciousness, placed towards the end of the sections Mind and Religion, this Absolute Knowledge — as is the case for every logical absolute — only defines the level of intelligibility or the element, at the heart of which the events of history, in their unforseeable contingency, can receive meaning. In this way, it allows the logical articulation of Phenomenology and System.